METASCIENCE & AFROCENTRIC RELIGIONS OF THE WEST: the "SAVOMASHO"

SAnteriaVOodooMAcumbaSHangoObeah {SAVOMASHO}

Specifically, Haitians call it voodoo (known to anthropologists as vodoun). Cubans and other Latinos refer to it as Santeria. Brazilians call it Macumba and Trinidadians call it Shango. In Barbados and other eastern Caribbean countries it is called Obeah. Certain forms of paraphernalia used to invoke various forms of spirits and saints include: snakeskin, dried bird claws, bones and other cadaver components (both animal and human), plant roots, incense, statues, candles (of various colours), and blood (of animal and human origin). You seemed to have witnessed on camera a form of initiation rite involving Santerian priest/s, called Santeros (and Babalawo in voodoo). If a blood sacrifice ritual was performed, then a Palo Mayombe, or black magic/k offshoot of Santeria, a more malevolent form, was performed, invoked by rada or bloody petro rites.

This system of ancestral worship has its origins in African cosmology (derivatives of ancient African religious practices) which survived the colonial era and was used as part of the anti-colonial and anti-slavery resistance by slaves. Santeria is popularly practised in Cuba, Brazil, and Dade County, Florida, to name a few. Secret religious ceremonies, along with the use of the Yoruba language so as to address the gods (spirits) in their own tongue, a complex system of food and drink offerings for these gods, and at times seemingly unhygienic practices all form part of the secretive, and at times violent world of Santeria.

Santerian or vodoun gods include: Ogun, the god of iron and war, who is believed to favour roosters and male goats for dinner with rum; Erzulie, the voodoo god of life, who craves desserts; Damballah, who likes champagne and the list goes on. Symbols, fetishes, talismen, icons, dolls, and other points of contact (familiar objects) are all used to protect the wearer of such objects against poisoning, death hexes, evil spirits, sickness, injury, and accidents, OR to inflict such upon one's enemy. Possession by the invoked spirit/s is often the result of such rituals revealed in shrieks or howls, violent shakes, writhing and epileptic fits (convulsions). This may all culminate with the possessed person becoming entranced, passing out or performing some seemingly impossible human feat (walking over broken glass or burning coals without injury).

Consider the Judeo-Christian Response:
Lev.19:26 & 28 (idolatry); Deut.18:9-12 &14 (all forms of spiritism forbidden); Sam.28:1-13 (witch of Endor, a necromancer—one who communes with the dead); Acts 8:9-23 (Simon the sorcerer/magician); Acts 15:19-20 (first Church Council's commandments to Gentile believers); Acts 16:16-18 (the damsel with a spirit of divination); Acts 19:11-20 (magic overpowered by God's Holy Word); Gal.5:20 (idolatry and sorcery/witchcraft listed among the works/deeds of the flesh); Rev.21:8 (sorcerers and idolaters are numbered among those reserved for the Lake of Fire judgment).

OOW

2011