Fraternidade Kayman

We are plural, as is life. Brothers that gather to dance and exacerbate their faith, so many faiths sprawled like paths between one God and us. The energy sources come closer and help each other harmonize and shine.

On the floor of the main house in the city of Belo Horizonte, capital of Minas Gerais state, the six-pointed star – David’s star – reminds us that this is an Umbanda location. Daime is served in the form of tea at the beginning of each meeting: strength and self-knowledge saturating every internal source of evolution. Altars with images of Saints and Orixás and Enchanted. Dance – psychography – Temazcal. An alliance between different faiths with the purpose of forming a fraternity to reflect the energetic encounter that is Brazil.

“Music is the founding principle

of everything”

Robespierry Caetano, founder of Fraternidade Kayman

Kayman: four feet tall, very large head. An inner earthly entity Pierry remembers seeing at an early age, around five years old. Maybe that was the first Enchanted ever noticed by this man born into a Catholic family in the countryside of Goiás state. It was also at five that he met Father João de Aruanda, his mentor who helps him in his spiritual path. He was considered deranged and hospitalized a few times for mental treatment. Only at twenty-one, after meeting Chico Xavier, Pierry started his first Umbanda house.

“Believing in God requires

being close to him”

Robespierry Caetano, founder of Fraternidade Kayman

He performed many Umbanda works before feeling disheartened and unmotivated. Once again, Father João helped him make way: he advised him to invite some friends and perform a Daime work.

In the vision of the work suggested by a Preto Velho entity last incarnated circa 1700 in Africa, the Sun invited him to cultivate Mariri vines and prepare it to offer Daime in his rituals, which could get more and more open and hybrid.

“The important thing is having

a heart full of love, and discipline”

Robespierry Caetano, founder of Fraternidade Kayman

Seven months after the vision, Pierry founded Fraternidade Kayman in 2002. The medium – who consciously and unconsciously incorporates spirits – is in good company: Father João de Aruanda is also a spiritual mentor in the house, the terreiro’s chief entity is Ogum Guerreiro, and Tranca Ruas is the protector. And the white lineage spirits, like Dr. Lazarino who last incarnated in Mexico, are the house’s spiritual surgeons. Now past his forty years of age, Robespierry opens the doors at Kayman to as many pulsating rituals as possible.

The making of Ayahuasca tea served in almost every celebration is marked by a very poetic and spontaneous ritual: the Mariri vine maceration reminds us that in the daily dealings of simple Brazilian people’s lives there is discipline, magic, and faith.

Healing Giras take place weekly: cure from prejudice, envy, fear… from everything that can be a source of illness for the body and the soul. Covered in white, Our Father in heaven is also present in prayer, and Daime inaugurates the ritual.

Smoked leaves mark the work of Umbandaime claiming for Oxóssi, the lord of the woods performs, and dancing in twilight, the many entities are manifested into shaking people. Hands and bodies lay on stretchers: doctors from past times arrive through the mediums of this time - these are spiritual surgeries.

“The encounter with Sacred is

the encounter with nature”

Adriano Bitaraes, Temazcal Ceremony master at Fraternidade Kayman

The Encantaria Ceremony came through a vision received by Adriano Biataraes, a spiritualist who found a place in Kayman to develop his works. From shamans in the North of Brazil, he learned to observe the presence and arrival of Enchanted beings: they are animals, creatures known and unknown who sometimes take visible shapes and other times are just perceived in their magical abilities… In the fraternity, the connection with the Sacred takes place through the dance that – with the power from Daime – helps awaken dormant enchantments within each and every one of us. An Indigenous eye drop made from forest roots clarifies the vision even more: the perception of colors and volumes becomes more sensitive, making this an immersion of the senses into the jungles and woods of many dimensions.

Offerings to orixás often are part of the Kayman calendar: it’s important to share gifts with nature, Mother Earth in all its forms. By riversides, mountain springs, and waterfalls… atabaques and Daime and honey and leaves call for Oxum – and her sweet love for us – to take over our bodies, eager to learn her affection.

The offering to Iemanjá, mother of the oceans, comes by way of salt water. Prayers sung in the middle of the ocean by a group that anchors the world in for its free and diverse qualities: Long live Jesus! Cruzeirinho hymnals, legacies from Ayahuasca, are repeated to remind us that humanity is in one same boat.

The nights of singing and rhythmic steps mark the rituals for Father João’s hymnals, the godfather and mentor with so many brothers who, in difference, search for common ground in the simplicity of their ways. It takes hours of repeating words received in visions, their teachings and ideas. Choosing to share it is a gift of nature and Fraternidade Kayman disseminates these lyrics and intentions wherever they go, transforming trips into love stretching across the map of Brazil.

And in a family with Enchanted name, there is a new star-being, a forest-song, a Bible-enchantment every day. Traditions are welcome and mutating, as everything going through the heads and womb of gods and humans. Incorporating different times is a challenge, but it’s also an undeniable truth that won’t silence in the sensitive ones… it takes being other voices to keep life from going silent.

“The best way to believe in God

is to believe in yourself”

Father João de Aruanda