Atinsás

The sacred trees and architectures of the terreiros of candomblé de Cachoeira and São Félix

Abstract

The present work approaches the relationship between nature and architecture in the context of Candomblé houses in the Reconcavo Baiano, between the cities of Cachoeira and São Félix. In these places there is no dichotomy between the natural x artificial, but an intertwining in the sacred. The sacred trees become architectures, nature that composes and creates a particular African-Brazilian architecture, and the architecture becomes sacralized nature, part of the ritual woods. Being the trees always opening and closing the festivities. The houses of Cachoeira and São Félix have in the sacred trees that are born in and stick the roofs of sheds, Ilê Orixá and Casa de Caboclos a symbolic spatial aspect that differentiate them, which gives them particularity, peculiarity, singularity, which are peculiar to them. The sacred trees found, generate, organize, and governing architectures of Candomblé houses of Cachoeira and São Félix.