This past Wednesday The University of Vermont’s Fleming Museum hosted guest speaker Daniel Rodriguez in light of the 2017 “Spirited Things” exhibition. Rodriguez addressed the topic of orisa tradition, more specifically the Afro-American religion of Santeria as a byproduct of the Transatlantic slave trade. Santeria is visualized in the “Spirited Things” exhibit as a grand altar, rendering Rodriguez’s lecture exceedingly relevant. His background as a priest in the religion for over 30 years makes him an excellent conveyor of Santeria teachings to audiences that lack exposure to the discipline.

Rodriguez began by explaining the origins of Santeria, otherwise known as Regla de Ocha, stating that early implementation was facilitated by slaves that had been removed from West Africa and brought to the Caribbean to work on plantations. In the New World slaves devised ways to revive the traditions they were forced to abandon, resulting in diasporic religions such as Santeria. The island of Cuba is closely associated with this practice, and as time progressed the religion crossed seas to the United States. In a predominantly Western cultured country, the practices of Regla de Ocha were and still are subject to wrongful criticism by a close-minded society. The specific exercise of animal sacrifice draws the most attention from non-practitioners and the media alike.

Santeria is a religion based on nature in the form of a concept known as ase. Ase is a foundational power that concerns the state of living and nonliving things (Abiodun, 2014, p. 53-87). For the purpose of ceremonial sacrifice, ase can be understood as a self-pertaining spiritual force manipulated by practitioners. An integral part of Cuban Santeria is sacrificial ase for the gods and goddesses. Sacrifice of an animal represents a pathway to honor a specified god, where the blood of the sacrifice represents the ase that is received by the deity.

Seen as controversial in the eyes of the masses, sacrifice is a highly sophisticated ritual that fails to be accurately depicted through popularized media outlets in the United States. As an initiate of animal sacrifice himself, Rodriguez was adamant that the practice is carried out in a humane and standardized way that only individuals with a certain status may conduct. A common misconception of Afro-American religions is that the behaviors associated with them seem primitive, even wicked when paralleled to Western religion. The reality is that the purpose of sacrificial ase is strikingly similar to Western culture procedure. Scholars of religion in all regions of the globe discuss living bodies as multisensory interfaces that are reconfigured through ritual performances (Perez, 2011, p. 665). Just as animal sacrifice in Cuban Santeria allows participants to connect to their higher power deity, Christianity expresses the same connection to a divine figure through Communion. When an individual takes Communion, they are essentially digesting the body of Christ and drinking his blood to exchange his spiritual presence within their own body.

Acknowledging that Afro-American religion contains many complex layers is a central theme in our class discussion. Attending this lecture reinforced the notion that Cuban Santeria and other diasporic religions are intricate practices that require exceptional devotion. I chose to focus my dissection of Rodriguez’s lecture on the false impressions of animal sacrifice shared by the American people as it relates to a greater careless perception of foreign culture in this country. Listening to Daniel Rodriguez articulate his personal experience with Regla de Ocha provided truthful insight to ritual sacrifice. If you have had the pleasure of viewing the “Spirited Things” exhibit, you have witnessed a piece of the profound nature of Afro-American institutions. However, I encourage those who lack exposure to a faith such as Santeria to listen to the words of a priest or priestess before any conclusion is made about the dense tradition.

References

Abiodun, Rowland. Yoruba Art and Language: Seeking the African in African Art. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 2014. doi:10.1017/CBO9781107239074.

Elizabeth Pérez (2011) Cooking for the gods: sensuous ethnography, sensory knowledge, and

the kitchen in Lucumí tradition, Religion, 41:4, 665-683