White Magic

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White Magic TEXT

ANA SCHLIMOVICH— IMAGES ANDY RICHTER

In Brazil’s syncretic, spiritual, ecstatic Candomblé religion, white lifts the spirit. And the spirits.

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very December 31st around two million people stand on the sands of Rio de Janeiro’s Copacabana Beach, waiting for the new year to arrive. A few days later, on the second Thursday of January, a huge pilgrimage led by a traditional cortège of baianas advances toward Salvador’s Bomfim Church to wash the entrance stairs with brooms and perfumed water to the rhythm of African drums and religious chants. On February 2, the beach of Rio Vermelho, also in Salvador, is filled with pilgrims bringing gifts for the goddess Iemanjá, the Queen of the Seas – a scene repeated in many other cities along the Brazilian coast.

All of these events have two things in common: Brazil’s unique mix of African and Portuguese religions, and a lovingly followed all-white dress code.

Why white? To comprehend the relevance of white requires an understanding of Candomblé, the belief system that animates much of Brazil’s religious expression. Candomblé’s name comes from the Quicongo-Angola language and means adoration, praise and invocation. In Brazil, slaves who arrived in Bahia from Benin and Nigeria created Candomblé in the 19th century from a base of African spirituality with overlays of European Catholicism.

Candomblé was one of the ways that slaves found to preserve their independence of spirit, and their ties to the homeland from which they were brutally taken. They worshipped orixás, ancient forces of nature whose names and characteristics are African. These “archetypal personalities concentrate in their myths an immense quantity of teachings about various areas of existence,” in the words of Zeca Ligiéro, a scholar specialized in

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Photographer Andy Richter captures various stages of a Candomble’ ceremony in Rio de Janeiro

Afro-Brazilian culture and author of the book Initiation to Candomblé.

To venerate the orixás, followers pay homage with animals, vegetables, minerals, chants, dancing and special clothes. One of the orixás of Candomble is Oxalá, the creator of all human beings and the father of many other orixás. He is the representation of purity, peace and spirituality in their most absolute state. His houses of worship, his clothes, even his food, are all white. Friday is Oxalá’s day, so Candomblé followers wear spotless white clothes to honor him throughout the day. They must also dress in immaculate white at the initiation ceremonies practiced to reach the knowledge of the orixás. These rituals take place in Candomblé shrines called terreiros. There, says Ligiéro, novices prepare to be reborn, so they should be like a white canvas, able to receive new ritual clothes, new colors associated with the forces of nature, all according to the dictates of the orixá that will inhabit their heads, their individual orí, the bearer-deity of each human being’s individuality. The initiation process can take up to two months, during which time the initiates wear only white.

In the land of syncretism like Brazil, where different cultures and beliefs are absorbed and remixed rather than separated and rejected, the significance of white exceeds Candomblé, or any individual religion.

White has become a deeply embedded custom expressing peace and purity of mind at every level of the Brazilian society, and across many spiritual systems. There’s no need to believe in any religion in particular when you stand among two million people looking clean and clear as a blank slate on the western shore of the Atlantic Ocean, hoping and wishing, body and soul, for a year of happiness for all. You just have to relax and float into the future on white wave of pure, peaceful intention.

Ana Schlimovich is an Argentinian travel writer and photographer and a regular free lance contributor to diverse magazines and newspapers. She is based in Rio de Janeiro. Photographer Andy Richter’s recent work includes a long-term project on childhood obesity with Time Magazine that can be seen with audio on Time. com. He traveled to Brazil in 2010 to explore Capoeira and Candomble through the lens.

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