Sacrificial Ceremonies of Santería: A Complete Guide to the Rituals and Practices

Introduction

WORK AND WORSHIP

Worship, in the Lucumí*1 faith, is work, and the work can be laborious and backbreaking. I was awaiting the arrival of my godchildren, the term used to describe spiritual aspirants in the religion, and already my labors had begun. They were coming over that night to make ebó, or offerings— several animal sacrifices and adimús (cooked foods) for the orishas, the deities of the Lucumí faith. As always on such days I had arisen early in the morning to begin the lengthy preparations.

First, I had a house to clean. It is offensive, in my opinion, to do anything with the orishas in a house that is anything less than freshly scrubbed. After cleaning the house I worked in the kitchen. There were ears of corn to shuck and piles of ñame, a yamlike root vegetable, to peel. These went into pots of boiling water. In saucepans I sautéed, boiled, mixed, and measured my secret ingredients for the dozens of adimús my godchildren would be offering after the animal sacrifices. There were sauces to prepare for the ashéses, the vital organs of sacrificial animals that are sacred to the orishas and are not for human consumption; these would be removed after the animals were sacrificed, cooked, and then given back to the orishas, thus completing the ritual. Not cooking the ashéses is like rice without beans, I had once told my godchildren. Never, ever do this with animals used for cleansing or healing; that meat is tainted, it will make you sick.

After the vegetables had been cooked and had cooled, I made dozens of balls from the mashed ñame and cut the ears of corn into smaller-size cobs. The sauces went into jars; these I stored in the refrigerator. Onions, garlic, and fresh herbs were arranged in baskets on the countertop, reserved for preparing the ashéses later. Finally, with everything ready, I went to my orishas’ shrines and lifted their individual sets of otás, the sacred river-polished stones holding their ashé, their life force, and put them into large silver bowls. Over each set I poured copious amounts of omiero, an herbal elixir created by the consecrated hands of a priest. Freshly ripped and shredded herbs covered each bowl, concealing their secrets from outsiders’ eyes. Carefully, against the wall where we would be doing the sacrifices, I lined them up in order: Elegguá, Shangó, and Obatalá. I was moving furniture out of the way when I heard several knocks on my door: my godchildren had arrived.

About a dozen of my godchildren, a mixture of both younger and older adults who had been studying the religion under my supervision, came in as a group, and for a few moments there was a flurry of animated activity. A couple of them gathered up jackets, sweaters, bags, and purses, carrying them to the back bedroom where they would be out of the way. Two of my godchildren took dozens of birds out of their cardboard carriers and put them into my larger cages, with water bowls for them to drink from. Not near the orishas, I corrected them, and together two of my female godchildren lifted the cages, one at a time, carrying them into the next room where they would not be in direct view of the sacrificial ceremonies about to occur. It is not humane for one animal to see another die, I reminded them. After setting up the animals, they turned toward the orishas lined up against the wall and took turns saluting Elegguá and Obatalá, some of them lying prostrate on the floor, face-down, while others did a stylized curtsey from side-to-side. After this, they repeated those same movements toward me, one by one. I touched their shoulders gently to offer a blessing and helped each rise. From this chaotic activity quickly came order, as two of my godchildren took over the kitchen, setting huge kettles of water to boil for scalding the chicken carcasses and lining trash cans with fresh bags for the plucked feathers. Others moved the furniture around and rolled up rugs and set them out of the way. Buckets of fresh water and jars of honey materialized out of nowhere. Somewhere, amidst all these items, lay my favorite, sharpest knife.

I think we’re ready, Ashara said, coming out of the kitchen with a mop in one hand and a broom in the other. Do you have bleach in that mop water? I asked her. She ran back to the laundry room to find it. My head was still spinning from the sudden arrival of so much activity. My godchildren could be overwhelming in a group, but somehow they always managed to organize themselves around me in times such as now, when my home was being turned into a working temple.

