The caja tree in candomblé, tambor de mina and umbanda based on the review of some authors

Abstract

Plants, fruit trees and connecting herbs provide us with a contrast, a sequence of time, a historical consequence and an addition, our medicinal flora coming from the sacred in Candomblé. The studies developed by the Ecoilê Project, from Fiocruz\Brasília, have among their aspects the study of plants - trees, herbs, flowers, roots and barks that our African diaspora made it possible to integrate into the material of traditional medicine and even of Plantmas. Thus, the objective of this article is to address the cajazeira as a liturgical plant in religions of African origin, based on a review of the literature. For this epistemological challenge, we have methodologically used the theory of Pedagogy of Crossroads, aiming to present reflections on this important role that encompasses our plants and foods. Afro-Brazilians separate plants and trees into dioecious, that is, plants with male flowers and plants with female flowers, hot, cold and lukewarm. This multiplies hundreds of times the number of indications for herbal medicine, which is in fact also based on spiritual precepts and with a medicinal development of observation and experience that took millennia to form. One of these sacred foods is the fruit and leaf of the cajá and its two species: cajá-manga (Spondias dulcis Forst anacardiácea) and the common cajá (Spondias lutea L).