Mollusks of Candomblé: symbolic and ritualistic importance

Human societies utilize aquatic biological resources in many ways. Marine invertebrates and fish are used as ornamentals, food, medicine, and even in magico-religious practice [1-15]. Interactions between humans and animals go well beyond simple ecological and functional relations and, since antiquity, cultures have attributed magical and religious meaning to wild and domesticated animals [7,8,16-19]. Particularly in pre-scientific societies, according to Marques [5], the imaginative that is present in the daily routines of people has encouraged mystical and religious relations with the environment.In Brazil, the use of animals in magic-religious areas is widely reported but infrequently investigated [8,20-24]. Although a diverse array of wild animals and animal parts are offered for sale for religious purposes throughout the country in the open markets and shops, especially to serve the Afro-Brazilian community [7,8,15,23,25,26], few studies have analyzed their use, especially in terms of a conservation framework. As Costa-Neto [27] notes, utilization of wild animal species in a magic-religious context has been mostly neglected by biological scientists, who often find their respect for traditional and indigenous uses of nature in conflict with their developed world, environmental ideology.The use of mollusks is probably as old as humanity. In pre-history, mollusks represented an important source of food, ornamentals, and tool materials [28-31], and these traditional uses are richly documented in the archeological record [32-34]. Mollusks continue to be an important source of food, providing an essential source of protein in the coastal communities [35-38]. But in addition to their consumptive value, their shells have long been utilized for magical-religious purposes. During the European Middle Ages, for example, the shell of the pilgrim (Pecten jacobaeus; a bivalve mollusk) became a religious emblem of Saint James. The shells of the P. jacobaeus can be seen in sanc