Santeria has a priesthood that includes both men and women. Priesthood is not a full-time paid job, and is often combined with ordinary work.
Priesthood
Last updated 2009-09-15
Priesthood
Santeria has a priesthood that includes both men and women. Priesthood involves training and initiation.
The priest may be a babalorisha (Father in the Spirit) or iyalorisha (Mother or Wife in the Spirit). The Spanish words for these priests are santero or santera.
Priesthood is not a full-time paid job, and is often combined with ordinary work.
A priest has 'made the saint', which means that they have been 'reborn in the spirit' and made a commitment to serve a particular Orisha.
Priests have special powers because they have been 'entered' by an Orisha.
Divining the future
These powers are thought to allow them to predict the future.
Divination mediates between earth (aiye) and heaven (orun). It proffers counsel and guidance to believers at all critical junctures and transitional experiences of the life cycle.
Eugenio Matibag, Ifá and Interpretation: An Afro-Caribbean Literary Practice, in Sacred Possessions: Vodou, Santería, Obeah and the Caribbean (ed. Margarite Fernandez Olmos and Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert), 1997
Priests can perform divination with shells or coconut halves. © Anastasiya Maksymenko ©Divination can be done by casting palm nuts, interpreting the fall of shells, or using a divided coconut.
Santeria also includes the Yoruba divination system called Ifa, which can only be performed by a senior male priest called a babalawo. This ritual involves throwing an ekwele, a chain of 8 shaped pieces. The way in which these pieces fall is used to provide guidance.
Healthcare
Santeria priests have a great knowledge of traditional medicine and herbalism, and often play an important role in the health of their community.
Their healthcare draws on Catholicism as well as African tradition; holy water is an ingredient in many Santeria medicinal formulas.
Santeria healthcare is often combined with conventional medicine.
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