#but its also NOT your place to assume all religious queers are abused by their religion

[groovyfags]

Religious queers are holy and loved

Religious queers are not sad or misguided or in need of saving

Your own issues with (almost always Christian) religious trauma do not give you a key to lash out laterally at religious queers or assume they're being hurt or abused by their beliefs

[metanoiamorii]

Wip Re-Introduction: A Rope In Hand

❛Horror is like a serpent; always shedding its skin, always changing. And it will always come back. It can’t be hidden away like the guilty secrets we try to keep in our subconscious.❜

♧ Title: A Rope In Hand [ARIH]

♧ Status: First Drafting

♧ Point of View: Third Person, flexible between a few

♧ Genre: Dark Fantasy, Supernatural, LGBTQ+, Action, Drama

♧ Warnings: This story revolves around the occult. There will be talk of witch hunts and trials and cults. There will be torture methods used to gain confessions, and these methods will be justified under religious belief. There will be toxic and abusive relationships, particularly family; finding an escape from them, and healing from the trauma. There will be homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, and colonization. There will be major character deaths, but I can spoil after the book ends the main characters do get a happy ending. Each chapter and scene posted will have personalized warnings, but these are the main things to expect.

♧ Featuring: The majority of the characters will be LGBTQ+, from pansexual, homosexual, to asexual; genderfluid, agender/nonbinary, and transgender. Each character is complex and morally grey. Yes, they will do things that are blatantly terrible, or actively good. Overall, they will be morally grey and questionable at best. There will be complex world-building, from both the universe it takes place in, and the religious pantheons brought up. The religions brought up will be polytheistic and animism-themed. The romance between the major characters will be slow-burn enemies to friend to lovers, and them learning to love themselves through one another. There will be an exploration on generational healing, and unlearning toxic, and bias believes.

♧ Setting: The setting is influenced by Victorian London, and Medieval Ireland. There will be mention of other places, primarily western Europe, the Ottoman Empire, Ancient Rome, Eastern Asia, and Napoleonic France.

♧ Synopsis:

In the town of Arkaley, in the northwest of the Duchy of Ruairc, the people have been plagued by bad fortune and crime. Attacks of bandits on the road, raids from pirates on the shores, untimely deaths of children and young women, elected officials coming out corrupt; there is no end in Arkaley of the suffering the locals endure.

Rationally, to explain such a bad string of luck, there is only one possible explanation: Witchcraft.

The Duchy of Ruairc already has a history of witchcraft: the Ó Ruaircs turned out to be witches, the Abondé incident in Salem, the Liathain incident in Trakee; the Ruaircs have their record. Perfectly acceptable for everyone to assume the worse of the Ruairish, as they have proved to be nothing but.

To prove his worth, the young Reverend Prudence Clemency Frye, takes up the task of quelling this coven of witches and heading this witch-hunt. Young and naïve, witch only knowledge from books and little hands-on experience, he’s unprepared for this challenge. When he finally leaves the town, well… everyone would rather put this incident behind them.

♧ Tease:

My darling dear, a knave so clear

You appear, so bravely near;

Do you hear my darling dear, sneers of austere jeers?

Behave, my dear, when I am near;

For peers will lear, in their fear,

Allow me o' dear our persevere

So my fave you appear

And volunteer a slave so dear 

in an atmosphere we fear.

my darling dear, wave so clear

Depravely as we leave, and give a souvenir;

My lips to yours, as you crave in these fallin' years. 

Be brave darling dear, and give into hearts o' queer.

For mine you be, your darling dear, 

To the stars you have swore in love, so crystal clear.

My peers shall sneer, but whore I be, and you I crave

Oh so bare. slurs and glares, just listen to my prayers.

Kiss me love, and leave o'they to a'crave 

In this atmosphere that we fear

Their own, o' pure, knave so dear.

♧ Excerpt:

".... This is wrong." Prudence finds the words slipping from his lips, voice a quiet whisper; a breathless tone of voice. He allows his fingertips to falter against scarred skin, watching as Mastema turned his cheek, he pressed himself into the palm of Prudence's hand. Eyes closed, a smile curled on his face. Prudence couldn't help but smile at the scene, but slowly, slowly, slowly, he rescinded his hand; breaking the hold.

"Revered..." Matching his voice, Mastema replied. Maintaining such a soft voice, as he shifted himself forward on the bed. One foot to the ground, the other drawn beneath himself. Over Prudence he leaned, resting one palm to the sheets, the other lifting to seize Prudence's hand before he could recoil back. "You have made me feel something in which I've never felt before..."

From where he laid, Prudence could only form a soft frown. He knew he could draw his hand back, the grip was far from tight. But he didn't. He laid there, allowing Mastema to hold his hand. "... This is wrong, Mastema."

Mastema frowned; he matched the reaction Prudence wore. Through it, he forced a half-smile, tightening his grip on the other's hand, and forward he brought Prudence's hands to kiss the knuckles. "... If this is wrong, I do not wish to be right."

At the response, Prudence shook his head. "It is not for us to be right or wrong, the gods—"

At the angle he sat, Mastema shifted once more. He dropped Prudence's hand, to lean forward; to lean in close. Both of his palms found the other's cheek, as he touched their foreheads to one another. "... Do not force your will onto another." In that soft whisper, he spoke. Eyes closed, breath drawn in. "Is that not a Commandment of our Creator?"

"I..." Prudence faltered. In, he drew his breath, to try to steady himself. "... I did not take you for the religious sorts."

"I'm not." Mastema all too quickly retorted. But as he was, he laid; this proximity. "But you are."

♧ Characters:

The Order of Witchesbane

Prudence Clemency Frye; The Reverend

Half Fae/Half Human • Intersex • Genderfluid • He/They • Homosexual • Homo-demiromantic

The bastard son of Lord Zachariah Frye. Raised by his father, with his mother dying young, he took to following in his footsteps. He became a religious young man and an active witch-hunter. A part of him desires his father’s acceptance, his praises; the other part despises his father and everything the man stands for. In recent years, he has joined the De La Cruz household, becoming an apprentice beneath the famous Witch’s Advocate; upholding the beliefs that not every witch is evil and has foul intentions, and the ones that mean harm are the only ones that should be hunted.

Zachariah Frye; The Bloodhound

Human • Male • He/Him • Bicurious • Aromantic

The oldest living member of the Order. Now he is the man that holds the face of the Order, who you think of when they come to mind. Cold. Vindictive. Despotic. Violent. He is not a good man. He is firm in his beliefs and stubborn to change. Once his mind is made up, he cannot be reasoned with. He is blindly convinced of his beliefs and his cause to eradicate every living witch, unfazed if he has to fill a few innocent thousands in the process.

Calisto Ferzan Hermengildo Melchior Lorencio De La Cruz; The Witch’s Advocate

Half Fae/Half Human • Amab • Nonbinary • Genderfluid • He/They • Asexual • Aromantic

A witch-hunter in title alone, Calisto has been making enemies since he could first talk. He’s always enjoyed being the underdog, going against the expectations of society, being ridiculed by his peers. The sole reason? Proving them wrong. To ridicule his own peers for their outdated beliefs, he’s taken to defending witches, proving them innocent of their ‘crimes’, and going on to help them to set up a life in a country more accepting of witchcraft

The servant of Calisto, never seen far from his side. He is a servant in name alone and is more-or-less an assassin, a hitman for Calisto. Held in contempt by Athylian society for being a foreigner, he often treated by others more as a slave than a servant. To help be unseen, to help the De La Cruz Household, Michelotto endures the treatment and goes as far to be perceived as ignorant, alongside him being born a mute. Keeping his true intents and intelligence duly guarded, only a handful are aware he is also a witch.

Myk'loumihr [Michelotto Dougal] Siavash; The Man-Servant

Witch; Amab • Agender • He/They • Asexual • Aromantic

Austin Duvine; The Lord Without A Ring

Half-Human/Half Fae • Amab • Nonbinary • He/They • Pansexual • Demiromantic

One of the younger members of the order, Austin relies on his father's wealth and name. He doesn't care for responsibilities, he doesn't care for hard work. He's a playboy at heart. He's fit to hold social events, and use his natural talent to gib and fib his way through life. He'll keep his mixed feelings to himself, struggling with doing the right thing or upholding tradition.

Alistair Lavine; The Witchfinder General

Human • Amab • Agender • He/They • Bicurious • Aromantic

The best friend to Zachariah and his right hand. Where Zachariah is business and lacks charms, Alistair can charm a crowd and hold their attention. He knows how to feign being an ideal human, without letting on his own bloodlust; he's a monster in human skin. At the end of the day, unlike Zachariah, Alistair does have morals and standards he will abide by, even if they come back to ruin him.

━━━━━━━━━━

The Vakari Coven

Ausrine Baoghal; The Lady

Witch • Female • She/Her • Bisexual • Aromantic

The woman in charge of the town, widowed and inheriting the right to rule as her husband had no heirs. She is a manipulative and dangerous woman, eager to commit any sin or crime for more power. She, in truth, cares only for herself and would feel no remorse if she had to turn on one of her coven to further her own agenda.

The magistrate and also the chief policeman of the town. He maintains a  calm, but manipulative personality. As a front, he presents himself to be fair and just, liked and favored by the people for genuinely caring for them. While in truth he has his own heinous and sinister agenda, aiding Ausrine in her plans.

Leary O'Laoghaire; The Magistrate

Witch • Male • He/Him • Bicurious • Aromantic

The oldest member of the coven, Dairine lives under the guise of an elderly woman, who lives alone with her children and grandchildren already leaving her to live their own lives. She is a kind and understanding woman and cares for the younger witches in the coven. She will not support Baríon with her agenda, nor does she care for the servant girl, she even despises the so-called ally Ausrine claims to have and who they all adhere to.

