Ritual de vida e morte no candomblé: narrativas iniciáticas e práticas educativas

Abstract

The aim of this study was to identify and analyze the educational practices arising from initiation into Candomblé. To this end, it problematized religious initiation from the subjects' perspective as a milestone that inserts them into a religious educational practice capable of influencing their social life after this rite. Methodologically, a qualitative study was carried out using the action research strategy, emphasizing the subjects' perspective on religious initiation. We used 3 (three) collaborating subjects, including 1 (one) woman and 2 (two) men who were initiated into Candomblé in religious temples in the city of Fortaleza at different times. The study made use of the anthropological method and used the approach: multiple ethnographic case study, with a focus on education. The sources of evidence for the research were targeted interviews. The text is situated in a line of post-colonial philosophical thought that places Candomblé in an Afrocentric perspective. The thesis presents results based on the subjects' narratives, and concludes that the Candomblé initiation rite produces and reproduces objects of education in its neophytes, that initiation into the religion educates, disciplines and indoctrinates bodies for a new life, that a new world of codes, precepts, norms and conceptions is known by those who initiate and that the religion therefore begins to guide their lives. As such, the study proves the thesis that Candomblé practices educate, and that when the neophyte undergoes the Candomblé initiation ritual, he dies to his life prior to initiation and is born into a new religious life. The birth of the religious being begins with the rituals of feitura and continues to be consolidated with the apprehension of the religious precepts and dogmas that are problematized throughout the study.