The First Time I Served as Cambono for an Entity in Umbanda

When I began to realize that nothing there was just a task

Over time, I began to notice something that was not so clear to me at first.

Inside a terreiro, everything asked of someone eventually becomes a form of learning.

Sometimes they were requests that seemed almost trivial. Fetching a blank sheet of paper. Bringing a glass of water. Doing something simple without drawing attention.

And yet some of those small requests stayed in my memory in a way that felt disproportionate, as if a hidden lesson were already contained within them.

At other moments in my path inside the terreiro, there were requests of a different weight — including firm, uncomfortable messages that had to be delivered in the right way and at the right time.

In very different ways, both kinds of experience marked me.

But I would only understand that better later. At that time, I was still beginning to realize that, in that environment, tasks were never just tasks.

There was always something being taught along with them.

Today I see that more clearly. Back then, I only felt that the terreiro was slowly showing me that learning there did not mean only listening to explanations or receiving spiritual guidance.

It also meant being willing to serve whenever some role appeared.

And it was within that movement that, one day, a different invitation came.

The night my place within the gira changed

At that time, I was still responsible for the chromotherapy work in the terreiro.

It was already a role that had changed the way I saw myself within the house. By then, I was no longer only in the place of someone observing, because chromotherapy had also placed me in a position of responsibility. But the kind of work I knew up to that point still had a different form, a different rhythm, and a different kind of closeness to the entities.

But that night, something shifted.

The spiritual leader of the house, Caboclo Tupinambá, decided that the chromotherapy room would remain closed during that gira. Instead, I was to assist one of the entities who would be working in that public spiritual service.

That was the first time.

After that, it would happen again on other occasions. On some nights, perhaps because there were not enough people in the mediumistic circle — the group of mediums who work spiritually during the gira. On others, for a reason that was not clear to me.

But what remained most strongly with me from that first time was not the exact reason for the change.

It was the fact that, suddenly, my place was no longer the same.

Today I think it was not always necessary to understand the reason.

That night, it was enough to step into the place that had been given to me.

And that place was new to me.

What a cambono does in Umbanda

In Umbanda, a cambono is the person who assists the medium and the entities working through them during the gira. This role includes welcoming visitors, supporting the consultation, and helping the spiritual work unfold with attention and discretion.

In some houses, this happens in a more occasional way. In others, the same person accompanies that medium more regularly.

Over time, I often heard an expression that stayed in my memory: the triad of medium, cambono, and entity.

People would say that, when this triad was in tune, everything happened with a kind of quiet precision.

Not only in visible movements or material needs, but above all in the spiritual work itself that unfolded there.

In that first invitation, of course, none of that yet existed.

I knew the name of the entity. I knew who I would be standing beside. But I still did not know their way, their rhythm, or the way they conducted the consultations.

Maybe that is why the experience marked me so deeply.

Being a cambono was not simply about standing beside someone.

It required attention, presence, and a certain discretion.

It meant helping without invading, noticing without interrupting, and following the rhythm of the consultation without trying to direct it.

At that time, I would not yet have known how to put that into words.

But I could already feel that much of that work depended precisely on that kind of measure.

What Joana de Aruanda taught me as cambono

That night, the entity I assisted as cambono was Preta Velha Joana de Aruanda.

Before anything else, she gave me a passe — a common Umbanda gesture of spiritual care, usually made with the hands near the body.

Then she asked me to light the candle she would use in that night’s work.

Only then did she begin to explain what she needed from me.

Everything seemed simple.

To receive each person well when they approached her. To help organize that approach. To stay attentive to whatever might be needed during the consultation. At some moments, to help when the person did not understand what was being said. At other times, to assist in small gestures within the spiritual work itself, including imantação, a form of spiritual energizing, when necessary.

But one thing she said stayed especially with me.

The work had already begun before that, from the moment the person decided to go to the terreiro.

The contact with the cambono, however, was often the first moment in which all of that began to take concrete form.

