Understanding Santeria through Stories

August 30, 2010 By David Charles 10 Comments

{Ocha’ni Lele. Teachings of the Santeria Gods. Destiny Books 2010. 269 pages. $16.95}

Reviewed by Star Foster

I love a good story. A good story has a mystery, a moral, a familiarity or a sense of the fantastic. A good story satisfies you down to your bones. Ocha’ni Lele’s book Teachings of the Santeria Gods is chock-full of just such stories.

Today when we want to learn about the Gods we often go to books that explain the Gods to us, rather than simply absorb the stories about the Gods. I knew very little about the orishas when I began reading Lele’s book but I was quickly entranced by them through their stories. What a wonderful way to meet Shango, Oya and Eleggua!

The book is divided into twelve sections to correspond with diloggun, an Afro-Caribbean divination system. For each of twelve possible results, or odu, there is a theme, and for that theme there are stories. Stories of love, loss, deception, faith, humility, perseverance, spiritual growth and sacrifice.

Sacrifice. If you know nothing else about Santeria you know they practice sacrifice devoutly but you may not know why. How does this fit in with their worldview? What function does it perform for them? How do they decide when and how and what to sacrifice? [Read more...]

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Star Foster Reviews Galina Krasskova, “Exploring the Northern Tradition”

August 3, 2010 By David Charles 14 Comments

{Galina Krasskova. Exploring the Northern Tradition. New Page Books 2005. 220 pages. $14.95}

Reviewed by Star Foster

A good, solid, human and engaging introductory text to a religion, particularly a minority religion, is worth its weight in gold. Crafting an introduction to a religious practice, mythos, cosmology and values is a bit like walking a tightrope: too far to one side creates a text that is inaccessibly esoteric and too far to the other side leaves you with a “dummies guide” that even the most ignorant novice will scoff. In Exploring the Northern Tradition Krasskova has created a beautifully balanced introduction to Modern Heathenry.

I will admit that I always check negative reviews of books first, particularly on Amazon. Despite having read her blog posts on Pantheon and found her to be a delightful and grounded person via e-mail, I did begin to read Exploring the Northern Tradition expecting it to be in the same vein as Welch’s Goddess of the North. I couldn’t have been more mistaken. While Krasskova has included UPG in certain sections of the book, especially when writing about the Gods and Goddesses, it was clear enough when something was from the lore and something was from her own personal spiritual practice, that the average reader should not find themselves confused. [Read more...]

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