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In The News:

A 47-year-old in New Jersey was charged with eight counts of animal cruelty after the remains of numerous animals, including chickens, guinea hens and a turtle, were found in his yard earlier this month. According to a member of the SPCA, the man admitted he killed the animals as part of a Santeria sacrifice. A few other live animals were found on the property, which were supposedly being kept to be sacrificed later.

This guy is facing eight-counts of animal cruelty, each count carrying a possible six-month jail term and a fine of $1,000. That’s potentially 4-years in jail and $8,000 in fines. Yikes. The charges are to be heard in municipal court on April 19th. I hope for his sake that they go easy on him.

I know some of you must be wondering what happened to freedom-of-religion and why he’s being threatened with jail time for just practicing his religion. The short answer is, this has nothing to do with the religion.

Regardless of why they are killed, if the animals are not treated humanely, there’s a risk being charged with animal cruelty. That’s yet another reason people shouldn’t attempt this stuff on their own. If he’s essentially just tossing the remains out into his yard after the sacrifice, that sounds a bit suspect to me.

Though I’m sure there’s a bit more to the story, I couldn’t find much more in the way of details. I’d like to assume that a priest would be a bit smarter about how the animals are kept, sacrificed, and disposed of, but I guess you never know.

I just hate how the only way the religion gets talked about in the news is typically in association with animal sacrifices or some lone nut-job. I guess it’s to be expected, though. I mean, how often do you hear about Catholicism without at least a comment or two involving priests and young children? Every religion has its own equivalent, I guess. If anyone comes across some positive press to help balance out these stories a bit, please send a link or two my way.

In Entertainment:

A few days ago, I wrote a blog post about a recent episode of a reality show that had a small segment taking place in the Yoruba-Orisha Baptist Church in New York. A few weeks ago, when I first saw a preview of the episode, I was sure it was going to be something involving Santeria. How could it not? There was drumming, people had head-coverings, and there even seemed to be some dancing. I Google’d the heck out of it, but I couldn’t find anything beyond a baptism and a visit to a church. Assuming I was wrong, I didn’t bother watching the episode until a few days ago. As soon as I saw the sign on the front of the church, I was absolutely ecstatic. I mean, for the size of the Santeria culture in New York, it’s amazing how little exposure they get on any of these shows that take place there. I was a little bummed when I saw how heavy the Christian overtones were, but I was still hopeful when I spotted a couple people with beads on under the shirts or some of the figurines and statues in back. Ultimately, they didn’t stay at the church for long. The goal was to visit the church and have the baby receive a blessing. As soon as the parents heard the word “baptism”, though, they got flighty. Part of it was concern over the child potentially being baptised at a church they don’t belong to. The main reason seemed to be just a general discomfort with the child being passed around among a bunch of strangers. Mothers of newborns are protective of their children, and rightfully so.

I found a dozen or so comments from people wanting to “warn” others about the church and its apparent affiliation with Santeria. By now, I’ve come to expect that.

What surprised me, though, were some comments from the other side of the fence.

In one post, the author chastises the parents for not knowing to cover their heads and gawking at the “exotic” attire of the people at the church.

That really bugged me. Did they look out of their element? Definitely. But they also commented on how beautiful everyone was dressed, how nice they were, and how fun the place seemed. There really didn’t seem to be any malice behind it. Not only was their reaction pretty normal to a new situation like that, but I felt like it was probably better than most.

Again, this is another example where people trying to defend the religion are really just shooting themselves in the foot, it seems.

Personally, I had nothing against the way they handled themselves in the church. My issue was only with how non-ATR the church seemed to be. I’m sure that was mostly because of the camera crew and publicity that the visit was bringing, but even with it being a Baptist church, I’d rather see a few more beads and a few less crucifixes, myself.

Accidental Aborisha:

As some of you know already from my blog, I don’t really consider myself a typical practitioner. Sometimes I feel like I wound up here by accident and one day I’ll get a reading from the orisha saying something along the lines of, “Oops! My mistake. I’m terribly sorry for the inconvenience.”

I found my way to this religion by following a somewhat zig-zaggy path of beliefs, practices, and curiosities. This is the only thing that has really stuck.

Aside from those who I’ve flat-out told about my religious inclinations, many people probably assume I’m an atheist. I guess I just don’t give off that “religious” vibe.

I don’t have much issue when it comes to understanding the fundamentals… and, except for my pronunciation at times, I’m usually pretty good with names and terms and stuff. I’m usually a quick-learner, even if I do struggle a bit when it comes to some of the more artistic aspects of the religion. Really, though, I’d consider myself pretty well-suited for an initiatory religion like this.

