to not see them represent Yoruban Ifa, Lucumi, Candomblé, Vodoun, etc. as well.

http://thegrio.com/2011/10/19/african-religions-gain-following-among-black-christians/

There are many of us participating in these less main-stream religious traditions.

Joshua the Buddhist does acknowledge Yoruban roots, but they have focused on the more "traditional" religions, which are, not surprisingly, the ones that white westerners are familiar with.

I know little of the traditions you mention, but had the opportunity to learn a little as a result of your post.

involved with the ATR's for about 12 years now. Buddhism is my 'philosophy', and Lucumi is my 'religion'. Though like many, I do not seek 'gods' or 'god' as I am ignostic but rather something else in religion - community, ritual, mystery, etc.

They are very beautiful and very misunderstood traditions.

and hope you will contribute more in the future.

Yes, Lucumi can also be refered to as Santeria and Ocha.

Particularly to its animal sacrifice. Though the Supreme Court allowed it in 1993; Lukumi Babalu Aye v. city of Hialeah:

"According to a standard survey: "In 1993, the issue of animal sacrifice was taken to the Supreme Court of the United States in the case of Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah. The court ruled that animal cruelty laws targeted specifically at Yoruba were unconstitutional.[22]"

Following that, there were cases where Catholic exorcisms were combined with magical beliefs, with fatal results:

" There have been a few highly publicized cases where injuries allegedly occurred during Lukumi rituals. One such case reported by The New York Times took place on January 18, 1998, in Sayville, New York, in which 17-year-old Charity Miranda was suffocated with a plastic bag at her home by her mother Vivian, 39, and sister Serena, 20, after attempting an exorcism to free her of demons. Police found the women chanting and praying over the prostrate body. Not long before, the women had embraced Lukumi. However, Lukumi doctrine does not postulate the existence of demons, nor does its liturgy contain exorcism rituals. The mother, Vivian Miranda, was found not guilty due to insanity and is currently confined in a New York State psychiatric hospital for the criminally insane.[25]" (Wiki)

In the Wiki summary of a major case, it is noted that 1) African/Lukumi doctrines does not speak of demons, nor exorcism in its "liturgy." Not mentioned here however is the fact that 2) the Catholic element of Santeria/Lukumi DOES allow both, it seems.

'Google-fu' for academic papers on how religion is definitely a mental illness, I would have expected much better research from you.

1) Santeria has a veneer of Catholicism which was necessary during the slavery period early in its history in Cuba. About the only connections today are the feasts days of the Orisha still being on the feast days of some Catholic saints. Some house (Ile) do use Spiritism when relating to the ancestors. Most do not, nor does the one I am currently associated with. Spiritism is definitely not Catholicism nor is it accepted by the Catholic Church.

2) Lucumi or Ocha are the correct terms for the tradition independent of any and all Catholic beliefs. In Yorubaland, it is called Ifa.

3) There are no demons as understood by Christianity in the Lucumi or any other African Traditional Religion.

4) Your example is not of the religion nor its practitioners but rather another sad case of a mentally ill person whose delusions were of a 'religious' flavor.

5) Animal sacrifice in the ATR's is similar to Kosher sacrifices where only specifically trained officiants are given permission to hold the knife. The animal is never tortured nor any way made to unnecessarily suffer. All parts of the animal are used from the bones, fur, and feathers to the meat. What meat is not immediately cooked for the ritual celebration itself is donated to the poor in the local community.

Animal sacrifice is only done during specific rituals and celebrations and is not a day to day occurrence. On the contrary most ebo's or offerings to the Orisha or Mpungo in Palo are of things like fruits, candles, rum, cigars, candy, cooked dishes like black eyed peas, grits and shrimp, or fried plantains, flower, honey, popcorn, dried fish, grasses, shells, stones, etc.

I'm touched. I usually hyphenate it or just a space, though. Like kung-fu/kung fu (I've seen it both ways.).

Thanks for allowing its use.

Then in its healing rituals.

Wiki often simply identifies Lucumi religion and Santeria. And notes that both talk much talk about spirits, good and bad, particularly not in the "liturgy," but in its healing rituals. And? Evil spirits are quite closely related to "demons."

Here's an excerpt:

"When a person is sick, the healer thinks, interprets and reacts, considering the illness not just a physical dysfunction but also an interface with suffering and bad luck in life, believed to be brought on by the activity of spirits...."

These beliefs are often rejected by the medical community:

"The reputation of espiritistas was tinged with negativity, being accused of witchcraft because they deal with health through the unfamiliar paradigm of the spirit world, which was not understood by either the medical doctors or the Catholic priests. Consequently, espiritistas or traditional healers of Santería and other Latin American cultures working with healing through the spirit world are attacked as "works of the devil" from the pulpits of the Catholic Churches and labeled as "quackery" from the journals of the medical profession. This unique system of knowledge is appreciated as ethnopharmacology or ethnomedicine.[15]:25"

In many African religions, it is thought that "evil spirits" cause disease. So healing involves exorcising the evil spirits.

has more inaccuracies than I could cover in a single reply to you.

