Divine Ordinances

It is easy to forget, within the comfortable landscape of social religions, that the metaphysical and the practical are fused in a way of life throughout many cultures, and this way of life is governed not by the social but by a transcendent reality, often configured as God. Look, for example, at a religion—a term indicating a distinct practice only, it seems, in recent Western history—that is not part of the mainstream in Western life. The religion (or way of life) is Santería, and a santero, Ernesto Pichardo, began transforming it in 1974 from an underground practice held in private homes to the church of the Lukumí Babalu Aye in Hialeah, Florida. Pichardo incorporated his church that year as a prelude to making it the first public institution in Osha (the African term for the religion). He was guided by intuitions or what he calls "supernatural indications" that this public manifestation of Osha was part of the family mission predicted before his birth by a Yoruba priest in Cuba. Pichardo wanted to provide a venue that could express the consciousness of Osha in a public manner.1KeywordsPublic ReasonSacred TextSlave TradeLiberal Political TheoryAnimal SacrificeThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Aesthetics · Art · Consciousness · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Institution · Mainstream · Metaphysics · Political science · Politics · Public life · Religious life · Social life · Social science · Sociology · Theology · Yoruba · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History · Law · Philosophy · Religion, Society, and Development · Religious studies

• The African Religions of Brazil

  Roger Bastide•The African religions of Brazil•2007

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