#devoted to death

[sir-crayfish]

I realised I haven't posted my peak video here yet but I just assumed I'll make a portfolio here n let people watch my video on my tiktok but I'm lazy and I'm not in the mood so yeah

Content Warning:

Disturbing images

Slight flash

Slight mention of sensitive language (not sure if it's necessary but just in case)

[frizzycrls]

Chapters: 2/2 Fandom: Hazbin Hotel (Cartoon) Rating: Explicit Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Alastor (Hazbin Hotel)/Original Character(s), Alastor/Alastor's Shadow (Hazbin Hotel), Alastor/Azrael Characters: Alastor (Hazbin Hotel), Azrael Additional Tags: Alastor's deal is with the angel of Death, Azrael is a bit of a sociopath in this one, This will probably get dark, eldritch angel, Smut, Tentacles, Choking, erotic asphyxiation, Breath Control Play, Dom/sub, This Az is vey much a controlling dom, Alastor really does not mind one bit Series: Part 9 of Future story ideas

Chapter 2

Summary:

Azrael comes to Raphael for aid in fulfilling part of the request this rather unique human has asked of him.

Alastor learns more about the Seraphim of Death and some of what it means to entertain him.

Notes:

Now we have smut! Please pay attention to the added tags before continuing in case this might not be your cup of tea anymore. Embedded links to my versions of Az and Raph have been added and can be found in the end notes too.

[babylon-crashing]

santa muerte: loved to death

While the origins of Santa Muerte and the love spells she casts each can be traced back to Spain, it appears that the fusion of the two took place on Mexican soil. In the brown candle chapter we examined a couple of references from the end of the Spanish colonial period, neither of which mentions any connection to love magic. You’ll recall that aft er her appearance in the annals of the Inquisition from the 1790s she vanishes from the historical record for almost a century and a half. According to the anthropologists who come across her in the 1940s, the newly resurfaced Saint Death is a specialist in affairs of the heart. While it is possible that she was involved in love magic during the colonial era and that devotees were able to hide this from Inquisitors, it is more plausible that she became associated with matters of the heart during her long period in hiding. The date of the Pretty Girl’s association with love magic is obscure, the location in which she first starts to mend broken hearts and capture, bind, and deliver stray spouses couldn’t be clearer. Since Santa Muerte’s Spanish forebear, La Parca, didn’t practice sorcery of this type, it’s obvious that in her New World transformation into Santa Muerte, she expanded her repertoire beyond matters of life and death to include affairs of the heart.  

A few years ago, when I was still researching the Virgin of Guadalupe, I had come up with a title for the book project that referred to her as the, “Queen of Mexican hearts.” But now that I know the White Girl much better, I’m wondering if the phrase isn’t a closer fit for her, given her specialization in mending and breaking Mexican and Central American hearts. Thus, the salient point is that two unrelated Spanish imports, love magic and La Parca, were syncretized on Mexican, Guatemalan, and Argentine soil. Back in Spain, the practice of love magic often involved the invocation of certain saints, but never the Grim Reapress. Of course, the fascinating difference between the Mexican love doctors on the one hand and the Argentine and Guatemalan ones on the other is gender. Somehow in Argentina and Guatemala, the female figure of La Parca morphed into the male saints of death, San La Muerte and San Pascual. San La Muerte prayers and rituals focused on matters of the heart are easily found on the Internet. Similar to the oldest known Santa Muerte prayer, which is a love-binding spell, the main one to San La Muerte includes the phrase, “For he who cheats me in love, I ask that you make him come back to me, and if he ignores your strange voice, Good Spirit of Death, let him feel the force of your scythe.”  

Less threatening is the “Love Prayer”:  

O Lord San La Muerte  I implore you that I won’t suffer because of love at any stage of my life. I  now ask you to bring [first and last name] to me so that I’m not unhappy. Don’t let anything detain him or delay him from coming to my arms, his heart joined to mine.  Together [first and last name] and I can enjoy love and passion that never ends as long as we’re together. I put my deep faith in you to be able to live to the fullest with love and with You, my Lord of Death.  

So on opposite ends of Hispanoamerica, Mexicans and Guatemalans in the north and Argentines in the south united the Spanish symbol of death with Iberian love magic and produced powerful new folk saints whose range of activity greatly exceeds that of their Spanish forebear, La Parca, who was limited to matters of mortality. Likewise, in its syncretism with the Mexican, Guatemalan, and Argentine skeleton saints, Iberian love magic increased its potency through its association with three of the most powerful figures of the Latin American supernatural landscape.

