Six Truths Brazilian Spirituality Knows

Brazilian spirituality has a way of cutting through the noise. It is not bound by endless theorising or rigid purity tests. The measure of anything is simple: does it work? If it does, you keep doing it. If it does not, you try something else. The proof is in the work, not in the words that describe it. This is why relationships with spirits come before any fixed ritual style. A worker in most Brazilian traditions will change their form to suit the spirit they are speaking to, not force the spirit into a pre-decided mould. What matters is the connection, the conversation, the pact between you and the spirit. The rest can be adapted.

Mixing is not seen as a flaw but as a strength. From the very beginning, Brazilian spiritual traditions have blended African, Indigenous, and European influences. This is not random imitation. It is the result of centuries of living together, exchanging, adapting, and creating something uniquely its own. You can see it in the music, in the language, in the way an altar might hold an African spirit beside a Catholic saint without any sense of contradiction. Or as an orisha priest once put it to me: "everyone learns from their neighbours."

Candomblé is generally the exception to this rule. Well-respected houses do not improvise or invent. They work with extraordinary care to preserve exactly what was handed down to them. In these houses, every drum rhythm, every chant, every movement has a lineage, and the integrity of that lineage is part of the power.

This approach is very different from much of what is now seen in the United States within Orisha-based traditions. While there are dedicated and well-trained priests in the US, there is also a tendency in some circles to build practices from a patchwork of sources without the same depth of transmission found in established lineages. In part, this comes from the way traditions travelled - through migration, partial memory, and reconstruction - but it can also lead to a heavy focus on outward form or personal authority, sometimes at the expense of the living relationship with the spirits themselves. Where Brazilian traditions often let the spirit dictate the form, some US-based practices can lean toward fixing the form first and then expecting the spirit to fit it. Orisha tradition has to come extent become a "religion of the book" where the letter takes precedence over spirit.

Community is the container for all this work. Even those who work alone remain part of a wider web. There are festivals, processions, and communal offerings, but there is also the quiet network of obligations and mutual care that link workers to each other. Spiritual life is not lived in isolation. There is no fear of beauty. Offerings are made to delight the spirits, so they are bright with colour, full of scent, layered with music and texture. A basket of fruit can be arranged like a piece of art. A candle can be dressed with flowers and ribbons. Beauty is not an afterthought; it is part of the gift.

And perhaps most importantly, magic is daily life. It is not something you step into for a ritual and then leave behind. It runs through cooking, cleaning, walking, singing, and talking. While everything centres around the terreiro, the spiritual is not a separate box. It is woven into the rhythm of the day, alive in the smallest acts as much as in the grandest ceremonies. Brazilian traditions remind us that magic does not need to be distant or complicated. It needs to be alive, in relationship, and rooted in the world around us. That is what makes it work.

I talk more about this in detail in Everyday Axé - Daily Rituals, Spirit Work, and the Power of the Orixás.