DEVOTED TO DEATH: SANTA MUERTE, THE SKELETON SAINT - R. ANDREW CHESNUT

Still on the Santa Muerte kick. This one i had to buy used online since I guess it is out of print. While the last Santa Muerte book I read, SANATA MUERTE: THE HISTORY, RITUALS, AND MAGIC OF OUR LADY OF THE HOLY DEATH, was focused on “practicality” in terms of prayers and rituals and offerings to get the Bony Lady’s attention. As a quick side note, both books employ this great technique where they are constantly changing which sobriquet they use to describe her. She’s got some great ones, the Skinny Lady, Beautiful Girl, White Girl, The Godmother, Lord of the Night, the list goes on. This naming practice started in this book though, like lots of information in SANATA MUERTE: THE HISTORY, RITUALS, AND MAGIC OF OUR LADY OF THE HOLY DEATH, originated here. Either way, this book was incredibly helpful and interesting. He uses the 7 colored candle as a scheme to organize the book, each chapter corresponds to a color. This 7 colors (siete potencias) trope is actually borrowed from Afrro-syncretic religions like Vodun or Santeria. The religious studies/history aspect, what Chesnut dubs the “brown” sections, was full of facts like the one about the candle and was my favorite part. All of it was fascinating and he certainly knows way more about the topic than me but I’d like to point out some areas where I heard different things from people when I talked to them about Santa Muerte. The first and most easily explained (hint: it’s my gender bias) is how deeply I underestimated Santa Muerte appeal as a love magician. I definitely noticed the prevalence of red candles and I understood their connection to love and passion but Chesnut points out that they are the most popular candle, above even totemic, “satanic” black candle. The earliest prayers to her are about love, or, more specifically, returning cheating men. Because the more famous Mexico City shrines tend to be in dodgy areas and occasionally attract a less-than-savory bunch, the demographics of the devotees I would see skewed male, I was underestimating the sheer volume of personal home shrines and thus underrating Santa Muerte’s appeal to women. In fact, the very idea of the Grim Reaper being a woman is a Spanish tradition, their version is called La Parca and was brought over with the conquistadors and turned into Santa Muerte. This might be the largest area where Chesnut and I differ. He really plays up the Spanish and Iberian connections of Santa Muerte. Every single person I ever spoke to about it in Mexico City talked about her Aztec origins, both as a point of pride (about how this powerful force is homegrown and deeply Mexican) and a testament to her efficacy (since Aztecs are assumed to have powerful magic). Chesnut relays the story about how most people look at the owl that often accompanies her as a symbol of wisdom (a la Athena), others people who want to emphasize her Aztec-ness point to the owl that often accompanies her, which, in pre-invasion Mesoamerica, was a symbol of death. The thing is, I heard the thing about the death-owl connection often. I never once heard anything about the western symbolistic associations with owls. I saw lots of statuary depicting Santa Muerte in Aztec clothing, paraphernalia that was supposedly enhanced by it’s Aztec origins, and occasional explicit references to Mictecacihuatl, an Aztec underworld goddess. Chesnut address this:

“However, many of those who do take an interest in the origins of the saint tend to emphasize her putative Aztec or other indigenous roots. This perspective derives, in part, from the nature of Mexican nationalism, which, since the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920), has glorified the pre-Colombian indigenous past and downplay and even vilified the Spanish influence off the construction of national identity.” 

This is an interesting but wrong critique to me. There is certainly a deep and fascinating strain of the Mexican psyche that is tethered to a very mystical, utopian view of what life was probably like for the vast majority of their ancestors during the height of the Aztec, Mayan or other civilization. You see something like this in the Hotep communities views on pre-Triangle Trade Africa. Again, it is fascinating that such large groups of people have such a strange view of the past, but ultimately any sane sense of Mexican identity and history must certainly “vilify” the Spanish and their influence. The take on death that Santa Muerte embodies always felt very Mexican and very pre-Colombian to me and the majority of her followers. It’s strange to me how Chesnut insists that this isn’t the case. Either way, very good. 9 votive candles.