Exu Is Not What You Were Told

A Name That Arrived Before the Experience

Before I had ever entered a terreiro, an Umbanda spiritual house, I already knew the names Exu and Pomba-Gira.

Or at least, I believed I did.

I had never had a serious conversation with anyone from Umbanda. I had never witnessed a spiritual consultation. Even so, I already carried enough images to form an opinion.

When I attended my first gira, an Umbanda spiritual session, and heard “Laroyê Exu,” I felt that old discomfort return.

I did not know exactly what the greeting meant. But I knew everything other people had already associated with that name.

The fear was not born in the terreiro.

It arrived with me.

I still did not know who the Exus and Pomba-Giras were in Umbanda, but I already believed I knew what I was supposed to feel in their presence.

The prejudice had arrived long before the experience.

The Exus and Pomba-Giras I Encountered in Umbanda

My first contact with this spiritual line did not happen through books.

Nor did it begin with studying the Orishas.

It began by living alongside them.

In Umbanda, Exus and Pomba-Giras are spiritual entities who work through mediums during the gira. It was by living alongside them for many years that I slowly began to let go of the images I had constructed.

In the terreiro where I spent much of my journey, they took part in spiritual consultations, in protecting the house, and in different forms of spiritual work.

But what affected me most was their particular way of approaching life.

Like other entities in Umbanda, they also sought to guide, care for, and help those who came to the terreiro. The contrast lay less in their purpose and more in their language, the subjects they addressed, and the way they conducted each conversation.

With Exus and Pomba-Giras, there was often less room for circling around the point.

People talked about work.

About money.

About family.

About relationships.

About pride.

About fear.

About desires.

About choices.

Spirituality did not seem to happen somewhere far removed from the world.

It happened precisely within it.

This did not mean valuing only money, pleasure, or material achievements. It meant recognizing that this is the world in which we build relationships, make decisions, and try to live the lives we claim to desire.

There was little point in asking for spiritual balance while continuing to feed the same conflicts.

There was little point in asking for new opportunities while remaining passive when possibilities appeared.

Nor was there any point in wishing for different relationships without looking at what we continued to accept—from others and from ourselves.

Perhaps spiritual growth does not happen despite material life.

Perhaps it happens precisely through it.

Language Was Also Part of the Work

Something else also felt strange to me.

The language.

Some Exus were extremely direct.

Others used irony or sarcasm.

Some used words I could never have imagined hearing in a religious environment.

At first, I admit, it made me uncomfortable.

I came from an idea of spirituality that was more careful with words.

More polished.

Perhaps also more distant from the contradictions of everyday life.

It took me time to understand that this language was part of the work itself.

It seemed to prevent the conversation from remaining on the surface.

It was difficult to keep hiding behind polite answers when someone could dismantle, in only a few words, the entire story you had prepared.

The questions were not always very different from those anyone else might have asked.

Their weight came from the way they were asked.

From the persistence.

From the silence that followed.

From the feeling that the answer had not yet reached the right place.

Exus and Pomba-Giras did not seem to be looking for polished answers.

They were looking for truthful ones.

Questions I Carried Home with Me

For many years, I served as a cambono, assisting entities and mediums during the gira.

That role allowed me to follow many spiritual consultations closely.

I cannot tell those stories. They belong to the people who entrusted their lives to the terreiro.

The details of many conversations have also faded with time. After so many years, I can no longer separate one night from another or remember exactly who said each phrase.

What remained was the movement that kept repeating itself.

I can no longer remember the first time I heard a question like this.

Perhaps because it appeared so many times, through different voices and in different situations.

Someone would arrive saying that nothing ever worked out.

That life never changed.

That no one ever gave them an opportunity.

The entity would listen.

Then ask:

— And what are you going to do to change this situation?

The answer would come quickly.

Then came the silence.

And often, the same question would return.

Not because the entity had not heard the answer.

But because they seemed to recognize that the first response was still only a justification.

Perhaps it was fear answering.

Perhaps pride.

Perhaps it was a story that had been repeated for so long that it had begun to feel like the truth.

Little by little, I began to understand that those questions were not merely seeking information.

They moved the person away from the place where it was possible to wait for something to happen without taking part in that movement.

They returned something that had often been lost without the person even realizing it:

a sense of authorship over their own life.

What was curious was that those questions did not end when the consultation was over.

