My Spiritual Journey and Devotion to La Santa Muerte

 

    

    For as long as I can remember I have always felt a strong fascination with all things related to magic and witches. We see it everywhere in our pop culture media, especially during Halloween. Sure there were some movies that only had surface level stuff and obvious cheap tricks in regard to the story that was being told. I mean even as kids we know that it’s impossible to have lightning bolts come out from your hands to attack someone! What did it for me were those few stories that took a more realistic approach to magic and even spirituality that made my heart flutter with wonder.

    Those movies and stories I will discuss in another post as there are a couple that I would like to analyze individually. But I will say that I began looking for a spiritual path around my late teens. For most of my childhood my family were lapse Christians and we never went to church or did much to celebrate any events except  for Christmas, which was still from a secular point of view. Yet, as I mentioned in a previous post, Halloween is the only holiday I actually try to celebrate. My love for the strange and unusual led me to do some research. 

    From that research I eventually stumbled across the term, Wicca. Finding this path online was absolute bliss! It is amazing to know that there are practices that honor nature and the magic of life and death from a non-Judeo Christian perspective. I never had anything against the Christian faith and coming from a Latino household, it’s something that is everywhere in your life. But for some reason it never stuck with me.

    So I kept researching what I could about Wicca and other similar Neo-Pagan practices. It was all so inspiring and I learned a lot along the way, yet I never took my first steps into actively practicing it. I came to realize that much of what I found online and that was most accessible were heavily influenced by Indo-European practices, which are great, but I started to yearn for something representative of my culture. Plus, I never felt like I was able to be a “good” pagan in the sense that I could never keep up with things like the Wheel of the Year. Of course now I know that things like that are not what make you a valid pagan or even a general spiritual practitioner. 

    A spiritual path is something personal to you that can be made in whatever form that suits you. One of the ways that I wanted to practice was by finding a deity as my anchor point and spiritual guide. With just one online search you can find dozens of them from which to learn of. I am particularly interested in “dark” deities (surprise!) and the one that caught most of my attention and who showed up a lot was the Greek goddess, Hecate. Everything about her sounds amazing and I took my time to research her history, since I was looking for a lifetime devotion. 

    I am grateful that I took the my time learning because even though I loved everything about her, there was still something missing, like a faint little voice that I could not grasp. Then one day as I was searching  for some books on Amazon, I came across one that instantly caught my eye. It was a thin book of about a 100 pages with a simple but dark cover. Its title is Grimore of Santa Muerte: Spells and Rituals of Most Holy Death, the Unofficial Saint of Mexico by Sophia DiGregorio. From then on I bought the book and began searching for any information I could get about La Santa Muerte. 

    There are a lot of misconceptions about this spiritual being thanks to the media press and the damnation of the Catholic Church. Who is Santa Muerte? She has a couple of origin theories that is different depending on who you ask. A general answer to that question is that she is a Mexican folk saint, the personification of Death itself. It is a bit complicated to explain more of who she is because she is not bound to a religion or a specific doctrine. Yes she can easily be found within Folk Catholic worship and practices, but there has been a growth in people seeking her without all the Catholic elements, myself included. I find that Tracey Rollin’s book, Santa Muerte: The History, Rituals, and Magic of Our Lady of the Holy Death, does a good job in explaining some of the theories of this entity’s origins and what some devotees believe in. 

    This is what I personally believe, to me La Santa Muerte is the modern incarnation of the Aztec death goddess, Mictecacihualt. There is even some essence of her husband, the Aztec death god, Mictlantecutli. I view Santa Muerte as embodying a she/they essence that not everyone agrees with, but that is fine. She is mostly seen as female but I believe that Death itself transcends our understanding of gender and she welcomes everyone, she has become well beloved among the LGBTQ+ community. Like many folk saints, this entity had to hide under a Catholic upbringing in order to stay connected to her children who had to go through the horrors of colonization. Much of the indigenous practices from the Mexica and other tribes were violently altered and destroyed. 

    Death is clever and like other entities who had to synchronize with Catholicism, like La Virgen de Guadalupe, and change in order to survive and keep at least something from the past alive. A lot of the information on La Santa Muerte stresses that you have to devote yourself through the traditional Catholic way. I tried at first, but even though I do respect it’s teachings, it never stuck with me. My family were very lapse in the faith, so I never really learned the prayers, let alone went to catechism. For about a year I felt like a failure because the one entity that I found from a Latino culture that I could devote to, came from a heavily Catholic perspective that I could not resonate with. At one point I tried to move on and look elsewhere. 

    Yet, I could not. No matter how hard I tried, La Santa Muerte was always on my mind. It was not until I found a couple of people on social media, who are also Latino and Indigenous, that worship Santa Muerte outside of the Catholic manner that I found relief at last! I went back to trying to devote myself to her in my way and since then it is going great! 

    La Santa Muerte has blessed me with so much patience and faith that I now feel comfortable with forging my own path and way of doing things for her. One of the main ways that I try to practice is by finding sources by Indigenous authors that share information of how to honor this path and incorporate some aspects of Curanderismo. She will let you know when there is something she does not like, but when you come to her with love and respect, and the willingness to learn, you’ll find that she is very accepting and just as loving. With that being said, there are a lot of misconceptions about her that float about both on and offline. Maybe in another post I will try to explain them but for now, know that she is a helpful spirit, not some malefic demon. Most of these misconceptions honestly come from Catholic fear. 

    The best advice I can give someone on a similar path to finding an entity to connect and devote to is to first do your research. Look into the culture of your ancestors to see if there is a sense of home or not. Learn as much as you can, especially if you feel drawn to something or someone. Always come into this with love and respect. Til next time my ghouls!