My Brazilian wife has been watching a Globo telenovella called “Paraiso”-in the plot, a characted purchases a glass bottle containing a miniature figure of a devil (horns, ref, tail etc.). I’m toldthat these are commonly sold in the Northeast region of Brazil. My question: what are they for? Are they taliamans, or some kind of charm?
WHATEVER YOU DO, DON’T BREAK THE BOTTLE!!! Jeez, I can’t believe they actually allow those things to be sold.
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Well, what does she say it is?
My Brazilian wife said it’s probably something about Macumba.
She said that there are stores all over the place in Brazil that sell devil stuff—she mentioned a particular store in her home town with a full-sized mannequin of the devil out front. She said she always figured that store was related to Macumba and never had the desire nor the courage to venture inside and find out.
I’ll second the suggestion for Macumba or Candomblé or some other form of Afro-Caribbean religious object. A related tradition, Haitian Vodou, sometimes uses bottle dolls (usu. people, not devils). “Bottle with dolls’ heads, used much less commonly, can be protective amulets (to ward off evildoing) or mediums for divination (for example, lying sideways, the doll’s eyes close; upright, the eyes open and the doll can ‘see’).” From Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou. With or without a figurine in them, they are sometimes called “spirit bottles,” though that brings up nothing relevant to the OP on google.
The figure is probably Exu rather than Satan qua Satan. Exu is one of the orixa, roughly equivalent to gods or saints, i.e. a group of named powerful supernatural figures who are somewhere between human and god. I don’t know much about Brazilian religions but I hope this helps.