I often returned home carrying some of them with me.

I was the cambono.

But it was impossible to witness so many encounters without beginning to hear those questions within myself as well.

A Truth That Does Not Condemn

It was by living more closely with this spiritual line that an important difference became especially visible to me.

There is a truth that accuses.

And there is a truth that awakens.

In my experience, the way Exus and Pomba-Giras conducted these conversations made it clear that their purpose was not simply to show someone that they were wrong.

What I witnessed was an attempt to reach the root of whatever was keeping that person trapped.

Often, the problem they presented was not false.

But it was not the whole problem either.

Someone might arrive talking about not having a romantic relationship and, little by little, the conversation would move toward the way that person saw themselves.

Someone else might talk about a lack of opportunities, but the question would return to what they were doing—or failing to do—with the possibilities that already existed.

The subject changed.

The question changed.

And little by little, the way the person looked at their own story also began to change.

At first, I found these conversations harsh.

Today, I see something else.

Often, the confrontation seemed to come from the conviction that the person was greater than the limited image they held of themselves.

Perhaps that was why the question was repeated.

Not to win an argument.

Nor to humiliate anyone.

But because the entity seemed unwilling to accept that the person should give up on themselves.

Choices, Falls, and Responsibility

For a long time, I asked myself a question.

If an entity could perceive certain consequences before the person could, why did they not simply prevent them from making a mistake?

I never received a direct answer.

I received years of observation.

I began to notice that Exus and Pomba-Giras offered guidance.

They warned.

They confronted.

They revealed possibilities.

But they did not choose.

After a spiritual consultation, life continued exactly where it had always been.

The person who had sought help was still the one who needed to decide.

At first, this frustrated me.

Today, it seems like one of the greatest gestures of respect I have encountered.

There is an enormous difference between controlling someone and helping them mature.

Not every form of help prevents a fall.

Sometimes, it simply ensures that the fall is not wasted.

Some experiences cannot be lived by someone else. Some consequences have to move beyond being only a warning before they can become understanding.

This does not mean that suffering is necessary or desirable.

It simply means that freedom also includes the possibility of choosing, making mistakes, and learning.

Living alongside this spiritual line made it especially clear to me that spirituality does not replace responsibility.

It can help us recognize the part we play in our own choices.

When I Began to Understand Exu as an Orisha

For many years, whenever someone said “Exu,” my thoughts naturally went to the Exus and Pomba-Giras of Umbanda.

That was the experience I knew.

It was only much later, after I was already living in Germany, that closer contact with Candomblé and my study of the Orishas broadened my understanding.

I am not initiated into Candomblé, and I do not write as someone qualified to teach that tradition.

But that encounter widened my horizon.

It was there that I began to understand Exu as an Orisha.

Not merely as a name I had heard before, but as one of the primordial forces of creation.

As I came to know some of the myths and reflected on them, I found an Exu deeply connected to movement, communication, possibilities, choices, and the consequences that arise from them.

Exu did not appear to me as a force that was simply good or bad.

Those categories seemed too small to understand a presence connected to the movement of life itself.

Paths might appear, but they still had to be walked.

Possibilities might arise, but someone still had to choose.

This resonated with something I had observed for years in Umbanda.

Exus and Pomba-Giras could guide, confront, and reveal possibilities, but they did not take away people’s responsibility for what they decided to do afterward.

I did not see this as an explanation of the entities I had known.

I saw it as an expansion.

My journey did not change direction.

It gained depth.

What Remained from This Journey

Today, I believe that my greatest lesson about Exu was never a definition.

It was a different way of looking at choices, freedom, and responsibility.

Some questions began to seem more important than many answers.

The most difficult lies to leave behind were precisely the ones we tell ourselves.

And consequences no longer necessarily seemed like punishment.

Often, they were simply the way life transformed choices into learning.

The Exus and Pomba-Giras I encountered never seemed to speak only to the person standing before them.

I often had the impression that they were also speaking to the person they might still become.

Perhaps this lesson does not belong to only one spiritual line.

Other entities also lead us toward truth, responsibility, and maturity, each through their own language and along their own paths.

With Exus and Pomba-Giras, this movement often appeared more directly, closer to material life, and less willing to accept superficial answers.

Entre mundos.

And perhaps some questions do not exist to give us an answer, but to change the place from which we choose to respond.