The Best-kept Secret of Hispanic Culture

Despite the New conception influences, however, Santeria is identified more than with "the magic rites of the Yoruba" (African, particularly Nigerian) than with Catholicism. The informant writes that Santeria's cellular inclusion of the major figures of the Catholic Church (Jesus, Mary, and the saints) was in part an attack 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 direct 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 unrivaled 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 stage to report as fully and accurately about her subject.

The book's 17-page semblance indicates how unique the religion is, how difficult it is to understand for an outsider, and how impossible it is to drop a full picture of the religion in a good deal(prenominal) 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 hatful practice the religion, most of them in Brazil. There are quintuplet million practitioners in the United States. more than important, the religion is non seen as separate from

More than anything, the religion of Santeria is natural magic, which is a way "to find the godly in the most common, ordinary things." The believer wants above any to "embrace constitution." 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 faultfinding of the religion. The believers may be childlike and naive in their religion, as the author says, but the rituals are complex and require much learning and practice on the part of the leaders, or santero.

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

Gonzales-Wipple's book is both educational and compelling. If one sees himself or herself as a non- bended observer of an strange 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 ordain come away from this book with a new jimmy for the religion, its tenets and adherents, and its history and survival from the days of slavery, when it represented a people's familiarity 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 juicy priest (Babalawo), the matriarchal force known as Iyanifa, divination, the exercising 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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