By Randy Fitch
Santa Muerte, Saint Death and Holy Death in English, is now the fastest growing new religious movement in the West. There are no surveys of the number of devotees, but with 15 years of combined research experience, we estimate some 12 million followers, with 70% in Mexico, 15% in the U.S., 10% in Central America, and the remaining 5% mostly in South America. There are also small groups of devotees surfacing in Europe and other parts of the globe. Devotion to the skeleton saint only went public in 2001, so the great majority of adherents have become devoted to death only in the past decade and a half. (Dr. Kate Kingsbury and Dr. Andrew Chestnut from skeletonsaint.com)
The two leading PHDs studying the Holy Death suggest roughly two million followers of the Santa Muerte in the United States as of 2015, yet you may not have ever heard of the Santa Muerte. However, her believers now outnumber the ~ 1.2 million Jehovah’s Witnesses in the U.S.. This places her number of followers second only to Wiccans, whose numbers are also multiplying.
So, what are roughly twelve million people in the Americas venerating, praying to, and worshipping? Let’s take a peek inside the shadows hiding the grim reapress coming soon to a neighborhood near you.
The Santa Muerte, or Holy Death, has been infiltrating American pop culture for years. The Santa Muerte has made a showing in Breaking Bad, True Detective, and the American Horror Story series. In 2022, Netflix aired the movie Santa Muerte; You give her more, She gives you more, and she is a central character in Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands video game.
In all the above, she is featured as a Mexican folk saint and, more specifically, a narco-saint, a supernatural immoral force that anyone, including those seeking revenge or protection against law enforcement, can call on. Many of her believers are offended by this portrayal, her ranks even including those in law enforcement.
Juxtapose this portrayal versus the series Penny Dreadful: City of Angels, where she is a Mexican folklore deity (emphasis on deity), the caretaker of the dead and guide to the great beyond, playing alongside her spiritual sister, the demoness Magda, who believes humanity is inherently evil.
When I heard about what sounded like a persona of a goddess of death, and more interestingly, one that answers prayers, I dug in. In my study of the Santa Muerte, I found dozens of book titles and hundreds of social media sites. The vast majority of these contain instructions on conjuring and casting spells or curses with the power of the Santa Muerte, along with iconography, e.g., candles, idols, tarot cards, etc.
Spells? Conjuring? Curses? While you may only think of this sort of devilry while appreciating Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry over a tub of corn, these practices are growing exponentially in the West.
At first, one might see this as a clear separation from all things Christian, but while many Christians may consider magic spells solely the work of the witches and sorcerers of pagan religions, this is not the case. We can look at magic in a subsequent post, but for now, know that magic plays a large part in the rituals and sacrifices offered the skeleton saint.
As a longtime researcher of the power of belief, I mistakenly associated the hodgepodge of Santa Muerte rituals I discovered with western pagan occult practices such as Wicca and chaos magic. But after digging a bit more, I realized the magic comes from multiple intriguing sources, which we will discuss in my next post.
Comments