Apart from vague notions that it somehow involves animal sacrifice and is a syncretistic religion blending Catholic and African beliefs, most Americans know little of anything about Santeria, yet it is probably the most-practiced religion in Cuba and is growing in the United States, De La Torre argues in Santeria: The Beliefs and Rituals of a Growing Religion in America by Eerdmans. She is associated with Saint Theresa. ", Ray, Benjamin. Such frustrated persons may have to "come back," looking for help or for some vital equipment necessary of the journey. Training includes divinatory work, herbalism, and counseling. Our goal isn't to spend eternity sitting on a puffy white cloud in Heaven isolated from the world of the living. Followers believe that these spirits will give them help in life, if they carry out the appropriate rituals, and enable them to achieve the destiny that God planned for them before they were born. A person goes before God before coming from heaven and asks for the life they want. Nairobi, Kenya, 1989. Santeria evolved when African slaves were stolen from their homelands during the Colonial period and forced to work in Caribbean sugar plantations. Copyright 2023, Good Faith Media | Site by, Baptist Pastor Recognized for Lifetime Contributions to Cuba, COVID-19, Inflation, Inept Govt Plague Cuban People, Religious Minorities Plight Too Often Overlooked, Handbook of U.S. Theologies of Liberation, Santeria: The Beliefs and Rituals of a Growing Religion in America. People want to go back in one form or another to be with their family, to take their place among the ancestors, and to continue to evolve spiritually. Santeria: A stigmatized religion. Idowu, Bolaji. This ceremony invites the Orisha to join the community in drumming, singing and dancing. When after a long time such individuals are no longer remembered by name, they enter a state of what Mbiti calls collective immortality as they blend into the general world of those who have gone before (Mbiti, 1969). There are lawyers and professors, civil servants and musicians whose homes are filled with altars laden with flowers, rum, cake and cigars to keep the gods happy and helpful. The songs also indicate that Christianized Africans have embraced Christian eschatological ideas of heaven and hell and even a postmortem judgment. This ritual involves throwing an ekwele, a chain of 8 shaped pieces. Offerings to the lwa include fruit and the blood of sacrificed animals. Deep stuff. . The rituals involve performers drumming that make most of the music, singing, dancing, praying, and even animal sacrifice. The denigration of the body implicit in these songs is quite alien to indigenous understandings of the human person and the person's destiny after death. Facing Mount Kenya. The masters of Santeria are mostly located in Cuba, although it is now being practiced by individuals of various nationalities. Cubas government considered it ancient sorcery. Being moral exemplars, the ancestors are also considered custodians and enforcers of justice and morality among the living, and because they are considered ontologically closer to God, they function as intermediaries between God and the people. A redefinition of the human person also seems to be indicated in the Christian discourse. Omissions? Santeria, which came out in October, is one of three recent books by De La Torre, whose earlier works include the 2002 Reading the Bible from the Margins by Orbis Press. Santeria is a religion that has beliefs of the Yoruba and it also has Roman Catholic elements (Types of Religion, 2016). Santera is a Spanish word meaning "The Way of the Saints.". African Religions: The Moral Traditions of Abundant Life. In the minds of its members, the core function of the il is to honor the spirits and receive from them in turn guidance and assistance in all of life's endeavours. Given this worldview, Africans see the hereafter as intimately linked with the here and now. Properly known as Lukum in the Yorb language, meaning "friendship," Santeria was the religion practiced by descendants of many Yorb slaves in Cuba, over time . The word syncretistic means to "draw together" or "combine." In a religious environment, this involves the mixing of elements from different or independent religious traditions to create a new belief system. Discusses in detail the belief system of the Acholi of Uganda. Is Santeria a sin? The Luo of Kenya, for example, use the yago fruit, which is several feet in length and is laid in the grave to represent the dead. These commonalities in worldview despite cultural ethnic differences will be assumed in this article. Occultist.net is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. The religion emphasizes the here and now rather than the afterlife, and it focuses on natural forces. These rituals can include Roman Catholic elements: One major ritual is a bemb. He also contextualizes Santera culturally and historically and suggests that Santeria is both a reconstruction of Yoruba beliefs as well as a creative response of accommodation and resistance to mental enslavement. The religion focuses on natural forces instead of the afterlife. Santeria and Voodoo were both presented in the Western Hemisphere by slaves from North Africa, most likely Nigeria. Needless to say, Africans who have come into contact with Islam and Christianity have been influenced by the rather sharply defined eschatological notions featuring a final judgment, heaven and hell, and final resurrection as destinies