Traditional Brazilian Black Magic: The Secrets of the Kimbanda Magicians

Review

“Diego de Oxóssi presents the factors that made Brazil so spiritually bountiful and o ers with care, insight, and respect what Quimbanda de Cruzeiro e Almas is and how it branched out from its native and African roots into something fresh, unique, and true.” ―
NICHOLAJ DE MATTOS FRISVOLD, psychologist, anthropologist, and author of Obeah and Palo Mayombe

About the Author

Diego de Oxóssi is a Chief of Kimbanda and Orishas Priest. For more than 20 years he has been researching and presenting courses, lectures, and workshops on pagan and African-Brazilian religions. He writes a weekly column at CoreSpirit.com and is the publisher at Arole Cultural. He lives in São Paulo, Brazil.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

From Kimbanda’s Spirit-Deities

Kimbanda can generally be defined as the cult of the rascals, the so-called Eshus and Pombagiras. However, in its theology, traditional Kimbanda goes beyond and organizes the cosmos hierarchically under the concept of condensed and expanded energies. In addition, as a marginal religion, it brings together other classes of spirits that, like Eshus and Pombagiras, are also often left out of society, both physical and spiritual.

Eshu Maioral
Eshu Maioral, also called Eshu Mor or Eshu Belzebu, carries with him the balance of the universe. Unlike Eshu Spirits, which, as already described, are spirits subject to the phenomenon of embodiment, Eshu Maioral does not embody in any Medium, no matter what! This is because Eshu Maioral is not a spirit, has not had an earthly life, nor is he disincarnated. Much more than that, Maioral is a cluster of energies, a powerhouse: the magical gathering of the positive and negative poles of universe, the symbolic marriage between male and female, the concentration of the five elements of magical nature: earth, fire, water, air, and spirit.

Commonly represented by the image of Baphomet–a goat-headed androgynous creature with female breasts and ox feet–it epitomizes the universal balance. The position of the hands, pointing up and down, is a clear reference to the rule common to all religious traditions: “all that is above is also below” or “on earth as it is in heaven.”

One of Kimbanda’s exponents in southeastern Brazil in the mid-1970s, Tata Augustin de Satã, describes the hierarchical position of Maioral in a famous Kimbanda sacred song:

Olha a catira da Umbanda, Espia, espia quem vem lá. É o chefe, é o Rei da Kimbanda, Chefe dos chefes, é o Maioral.
Oh worshippers of Umbanda,
Look, look who’s coming there
It’s the master, the Kimbanda King,
Chief of all chiefs, it is Maioral.

Eshu e Pombagira

Eshu and its female counterpart, Pombagira, are the most well-known Spirits of all those manifested in African-Brazilian religious practices. This is because, in all of them, the other Spirits are always kept at a certain distance that divinizes and sacralizes them, while Eshu is seen as close and intimate with the human being, and even treated by his faithful as “my buddy” (in Portuguese,
compadre).

In addition, the archetype represented by Eshu also contributes to the creation of this almost affective bond between men and Spirit. Outcasts of every kind, marginal in the literal sense of the word–those who live on the margins–Eshu and Pombagira represent human nature itself with all its vices and virtues, free from the moral bonds imposed by Western Christian society. They are therefore parents, siblings, friends, and, why not, reflections of those who worship them, even serving as an element of catharsis.

It is precisely for this reason, combined with the
freedom that Eshu gains within Kimbanda for his insubordination to other Spirits, that when embodied in his Mediums, He maintains and reproduces the ways, tastes and desires of when He was incarnated and can often be easily confused with a live person.

“They are lovers of the night, the gambling, the balls and the parties of all kinds. The carnival, stree