Umbanda

Overview: Umbanda is an Afro-Brazilian religion that arose in Brazil at the beginning of the twentieth century and developed through multiple currents, terreiros, and ritual lineages. In comparative language, it articulates elements from African matrices, Kardecist Spiritism, popular Catholicism, Indigenous religiosities, urban devotions, and mediumistic experiences, forming its own tradition centered on charity, spiritual work, entities, orixás, and communal care.

Origin and development: The best-known narrative links its public foundation to 1908 and to the activity of Zélio Fernandino de Moraes, but researchers and practitioners recognize that the religion also results from broader processes of encounter among Afro-Brazilian traditions, spiritualisms, healing practices, urban devotions, and modern reconfigurations of mediumship in Brazil. Over the twentieth century, Umbanda took on varied forms, ranging from currents closer to Kardecism to more Africanized, esoteric, or popular lineages.

Beliefs and structure: Among its frequent elements are the existence of a supreme divine principle, the action of orixás, the work of spiritual entities such as caboclos, pretos-velhos, children, boiadeiros, sailors, exus, and pombagiras in different traditions, mediumship as a human faculty, charity as a moral and ritual axis, and the possibility of passes, cleansings, consultations, ritual fixings, baths, smoke cleansings, and spiritual development. Not all of these components take the same form in every line of Umbanda.

Texts and authority: Umbanda has no single universally normative scripture. Its authority circulates through oral tradition, ritual songs, terreiro teachings, doctrinal works, manuals of specific lines, and communal recognition. Some currents value more systematized Umbandist literature; others privilege terreiro experience and initiatory or mediumistic transmission.

Practices: Giras, incorporation, passes, consultations, offerings, ritual fixings, ritual use of herbs, candles, pemba, songs, drums in many terreiros, and works of spiritual and social assistance make up the life of the religion. Charity is often understood not only as material giving, but as spiritual service, listening, symbolic healing, and moral guidance.

Diversity and debates: There are Umbandas with strongly Kardecist, popular, esoteric, omolocô, traced, sacred, initiatory profiles or ones that dialogue intensely with Candomblé and other Afro-Brazilian religions. Recurring debates involve the relationship with ritual sacrifice, the legitimacy of exus and pombagiras, syncretism, Africanization, religious racism, the distinction between Umbanda and Candomblé, and disputes over doctrinal purity. In a comparative database, it is important to treat Umbanda as a religion in its own right and as internally plural.