Spiritism is not a part of the ATR's. It is a separate tradition that some but hardly all involved in the ATR's incorporate into their lives. I do not, and neither does the Lucumi Ile I am a part of. The Palo munaso is equally devoid of any connections.

There are no demons in the ATR's. There is no Christian god. There is no Christian devil. Therefore there are no angels or demons. Spirits are the ancestors of the living. Some were good humans. Some were bad humans. Some practitioners believe that they are literally experienced. Other practitioners know that they are psychological metaphors. If my grandfather sexually molested me, and I have not dealt with that trauma, then I am haunted by the 'bad' spirit of my ancestor. The rituals are done for me not to an external identity or literal spirit. Exorcisms are a Catholic tradition. No one in the ATR's practices such a rite.

Your understanding of indigenous religions is frankly rather colonial. It is biased and prejudicial. It assumes that they are primitive and destructive. It assumes that the Christianity that enslaved or converted them is somehow the 'truth' of them in and of themselves. It simply is not.

I have a great deal of respect for neo-pagans (whether druids, Wiccans, Heathens, or eclectics) but they will admit that what is known about the real and actual practices of their ancestors has sadly mostly been lost to time. There are few written records or even fewer living oral traditions that passed on to modern times. The diasporatic African traditions have that living oral tradition and have evolved with modern times.

There is still not a lot written on the ATR's. However, I can assure you that what is written on Wikipedia is factually inaccurate. Their lead source, De La Torre, is a born again Christian, former Catholic, with no actual experience in the religion. Lydia Cabrera is a better first source if you want an unbiased though still an outsiders scholarship on the religions. Wikipedia, that bastion of scholarship, even lists Gonzalez-Wippler as Miguel instead of Migene (her real name!). Yet, even then she is a New Age writer for Llewellyn books who despite her academic background is still an outsider to the religions.

By appeasing them, one hopes they will leave. This would be in effect, rather like an exorcism.

I agree that such evil spirit talk, is probably in effect an early version of people being "haunted by" this or that notion. Or even in effect, if there are many such related notions, a second personality.

Though current Psychology does not seem so interested in "Multiple personality disorder," I'm rather interested in seeing many elements of religion - particularly being possessed, or over-occupied by another spirit or personality - as a kind of multiple personality disorder.

In particular I feel that there is often a somewhat malign second and third personality, behind or within much religious thinking.

as it is not one that a Santero or Santera would use. One does not fear spirits. One does not appease spirits. The idea is that one must relate to spirits. The world is a place that is concrete and objectively real. That must be related to. The world is also a place that is perceived through subjective filters with far less concreteness. That second world is the world of the spirits. It is our minds. It is our psychology.

Yes, MPD fell out of fashion. It is ADD (ADHD) and autism spectrum disorders which are popular now. As someone well verse in hypnoanalysis and the Milton Erickson approach to the mind, the idea that we are somehow singular in consciousness is hard to accept. As a great poet once said, we contain multitudes. Some of our sides are 'good' and some of our sides are 'bad'. We are a society of mind as Minsky would describe it.

To believe that a malign personality is behind much of religious thinking is a rather odd thing to say coming from an avowed atheist. It also gets awfully close to equating once more, as your agenda is wont to do, that religion is somehow equivalent to mental illness. As long as you persist in holding on to that belief, I will not discuss the very real psychology of religion with you.

Who might seem to some to be a dark second personality to Christianity; one standing right behind the kinder, more gentle Jesus.

The Old Testament god was quite punishing; even genocidal. To try to tone this down, generally it is thought among modern Christians that the person of the kinder, gentler Jesus - stressing "love," "forgiveness," and so forth - in effect, "fulfills" and in effect updates, modifies, replaces the old God. With a kinder, gentler "new covenant."

Most modern ideas of religion - including perhaps the idea many have today, of ancient African religions - seem heavily influenced by this replacement theology. Seeing our gods now, as more like Jesus. And less as the sometimes-genocidal God the Father.

Are any of these gods objectively real? It would seem unlikely that ANCIENT tribal religions consciously saw their many spiritual conflicts as being entirely within their own mind. Rather they seem to have projected their inner turmoil on the universe; ascribing huge conflicts as coming from a primal and objectively real "Devil" or "god."

It is probably only more modern Existentialist theology that sees all that as simply conflicts within our minds. The modern concept of your religion looks more like a more modern reconceptualization of an older African tradition.

a bit too simplistic academically.

I would recommend some of Jung's writings on religion, in particular, his Answer to Job.

There is an assumption that I once shared due to my extensive academic background that somehow the modern world is markedly different than other times in history. We talk on this site about American Exceptionalism. I think arguments can be made for Modern Exceptionalism.