Dairine Ó Séaghdha; The Crone

Witch • Afab • Agender • She/They • Asexual • Aromantic

The acting servant of Barion, Anisha’s true loyalties lie elsewhere. She stays within the town, serving the coven while acting as the eyes and ears of someone, the person who is truly pulling the strings. She is the one to relay information and letters between the coven and her master.  She is a quiet woman, that keeps her head down and her mind to herself. She only shows her true, confident and demanding, nature behind closed doors with the coven when they dare to question her.

Anisha Kaur; The Servant

Witch • Afab • Demigirl • She/They • Asexual • Aromantic

The charming son of Leary. Many whisper that is part fae, due to his charm, if it’s true or not many are unaware. He is a very sophisticated young man, that has managed to wrap the entire town around his finger. While on the surface he is alike his father is a caring, compassionate, charming young man, something sinister brews beneath. He is devious, demanding, domineering.

Nathir O'Laoghaire; The Magistrate’s Son

Half-Witch/Half-Fae • Amab  • Agender • He/Him • Bisexual • Aromantic

Being the baker's daughter, Liannah helps around the bakery and family business. Unlike the company she keeps, she is a reserved young woman. She is polite and maintains her manners with whomever she is dealing with. She has the patience of a saint and rarely loses her cool. Liannah is a woman with a calm demeanor about her, being a woman many are comfortable around due to her peaceful and calm aura.

Liannah Ó Buachalla; The Baker’s Daughter

Witch • Afab • Genderfluid • She/They • Asexual • Panromantic

Ausrine's bastard son she had with a spirit she bargained with for more power. Since he was young, he was raised by the servants of the house, and the coven, over his own mother; the two have more of a business relationship over a family one. Since he cares less about what his mother does, he spends his time with Liannah and Reyes, either at the bakery or getting into trouble somewhere. With Reyes as an influence, Mastema is a flirtatious man that enjoys scandals and making the most of life

Mastema Baoghal; The Knave

Half-Witch/Half-Spirit • Amab • Genderfluid • He/They • Pansexual • Demiromantic

Rochan Misra; The Charlatan

Half-Witch/Half-Spirit • Amab • Queer • He/She • Pansexual • Aromantic

A foreigner to the Coven, born and raised in the Duchy of Incali. At a young age, he became a traveling charlatan, recently settling within the coven only as he befriended Liannah and Mastema and enjoyed their company. Now, he is the local bad influence: scamming locals out of their money at the taverns, wooing and seducing young men and ladies alike, always trespassing and vandalizing something. He is trouble but has a heart of gold when it matters.

ARIH: : @hekat-ie, @writings-of-a-narwhal, @silent-creed

━━━━━━━━━━

Taglist:

General: @endlesshourglass, @writerray, @poore-choice-of-words, @alexwritesfiction, @primusesgiantmetalballbearings

Both: @cecilsstorycorner, @little-boats-on-a-lake, @hazard-writes, @egg-shark

[a-room-of-my-own]

Hi! Did you see the NewStasteman interview with Judith Butler? The way she framed the whole debate about gender is so depressing, I cannot believe it... And that's without going into the Rowling debate, the more I read about it on Twitter and tumblr and the most depressed I get. How can womanhood be reduced to a feeling anyone can claim?

https://www.newstatesman.com/international/2020/09/judith-butler-culture-wars-jk-rowling-and-living-anti-intellectual-times

I had not seen it so thank you for giving me the opportunity to read it. She’s really manipulative and that’s pretty scary honestly. I picked up a few examples to show you 

“I want to first question whether trans-exclusionary feminists are really the same as mainstream feminists. (…) I want to first question whether trans-exclusionary feminists are really the same as mainstream feminists. (…)I think it is actually a fringe movement that is seeking to speak in the name of the mainstream, and that our responsibility is to refuse to let that happen.  

It’s “our” responsibility to act on something she cannot prove? It’s quite easy to observe that trans-activists are an active minority within the feminist movement. On the other hand, it’s much harder to prove than most people support modern trans-activism in all its implications. She doesn’t give any source, proof or figures to support her claim but ask people to fight for it, nevertheless. That’s faith, not fact. 

If we look closely at the example that you characterise as “mainstream” [the problem of men claiming to be trans to access women’s space] we can see that a domain of fantasy is at work, one which reflects more about the feminist who has such a fear than any actually existing situation in trans life. 

Then again, no proof, when many gender critical bloggers have lists of dozens of examples of men using self-ID to access bathrooms, women’s shelters, women’s prisons, some of them sex offenders.  

The feminist who holds such a view presumes that the penis does define the person, and that anyone with a penis would identify as a woman for the purposes of entering such changing rooms and posing a threat to the women inside. It assumes that the penis is the threat, or that any person who has a penis who identifies as a woman is engaging in a base, deceitful, and harmful form of disguise. This is a rich fantasy, and one that comes from powerful fears, but it does not describe a social reality. 

That’s a lot of words to call women who are afraid of men “hysterical”. #sorority 

Trans women are often discriminated against in men’s bathrooms, and their modes of self-identification are ways of describing a lived reality, one that cannot be captured or regulated by the fantasies brought to bear upon them. The fact that such fantasies pass as public argument is itself cause for worry. 

Word salad that could be translated like this: our priority shouldn’t be protecting women from men, it should be accommodating men, because #notallmen are predators, so it would be very unfair to them, uwu. Men’s concerns should always be considered while women who are afraid are irrational. 

I am not aware that terf is used as a slur.  

I’m 99% sure that’s a lie, but okay. 

I wonder what name self-declared feminists who wish to exclude trans women from women's spaces would be called? If they do favour exclusion, why not call them exclusionary? 

Women who want to have spaces without men should be called exclusionary, because we define women based on their relationship with men and how they include them. Suuuuure. 

If they understand themselves as belonging to that strain of radical feminism that opposes gender reassignment, why not call them radical feminists? My only regret is that there was a movement of radical sexual freedom that once travelled under the name of radical feminism, but it has sadly morphed into a campaign to pathologise trans and gender non-conforming peoples. 

We’re not the ones telling you can cure a psychological problem with cross-sex hormones and amputations, but we are the one pathologizing trans and GNC people. That’s hi-la-rious.  

My sense is that we have to renew the feminist commitment to gender equality and gender freedom in order to affirm the complexity of gendered lives as they are currently being lived. 

Meaningless word salad > "women should let men redefine the word woman as they please"

Let us be clear that the debate here [between people who support JKR and others] is not between feminists and trans activists. There are trans-affirmative feminists, and many trans people are also committed feminists. So one clear problem is the framing that acts as if the debate is between feminists and trans people. It is not. One reason to militate against this framing is because trans activism is linked to queer activism and to feminist legacies that remain very alive today. 

TLDR: Real feminist can only be trans-supporters. 

Feminism has always been committed to the proposition that the social meanings of what it is to be a man or a woman are not yet settled. We tell histories about what it meant to be a woman at a certain time and place, and we track the transformation of those categories over time.  

That’s gender for you Judith, not biological sex. Social identities vary, biological sex is a constant. Saying that isn't essentialism.

We depend on gender as a historical category, and that means we do not yet know all the ways it may come to signify, and we are open to new understandings of its social meanings. It would be a disaster for feminism to return either to a strictly biological understanding of gender or to reduce social conduct to a body part or to impose fearful fantasies, their own anxieties, on trans women...  

“Women who are afraid of men are irrational” third instalment.  

Their abiding and very real sense of gender ought to be recognised socially and publicly as a relatively simple matter of according another human dignity. The trans-exclusionary radical feminist position attacks the dignity of trans people.   

Men are whoever they say they are, women are whoever men say they are.  

One does not have to be a woman to be a feminist, and we should not confuse the categories. Men who are feminists, non-binary and trans people who are feminists, are part of the movement if they hold to the basic propositions of freedom and equality that are part of any feminist political struggle.  

Many feminists consider that men can only be feminist allies, so the debate is clearly not settled.  

When laws and social policies represent women, they make tacit decisions about who counts as a woman, and very often make presuppositions about what a woman is. We have seen this in the domain of reproductive rights. So the question I was asking then is: do we need to have a settled idea of women, or of any gender, in order to advance feminist goals?   

Does “woman” need to have a *gasp* definition? Judith is saying it doesn’t. You’ll notice that she doesn’t say that anything about “man” not having a stable definition. She believes it’s possible to fight against misogyny while having no stable definition for what a woman is. Laughable. 

I put the question that way… to remind us that feminists are committed to thinking about the diverse and historically shifting meanings of gender, and to the ideals of gender freedom. By gender freedom, I do not mean we all get to choose our gender. Rather, we get to make a political claim to live freely and without fear of discrimination and violence against the genders that we are. 

Word salad > “we don’t get to choose our gender but we get to choose it I am very smart"

Many people who were assigned “female” at birth never felt at home with that assignment, and those people (including me) tell all of us something important about the constraints of traditional gender norms for many who fall outside its terms.   

Many women have internalized misogyny and homophobia, which in turn had a huge impact on their sense of self and self-esteem, but that doesn’t mean they’re not women Judith. And I don’t think any woman who was forcefully married, who had her vulva mutilated for religious reasons, had to wear a veil since she was a toddler, or was sold as a child into prostitution ever “felt at home” with having been born a girl, you absolute unit.  

Feminists know that women with ambition are called “monstrous” or that women who are not heterosexual are pathologised. We fight those misrepresentations because they are false and because they reflect more about the misogyny of those who make demeaning caricatures than they do about the complex social diversity of women. Women should not engage in the forms of phobic caricature by which they have been traditionally demeaned. And by “women” I mean all those who identify in that way. 

That was going so well until the last sentence 

I think we are living in anti-intellectual times, and that this is evident across the political spectrum. 

JB, darling, just read your own word salad and get some self-awareness. 

The quickness of social media allows for forms of vitriol that do not exactly support thoughtful debate. We need to cherish the longer forms. 

