There is no Candomblé Without Leaves: The importance of nature in the religion's rites

Abstract

We are living through an environmental crisis unprecedented in human history. This problem highlights the ethical and moral crisis and the environmental imbalance that affects the quality of life on the planet, such as global warming and the current global health situation. In this sense, the starting point of this discussion involves understanding the society-nature relationship, that is, understanding at what point in civilizational history this relationship was broken. This distancing of society from nature is related to the emergence of capitalism and, therefore, to the process of disenchantment of the world and nature. Thus, the present article, based on a bibliographical research, relates religion, through Candomblé, with the environmental issue, and the dialectics of the practice of religious rites with the environment, starting from the premise that Candomblé and its practitioners share the ecological vision.