That day we would be feeding the orishas, practicing the one part of our religion that causes so much controversy among outsiders: animal sacrifice. Everyone there had ebós to make. Some would sacrifice to Obatalá, others to Shangó, and a few would offer just one small chicken to Elegguá. But since all the ebós were being done together, we had to be well organized. Only one person seemed lost in the shuffle, Stephanie, but that was okay because this was the first time she would be offering to the orishas, and her first ebó was extensive—a rooster to Elegguá and three roosters to Shangó. When I presented Elegguá’s rooster to her and put it in her hands so she could pray, she shook slightly. Stephanie was nervous. She took her time praying that day, her eyes closed and her face a mixture of peace and fear. Of all the rituals in the Lucumí faith, none creates more confusion, more concern, or gets more media play than the practice of animal sacrifice, and this was to be her first. As she stood there praying and trembling, it reminded me of the first time I made sacrifice many years earlier; it seemed like a different lifetime.

It was the winter of ’95, and I stood in my first godmother’s house dressed in white. I was uncomfortable. The winter had been unseasonably hot, even for Florida, and I was dressed according to her directions: white t-shirt and white boxers, white shirt and pants, white shoes and socks, with my head tied up in a white scarf that had something wet and sticky under it—a rogación, a head cleansing that uses grated coconut. In Lucumí belief, the head is known as orí, and it is a powerful orisha in its own right. At its core, it is the soul. The physical orí is a mirror of the spiritual orí that remains in heaven, with the orishas and Olódumare, and the cleansing known as a rogación strengthens and increases the spiritual bond between the heavenly head and its earthly manifestation.

My journey into this religion was a complicated one. Newspapers across the country were on fire with reports and accounts of an Afro-Cuban religion known as Santería; and they mentioned an organization known as the Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye that was fighting for its right to conduct animal sacrifices in conjunction with its faith. I was already searching for the mystical and exotic, practicing magic with a small group in rural Virginia. The more I read about Santería, the more entranced I became by its primal beauty, and in April of 1989 I packed a suitcase and began my long trek in search of the faith. Of course, my search began in Florida. My first exposure to the religion was only as a casual client of the diviners; being young, I wanted guidance, and guidance was all most diviners were willing to give to a young, Caucasian male. At first I wasn’t serious about the faith, and perhaps that’s why most priests were wary to offer me anything except divination; however, in the fall of ’95 something changed: I became serious about the religion and the santeros took me seriously. I realized this was my spiritual home. It took some time, but soon I found a priestess who was willing to stand up as my godmother, and on November 7, 1995, I received my elekes, the beaded necklaces presented in the early stages of initiation. Nine days later, on November 16, 1995, I was at my godmother’s house again receiving my warriors: Elegguá, Ogún, Ochosi, and Ósun.

Now the oriaté, a Lucumí priest, expert in Santería ceremonies, came toward me with a live chicken in his hands. I bowed my head as he presented it to me. Will you be okay? my godmother, standing nearby, asked me. I was obviously distressed, but I nodded my head yes. It’s the heat making me uncomfortable, I said. Her apartment had no central air conditioning, and the windows, though open, did not cool the the room from the winter heat. We’ll be working, and hard, my godmother had told me earlier, so we’ll be dressed appropriately. I noticed that while everyone else was also wearing mostly white, the women in skirts and men in long pants, their clothing was lightweight and no doubt more comfortable than what I had chosen; I was wishing I had worn a short-sleeve lightweight shirt, not the long-sleeved, heavy cotton oxford dress shirt I had on. I was already sweating profusely. Now, turn slowly, the oriaté said to me. With my arms held out, I turned around in several circles, the chicken clucking softly as he rubbed its body over me, from head to toe.

I had to admit I had some reservations about this ritual. I had grown up in a rural environment, my parents and grandparents raising chickens and hogs, and I had vivid memories of the bloody mess that was made on slaughter day. I was only six the first time I saw them killing chickens. My grandfather would chop off the head of the chicken before throwing the body into a bushel basket to bleed out; I would immediately put the lid on the basket—but sometimes I would be too slow and the headless chicken would jump out of the basket before I could get the lid back on. I would run after it, the animal flapping its wings and running around in crazed circles. Never once did I catch a chicken before its reflexes gave out and it collapsed on the ground. Still, I tried.