I know from previous discussions that you are heavily influenced by Hegelian views and ideas. I did my undergrad thesis on Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. There is a very modern bias that 'spirit' has evolved. That primitive religions led to organized religions that will lead to no religion and science. My studies and experiences have shown me that human ideas and beliefs are not on a straight & linear trajectory but rather are more circular and cyclical. I think the exact same breakdown of belief versus disbelief that is seen today is and has been the same for most if not all of human history. Our technology, language, cultures, etc. may appear to change and yet the same human levels of understanding rarely change. Bigotry, violence, racism, homophobia, etc. are not new or old. They just are.

I might accept your ideas on modern reconceptualization particularly with regards to other pagan type religions expressed today. However, the ATR's are not modern reconceptualizations, they are living traditions whose roots and branches can be traced back extensively. The passing on of mysteries and secrets of the Orishas is well documented within the tradition. Every student receives their 'history' (in both oral and now written formats) so to speak which connects them to actual men and women that lived on this earth hundreds of years ago. Houses and paths from the diaspora can be traced back to there origins pre-slavery in Africa.

Every religion seems to feel that it is, itself, the unique exception to the rule that human thinking is flawed. But most Historians today feel that our religions and their histories are in large part fictionalizations. And too mythological. To try to fix this, we try to use Science.

Jung probably argued that the old mythic models are still with all of us. But many, against Jung, feel that the mind and spirit of man has indeed, progressed. To fail to acknowledge that, is to begin to slip back, many would therefore say.

Though for some time it was fashionable to put down the notion of "progress," especially in the mind or spirit, they tell me the Hegelian model now prevails again in historiography.

Ethnographers, anthropologists, have gone to African itself of course; to try to investigate such things at their traditional source. Your own tradition's roots seem to be quite varied, many say. It is hard to find a single, definitive root. It seems more likely that these traditions achieved codified stability only around the time of the Supreme Court challenge.

Looking for some references, here's the first one I found at random. It seems to suggest, just from its title, that there are indeed transformations in say ritual, even in the apparently core roots: Glazier S. Syncretism and separation: ritual change in an Afro-Caribbean faith. Journal Of American Folklore [serial online]. January 1985;98:49-62. Available from: Humanities Full Text (H.W. Wilson), Ipswich, MA. Accessed April 13, 2014.

Another? 'The 'Orisha Religion'between Syncretism and Re-Africanization,'' by S Capone - Cultures of the Lusophone Black Atlantic, 2007 - Macmillan

This last title would seem to suggest that Re-Africanization was to be sure, a modern development. Though it attempted to reconstruct an authentic past, it seems likely that modern ideas of the authentic past were influential.

Jung's book on Job though? Might be useful.

They simple are one tradition, among the more pagan or indigenous ones, that has not had to be recreated by modern men and women. The tradition still exists with actual roots to its past. Your last post denied that factual truth.

I never said the roots were singular. The ATR's in the diaspora are made up of several different African tribes' beliefs, from Fon to Bantu to Yoruban. In the diaspora, the traditions are mixed more than they were in Africa. But their ability to be mixed has more to do with their similarities there than with their differences.

If you believe that the 1998 Supreme Court case on animal sacrifice in Fl was when this tradition was codified, then you are definitely displaying an incredible amount of gross ignorance on this topic. I will need to find some written sources for you to read pronto.

Yes, I do firmly reject the Hegelian model though I am not surprised at its resurgence -again, cycles and all.

To discuss Re-Africanization, we would need to discuss the AA concepts of nationalism, AA ideas of rejection of colonial and slave cultures, and the distinctions between African Ifa and Ifa as part of the ATR's. That is another long topic of discussion best suited for elsewhere.

I also practice an Indigenous religion that has been passed down faithfully through the generations, sometimes secretly. My grandfather was the first in decades to be an "out" Traditional, though he and my uncles still carried their guns to Ceremony in the 50's.

I don't recall reading which Indigenous religion you are a part of. Do you mind sharing with me?

I was honestly rather startled at just how inaccurate the Wikipedia article is on Lucumi/Santeria. There is so little understanding and openness with regards to these traditions.

More specifically, a Tsalagi (Cherokee) Traditional,
My maternal grandfather and his father were healers and holy men, so my cousins and I who spent summers on Grandpa's farm were deeply privileged to be taught by him.

I'm currently a member of a local inter-tribal group which includes Navaho, Comanche, Apache, Seminole, Ute and Kiowa participants. Our ceremonies draw on all our traditions.

and thank you for confirming and sharing.

I grew up very close to Cherokee, NC and had the pleasure of many fine interactions there especially when involved with Unto These Hills.

Over the last 20 plus years here in Arizona, I have had a lot of interaction with the various tribes. Some have been personal friends who took me to Pow Wow's and the other public events. Others have been professionally working closely with Native Health service providing group counseling for substance abuse and addictions. It has been a while, but I used to also attend some Talking Circles when I was able.

Unto These Hills is a wonderful experience, and I'm glad to know that you were involved in it.

I was quite young and decidedly behind the scenes in my involvement. My ballet instructor as a teen was the choreographer for Unto These Hills for quite some time.

