Tree deities and conception of time in Afro-Brazilian religions

Abstract (English)

The sacred trees of Afro-Brazilian religions - the ‘family’ of gods Tempo, Iroko and Loko - are considered deities of Time. They symbolize ancestry and transformation. They are mostly fig trees species: family Moraceae, genus Ficus.
In the Brazilian Atlantic Forest the imposing tropical fig trees, with their numerous and voluminous aerial roots, grow with age: they never stop growing. Observation also shows us that fig trees, with their large canopies, receive all the meteors (rain, lightning, wind, sunlight, etc.) directly: they are on the front line of atmospheric disturbances, climatic and seasonal events.
In Candomblé shrines, the tree deities Tempo/Iroko/Loko also remain ‘outside’: they are always worshipped in the open air, under the sky: they live unprotected, without shelter or covered altars.
In other words, Tempo/Roko/Loko live at the mercy of the elements (‘Tempo’ in Portuguese refers to both the passing of time and the weather). They let themselves be altered. Once consecrated, fig trees ‘eat from below’ and ‘eat from above’: they receive offerings from humans (animal sacrifices and foods placed on the ground at the foot of the tree) but also ‘incorporate’ the effects from non-humans (through the action of meteors and astral bodies on them).
Thus, the great sacred fig trees remind us that the passage of time (whether cyclical-repetitive or chronological-disruptive) is linked to atmospheric and climatic time (the influence of celestial bodies, climatic phenomena in the Earth's atmosphere), and vice versa. Chronology is inseparable from meteorology.
We want to show that these trees, closely associated with religious traditions, bring together several complementary dimensions of time, and that this contributes to their sacredness. Climatic/atmospheric time (unpredictable, constantly changing), astronomical time (predictable, regular, cyclical), and chronological time go hand in hand. These tree deities also challenge the notion of time in the contemporary context of the Anthropocene.