Before delving into the ritual practices associated with the crimson candle, let’s briefly consider the socioeconomic context that for centuries has engendered a strong and steady demand for such sorcery, especially among women. If witchcraft  is a weapon of the weak, a magical attempt on the part of the socioeconomically powerless to manipulate and control circumstances, environments, and other people that they are unable to influence through other means, then the double attraction of love magic to women, especially impoverished and marginalized ones, is easily comprehensible. From the advent of love-related spells and curses centuries ago in the Mediterranean to the present-day Americas, patriarchal societies have generated strong demand for such love magic on the part of socioeconomically vulnerable women. Besides the emotional impact of losing a husband or paramour, his departure could mean financial ruin or social ostracism for the abandoned woman. Indeed, in my previous studies of Brazilian Pentecostalism I found that many impoverished women had converted to this charismatic branch of Protestantism both because of problems related to spousal abandonment and separation and because they found strong support for such affliction within the churches. Without the worldly power to prevent spousal abandonment or the means to support themselves afterward, countless women throughout time have turned to both witchcraft  and religion in order to prevent and cope with the loss of a breadwinner. Of course, 21st-century Mexican and Central American women face less social ostracism after being abandoned and divorced than in the past and have greater educational and employment opportunities, but the combination of enduring sexism and very restricted labor markets continues to create strong demand for love magic. And at the beginning of the new millennium, Saint Death reigns as the supreme queen of mending, binding, and breaking Mexican and Central American hearts.

(R. Andrew Chestnut, Devoted to Death, pages 133-136)

[babylon-crashing]

SANTA MUERTE'S BLACK CANDLE

While the Lady of the Shadows is the saint of the margins par excellence, her strong appeal to one particular group, which has suffered persecution throughout the ages, is unparalleled. LGBT Santa Muertistas constitute an inordinately large sector of devotees in North and Central America and beyond. I had noticed her special attraction to those who aren't heterosexual from the outset of my research eight years ago, but in the rush to publish I wasn't able to go beyond a passing reference. From the most prominent devotional leaders to anonymous believers, the disproportionate number devotees to death can't be ignored.

The majority of top Saint Death leaders in the United States, Britain, and the Philippines are LGBT, with gay men predominating. In Mexico the trend isn't as pronounced, as the three most prominent devotional authorities there are straight. However, Dona Queta appears to be grooming a gay devotee as the successor to her Tepito throne. Among rank-and-file Santa Muertistas in Mexico, images of the Powerful Lady have become commonplace at gay pride parades in Mexico City, where rainbow-colored death saints process alongside their festive owners. On the other side of the border the strong presence of LGBT devotees is particularly noticeable on social media where they seem to compose the majority of Euro-American Santa Muertistas on Twitter and Facebook groups dedicated to the Bony Lady.

Without doubt the skeleton saint's zero-tolerance policy on discrimination is one of the most important appeals to LGBT devotees. While great strides have been made in both Mexico and the United States over the past few decades in terms of gaining equal rights and creating greater social acceptance, lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and especially transgender individuals still suffer from discrimination, homophobia and persecution.

It's the enduring discrimination in rural and small-town Mexico that set the stage for Arely Vazquez, who has appeared in numerous media reports and documentaries, to become the pioneering Santa Muertista in New York City. Raised in a small town outside of Acapulco, Arely started to feel uncomfortable with her natal male sexuality in her preteens. She quickly realized her attraction to other boys wasn't acceptable with the rigid social and religious confines of her hometown. In fact, when Arely confessed her sexual orientation to the parish priest, he instructed her to pray for conversion, which, of course, is still popular in some Evangelical and Catholic churches. Realizing life would be difficult for her in her hometown, Arely moved to Mexico City in her late teens, and it was there that she discovered the skeleton saint through her aunt and quickly became devoted to death.

Arelys new devotion to Saint Death helped her to move again, this time to the "other side" (as Mexicans often refer to the United States). She already had some relatives in New York City, which, by late 1980s, was experiencing a boom in Mexican immigration. Queens neighborhood of working-class Latin American immigrants, Arely believes the Powerful Lady has empowered her to deal with the challenges of being a transgender immigrant who doesn't speak English. Most significantly, the Bony Lady gave Arely the strength and courage to change her gender to female, which has entailed several surgeries and hormone therapy. It s one particular surgery that Arely views as one of the great gifts of her matron saint. Several years ago I asked her what had been the most important miracle that the Pretty Girl had granted. She immediately clutched her bosom and exclaimed "these!" The breast implants had cost her thousands of dollars. Arelys transgender friends and fellow devotees appear to have asked the White Girl for the same miracle.

As a sign of her fervent devotion and gratitude to her matron saint for empowering her to overcome all kinds of obstacles, Arely has promulgated devotion to the Skinny Lady like nobody else in New York City. A few years ago she started a weekly Sunday prayer service, which is usually held at her Queens apartment and attended by some ten to twenty devotees. In a bid to increase her following, Arely recently affiliated with Enriqueta Vargas, currently the top devotional leader in Mexico, who, from her home temple in Tultitlan, Mexico, presides over a network of some twelve temples and shrines throughout Mexico, called Santa Muerte Internacional, and is attempting to expand into the United Kingdom and Colombia. Enriqueta has attended Arelys annual August fiesta in Queens for the past three years in a row. Attendance at Arelys 2016 fiesta was markedlyless than previous years, possibly due to concerns over the threat of violence. A rival Santa Muertista, headquartered in Kansas, had allegedly made threats against both Arely and Vargas shortly before the 2015 anniversary celebration, which led the transgender diva to hire extra security.

