Do Aiyè ao Orún: a interpretação de Altair Bento de Oliveira sobre a morte e a vida através do ritual do Àṣèṣé nos terreiros de candomblé de nação Ketu

Abstract

The present work aims to analyze the conception of death in the Candomblé of the Ketu nation, within the funeral ritual called Àṣèṣé, through the literary contextualization of Altair Bento de Oliveira, known among his followers and family members of the religion as Bàbá Altair T'Ògún, deceased in 2012. In this analysis, the research seeks to clarify a cultural anthropology, so that the ethnographic use of mourning describes in detail the perceptions of similarity between the religious cosmology of the Yoruba and the self-taught studies by Bàbá Altair T'Ògún on the funeral rituals, presented in his last book, published independently, as a means of dialogue for the execution of the practice. Death, in Africa as in Brazil, is an important Òrìṣà within the pantheon of Yoruba Gods, called Ikú, whose purpose is given by its contribution to the cyclical equity of life. In this sense, through the literature of anthropologists who portrayed the funeral process, the interviews conducted with the remnants of his Àṣẹ (Evanir Silva, Osmar Silva and Esterlane Braga), as well as my experience as an adept and grandson within the cult of the Òrìṣà, it was possible to perceive the way the priest observed death, that within Candomblé becomes the ideal persona to prepare the rebirth of the individual among the elderly, since our deceased took the path to meet our ancestors in the community of the dead.