I picked up Migene Gonzalez-Wippler’s book, Santeria: African Magic in Latin America, on a recent used bookstore trip in Baltimore for six dollars. According to the book’s introduction, it was one of the first English-language books ever published on the subject of Santeria, in 1973. For that reason, I imagine it is rather significant, but standing on its own merits the book falls short.
It is, of course, an introductory work on Afro-Carribean magic and religion, detailing a bit of the history of the religion, along with a smattering of spells and legends related to it. It also features a chapter dedicated to brujeria - “black magic.” As a survey, it never gets very in-depth. But moreso than that, I didn’t feel like it did a very good job of introducing these traditions to the outsider. The information was certainly conveyed in a straightforward and easy to understand way, but it didn’t really “connect the dots,” so to speak. Everything was sort of disjointed and it didn’t leave me feeling like my understanding of Santeria was at all richer for the experience of having read the book.
From my own perspective, I would have appreciated getting more of an understanding of the world-view associated with the religion, as this is the part of the tradition which I think is most inaccessible to outsiders. It’s easy to relate myths and give ingredients for spells, but doing so doesn’t transform the reader’s understanding, nor does it philosophically or emotionally key them into the personal undercurrents of what the religion is all about.
Unfortunately, I am just beginning to read up on Santeria and associated Afro-Carribean religious systems, so I’m unable to recommend a similar and better book on the subject. My final analysis of Gonzalez-Wippler’s book though is that it’s only worth picking up if you come across it in a used bookstore or perhaps a library. There must be better, more modern and more thorough books that have been written on the subject over the last thirty years.
Comment by Jennifer Emick — July 25, 2006 @ 10:55 am
Funny, that was the first book I ever read on a non-christian religion. I read it in seventh grade and really identified with it. I’m actually supposed to be reviewing her latest book but I just can’t get into it, but then, her ‘western’ material always struck me as kinda flat.
Comment by Rev Max — July 25, 2006 @ 10:58 pm
what kind of book do you want, i mean what do you want to know?
Personal accounts of close encounters with spirits, how-to spells, history & anthropology?
You’d go nuts if you ever saw my bookshelf… pretty much every book ever written in english on gnosticism and the ATRs both.
Comment by Pop Occulture — July 26, 2006 @ 3:13 pm
Yeah, all of that sounds really good.
Comment by hebrides — August 10, 2006 @ 7:46 pm
Hey, Tim:
I got a revised copy of the book at a botanica in Brooklyn about 6 months ago. I was reluctant at first to get it because I had read another book by this Cuban-American Babalawo who was based in NYC disparaging it. According to him, there had been a lot of inaccuracies in the book because her informants repeatedly lied to her (apparently, they didn’t trust her so much because she was an outsider and they were suspicious). The revised version I bought points this out as being a reason she had to revise the text as she found out later when she finally got some initiations done. It still basically reads the same way that you describe it, though. The Babalawo guy’s last name who wrote the other book that basically said “Don’t get the Wippler book cuz it’s crap” was Canizares (if I remember rightly) and it’s an autobiography, but also he puts in a lot of other details that were educational for me as an outsider–he was also a PhD in Anthropology. Ah, just googled his name–Raul J. Canizares. And the book was called: Cuban Santeria. He wrote some other books about specific orishas, but when I tried to get them on Amazon awhile ago they were either out of print or, after months of waiting, Amazon told me they couldn’t get a copy my way… The other really good book I read about related spirituality was Voodoo in America by Davis. It’s basically one white guy’s search for the traces of the original African religions that the slaves brought over to the U.S. Shout out to Rev. Max.
Comment by hebrides — August 11, 2006 @ 11:53 am
Cuban Santeria by Raul J. Canizares is very good; also Voodoo in America by Davis.