earthcds – Misterios essay

MISTERIOS

This documentary is my personal voyage into the world of Dominican Vudu, also known as LOS MISTERIOS. It is a journey in the unknown world of the LOAS, or Spirits, guided by the Servidores de Misterios, who introduced me and my camera to their beliefs, their ceremonies, and their work.
I filmed in New York City, The Dominican Republic and Haiti.

A misterio is something inexplicable, a mystery, something that requires faith and belief to approach and observe, something that inevitably defies a scientific and rational explanation.

A misterio is something that cannot and should not be revealed to a voyeuristic audience in search of a thrilling magic spectacle, it’s a serious spiritual happening that cannot be easily recorded by a video camera and a microphone, something one cannot and probably shouldn’t try to dissect and analyze with a western rationale and a cynically charged urge to understand.

Hence, I had many concerns on how to go about this video investigation and maintain a respectful attitude toward these cultural and religious phenomena so ancient, mysterious, extremely private yet socially widespread and avoid the common western presumption to explain, judge and criticize what I was being allowed to witness.

I decided to start filming without any financial help from anybody, completely free from obligations to anyone but myself, mainly to fulfill my own need to know more about something that, almost inexplicably, deeply attracted me and that I felt belonged to me not as a member of a specific cultural group but really, at an ancestral level, as a member of the human race. I had little money but not a deadline or concerns about neither commercial breaks nor TV ratings.

I started befriending various Botanica owners in NYC, who in turn introduced me to Paleros (ceremonial drummers), worshippers and Servidores de Misterio. We could say this is a video notebook, primarily for my own use. To this day I don’t know if I’ll ever let it reach a large audience and if it does I don’t know yet in what format or circumstances. Certainly this is not a family TV/ easy viewing kind of film, it’s a story about the places and the people where the divine, the inexplicable, the supernatural is a daily staple. For the first time in my career as a cinematographer, what I am filming is to me more important than the process of filming itself and I feel honored to have been given access to such intimate sites of popular faith and tradition. Often the video quality is rather poor due to lack of lighting and unusual shooting conditions which I often endured in order to be as unobtrusive as possible. Always, while I was filming, my eye to the viewfinder, I felt that what could be seen on the screen was merely a fraction, a faint, symbolic, very limited representation of the actual significance of the events themselves. In other words, I felt I was dealing with ancestral rituals and spiritual events that are almost impossible to be captured and analyzed through a video camera. In fact, the very use of this medium often could dangerously enhance the already feeble borderline between inexplicable but genuine events and some kind of supernatural choreography, possibly fabricated just for the benefit of the viewers.

The “Servidores de Misterios”, “Los Caballos” (the horses) are the priests, the intermediaries between the spirits of the Loas and ordinary people. The spirits descend into their bodies sometimes after being invoked, sometimes, especially during the intense drumming of a Fiesta de Palos, spontaneously. They are the “Horses” who temporarily carry the spirit in their own body while in a state of trance. They are the people I followed and asked questions to, who permitted me to film the ceremonies and places of worship portrayed in this video. Their powers are sometimes a gift of God and nature, sometimes an inheritance from a family member, who passed them on at the time of his/her death. Twins and triplets appear to have a particularly undeniable disposition towards becoming “Servidores” or “Caballos” de Misterios and further examples of this belief can be found in ancient African legends and symbolism. Also, I have sometimes come across homosexuals who were regarded as more “naturally prone” to incarnate both male and female spirits and carried no social stigma whatsoever.

A “caballo de Misterios” might have a normal life and job on the side of his/her spiritual role, or vice versa, dedicate him/herself full-time to “serving the Misterios”. Serving the Misterios is not a joke and is not fun; it is a mission that God and nature put a person, with the right personality and psychic power in charge of. If you are a chosen one, you must perform your spiritual duty. It is a very serious matter with many ceremonial rules to be carried out and if performed incorrectly one can incur in punishment from the Loas. Serving the Misterios is often a very difficult and debilitating activity and once the descending spirit leaves the body of his or her caballo, the person does not remember what happened and can be very tired and debilitated, physically hurt or I have been told, even dead, depending on the particular spirit that occupied his/her body and the specific circumstances of the trance.

