Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/303828
But on other days, on fiesta days, on those miraculous mornings when the starfish-crowned, fishtailed African goddess arrives, tens of thousands of worshippers descend on Casa do Peso. ey ignore the windward porticos where the fishermen normally dis- play their catch and enter, instead, the building's leeward door. Inside, her airborne mermaid image flying across the shrine's wall, is Yemanjá, the great Nigerian goddess, who left Africa more than 500 years ago on the first of thousands of slave ships destined for South America, and who now regularly inhabits the bodies of her Brazilian trance-dancing, female devotees. To the tens of millions of followers of the animis- tic, Afro-Brazilian religion called Candomblé, Yemanjá represents the rhythm of life. She's the power of the moon, the source of fertility, the protector of children, the deity to whom Brazilian women have turned whenever hope is called for or counsel sought. She's the Mother of All. Gathered below her painted image within Casa do Peso are blue plaster figurines that could – overlooking their reveal- ing décolletage – easily be mistaken for the Blessed Virgin Mary. In fact, the figures are Mary, Christianity's Mother of God. In a place where miscegenation has long ruled, where mulatto is the norm, Africa's Yemanjá is Catholicism's Mary (and vice versa). In Salva- dor de Bahia, the very spot where Brazil began Spirits p30-35_Brazil.indd 31 14-04-11 2:45 PM