Exu's treatment differs sharply depending on which Brazilian tradition is asked about him, and the difference is not merely one of emphasis but of theological structure. Candomble, which preserves Yoruba ritual language, initiation and cosmology with comparatively little alteration, keeps Exu, there generally called Exu or Eshu, close to his West African role as an inherent, morally neutral messenger without whom no offering to any orisha can reach its destination, propitiated first and always at the opening of a ceremony as a matter of protocol rather than choice.
Umbanda, which formed in early twentieth century Brazil out of a deliberate blending of African tradition with Kardecist spiritism, Catholicism and indigenous belief, reorganizes Exu instead within a spiritist framework of moral evolution: exus become a category of formerly disordered human spirits who can progress, through mediumship and guided work, toward the light, a scheme with no equivalent in Yoruba thought and one that Kardecist doctrine specifically supplies. Quimbanda, in turn, works with those same spirits without insisting on their moral reform, treating Exu's power as available for direct, practical use. The three traditions therefore do not represent one belief about Exu inconsistently practiced, but three distinct theological systems, Yoruba, spiritist and a synthesis of both, each giving the same name and the same crossroads a different explanatory frame.