(no subject)
May. 8th, 2003 09:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cailjFor those who were interested, the long (probably really long) post on my thoughts and background regarding Santeria can be found behind the cut-tag. Just as a head’s up, I’m willing to talk about any of it, but I’m not really interested in /arguing/ about it at the moment. My thoughts aren’t solidified, which is why I haven’t spent a lot of time talking about it, so if you push me into a corner to explain something I don’t know the answer to, don’t be surprised just to get an “I don’t know.” (Needless to say, I’m a little wary of talking about this because of all the misconceptions about Santeria that exist out there.) Anyway, disclaimer aside, here are
Back when I was spending a lot of time wandering New York, I got a chance to see various practitioners of Santeria. They made me curious about the religion, but in a way that was definitely just “ooh, look, a shiny new thing to study.” By the time I was living in Bryn Mawr, right outside of Philadelphia, I had all but forgotten about that interest. But I was near to Philadelphia, and there is a fairly large Santeria community there. (By the way, for those who know about Santeria already, I call it that simply because it is the term most people are familiar with, and it makes it easier for me than having to explain other vocabulary.) So I saw bits and pieces of it once more. And once again, my curiosity was peaked. But for some reason, the year I graduated Bryn Mawr and moved into Philadelphia proper, I began to think more seriously about it. Not just as something I was “curious” about.
I bought a few books. I learned about the Orisha, in the limited way that the books would teach me. And I felt … I don’t know. A calling. A pulling. Something that made me ache inside to learn. And it wasn’t that ache of “here’s something I want to know about but don’t know about.” It was a more personal thing. I mostly tried to ignore it.
One day I was wandering around this big open-air market in Philly, and I came upon a huge (thousands of ‘em) stack of used books for sale. Jokingly, I said, “Okay. If it’s real… if the Orisha are there and real and if Santeria is something I should be following up on, let me find one book in this stack that deals with Santeria.” It’s that same ol’ thing kids do, “God, if you want me to eat my broccoli, make it dance around the table.” Well, the broccoli danced. I mean, I turned the corner of the book stack, and BAM, there it was, a book on Olodumare, or God, in the religion of Santeria. I picked it up, bought it, and walked out of there feeling very very very strange. I mean, hell, I’d asked for a sign, and whether it was coincidence or not, when I turned the corner, I was given my sign. Never had God or Jesus or anyone actually given me such a concrete and in-your-face kind of sign before.
So I took a walk through North Philadelphia. Anyone who knows North Philly, knows what I’m talking about here. I went to a Botanica that was in the middle of a neighborhood where the police were outright ignoring the drug deals that were going on, and I saw more people carrying guns than I’ve ever seen in one place. And the whole time I was on my way there, and the whole time I was on my way back, I felt disconnected from what was going on around me. Carried away to someplace else. I felt pretty invincible. Maybe it was foolish of me, but I had to know more.
I learned a little more over the next year or so. I had a reading. I’m not sure how valid that reading was. I’m not sure how much I trust the guy who did my reading. But I was declared to be a child of one of the particular Orisha, Oshun. The Orisha who represents joy, sensuality, pleasure, money, river waters, love and fertility.
During this year, I also tripped for the first time. To be honest, being on acid is probably the closest I’m ever going to come to being “possessed” by anything. And the possessor, so to speak, is my own mind. Acid has this tendency to take you deep down into your own mind and force you to kind of look at the things that really are going on in your head. It’s not something I want to do on a regular basis, but it is something that is interesting when it happens. My first experience on acid was being convinced, as I walked along South Street, that I saw the Orisha everywhere. I saw Elegba in the face of this old man who kept watching me. It made me feel alive and connected to everyone.
It’s that connection that Santeria has come to represent for me. Eventually, while I was in Philly, I decided against becoming an initiate of Santeria. I couldn’t foresee a time when I would be able to shave my head and wear white for a year and do all the things necessary for initiation. So, with a little bit of regret, I turned away from the religion.
A couple of times since then, I’ve had moments where I felt the tugging. Where I wanted to go back and learn and know more.
My sexuality, my sensuality, as I’ve stated before, is incredibly complex. Incredibly. I connect with my lover through sex, through pleasure. It’s so important to me that I could give up traditional views of “love” before I could give up the touch of physicality. It has been part of the problem I’ve had in previous relationships, and it’s been part of why I think I have had a tendency to fall in love so easily. I can look at myself and say “Yes, I’m a child of Oshun” if I want to. It’s easy to interpret things that way. After all, I view the world with love, I’m less cynical than most people I know, I give more chances to people than some have thought smart, I’m always willing to help someone who needs it. I’m generous with money when I have it, and generous with my time and energy. I’m usually an incredibly happy person, and I really do live for joy. So yeah, really easy to say “Obviously, he was right. I’m a child of Oshun.”
