amuletsPatuápatuá

said pah-too-AH

also: pátua · bolsa de mandinga

amuletBrazilDiasporaBrazilconfidence mediumneeds checking

A small sewn packet, worn at the neck or carried, closed over whatever was put inside it. The example catalogued by Duke University's Sacred Arts of the Black Atlantic project is 43 by 35 by 11 mm: cloth and blue vinyl, wood pieces, white thread, and a cowrie shell. It is not meant to be opened.

cited

When

documented in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries; older than that and undated here still carried cited

Period	Afro-Brazilian religious practice
How the date is known	ethnographic — somebody recorded it being used, on a date
Note	The Duke catalogue gives no date for the object it describes, and this project found no dated first attestation for the form.

Years are stored astronomically — 1 CE is 1, 1 BCE is 0, 500 BCE is −499 — and printed the way a reader says them. How these dates are made.

The thing itself

Form	Sewn packet or pouch
Made of	Cloth · Wood · Cowrie · Thread and cord
Goes	At the neck · In a pocket or a bag · In a vehicle
Made by	made inside a terreiro by people entitled to make one; not described further here
It says	the name of the orixá, embroidered — Iemanjá, in the Duke example, in twenty-one stitches (Latin)
Counted	21
Length	42.87 mm
Colour	blue · white
Retired	no — it is kept
Note	Dimensions as published by Duke: 42.87 by 35.18 by 11.44 mm. Blue vinyl is part of the Duke example and is not in this project's materials list.

What its carriers say it stops

Reported, attributed, not tested here. Each row below is somebody's claim, with their name on it.

Bad luck, unspecified citedsaid by the Duke catalogue, describing the object's purposethe catalogue names protection in general and no specific harm; this atlas does not narrow it for them
This amulet, called a pátua, used the power of the Brazilian goddess Iemanjá to protect the owner.

The story

Duke's catalogue entry is blunt about what the object is for: "This amulet, called a pátua, used the power of the Brazilian goddess Iemanjá to protect the owner."

The construction is a set of claims stitched into cloth. Iemanjá's name is embroidered in white thread on blue vinyl — her colour — in twenty-one stitches, a number the catalogue says is sacred to her. Wood pieces reference Catholic relics. A Star of David sits on the back. A cowrie is set in, the shell that is both an instrument of divination and, in Candomblé, a body the gods are present in. The entry reads the combination as sacred colour, sacred number, and references that follow the trade routes between West Africa and Brazil.

Inference — the Catholic relic and the Star of David on an Iemanjá packet are the record of a religion that spent centuries being illegal and learned to be legible in more than one language at once. This atlas states that as its own reading and not as the catalogue's.

What this record cannot do is tell a reader how a patuá is filled, closed or charged. That happens inside a terreiro, a Candomblé house, under people entitled to do it; this project has read no published account of the procedure that it can cite, and does not fill the gap from a neighbouring tradition. The entry stops here.

cited

How it is made and carried

Sewn shut. The Duke example is closed with a counted number of stitches carrying the name of the orixá it belongs to. Beyond that, the making is not described here — see the note above. A patuá is worn under clothing at the neck, or carried in a bag, wallet or car.

cited

Now

Patuás are made and sold in Brazil, in terreiros and in shops selling to Umbanda and Candomblé practitioners, and are a regular subject of Brazilian religious-goods retail online as of 2026. This project has no dated price and no maker's name for the current trade.

inference