Skeletons and Goddesses: The Divine Feminine in the Rituals of Death
Andrew Chesnut2025, Rogue's Substack
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Abstract
Santa Muerte, often translated as “Holy Death,” represents another contemporary manifestation of the divine feminine that has captured the devotion of millions in Mexico, the United States, and Central America. Devoted to Death: Santa Muerte, the Skeleton Saint, a book by R. Andrew Chesnut, offers an in-depth examination of this folk saint’s origins, rituals, and evolving social significance.
Related papers
Devoted to Death: Santa Muerte, the Skeleton Saint (Oxford University Press)
Oxford University Press, 2017
R. Andrew Chesnut offers a fascinating portrayal of Santa Muerte, a skeleton saint whose cult has attracted millions of devotees over the past decade. Although condemned by mainstream churches, this folk saint's supernatural powers appeal to millions of Latin Americans and immigrants in the U.S. Devotees believe the Bony Lady (as she is affectionately called) to be the fastest and most effective miracle worker, and as such, her statuettes and paraphernalia now outsell those of the Virgin of Guadalupe and Saint Jude, two other giants of Mexican religiosity. In particular, Chesnut shows Santa Muerte has become the patron saint of drug traffickers, playing an important role as protector of peddlers of crystal meth and marijuana; DEA agents and Mexican police often find her altars in the safe houses of drug smugglers. Yet Saint Death plays other important roles: she is a supernatural healer, love doctor, money-maker, lawyer, and angel of death. She has become without doubt one of the most popular and powerful saints on both the Mexican and American religious landscapes.
Death is Women’s Work: Santa Muerte, a Folk Saint and Her Female Followers
International Journal of Religion in Latin America, 2020
Santa Muerte is a new religious movement that originated in Mexico. It centers on devotion to death. It has come under fire from the Catholic Church, the Mexican State, and mass media across the Americas. In misrepresentations that are often racist, and sexist, Santa Muerte has been portrayed by the above institutions as a ‘narco-saint’, that is a saint worshiped by narcotraffickers, and the religion portrayed as one that only violent, barbaric males follow This article counters this erroneous depiction suggesting that devotion to death is women's work. I detail how Santa Muerte has long been appealed to by women who have been at the fulcrum of the expansion of the movement. I describe how knowledge of Santa Muerte continues to be germinated by women who through gynocentric thanatological praxis are empowered and fashion spaces in which to deal with the violence, precarity and poverty that riddles the Mexican post-colony.
Foreword to DEVOTED TO DEATH: SANTA MUERTE A SKELETON SAINT
DEVOTED TO DEATH: SANTA MUERTE A SKELETON SAINT, 2020
Foreword to the 2020 edition of the book by R. Andrew Chesnut Also featured on the Global Catholic Review
Death as a Woman: Santa Muerte and Religious ’Othering’ in Mexico
In Anthony Patterson & Marilena Zackheos (eds.), Vile Women: Female Evil in Fact, Fiction and Mythology, 2014
During the past decade, worship of the Mexican folk saint Santa Muerte has been on the rise. Santa Muerte, literally translated as ‘Holy Death’ or ‘Saint Death,’ is thought to be the female personification of death, and is usually depicted as a skeletal figure robed in black, red or white and carrying a scythe. Although a reverence for death has long been part of traditional Mexican culture, exemplified by the hugely popular celebrations of Día de los Muertos (The Day of the Dead), Santa Muerte is a highly controversial figure. Persecuted and condemned as satanic by the Catholic Church, the skeleton saint is strongly connected to the lower classes and criminal elements of Mexico. Moreover, veneration of her by several well-known criminals and drug cartel members as well as sensationalistic news reports linking Santa Muerte worship to murder and human sacrifice have added to her sinister reputation. There are also indications that the Santa Muerte cult can provide a spiritual framework that legitimises acts of extreme brutality. However, the Catholic establishment’s demonization of Santa Muerte is also part of a religious power struggle, as most members of her cult invoke her aid for benevolent ends. Candles, statues, incense and rosaries connected to Santa Muerte are available in botanicas and stores selling Mexican imports. She is also considered a protector of homosexual, bisexual and transgender people, and is often invoked in same-sex marriage ceremonies in Mexico. Furthermore, she is strongly associated with love, and often invoked by women wishing either to punish or bring back wayward lovers or unfaithful husbands. This chapter will introduce this feared and beloved folk saint and attempt to explain the growing popularity of this allegedly ‘evil’ figure, examining how and why Santa Muerte is constructed as an ‘Other’ of the Catholic Church and what this means for those who venerate her. I will also analyse how perceptions of what constitutes ‘authentic’ religion versus superstition or witchcraft are socially constructed and shaped by power relations.
