A PATH NOT AS BRIGHTLY LIT… ("La Santisima Muerte")

La Santisima Muerte translates to “Saint Death” or literally to “Most Holy Death”. She is portrayed as a female skeleton with a skull for a face and covered in a black robe similar to a Catholic female saint. How she grew in popularity in Mexico is as insidious as what many of her worshippers do to others in her name. Many have committed human sacrifice, crimes, murders, black magic most unimaginable and terrifying, and have made deals with her for wealth, power and greatness. She is the Dark Priestess of Mexico and she is gaining in strength in other countries as well. She is gaining in popularity because she caters to humanities carnal, material, and animal desires. However, she does this for a price. It baffles me that people will blindly follow a deity, entity or power without first understanding what exactly it is. She is in fact, not a Saint at all. She is not even death itself. She is an active Aztec god. 

The Aztec Gods Like many other ancient gods were vampiric in nature and fed off their servants and all who worshipped them. Human sacrifices were common in primordial Mexico much like in other places in the world. However what made the Aztec Gods different than those of other pantheons, is that they also fed psychically and emotionally off their servants and worshippers. The Aztec Gods could feed off the anger, rage, guilt, lust, sadness, pain, suffering, and misery of their believers. These Gods were Psychic and empathic feeders and not exclusively dependent on blood. Another less known but most sacred Goddess in the Aztec pantheon, Tlazolteotl was what is called a “sin-eater” and ate the sin of all who cut themselves before her effigy and rubbed their blood on her. It was said that she “ate the filth of man that his spirit would be clean. Many of such rituals and ceremonies existed in an attempt to propitiate these almost always hungry deities. (Now it must be said that NOT ALL of the Aztec Gods are dark. Some are beautiful and healing, ascended and transcendental protectors and teachers. Where there is darkness there will always be light!) 

In 1580 A.D. through 1640 A.D. when the Spanish was actively colonizing Mexico, The Spanish brought African Slaves to counter the rapid decline of the indigenous people who were dying off due to the sicknesses the Spanish brought, being worked to death as slaves themselves, being conquered, oppressed, subjugated by their conquerors religion and forced to abandon their own. As time went on the Africans revealed that they brought their gods with them from Africa because the Gods were in fact there Ancestors and that the Aztec Gods were the Ancestors to the Aztecs. The Africans taught them to hide their gods in the Catholic Saints they were being forced to honor. As the Africans interbred with the Aztecs and the indigenous peoples of Central and South America a hybrid religion was born. A religion fusing the gods of Africa, Meso-America, Caribbean, Central and South America. The energy in this religion is primal, raw, implacable, overpowering, rage, vengeance and brutal power forged by everything that was experienced by all those who were subjugated, enslaved, brutalized, victimized and tortured. This Hybrid religion has many different names by region and location but are similar in origin and hybrid make up. They are Santeria, Luccimi, Candomble, Palo Mayombe, Santuario, Quimbnda, Vodou, Obeah and Indigenous Shamanism working with the Ancestors and the dead. In this day and age these magical religions are still prevalent but still highly secret with regards to their practices, ceremonies, rituals and the extent of their reach and power. Unfortunately and like with all religious hierarchies,  corruption is rampant within its sacred mysteries. Not only can you purchase the power in this religion you can purchase entrance in to it and this naturally leads to the abuse of the powers and wisdom of the Ancestors by the greedy, disrespectful and unworthy. These are the very types of people that are spreading the worship of La Santisima Muerte to the ignorant, the desperate and the lost.