I have not seen it since the rewrite. If I ever get back to NC, I would love to do so.

Last edited Mon Apr 14, 2014, 05:44 PM - Edit history (1)

This center for Lukumi/Ocha seems to be still acknowledging Catholic ties. And therefore potentially exorcism rites:

http://www.lukumiart.com/ocha/

as the Ashanti and Yoruban are very different ethnic and religious traditions with few similarities.

I have already stated that the syncretism between Orisha and Saints is still honored for the veneer that it was in the slavery times. For example, the celebration of the feast day of Babalu aye is the same as Saint Lazarus on December 17th. However, if you actually attended such a celebration (and feast days are open to all in the community) you would see absolutely nothing that is even remotely Christian or Catholic. Such a believer being in attendance would agree. I attended the last one here locally last December. There was nothing Christian about it.

This quote, I believe, is where you are getting your foundational thesis in order to support the erroneous assumption that Lucumi has 'exorcism rites'.

Many Lukumi practitioners also require their family of initiates to develop relationships with their ancestral spirits through Spiritism or espiritismo. This practice mixes Catholicism, Native American, Kardecian philosophy and African beliefs that focus on elevating dead spirits to a spiritual space where they can directly influence the lives of their descendants positively. This is done through prayer, rituals and giving "light" to the spirits of the dead who are channeled by elder, experienced espiritistas (mediums) who have undergone the coronación/coronation ceremony.

That used to be true and is no longer. Some do and some don't but Spiritism is not Lucumi. It is a separate religious practice which blends the above beliefs in order to specifically assist the young initiates in their understanding of the dead and ancestors. And even in Spiritism, there is still no such practice as an exorcism.

You can beat this dead horse all you would like, and you are still simply factually wrong. This seems to be a habit with you when you get an idea to support an agenda you wish to promote.

... between your own allegedly pure (purely African?), Lukumi, and many other African Tribal Religions. 1) Articles note ties to a violent past, even in spite of (or even because of ) re-Africanization. Then too, we see 2) continuing Santeria/Catholic links in current websites. As noted in one explicitly "Lukumi" web site, that I included above. While Scholarship also notes ties to Vudou or Voodoo, among others.

Your own personal experience in a few modern churches therefore, does not seem to provide quite the full perspective that would be offered by a full academic review. I'm not doing a full academic investigation here. But I've listed a few sources.

YOu seem eager to deny what objective evidence suggests of your history ... and ongoing links to a violent past, both Catholic and African. Therefore as my current hypothesis, I ask: why are you in denial about your past, and present? It seems that academics over and over, find longstanding links between Lukumi, and darker traditions; but as your religion of US Lukumi was pursued by the law - including eventually SCOTUS, for animal sacrifices and in one famous case a fatal exorcism - US Santeria no doubt became anxious to separate itself from the more violent and controversial side of its beliefs. Rather as Christians today want to separate themselves from the more violent, genocidal Old Testament god.

Achieving this separation however - achieving your new allegedly pure Lukumi - seems to involve some academic sophistries and suppression of much evidence. Africa after all has been famous for violence throughout both popular but also Anthropological literature. And famous for specifically say genocide; as recently as the Rwanda genocide of 1994, just around the corner from the area that Lukumi evolved. In the Rwanda genocide we now estimate that a million persons were killed, largely for religious differences, within 100 days. Currently I'm quickly researching the Lukumi region proper. Though briefly: of course their contiguous neighbors and rivals, the Ghanian Ashanti, at times indicate reasons for conflicts with your neighboring tribe. And though you - as a partial member of that religion yourself - insist that all such problems have been resolved, many of us are seeing evidence that they have not been.

Why don't you see these problems in your own church? Probably this is due to the general phenomenon of Religious Exceptionalism. People, particularly liberals, like to imagine that their own church is exceptionally pure and good; and has vanquished all links to any violent past. Disavowing any connection with a dark past is no doubt particularly desirable when the law - including the US Supreme Court - is busily pursuing you. It is probably due to this as much as anything, that believers like yourself are now adamantly attempting to extirpate any such ties.

However, given what we know about African to date, any true re-Africanization will eventually end up recovering links to after all, a violent African belief system. In the Yoruba region of Nigeria and so forth.

While in the meantime? Many websites confirm an historical - and so some extent continuing - link to Catholicism. And therefore, exorcism.

Perhaps it was the unfortunate meeting of an animal sacrifice mentality, along with residual Catholic exorcism, that lead to the famous Santeria/Lukumi fatal exorcism. Though many new Lukumi adherents now try to disavow such connections, they were obviously active as recently as 1994-8, and the now infamous Supreme Court case.

I promised Trotsky the next reply this morning, and I need to address this first.

You attempt to present yourself as an academic. Your thinking is disorganized. You draw conclusions based on your own warped relationship of ideas.

It is frustrating to even try to converse with you. It pisses me off when people like you do this type of thing. It is not scholarship. It is truly sophistry.