This was the image of sacrifice I brought with me that day; but what happened next was cleaner—far more humane and genuinely spiritual— than anything I had ever witnessed growing up in rural Virginia. In the tongue known as Lucumí, a liturgical language based on a Yoruba dialect, the priests and priestesses assembled in the room began to sing; and then carefully, with great precision, the oriaté sliced the chicken’s neck with the blade of a knife. There were no chicken bodies being thrown into a basket; there were no headless animals running wild around the house; there were no random sprays of blood splashing the walls. He held the chicken’s lifeless body firmly but carefully in one hand while holding the knife in the other as the blood dripped down the blade and onto Elegguá’s sacred stones. Three pigeons followed as offerings: one for Ogún, one for Ochosi, and one for Ósun; I was cleansed with each. Because the pigeons were so small, the priest separated the heads without a knife, and everyone sang and praised the orishas while a carefully poised index finger directed the blood over the orishas’ sacred stones. Fresh water ended each sacrifice; the oriaté called for it with song, and one of the priests poured a gourd of water over the animal’s severed neck. Then the priest offered copious amounts of honey, tasting it before allowing it to drizzle and drop over the orisha. Next, I covered the orishas with a downy pile of feathers, ripping them from the animal carcasses with both hands and letting them settle over their bowls. Finally, I lit two white candles to the orishas.

We won’t be plucking these or pulling out ashéses, my godmother said. "You were cleansed with these. Any time you receive an orisha, your first sacrifice to it is a cleansing. You begin your new life with that spirit cleansed. That means the meat is tainted. It holds the osogbo, all the misfortunes you brought with you." The oriaté then used obí, a divination system using four slices of coconut, to determine where Elegguá, Ogún, Ochosi, and Ósun wanted their sacrifices disposed. Each answered that the animal remains were to go to the woods; I would have to take them there later, the oriaté told me, and bury them.

Compared to life in a rural environment, with its practical, almost brutal approach to animal slaughter, the Lucumí practice of sacrifice was an artful, spiritual experience. Right then and there I decided I couldn’t wait for the day that I would be able to do this on my own.

Stephanie opened her eyes and looked at me. I saw that they were moist with tears. Will you be okay? I asked her, remembering my own godmother’s words the first time I made sacrifice. Gently, she nodded her head. Stephanie was typical of the aleyos, or outsiders, coming to the religion seemingly in hordes these days. She had been raised in an urban environment, and her concept of working for her food meant punching a time clock, working nine to five, five days a week, and then cashing a paycheck to buy groceries. Her notion of gathering food meant rummaging through the produce section of her local supermarket, smelling oranges and squeezing tomatoes to see if they were ripe. And for her, hunting meant purchasing neatly trimmed, wrapped, and sanitized packages of animal protein from the meat section of the supermarket. Like so many others in our society, she was far removed from the food she ate. Her meat didn’t come from cows, pigs, or chickens—it came from a chain store in which beef, pork, and chicken were faceless packages that had seemingly never experienced sentience. Today, for perhaps the first time in her twenty-four years, she was about to learn that life feeds on life: it is the nature of physical beings to eat other physical beings to live. It is, I thought, a lesson everyone should learn.

Years passed; after receiving my warriors in the Orlando ilé, a spiritual house of the orishas, I moved from Orlando to Michigan; and later, when a series of circumstances made it painfully obvious to all that my head was not to find initiation in that ilé, I moved back to Orlando again, my search starting anew each time. A few more years passed, and I found myself in one of three active ocha (short for orisha; it also denotes the Lucumí faith) houses in Brooklyn, New York. My new godfather, the one to whom my orisha had sent me to be crowned, was a phenomenal priest. He himself had crowned in Havana, Cuba, and was the first man to bring our direct lineage out of Cuba and into the United States. My yubon had crowned in the same lineage, but with a different godparent, but he drank from the same deep well of knowledge as my own godfather. The two of them were a perfect team, a well-oiled machine when it came to working the religion, and I remember standing there in the throne (an altar set up for the newly born priest and his or her orishas), freshly shaved, exhausted yet ecstatic when the massive sacrifices to my orishas began. But mostly I was proud, not only of having been initiated to my orisha, but also of having been crowned by the cleanest hands in New York.

Ray,*2 a priest of Yemayá, walked over to me. I was trembling, and he thought it was because the sacrifices were about to begin. Everyone was worried about how the white man from the city would react to the ritual of animal sacrifice; no one knew I had been raised in the country, on a homestead, and had witnessed far more brutal treatment of animals there. Do you know why we do this, iyawó [initiate]? he asked me. Do you know why we sacrifice to the orishas? It is to give them life. Are you nervous about the sacrifices?