La Santisima Muerte is called in  ancient Aztec language of Nahuatl, “Coatlicue” which means “Skirt of snakes”. She is the devouring mother of the Aztec Gods and rules the powers of Life, Death and Rebirth. She is first in a cadre of primal Earth Goddesses. Were as the Aztec Gods one and all are vamipric in nature, it is only the older female dieties that possess Chthonian quality. Coatlicue is the darkness of the womb and the tomb. In Aztec Legend she was sweeping a temple when she saw a ball of beautiful feathers floating before her. She quickly grabbed it and placed it between her bosom and returned to sweeping as if nothing happened. Unbeknownst to her, she became pregnant and no longer found the ball of feathers between her bosom. Her children, embarrassed and enraged attempted to kill their mother for shaming them and their family however right before they killed her, Coatlicue gave birth to Huitzilopochtli who would become the God of War. A feathered god fully grown and armored, who killed all 400 hundred of her children who tried to kill her. He dismembered them flinging their heads up in to the sky where they became stars, so that she could look up and gaze at them when she missed them. Coatlicue or La Santisima Muerte as she is called now In Palo Mayombe, is a most powerful spirit. Spirit, not a GOD. Those who serve La Santisima Muerte are said to lead solitary, lonely lives. They cannot have friendships, relationships, connections with community and social lives because she is an extremely jealous Goddess. You are only to be with her. She who protects you, nurtures you, defends you, kills for you and allows you to live. She is splendid with the powers, gifts, wealth and health that she gives but the price you pay is that you become hers. Not her child, her possession. Her snack. She feeds on all that which is hers and all that she bestows? Is for a limited time only. She takes it back and when you have outlived your usefulness to her and have brought her more people to corrupt? You slowly decay away and perish by odd and unforeseen or criminal circumstances. She is being fed quite regularly now with all the Drug Cartel wars, mass murders, random killings, corruption, greed, hunger, poverty and the like. It’s a proverbial banquet for her and she is getting her fill. Also of import is that she is not only Vampiric and Chthonic but she is also one of the few dieties that is a symbol of a hell mouth. After all she is a Primordial Earth Goddess, attributes of life, death and rebirth, and a devouring mother of the womb and the tomb. 

The Aztec Goddess of creation for the Aztecs was and is “Tonacacihuatl”. It is believed that it is she that Appeared to a Humble Mexican Indian named Juan Diego who told the priest of the town and the villagers of this Brown skinned girl who later would reveal herself to be the Virgin of Guadalupe. The Virgin of Guadalupe has more followers than Jesus and all of the Saints of Catholicism in Mexico. Because it is engrained since Aztec times that The Mother is the symbol of the divine sacred. La Santisima Muerte will and has capitalized on that and has used it to her advantage to her great success. The Followers of La Santisima Muerte have become a cult and slowly are becoming a fill blown religion or maybe better said “fringe religion”. Her power only held in check by The Virgin of Guadalupe or  Tonacacihuatl, the true Mother of the Mexican People. 

In Palo Mayombe there is another power that is stronger than La Santisima Muerte. Stronger than all the dark ancient or modern. They fear this spirit and obey his edicts with the fiercest loyalty. His Name in Palo Mayombe is “El Cristo Negro.” His name translates to “The Black Christ.” This Spirit is King of the Spirits of Palo Mayombe. All them must bow to him and him alone. To know him is to know his back story as well. He is Christ after the crucifixion who descended in to hell and freed the imprisoned, lost, incredulous, martyrs and saints from hell. The Christ that forced the powers and principalities of hell to bow before him as he freed the  imprisoned souls. This is the power of El Cristo Negro. However, He too  has a much older name and was known to the Aztecs. His was Known as “Tezcatlipoca” or the “Smoking Mirror” Tezcatlipoca was a feared God because he was a master of many powers, an ancient Aztec Polymath God who was the master of magic, night, war, Night winds, hurricanes, The North, Obsidian arrows, mirrors and stones, enmity, discord, rulership, divination, temptation, jaguars, sorcery, beauty, strife, Master of Machiavellian strategies (This is derived by another of his many nicknames or lesser names The “Enemy of both sides”), Sky and Earth. Tezcatlipoca Is wise and can outsmart and trick both the Gods and man and is known to be a trickster as well. Tezcatlipoca crossed swords, so to speak, with the Aztec God of civilization and light known as “Quetzalcoatl” The Feathered Serpent and won. As El Cristo Negro, Tezcatlipoca has unlimited power and is also being continuously fed in the most remotest of villages and regions in Latin America and has kept himself in large part hidden from public scrutiny. Anywhere El Cristo Negro is, La Santisima Muerte must bow. Where his power is, her power must yield. El Cristo Negro isn’t just the knowledge of good and evil, he is the wisdom and the power of both good and evil and the keeper of the deeper knowledge that Both Good and Evil evolve into each other becoming each other in a continuous cycle until creation transcends those paradigms for higher states of being and consciousness.