Posted on 03/04/2013 4:13:12 PM PST by haffast
A follower in New Orleans built a public shrine in her honor. An actor in Albuquerque credits her with helping him land a role on the TV show "Breaking Bad." She turns up routinely along the U.S.-Mexico border at safe houses, and is sighted on dashboards of cars used to smuggle methamphetamine through the southwest desert.
Popular in Mexico, and sometimes linked to the illicit drug trade, the skeleton saint known as La Santa Muerte in recent years has found a robust and diverse following north of the border: immigrant small business owners, artists, gay activists and the poor, among others — many of them non-Latinos and not all involved with organized religion.
Clad in a black nun's robe and holding a scythe in one hand, Santa Muerte appeals to people seeking all manner of otherworldly help: from fending off wrongdoing and carrying out vengeance to stopping lovers from cheating and landing better jobs. And others seek her protection for their drug shipments and to ward off law enforcement.
"Her growth in the United States has been extraordinary," said Andrew Chesnut, author of "Devoted to Death: Santa Muerte, the Skeleton Saint" and the Bishop Walter F. Sullivan Chair in Catholic Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University. "Because you can ask her for anything, she has mass appeal and is now gaining a diverse group of followers throughout the country. She's the ultimate multi-tasker."
Exact numbers of her followers are impossible to determine, but they are clearly growing, Chesnut said.
The saint is especially popular among Mexican-American Catholics, rivaling that of St. Jude and La Virgen de Guadalupe as a favorite for miracle requests, even as the Catholic Church in Mexico denounces Santa Muerte as satanic, experts say.
snip
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
People can turn away from God in any numbers of ways, sometimes even deceiving themselves as to the direction of the turn.
Personally, I have a Hoodie Crow on my dashboard, and there always seems to be comely damsels following me for some reason.
Saint Death? There’s a clue there son,
Cultural diversity is so enriching for the new America. /s
Aren’t the remains of the real one on display under glass in some cathedral somewhere? Or is that the skeleton of some other female saint? All those skeletons lying about, it’s a little cryptic.
“Because you can ask her for anything, she has mass appeal and is now gaining a diverse group of followers throughout the country. She’s the ultimate multi-tasker.”
That is a GREAT concept for a saint! You can ask for her to help with anything from ‘please cure my son of his illness’ to ‘please don’t let the cops catch me for raping children’. Yet another sick spiral. Previously, this had only existed in the nutjob rantings of men like Richard Ramirez, but now, it’s cool to worship satanic figures. Saint Death? She is a made up figure, an attempt to carry over ancient Mesoamerican death reverence into the modern world. There is only one death, Samael, and he is not a figure to be worshiped.
Of course it’s popular in Mexico, it’s syncretic paganism hidden under a thin veneer of Christianity.
It’s the same beliefs that Catholic Church in Mexico has tried to stamp out that lead the ancient Mexica to ritually slaughter people regularly to appease their Gods.
No wonder the Drug Cartels adopted it.
Why don’t they just call her an Aztec death goddess, now called by a new name?
/sarc
Somehow, this doesn’t seem like a healthy philosophical development.
A comely damsel followed me home. She turned into an old crow. ;)
Be careful!
Underworld Satan is more like it.
Yeppers..
>>”the Catholic Church in Mexico denounces Santa Muerte as satanic”
Not a good sign...
Aye, the legend Crows...err...grows.
This is a cult to be concerned about. There are as many as an estimated 2m people in Mexico that show some degree of attention to La Santa Muerte.
The parallels between this and Kali, the Indian death goddess, are a bit too close for comfort. Some of its followers were the Thuggee (”stranglers”), from perhaps the 14th to the 19th Century, known for their willingness to indiscriminately murder anyone.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kali
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thugee
The British finally had enough of them, and effectively wiped them out, twice, before they were extinguished. This was done with the broad praise of everyone else in India.
The Thuggee were able to operate freely for so long because they looked like most everyone else. Much like La Santa Muerte followers look today.
For an invisible cult whose primary goal is murder, to operate freely in the US is asking for trouble.
“Mexican-American Catholics, rivaling that of St. Jude and La Virgen de Guadalupe as a favorite for miracle requests”
Don’t buy it.
“Mexican-American Catholics, rivaling that of St. Jude and La Virgen de Guadalupe as a favorite for miracle requests”
Don’t buy it.
I’ve met the fellow who is the leading expert on Santa Muerte in the South, Robert R. Almonte.
The funny thing about Santa Muerte is that the bad guys really believe that if they have the image on their vehicles or have something hanging off the rear view mirror that they are “invisible”.
Alamonte has been going around the country for years teaching law enforcement how to spot the various figurines, images, amulets that the followers use. Suffice to say that once a cop knows what to look for they can readily identify traffickers by looking for all the various signs. If they pull a vehicle over and see the stuff on the dash or rear view mirror they know they have bad guys. The dummies really think they are invisible.
