Notes by Roger Penny

Auguste Comte (1798-1857) took Enlightenment to the extreme with his Positivism, a philosophy that holds that the only authentic knowledge is that based on actual sense experience. Such knowledge can come only from affirmation of theories through strict scientific method. Metaphysical speculation is avoided.

Positivism had a fundamental influence on the events that led up to the military coup and the Proclamation of the Republic of Brazil in 1889, mainly through Benjamin Constant one of the protagonists of the 1889 uprising and Minister of War in the first republican government. Indeed, the inscription on the Brazilian flag “Ordem e Progresso” (Order and Progress) is from the Positivist motto "Love as a principle, Order as a base and Progress as an end.”

Comte went so far as to set up a religion based on his philosophy, but only in Brazil and Mexico did it gain any significant adherence. The “Chapelle de l’Humanité” in Paris, where Mollica installed his work, is the mother church. Positivist temples continue to exist in Brazil, notably in Rio de Janeiro. There is a degree of interchange between them, as can be seen by the presence of French and Brazilian flags.

Positivism glorifies certain people as being the summit of human achievement in their particular field. In the nave of the chapel in Paris there are thirteen of them painted on the walls; Moses (Early Theocracy), Homer (Ancient Poetry), Aristotle (Ancient Philosophy), Archimedes (Ancient science), Julius Caesar (Military Civilization), St. Paul (Catholicism), Charlemagne (Feudal Catholic Civilization), Dante (Modern Poetry), Gutenberg (Modern Industry), Shakespeare (Modern Drama), Descartes (Modern Philosophy), Frederick II (Modern Politics) and Bichat (Modern Science), plus Heloise (representative of the "Holy Women" or "Female Glorification").

Towards the end of the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th, like many other countries in Western society, Brazil showed signs of new cultural and political movements that came to be described as Modernism. Embracing change and the present, modernism encompasses the works of thinkers who rebelled against nineteenth century academic and historicist traditions, believing the "traditional" forms of art, architecture, literature, religious faith, social organization and daily life were becoming outdated; they directly confronted the new economic, social and political conditions of an emerging fully industrialized world. The 1908 founding (or announcement) of Umbanda in Brazil, a non-proselytizing blend of African religions with Catholicism and Spiritism, was seen by some reforming and revolutionary political leaders in the 20s and 30s to be a manifestation of Modernism. While the conservative elite still clung to its exotic and ideological Positivist heroes, the black and indigenous people could find their religious needs met with Umbanda. Today, despite the widespread adhesion to Umbanda among Brazilians of all social classes there remains considerable suspicion and prejudice against it.

Some of the Umbanda's basic beliefs are the existence of a One Supreme Creator God (the Orixá Olorum); deities called Orixás related to Catholic Saints that act as God's energy and plain power expansions; spirits of deceased people that counsel and guide believers through troubles in our material world; psychics called mediums who have a natural ability that can be perfected to bring messages from the spiritual world of Orixás and guiding spirits, reincarnation and spiritual evolution through many material lives (Karmic Law) and the practice of Charity.

The main Orixás (Pantheon) are:
Orixála (or Oxalá). He is the chief Orixá who represents the Lord's Light, the Beginning, the Verbum. His celestial body is the Sun, his ritual day is Sunday and his sacred colors are white and yellow.
Yemanjá. She represents the feminine principle of creation. She is linked to the sea (and so considered the patron of fishermen) and to the moonlight. Her celestial body is the Moon, her ritual day is Monday, and her sacred colors are blue and silver.
Xangô. He is the lord of justice and represents the lightning bolt. His ritual day is Thursday and his sacred colors are red and/or brown. He is evoked when people need justice.
Ogun. He is a warrior that protects people in the military. He is evoked when someone wants to win a battle, a struggle, or any kind of fight or competition.
Oxóssi. He is a hunter and protector of Nature. His day is Friday and his sacred colors are green and blue.
Ibeji. Those are entities often related to child spirits (Crianças).
Omulum. He is the Lord of Death, the Orixá that brings diseases, but when appeased gives good health and healing.

As well as the Orixás there are three levels of spirits, each with its own significance, characters and imagery. These images are often recreated in the form painted plaster statues that can be found in all Umbanda centres and in many homes.

In his installation at the Chapelle de l’Humanité, Mollica created a provocative confrontation between the images of twelve male and one female Positivist “gods” of Universal Reason, pillars of the Old Republic (also known as the Colonels’ Republic) and 12 images of Orixás and other Umbanda spirits, a significant presence in the day-to-day life of ordinary Brazilians.

Mollica writes: “I had tremendous difficulty with the person responsible for the Chapel in Paris in finding a suitable title for the exhibition, exactly because of his intellectual prejudice against the marked presence of Umbanda in the daily life of Brazilians, especially amongst poor folk who are left to the own devices by the negligence of an elitist and corrupt state.”

Mollica also writes of his success in provoking a prejudiced reaction: “Proof of this (is) that I fell out of favour at the University of Santa Úrsula (his erstwhile employer and part sponsor) because of a report sent to the Mother Superior by a woman linked to the Catholic religion. Out of pure prejudice, she claimed not to understand anything, nor even admit that Brazil is dedicated to certain gods, many of them of the ordinary people. This phenomenon is even more present in the “white’ heads of the majority of the Brazilian middle class, Catholic as well as Pentecostal, who see Umbanda as a satanic ritual, while others more “condescending” see it as mere superstition.”

Roger Penny, Rio de Janeiro, 21/01/2009