A Missing Orixá:

Discoveries through a Silent Museum

Abstract

This article analyzes the Coleção Perseverança, a collection of pieces stolen from some terreiros in a repression episode occurred in 1912, at Maceió. Exposed at the Historical and Geographical Institute of Alagoas, this archive has not been issue of scientific studies ever since. I tried to fill gaps, tracing its path so far, demonstrating the transformations of the xangô alagoano, at the liturgical and ritual levels. Through a construction of an inventory, I investigated their original uses to properly reference the pieces. This quest for the object’s biography was produced with the participation of the Afro-Brazilian religious community in Alagoas and Bahia, focusing on traditional knowledge, mythology and cosmological system. Those object’s biographies also had brought important discoveries, like a divinity completely disappeared from the local Afro-Brazilian pantheon with its liturgical knowledge. It is the orixá Baiani, a rare one, only found in a few houses in Bahia.