The person “que se monta”, the “caballo” (the horse) who receives and carries the Loas (spirits), can also be called “Servidore de Misterios”, “Brujo”, “Santero”, “Espiritista” and “Curandero”. I have met Servidores de Misterios as young as 17 and as old as 90. When the Spirit descends, the body, behavior and voice of the “caballo” changes considerably, according to the spirit descended; multiple possessions are common.

The question of how genuine a possession is cannot be answered simply. When observing this kind of phenomena, whether one “believes” or not, there is always a very human natured interrogative present: if and how much of what we are witnessing is “real”, genuine, authentic, and how much of it is “theatre”, some sort of a choreographed interpretation of ancient myths and legends, of a remote oral tradition, staged specifically for the observer or the petitioner with the sole scope of extorting money and/or gaining prestige in the realm of magical manipulation. Even if I was personally approaching all this with a great deal of respect and belief, I was not immune to asking myself the above question and to this day I am struggling to find a proper answer. In magic matters as well as in western medicine and even in other fields such as psychoanalysis and even dentistry I have always been very aware of the “placebo effect”. In other words sometimes there is a very feeble line between what does us good and what we believe is doing us good. When we are dealing with supernatural forces this is even more true. There is indeed worldwide a great yet inexplicable evidence of the power of faith and prayer, widely substantiated by innumerable temples and sites of pilgrimage linked to every cult and religion. Obviously there is no use in consulting a “brujo” or a “curandero” if we are skeptic and negatively opinionated about their methods and line of work. Whether we decide to follow a conventional western (or eastern, natural, macrobiotic etc.) therapy or to work with supernatural forces we need to believe in what we are doing in order to obtain a result. And I would leave it to that.

In this documentary I could systematically deconstruct and present as “fake” each and every event I filmed if I decided to do so. I don’t do it because I believe in the supernatural, as a man, a human being and a filmmaker. In the course of my life I have had many experiences that I could not nor would even try to dissect and explain but that, nevertheless, I know, must have happened to me for a reason greater than I can comprehend. To me, the inexplicable exists, it happens to all of us, everyday, whether agnostics or religious. We cannot explain all philosophies of life mathematically; we cannot dissect poetry, painting, music, love, hope, pain, faith using a ruler and a calculator. Here I present the viewer with the events I witnessed, you won’t see blood flowing nor water turn into wine, but in this film you’ll be able to see the life, the work and hear the thoughts, the opinions of people who work with supernatural forces in their day to day life. Believe it or don’t, true or false, genuine or staged? Do miracles happen? Does God exist? Are the Loas true spiritual forces? You are entitled to your opinion and I won’t impose you my own.

LOAS, SAINTS, DIVISIONS and POSSESSIONS

The Pantheon of LOAS pertinent to Dominican Vudu,”Las 21 Divisiones” (the 21 Divisions) is vast but there are 3 main divisions I am focusing on: The White Division, the Black Division and the Indio Division. While the majority of the Loas (spirits) are graphically represented by Canonized Catholic Saints such as St. Miguel, St Carlos Borromeo, St. Elia, St. Antonio, St. Lazaro, etc., there are exceptions. For example, there is an entity who is very important to me on a personal level, and perhaps because of this very entity, to whom I became inexplicably attracted about 8 years ago, as I casually walked into a Botanica shop in NYC, I found the determination to embark in the difficult and painstakingly slow research that was to lead to this film. She is a Loa of the Black Division, a beautiful black woman fiercely holding a dangerous snake with her hands and giving shelter to a newborn baby in her lap. She is Santa Marta La Dominadora and a vast part of my investigation focuses on Her, Her powers, Her followers, Her “Caballos”. People have said to me many times that Santa Marta la Dominadora is a dangerous Loa, that she is best left alone if one is not absolutely sure how to deal with her.