Tell that to your supporters Miss I Wasn't Aware TERF Were A Slur.

I am against online abuse of all kinds. I confess to being perplexed by the fact that you point out the abuse levelled against JK Rowling, but you do not cite the abuse against trans people and their allies that happens online and in person. 

Kindergarten argument, but sure. Also, yet again, no proof. 

I disagree with JK Rowling's view on trans people, but I do not think she should suffer harassment and threats. Let us also remember, though, the threats against trans people in places like Brazil, the harassment of trans people in the streets and on the job in places like Poland and Romania – or indeed right here in the US.  

“Threats against JKR are bad BUT have you seen what’s happening in Brazil?”. I’m sorry what? Also, could trans-activist please stop instrumentalizing Brazilian stats, since they reflect the situation of prostituted homosexual transsexuals ?  

 So if we are going to object to harassment and threats, as we surely should, we should also make sure we have a large picture of where that is happening, who is most profoundly affected, and whether it is tolerated by those who should be opposing it. It won’t do to say that threats against some people are tolerable but against others are intolerable. 

NO ONE, literally NO ONE said that threats against trans people were acceptable. In fact, most, if not pretty much all threats, especially physical threats, don’t come from radical feminists, but from men. Basically, what she’s saying is “who cares about threats against JKR, trans people (men) matter more”.  

If trans-exclusionary radical feminists understood themselves as sharing a world with trans people, in a common struggle for equality, freedom from violence, and for social recognition, there would be no more trans-exclusionary radical feminists.  

♫ Kumbaya my Lord, Kumbaya ♪ 

It is a sad day when some feminists promote the anti-gender ideology position of the most reactionary forces in our society. 

All radical feminists are right wingers, sure. 

Anyway, it's terrible that this kind of article is taken seriously when it could be summed up as "women are irrational and hysterical, men can be women and redefine the word woman if they so wish"...

[recentanimenews]

An Explorer's Guide to the Wonderful World of Visual Novels

Visual novels! Once decried as a “niche” by the masses, they have slowly but surely wormed their way into video games as a whole. Persona became a visual novel, then Fire Emblem. Now Saya no Uta, Gen Urobuchi's disturbing cult “classic” (?!) is available on Steam to stumble upon. There are fewer barriers than ever before to experiencing this varied, historic and often misunderstood medium.

    But where to begin? Some visual novels are very long. Others are quite lewd. A number of them (even the ones people love) front-load their most boring material at the beginning, and save the best moments for the last hour of what can be twenty or thirty-hour games. Picking up Saya no Uta without being primed for the extremes of the medium is a recipe for despair. But don't be afraid! Many of the best visual novels being made today are only a few hours long, encompass many approaches and genres, and are acceptable for all ages. In this piece I will lay out a path that you, dear reader, may follow into the thickets. Some things to keep in mind:

1. Every one of the games featured here is legally avaliable in English. If you know Japanese and are willing to spend some money, feel free to experiment on your own!

2. The games featured here range from appropriate for teenagers, to appropriate for mature audiences. Content warnings will be marked as needed. That said, almost none of these games feature the kind of graphic sex you'd see in old-school titles like Fate/Stay Night; the exception is the final title, included for completionism, which is truly sordid and not appropriate for anybody (but I like it).

3. While I've had some experience with the medium, BL and otome games are huge blind spots of mine, so I won't embarrass myself by pretending expertise! If you're interested in exploring those fields, I've heard good things about Code: Realize (get the collector's edition with the extra content!), Hatoful Boyfriend and (if you're OK with some NSFW material) Coming Out on Top.

With that said, let us being our journey!

  SHORT AND SWEET:

  These games last about two to three hours, but will stick with you longer than that. Don't assume these are “beginner games” simply because they are short! I could argue that collectively, the three titles here are the best on this list.

    Butterfly Soup is Brianna Lei's follow-up to her cult success Pom Gets Wi-Fi. It's free! It's also one of the most acclaimed visual novels ever by the mainstream games press, scoring praise from folks like Patricia Hernandez and Steve Gaynor. As for what it's about: it's the story of four girls on their high school softball team, two of them are in love, and there are many funny jokes. I found the ending to be abrupt, but if you're looking for good vibes and some much-needed encouragement to stay true to yourself, I highly recommend this game. Plus it references Matt Mullholland's excellent “My Heart Will Go On” performance, which earns it extra points in my book.

  Content warnings: Brief depictions of parental and physical abuse (no visuals!), ableist slurs.

    We Know the Devil is “what if Kelly Link wrote Revolutionary Girl Utena?” Plenty of anime and games channel that energy (my beloved What A Beautiful visual novel series among them) but few do so as succinctly and distinctively as Aevee Bee, Mia Schwartz and their team do in this game. The result is a punk, unsettling take on magical girl stories set in a Christian summer camp, featuring sneaky world-building and some striking body horror. You'll feel for the cast and their struggles, and cheer in the True Ending when everything goes completely off the rails.

  Content warnings: Psychological and body horror, alienation of queer youth in a religious setting, freaky music.

    EXTREME MEATPUNKS FOREVER is a game about gay antifascist folks fighting fascists across the desert while riding giant robots made of meat. It's the equivalent of a zine you'd pick up at a fair, willing to dive into messy topics most games shy away from and wholly uninterested in sanding away any rough spots. The music is great too! Play this game if you want to beat up Nazis in a giant meat machine called ROOTS AMONG ASH.

  Content warnings: Body horror, mentions of self harm and abuse, suicidal ideation, alcohol, gender dysphoria, loss of bodily autonomy, apocalyptic ideation. For mature audiences!

NICE AND MEATY:

  These games are a good bit longer, ranging from five to fifteen hours to beat. If you enjoyed the earlier entries and want more, try some of these!

  The House in Fata Morgana is a bonafide cult classic, a game made by a small studio that earned itself a legion of die-hard fans in the visual novel space. At first glance it's an entertaining genre pastiche, four tales of doomed love centering around a cursed mansion. But read past the first four chapters, and suddenly the real story comes to the fore—the tale of two ordinary people and a love that lasts for centuries. Fata Morgana takes some huge swings, tackling societal oppression, intersexuality, recovering from past trauma and learning to move on from those who have wronged you without having to forgive them. Its success at landing these swings likely depends on the reader, but I found Fata Morgana's heart to be in the right place. Couple that with one of the best soundtracks in video games, and you have an experience that is worth it even at 0% off.

  Content warnings: incest, domestic violence, racist and sexist remarks, psychological manipulation, homophobic and transphobic remarks, sexual assault, child abuse. For mature audiences!

    Heart of the Woods is, as of yet, the most ambitious game made by Studio Elan. It's a supernatural mystery where two adult women travel to a small town in the cold and dark to investigate some strange occurrences. What they find leads to unexpected romance, but also incredible danger. Heart of the Woods is sweet, it's funny (Tara is hilarious!) and as has come to be a running theme in this piece, the music is excellent, courtesy of Sarah Mancuso and Kris Flacke. Heart of the Woods is a game made by people who clearly have a lot of affection for visual novels as a medium, but had enough discretion to snip out the bits they weren't fond of. It also comes with a plethora of accessibility options, allowing you to customize everything from the text to the music to your needs.

  Content warnings: Parental abuse, alcohol, light horror elements, some sex scenes you can enable with an optional R-18 patch. For mature audiences!

    As for Seabed, it's... yuri ASMR? It's difficult to describe, as the appeal of this one for me isn't so much the story—which is intriguing, but very slow-paced—as it is the feel of it. Everything from the music, to the sound effects, to the text, contributes to a languid feeling unlike every other game in the medium I have played. Seabed won't be for everyone, but few titles match its distinctive atmosphere.

  Content warnings: alcohol, partial nudity. At least one sex scene that isn't too explicit by the standards of the medium. For mature audiences!

  THE DEEP END:

  These games range in length from fifteen hours to fifty... and beyond! If you're looking for the experience your Japanese-speaking friends fell in love with back in the days of fan translations and frantically searching online for information on Type-Moon properties, this is it! 

    Imagine that you have an idea for a great Japanese TV-drama, but you decide to make it as a visual novel instead. Wanting to produce as authentic an experience as possible, you hire actors and have them act out every scene in your script as you take multiple photographs depicting every twist and turn in the plot. Imagine the sheer amount of time and labor it would require. Then multiply it by five, let the player switch between these narratives with the ease of hitting a button on a gamepad, and tie them together into a vast meta-narrative. That's 428: Shibuya Scramble, one of the most ambitious visual novels ever created and a game that was famously awarded a score of 40 by the Japanese games rag Famitsu. Despite having an enormous and complicated script, it was localized into English just a year ago. Don't miss out on this bizarre and fascinating video game! If you're a fan of the Yakuza series, you'll be right at home with 428's brand of lunacy.

  Content warnings: Violence, drugs, alcohol, some bad language.

    Umineko: When They Cry is a lot.  A gonzo mystery story that starts as a riff on And Then There Were None, it swiftly mutates into a hundred-hour game of four-dimensional chess. It was made by a small team, scored by the music of the gods, and is fully committed throughout to its brand of sentiment, metaphysical rambling and extreme horror. Some might say that Umineko is overwrought, but that is the point: the game is memorable for its excess, not despite of it. If you're looking for a taste of the full VN experience, complete with shocking twists, a weird obsession with trivia and far too many words, this is the most authentic you can find that's appropriate for all audiences. Please play with the original art! It's charming.

  Content warnings: Parental abuse, blood and gore, people getting killed and suffering fates worse than death at the hands of witches (???). For mature audiences!

