Umbanda Spiritual Consultation

Competing accounts of origin

Scholarship does not give a single agreed account of how Umbanda began. A reference entry by the religious studies scholar Steven Engler sets out three insider narratives: a lineage from enslaved Central Africans, an origin within Kardecist Spiritism in 1908, and an esoteric account of great antiquity. The same entry states that the most prominent scholarly account places the emergence of Umbanda in the 1920s in the large cities of southern Brazil, and it concludes that the question of origin remains open.

In the best-known insider account, a seventeen-year-old named Zélio Fernandino de Moraes was incorporated on 15 November 1908, in Niterói near Rio de Janeiro, by a spirit called Caboclo das Sete Encruzilhadas during a Kardecist session. Engler states that there is no independent evidence for this story, that not all Umbandists accept it, and that the scholar Emerson Giumbelli argues it was consolidated only in the 1960s and 1970s. Organized groups calling themselves Umbanda are dated in the entry to the late 1920s.

Kardecist, African, Catholic and Indigenous strands

Engler describes Umbanda's core theology as Kardecist: God created all spirits equal but undeveloped, and spirits progress through repeated incarnations, with advanced spirits offering charity to those still incarnate. Candomblé is described as supplying part of the spirit taxonomy, while altars display Jesus, Mary and Catholic saints. The entry also links the process to race, describing scholarly accounts of some Kardecist groups adopting African elements and some Afro-Brazilian groups adopting Kardecist forms.

Sources weigh these strands differently. A study of Umbanda possession states that its beliefs probably owe less to Indigenous Brazilian culture than to African and European religions, particularly Catholicism and French Spiritism. An ethnobotanical paper describes Umbanda as structured under Iberian, Amerindian and African influence and cites one author who traces it to a branch of Candomblé in the mid-nineteenth century, an account that differs from the 1920s dating above.

Institutions and membership

The Federação Espírita de Umbanda do Brasil was founded in 1939, and a First Brazilian Conference of Spiritism and Umbanda was held in 1941, according to Engler's timeline. Most Umbandists belong to independent houses led by a pai or mãe de santo rather than to a unified institution. Engler reports that self-identified membership in the national census fell by almost a quarter as a share of the population between 1991 and 2010, while noting that millions of non-members, mostly self-identified Catholics, attend Umbanda rituals for spiritual healing services. A 2022 study estimated that between 2.3% and 4.2% of Brazilians are affiliated with a religion involving possession.

Umbanda, macumba and related terms

Engler writes that macumba does not refer to a single religion but to a range of popular Afro-Brazilian rituals, often labeled black magic, and that from the nineteenth century it was equated with low spiritism in contrast to upper-class Kardecism. He cites scholarship suggesting the term came to designate spirits, practices and goals classified as illegitimate by other actors. Quimbanda is described as a related left-hand tradition in which exus and pombagiras are central, and in which cash payment for consultations is common.

Consulta, incorporation and mediunidade

In Engler's usage a consultation is a one-on-one exchange with an incorporated spirit, held in the area of the ritual space where spirits incorporate. The medium is the person said to host the spirit, and the process is called incorporation. Engler reports that a talent for mediunidade is recognized in people who see or feel spirits, often during illness or after a bereavement, and that people become mediums as a way of living in balance with these presences.

Spirit types named in the literature include caboclos (described as strong-willed, forceful, well-intentioned Indigenous spirits), pretos velhos (calm, humble spirits of Afro-descendant elders from slavery), crianças (child spirits), exus and pombagiras (guardians), and orixás, which Engler describes as powerful guardian spirits and not deities in the Candomblé sense. Practitioners also use the word axé for the vital energy attributed to plants and rituals.

The ritual setting

The main Umbanda ritual is a public gathering in which spirits incorporate in mediums and offer consultations and services to the attending public. Engler describes clients sitting facing the ritual area, usually behind a low wall, while they wait their turn. The altar commonly holds flowers, candles, food offerings and statues, drummers play on a raised platform in many groups, and ritual assistants called cambones, often apprentice mediums, assist the spirits. Mediums often wear protective necklaces associated with their spirits.

What happens in a consulta

According to Engler, after an initial blessing by the spirit, the conversation generally resembles a medical or psychological consultation: the spirit listens, then offers advice, and occasionally gives instructions for a ritual. The spirit's three main roles are described as giving assistance, performing physical or spiritual healings, and protecting clients from, or undoing the effects of, black magic. Payment is rare in groups near the Kardecist end of the spectrum, while offerings, and in some groups animal sacrifice, occur toward the Afro-Brazilian end.

Herbal baths, smoke and hands-on practices

A survey of terreiros on Santa Catarina Island, Brazil, interviewed 27 leaders from Candomblé, Umbanda and a related ritual, who named 93 plants. Baths were the most cited ritual use: a cleansing bath intended to remove dense energies and a harmonizing bath intended to bring prosperity or happiness, usually prepared by infusion and poured over the body. Smoke from burning plants is used before spiritual work, and the plant to be used is usually indicated by the priest but not supplied to the client.

Engler lists laying on of hands, herb preparations, purifications and prayers among additional rituals that vary greatly between houses. Interviews with 30 mediums in one Umbanda line, the Bantu-Amerindian ritual, describe scheduled spiritual surgeries in which patients lie on a stretcher while mediums incorporated with entities work using hand positions. The mediums report no cutting or anesthetic and describe the practice as one part of care that often runs alongside biomedical treatment.