The thing is, though, when it comes to the belief side of things, well… it gets a bit complicated.

When family, friends, or co-workers hear about my interest and involvement in the religion, the initial reaction is usually that of mild amusement. I’ve always had pretty diverse interests, so they usually aren’t too surprised. Once they find out how long I’ve been involved with it or that I’m saving up money to become a priest, though, their tone typically changes to that of concern.

For one, I guess I don’t fit the usual mental image people have for someone involved in Santeria. Maybe they expect someone of Latin or African decent. Maybe they expect some confused teenager. Or someone dying of cancer. Or in prison. I have no idea. But whatever their idea of what a Santeria practitioner should be, I’m not it.

Next, there’s the issue of belief. Through talking about the religion, topics such as the orisha, divination, possession, and that sort of thing eventually get brought up. This leads to the question of, “Do you actually believe that stuff?” I never know quite how to answer.

I’ve always been a bit jealous of the folks who have that strong conviction of “knowing” when it comes to the religion. They unquestioningly know the orisha are real, know the results of their divination will help them in the future, and they just accept it unconditionally. I’m definitely not in this group. One day, maybe, but not yet.

There are also people who believe. It’s similar to the previous group, but different. When you know something, you don’t have to put a lot of effort into it because it just is. To me, belief takes work. It requires faith and maybe a bit of hope. It also seems like it’s not just about wanting something to be true, but about needing it to be true. I don’t think I really fall into that category.

I’m not sure how I’d classify myself, to be honest..

I certainly don’t know… I might not even believe…. Instead, I just do.

I make offerings to eggun, I talk to Elegua, and I adhere to my readings, and all of that other stuff. I do it because it works for me. If you ask me why, I can probably give you lots of explanations, but probably nothing very convincing.

It’s not that I disbelieve any of it, really. I just know how I am… My mind can offer up plenty of rational excuses for just about anything.

I remember when I had my first reading. I was convinced there was some trick to it, some pattern that I could figure out, or some way it could be explained logically It was the same when I saw my first mount. Obviously the person was faking it, right? I mean, everyone seemed to know everyone else and people love to gossip… It seemed like the obvious explanation — though one I certainly kept to myself.

Thinking like that can quickly make this religion — or any, for that matter — pretty dull.

Rather than trying to rationalize what goes on in the religion, I’ve just learned to sort of side-step it and move on.

The same holds true for my spirituality in general. I have no problem having a mental conversation with my muerto, but if I was put on the spot and asked whether I believe in spirits, I’d be hard-pressed to give a definitive answer one way or the other.

Like I said, it’s complicated….

Final Thoughts:

One thing that is not complicated is the donation page for YearInWhite.com…

I know it’s a shameless plug, but it seems to help.

Laura H. was this month’s contributor… Thank you, Laura. I’m not saying your donation got me motivated enough to put out another podcast episode, but let’s just say it certainly didn’t hurt.

Even with these few donations of a couple dollars at a time, it really does bring a smile to my face when listeners of the podcast or readers of the blog contribute money to my Ocha Fund.

Assuming I don’t have any major financial burdens this year, I’m currently about six-months away from my goal.

I hope I’m allowed to continue with this podcast — or at least the blog — during my year as an iyawo. We’ll see. I still have quite a bit of time to work out the details on that, I suppose.

Especially with the blog, it’s been helpful for me to be able to look back and see how far I’ve come. It’s also interesting seeing what views of mine have and haven’t changed.

Until next time….

Maferefún eggun.
Maferefún orisha.

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Miami New Times posted a news story about Richard Couto, an animal activist who is trying to publicize the animal “torture” of Santeria sacrifices.

Couto’s big claim-to-fame was when his tactics — albeit technically illegal — helped get authorities to shut down some black market slaughterhouses.

Not content with letting his ten minutes of fame run out, now he has a new target…

Couto now says that many of those slaughterhouses catered to the Santeria crowd, selling dogs, goats and chickens especially for vodou sacrifices. He routinely found mutilated animal corpses in the area.

“Some of these animals had their eyes missing, their genitalia missing,” he says. “Most people think that santeria sacrifices are mainly goats. They don’t know that dogs are also tortured too. With the Haitian population, the longer that the animal suffers, the quicker that the evil spirits will come forth.”

