On the margins of theology – 2.5

The lodestone cultus in Mexico

The men in Mexico still carry lodestones to give them success and great virility. They regard the stone as a living being, every Friday placing it in water, then in the Sun, and giving it iron filings to “eat”. However, they also believe that this stone has a devil inside and will not enter a church with it. Another belief is that if a lodestone is rubbed on a knife blade, anyone wounded by that blade will die of the poison left there.

-found here

Some may discount the above as coming from a disreputable source, or think that it is the result of some bizarre “New Age” thinking influencing the minds of Mexican men. The only problem with such a supposition is that the cult to the lodestone is an established “tradition” in many parts of Mexico, and I have even translated a prayer to it here.

Isabel Kelly, in her book, Folk Practices in North Mexico, has a significant section on the lodestone cultus. Although she speculates that it is a “recent cult” (keep in mind that the field work for this book was done in 1953), she nevertheless goes into quite a bit of detail regarding how it manifested itself in daily life. The “theology” behind it is stricly oral (of course), and oddly based on dubious Christological origins, as was explained to the anthropologist by an herbalist in Torreon:

The [lodestone] is where Christ is kneeling. Have you not seen the picture? A “light” woman [presumably Mary Magdalene. The Libro de San Cipriano twice mentions "the Samaritan woman" in connection with the lodestone] cut a piece of the stone for luck…

Botanica moments

1. I went to a rather scary botanica in east Oakland right before I left California. Saw a lot of interesting stuff, and they had dozens of statues of Santa Muerte. If that had been the first botanica I had ever visited, I would have been really creeped out by it.

In the back, next to the consulting room (botanicas tend to do a lot of that kind of business), there were two twin niches: one to the Virgin of Guadalupe, another to la Santa Muerte, all decked out as if she were a Virgin. If I had a camera, and was permitted to take a picture, I would have. The contrast between the “light Mother” and “dark Mother” was Jungian theory in living, folk Catholic color. They were going to have a “fiesta de Santa Muerte”, but I could not make it, since by then I had left California.

2. Not quite a botanica, but something similar: it was at the New Orleans Spiritual Voudou Temple, which if you go in the entrance, looks like a botanica with a New Age flavor and ridiculously overpriced. Anyway, I took advantage of their offer to go into the “altar room”, though few ceremonies actually take place there. As I entered and exited, I noticed a large doll dressed in white with a mitre on its head.

“Hey,” I thought to myself, “that’s John Paul II.” I was too afraid to ask my guide about the doll, but I was not surprised to see him there. So you know, at least in one place in New Orleans, a Voudou priestess invokes the spirit of the late Pontiff. JP-2, we love u!

There is an actual botanica up the street a bit from downtown, but it mostly deals in candle magic and statues. Plus, it has more of the original, Cuban santeria / palo mayombe flavor to it. It has a particularly impressive statue of St. Lazarus, or Babalu-aye.

3. AG and I went on a tour of the French Quarter that ended at St. Louis No. 1 cemetery and the tomb of Marie Laveau. There is still devotion in the city to the Voudou Queen, and various piles of Mardi Gras beads and trinkets were left at the foot of her free standing grave. But I noticed another offering on the side of the tomb that was a little odd: a copy of Ayn Rand’s novel, Atlas Shrugged. I hope her devotees will bring her better reading material in the future.

San Miguel y Santa Muerte

AG was listening to my CD of Crisotbal Morales’ Requiem (see video above), when it hit me that St. Michael is mentioned in the text of the old Requiem Mass, at the Offeretory:

sed signifer sanctus Michæl
repræsentet eas in lucem sanctam,
quam olim Abrahæ promisisti et semini ejus.

but may the sign-bearer, Saint Michael,
lead them into the holy light
which you promised to Abraham and his seed.

Of course, this image also came to mind:

Notice the ancient scales of Maat, signifying judgment over souls. I suppose that is why some people say that it is St. Michael that comes to retrieve souls at the point of death.

Like many traditions, however, this one seems to not have been passed down, except in the garbled, early morning prayers of a priest at Low Mass. So it is no wonder that in Mexico at least, the Angel of Death morphed into this:

No comment:

La nueva narco-religión

In Culiacan, Sinaloa/ they land with much urgency/ A special operation with maximum power / in the compound of the DEA/ at the in the center of intelligence

They brought in a lieutenant and performed surgery on him/ He ended up looking just like Malverde / anyone would be fooled / Presidential secrets / That’s how the CIA works

A very astute man / he was the best police / and he visited the narcotraffickers just how he looked / They thought he was Malverde and offered up prayers to him.

The impostor asked them: Where do you move your shipments/ to protect your merchandise/ be it through Tijuana or Nogales/ And when they told him / He sent the police after them.

The dudes are astute and soon they realized what was going on / They caught that liar / at the other end of a machine gun / in the neighborhood of Las Quintas, there they evened the score.

