Santeria Healing: A Journey Into the Afro-Cuban World of Divinities, Spirits, and Sorcery

Wedel's account will appeal to scholars and others interested in Santería, Cuba, and religious healing. Santería--with roots in Africa and the slave trade and rituals including divination, animal sacrifice, and possession trance--would seem an anachronism in the modern world. Still, Wedel argues, it offers treatment and ideas about illness that are flourishing and even spreading in the face of Western medicine. He shows that Santería healing is best understood as a transformation of the self, allowing the patient to experience the world in a new way. He grounds his analysis of Santería in lively and sometimes frightening narratives in which people reveal in their own words the experience of illness, sorcery, and healing.