I have a masters in religion. I speak and read Spanish among several other languages. Beyond that I also happen to be an insider in what is and has been a traditionally closed off and therefore misunderstood minority religion. Very little academic study has occurred on it. So first of all, attempting to dismiss my actual knowledge and experiences in replace of your own silly misinterpretations is true intellectual dishonesty.

ATR does not refer to African Tribal Religions. It means African Traditional Religions and there are two main branches. The first is the one that concerns the African continent. The second is the one that concerns the diaspora. Lucumi/Santeria, as well as Palo, Vodoun, Abakua, Candomble, etc., are not continent based traditions. To attempt to link them as you are doing in this particular discussion is spurious. Furthermore, the ATR's in the diaspora cloaked themselves in the slave masters religions in order to avoid the persecution that continues to this day on the African continent of traditional religions by Muslims and Christians.

Websites present a lot of falsehoods as truth. Do you rely on websites alone for your scholarship? If so, then that would explain quite a lot. Catholicism and Lucumi are not mixed. One did not supplant the either. And while there is some syncretism as I have already attempted to discuss, it is not to the degree that you continue to theorize. You refuse to accept that fact because then it debunks your faulty exorcism linkage. If you want to see a really good example of Catholicism syncretized in the Caribbean, I suggest studying Voudon as it is very mixed there. Spritism is another religious tradition that some disporatic ATR's can and have practiced, and it is by no means Catholic nor is it as widespread as believed. Furthermore, the ATR's in the Caribbean date to the 1600's and the beginning of the slave trade in the new world. Spiritism was codified into a tradition in the late 1800's. For several hundred years, it was not even remotely connected with these ATR traditions as it did not EXIST. You can do a simple Google search to learn the differences between Spiritism and Catholicism. You will also see that once more there is no fucking relationship to exorcisms.

And let's discuss this 'violent past' you are referring to shall we? What in particular? If you are referring to one damned example of a mentally ill woman killing her daughter, then try again. The diasporatic ATR's have been around for over 400 years. Do you have more proof than one sad tangential case in the 1990's? I have already addressed animal sacrifice as it has been and continues to be done, so it can't be that, right? And one court case which showed at the Supreme Court level that Lucumi/Santeria was a valid and acceptable religion in America that was not in and of itself any more violent than Judaism with Kosher. If you actually knew about the court case you would know that it was the Muslim and Jewish communities that fought along side Lucumi/Santeria because they would have also been limited due to their 'violent practices' as well. So 1st Amendment aside, is that all you have?

Oh, wait, you then pull some bullshit about the Rwandan Civil War & genocide out of your ass and try to draw an equivalency between it and Lucumi, because, now let me get this straight, Nigeria is a neighbor of Ghana. How could you fail at geography so abysmally and get a Ph.D. in cultural studies?! Let's ignore even for a moment that the Ivory Coast is West Africa and Rwanda is a central African nation which does not neighbor either of these countries in question, but how would a possible tribal conflict between Ghana and Nigeria even be relevant to the Rwandan Civil War and genocide?! I suggest a simple study of the German colonialism of the area and the Catholic churches avowed influence on the conflict between the Tutisi and the Hutu factions in Rwanda as the more accepted academic position on this topic. It is this type of tortured logic that shows plainly that you are not an academic.

Furthermore, I am convinced more than ever that you are a troll because no Ph.D. in academic studies could be so ignorant as to state:

Disavowing any connection with that, is no doubt particularly desirable when the law - including the US Supreme Court - is busily pursuing you.

WTF!?

The Supreme Court now issues subpoenas against 'violent religions'?! The law is 'busy pursing' Lucumi?! Dude, I totally want what ever the fuck you are smoking!

You are another perfect example of how difficult it is to engage in serious and meaningful discussions on interesting topics of religion. This thread discusses the variety and diversity of spirituality in the African American population. From both an academic and personal expression of one such tradition coupled with the uniqueness of my perspective as a non-believer, I am willing to discuss and share about Lucumi/Santeria. I refuse to have my words twisted for your perverse little agenda. I refuse to entertain the continued belief that you are as you pretend yourself to be. If you are a Ph.D. student and yet you demonstrate continuous levels of disorganized thinking, tortured logic, politically motivated agendas, and sheer bullshit such as this post, no wonder cultural studies departments are dismissed by most academics as pseudo-scientific non-sense passing as scholarship.

We are done here. I am sure you will make another stimulating post as your denialism is strong. Feel free. I have some other posts to reply to and won't be returning to you in this thread.

1) You yourself earlier referred to links to Africa itself. Re-africanization explicitly seeks to reforge that link.

2) What is the "authentic" tradition? Can it hundreds of years later really be clearly seen as separated entirely from Muslim etc. religion? Especially without going back to Africa itself? If there is little material, then how can YOU do this?

3) I rely on websites by everyday believers say, not as academic sources; but as evidence of what they believe. And there, many accept the old links to syncretized links to Catholicism. Many African Americans retain links to Islam; Black Muslim influence is there too to encourage that.

