Santa Muerte

  

Skeleton Saint: The Literal Cult of Death

A Christian Education Forum for Pub Theology

Who is Santa Muerte?

She is, quite simply, Death. While some would claim her as once human, and others as an angel, for most of her devotees she is the incarnation of death itself. While she had been worshipped clandestinely since the mid-twentieth century, her first public shrine appeared in Mexico City in 2001. Since then, devotion to her has spread throughout North America to become one of the world’s fastest growing religious movements.

Is she Christian?

Santa Muerte straddles the border between folk Catholicism and Mexican neopaganism. Many who venerate her consider themselves to be good Roman Catholics. Others want nothing to do with the Church, yet nonetheless ape Christian forms. The most popular image of Santa Muerte presents her as an aspect or shadow of the Virgin of Guadalupe. There are Santa Muerte rosaries, novena candles, pietas, and more. It should be noted that both Catholic and Evangelical religious leaders have condemned her worship.

Is she Aztec?

Many believe that Santa Muerte is a modern reëmergence of an Aztec goddess, Mictecacihuatl, whose cold womb holds the dead for rebirth in the world to come. As with the Virgin of Guadalupe, she combines Catholic and Native imagery. It is just as likely, however, that she is of Spanish origin, as Spaniards already had a tradition of a female Grim Reaper. Regardless of whence she comes, all cultures know Death.

Why is she considered to be so powerful?

Death touches everything. Her devotion proves especially strong among those with dangerous professions: narcotics traffickers, sex workers, police, military, gang members, and those with nocturnal employment. For devout Catholics, Death even held the Son of God for three days in the tomb, did she not? The different colors of her raiment indicate different aspects of her dominion: red, white, gold, black, green, &c.

What is her appeal?

Death is amoral. Rich and poor, young and old, all are equal in death. She accepts all sinners. So does Christ, of course, but He bids us go and sin no more. Santa Muerte does not care. You might say that her approach to her followers is mercenary: you scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours. She offers benefits here and now, not salvation. This nonjudgmental attitude, more magic than religion, allows the unrepentant to approach.

What is Death?

Unlike Judaism and Islam, Christianity has no designated Angel of Death. In Christian theology, death is not a thing but simply an absence of life. God didn’t create death because death has no substance: it is a void, a lack, an emptiness. Yet Christ transforms death by filling it. Could she now be St Francis’ “Sweet Sister Death”? Is she in Christ what she was always meant to be: a principle of transformation, from glory unto glory?