    And now we come to [NSFW] Wonderful Everyday, everything your anxious friend told you about visual novels. It's not just that Wonderful Everyday has sex scenes, it's that it takes less time to list what triggering and problematic content is not in the game than what is in it. It references Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and Cyrano de Bergerac. The game isn't afraid to take huge, unexpected shifts in tone and aesthetic in order to scare or destabilize the player. You might be wondering: why recommend a game like this, which many would find morally abhorrent? All I can say is that Wonderful Everyday is the game that convinced your Japanese-speaking friends to read Wittgenstein. It's a cult classic, a title unavailable in English for years that came with the highest praise imaginable: that it was a profound work of art, that it would change your way of thinking forever. After finally playing through the game two years ago, my feelings were more mixed; but there's no mistaking that few games better personify the visual novel medium's eccentricities, indulgences or shoot-for-the-moon ambition than this shaggy, gross, but fascinating video game.

  Content warnings: suicide, psychological and body horror, multiple variants of sexual assault, extreme bullying, extreme violence, bestiality (thankfully cut down for release in the US!), a transgender character who is handled in a pretty specious way. Many graphic sex scenes. For very mature audiences!

  There's even more great titles out there that I couldn't fit on this list! The high stakes and interface-shattering plot twists of 999. The countless games being made in engines like Ren'Py, Choice of Games and Twine. South Korean visual novels like Nameless and Mystic Messenger. No matter what kind of person or reader you may be, there is a visual novel out there somewhere for you. I wish you luck in your endless journey of discovery!

  Are you a fan of visual novels? Do you have any (safe for work, if possible) recommendations? Please let us know in the comments!

---

Adam W is a features writer at Crunchyroll. When he isn't eagerly awaiting the announcement of the Girls' Work anime by Type Moon, he sporadically contributes with a loose coalition of friends to a blog called Isn't it Electrifying? Follow him on twitter at: @wendeego

Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com

[androgyne-acolyte]

The Radical Queer Gospel

(My first try at a sermon, for Pride Sunday 2019. You can also listen on Soundcloud.)

Why do we need a Pride Sunday? Especially in June? [Note: our local Pride festival is held in July.]

Because there is still a great lie that queer people — LGBTQ+ people — and Christians can’t get along.

I’ve had people on the internet tell me that my decision to go into ministry as a genderqueer person is worthless, because “the belief system of some two-thousand-year-old desert tribe didn’t care about being nice to gay people”. We routinely get messages telling us our church sign is wrong.

Anyone can spout talking points about this; but wisdom is vindicated by her deeds. [cf. Matthew 11:19]

I’m going to tell you about Jesus today; how he lived, and what he taught. For me, there is something powerfully relatable about the shape of Jesus’ life; not just as a person of faith, but as a queer person. I want to talk about how Jesus’ story resembles, in many ways, nothing so much as a queer life — with all the upheaval, scandal, and confounding of expectations that implies.

I’m certainly not saying that Jesus was gay, or trans, or intersex. Queer is a more expansive term than that, and is a much more immediately transgressive term; it’s a term, quite honestly, that is still very much connected to its origins as a term of abuse. While it can refer to anyone who experiences homophobia or transphobia, it carries with it a connotation of a way of being that goes against the grain; a state of being not quite one thing and not quite another.

But, fair warning: its use is sometimes quite contentious, even discouraged, within the wider LGBTQ+ community, especially when used by people who would not consider themselves “queer”. I’m using it today, however, because I’m speaking from my own point of view.

Jesus is born as an ordinary peasant, the son of a teenage mother and a carpenter — you know the story. He lives under military occupation by the Roman Empire, which has annexed all the best land; demands punitive taxes to build palaces in fortified seaport towns; has taken over the Jerusalem Temple, hiring and firing high priests at will, and doesn’t hesitate to violently crush any sign of dissent.

But as Jesus grows up, he starts to realize that he is called to be something different, something that will disturb the very fabric of the society that he lives in. He finds community through John the Baptist, a strange, wild figure who has quite a following, mostly among the more downtrodden parts of society — and through John he gets initiated into a new kind of life, a new way of being.

Then, Jesus begins to get noticed. Imagine the young Jesus, certainly no older than I am now, speaking in the synagogues all across the countryside of Galilee. And when he gets to his hometown of Nazareth, he stands in front of all his family and friends and begins to read from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives … to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.” … The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” (Luke 4:18-21)

This reads, to me, like a coming-out narrative. Because Jesus immediately follows up this seemingly empowering message with a bunch of uncomfortable truths that they don’t want to hear — namely, by citing the story of the prophet Elijah to make the point that God works from the margins of society, and plants the seeds of prophecy and change from the bottom up. “No prophet is accepted in their own country,” declares Jesus — and the congregation who had just minutes before said “Wow! This kid is going places! Joseph, isn’t this your son?” turn around and try to run him out of town.

There is something else here that the gospels aren’t quite obvious about. Jesus is giving up his place in the family structure that bound Judean culture together; striking out on his own, all the way to the raggedy edge — to share his message of healing and justice and resilience in the face of Roman occupation with those whom his people would have considered foreigners and outcasts.

It’s almost certain that Joseph assumed that Jesus would come of age and take on his father’s trade, inheriting his tools and going to work as a day labourer in Roman construction projects. All of a sudden, that’s not going to happen — because Jesus has fallen in with a very strange crowd; he’s been influenced by these people, and has come back home full of uncanny zeal and radical ideas.

I can imagine all too well the sight of Mary grieving for the image of the son she loved, who she assumed would grow up, settle down, and have children of his own — but all of a sudden he’s someone different; someone or something that can’t quite be contained. I can imagine this all too well because my own mother, my own father, have both gone through this.

But as it turns out, Jesus had discovered — he had understood, had even begun to embody — a kind of love that had never been thought possible; a kind of love that was so radical and so powerful that a lot of folks outright rejected it. The people in power certainly weren’t into it.

This is a kind of story that should absolutely resonate with queer folks like me, because we have a very similar experience — with and through each other. The dawning realization that we are meant for a different kind of life; something which not everyone can understand, but which we suddenly realize is beautiful. That moment when you see someone else, in person or in the media, who embodies an indescribable feeling that you have kept tucked away inside of you for your entire life.

Isn’t it possible that those ordinary semi-literate fishermen, Peter and Andrew and James and John, had a similar experience — seeing something in Jesus that was so powerful, so compelling, that they couldn’t help but respond when he said “follow me”?

We queer people know a kind of love that wrenches us out of the closet and into the sunlight; a kind of love that makes us feel beautiful and strong and valued in a way that no other love has before; a love that opens our hearts to weep at the injustices done to our queer siblings, our trans siblings, our Two-Spirit siblings throughout history;

A love that can make us fearless, so that no catcalling, no misgendering, no homophobic preaching, no gay-bashing, no parental rejection can dissuade us from living out the kind of love to which we are called; the ways of being that upset cultural assumptions and power structures that most of us take as fact.

The love that took root in Jesus’ movement was one that breached walls and broke down borders; that reached across ancient religious schisms — such as the one between the Judeans and the Samaritans, who wouldn’t even speak to each other; that uplifted and empowered women; that extended all the way to the Ethiopian eunuch in the book of Acts — who would have been considered not only foreign, but ritually unacceptable as a person! — to heal and unify and plant the seeds of distributive justice through small, beautiful, subversive actions. And it didn’t stop there.

Near the end of the Gospel of Matthew, some of the Roman-backed chief priests and elders come up to Jesus and start questioning him. But he takes the wind out of their sails by telling them a parable:

“What do you think? A man had two sons [keep in mind that in a lot of Bible stories, the second son is the underdog who comes out on top]; he went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work in the vineyard today.’ He answered, ‘I will not’; but later he changed his mind and went. The father went to the second and said the same; and he answered, ‘I go, sir’; but he did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father?” They said, “The first.” Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the [sex workers] are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you.” (Matthew 21:28-31)

(Look at it this way; at least no one can accuse me of not being Bible-based.)

That passage is a proverbial smoking gun; of all the sayings in the Gospels, it’s the one that is still immediately subversive to us today. But it’s true, Jesus explains, because there’s one thing that the most stigmatized, most down-and-out people in society have that the respectable folks who actually obey the traffic laws and run the Temple don’t — and that is, a thirst for hope and meaning and healing, and a reason to imagine that another world is possible.

So, I’ll say it right now: I am not going into ministry to uphold the stability of the mainline church in its current form. I am going into ministry in the hope that I can help make the church into a refuge, where everyone has the opportunity and the tools to heal and thrive and care for one another; where this transformative divine love is as present and as accessible as the air we breathe.

I believe that I am called, among other things, to be a minister to and for my queer and trans siblings, for my radical siblings; to be an instrument of disorientation and reorientation and renewal and healing for the wounds that the church at large has inflicted by confusing white heteronormative Western social conventions with the actual, radical teachings of christianity.

Because how many queer and transgender children have been turned away, just like Jesus was run out of his hometown, by parents and communities and churches who don’t understand them?

I think what Jesus says to his own people later on in the Gospel of Matthew is something he might say to my radical queer siblings, and to the church that has historically rejected them, today:

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children [— your queer and trans and non-binary children —] together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you, desolate.” (Matthew 23:37-38)

Because the great tragedy here is that that vital, transcendent love should have been the church’s stock in trade all along. We, the church, have the capacity and the knowledge to reach back to our radical, counter-cultural roots and throw people a lifeline of meaning and hope and healing in a tempest-tossed world — but in the eyes of far too many, we are still at best a bastion of the status quo.

I’ve connected with some wonderful radical theological people through the internet; one particular person, by the name of Jane Nichols — a remarkable lesbian trans woman who just completed her master’s degree in theology — says it better than I ever could:

[O]ur stance towards exclusionary theology should not be ‘well, actually, if we look in the Bible, we can see that it never actually forbids being gay,’ but instead, ‘how dare [we] presume to limit God’s love? What blasphemous arrogance could have possibly led [us] to where [we ended up]? When did [we] start worshipping [our] own image in place of the Divine?’ (Jane Nichols, Tumblr post, May 2019)

Wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.

