Lucumi Divination, the Mythic World and the Management of Misfortune

Authors

  • George Brandon City College of New York

Keywords:

Popular religion, ethnomedicine, Afro-Caribbean, divination, symbolic healing, Santeria

Abstract

This paper examines Lucumi healing practices in re
lation to anthropological understandings of how symbolic heal
ing works. This essay focuses upon divination because so much
that is fundamental to the process of symbolic healing in Lucumi
religion occurs during divination. After tracing the evolution of
Lucumi Orisha worship, I describe Lucumi etiological theory,
its basic categories of misfortune and how interaction between
cowrie shell diviners and their clients sets people on the road
to healing. After this I compare Lucumi divination practices
with those of two other healer types who also use cowries in
divination.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Downloads

Published

2012-11-30

How to Cite

Brandon, G. (2012). Lucumi Divination, the Mythic World and the Management of Misfortune. Anthropologica, 54(2), 167–188. Retrieved from https://cas-sca.journals.uvic.ca/index.php/anthropologica/article/view/878

Issue

Vol. 54 No. 2 (2012): Good Spirit, Good Medicine: Religious Foundations of Healing in the Caribbean

Section

Thematic Section:

License

Copyright (c) 2012 George Brandon

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Authors contributing to Anthropologica agree to release their articles under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 Unported license. This licence allows anyone to share their work (copy, distribute, transmit) and to adapt it for non-commercial purposes provided that appropriate attribution is given, and that in the event of reuse or distribution, the terms of this license are made clear.

Authors retain copyright of their work and grant the journal right of first publication.

Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.