Marsilea

Yearly Cycles and Rituals

In response to the effects of the Sun on Earth, yearly practices were divided to include two main types of rituals and corresponding objectives, related to the phases that Earth crosses over the period of one year.

Each culture reacts to this phenomenon in different ways. Indo-European culture, where the roots of the Azorean culture are, shows a pattern that is still evident in the Archipelago. When approaching current Azorean rituals and ceremonies, it is easy to observe that they must be divided into two different classes of meanings:

1) In what concerns winter, we can see that their symbolism is still impregnated with the Cult of the Dead and the intent to exorcise evil, as will be discussed further on. In addition, there is a demand for permanent attention and care, in order to protect Earth from these evil forces (which were real life treats during the glacial eras, thus marking humankind memories).

“Foliões”, Domingos Rebelo, S. Miguel

Consequently, a great part of the present rituals are still influenced by this intention of freeing Earth from evil forces, conceived as myths, demons and evil spirits who roam the Earth during Winter time, causing illness and death.

At this time of the year, memories of the sterility of the Earth during the glacial eras, attributed to these evil forces, remain visible on the meaning of the rituals, which function was their expulsion.

The Calf of the Holy Spirit, Terceira

This expulsion, first seen as possible only through god’s influence, was then perceived as the task of humans (when purified), who should not only restore earth’s fertility, but also sun’s energy, throughout ritual ceremonies.

Doze Ribeiras, Terceira

2) According to this logic, summer rituals present a different meaning from those of the winter. Their intentions seem to be of propitiating the good and celebrating abundance. Both these beliefs are still so strongly tied to cultural performances, that even the religious calendar of the Catholic Church is submitted to its logic.

Urban purification through vegetation, Praia da Vitória, Terceira

By analysing the logic behind present ritualistic practices, we can conclude that primitive man believed in this relationship as a tie existing between his body’s potentialities and the cosmos, as if both were just one. This logic is present in the nature of the ceremonies and in the magic, applied in the exorcising of evil and in the celebration of fertility, rituals which take place around the time of the Solstices and Equinoxes.

Vila Nova Equinocial rituals of the Holy Spirit, Terceira

Within Azorean rituals and beliefs, traces of this mythical spirit of the celebrations happening around the dates of the spring and Autumn Equinoxes and of the Summer and Winter Solstices are easily identifiable.
The rituals related to these particular time frames (of three months each) are characterized by two different natures of meaning, subdivided into two other categories, making four distinct clusters of meanings that will be analysed in detail, through their expression in the Cosmic Calendar:

1) The Cult of the Dead and the exorcism of death, through the expulsion of the ‘Queen of the Shadows’, and her court of devils, believed to have the power of maintaining the Earth’s sterility;
2) The invocation of the ‘Spirit of Vegetation’, through the purification of the Earth, in order to facilitate its entrance into the sacred time of fertility;
3) The celebration of the vegetation’s germination; and,
4) The celebration of abundance.