Ancestrality and trust.

The issue of trust is crucial for me because, at least in my private life, I tend to give a lot, even without reason.

I am one of those people who believe in humanity and in good intentions and who find it hard to guess opportunism in relationships, before it is too late.

A dear friend once told me that if someone betrays you once, it is their fault; but if it still happens, the fault is yours.

Despite this obvious warning to be cautious, I continued undaunted to take big slaps.

However, I managed not to make a mistake when it came to choosing the spiritual guide and it was not a mere stroke of luck!

Surely help in the choice came from intuition: that totally irrational feeling of being in the right place, safe, without a doubt.

But I didn't want to settle for instinct: I thought it necessary to better understand who I had before me.

A Pai de Santo is a professional and should be chosen in this precise perspective.

Since we turn to him by entrusting him with our energy, asking him to take care of our journey, we must be able to trust his experience.

His resume is as important as that of any other professional.

But what aspects should we look at?

My experience, gained over several years of candomblé, leads me to conclude in the sense that there is a determining element, which even comes before the technical skills and human qualities of the person to whom we turn.

This criterion is Africanism.

Candomblé is a Brazilian religion of African origin. It rests exclusively on oral tradition and secrecy, although in recent years the anthropological and psychoanalytic interest in this religion has been high with, the consequent publication of several essays by scholars.

Everyone can access it, as customers or as part of the community: it is an open, tolerant and inclusive culture.

Not surprisingly, Pai Ode always says that the orixás know no borders.

However, this permeability does not mean that it is also easily assimilated and understandable.

The time factor, continuity in worship and ancestral bonding are crucial.

If you are born inside the candomblé, or if the candomblé is born inside you (it is the case of ogans and ekedi, people chosen from birth by the orixás to be their assistants), the ancestral bond is certainly stronger than if you enter the candomblé at a certain moment in life and, from then on, you "learn" it.

The experience in candomblé does not depend so much on the number of rituals performed, on the number of celebrations in which one participates or on the years since the initiation, as on the ancestry of the link with the African matrix.

Ancestry that is not attested by the racial factor.

Pai Ode, for example, is not a descendant of Africans, however his ancestral link with the orixás is evident.

Born in a terreiro of Umbanda, founded by his grandmother, he grew up dedicating himself to the orixás, with the awareness that his life would be dedicated to them and that he would take the task of spiritual guidance of a community.

It can be said with certainty that he was chosen by the orixás to carry out this destiny and not, instead, that it was he who chose the candomblé as "job".

In ancient times, when candomblé was a religion frequented only by descendants of Africans, this theme probably did not arise.

The succession at the helm of the candomblé lands was, as it should be, by designation by the orixás and invested people who were already in a direct relationship of continuity with the house of axé, as was the case with Pai Ode.

Today the ties are much more fluid and weak: the "descendants" of an house of axé are invoked as proof of preparation, but it is not an element in itself significant.

The so-called belonging to a terreiro in Brazil indicates, at most, a training course, a bit like writing in the curriculum in which university you graduated.

It is an element to be enhanced but, in my opinion, not in itself sufficient.

My invitation is, when you decide to entrust the care of your energy to a Pai or a Mâe de Santo, to try to understand "how African they are".

The greater the ancestral link with this culture, the stronger the starting point is. From there, the relationship with the chosen person will depend on empathy, trust and all that other set of factors that characterize the relationship with a professional.

Axé.

Gardenia is a symbol of trust.