of the soul. Though the deceased may be physically gone, they are still here as persons and the living can still communicate with them. They are accompanied by their Guardian Orisha. Priesthood involves training and initiation. Possession of spirits. Simultaneously, however, while many seem to have embraced these Christianized notions of the afterlife, there is evidence, even among Christianized Africans, of a marked resistance to the seeming demonization of African beliefs, particularly beliefs in ancestors. In the crowning ceremony, the symbols of the patron orisha are placed on the head of the devotee, and he or she may enter a ceremonial trance and become a medium for that orisha. Moreover, for the most part assuming a radical difference between themselves and their worldviews and the Africans and their worldviews, and convinced of the need to convert Africans from their allegedly "primitive" and therefore "inadequate" or even "wrong" beliefs, missionaries deliberately tried to erase African beliefs and practices and to replace these with ostensibly Christian ones. Belief that people can be possessed by spirits is more common among Latino evangelical Protestants (80%) than among mainline Protestants (63%), Catholics (56%) or the religiously unaffiliated (43%). It seems from this myth that the Tutsi understand happiness and immortality to be dependent on how well they maintain the link between themselves and God. Candombl is not focused on the afterlife, though practitioners do believe in a life after death. The traditional rituals of reinstating the dead into the world of the living, for example, seem to reappear camouflaged in the quite prevalent Christian rituals of "unveiling the tombstone" or "unveiling the cross." Devotion to the orishas takes four principal forms: divination, sacrifice, spirit mediumship, and initiation. Here, they reinforced prior indigenous concepts of the afterlife where these already incorporated notions of a final judgment, as in the case of the Yoruba of Nigeria and LoDagaa of Ghana (Ray, 1976, pp. It explores marginalized views of global issues like poverty, war and the environment, as well as business issues such as corporate accountability and affirmative action. It's a choice. Yet it is packed with high-powered rituals that are seeing the light of day for the first time in this century. Cite this article Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. If you are angry, rather than learn to control your anger and address the problem in a different way, you can just go around punching people in the face. Santera is a syncretic religion based significantly in the traditions of the Yoruba and incorporating elements of Catholicism. https://www.encyclopedia.com/environment/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/afterlife-african-concepts, "Afterlife: African Concepts The study was recently published in Psychology of Religion and Spirituality. Secondly, African beliefs are dynamic rather than static. Somehow, this state was interrupted, and death entered the world. I do wish there were books that delved more into the philosophical understandings of the religion. In this time anyone caught in the worship of native gods would be punished and many times by death, Africans and the native Tainos. Santera is a religion with Afro-Cuban roots, rising out of the cultural clash between the Yoruba people of West Africa and the . It marks the end of his physical life in the religious community that he's been part of, and it's important to make sure his Orichas are cared for in the proper way, to bring an end to his relationship with them on earth. Conversely, those who fail in their worldly obligations, or those whose actions are subversive to rather than nurturing of life, are quickly forgotten and "excommunicated" after death. Sometimes feared and often misunderstood, Santera and other Afro-Cuban spiritual traditions still persist in the U.S. - especially in South Florida. The world below was the opposite of the world above, since it lacked in beauty and prosperity. Maryknoll, N.Y., 1997. The Gikuyu refer to such a persons as mwendwo ni iri (the people's beloved). Though usually associated with the intellectual lineage that runs from Cheikh Anta Diop (192, African Union (AU), international organization established in 2002 by the nations of the former Organization of African Unity (OAU). Santeria, as explained to me, is supposed to be a nature-based religion. In general, within the African context, such a rigid dualism between body and soul is not found. but only faith in Almighty God can bring them a happy afterlife. Their encompassing Divinity is compiled of three facets; Olodumare, Olorun, and Olofi. While traditionally one's body was considered integral to one's person and was therefore considered important even after death, today Christian funeral songs depict the body as incidental if not detrimental to one's positive destiny after death. We also participate in becomealivinggod.com affiliate program. "The religion is something you are part of and see on a daily basis. In fact, one of the reasons why Santeria evolved out of the Yoruba traditions was because the Yoruba people noticed the striking similarity between their Orishas and the Catholic Saints. Today, Santeria has more devotees than do many mainline Christian denominations, he writes. Recently, recognizing that rituals to honor the dead are carried out despite the ban, and conceding that ancestors hold a key position in African traditional