Fun-Loving Deities in an Afro-Brazilian Cult
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2581843 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Seth Leacock (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1964 |
| Volume | 37 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 94 |
| Publication date | 1964-07-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Anthropological Quarterly (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0003-5491 • E-ISSN: 1534-1518 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/3316951 |
| OpenAlex | W2331563861 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 6 |
| References cited | 1 |
One of the striking features of the religious life of modern Brazil is a proliferation of new religions. Officially, and largely in fact, Brazil is Catholic, in the sense that the basic beliefs about the supernatural world are derived from the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church. But today many Brazilians, and particularly members of the lower classes, are broadening their religious experience by participating in possession cults of various kinds. Of the wide range of cults which occur, most attention has been directed to those which are based directly on African traditions (Bastide 1960). The present paper deals with a type of cult which quite clearly stems from the African tradition but which has been so greatly modified and Brazilianized that it is best considered as an essentially new religion. One of the distinctive features of this new cult is a belief in a group of fun-loving deities which are said to possess people in order to have a good time. The intent of the present paper, in addition to describing the role of the fun-loving deities in cult activities, is first to consider several hypotheses relating to their origin, and then to discuss the implications of their probable origin for historical studies of religion. In the city of Belkm, the port city of the Amazon River in northern Brazil, there are some forty Afro-Brazilian cult centers. Although the ritual and beliefs of each center are somewhat different from all the others, the over-all similarities are such that it is reasonable to consider them as a unit. I have called the cult
Aesthetics · Art · Cult · Sociology · Theology · Culinary Culture and Tourism · History · Philosophy · Religious studies
| Unique citing works | 6 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,35 |
| Citation span | 2009 - 2021 (13) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 6 |