Before I could answer him, my godfather began to sing; his assistant was cradling Elegguá’s goat like a baby, and skillfully my godfather sliced both carotids of the animal with one clean swipe of the knife. Blood flowed. The priests sang. Ray moved back with the others and joined the chorus. Soon they would start opening the animals up, skinning, plucking, removing the ashéses, or inner organs, that were so sacred to Olódumare, the supreme deity of Lucumí. He was there to help with that.

I watched as my godfather next removed the head from the lifeless goat; he seasoned it with salt, red palm oil, and honey—offerings to the orisha known as Ajala, the owner of all heads, even animals’—and then his assistant presented me with it. While the two butchers who had been selected beforehand from the priests started skinning and cleaning the goat, the santeros, the Santería priests, lined up with the live birds outside my throne, presenting them to me one-by-one while I thanked the animals silently for giving their lives to nourish my own. After presenting the live birds, the santero took them back to my godfather, who then sacrificed them quickly. After the sacrifices of the birds were complete, their lifeless bodies lay on the floor; and I had to emerge from the throne to rip handfuls of feathers off their carcasses, covering the orishas’ bowls with piles of down. After I was done ripping handfuls of feathers off each, the dead birds were lifted by the other priests, their bodies going to the pluckers who would remove the remaining feathers from their bodies. After cleaning the birds, the priestesses plucking them removed the inner organs and quartered the meat. Soon, what had only moments before been living animals resembled the contents of a grocery store’s neat packages. That meat, plus the goat meat, went to the cook in the adjoining kitchen. Between seasoning the meats prior to cooking and preparing all the ashéses, her work was now only just beginning, and it would take hours more. All these people, all this work, all this time—all this in preparation for the feast that would take place the next day, known as the middle day, when I would be presented to the community as a newly initiated santero.

Months passed before I learned that Ray’s explanation about the reason for sacrifice was not quite correct. My own godfather clarified this point: "The orishas have life when we put them on your head, iyawó. They are born from Osain,*3 not from blood, and they are alive and awake when they are crowned on you. Blood simply nourishes them. The four-legged animals give them the ashé to speak to us here on Earth, and the feathered animals cool them down. That is the reason for the sacrifice. As my iyaboraje, my learning period, progressed, he taught me much more, and in the process deprogramming me of my preconceived ideas about sacrifice, beginning with the fact that santeros are forbidden to consume blood. We say, ‘Sangre para los santos y carne para los santeros’—‘Blood for the orishas and meat for the priests,’ he told me. He would teach me that we take animal life only with the consent of Ogún; he was one of the warrior orishas who guided the hand on the knife. My godfather also taught me that we were forbidden to eat the inner organs. These, he said, hold the vital life force, the ashé, more so than the blood. We cook them and present them back to the orishas. In a way, we’re offering a complete animal back to them again." It was one of many lessons I would learn before I was ready to sacrifice anything on my own.

Stephanie trembled slightly as my knife sliced the rooster’s carotid arteries, and as the blood flowed down the blade, over Eleggua’s sacred stones, my godchildren sang. At first their singing was somber and serious, but it quickly grew into a joyous chorus of praise for the orisha before us. Stephanie picked up bits of the chorus as we sang, her own voice joining the praises. One by one, Elegguá received his sacrificial offerings from each of my godchildren, the sacrifice of each followed by offerings of fresh water, honey, and feathers; and when all the animals were dead, I lifted the chickens and rooster, putting them into the hands of Amy and Ashara. They took the lifeless birds to be scalded in boiling water and plucked, while other godchildren cleaned the floor and prepped it for Shangó, and later, for Obatalá. By the time the two white candles were lit, I was in the kitchen, pulling ashé from each animal while the women watched. Soon the kitchen was filled with the aroma of the seasoned ashéses searing in a pan on the stove.