Not a saint. This is an occult invention meant to subvert the Church.
We went searching for the tall glass candles that have pictures of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Our Lady of Guadalupe, etc. on them because our local Target stopped selling them. We found some in a mall nearby where a large group of Hispanics sell their wares. But a full shelf (in the booth that had the candles and other Catholic-type goods/gifts) was devoted to St. Death. Very disturbing; we scooted out of there...
In other words, criminality and devil-worship are becoming more popular in the US.
“the real one”
Another Catholic bashing clown, showing his ignorance and vitriol.
and why is this thing called a “saint”?
Related threads:
Keyword: santamuerte
Rival Santa Muerte church claims captured 'bishop' does not represent the Mexican death cult
Mexico Detains Leader Of Santa Muerte Cult On Kidnapping Charges
Drug Trafficker....Gets 16-Year Sentence ["La Santa Muerta", "Jesus Malverde" cultist]
Shrine to 'Drug Saint' Jesus Malverde Erected in Mexico City
Patron saints of Venezuelan gangland crime
Catholic Church wages campaign against witchcraft in Mexican town
Mexico's Death Saint Gets Makeover
No different why libtards media see Obama as a saint =)
This thing is NOT a saint. Most annoyed but not surprised that the article quotes a Catholic authority in a way that makes is sound like Santa Muerte is an approved saint in the Church.
This is the Catholic Saint for Halloween, right?
Not hardly. Just a little bit of Catholic pixie dust on top of good old-fashioned Aztec paganism.
Well said! ;-)
At first I thought it had to do with the Mexican Day of the Dead (Día de los Muertos), somewhat like Halloween, but apparently not.
Touchy, touchy. This isn’t the only example of an occult death cult centered around purported “saints,” it isn’t even the only one in Mexico.
And then there’s the Carribean.
Maybe there’s something wrong with the practice, of attributing certain gifts or abilities to dead people and presuming to make requests of them? Seems to morph into pagan pantheism rather readily and persistently in numerous locales.
To some, it might appear that there’s a deeper problem across the board. We were warned against idols and false gods for a reason. But that’s just ignorance, vitriol and “bashing,” according to defensive partisans.
Have a nice day.
The Indian cult mentioned is actually worship of a fallen angel, quite demonic, and many in that cult were very possessed. It still isn’t dead.
Maybe there's something wrong with trying to turn a story about recrudescent paganism in Mexico, which is strenuously opposed by the Church, into yet another occasion to attack Catholicism on FR?
Fact: This cult doesn't involve a "dead person". It doesn't involve a Catholic saint, despite the name. The Church condemns it.
There are PCUSA Presbyterians out there praying to "Sophia", which sounds suspiciously like some sort of fertility cult or goddess worship. Should I make some broad-brush claim about how that grows inherently out of Protestantism? Of course not; real, faithful Protestants find "Sophia" as suspicious as I do. Mutatis mutandis, La Santa Whatever is the same sort of thing.
Satan is quite happy to have you believe there is no merit in praying for the dead.
That’s why Luther through out the Book of Maccabees.
It should also be noted a great peculiarity, that the Thuggee among their numbers didn’t just have Hindus, but also Muslims and Sikhs, yet differed from ordinary dacoits(*) (highwaymen) with their elaborate subterfuges and schemes, as well as a total lack of discretion in choosing their victims. Any caste, and even British.
Today, the Kali cult has been absorbed back into a branch of Shiva worship (Kali was a version, an avatar, of Shiva, according to their myth), and this branch practices “pseudo-murder” with young children, such as dropping them from a high temple yet catching them; or digging a hole, putting the child in there with a blanket over them, then shoveling dirt on the blanket, to ritually “bury” them, before pulling up the blanket and dirt and removing them from the hole.
But every now and then, some Shiva priest is accused of being unsatisfied with pseudo-murder and butchering a few children for real.
The Thuggee were so discreet in fact, that for a long time they operated without British knowledge. Only when a group of them were arrested and set to be hung did the light finally dawn. Up on the gallows waiting to be hung, the group cried out to their goddess, then jumped off to die instantly. This got the attention of the British.
So the British arranged for a top notch criminologist from England to take over the national police, who used modern forensics to dismantle and finally destroy the cult, to the great relief of all. Not too many policemen get entire regiments of soldier at their command.
No such “saint”. Never has been. Never will be.
this is a pagan saint, but it could also be translated as “holy death”.
The original ceremony was to celebrate those who had died, and was “baptized” into All Saints day/all souls day, when Hispanic communities and here in the Philippines, we visit the graves of our family and clean them up and usually say prayers and hold a small picnic.
The perversion back to the pagan deity only shows how bad the drug trade has perverted people. Several priests and bishops have been killed in mexico and Colombia by narcoterrorists for opposing them.
And of course, they get their money from all the nice American yuppies who insist they want their marijuana/cocaine/etc. to party.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.