The only thing left of the impostor/ are his remains up there on the hill / they say he doesn’t even have a tomb / the dogs gobbled him up / He wanted to pass for Malverde, but Malverde is not a game

This gory ballad is an example of the now infamous narcocorrido, but with a religious twist. The narcocorrido is a Mexican song celebrating the exploits of a drug-related outlaw or kingpin, and is a genre made famous by such popular groups as Los Tigres del Norte. In this one, faith also comes into play, as a rather strange fable is weaved of the government using the superstition of the drug traffickers to catch them in the act of illegal smuggling. The emergence of such “narcosantos” as Jesus Malverde and Santa Muerte is not an isolated incident in the popular Mexican religious consciousness, but is rather a sign of escalating violence in Mexican society, the growing importance of the drug trade, and the general decline of the rule of law.

Santa Muerte Counterpoint

Epidermal Macabre

Indelicate is he who loathes
The aspect of his fleshy clothes, –
The flying fabric stitched on bone,
The vesture of the skeleton,
The garment neither fur nor hair,
The cloak of evil and despair,
The veil long violated by
Caresses of the hand and eye.
Yet such is my unseemliness:
I hate my epidermal dress,
The savage blood’s obscenity,
The rags of my anatomy,
And willingly would I dispense
With false accouterments of sense,
To sleep immodestly, a most
Incarnadine and carnal ghost.

-Theodore Roethke

San La Muerte

San La Muerte is the masculine equivalent of Santa Muerte in Mexico, this time having his origins in the northeast of Argentina. He probably has much more to do with indigenous belief than the cult of Santa Muerte. Speculations as to his origins range from his being the spirit of a Guaraní king who was given the task of being the Grim Reaper to a renegade Spanish friar who went native and was found dead in his cell after being imprisoned by ecclesiastical authorities. In any case, the cult to him is quite old and in places enjoyed unofficial sanction from some church officials. One man speaks of his grandfather’s devotion to the saint on this website (my translation):

There was a time, not more than thirty years ago now, when my grandfather would bring the little saint to church to have a Mass for him every 20th of the month. That would happen every month until one day they stopped it. I believe in all humility that it was a mistake for the Church to discriminate against us. We really don’t see the harm in believing in a saint who defends the poor… He would have to be accepted since he doesn’t do evil, on the contrary. And I’ll tell you more, before my grandfather found the saint, he didn’t even know how to make the Sign of the Cross, and towards the end of his life he prayed two hours when he got up and two hours before he went to bed for those who were praying for the intercession of San La Muerte.

La Santísima Muerte – A Mexican Folk Saint

A Review of E. Bryant Holman’s book, with some reflections

(image above found on one of Mr. Holman’s sites)

E. Bryant Holman is a writer for whom I have immense esteem. I have spent many an hour perusing his Curanderismo mailing list, and everything he writes is insightful, eloquent, and well thought-out. Although not really a believer himself, he approaches popular Mexican Catholicism from a respectful and unbiased perspective. At no time does he patronize or express outright skepticism regarding the practices of folk healers, witches, and ordinary faithful, and only records their beliefs and practices with very little hint of editorial judgment. In a word, he is a true scholar: always humble, always searching, and never quick to impose his own categories in areas where he is admittedly an outsider.

Lay Catholicism in Mexico as perceived by the normal believer has almost always been slightly different from the Catholicism that the hierarchy preaches. For the average believer, there have always been many Christs and many Virgins, many images of saints and many animas or holy souls, all of whom vie for the devotion and prayers of the faithful. The Sacred Heart is not the same as the Holy Infant of Atocha, who is not the same as the Holy Face. If the Virgin of Guadalupe doesn’t answer your petition, you go to the Virgin of St. John of the Lakes, and then to the Virgin of Lourdes, etc. A lot of it can seem like witchcraft at times, and while the hierarchy is often distrustful of this attitude towards Catholicism, they have had to respect its understanding of the Christian mystery. They have also had to tolerate people taking the sacramental character of Catholicism upon themselves in the form of “white magic” or curanderismo, of which I written on this blog before.

Corrido de la Muerte

“Ven, dame un beso, Pelona…”

Es muy padre este corrido.

Esto muestra que la Muerte es una figura muy personal en la conciencia mexicana.

(This shows that Death is a very personal figure in Mexican consciousness. Note: “Pelona” means “bald woman”, a title for Death in Mexican folklore.)

Curanderismo on the radio

image source

An hour long interview with folklorist E. Bryant Holman to be found at this link

Regnum Mortis

Conclusion: A Morning at the Movies, Or: How I learned to stop worrying and love Santa Muerte

Weekdays for me can be a little hectic now. So if I need to catch up on some activities that I’d like to do during the week, I have to do it on Saturday morning. Most of the blog entries for the week are written in one or two sittings on the weekend. This time, however, I wanted to watch my new DVD on the cult of Santa Muerte. A very well-made production narrated by Gael Garcia Bernal, I can honestly tell you that if you watch the trailer above, that is pretty much all you need to know about the movie. Its one main weakness is that it focuses only on the cult to Saint Death as manifested in the Tepito neighborhood of Mexico City. While one realizes that the Mexican film crew would have liked to expand its geographical range but couldn’t due to lack of funds, they nevertheless do a good job with what they have. It was a real eye-opener for me in many ways.