Where I have found the Holy Spirit alive and well and pushing the envelope is on the margins of almost every sphere. Most immediately, I encounter it in the deep insight and vulnerability of the women clergy members in my life — and most recently, I have seen it spring to life in the passion and brilliance and vision of the lesbian and queer women clergy with whom I was privileged to commune on the sidelines of the former Maritime Conference.

By the way — Jesus’ story is hardly the only one that’s relatable to queer and trans people like us. The Bible is replete with stories of transformation, of coming into new identity and purpose, even gender-ambiguity, if you know where — and how — to look.

Yes, queer people — LGBTQ+ people — and Christians, followers of Jesus, can and should get along. Yes, queer people can be Christian, and Christians can be queer; and yes, we can and should learn from one another!

Because we have a remarkable common ground — a remarkable birthright:

We are called to go against the grain; to challenge the basic patterns in which our societies operate, and to embrace a new and powerful kind of love;

a love that reshapes the way we think about ourselves, a love that beckons us to healing and renewal, a love that calls us to take action and cry out for justice, a love that is itself a radical way of being; a love that is potentially more beautiful and more life-giving than the power structures of this world are ready to understand.

Amen.

June 2, 2019 — St. Andrew’s United Church, Halifax

[dogmapod]

03 Santa Muerte

Hey folks, welcome to the show Dogma: A Podcast About Cults I’m your host Denis Ricardo.

This show is about cults. The origins, practices and abuses of cults. So, if you are uncomfortable with descriptions of sexual, physical and mental violence and abuse, this isn’t the show for you.

I’m gonna try to keep it light and fun, but this stuff can get pretty dark… so you’ve been warned.

Circa 1300CE, in pre-invasion Mexico, religion was very fluid. Different tribes such as the Mexica (also known as the Aztec), the Maya and the Zapotec had specific patron gods, but the pantheon was more or less the same and many religious practices such as human sacrifice and veneration of the dead spanned the different tribes and groups of people. Many of the gods came from the ancient Olmec, thought to be gods themselves by the contemporary Mesoamericans.

For the purposes of this show, I will be using the Nahuatl name of these deities as they are the most common. My apologies to the ancestors for my pronunciations. And my apologies to any Spanish speakers because of my pronunciations. One such deity is the goddess of the dead, Mictēcacihuātl, wife of the god of the dead Mictlantecuhtli. They were placed in the underworld by Quetzalcoatl after he created the world.

Mictēcacihuātl was believed to have been born and sacrificed as an infant, granting her the status of “Lady of the Dead.” She has typically represented with flayed body, muscle exposed, and her mouth open to swallow the stars.

Mictēcacihuātl’s worship, as well as the worship of the rest of her cohorts, abruptly declined once Hernan Cortez invaded and Catholicism spread throughout the region. The spread of the Word did change the religious landscape of the Native Mexicans. Instead of honoring the Mother God Tonatzin, she was replaced by La Virgen de Guadalupe, instead of offering prayers and sacrifices to the dead, the ritual was replaced with the novenario and dia del los muertos, The Day of the Dead.

It is believed that Mictēcacihuātl’s worship has continued on throughout these centuries almost in secret and has now become more present today as the cult worship and veneration of Santa Muerte.

Santa Muerte goes by many different names, Lady Death, Lady Bones, Black Lady, White Lady… and these names are used interchangeably by her followers as well as myself in this podcast.

Santa Muerte looks very different from her (potentially) previous incarnation as Mictēcacihuātl. Though she is still flayed, she is not muscle, but just bone. She dons a black robe, resembling a nun’s habit. She is typically holding a scythe, though it is not uncommon to see her also holding a globe, a scale (like Justice), an hourglass, a Christian cross or nothing at all and her hands together in prayer. Roses and owls are also a common motif in various depictions of her. It is assumed that part of her design is partially influenced by José Guadalupe Posada’s Catrina engraving, a female skeleton dressed in fancy clothing, which is often seen on Day of the Dead.

The first person to display a large public altar to Santa Muerte is a woman known as Doña Queta in the neighborhood of Tepito in Mexico City, a neighborhood known for its poverty and high crime rate. Brujo Negro, a worshiper of Santa Muerte, historian and seemingly the authority on Santa Muerte online, writes that his grand-aunt was a devotee of Lady Death as well, having a plastic effigy of Santa Muerte in her home in Mexico that she acquired in Los Angeles, dating Lady Death’s worship and mass-manufacturing of effigies much earlier than 2001 and outside of Mexico. R. Andrew Chesnut said in his book Devoted to Death: Santa Muerte, the Skeleton Saint that Santa Muerte is a syncretic blend of the European depictions of the Grim Reaper and Mictēcacihuātl, a hypothesis that Brujo Negro agrees with, though there is almost no information corroborating this. There is also the possibility she has West African influences, as Mexico had the largest slave population in the New World at one point and their practices are major components of Voodoo, Candomblé and Santería, all syncretic blends of Native, African and Europeans spiritualities and all having death motifs in their practice. The truth is, there is no consensus on her origin, but we do know that her popularity has grown in recent years.

There is no one way to honor Santa Muerte. Her followers either will pray to her like she is a Catholic saint, asking for guidance and protection. Others, like Brujo Negro, view her as a goddess and worship her. In both cases, offerings are often placed at altars of her.

“…she is offered food, candles, tobacco, prayer and an unwavering faith.”

Various different colored statues and candles with Santa Muerte’s visage will grant different things to the devotee, according to Brujo Negro. Black is for cursing your enemies, red is for love and sexual desire and white is for cleansing and good luck. I have a white Santa Muerte candle and I can say that she really hasn’t done much in the way of luck for me but, perhaps it’s because I have not offered anything to the Lady.

There is no question that her veneration is considered brujería, the Spanish word for “witchcraft.” In this sense, witchcraft is less of the European view of witchcraft and it is more closely related to folk magic and shamanism. These shamanic people are either called chamanes, curanderos or brujos.

Because of her ties to witchcraft, she is condemned by the Vatican. They warn against praying to her and saying she is a demon. Father Gary Thomas, a Vatican-trained exorcist for the Diocese of San Jose said in an interview with Catholic News Agency,

“I have had a number of people who have come to me as users of this practice and found themselves tied to a demon or demonic tribe.”

But what does venerating Santa Muerte do for her devotees?

“There are rituals for prosperity, success in business, justice (court case), protection from harm, protection from enemies, spiritual cleansing/healing, attraction of a lover, the return of a lost love, domination, even curses against enemies, the reversal of curses to name a few.”

Brujo Negro asserts that it is a myth that in order to get a blessing from Lady Death, she will take the life of someone in your life.

Various Catholic news outlets and Chesnut report that her worship is closely tied to criminality. Altars dedicated to her are reportedly found in prison cells and is commonly worshiped by both inmates and prison guards.

Other practitioners are members of various drug cartels and there has been one known human sacrifice in her name. The sacrifice was carried out by Silvia Merez and her son Ramon Palacios, both leaders of a Santa Muerte cult. They and six of their followers performed the ritual sacrifices of a woman and a 10-year-old boy in 2009, and another sacrifice of a boy in 2010. Police officers in the state of Sonora reported that the victims’ blood was drained from their bodies and poured over an altar  of Santa Muerte holding a scythe.

Merez said of one of the sacrifices,

“We all agreed to do it. Supposedly she [one of the victims] was a witch or something.”

As of 2019 there have been no other reported human sacrifices to Santa Muerte.

Her worship reportedly has also been tied to sex workers, though I would like it to be known that this podcast believes that sex work is legitimate work.

Brujo Negro asserts that the tie to criminals is an exaggeration,

“…it is true that such people do revere her such people do not make the majority. Remember that the faithful come in all shapes and sizes and from all walks of life.”

One example is the LGBT community.

A side note— I will be using the phrase “LGBT” and “queer” interchangeably for the entirety of this podcast if the phrase comes up. I understand that “queer” is not fully accepted by the community and I understand that it can and still is viewed as a slur. However, it is the proper academic term and I am an academic of gender and sexualities in minority communities, so I will be continuing in the use of “Queer.” If that is bothersome to you, then I don’t know, listen to another podcast.

OK, back to the show.

Her Queer following seems to be mostly outside Mexico. One of the more prominent Queer practitioners is Steven Bragg, a gay white man in New Orleans. The public shrine in his home draws mostly middle-class and college educated gringos, though there are Latinx practitioners among them. They pray to her, reciting the Lord’s Prayer and three Hail Marys… add an Act of Contrition and it’s like you’re back at confession on a Saturday.

Bragg left the Pentecostal faith because of the rejection he felt as a gay man. He was introduced to Santa Muerte by a friend when he graduated college and has been a practitioner since.

“When I ask her to do something for others or for myself she does it really fast … she’s the quickest and most powerful.”

Another important figure in evangelizing Santa Muerte in los Estado Unidos is Arely Vasquez, a transgender woman who is thought to be the person to bring Lady Death to New York City. She grew up in Mexico, feeling alienated because of her gender identity. She later moved in with her aunt where she learned of Santa Muerte and became a devotee. In the 1980s she moved again to New York City where she had other family members. She credits her faith in Santa Muerte for helping her, a transgender Mexican woman who spoke no English, with giving her the strength and courage to immigrate. She now has a public shrine to Lady Death in New York City.

Even outside the sphere of Mexico and Doña Queta Santa Muerte is venerated. Queer new age and neo-pagan groups in Australia and the UK are said to worship her and she has a particularly strong following among bakla and gay men in Manila. Yashagaro Hasegawa, the leader of the devotees of Santa Muerte in the Philippines told the blog Dead Maidens,

“Santa Muerte does not discriminate. I feel discriminated in Filipino society. There is the idea of making fun of the gay [sic] here in the Philippines. There are rules in the Asian culture [sic] so I have to be careful because of jobs, and I have to be respectful, to be on the safe side. Also when I’m out at night with the boys I feel her black robe protecting us from dangers in the street.”

