Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Obama's Mother-In-Law Practices Santeria

Well there are reports. But does it matter? Not a bit. Unless this is some kind of counter spin to the Christine O'Donnell/Witchcraft craziness.

And Santeria? I belonged to one of those groups once. Not exactly traditional Santeria though. It was designed to attract American Wiccans and fans of Aleister Crowley. In Chicago. On Halsted Street. Around 1975. The group had a book/herbal store and the services featured naked dancing girls. On the appropriate holidays.

You know if more Republicans switched to that religion they would have no trouble attracting hormone addled teens to services. Or voters to political rallies. Well among the men and appropriately disposed women anyway.

And if you dig deep, Santeria is sort of a paganism based very loosely on Catholicism. Which is a sort of Christianity loosely based on paganism rather than being a Christianity true to its Jewish roots. Not that there is anything wrong with that.

Well I knew some Christians once who celebrated all the major Jewish holidays and especially Passover. Those people had the right idea. Time to get back to the old time religion. These days? I’m mostly Jewish with a little Aleister Crowley thrown in for spice. It suits me. Any way the Hebrew comes in real handy when studying Crowley. Who might be considered something of a Kabbalist. The give away is the copious Hebrew in his book 777 And Other Qabalistic Writings of Aleister Crowley: Including Gematria & Sepher Sephiroth.Not for beginners. But very interesting. It is kind of a pagan Connections. Without all the explanatory text.

And my politics? I'm a libertarian Republican. Unless the Republicans piss me off. In such circumstances I might go so far as to vote for a Communist like Obama. In fact in 2004 I did vote for Obama.

Amazon has a few pages of books on Santeria.Should you need some more bedtime reading.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I like your term "libertarian Republican"; my husband calls himself a "paleoconservative". They may be related. I am of a similar bent, but because I consider myself to be a practitioner of Earth Spirituality, which is by its nature more tolerant of everyone unless they are Christian (I plan to discuss this in a blog of my own) I am by definition more *ick* "liberal."

You are right that your Santeria group in Chicago was one in name only: in fact, it sounds pretty healy-feely to me. I've never seen naked dancing girls at a missa. But Santeria is an afro-caribbean religion, brought over from Africa with slaves. It obtained its thin veneer of Catholicism because their masters said they must worship their God: the slaves obliged, but kept their pots and other devices behind the scenes. In all reality, Santeria is the heritage of every African-American who can trace their roots back to the slaves brought from West Africa. AND it has been determined by the Supreme Court (as if they have the knowledge and smarts--or the right-- to make such pronouncements) to be a "legitimate" religion. People need to be reminded of this.

I don't know if the revelation that Michelle Obama's mom practices Santeria was in direct response to Christine O'Donnell's bubble-headed remarks about witchcraft and satanism, but what has surfaced is the ugly truth that many Americans think that religious freedom means we can have 30 different kinds of Christians but nothing else, and that the news media--liberal and conservative alike-vacillates between near-horror and hurtful ridicule. It is disgusting.

Oh, and I voted for Obama too. What was I thinking?

Sophia

Neil said...

...but what has surfaced is the ugly truth that many Americans think that religious freedom means we can have 30 different kinds of Christians but nothing else...

Hardly. What has surfaced is that the reigning media and our oh-so-tolerant Progressives think that "Americans think that religious freedom means we can have 30 different kinds of Christians but nothing else".

I will refrain from commenting overmuch on the sheer ignorant hatred behind the statement "tolerant of everyone unless they are Christian".