Debunking the Myth of Continuity

In recent years, some writers have tried to weave Quimbanda into a grand story of Western occultism. They argue that the spirit traditions of ancient Greece and Rome somehow survived through medieval grimoires and then re-emerged in the Afro-Brazilian world. It is an attractive idea for those who want to see one continuous current of magic stretching from the Mediterranean to Brazil. But it is not history. It is speculation, and not very good speculation at that.

Jake Stratton-Kent was the most prominent voice pushing this view. He built his career on the claim that the goetic tradition of the ancient world never died, that it was hidden in Christian grimoires, and that when those books travelled across the Atlantic, they met African religions and fused into the practices we now see in the Caribbean and Brazil. For him, Exu and Pomba Gira were part of the same family as Greek daimons and the demons of the Lemegeton.

The problem is that there is no real evidence for this. The Greek goēs was a figure of lamentation and necromancy, often feared and despised. The daimons of the papyri and the underworld cults were local to the Mediterranean world. By the time Christianity took hold, those practices had already been condemned, suppressed, and fragmented. What survived in medieval Europe were scraps, often copied by people with little practical experience. Grimoires are fascinating cultural artefacts, but they are not proof of an unbroken initiatory current. Most were compilations of prayers, names, and half-understood folklore, often sold as curiosities to the credulous.

When Europeans carried books to the colonies, they carried many things, from psalm books to cheap chaplets of magic. But to claim that these fragments somehow seeded Brazilian Quimbanda is to miss the actual story. Quimbanda was born from the Congo and Angola spirit traditions carried by enslaved Africans. It was shaped by the violence of slavery, the presence of Catholic saints and prayers, and the unique social realities of Brazilian cities. Its spirits are not abstract daimons from Greece but living presences who speak in possession, who drink and smoke and dance with their people. Exu and Pomba Gira are not survivals of a classical current. They are Brazilian spirits with African bones and Brazilian flesh.

The gap between theory and practice can be seen clearly in personal encounters. In 2005 Jake Stratton-Kent phoned me asking how to serve Exu. He explained that he had a circle of people making offerings of their own blood to Exu. That detail alone shows the problem. It reflects a European demonological lens, where blood is imagined as a currency for power, rather than the reality of Quimbanda where the spirits have their own very specific forms of service. Exu is not a demonic figure who demands bloodletting from initiates. He is a Brazilian spirit who is honoured in precise ways, with his own lineage and traditions. The fact that someone who later set himself up as an authority was asking those kinds of questions tells you how speculative and disconnected his approach really was.

What is troubling about Stratton-Kent’s theory is not only its lack of evidence but also the way it erases African voices. By stretching Greek necromancy into Brazil, he shifts attention away from the Congo and Angola heritage that actually gave Quimbanda its shape. He recentres the story on Europe and on the fantasies of Western occultists rather than on the people and spirits who built the tradition. This is a familiar pattern. African-diasporic religions are endlessly reframed by outsiders who want to see them as extensions of something European.

Yes, European influences are present. Catholicism is present. Popular magic and prayer manuals are present. But these are layers, not the foundation. The foundation is African. The spirits of Quimbanda are not European demons hiding in disguise. They are the Exus and Pomba Giras who have walked with their people for more than a century in Brazil, born out of lived ritual, struggle, and devotion.

There is also the matter of results. Stratton-Kent liked to present grimoires as if they were powerful working manuals, but anyone who has tried them knows that their claims rarely deliver. They are more theatre than technique. To build a theory of continuity on texts that were themselves of questionable effectiveness is to build a house on sand.

By contrast, Quimbanda delivers. Ask those who serve Exu and Pomba Gira and they will tell you: the spirits arrive, they speak, they act, they change lives. They do not need a pedigree traced back to the Greeks in order to be real. They prove themselves in the terreiro, in the street, in the crossroads.

This is why speculative theories miss the point. Quimbanda is not about neat continuity with Western occultism. It is about relationships with spirits who live and breathe in the rituals of Brazil. To try to rewrite that into a story about classical survival is not only false, it is disrespectful.

If you want to understand Quimbanda, do not look to the fantasies of European magicians. Look to the works of those who serve the spirits with respect. Writers such as Mario dos Ventos offer an account rooted in practice, in the voices of Exu and Pomba Gira, and in the lived reality of Brazilian religion. That is where the truth of Quimbanda is found, not in speculative maps stretching back to Greece.

The spirits of Quimbanda do not care about continuity theories. They care about being honoured, fed, and called. And that is enough. If you want a book that goes beyond borrowed rituals and speculative theories, my book The Devil and the Rose is for you. Bold, poetic, and uncompromising, this is a work that honours the Devil as teacher and the rose as a path of transformation. Where The Devil and the Rose explores the European Roots of Quimbanda, my book Nganga Nzila looks at the Bantu roots of Quimbanda, and Roots and Roads the history and practice of Quimbanda.