This isn’t to say that her veneration by Queer people in Mexico is not present. Santa Muertistas can be found holding statues of her during Pride parades, with their saint clad in a rainbow robe. The Iglesia Católica Tradicionalista mexicana-estadounidense, an unrecognized religious organization that broke away from the Catholic Church in Mexico venerates Santa Muerte, performs religious same-sex marriages for its followers, invoking her name. Doña Queta’s protege who is going to succeed her after she dies, is gay according Dead Maidens.

Another side note — Santa Muerte’s veneration by queer people and their role as leaders of the faith is no surprise. I won’t get into it much here, but third-gender and people who we would now today recognize as queer have almost ubiquitously been tied to shamanism, occultism and spirituality. From the mahu, two-spirit, fa’fafine, bakla, hidra… and so many others, we have bridged that gap between the material and spiritual (Oh, did I just out myself?). I won’t go into it more here, but maybe a podcast about the ties between queer people and spirituality will be something for Patreon donors.

OK, now, back to the show.

One thread that ties all of Santa Muertistas together, LGBT, criminals and sex workers, is their alienation from “civil” society and the Catholic Church. Santa Muerte is said to have no judgment of her followers. All are free to worship at her feet and be protected by her black robe. Death watches over all of us.

“…death is the ultimate destiny of all living things and you can not take away life from death. All mortals must answer to death, this is well addressed in the prayers of the Novena de la Santisima Muerte that express death’s supreme influence over our destinies as mortal beings. In essence this power is not limited to human life but ALL LIFE all things must die so death has great power over all life.“

Eventually, we all die, giving all rungs of the societal ladder a form of equality in the end.

Now here comes the fun part, where I beg you for money. I come to you hat in hand, asking you to go to patreon.com/dogmapod and throw a few dollars my way to help support the podcast, I really do need the money to keep the lights on. I can’t offer much for tier rewards, but no matter what level you donate at, I will get the episodes out to you early and you can have access to the joke/pop culture cult podcasts and non-cult related articles and podcasts that don’t quite fit with the format. At higher donations, I will take suggestions for cults and do an episode on those. Thank you so much if you decide to be ever so gracious. OK, now back to the show.

Is worship of Santa Muerte a cult? Yes, definitely. Though, not in the way that we think of a group like Scientology, but by the other definition of a cult: veneration of a particular figure. This is not unlike Mictēcacihuātl’s worship in pre-Columbian Mexico. Worship of death, sacrifice and the macabre has been consistent among the Mexican people and Santa Muerte is just the modern-day manifestation of this.

Thanks so much for listening. This was our episode on Santa Muerte. I wanted to cover this particular cult because of its tie to the queer community and this is Pride Month. I had a lot of fun researching this, listening to corridos and indigenous music while writing the script. I realized that the traits indicative of corridos and mariachi such as a wavering voice and the gritos (which I can only do after a few drinks) can be traced back to Indigenous Mexican music, and this says nothing of the African influences on Mexican art, music and dance. It’s nice to know that the black and brown ancestors have survived in some way post-colonialism.  

I’m going to put all of my sources in the description. Some of them are from Wikipedia, but I checked to make sure those sources were legit, so lay off me. It should be noted, because of the lack of organization in the cult worship of Santa Muerte, many of my sources are blogs. Some of the writers such as Brujo Negro cite their sources while others do not. I don’t think this effects the validity in the claims of what Santa Muerte can and cannot do for her devotees however, so their holistic writings feel like they’re  legitimate in this case.

Next time we’re going to look at a surprisingly popular cult. Its number of followers is small, but it has reached out to people at least eight or so times since 2005 in different parts of the world. And at the center of all of it was a conspiracy and bioterrorism.

Until then, take care and goodbye.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Aztecs

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sacrifice_in_Aztec_culture

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztec_religion#Cosmology_and_ritual

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Columbian_era#Mesoamerica

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditionalist_Mexican-American_Catholic_Church

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novena#Regional_practices

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Muerte

https://www.brujonegrobrujeria.com/page/page/2215114.htm

https://web.archive.org/web/20120402221717/http://articles.cnn.com/2012-03-30/americas/world_americas_mexico-human-sacrifice_1_santa-muerte-human-sacrifices-saint?_s=PM:AMERICAS

https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/765864/duterte-backs-gays-in-brawl-vs-pacquiao

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/06/02/asia/philippines-duterte-gay-intl/index.html

https://www.rappler.com/newsbreak/inside-track/231882-duterte-implies-being-gay-is-disease

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-17570199

https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/have-you-heard-of-saint-death-dont-pray-to-her-38884

https://deadmaidens.com/2017/02/15/sex-death-santa-muertes-strong-lgbt-following/

https://www.cnn.com/2017/03/30/opinions/believer-reza-aslan-santa-muerte/index.html

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/growing-devotion-santa-muerte-u-s-abroad-n275856

The African Roots of la Santa Muerte - Jessica Kindrick

https://www.jstor.org/stable/24394940

https://www.jstor.org/stable/41336081

https://www.jstor.org/stable/41933902

https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt13x1rqh.15

https://www.jstor.org/stable/23722457

“Latin America” Dark Tourist, Netflix

Music credits:

“Frozen Jungle,” “The Upside Down World,” “She’s gone” and “Fight the apocalypse but before a quick nap” by Monplaisir under the name Komiku http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Komiku/

“‘The Fire dance’ performed by Aztec artists” video by MissGardenGG1, performance by Company Tenochtitlan. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BZ5Jm8pC_g

“Tu solo Tu” performed by Corozo y Su Cuarteto and Felipe Valdes Lopez https://archive.org/details/78_tu-solo-tu_corozo-y-su-cuarteto-felipe-valdes-lopez_gbia0022646a

“Aunt Hagar’s Blues” performed by Lu Watter’s Yerba Buena Jazz Band https://archive.org/details/TraditionalDixielandGeorgeBrunisAndHisJazzBandThatDaDaStrain/Traditional+Dixieland+-lu+watter+s+yerba+buena+jazz+band+aunt+hagar+s+blues.mp3

“Nueva Era (versiòn sorta - short version)” by Xiuhcoatl https://archive.org/details/TFR959-Xiuhcoatl-XiuhcoatlEP/04-NuevaEraversinCorta-ShortVersion.mp3

[sallymolay]

Brynn Tannerhill writes in The Advocate:

1. Who wrote it?

Would anyone take an article on how to deal with racial issues written by David Duke seriously?  Or an article on American Jewish history written by Richard Spencer? Of course not, unless they were a raging bigot to begin with. Therefore, you look at who the authors of anti-transgender articles are. [...]

2. Who does the author hang out with?

Let’s apply the white-nationalist analogy again. Suppose someone claimed not to be a white nationalist. They just write books and articles that white nationalists love and quote all the time. They hang out on white nationalist internet forums, and generally support the statements made by white nationalists in the comments section. They also give away links to free electronic copies of their works on white nationalist websites. Almost all of their followers on Twitter are white nationalists and people who really hate black people. Would you really take their claims of not being a white nationalist seriously? [...]

3. Where is it published?

Would you ever take an article published on Der Sturmer or Stormfront about Jewish conspiracies seriously (besides someone who’s obviously comfortable with their own anti-Semitism)? Obviously not — neither publication has ever had anything nice to say about Jews, and their bias isn’t hidden.

So why on Earth would you give any credence to an article about transgender people on The Federalist, The Daily Caller, Breitbart, or any other far-right-wing site seriously either?  None of them has ever had a nice thing to say about transgender people, and have consistently treated us as a public health hazard that needs to be removed from the public consciousness.

4. Does it blatantly misuse (or cherry pick) real research?

One of the quickest ways to spot biased and unreliable articles about transgender people is when they misuse actual research. Most commonly this occurs when they cite a 2011 study by Dr. Cecillia Dhejne to argue that medical care for transgender people is ineffective, or that it makes them suicidal. The problem is, the research actually says no such thing, and Dhejne has gone on the record saying that attempts to use it to make these points are both wrong and unethical.

5. Does it blatantly misrepresent the actual positions of people?

Dr. Kenneth Zucker is a problematic figure. He has been the biggest proponent of the 80 Percent Desistance Myth, and been completely opposed to supporting kids in any gender variant behavior whatsoever, even if the kids are otherwise emotionally healthy and happy. This is why he is frequently cited by people and organizations opposed to letting transgender and gender variant kids be themselves.

However, what they never acknowledge is that even Zucker supports the use of puberty blockers for adolescents (i.e. those who have started puberty) who are gender dysphoric, because in an interview with a conservative outlet he conceded that, “By age 11 or 12, trans kids are typically 'locked in' to their gender identity” and for them, “I very much support that pathway, because I think that is going to help them have a better quality of life.” (i.e. even Dr. Zucker thinks that kids older than 11 or 12 are unlikely to to desist.)

As a result, any person or article that tries to apply the 80 percent desistance figure to transgender teens are transgender teens is either ignorant, or lying. In either case, this makes it unreliable and unworthy of further consideration.

6. Does it misrepresent the positions of mainstream organizations?

One of the most common examples of this is the breathless assertion that, “They’re giving hormones and sex change surgery to 6 year olds!” “They” in this case meaning medical practitioners who fall under the World Professional Association of Transgender Health Standards of Care. WPATH sets the standards followed by the vast majority of health care providers who specialize in transgender medicine. These standards do not recommend blockers (a reversible intervention) until the age of 12 and hormones until the patient is 16. [...]

