Umbanda holds a single God, usually called Olorum or Zambi, and beneath him the orixas, taken from Yoruba tradition by way of Candomble but reduced in number and reinterpreted. In most Umbanda houses the orixas are not possessing deities but vibrations or lines of spiritual force, each governing a domain and paired with a Catholic saint: Oxala with Christ, Ogum with Saint George, Iemanja with Our Lady, Xango with Saint Jerome. Practice is commonly organised into seven lines, each headed by an orixa, though the schemes differ from house to house and no authority reconciles them.
What actually arrives in the body of a medium is not an orixa but a spirit of the dead advanced enough to help the living. These entities come in recognisable types, and the types carry the religion's whole social imagination.
The pretos velhos and pretas velhas are the spirits of old enslaved Africans, arriving bent and slow, smoking pipes, speaking in an archaic register, offering patience, herbal cures and forgiveness. The caboclos are Indigenous Brazilian spirits, upright hunters and warriors of the forest, brisk where the pretos velhos are gentle; scholars note that their portrayal owes more to nineteenth-century Romantic literature than to any Indigenous tradition. The eres or criancas are child spirits, playful, fond of sweets, and consulted precisely because they say what adults will not.
The exus and their female counterparts the pombagiras occupy the difficult ground. Associated with streets, night, sexuality, money and settling scores, they are approached for problems respectable religion will not touch. Umbanda distinguishes exus who have turned toward the light from those who have not, and distinguishes itself from Quimbanda, understood as the practice that works with the latter deliberately, though the line between the two is less firm than Umbandistas usually present it.