That idea stayed with me.

Until then, I may have thought that a consultation only began when the person finally sat before the entity.

That night, I began to realize it did not.

The way someone is received is also part of the help.

And at the same time, I began to understand more clearly how that encounter took place.

Many people arrived nervous. Others came in tears. Some seemed not to know how to begin.

And very often, before any more direct words, there came the embrace of the entity.

In my experience, that was where something began to change.

Even before advice, before any clearer guidance, that gesture opened a space of trust, welcome, and surrender.

Listening without being the one being addressed

During the consultations, I did what I had been asked to do.

I received people, helped when necessary, stayed attentive to the work, and tried not to disturb the flow of that encounter which, for me, was still new.

But something else was also happening.

Many words spoken that night, although directed to other people, also reached me.

It reminded me of something that had also happened at other moments in my experience in the terreiro: sometimes an entity says something openly, and that ends up touching more people than just the consulente — the person receiving spiritual guidance at that moment.

But there, it was a little different.

As a cambono, I was at that person’s side.

Present the whole time.

Listening to everything, while trying to keep my mind almost switched off, because that, at least in principle, was not meant for me.

And yet, between one sentence and another, there would come a kind of call to attention.

As if certain words crossed the consultation and found me too.

Not in an invasive way. Not as if everything were about me.

But as a quiet reminder that, even while we help in the work of an entity, something in us is still being worked on too.

One consultation at a time

Another thing that stayed with me that night was realizing how one consultation did not blur into the next.

I was affected by some of the stories I heard.

At times, I felt deeply moved by what was being said.

Sometimes, I came out of one consultation still touched by what I had just witnessed.

But when the next person approached, that no longer occupied the same space inside me.

Not out of indifference.

Not because what had been heard mattered any less.

Perhaps precisely the opposite.

It was as if each consultation had to be allowed to end completely, so that the next one could receive the same presence, the same listening, and the same attention.

At the time, I did not think of it in those words.

Today it seems to me that there was an important lesson in that.

Helping someone, in that context, also required learning not to carry each consultation whole into the next one — and not to carry everything into myself in the same way either.

Perhaps there was a difficult but necessary measure in that: to be truly present in what one hears, without letting it take up all the space afterward.

The depth hidden in what seemed simple

Looking back, what strikes me most about that experience is that almost everything seemed simple.

The gestures.

The instructions.

The way people were received.

The way I was expected to be present.

And yet nothing there was empty.

There was intention in details that, from the outside, might easily go unnoticed.

Over time, I came to see that a spiritual consultation is a very intimate moment, but also a very human one.

There stand the entity, the medium, and the cambono before a person who has come needing help.

And very often, that help does not appear in the grand way we imagine when we think about spirituality.

Sometimes it appears as attention.

As careful listening.

As counsel.

As the feeling of having truly been received.

Today, living outside Brazil, that also stands out to me in another way.

Perhaps because, when we move away from Brazilian culture, certain things that once felt natural become more visible.

That more direct kind of welcome.

The possibility of speaking about pain without so much formality.

Of crying.

Of stumbling over words.

Of letting something come out even without being able to organize it properly.

In my experience, this is something that touches many people who did not grow up within that cultural universe — and sometimes not even within Umbanda itself.

Because for those who come from contexts where structure, restraint, and self-control carry a lot of weight, finding a space where suffering can appear in a human way, without immediate judgment, can be deeply moving.

Perhaps there is a kind of quiet magic in all of this.

A simple magic, but not a small one.

A new place within the gira

That was not the period in which I worked most as a cambono.

Other experiences would come later, including ones that were more intense, more demanding, and more formative.

But that first time remained marked in its own way.

Because something began to shift there.

That night, I was occupying a different place within the gira.

Still in an initial way. Still without much intimacy in that place. Still learning.

But already in another point of the work.

Maybe it was a small change from the outside.

On the inside, it was not.

Entre mundos.

And perhaps, sometimes, that is how a new place begins.