7. What organizations does the author represent?

Ask what organizations the writer belongs to, or is representing. Do they belong to a hate group, as defined by the Southern Poverty Law Center? Or speak for fake medical organizations that are routinely produce recommendations driven by religious beliefs rather than peer-reviewed science and medical consensus? If they do, they cannot credibly claim to be unbiased, or acting in the best interests of transgender people. [...]

8. Who does the article cite?

Does the article rely on sources that are biased and/or discredited? Dr. Paul McHugh would be an example of someone who is both biased and discredited as a source. Be able to describe why this source is biased or discredited. For example, Johns Hopkins has implicitly repudiated McHugh’s work by reopening the gender clinic. If the article relies on biased and disreputable sources to make its point, it's no good.

9. Does the article go against the scientific consensus?

There is currently an overwhelming consensus by professional organizations for mental and medical care providers on the necessity and efficacy of health care for transgender individuals. These organizations include the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, and the American Psychiatric Association. These organizations studied the matter in detail before taking these positions.

Thus, if the author contradicts all of these organizations, they must adequately explain why they are more qualified or smarter than the vast majority of experts who have studied the issue based on peer-reviewed evidence. Alternately, they must explain why all the peer-reviewed evidence is wrong (in a way that would survive peer review.) Otherwise, it’s merely an opinion piece with little in the way of (cherry-picked) research to support it, by someone with very few qualifications, and probably an axe to grind based on personal beliefs as well.

10. Does it substitute anecdotes for research?

Many of the articles that have come out recently about detransitioning and regrets are based on anecdotes, not actual research. This is because the actual research shows that when the Standards of Care for mental health care professionals is followed, regret rates are very low, and even then often caused by factors external to the patient (e.g. surgical complications, mistreatment, and abandonment after transition). Often, anecdotes leave out or ignore key details as well, which brings us to the next question you should be asking…

11. Are crucial details left out or ignored?

Here’s some facts about Senator John McCain. He joined the Navy, and tried to commit suicide as an indirect result of joining the Navy. From this statement, one could be led to draw the conclusion that the Navy makes people suicidal, or that McCain was mentally unstable, and should never have been allowed in the Navy in the first place.

However, it leaves out the key detail that he attempted suicide after being shot down, becoming a POW, held in solitary confinement for two years, and having his arms torn out of their sockets (leaving him permanently crippled) by his Vietnamese captors.

Similarly, most of the anecdotes about detransitioners leaves out crucial details. Chief among these omissions is that there seems to be a common thread that most of them did not have access to competent mental health care before transitioning, or did not avail themselves of it. Others detransition, but do not regret having done transitioned. Another frequent omission is that people often detransition due to being abused for transitioning in the first place. Systemic abuse can lead to very unhealthy mental states and poor decisions, whether by John McCain or a random transgender person.

12. Does it make unsupportable assumptions?

A prime example of an unsupportable is that transgender people can (and should) just stop being transgender because of higher health risks, as if it was like quitting smoking or eating carb-loaded snacks before bedtime. This assumption first ignores that the medical and mental health care communities regard efforts to change sexual orientation and gender identity as ineffectual and unethical. It also ignores the fact that the only people promising to “fix” someone’s gender identity are the same people who failed so miserably at “curing” gay people while using the same “embrace your God-given masculinity” snake oil. Or, conversely, it’s a lot easier to reasonably assume based on the peer reviewed evidence that if transgender people weren’t ostracized, abused, and legally marginalized they’d have better mental health outcomes.

13. Does it make unsupportable conclusions? And ignore the supported ones?

Examples of unsupportable conclusions in anti-transgender articles are myriad. Many of the anecdotes about detransitioners essentially conclude that no one should ever be allowed to transition (which ignores the peer reviewed evidence showing the vast majority of transgender people report improvement in quality of life after transition). A far more logical conclusion would be that people should have better access to competent mental health care providers, which is something the APA is recommending anyway.

14. Does the article make wild accusations and predict ludicrous outcomes?

Wild accusations (that have actually happened) include that accepting transgender people will destroy humanity, cause people to forget how to procreate, cause hurricanes and terrorist attacks, destroy legal rights for LGB people, and destroy the LGB community by stealing all queer kids and forcing them to transition.

15. Does the article imply religion is a cure for gender dysphoria?

This is a theological argument, and not a scientific one. If there was peer-reviewed evidence that prayer was more powerful than medicine, we wouldn’t need hospitals. Indeed, they’ve actually extensively studied whether prayer is any good at curing people (hint: it’s not). On the other hand, there is plenty of evidence that religious counseling and conversion therapy is harmful to queer people. The Bible has very little to say about transgender people directly, and what exists is contradictory. The Bible is much more clear on things like divorce and adultery. Indeed, the Bible pretty explicitly endorses things we accept as social evils now, such as slavery and polygamy. In other words, the Bible is a poor manual for setting public policy, and especially policy for health care.

Read the whole story!

[dogmapod]

03 Santa Muerte

Hey folks, welcome to the show Dogma: A Podcast About Cults I’m your host Denis Ricardo.

This show is about cults. The origins, practices and abuses of cults. So, if you are uncomfortable with descriptions of sexual, physical and mental violence and abuse, this isn’t the show for you.

I’m gonna try to keep it light and fun, but this stuff can get pretty dark… so you’ve been warned.

Circa 1300CE, in pre-invasion Mexico, religion was very fluid. Different tribes such as the Mexica (also known as the Aztec), the Maya and the Zapotec had specific patron gods, but the pantheon was more or less the same and many religious practices such as human sacrifice and veneration of the dead spanned the different tribes and groups of people. Many of the gods came from the ancient Olmec, thought to be gods themselves by the contemporary Mesoamericans.

For the purposes of this show, I will be using the Nahuatl name of these deities as they are the most common. My apologies to the ancestors for my pronunciations. And my apologies to any Spanish speakers because of my pronunciations. One such deity is the goddess of the dead, Mictēcacihuātl, wife of the god of the dead Mictlantecuhtli. They were placed in the underworld by Quetzalcoatl after he created the world.

Mictēcacihuātl was believed to have been born and sacrificed as an infant, granting her the status of “Lady of the Dead.” She has typically represented with flayed body, muscle exposed, and her mouth open to swallow the stars.

Mictēcacihuātl’s worship, as well as the worship of the rest of her cohorts, abruptly declined once Hernan Cortez invaded and Catholicism spread throughout the region. The spread of the Word did change the religious landscape of the Native Mexicans. Instead of honoring the Mother God Tonatzin, she was replaced by La Virgen de Guadalupe, instead of offering prayers and sacrifices to the dead, the ritual was replaced with the novenario and dia del los muertos, The Day of the Dead.

It is believed that Mictēcacihuātl’s worship has continued on throughout these centuries almost in secret and has now become more present today as the cult worship and veneration of Santa Muerte.

Santa Muerte goes by many different names, Lady Death, Lady Bones, Black Lady, White Lady… and these names are used interchangeably by her followers as well as myself in this podcast.

Santa Muerte looks very different from her (potentially) previous incarnation as Mictēcacihuātl. Though she is still flayed, she is not muscle, but just bone. She dons a black robe, resembling a nun’s habit. She is typically holding a scythe, though it is not uncommon to see her also holding a globe, a scale (like Justice), an hourglass, a Christian cross or nothing at all and her hands together in prayer. Roses and owls are also a common motif in various depictions of her. It is assumed that part of her design is partially influenced by José Guadalupe Posada’s Catrina engraving, a female skeleton dressed in fancy clothing, which is often seen on Day of the Dead.

The first person to display a large public altar to Santa Muerte is a woman known as Doña Queta in the neighborhood of Tepito in Mexico City, a neighborhood known for its poverty and high crime rate. Brujo Negro, a worshiper of Santa Muerte, historian and seemingly the authority on Santa Muerte online, writes that his grand-aunt was a devotee of Lady Death as well, having a plastic effigy of Santa Muerte in her home in Mexico that she acquired in Los Angeles, dating Lady Death’s worship and mass-manufacturing of effigies much earlier than 2001 and outside of Mexico. R. Andrew Chesnut said in his book Devoted to Death: Santa Muerte, the Skeleton Saint that Santa Muerte is a syncretic blend of the European depictions of the Grim Reaper and Mictēcacihuātl, a hypothesis that Brujo Negro agrees with, though there is almost no information corroborating this. There is also the possibility she has West African influences, as Mexico had the largest slave population in the New World at one point and their practices are major components of Voodoo, Candomblé and Santería, all syncretic blends of Native, African and Europeans spiritualities and all having death motifs in their practice. The truth is, there is no consensus on her origin, but we do know that her popularity has grown in recent years.

There is no one way to honor Santa Muerte. Her followers either will pray to her like she is a Catholic saint, asking for guidance and protection. Others, like Brujo Negro, view her as a goddess and worship her. In both cases, offerings are often placed at altars of her.

“…she is offered food, candles, tobacco, prayer and an unwavering faith.”

Various different colored statues and candles with Santa Muerte’s visage will grant different things to the devotee, according to Brujo Negro. Black is for cursing your enemies, red is for love and sexual desire and white is for cleansing and good luck. I have a white Santa Muerte candle and I can say that she really hasn’t done much in the way of luck for me but, perhaps it’s because I have not offered anything to the Lady.

There is no question that her veneration is considered brujería, the Spanish word for “witchcraft.” In this sense, witchcraft is less of the European view of witchcraft and it is more closely related to folk magic and shamanism. These shamanic people are either called chamanes, curanderos or brujos.

Because of her ties to witchcraft, she is condemned by the Vatican. They warn against praying to her and saying she is a demon. Father Gary Thomas, a Vatican-trained exorcist for the Diocese of San Jose said in an interview with Catholic News Agency,

“I have had a number of people who have come to me as users of this practice and found themselves tied to a demon or demonic tribe.”

But what does venerating Santa Muerte do for her devotees?

