Quimbanda
Quimbanda is an Afro-Brazilian tradition historically centered on the veneration of Exus and Pombagiras as its primary spiritual entities, rather than on the Orixás who occupy the center of Candomblé — an important structural distinction for understanding the religion correctly.
Last reviewed: 2026-07-20
Historical fact
Unlike Candomblé, whose cosmological center is the Orixás, Quimbanda has historically organized itself around the veneration of Exus and Pombagiras as primary spiritual entities, worshipped in 'lines' — families of related spirits, each with an individual name, personality, and area of influence. Quimbanda has, throughout its history, been the Afro-Brazilian tradition most associated with this structured ritual work involving Exu and Pombagira. It also carries a history of heavy stigmatization: it has been (and in part still is) conflated in Brazilian popular culture with 'black magic' or the Christian devil — an association rooted in the same colonial and missionary origins as the Exu-devil conflation already documented on this site's Exu entry, and one rejected by practitioners and scholars of religion alike. Quimbanda's historical relationship to Umbanda is close and sometimes overlapping: some see it as a specific branch or 'left-hand' counterpart of Umbandist practice, while others treat it as an independent tradition with its own history — a genuinely open question among researchers and practitioners that should not be flattened.
Interpretation — The inside view (practitioners)
For practitioners, Quimbanda is a legitimate religious path of spiritual work tied to resolving concrete life problems — protection, justice, love, prosperity — mediated by Exus and Pombagiras understood not as malevolent forces but as spirits with complex personalities, capable of both rigor and generosity, who demand respect and ritual reciprocity rather than fear. The popular equation of Quimbanda with Satanism is seen by practitioners as the product of racial and religious prejudice, not an accurate description of the tradition.
Interpretation — The academic view (anthropology of religion)
Scholars of religion point out that the demonization of Exu, of Pombagira, and by extension of Quimbanda as a whole, has roots in the process of colonial and missionary evangelization, which tended to reinterpret African and Afro-Brazilian deities and spirits associated with boundaries, crossroads, and sexuality as diabolical figures within a Christian framework foreign to the original cosmology. The institutional and historical relationship between Quimbanda and Umbanda — whether branch, counterpart, or fully separate tradition — remains a subject of genuine academic debate without definitive consensus, reflecting the fluid, regionally variable nature of these traditions across 20th-century Brazil.
This section presents one tradition's interpretation, not a verifiable fact.
Frequently asked questions
- Is Quimbanda the same as black magic or Satanism?
- No. That is a mistaken association, rooted in colonial and missionary history, and rejected by practitioners and scholars alike. Quimbanda is an Afro-Brazilian religious tradition centered on the veneration of Exus and Pombagiras, entities with complex personalities who demand respect and ritual reciprocity — not a practice of 'evil' in the Christian sense of the term.
- What is the relationship between Quimbanda and Umbanda?
- It is a close but not fully settled relationship: some currents see Quimbanda as a branch or 'left-hand' counterpart of Umbanda focused on work with Exus and Pombagiras, while others treat it as an independent tradition with its own history and organization.
Sources
- Roger Bastide. The African Religions of Brazil (1978).
- Reginaldo Prandi. Mitologia dos Orixás (2001).
- Pierre Verger. Orixás: Deuses Iorubás na África e no Novo Mundo (1981).
- Stephen D. Glazier (ed.). Encyclopedia of African and African-American Religions (2001).