But that’s too easy for me. It doesn’t explain Santeria, it simply explains my desire to see part of my life as tied up in something that, deep down, I want to believe in. I mean, how much of my personality is the way it is /because/ of my experiences in Philadelphia with learning about this?
I had one more acid trip while I was in New Orleans. During it, my body did something odd. It rewired itself so that every single sensory input was interpreted as an orgasm. I ate an M&M, I had an orgasm. I listened to music, I had an orgasm. I touched some paint on the wall, I had an orgasm. I licked the image of Britney Spears on the television, I had an orgasm. And finally I just laid in bed and let my body feel this. Without touching a finger to myself, I laid there and had about 100 orgasms. And during it all, I just kept thinking “I am like the great mother goddess, giving birth to a world through the orgasms that my body has. I am connected to everyone and everybody because of what I can do. Through my body.”
Yeah, I know. Hokey as all hell. Acid can be fun.
But seriously, what that tells me about myself is that, once more, the Orisha provided me with a point of connection to the world. My belief, or my desire to believe, led me to feel connection with other human beings.
And so now, after thinking and thinking and thinking about it, I’ve realized that that’s what it really is for me. I don’t see the Orisha as real, solid, embodied beings who, like the Roman gods, suffer from human foibles. The Pataki’s, or the stories of the Orisha, are symbolic, not literal. They represent, to me, human capability and human experience. By focusing on the stories of Oshun, I feel more connected to my own sexuality and more connected to the world at large, seeing the ways in which my sensuality and love fit me into the world. The Orisha are focal points. Like a set of rosary beads for a Catholic who is busy focusing on the passion story. But instead of feeling connected only to God, it makes me feel connected to the world. To a larger community.
And I think it’s time that I find a community in which I can feel free to ask questions or talk about this, or get more information. A place where I don’t feel like I’m going to be eyed warily for the things I want to say and the things that I feel. With people who’ve gone through things like this, or similar to this.
I mean, if I told my parents I was interested in Santeria, I think they’d flip. I think they’d flip more than they did when I came out as being both bisexual and in the bdsm scene. In order to find a community where I feel good about talking about this stuff requires, really, taking the first step, which is not full initiation, and finding what are called godparents in the religion. People who will teach me.
I spoke with a girl yesterday who has been in the religion for four years without being initiated. She says you never actually have to go through initiation to practice the religion, you just have to do a few things so that you have the rituals down at least. I’d like that. To have the rituals. To have my “rosary beads and passion story” so to speak.
But. Now I’ve rambled a long time, and there’s a lot more to it, but I’m going to stop there and if anyone has any questions, feel free to ask. :)
Back when I was spending a lot of time wandering New York, I got a chance to see various practitioners of Santeria. They made me curious about the religion, but in a way that was definitely just “ooh, look, a shiny new thing to study.” By the time I was living in Bryn Mawr, right outside of Philadelphia, I had all but forgotten about that interest. But I was near to Philadelphia, and there is a fairly large Santeria community there. (By the way, for those who know about Santeria already, I call it that simply because it is the term most people are familiar with, and it makes it easier for me than having to explain other vocabulary.) So I saw bits and pieces of it once more. And once again, my curiosity was peaked. But for some reason, the year I graduated Bryn Mawr and moved into Philadelphia proper, I began to think more seriously about it. Not just as something I was “curious” about.
I bought a few books. I learned about the Orisha, in the limited way that the books would teach me. And I felt … I don’t know. A calling. A pulling. Something that made me ache inside to learn. And it wasn’t that ache of “here’s something I want to know about but don’t know about.” It was a more personal thing. I mostly tried to ignore it.
One day I was wandering around this big open-air market in Philly, and I came upon a huge (thousands of ‘em) stack of used books for sale. Jokingly, I said, “Okay. If it’s real… if the Orisha are there and real and if Santeria is something I should be following up on, let me find one book in this stack that deals with Santeria.” It’s that same ol’ thing kids do, “God, if you want me to eat my broccoli, make it dance around the table.” Well, the broccoli danced. I mean, I turned the corner of the book stack, and BAM, there it was, a book on Olodumare, or God, in the religion of Santeria. I picked it up, bought it, and walked out of there feeling very very very strange. I mean, hell, I’d asked for a sign, and whether it was coincidence or not, when I turned the corner, I was given my sign. Never had God or Jesus or anyone actually given me such a concrete and in-your-face kind of sign before.
So I took a walk through North Philadelphia. Anyone who knows North Philly, knows what I’m talking about here. I went to a Botanica that was in the middle of a neighborhood where the police were outright ignoring the drug deals that were going on, and I saw more people carrying guns than I’ve ever seen in one place. And the whole time I was on my way there, and the whole time I was on my way back, I felt disconnected from what was going on around me. Carried away to someplace else. I felt pretty invincible. Maybe it was foolish of me, but I had to know more.