4) If Voudoun or Voodoo is syncretistic? Many note ties between Lukumi and Voodoo.

5) YOur own modern Lukumi is very spiritual/existential. Which is evidence of lingering links to other spiritual traditions. Which in turn are discussed in fact in a recent (Columbia?) dissertation. Suggesting more links to if not spiritism, then to other spiritual traditions; adding to lingering ties to Catholic spirituality.

6) The violence of African tribes in general is overwhelmingly documented.

7) The Supreme Court case(s) acknowledged animal sacrifice in specifically your religion.

8) And if it let your religion off because of lack of exorcism in its "liturgy," the decision neglected signs of it in your medicine and so forth. I do not suppose that many people in your religion today are violent. But there are famous cases that began to address this subject.

9) You yourself spoke of Lacumi as belonging to an "ATR" context. Which in turn evidences a lot of violence.

10) I am an academic. But this to be sure is not my primary field; I noted above these are in effect merely notes for a more serious study. Did you miss that?

11) The law has long had trouble with related (as per your own account) religions like Voodoo and Santeria.

12) And the law is indeed, dogging your heals. The Supreme Court has recently taken the trouble with at least two or three separate decisions to address apparent problems in your religion. Like animal sacrifice. And a recent case where Santoria/Lacumi appeared to cause a death in an exorcism.

Though your churches have been distancing themselves from the violent African past, where there is smoke, there is fire. So far, your own religion has been pursued by even the Supreme Court. But has gotten off on perhaps technicalities. Or by distancing yourself from your violent African and syncretistic roots. Yet re-africanization should renew those ties unfortunately.

(At random, here's another recent dissertation on your religion, which speaks of it as continuing to be syncretistic; and moreover as involving apparent "possession": ABSTRACT
Title of Dissertation: AFRO-CUBAN BATÁ DRUM AESTHETICS:
DEVELOPING INDIVIDUAL AND GROUP
TECHNIQUE, SOUND, AND IDENTITY
Kenneth George Schweitzer, Doctor of Musical Arts, 2003
Dissertation directed by: Professor Robert C. Provine
School of Music
The Lucumí religion (also Santería and Regla de Ocha) developed in 19thcentury
colonial Cuba, by syncretizing elements of Catholicism with the Yoruba
worship of orisha. When fully initiated, santeros (priests) actively participate in
religious ceremonies by periodically being possessed or “mounted” by a patron saint
or orisha, usually within the context of a drumming ritual, known as a toque de santo,
bembé, or tambor.
Within these rituals, there is a clearly defined goal of trance possession, though
its manifestation is not the sole measure of success or failure. Rather than focusing on
the fleeting, exciting moments that immediately precede the arrival of an orisha in the
form of a possession trance, this thesis investigates the entire four- to six-hour musical
performance).

Many of these retorts are simple because you lack reading comprehension skills.

1) Past historical links to Africa are not the same as some modern attempts by African American Nationalists to achieve Re-Africanization. Trying to equate these two when discussing Lucumi is spurious and off-topic.

2) I know it is de rigor in the post modern world, but yes, there are actual authentic traditions. I encourage you to have this similar conversation with Native American traditional religious people and see how well it goes over.

3) You accept websites by 'everyday believers' and yet because I am not a 'believer' per se but am an actual member of a traditional Ile all that I share is inaccurate? What idiocy.

4) Voudon and Lucumi are two separate traditions whose members can respect the similarities but recognize they are not the same. Erzulie is not Oshun. Papa Legba is not Eleggua.

5) Irrelevant to anything being discussed.

6) Again, this is utterly irrelevant to a discussion about Lucumi.

7) This makes no sense. The Supreme Court affirmed that there was nothing wrong with animal sacrifice within Lucumi and overturned an unconstitutional law. Truth versus your fiction.

8) & 9) Exorcism is the wild hair up your ass and has literally zero to do with Lucumi or the Supreme Court case. You have picked one obscure case where a woman was found to be extremely mentally ill as the foundation of an argument. There are no cases. There is no history of violence within this or other ATR traditions. ATR religions, even within Africa, are no more or less violent in their distant past than any other human group with religion as its dominant underpinning.

10) You display nothing that convinces me that you are an academic. These are not even notes. They are incoherent ramblings full of inaccuracies, biases, and flights of imagination. An academic adviser would reject them summarily if you attempted to present such a topic for a thesis.

11) No. If you continue to promote this inaccurate belief, then you will need to provide ample proof. By that I do not mean one or two article abstracts from a quick Google Scholar search either.

12) Again, no, no and no. There are no current legal cases against Lucumi. The one tragic case you are obsessed with from 1998 is not being heard by the Supreme Court. The woman was found mentally ill and put in a facility. You are making shit up and trying to pass it off as reality. Please just stop it.

