No, it is not. In fact:
Santeria was created in Cuba by mingling the Yoruba traditions of enslaved Africans from Nigeria and Benin with the Roman Catholic faith of the Spanish plantation owners.
Yoruba has its own creation myths and an extensive list of literature about Santera is here. The Wiki entry is also pretty helpful. Anyway, moving on…
said a teenager she didn’t know was tied up inside the house and they threatened to kill him if she didn’t cooperate and she was attacked by a woman with a knife when she refused to participate in a devil worship ceremony.
She said she got away, but they caught up with her again on Sunday, tying her up and putting her in the cargo area of a metallic blue SUV.
“A couple of them stayed in the back with me, holding me down,” she is quoted as saying in the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office offense report.
Wood said she was once a member of a Santeria Voodoo group and she believes some of her attackers were members of that group. They practice a religion practiced in the caribbean, Haiti and Cuba which includes animal sacrifices.
She said that after about 40 minutes, they took her into a field, where they were building a fire and “preparing a circle.” She told deputies they were preparing for the Autumn Equinox and they needed her there.
The thing that bugs me most about this article winds up being the casual, off-handed way the writer mentions only one aspect of the Santaria religion. No room in this article to explain the history of Santaria, its similarities to Roman Catholicism and how the followers believe in orishas and pray to them much like Catholics pray to saints for intercession.
That’s not the issue here anyway, it’s the treatment of this poor woman at the hands of idiots involved in their own brand of cult worshiping. If they want to build fires and circles and dance around praising whatever demon they choose (and there are plenty to choose from) instead of really celebrating Autumn equinox in all its harvesty goodness, so be it.
But don’t be dragging innocent people into your delusions, and don’t intimidate others by threatening to kill people. I’m glad she got free of these asses, and got rescued.
September 26, 2008 at 9:39 am
Santeria has no relationship to Satanism. The only legitimate form of Satanism, as described in The Satanic Bible and as practiced by members of The Church of Satan, is an atheistic religion that recognizes the human need for ritual, dogma, and fellowship. Satan is merely a metaphor, an archetype to represent man’s carnal nature, and, in the Miltonian sense, he who refuses to bow down before any god.
That said, Satanists are forbidden from killing animals except for food. As there are no literal gods, devils, demons, angels, etc….there is no need for sacrifice of any kind, and Satanists are disgusted by the barbarism of Santerians who continue the practice of animal sacrifice.
In this case, it sounds like sociopaths using a mish-mash of the sort of fear tactics they heard in Christian churches to justify their criminal behavior. The fact that the police are buying into this cult nonsense only proves that the noise from the pulpit is doing its job, and preventing the kind of personal responsibility for one’s actions demanded by Satanism.
Magistra Ygraine
Church of Satan
http://magistrayrainetwo.blogspot.com/
September 29, 2008 at 6:40 am
Sorry I didn’t release your comment earlier. It got caught by the spam sieve for some reason and I just got around to cleaning it out this morning.
Thanks for the input on this. I’ve seen Satanism described in a similar way before.
I think it’s evident across the board that people don’t want to take responsibility for what they do, and it doesn’t matter what belief system drives them.