A few hours later the orishas had been cleaned from the previous sacrifice; the two white candles still burned and the ashéses rested with them. Soups and stews made from the chickens that had been cooked separately in yellow rice as an adimú simmered on the stove in the kitchen. These were to be shared between Elegguá and the Ibeyi, the divine children of Shangó and Oshún; this was an adimú presented by my goddaughter, Amy, in adherance to a divination received a week earlier. Because life is rarely wasted, she used the meat of animals already sacrificed to Elegguá to prepare the adimú (cooked food). Red beans, black beans, and white rice were cooking away on the stove, and the rooster and chickens that we did not cook were wrapped and placed in the freezer for eating later. From the many animals that were sacrificed that day, only five would be neither consumed that day nor set aside for later consumption: a chicken used in a cleansing to Elegguá, and four hens that were used in another cleansing and sacrificed to Obatalá. These were wrapped in brown bags, to be later taken to a dumpster near a crossroads, the place where the orishas said we were to dispose of them. Animals used to cleanse illness or osogbo are filled with that illness, much as a sponge used to wipe a sink is filled with the sink’s filth. Such meats cannot be eaten; they would spread the disease that they have absorbed.

Stephanie came up to me while I was washing dishes. Her face was now an image of exhaustion from having worked so hard all evening, and . . . happiness. The feeling of exhaustion I knew well; we were all tired from all the preparations, the cleaning, sacrificing, plucking, and cooking. But I wanted to know why she was smiling. You look happy, I said. What’s on your mind? Was it as bad as you thought?

Not at all, she said. And a Sunday dinner tastes so much better when you’ve made it with your own hands. I’ve never had chicken that good! I laughed. Only a few hours earlier, Stephanie’s face had been ghost white, and now she exhibited pride in all that her hard work had accomplished. She spoke again: And somehow, strangely enough, I can’t wait until the day I’m a priestess myself and can do rituals like this for my own godchildren.

Hearing her brought me back to that warm winter’s day eighteen years ago, when I stood in my godmother’s kitchen thinking that I couldn’t wait for the day I would be a priest and make sacrifices of my own to the orishas. With my wet hands and a dirty apron on, I hugged her and held her close. It was the perfect ending to a perfect day, the completion of a circle that was beginning anew for me—this time with my own godchildren. This book investigates the subject of Lucumí sacrifice and its rationale through several layers of understanding. Chapter 1 provides an overview of the Lucumí faith and the central place that sacrifice holds in the religion. Chapter 2 introduces readers to the concept of Olódumare, the Lucumí name for God. Along with an introduction to our beliefs surrounding God, the concept of what an orisha, or deity, is will be explored. Chapters 3 and 4 investigate the history of this religion and its globalization, going beyond its geographic origins among the Yoruba tribes of southwestern Nigeria, on Africa’s western coast, and through the slave trade, flowing through the diaspora, finally landing in Cuba. Chapter 5 documents the growing number of adherents to this ancient religion in the United States, and how the rise of Lucumí aborishas and olorishas in this country sparked, in 1993, one of the 100 most important legal cases to come before the United States Supreme Court, a case studied in law schools nationwide: Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah. In chapter 6 we examine the massive preparations necessary before animal blood can be shed; and then, in chapter 7, the sacrificial ritual itself is broken down in terms of both the meaning and the etymology of the sacred chants. In addition, the odu of the diloggún from which each segment comes—information never before published—is considered. Finally, in chapter 8, a small handful of patakís are given to help the reader understand that there is strong cultural significance and a large catalog of patakís backing the rationale for why some animals are regarded as sacrificial animals and, hence, food for humans; unfortunately, in a work of this scope I am unable to present more than a small sampling of these stories.

Writing this book was no easy task; it consumed every waking moment of my life for a year. Society no longer embraces sacrifice. As Lucumí priests, we understand that Eurocentric culture might never accept our practices; however, we continue. The odu Odí Unle (7-8) in the diloggún teaches us that although outsiders might never embrace the practice, priests who perform it are not only bringing blessings to themselves, but to all of humanity. It is a sacred duty we fulfill for the world. Therefore I ask that when reading this book, keep in mind that I wrote it with a heart filled with both love and anxiety: love for the orishas and God, Olódumare, whom I serve; and anxiety because I am the first priest who has ever sought to write a complete text about our sacrificial practices. With my work there is but a single hope in my heart: that this book sheds light and understanding on our holiest sacrament, that of animal sacrifice. Read the material with an open mind, and understand that we are not barbarians lost in a primitive past. We, like you, are a modern tribe of people who, through our rituals and ceremonies, try to elevate the basest of our human natures into an expression of both natural law and the divine.

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The Sacrament of Sacrifice in the Lucumí Faith

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