'Off on a technicality'? Seriously? Did you actually, you know, like read the actual Supreme Court decision?! As a scholar, I can not accept that you would pontificate in such an apparently ignorant manner without having actually read said document.

Since you obviously have not read it, let me link it for you.

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/508/520/case.html

Here are some relevant and pertinent passages of the document penned by Justice Kennedy from a unanimous decision:

Our review confirms that the laws in question were en-
acted by officials who did not understand, failed to perceive,
or chose to ignore the fact that their official actions violated
the Nation’s essential commitment to religious freedom.
The challenged laws had an impermissible object; and in all
events the principle of general applicability was violated be-
cause the secular ends asserted in defense of the laws were
pursued only with respect to conduct motivated by religious
beliefs. We invalidate the challenged enactments and re-
verse the judgment of the Court of Appeals.

In sum, the neutrality inquiry leads to one conclusion: The
ordinances had as their object the suppression of religion.
The pattern we have recited discloses animosity to Santeria
adherents and their religious practices; the ordinances by
their own terms target this religious exercise; the texts of
the ordinances were gerrymandered with care to proscribe
religious killings of animals but to exclude almost all secular
killings; and the ordinances suppress much more religious
conduct than is necessary in order to achieve the legitimate
ends asserted in their defense. These ordinances are not
neutral, and the court below committed clear error in failing
to reach this conclusion.

We conclude, in sum, that each of Hialeah’s ordinances pur-
sues the city’s governmental interests only against conduct
motivated by religious belief. The ordinances “have every
appearance of a prohibition that society is prepared to
impose upon Santeria worshippers but not upon itself.”
Florida Star v. B. J. F. , 491 U. S. 524, 542 (1989) (Scalia,
J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment). This
precise evil is what the requirement of general applicability
is designed to prevent.

The Free Exercise Clause commits government itself to
religious tolerance, and upon even slight suspicion that pro-
posals for state intervention stem from animosity to religion
or distrust of its practices, all officials must pause to remem-
ber their own high duty to the Constitution and to the rights
it secures. Those in office must be resolute in resisting im-
portunate demands and must ensure that the sole reasons
for imposing the burdens of law and regulation are secular.
Legislators may not devise mechanisms, overt or disguised,
designed to persecute or oppress a religion or its practices.
The laws here in question were enacted contrary to these
constitutional principles, and they are void.
Reversed.

Finally, with regards to your last point, the dissertation in question is from a Doctor of Music, and I quote: "Rather than focusing on the fleeting, exciting moments that immediately precede the arrival of an orisha in the form of a possession trance, this thesis investigates the entire four- to six-hour musical performance."

Not only is the author factually inaccurate with regards to stating that Lucumi developed in the 19th century (it was hundreds of years previous), he is not writing about your pet ideas or spurious thesis, he is writing about the fucking music in the ceremonies.

You are in over your head, and I truly advise you quit while you can. Sadly, I suspect you will not. We did this same song and dance about psychology in a recent thread. Eventually I will tire of correcting your 'academic' inaccuracies and this discussion will end with another thread disrupted by someone with an agenda and mental masturbation instead of actual knowledge.

Last edited Thu Apr 17, 2014, 08:08 AM - Edit history (1)

Though many like the ASPCA still find your animal sacrifices rather troubling.

And as a matter of fact, in my very hasty - but as I noted over and over, preliminary - research, I neglected to note that the case of death by exorcism, did not go to the Supreme Court. Though of course it is still a bothersome case. Especially since we have been at pains to note that the "insanity" defense is essentially irrelevant; if "all religion is delusion," then the crime can still be a religious one, even if insanity is involved. This is the point we were making at length earlier.

And by the way, the pattern we are often seeing is particularly, religion killing victims often in say, exorcism ritual.

Here's the particularly troubling case again:

"There have been a few highly publicized cases where injuries allegedly occurred during Lukumi rituals. One such case reported by The New York Times took place on January 18, 1998, in Sayville, New York, in which 17-year-old Charity Miranda was suffocated with a plastic bag at her home by her mother Vivian, 39, and sister Serena, 20, after attempting an exorcism to free her of demons. Police found the women chanting and praying over the prostrate body. Not long before, the women had embraced Lukumi. However, Lukumi doctrine does not postulate the existence of demons, nor does its liturgy contain exorcism rituals. The mother, Vivian Miranda, was found not guilty due to insanity and is currently confined in a New York State psychiatric hospital for the criminally insane.[25]"

In this case your reading skills seem inadequate. Note the qualifiers in the above report: that Lukumi "doctrine" does not postulate "demons," nor does its "liturgy" contain exorcism rituals. Above however I noted that these qualifiers are too limited, and fail to see the real problem. Which is not 1) rarified "Lukimi." But rather 2) the commonly-conflated Santeria Lukumi. Where even practioners (by report above; excluding yourself), still follow elements of Catholic belief. There is no point in presenting yourself as final authority here; any good anthropological survey would regard you yourself merely as one informant, among many.