Santa Marta is a Loa more openly of African descent than others, a Saint that in the popular iconography can be found (to the contrary of the majority of the other Saints, depicted with colorful images) only in a black and white print, almost to underline the dark tones of her work and of her personality. The added mystery of her lack of conformity to the Vatican-approved syncretistic imagery employed as a graphic vehicle for the rest of the Loas, her blackness, her snakes (a diabolic related animal) make her different and even more mysterious. In the Botanicas of NY and Santo Domingo, while I was able to find booklets and papers describing the majority of the other Loas, their rituals, their preferred offerings, their “related” Catholic counterpart, I could not find anything related to Santa Marta but a tiny prayer book. And Yet, I am told there are a great number of people working with and pleading to Santa Marta, there are snake skins, perfumes, oils and essences being sold in Botanicas to be used in her worshipping. In other words Santa Marta appears to be very popular and at the same time have a “bad reputation” and her rituals and offerings are divulged entirely by word of mouth, as an oral tradition, a secret within a secret, a mystery within a mystery. I was also told several times that she is the protector of prostitutes who often keep her image in the room where they receive the clients so that Santa Marta’s snakes can dominate the men and avoid trouble. The common interpretation about this Loa I encountered while visiting many altars on the Dominican border with Haiti (where S.Marta is also venerated and “used” in various rituals) was that S. Marta is not a Saint, she is an emissary of the forces of darkness, she is a Loa of the Black Division, that she can be very dangerous, and that she is mainly used to strongly dominate a person or an event and even employed in rituals leading to someone’s death. That would also explain why the syncretism with Catholic Saints common with many other Loas does not apply here.

In the Dominican Republic there isn’t such a radically negative vision on S. Marta but it is still perceivable a certain level of fear and uneasiness when mentioning this Loa of the “Black Division” who “works” as a team with S. Elia (Baron del Cementerio), another very powerful and dark tinted entity worshipped every Monday at the crypt of the first dead in many Dominican cemeteries. Santa Marta is very popular in esoteric works to dominate a lover, a stray husband, an unfaithful wife and there are many “servicios” (services) and “lamparas” (votive oil lamps) that can be prepared with different ingredients and then offered to S.Marta in order to solve a particular problem. Santa Marta likes offerings of dark malt, honey, eggs, gin, beer, champagne, perfume and cigarettes. In the Altar she has in the Cemetery Maximo Gomez in S. Domingo, pilgrims pour such offerings all around her statue after ritualistically genuflecting and slapping their hand three times above the tabernacle. Many smoke cigars in front of this altar and “read “the ash that develops, being very careful not to flick it off.

The possession with Santa Marta, to my understanding can be of two kinds, the fist one, as a “Metresa”, more gentle and flirtatious and the second one as “Petro” with darker tones and more intimidating. When Santa Marta descends in her “horse” as Metresa, she laughs, asks for beer and cigarettes, wants perfume and speaks sitting upright with sibilant sounding voice. She wears a purple scarf around the head and sometimes, in saluting her worshippers she is flirtatious and sensual, showing her tongue as she speaks as a snake would do. When the possession is of type “Petro” Santa Marta descends with convulsions that throw her caballo to the floor where he or she starts tearing the clothes off and contorting in the dirt as a serpent. During this type of possession eggs and ground coffee are offered to her which she consumes raw. There is also a third type of possession: when Santa Marta does not descend, she might send her snakes to do the work, “el Punto Culebra” and in this case, the possessed also convulses on the ground and contorts like a reptile, but usually does not speak. The majority of “Servicios” (offerings) and “Lamparas” (votive oil lamps) for Santa Marta I have come across are used to ask for her intervention to solve a problem or to “take care” of a person or a situation. As I said earlier, she is mainly used to manage love matters, but she can also be invoked to help with money problems, law problems and even immigration papers.

GIOVANNI SAVINO

Close this window