http://blogcritics.org/ A sinister cabal of superior bloggers on music, books, film, popular culture, politics, and technology - updated continuously. en Copyright 2005-2007 by the authors Sat, 9 Jun 2007 03:05:12 EDT http://backend.userland.com/rss Blogcritics.org custom software http://blogcritics.org/archives/2007/06/05/144307.php#comment-599931 Father Loves Me: Thank you for your letter and I appologise if I misrepresented or misunderstood aspects of the history and belief system of Santeria. Thank you for supplying readers with those corrections, I appreciate it anyway if nobody else does. I'm glad that you did understand that I wasn't passing judgement and was doing my best to describe the religion(s) as neutrally as possible. I only brought the religion up because of the subject matter of the photographs in the book which are truly amazing. I believe you can see samples of some of the work in this book at the link to his web site that I included in the article. As you appear to know quite a bit about the religion you will probably appreciate the photos far more than an unintiated person like me. Thanks again Richard Marcus 599931@blogcritics.org Sat, 9 Jun 2007 03:05:12 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2007/06/05/144307.php#comment-599879 I appreciate the tone of the article. Media in general tends to portray the religion negatively. My comment centers around the following passage: "Regla de Ocho – the Kingdom of Ocho. Ocho was the primary deity of the religion, which chose the name Santeria - way of the Saints - in order to disguise their traditional practices of worship." The religion is actually referred to as Regla de Ocha. Ocha isn't the primary deity; rather Orichas are primary to the religion. Oricha is a word for a group rather than a single entity. Also, the name Santeria wasn't chosen to disguise anything. The slave owners in Cuba actually used Santeria as a derogatory term because they believed the slaves were worshiping saints in an extreme fashion. 599879@blogcritics.org Sat, 9 Jun 2007 00:04:30 EDT