The problem moreover is not 3) "liturgy": a formal body of written doctrines; nor 4) "doctrine." These apparently have long since been cleaned up. But rather, 5) the problem is actual PRACTICE, particularly based on pre-oral tradition; involving exorcism. And quasi medical practice.

As in many cases before the law, the many caveats in this case invalidate its general applicability; it addresses elements (a whitewashed "Lukumi"; formal written "doctrine" and "liturgy"; etc) - that are not the real problem. The real problem is not cleaned up/whitewashed written doctrines; it is orally transmitted cultural traditions; with their lingering ties to exorcism.'

6) The insistence that Lukumi has nothing to do with "demons" specifically is likewise, a semantic evasion. Anthropology has long since evolved a general language to deal with cultures like your own; and the postulation of no specifically "demons" does not however say anything about closely related beliefs in "spirits," and "evil spirits." While tons of ethnographic data note problems in your belief in "spirit"s; belief in "evil spirits," or more neutral spirits that however need to be "placated" (or in one Yukumi doctrine, persuaded), cause many famous problems. Some of which resemble MPD; since the victim thoughts he has another mind, another personality or spirit, in his head. While "hearing voices" in your head of course, can be a related symptom of this; one that is clearly related to schizophrenia.

I understand that you are defensive regarding your own religion. Typically we are finding on DU, defenders of this or that religion resort to one rationalization or sophistry after another, to avoid taking responsibility for their misdeeds. In your present case, defenders of your faith have clearly been playing semantic games, to try to dodge responsibility for typical religious misdeeds. In particular you have resorted to what in formal logic would be called the fallacy of "Distinction Without a Difference"; attempting to rigidly differentiate between belief strictly in "demons," vs. traditional Lukumi/Santeria belief in similar tormenting "spirits" and so forth.

You are denying linkage, recognition of problems over and over. However, Anthropology well knows that both are part of the same general phenomenon.

It is for the all the world as if defenders of religion had a malign personality in themselves; one they cannot face, or are trying to hide. Confirming Jung's suggestion, in his book on Job, that even Christianity contained a malign spirit within itself. One that attempts to disguise and hide itself, by any available sophistry.

and then decided that I am done discussing serious topics with you.

You are not an academic. I initially thought you twisted other people's words, and I now recognize that that is simply how your mind seems to function. Perhaps English is not your primary language as your communications are highly disorganized and rather obsessive. You latch on to singular ideas or factoids and attempt to use those and those alone to bolster your spurious claims of linkage.

You did this with regards to Ostara/Eostre = Ishtar which no one in academia accepts as valid.

You did this and continue to do this with religion = delusion = mental illness. If you did read Jung, you did not understand it. God & the devil are Jobs light and dark sides fighting over his ego. It occurs for the individual, the group, and the collective. Sometimes the battle is easy and relatively painless. At other times, it is drawn out and horrific. Odd that only you seem to interpret repeatedly that malign spirits reside with the mind and create religion. That is quite warped.

Now you are doing this same type of thinking yet again by attempting to link Lucumi with exorcism & demons. If you simply wanted to discuss the ethics of animal sacrifice, that would be just fine. But that is not what you are doing.

You do not accept corrections. You do not accept sources or facts that contradict your ideations. You want to throw in such things as anthropology and no anthropologist I have known would entertain such distorted theories nor would they treat the subjects of their inquiries with such obvious arrogant derision. Which of course means you will fit in quite well with the other 'anti-theists' here at DU.

I don't use the Ignore function, but I do set boundaries. For now, I am done discussing such topics with you in this forum. I will not allow my buttons to be pushed by someone like yourself.

is "pre-oral tradition."

in Google-ology that we don't know about.

Last edited Thu Apr 17, 2014, 09:48 AM - Edit history (1)

I mean of course, oral or pre-literate tradition. Which I referred to earlier in my post.

My method by the way, might be called post-Poststructuralist or deconstructionist. But specifically, it is about "reading" culture as "text." Which is appropriate especially given the textual/mythological content.

In these readings, we seek to find a major theme in a cultural text; rather in the way that one would write about a theme in a literary work. We assume that a cultural text - particularly its mythology - is complex enough, that no single standard account can be entirely right or exhaustive. Opening the text to many possible readings, of different themes or structures within a given culture.

By the way? Though I have taught in various colleges, I've also been involved with the American Indian community; studying their myths. As well as interacting with AIM-type Indian movement members. This involvement is not strictly academic, but is also political/social activist.

with AIM-type movement members.

Prove it. How did Tunkashila Wanblee Mato conduct surveillance on the feds at Wounded Knee in 1973?

Which was apparently granted in Switzerland; but not exactly in the US, if memory serves.

I do not claim intimate knowledge of all or even any AIM activities. Many of which ran into trouble with the law.

Just worked with a few Indian activists on alternative/activist newspapers; and had a few drinks, exchanged ideas with them. Now and then.

Amazing what can happen over a few drinks though.

aren't as monolithic as some assume. Good read.