Advice, protection and ritual healing

Practitioners and attendees describe consultations as a source of advice, of help with misfortune or illness believed to have a spiritual cause, and of protection from harm attributed to others. Engler reports that millions of people who do not call themselves Umbandists attend rituals for spiritual healing services. In his account, spirits advance spiritually through acts of charity, and consultations are the main venue for that charity.

Engler also reports a belief that ignoring or resisting the call of mediunidade is a significant cause of illness and psychological problems. This is a belief held within the tradition and is not a clinical finding.

Uses described in health-related studies

In the study of spiritual surgeries, mediums gave faith, disease and the search for health as main motives, and described the practice as a complementary treatment sought, in the authors' reading, especially when people no longer find results in the official health system. In a survey of 207 Umbanda and Candomblé women, faith, Orixás, God, peace and love were central to how spirituality was represented.

Consultations as an intervention

A PubMed search for Umbanda returned 19 records, and none was a controlled trial or systematic review of the consulta as a treatment for any health condition. Searches on Brazilian spiritist mediumship and psychiatry returned studies of spiritist views, mediums and religious experience, none of them a trial of Umbanda consultation. Evidence of benefit or harm from the consulta itself therefore was not found. Studies that exist are anthropological, qualitative or cross-sectional, and they describe the practice and the people involved.

Mental health of mediums

A cross-sectional questionnaire study in 2019 compared 334 Umbanda mediums who regularly experienced possession with 54 people who attended the same rituals without being possessed, in Porto Alegre and São Paulo. The two groups did not differ significantly on personality, hallucination-proneness, cognitive or quality-of-life measures, except that anxiety was lower in mediums. Within the mediums, the meaning attributed to possession and fusion with the spirit were associated with better psychological quality of life, and lower bodily control was not associated with worse outcomes.

The authors state limits. The comparison group was small and religiously similar, depression and childhood trauma measures were dropped after Umbanda leaders found them too sensitive, and the findings reflect a setting where spirits are understood as benevolent, so they cannot be generalized to cultures that regard possession as malignant. A cross-sectional design cannot show that possession caused or protected against any outcome.

Other studies and gaps

A São Paulo health survey of urban residents reported that common mental disorders were more frequent among followers of Umbanda or Candomblé (37.8%) than the overall sample (19.7%). The authors associate such disorders with vulnerable social groups, and the survey does not show that religious practice, or consultation, is related to the finding in a causal way.

For plants used in baths and smoke, the Santa Catarina authors state that, apart from one species, none of the 16 culturally important plants had their properties studied in the context of ritual use, and they call for pharmacological research.

Prejudice and religious intolerance

Engler reports that Afro-Brazilian religions were persecuted during the mid-twentieth century, that some Umbandists downplayed African roots in response, and that religious intolerance is described as the most significant problem facing Umbanda in recent decades. Nursing authors describe religious racism and a historical whitening of Umbanda in Rio de Janeiro.

Relation to health services

The authors of the survey of 207 women recommend that health professionals respect sacred objects, discuss discrimination with staff and patients, and recognize terreiros as cultural institutions where practices such as herbal baths take place. The spiritual surgery authors note that Brazil's national policy on integrative and complementary practices has provided some complementary therapies through the public health system since 2006, and they frame mediums' work as culturally congruent care. These are recommendations by researchers in nursing and public health, not outcome findings.

Mental health care and the care boundary

A review by Menezes and Moreira-Almeida discusses religious and spiritual experiences that may resemble psychotic episodes yet be nonpathological, and mental disorders with religious content, along with criteria for telling them apart. It concludes that quality investigations are lacking. Either error, mistaking an ordinary spiritual experience for illness or the reverse, is therefore possible, and assessment by a clinician familiar with the person's culture is part of the care picture.

An ethnographic study of 21 families in São Paulo whose youth had a first episode of psychosis found that families used religion, including Umbanda, as a source of healing complementary to psychiatric treatment. For the young people, religious involvement worked in progressive and regressive ways, improving functioning at times and diminishing it at others. A review of Spiritist writings reports that leading Spiritist authors recommended spiritual measures in addition to conventional care, not instead of it; it concerns Kardecist Spiritism, not Umbanda specifically.

A case analysis from Rio de Janeiro followed one patient who chose therapy based on her religious beliefs, using ayahuasca in an Umbanda setting, over treatment as usual in mental health services. It is a single case with no clinical outcome in the abstract.

Mediumistic distress

A case study of an Umbanda leader described two stages. In childhood and early adulthood her possession states were uncontrolled and linked with anxiety, loneliness, amnesia and family conflict, and she met all five DSM-5 criteria for dissociative identity disorder. Later she felt in control and found the experiences religiously meaningful, meeting three criteria. The authors question whether the diagnosis fit her earlier life.

Distress can therefore accompany possession experiences, particularly when they are involuntary or not accepted by family. The 2022 study describes people who remained in the ritual setting, not those who sought mental health care or left.

Plants, physical procedures, cost and interpretation of outcomes

Among the plants cited by every leader in the Santa Catarina survey, the authors identify one species and two varieties of another as toxic, used for protection and in baths and smoke. No source reviewed reports adverse-event rates for baths, smoke or hand-based practices, so their frequency and seriousness are unknown.

Mediums in the spiritual surgery study described a failed outcome as attributable to lack of merit, lack of faith or karmic causes, which places responsibility for non-response on the person. Engler reports that payment, offerings and, at one end of the spectrum, animal sacrifice vary by house. He describes training as apprenticeship, and the sources reviewed describe no standard qualification or professional register for mediums.

This information is educational and is not individualized medical advice. Symptoms, distressing experiences or thoughts of self-harm call for conventional medical or mental health assessment, and these should not be delayed.