“There are rituals for prosperity, success in business, justice (court case), protection from harm, protection from enemies, spiritual cleansing/healing, attraction of a lover, the return of a lost love, domination, even curses against enemies, the reversal of curses to name a few.”

Brujo Negro asserts that it is a myth that in order to get a blessing from Lady Death, she will take the life of someone in your life.

Various Catholic news outlets and Chesnut report that her worship is closely tied to criminality. Altars dedicated to her are reportedly found in prison cells and is commonly worshiped by both inmates and prison guards.

Other practitioners are members of various drug cartels and there has been one known human sacrifice in her name. The sacrifice was carried out by Silvia Merez and her son Ramon Palacios, both leaders of a Santa Muerte cult. They and six of their followers performed the ritual sacrifices of a woman and a 10-year-old boy in 2009, and another sacrifice of a boy in 2010. Police officers in the state of Sonora reported that the victims’ blood was drained from their bodies and poured over an altar  of Santa Muerte holding a scythe.

Merez said of one of the sacrifices,

“We all agreed to do it. Supposedly she [one of the victims] was a witch or something.”

As of 2019 there have been no other reported human sacrifices to Santa Muerte.

Her worship reportedly has also been tied to sex workers, though I would like it to be known that this podcast believes that sex work is legitimate work.

Brujo Negro asserts that the tie to criminals is an exaggeration,

“…it is true that such people do revere her such people do not make the majority. Remember that the faithful come in all shapes and sizes and from all walks of life.”

One example is the LGBT community.

A side note— I will be using the phrase “LGBT” and “queer” interchangeably for the entirety of this podcast if the phrase comes up. I understand that “queer” is not fully accepted by the community and I understand that it can and still is viewed as a slur. However, it is the proper academic term and I am an academic of gender and sexualities in minority communities, so I will be continuing in the use of “Queer.” If that is bothersome to you, then I don’t know, listen to another podcast.

OK, back to the show.

Her Queer following seems to be mostly outside Mexico. One of the more prominent Queer practitioners is Steven Bragg, a gay white man in New Orleans. The public shrine in his home draws mostly middle-class and college educated gringos, though there are Latinx practitioners among them. They pray to her, reciting the Lord’s Prayer and three Hail Marys… add an Act of Contrition and it’s like you’re back at confession on a Saturday.

Bragg left the Pentecostal faith because of the rejection he felt as a gay man. He was introduced to Santa Muerte by a friend when he graduated college and has been a practitioner since.

“When I ask her to do something for others or for myself she does it really fast … she’s the quickest and most powerful.”

Another important figure in evangelizing Santa Muerte in los Estado Unidos is Arely Vasquez, a transgender woman who is thought to be the person to bring Lady Death to New York City. She grew up in Mexico, feeling alienated because of her gender identity. She later moved in with her aunt where she learned of Santa Muerte and became a devotee. In the 1980s she moved again to New York City where she had other family members. She credits her faith in Santa Muerte for helping her, a transgender Mexican woman who spoke no English, with giving her the strength and courage to immigrate. She now has a public shrine to Lady Death in New York City.

Even outside the sphere of Mexico and Doña Queta Santa Muerte is venerated. Queer new age and neo-pagan groups in Australia and the UK are said to worship her and she has a particularly strong following among bakla and gay men in Manila. Yashagaro Hasegawa, the leader of the devotees of Santa Muerte in the Philippines told the blog Dead Maidens,

“Santa Muerte does not discriminate. I feel discriminated in Filipino society. There is the idea of making fun of the gay [sic] here in the Philippines. There are rules in the Asian culture [sic] so I have to be careful because of jobs, and I have to be respectful, to be on the safe side. Also when I’m out at night with the boys I feel her black robe protecting us from dangers in the street.”

This isn’t to say that her veneration by Queer people in Mexico is not present. Santa Muertistas can be found holding statues of her during Pride parades, with their saint clad in a rainbow robe. The Iglesia Católica Tradicionalista mexicana-estadounidense, an unrecognized religious organization that broke away from the Catholic Church in Mexico venerates Santa Muerte, performs religious same-sex marriages for its followers, invoking her name. Doña Queta’s protege who is going to succeed her after she dies, is gay according Dead Maidens.

Another side note — Santa Muerte’s veneration by queer people and their role as leaders of the faith is no surprise. I won’t get into it much here, but third-gender and people who we would now today recognize as queer have almost ubiquitously been tied to shamanism, occultism and spirituality. From the mahu, two-spirit, fa’fafine, bakla, hidra… and so many others, we have bridged that gap between the material and spiritual (Oh, did I just out myself?). I won’t go into it more here, but maybe a podcast about the ties between queer people and spirituality will be something for Patreon donors.

OK, now, back to the show.

One thread that ties all of Santa Muertistas together, LGBT, criminals and sex workers, is their alienation from “civil” society and the Catholic Church. Santa Muerte is said to have no judgment of her followers. All are free to worship at her feet and be protected by her black robe. Death watches over all of us.

“…death is the ultimate destiny of all living things and you can not take away life from death. All mortals must answer to death, this is well addressed in the prayers of the Novena de la Santisima Muerte that express death's supreme influence over our destinies as mortal beings. In essence this power is not limited to human life but ALL LIFE all things must die so death has great power over all life.“

Eventually, we all die, giving all rungs of the societal ladder a form of equality in the end.

Now here comes the fun part, where I beg you for money. I come to you hat in hand, asking you to go to patreon.com/dogmapod and throw a few dollars my way to help support the podcast, I really do need the money to keep the lights on. I can’t offer much for tier rewards, but no matter what level you donate at, I will get the episodes out to you early and you can have access to the joke/pop culture cult podcasts and non-cult related articles and podcasts that don’t quite fit with the format. At higher donations, I will take suggestions for cults and do an episode on those. Thank you so much if you decide to be ever so gracious. OK, now back to the show.

Is worship of Santa Muerte a cult? Yes, definitely. Though, not in the way that we think of a group like Scientology, but by the other definition of a cult: veneration of a particular figure. This is not unlike Mictēcacihuātl’s worship in pre-Columbian Mexico. Worship of death, sacrifice and the macabre has been consistent among the Mexican people and Santa Muerte is just the modern-day manifestation of this.

Thanks so much for listening. This was our episode on Santa Muerte. I wanted to cover this particular cult because of its tie to the queer community and this is Pride Month. I had a lot of fun researching this, listening to corridos and indigenous music while writing the script. I realized that the traits indicative of corridos and mariachi such as a wavering voice and the gritos (which I can only do after a few drinks) can be traced back to Indigenous Mexican music, and this says nothing of the African influences on Mexican art, music and dance. It’s nice to know that the black and brown ancestors have survived in some way post-colonialism.  

I’m going to put all of my sources in the description. Some of them are from Wikipedia, but I checked to make sure those sources were legit, so lay off me. It should be noted, because of the lack of organization in the cult worship of Santa Muerte, many of my sources are blogs. Some of the writers such as Brujo Negro cite their sources while others do not. I don’t think this effects the validity in the claims of what Santa Muerte can and cannot do for her devotees however, so their holistic writings feel like they’re  legitimate in this case.

Next time we’re going to look at a surprisingly popular cult. Its number of followers is small, but it has reached out to people at least eight or so times since 2005 in different parts of the world. And at the center of all of it was a conspiracy and bioterrorism.

Until then, take care and goodbye.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Aztecs

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sacrifice_in_Aztec_culture

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztec_religion#Cosmology_and_ritual

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Columbian_era#Mesoamerica

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditionalist_Mexican-American_Catholic_Church

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novena#Regional_practices

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Muerte

https://www.brujonegrobrujeria.com/page/page/2215114.htm

https://web.archive.org/web/20120402221717/http://articles.cnn.com/2012-03-30/americas/world_americas_mexico-human-sacrifice_1_santa-muerte-human-sacrifices-saint?_s=PM:AMERICAS

https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/765864/duterte-backs-gays-in-brawl-vs-pacquiao

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/06/02/asia/philippines-duterte-gay-intl/index.html

https://www.rappler.com/newsbreak/inside-track/231882-duterte-implies-being-gay-is-disease

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-17570199

https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/have-you-heard-of-saint-death-dont-pray-to-her-38884

https://deadmaidens.com/2017/02/15/sex-death-santa-muertes-strong-lgbt-following/

https://www.cnn.com/2017/03/30/opinions/believer-reza-aslan-santa-muerte/index.html

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/growing-devotion-santa-muerte-u-s-abroad-n275856

The African Roots of la Santa Muerte - Jessica Kindrick

https://www.jstor.org/stable/24394940

https://www.jstor.org/stable/41336081

https://www.jstor.org/stable/41933902

https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt13x1rqh.15

https://www.jstor.org/stable/23722457

“Latin America” Dark Tourist, Netflix

Music credits:

“Frozen Jungle,” “The Upside Down World,” “She’s gone” and “Fight the apocalypse but before a quick nap” by Monplaisir under the name Komiku http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Komiku/

“‘The Fire dance’ performed by Aztec artists” video by MissGardenGG1, performance by Company Tenochtitlan. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BZ5Jm8pC_g

“Tu solo Tu” performed by Corozo y Su Cuarteto and Felipe Valdes Lopez https://archive.org/details/78_tu-solo-tu_corozo-y-su-cuarteto-felipe-valdes-lopez_gbia0022646a

“Aunt Hagar’s Blues” performed by Lu Watter’s Yerba Buena Jazz Band https://archive.org/details/TraditionalDixielandGeorgeBrunisAndHisJazzBandThatDaDaStrain/Traditional+Dixieland+-lu+watter+s+yerba+buena+jazz+band+aunt+hagar+s+blues.mp3

“Nueva Era (versiòn sorta - short version)” by Xiuhcoatl https://archive.org/details/TFR959-Xiuhcoatl-XiuhcoatlEP/04-NuevaEraversinCorta-ShortVersion.mp3