And because I never get tired of it...

[kishiriadgr]

http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/documents/Santa-Muerte/santa-muerte.htm

Academic article from the US Army on Santa Muerte. No one will read it but garpu and letter_d, but they'll be fascinated, so it's all good.

Comments

[kishiriadgr]

I'd already drawn that conclusion. I'm a big Kali fan and there's definitely archetypal crossover.

[garpu]

hm, you and desert_vixen are right. Academic Army writing is weird. My inner academic had a "dude WTF" moment at it.

[napoleonofnerds]

Wrong, I read it.

Some of the things aren't quite accurate - the distinction between "holy" and "saint" as translations for Santa, for instance - but it's interesting.

I defy him to find me an institutional example of the "do ut des" mentality anywhere in mainstream Christianity.

He doesn't seem to understand what a Saint is, why we don't worship them, and why this is completely different than devotion to the saints.

But still, cool article. Thanks.

[kishiriadgr]

"San/ta" literally means "holy", so yes, it's either Holy Death or St. Death. The German "heilige" has the same usage.

The author doesn't quite grok Mexican Catholicism. "Do ut des" (a phrase I've never encountered" is utterly part of it. Here is an example, a photo I took in Mexico City:

[napoleonofnerds]

Most languages actually have Saint as an alternate definition for holy, following the Latin Sanctus/a (/um?). English is strange in that regard, and it is the source of the problem in which Archangels, who are objectively not Saints, are addressed as such. The proper translation is "Holy" but when you see "Festum Sancti Michaeli Archangeli" in the rubrics it doesn't look any different than the feast of a Saint.

"Do ut des" is a phrase from Roman pagan practices. If I were leaving, say, a statue of a bull for Zeus, I might carve Do ut Des or just DUD into the wood, explaining that I expect something out of this exchange. It's found a lot on coins which were thrown into sacred pools or given to a temple during the Roman period. It doesn't properly belong to modern practices, where offerings are not considered to be half of a contractual arrangement between a deity and the devotee. If I gave the infernal gods blood, wine, and honey, it was thought they had to curse whoever I wanted cursed. It's a little different than the idea of

[kishiriadgr]

It would need extreme modifications and probably wouldn't fly outside of Mexico, because of the massively different view of death in general. Death isn't really dreaded there; even before the advent of the Santa Muere devotion, death was seen as friendly. Life is painful, so when death comes, it's a relief and you're happy to have her finally show up

[helenkacan]

Well, I didn't read it, but I glanced over particular paragraphs and certainly took in all the pictures.

So much I'd never known.

My usual admiring hugs,
H.

[maria_callous]

I read it too, and enjoyed the article very much; it was a welcome diversion from my job.