Syncretic Santa Muerte: Holy Death and Religious Bricolage
RELIGIONS, 2021
In this article, we trace the syncretic origins and development of the new religious movement centered on the Mexican folk saint of death, Santa Muerte. We explore how she was born of the syncretic association of the Spanish Catholic Grim Reapress and Pre-Columbian Indigenous thanatologies in the colonial era. Through further religious bricolage in the post-colony, we describe how as the new religious movement rapidly expanded it integrated elements of other religious traditions, namely Afro-Cuban Santeria and Palo Mayombe, New Age beliefs and practices, and even Wicca. In contrast to much of the Eurocentric scholarship on Santa Muerte, we posit that both the Skeleton Saint’s origins and contemporary devotional framework cannot be comprehended without considering the significant influence of Indigenous death deities who formed part of holistic ontologies that starkly contrasted with the dualistic absolutism of European Catholicism in which life and death were viewed as stark polarities. We also demonstrate how across time the liminal power of death as a supernatural female figure has proved especially appealing to marginalized socioeconomic groups.
Holy Death in the Time of Coronavirus: Santa Muerte, the Salubrious Saint
Journal of Religion in Latin America, 2020
As Santa Muerte prayer cards and candles circulate in Mexico with petitions of protection against COVID-19, we consider death as doctor in these tumultuous times proving that the folk saint of death is not solely a narco-saint, as the press depicts, but is supplicated for miracles of COVID healing and protection from the virus. We not only reveal the importance of religion for coping with pandemics but also focus on the notion of death as healing and as a giver of life. We decolonize knowledge of Santa Muerte and explore the saint's syncretic origins, hailing not only from the European Grim Reaper during times of plague but also from Indigenous thanatological episte-mologies that account for her dual powers of gifting life and also doling out death.
The African Roots of la Santa Muerte
When analyzing the "cult" of Santa Muerte, a skeleton "saint" that has exploded in popularity in Mexico and the U.S. over the last thirty years, many correlations with African Diasporan religious traditions are observable. 1 These traditions include Vodou, Santería, Palo Monte Mayombe, Obeah, and Spiritism, and the influence of these African derived syncretic traditions to the creation and veneration of the skeleton saint of Santa Muerte has been under investigated to date. 2 While dissecting syncretic traditions is never straight-forward, clear cut, or easy, this paper will build upon previous research done on the origins, representation, and ritual associated with the Santa Muerte cult in order to explore the African diasporan characteristics and correlations that may have influenced its creation and evolution. I will also comment on the similarities observable in the syncretic processes that fueled the creation of the African diasporan traditions and those that yielded the Santa Muerte cult. It is important to note, as Mason does, that these "syncretic traditions" are not the result of some vague and indiscriminate syncretic process, but of engaged and active practitioners being "syncretic" in the ways that they incorporate disparate ideas into their ritual practice; when viewed in this way, syncretism is simply a term used to describe a "standard aspect of all cultural processes in which different systems of meaning-making are reconciled to some degree". 3 1 I used the figure of thirty years due to the fact that Thompson wrote about its explosion in popularity in 1998 and and Barnhouse wrote about the cult's expansion into America in 1982.
SANTA MUERTE, PROTECT ION, AND DESAMPARO A View from a Mexico City Altar
From the mid-1990s, devotion to Santa Muerte (Saint Death) became highly visible, not only in Mexico but also in the United States. Its evolution has coincided with the expansion of organized crime, creating the impression that the icon belongs to a coherent "narco-culture." This article contextualizes ritual practices at a single altar in Tepito, a Mexico City neighborhood historically specialized in informal and illegal commerce. Its monthly prayer service, which dates to September 2001, now balances the needs of its congregation with a kind of response to accusations against devotees in the mass media. Ironically, the range of gestures that share Santa Muerte iconography encompasses laments and high-minded indignation over blanket attribution of violent intentions to a population, but also a language for making threats. The average devotee is always affected by the likelihood that new acts of violence will be styled as religious.
'La Santa Muerte in Mexico: History, Devotion, and Society'
Hispanic American Historical Review, 2020
Edited by Wil G. Pansters. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2019.
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Supplicating Santa Muerte (Saint Death): Fierce Female Folk Saint as Source of Empowerment for Mexican Indigenous Women
Global Catholic Review, 2019
Devotion has become a means for Indigenous women to empower themselves in the face of inequity, state exclusion, discrimination, and violence, thereby creating new ways of being modern Mexican mothers.
Autoethnography of Holy Death: Belief, Dividuality, and Family in the Study of Santa Muerte
Through an autoethnographic account that interweaves academic observations, my story of how I came to study Santa Muerte in Mexico and the entangled, emotive tale of Abby, a Santa Muerte devotee whom I grew very close to, I discuss the topic of belief in the ethnography of the occult and the "politics of integration", derisively referred to "as going native". I reveal how being an ethnographer of the Mexican female folk saint of death has taught me the necessity of dividuality and embracing belief in both the epistemological worlds of academia and the occult. I argue that slipping fluidly between the realm of science and the cosmos of magic has given me access not only to arcane knowledge and networks of practitioners but also through shared experiences of participatory consciousness with devotees of death during our rituals, proffered unique experiences, and new insights through intersubjectivity and interexperience, allowing me to understand the mystical power of Death Herself.
