Scarlet Shifflett

Clark  Mary, Asho Orisha (Clothing of the Orisha): Material Culture as Religious Expression in Santeria. Ann Arbor: UMI, 1999.

I found this book through google scholar when I searched “Cuban Santeria altars”. I Decided to use this source after reading the abstract and finding it relative to my topic.

This book contains many chapters, the ones I am interested in using are chapters three and four. Chapter three talks about birthday altars and how each altar is set up for the different Orisha. It also discusses why certain objects are important to an altar. Chapter four gives the significance of objects in terms of the Orisha and talks about the specific object to the Orisha it pertains. The objects present on an altar represent the Orisha’s life while also telling a story about the life of the person who created the altar.

The author has a scholarly point of view that is from someone on the outside looking in. This kind of perspective is useful when trying to learn about a broader subject, like altars, but is not very useful when trying to understand details, like Oya altars. The goal of the author is to inform the reading on the subjects of Cuban Santeria altars and the importance objects have on the altar. While this source will not help me with the details of my writing it will be useful to understand the main idea of my research, why altars are important when worshipping Orisha.

Gleason Judith, Oya in the company of saints. United States of America: Oxford University Press, 2000.

I found this article through the UVM library search. I used the key word “Oya” in the ATLA article database.  and this article was one of the first resources that was the most relevant to my topic. This article was available through a secondary source from the UVM library search database.

This article discusses the Orisha Oya, what is associated with Oya, change and storms,  along with her history, Oya was the favorite wife of Shango, another Orisha. A lot of important information about Oya is written in this text, allowing the reader to get a better understanding of why and how someone would worship the Orisha. While the altar concept is not so much talked about this article will still be useful because it allows me to learn more about the key part of the altar I am studying, Oya.

The writer’s perspective is that of someone telling a story about how they learned about a topic. The writer talks in first person and discusses how she went to Cuba to discover more on the Orisha. The writer’s goal is to inform readers of the goddess Oya and what her role is among other Orisha. I found the perspective of this article helpful in understanding the information given because it felt like I was learning at the same pace as the writer.

Mary, Clark, Orisha Worship Communities: A Reconsideration of Organisational Structure. United States of America: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2011.

I found this article through the ATLA database by searching “Orisha” I had to scroll through multiple other articles before coming to this specific one. I chose this article because it was from the same author as another one of my sources that I found helpful and because it contained a section on Santeria.

This article discusses the idea behind the birthday alatar. Clark goes into detail about what a birthday altar is and how a priest would know which Orisha to honor in their altar. An important detail in this section that directly relates to my topic was tureens on an altar. Clark stated that the tureens are kept closed with objects that embody the orisha. This statement was able to answer a key question in my research statement. Other topics discussed in the article related back to the priests who have birthday altars and how they are initiated.

Clark had a scholarly perspective in this article which is the same point of view she had in the first article I used. The goal of this piece of writing is to inform the reader on how a priest gets initiated and what that has to do with their birthday altar. While my object is not directly related to this article it was helpful in answering a key question I had that I was not able to find an answer to anywhere else.