I’ll assume Mr. Couto is educated enough to know there’s a difference between Santeria and Voodoo… Maybe that was just a misunderstanding by the person writing the article. But his quote about dogs should have been a big red flag for anyone who actually knows about this stuff… And what the heck is he talking about with evil spirits and animal suffering?

The insanity doesn’t stop there. Couto’s current focus is on a puppy mill, where he guesses “90 percent of the dogs and puppies” are going to be used for Santeria sacrifices.

That’s quite a figure… If we’re going to be putting out guesses, my estimate is that Couto is 100-percent clueless about the difference between dead animals and a real sacrifice.

My favorite response was a comment by the user “Papasnumber1″ in response to a comment I had made about the news story and pictures being highly sensationalized. The user wrote:

you are a disgusting individual..I wont call you a human being..its not sensationalistic, it is a fact and the pictures prove it. I would love to run a stake thru your skull and jaw and hang you while u slowly bleed,,,people like you are only cowards who enjoy torturing defenseless animals….you people are not only cowards, but ignorant for practicing this garbage…God will not have mercy on your foul soul.

A friend of Richard left a comment on the article. While it’s clearly not the most unbiased response, it’s definitely one of most humorous:

By keeping these killings legal for “religion” now we are just giving them an excuse to be able to practice, before they are “skilled” enough to move on to our friends, neighbors, and families.

Interesting. I never realized Santeria was a gateway-religion. I mean, you do receive your knife at the end, right? I’m teasing, of course. After all, there are plenty of people in jail for murder who had never needed to “practice” it beforehand. I’ve also never met anyone who seemed to enjoy doing sacrifices.

Addressing these issues requires going in with a cool head. It’s one thing to point out the fallacies in the article, but there were also people criticizing Christianity or trying to argue about whether animal sacrifice is cruel or not.

Those aren’t the issues and just cloud the discussion.

If people care so much about animals that they want to wander through fields at night and risk getting shot just to prove that illegal activities are happening, that’s great. I have no issue with that. I have zero issue with what this guy is trying to do.

My only gripe is with the Santeria part and how it’s being portrayed for his cause.

If the article simply said people were torturing these animals and here’s what was found, I’d have no issue with it.

The difficult part about stories like this are all of the emotions and conflicting agendas with it.

Among the many people commenting on the article, I spotted a response from Baba Omitocunbi, a priest of Yemaya for 16-years. In his post, he urged people within the community to unite and to focus on education.

I wholeheartedly agree.

A lot of it just comes down to presentation, though. If people consistently attack the issues, rather than just other people or whatever, it’s going to get more notice. The general public isn’t going to spend time researching who is right or wrong when it comes to stuff like this. If there are a few well-written and educated responses on one side and a bunch of misspelled and vulgar responses on the other, which side do you think they’d be more likely to identify with?

In the gruesome images the go along with the article, there are pictures of countless dead animals, which Couto claims is evidence of Santeria rituals. There were a few people who pointed out there’s never really any reliable connection made between the dead animals and Santeria. Unfortunately, they were drowned out by all of the other people who were declaring that Santeria practitioners spend their free time torturing animals, graphically describing how the people who sacrifice animals should be killed, or simply declaring that religious practices like this shouldn’t be allowed in America. That last claim always cracks me up. Wasn’t America founded on religious freedom? And it isn’t like everything is fair game just because it’s your religion. It’s kind of frustrating to hear stuff like that.

As much as I hate seeing people attacking the religion, though, it’s even worse when it feels like people in the community are just looking to pick fights.

In a recent episode of Criminal Minds, the topics of Santeria and Palo Mayombe were brought in. While the episode centered around them, the “bad guy” was ultimately not someone within either religion.

There were definitely things they got wrong about the religion and a few things they might’ve been able to do better. Really, the only bad things said about the religion seemed to come from the guy who was actually the guy doing all of the killings in hopes of blaming it on Palo… One of the main characters does refer to the religion as “amoral”, but that isn’t the same as saying it’s “immoral”.

Especially compared with pretty much every other television show I’ve seen that depicts Santeria, I was surprised by the outrage this episode seems to have gotten.

Ernesto Pichardo wrote a comment about the show having elements of racism in it. Others commented as well. Some names I recognized and some not, but the majority of them all seemed offended by the show and went on an on about how the writers should be fired, how CBS should be ashamed, etc.

One of the only rational responses seemed to come from Jorge Rivera, who seemed to express satisfaction with the episode. He attributed the inaccuracies to the fact that this is a religion of secrets and it’s unlikely the writers would ever be able to find someone willing to reveal everything to them.

