Santeria's Culture and History

Despite the New creative activity influences, however, Santeria is identified more than with "the magic rites of the Yoruba" (African, particularly Nigerian) than with Catholicism. The condition writes that Santeria's cellular inclusion of the major figures of the Catholic Church (Jesus, Mary, and the saints) was in part an try on to continue to practice the African religion while disguising it in terms acceptable to the Europeans.

However, the Europeans quickly realized the slaves were practicing their own religion, which take to persecution, and then to greater secrecy on the part of the religion's believers: "This secrecy, which ne'er existed in Nigeria, is still observed" by those believers today "and is one(a) of the reasons the religion is so closed to outsiders." It also makes the reader more understanding of the necessity of the author's becoming a semi-initiate in do to report as fully and accurately about her subject.

The book's 17-page rubric indicates how unique the religion is, how difficult it is to understand for an outsider, and how impossible it is to invest a full picture of the religion in such a brief summary as this. However, it is clear that the author sees Santeria as a true world religion (and wherefore she refers to "The Religion" in the title). One hundred million throng practice the religion, most of them in Brazil. There are quintuple million practitioners in the United States. to a greater extent important, the religion is not seen as separate from

More than anything, the religion of Santeria is natural magic, which is a way "to find the portend in the most common, ordinary things." The believer wants above wholly to "embrace character." This emphasis on the magic in nature explains the sacrificial aspects of the religion, although that aspect, says the author, has been exaggerated by popular notions and those unfairly sarcastic of the religion. The believers may be childlike and naive in their religion, as the author says, but the rituals are complex and require more learning and practice on the part of the leaders, or santero.

The absurd image of any individual in Santeria simply acidulated an animal's throat is a perversion of the religion. The rituals and ceremonies involving the blood of animals are twisty and must be carefully executed and applied, and the blood is provided one ingredient in them.

Gonzales-Wipple's book is both educational and compelling. If one sees himself or herself as a non- preconceived ideaed observer of an unfamiliar with(predicate) religion, one would do well to test that lack of bias in the case of Santeria, which is maligned by misconceptions. The open-minded reader get out come away from this book with a new see for the religion, its tenets and adherents, and its history and survival from the days of slavery, when it represented a people's participation to the past, to their home, and to their means of connection with nature and God.

The remainder of the book includes studies of the game priest (Babalawo), the matriarchal force known as Iyanifa, divination, the utilisation of herbs in magic, sacrificial ceremonies and offerings, initiations, sainthood, music. spirit possession, spells, comparisons with witchcraft and the Church, spiritism, the role of Santeria in the social struct
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