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| It is often said at Casa Branca, one of Salvador's founding temples of Afro-Brazilian worship, that an uninitiated person looking inside a shrine (quarto de santo) will be blinded. Axé, the accumulated forces residing in the shrine, cannot be seen, but can be felt. If you have two identical jackets, and one of them contains axé, then that jacket will define the essence of African religious art. A sacred object with a profound life history has axé. The beauty of Afro-Brazilian art resides in this history, and unfortunately it is not something that a camera, or one human being, can capture. |
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Beyond not being able to capture the axé of the Orixá, even if I wanted to, I have also tried to photograph shrines in which the sacred implements that carry the axé have been covered. Annual transformations of the shrine are vital to the continuity, dynamism, and mystery of the axé of all shrines.
Trees are especially symbolic of this.
| Arvore sagrada a Odé, orixá da caça |
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| Tree sacred to Odé, a hunting deity |
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| Olubaje, comida sagrada a Obaluaie, orixá curador de doenças
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| Olubaje is served in honor of Obaluaie, deity that cures the ill. |
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| Ossain, orixá das folhas, dança no barracão. |
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| Ossain pounds herbal remedies between his hands. |
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| Arvores sagradas são enfeitadas com ojás, em respeito aos ancestrais. |
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| Cloth is tied round trees and shrubs as a sign of respect to ancestors. |
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