MITOLOGIA DOS ORIXÁS E UMBANDA: DUAS BACIAS SEMÂNTICAS NA PERSPECTIVA DE DURAND

Abstract

According to some concepts of Gilbert Durand (sociocultural topic of the imaginary, semantic basin, mythanalysis, day and night regimes of the imaginary), this doctoral thesis searches for two cultural topics from the religious: the mythology of orixás (African) and the Umbanda (Brazilian). Both considered having the same semantic basins and typified as belonging to the same night regime of the imaginary (however, Umbanda is in a phase of transition of regime). In the imaginary study of several populations, Durand organized the mythological expression in two different regimes: the night and the day regimes. The first is the regime of antithesis, the Manichaeism, the universe divided in opposites (the good versus the evil, darkness versus light), the tormented man, polemic, dual, divided in his psyche and his needs to put in order the chaos. The second is the one that unifies and synthesizes the opposites of the universe, the regime of the integral human and allayed with himself. The great family of the orixás, with its thematic unity, his habitus and the euphemic ideology, it is the example of the night regime. This reveals the ethos of a population psychically allayed with itself that solves all of the existential problems by the oracle of Ifá and the offering of gifts to the orixás that answers the demands for happiness, welfare and fortune. Created by the oral collective tradition, memorized by the balalaôs and repassed generation by generation, the mythology of the orixás is the set of narratives of the orixás, the gods of the iorubá African people. The believers receiving their gods in rituals typified with drum sounds, songs, dancing and parties characterize the mediumistic phenomenon of possession, during the celebrations. This is the tradition that arrived in Brazil with the slaves in the XVI century, syncretized with the Catholicism, as a mechanism to avoid the discrimination that the blacks have suffered from their white lords, therefore, resulting in many celebrations of African matrices, which Candomblé and Umbanda stand out. In the present work, the mythanalysis of orixás shows separately the meaning and significance (the two parts of the linguistic sign and symbolic signs). To this reason, the significance is the sensitive part, figurative, concrete and linked to the imaginary with narratives and their contexts (characters, plot, action, time and space); the meaning is the thematic aspect, abstract with some approaches of interpretation: anthropological, historical, social, psychoanalytical and archetypical. The Umbanda, that was born in this semantic basin, in modern times, in the XX century, is a Brazilian religion, which was raised from the synthesis among these celebrations of African matrices, Catholicism, Kardecism and the native indigenous rites, creating, yet, recent myths according to the Brazilian reality. The Umbanda inherited many traces of the basin-mother and the most remarkable of this religion is the practice of the mediumistic appointments with mediums incorporated by spiritual entities that are similar to the oracles of the orixás, taking care of people in existential difficulties, solving magically all the problems they present. Thus, the discourse of legitimation and social acceptance is set, the Umbanda follows its moral principles; practice the good and the good through charity, like the Christian principles.