That’s pretty much how I feel as well. Besides, it’s a dramatized crime show. Of course they are going to twist things around a bit to make it more interesting for the viewers.

Instead of berating CBS or the writers of Criminal Minds, they should be thanking them for not taking the easy way out. How many other shows make the serial killer a Santeria practitioner? And now that this show just made practitioners into the good guys, you’re going to fault them for some inaccuracies? The opinion of the general public is shaped by the media. I’m in complete agreement with Pichardo when it comes to that. But making a fuss over episodes like this only serves to make them less likely to incorporate Santeria in the future. While that might cut down on the inaccurate portrayals, it also cuts down on the amount of people who might have wanted to learn more about the religion. Keeping the religion out of the spotlight only continues to portray us as being a minority. When someone finds out you practice Santeria, would you rather their reaction be, “Oh, cool. Like on Criminal Minds?” or “Eww. Like where they kill cats and stuff?” Maybe I’m exaggerating a bit, but you get the point.

If people put just half of the effort they spend on writing complaints about fictional television shows into trying to make changes that truly matter, we would be far better off as a religious community.

If you want something to speak up about, there are plenty of options.

How about the case of Miguel Leon Jr.? This 53-year-old Lukumi practitioner convinced two young teenage boys that he could help them obtain spiritual powers. The way he did that was through sodomy… for nearly an entire year. Stories like this aren’t new. It seems like every few months, someone is in the news for having taken advantage of the religious trust they were given. Why aren’t there people commenting about this? Why is no one saying, “This is not what Santeria is about.” Why is no one educating young people and letting them know even in a religion full of secrets, things like this they need to tell someone about?

There’s also the trial of a mother who brought her 7-year-old daughter to New Jersey for a Palo Mayombe ritual. She was brought up on child-endangerment charges after her daughter told her teacher about the ceremony. Apparently, she had been forced to watch a chicken being sacrificed and then made to eat some of its heart. She was also scratched as part of the ritual. The prosecution argued that unlike with certain other religious practices, like a circumcision, where the person performing it is trained and sometimes licensed to perform the act under sanitary conditions, this ceremony put the child at risk for illness from the chicken heart or infection from the scratching. Depending on how this turns out, I can see this having a definite effect on Santeria at some point. It might not affect me directly, but what about parents who want to have their children make Ocha?

But, hey, this month isn’t entirely filled with doom and gloom. There were some positive things as well.

I mean, maybe not in the news or whatever, but at least for me. And, hey, that’s what counts, right? I’d really like to thank William L. for his donation of $5 to my Ocha Fund on the website. I know it’s not a lot for you, but it means a lot to me. I’ve had that up on the site for a while now, but didn’t really expect it to get used. I get comments from people all of the time about the site and podcast. And, don’t get me wrong, seeing people participate and be involved is awesome. But it’s rare to see people putting their money where their mouth is, so to speak.

So who is William? He lives in Ohio and is new to the religion. He’s apparently found someone to work with recently, who comes down from New York each month to do misas. He didn’t go into details on how he met the guy, but it sounded like he’s got a good feeling about him. He’s already had long phone conversations with the guy about the religion and has been invited to a misa. It sounds like he’s off to a good start. Having a godparent or even just a friend in the religion who lives far away can be tough. If anyone knows of some people in Ohio that might be worth talking to, perhaps you can post something on the Facebook page for him or pass it along to me directly.

William also said that my honesty when I speak about the religion is refreshing, especially when I speak of my fears. Well, William since you like hearing about my fears, I’ll share one with you now. Hopefully it’s worth the $5.

Mainly, my issue is that I need to make Ocha. I keep putting that off and I know I shouldn’t.

With my tax rebate, I’ll get back all of the money I borrowed from my Ocha Fund a few months ago to pay down some of my bills and credit card debt. What I’ve been struggling with most is how to rationalize putting all of it towards Ocha so I only have a couple grand left. I have an old car that I don’t think will be around much longer. I have repairs I need to make around the house and I have large appliances with one foot in the grave already. It’s easy for someone to tell me that making Ocha should be my priority and everything else will fall into place afterward. My godfather plays it safe with the advice and just tells me I need to do what I feel I have to. At some point, the old rotted wood on my deck is going to break, my car is going to leave me stranded on the side of the road, or my fridge will no longer keep my food cold. When that happens, my view of what I “have to do” is going to change…

I know Oshun’s got my back, though, so I’m probably just worrying too much.

Take care, everyone. Hopefully this year will bring many good changes for you all.

Maferefún eggun.
Maferefún orisha.