religions the Catholic Synod of African Bishops recommended that attempts be made to harmonize African beliefs in ancestors with Christian beliefs regarding saints (Schotte, 1992, p. 55). As we recall, Africans believe that the destiny of the individual and the community are interdependent, interconnected, and intertwined. Like many religions, Santeria also offers . The Santeria faith teaches that every individual has a destiny from God, a destiny fulfilled with the aid and energy of the orishas. However, etutu is our process of funeral rights and it does include judgement. Many contemporary practitioners refer to the tradition as the religion of the orishas or the Lukumi religion, after the name by which the Yoruba were known in Cuba. Such theologians assert the compatibility of African beliefs with Christian ones if only the latter can shed their Western garb and be clothed afresh in terms of African culture, a process called "inculturation." The Chagga of Tanzania believe that this journey to the world of ancestors takes nine days. Santeria is based on Yoruba beliefs, while Voodoo is based on Fon and Ewe beliefs. P'bitek notes that the Acholi approach the dead as identifiable persons rather than mere disembodied spirits (cwiny ) or shadows (tipo ). Furthermore, the ban is seemingly based on Christian notions of afterlife that define salvation as a matter of the individual's disembodied soul getting to an "otherworldly heaven." Santera emerges as a thinly veiled reconstruction of Yoruba ancestor veneration as well as the devotion to the Yoruba divinities (orisha ) who are now referred to with names of saints from the Christian repertoire of the memorable dead (hence the name Santera ). Obtain a deeper knowledge of magic with my latest book The Psy-Mage Compendium. As Ela, for example, argues in his book My Faith as An African (1990), ancestral veneration is simultaneously an affirmation about life after death but also an affirmation of African notions of family, which includes the living, the dead, as well as the not yet born. Dressed in a loose white gauze shirt, white pants and white hat, the red-bearded drummer Babaila taps out the same beat he has played for 35 years. Santeria is based on Yoruba beliefs, while Voodoo is based on Fon and Ewe beliefs. Santeria has the basic features and traditions of an ancient African religion practiced among the Yoruba in Nigeria. The Yoruba call this inner person ori-inu (Idowu, 1994, p. 170). Therefore, that information is unavailable for most Encyclopedia.com content. Encyclopedia of Religion. The U.S. Army and Federal Bureau of Prisons have incorporated orisha ministries into their chaplaincies. Santeria combines influences of Caribbean tradition, West Africa's Yoruba spirituality, and elements of Catholicism. Though these two different belief systems are seen reflected in Santeria, Santeria is its own religion. Image courtesy of Jacob Tabo/Unsplash. The animal is sacrificed as food, rather than for any obscure mystical purpose. What does Santera believe about the afterlife? Therefore, its best to use Encyclopedia.com citations as a starting point before checking the style against your school or publications requirements and the most-recent information available at these sites: http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html. An Orisha is a manifestation of Olodumare (God). This anthology of essays discusses and contextualizes the famous 1987 controversial case regarding the burial of SM Otieno, a Kenyan Luo. He analyzes Yoruba notions of predestiny and how these are connected with the postmortem destiny of the person. The religion is also known as La Regla Lucumi and the Rule of Osha. Ils are independent but may join up for special occasions. A religion started in secret. The il sets out a path of spiritual growth, a road en santo. African Religions and Philosophy. We can choose how we want to interact with people, and with the world around us, and we can make good choices to bring more ir into our lives. To be thus rejected, excommunicated and forgotten, is truly to die in the African understanding. Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. People have to be held accountable for their actions, and this is how we envision it. Santeria has a priesthood that includes both men and women. New York, 2000. Mortuary rituals also emphasize the integral connection between the "inner and outer person." For this reason, even when a wild beast devours a body, leaving only a few shreds or pieces, these are carefully collected and accorded a full and respectful burial. Many people are involved with Santeria to a lesser extent, without becoming members of an il. Drawing largely on his experiences as an African Catholic priest, Ela asserts the compatibility of African beliefs with Christianity and argues for their reclamation as both doctrinally viable and socially relevant for Africans' quest for beliefs and practices that enhance and nurture life in the here and now. The religion is also known as La Regla de Lucumi or Lucumi or Lukumis Rule. Derived from African religions brought by . A Santero, or high priest, traditionally presides over rituals and ceremonies. Encyclopedias almanacs transcripts and maps. Encyclopedia.com gives you the ability to cite reference entries and articles according to common styles from the Modern Language Association (MLA), The Chicago Manual of Style, and the American Psychological Association (APA). 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