The Scythe and the Pentagram: Santa Muerte from Folk Catholicism to Occultism
Religions, 2017
Santa Muerte is establishing a presence among practitioners of contemporary occultism in Europe and North America. The occult milieu is highly different from the Mexican cult of Santa Muerte, having a strong heritage of secrecy and tradition as social capital and being mostly middle-class in orientation. Nonetheless, this Catholic folk saint with a mostly pragmatic, popular, and grassroots cult is becoming increasingly popular among occultists. Based on a survey of three recent books on Santa Muerte geared towards an Anglophone, occult audience, it is therefore the aim of this article to understand how and why the Skeleton Saint is attracting adherents in the occult milieu, by analyzing the underlying causes of this growing trend, as well as the conditions shaping it. It is the overall argument of this article that the beginning reception of Santa Muerte in occultism is a result of perceived needs and demands specific to the occult milieu rather than characteristics inherent in the symbol itself, and that an analysis of the ways in which she is spreading outside of her original sociocultural context must be guided by an understanding of the novel one she is integrated in.
Santa Muerte: Dangerous superstition or empowering guardian?
U.S. Catholic, 2023
While the Bony Lady is condemned as heretical by both the Catholic and Protestant churches in Mexico, she has gained a massive following among marginalized groups, such as the urban poor, LGBTQ communities, and those involved in illicit activities in Mexico, Central America, and the United States. The folk saint of death is important to these groups because she provides a sense of empowerment, identity, solace, and protection amid social and economic tribulations. One primary reason why Santa Muerte is popular among less advantaged groups is her extreme inclusiveness; she is the saint who never discriminates. Christian denominations have often marginalized certain groups due to sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, or involvement in illegal activities. Santa Muerte, in contrast, offers a spiritual path that does not discriminate. Anyone, regardless of their background or lifestyle, can turn to the skeleton saint for protection, solace, and guidance.
The Church's life-and-death struggle with Santa Muerte
The Catholic Herald (London), 2019
The Church in the Americas is sounding the alarm over a macabre new devotion To the great consternation of the Church, over the past 17 years veneration of a Mexican folk saint that personies death has become the fastest-growing new religious movement in the West. At this point there are no systematic surveys of the precise number of Santa Muerte devotees, but based on 10 years of research in Mexico and the US, we estimate there are some 10 to 12 million followers, with a large majority in Mexico and a signicant presence in the United States and Central America. However, the skeletal folk saint, whose name translates into English as both Saint Death and Holy Death, now has followers across the globe, including in the UK, where there are sufcient devotees to support a Facebook group specically for British followers. As the name would indicate, Santa Muerte is a Mexican folk saint who personies death. Whether as a plaster statue, votive candle, gold medallion or prayer card, she is most often depicted as a female Grim Reaper, wielding the same scythe and wearing a shroud similar to that of her male counterpart. She is also frequently shown with an owl, which in Mesoamerican traditions symbolises death. Unlike ofcial saints, who have been canonised by the Catholic Church, folk saints are spirits of the dead considered holy by the local populace for their miracle-working powers. In Mexico and Latin America such folk saints as Niño Fidencio, Jesus Malverde, Maximon and San La Muerte (the Argentine counterpart of Santa Muerte) command widespread devotion and are often invoked more than the ofcial saints. These folk saints are united to their devotees by nationality, cultural afnities,
Santa Muerte: The Fastest-Growing New Religious Movement
Encyclopedia of Latin American Religions (Springer), 2018
Healed by Death: Santa Muerte, the Curandera
Movements, Institutions, and Allegiance (Brill), 2016
Drawing on both European and Mexican cultural antecedents in which death possesses awesome curing powers and tapping into the well-established tradition of saints (both canonised and folk) who heal through faith, Santa Muerte in just over a decade has become one of the greatest healers on the Mexican religious landscape
How did death become a saint in Mexico?
Ethnos, 2014
Over the last decade, the cult of La Santa Muerte (St Death) has attracted a remarkable number of followers in Mexico and the USA. Whereas the social context of her devotees, who tend to live on the fringes of society, has attracted ample attention from scholars and journalists, one of the principal puzzles is still how a skeleton image of death has come to be seen as a saint by large numbers of Catholics. How is it possible for this figure to embrace such antagonistic qualities as death and sainthood in a Christian context? In this semiotic-material exploration of the image's genealogy, I suggest that La Santa Muerte should be seen as a coalescing of two radically distinct images of death: the popular-secular Catrina and the occult-biblical Santísima Muerte. The St Death venerated today encompasses the ambiguities of the two and creates an exceptionally vibrant and popular Catholic image.
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