Description
In 1992 Smithsonian anthropologist Michael Atwood Mason traveled to Cuba for initiation as a clergyman into the Santería religion. Since then he has created an active oricha “area” and has initiated five others as priests. He’s a unprecedented combination: a scholar-practitioner who is equally fluent in his profession and his religion. Interweaving his roles as researcher and priest, Mason explores Santería as a recent phenomenon and provides an figuring out of its complexity thru his own experiences and the ones of its many practitioners. Balancing deftly between a devotee’s account of participation and an anthropologist’s theoretical analysis, Living Santería offers an original and insightful figuring out of this growing non secular tradition.