I learned a little more over the next year or so. I had a reading. I’m not sure how valid that reading was. I’m not sure how much I trust the guy who did my reading. But I was declared to be a child of one of the particular Orisha, Oshun. The Orisha who represents joy, sensuality, pleasure, money, river waters, love and fertility.
During this year, I also tripped for the first time. To be honest, being on acid is probably the closest I’m ever going to come to being “possessed” by anything. And the possessor, so to speak, is my own mind. Acid has this tendency to take you deep down into your own mind and force you to kind of look at the things that really are going on in your head. It’s not something I want to do on a regular basis, but it is something that is interesting when it happens. My first experience on acid was being convinced, as I walked along South Street, that I saw the Orisha everywhere. I saw Elegba in the face of this old man who kept watching me. It made me feel alive and connected to everyone.
It’s that connection that Santeria has come to represent for me. Eventually, while I was in Philly, I decided against becoming an initiate of Santeria. I couldn’t foresee a time when I would be able to shave my head and wear white for a year and do all the things necessary for initiation. So, with a little bit of regret, I turned away from the religion.
A couple of times since then, I’ve had moments where I felt the tugging. Where I wanted to go back and learn and know more.
My sexuality, my sensuality, as I’ve stated before, is incredibly complex. Incredibly. I connect with my lover through sex, through pleasure. It’s so important to me that I could give up traditional views of “love” before I could give up the touch of physicality. It has been part of the problem I’ve had in previous relationships, and it’s been part of why I think I have had a tendency to fall in love so easily. I can look at myself and say “Yes, I’m a child of Oshun” if I want to. It’s easy to interpret things that way. After all, I view the world with love, I’m less cynical than most people I know, I give more chances to people than some have thought smart, I’m always willing to help someone who needs it. I’m generous with money when I have it, and generous with my time and energy. I’m usually an incredibly happy person, and I really do live for joy. So yeah, really easy to say “Obviously, he was right. I’m a child of Oshun.”
But that’s too easy for me. It doesn’t explain Santeria, it simply explains my desire to see part of my life as tied up in something that, deep down, I want to believe in. I mean, how much of my personality is the way it is /because/ of my experiences in Philadelphia with learning about this?
I had one more acid trip while I was in New Orleans. During it, my body did something odd. It rewired itself so that every single sensory input was interpreted as an orgasm. I ate an M&M, I had an orgasm. I listened to music, I had an orgasm. I touched some paint on the wall, I had an orgasm. I licked the image of Britney Spears on the television, I had an orgasm. And finally I just laid in bed and let my body feel this. Without touching a finger to myself, I laid there and had about 100 orgasms. And during it all, I just kept thinking “I am like the great mother goddess, giving birth to a world through the orgasms that my body has. I am connected to everyone and everybody because of what I can do. Through my body.”
Yeah, I know. Hokey as all hell. Acid can be fun.
But seriously, what that tells me about myself is that, once more, the Orisha provided me with a point of connection to the world. My belief, or my desire to believe, led me to feel connection with other human beings.
And so now, after thinking and thinking and thinking about it, I’ve realized that that’s what it really is for me. I don’t see the Orisha as real, solid, embodied beings who, like the Roman gods, suffer from human foibles. The Pataki’s, or the stories of the Orisha, are symbolic, not literal. They represent, to me, human capability and human experience. By focusing on the stories of Oshun, I feel more connected to my own sexuality and more connected to the world at large, seeing the ways in which my sensuality and love fit me into the world. The Orisha are focal points. Like a set of rosary beads for a Catholic who is busy focusing on the passion story. But instead of feeling connected only to God, it makes me feel connected to the world. To a larger community.
And I think it’s time that I find a community in which I can feel free to ask questions or talk about this, or get more information. A place where I don’t feel like I’m going to be eyed warily for the things I want to say and the things that I feel. With people who’ve gone through things like this, or similar to this.
I mean, if I told my parents I was interested in Santeria, I think they’d flip. I think they’d flip more than they did when I came out as being both bisexual and in the bdsm scene. In order to find a community where I feel good about talking about this stuff requires, really, taking the first step, which is not full initiation, and finding what are called godparents in the religion. People who will teach me.
I spoke with a girl yesterday who has been in the religion for four years without being initiated. She says you never actually have to go through initiation to practice the religion, you just have to do a few things so that you have the rituals down at least. I’d like that. To have the rituals. To have my “rosary beads and passion story” so to speak.
But. Now I’ve rambled a long time, and there’s a lot more to it, but I’m going to stop there and if anyone has any questions, feel free to ask. :)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-05-08 10:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-05-15 08:38 am (UTC)