The protection of the Powerful Lady figures as another compelling draw to LGBT devotees. Enduring discrimination and even persecution at times makes the fierce, female skeleton saint especially attractive to those who've been ostracized, taunted, or even subjected to physical violence because of their sexual orientation. This is especially the case for the small group of Filipino devotees in Manila, all of whom are gay men. A devotional leader, Yashagaro Hasegawa, told me, "Santa Muerte does not discriminate. I feel discriminated in Filipino society. There is the idea of making fun of the gay here in the Philippines. There are rules in the Asian culture 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." And since Rodrigo Duterte became president in 2016, death squads targeting alleged narcos have made Manila's streets even meaner.

(R. Andrew Chestnut, Devoted to Death, pages 126-132)

[babylon-crashing]

SANTA MUERTE'S BROWN CANDLE: DEATH CLOSE TO HOME

While Santa Muerte and her followers have yet to make headlines here in the United States, the extent to which her cult has expanded here in the past few years is astonishing. When I started thinking about her growing presence in this country, I assumed that I would have to head to the border or to cities such as Los Angeles and Houston to find the White Sister being venerated by her Mexican and Central American adherents. From my home in central Virginia I figured the closest I might find the skeleton saint would be in the Washington, DC, area, ninety miles to the north. And sure enough, on one of my recent trips to the capital city I found her fairly easily in the hip Adams-Morgan neighborhood. Sharing vibrant 18th Street with an Ethiopian, Peruvian, and even a Oaxacan restaurant, Botanica Yemaya y Chango carries a wide selection of Saint Death paraphernalia, including a two-feet-tall statue in which the saint’s robe is made of a patchwork of miniature hundred-dollar bills. The old Panamanian woman … told me that in the past three or four years the Skinny Lady has taken over more and more shelf space at the expense of Yemaya, Chango, and the other orishas (spirits) of this Cuban-born religion. The well-heeled young hipsters who wine and dine in Adams-Morgan occasionally stop in the shop to check out the religious exotica, but it is the Latino, mostly Salvadoran, residents of the neighborhood who purchase the hundred-dollar-bill-draped Santa Muerte and other articles that they pray will bring them, health, wealth, and love.  

The easy discovery of the Powerful Lady in DC led me to rethink my dismissal of the possibility of finding her in the former capital of the Confederacy. Perhaps there were enough Salvadoran and Mexican immigrants in Richmond for me at least to find a few votive candles for sale at a local Latino grocery. The more I thought about the prospect of finding her here, the more excited I became. For to discover her here in central Virginia, where the Latino population is under 5 percent, would be really significant. It would mean that the Pretty Girl had moved beyond the barrios of the big cities and the border and into the American heartland. And sure enough, the two Latino grocery stores on the same block as my favorite Vietnamese restaurant, on Richmond’s West End, were selling an assortment of votive candles, and even a few figurines at the Salvadoran-run market. Even more impressive, though, was the discovery that the skeleton saint had a semi-public altar in my new hometown. Lupe (short for Guadalupe), the mother of one of my wife’s third-grade students and a new devotee of Saint Death, told me to check out Botica El Ángel where she gets all her devotional paraphernalia.  

Wearing a flashy gold medallion of Santa Muerte on her chest, Cristina, the energetic owner of the religious esoterica shop on the city’s hardscrabble south side, gave me a tour of Botica El Ángel. A Salvadoran immigrant, she hadn’t heard of the saint of death in her homeland, but became a believer in 2005 when she started to sell Santa Muerte merchandise at her newly opened shop. While looking for a Saint Death book in English for me, an item I hadn’t requested, she enthusiastically stated that the Grim Reapress accounts for approximately 40 percent of her total sales. Santa Muerte candles, incense, and figurines outsell the other Catholic and Santería paraphernalia at the well-stocked little store. After a lengthy search, Cristina produced an overpriced bilingual devotional manual that she carries for her Jamaican and African American clientele. This was the first and is still the only reference to non-Latino devotees that I’ve come across. I wondered how many English-speaking believers in the White Girl had left  dollar bills in the bony hands of the four-foot statue in the center of the altar at the back of the shop. Politely declining her twenty-two-dollar English/Spanish booklet, I instead opted for a bilingual red jar candle. A former middle school spelling bee champion, I was naturally drawn to the misspelling at the base of the glass candle jar, right beneath Santa Muerte’s bony feet. Manufactured in North Hollywood, California, by the General Wax Company, my candle and all the bilingual candles on the shelf read “Holly Death.”        

(R. Andrew Chestnut, Devoted to Death, pages 47-49)

[babylon-crashing]

SANTA MUERTE'S WHITE CANDLE: DEATH AS THE GRIM REAPRESS

If her status as a folk saint who personifies death is exceptional in the Americas, Santa Muerte’s gender identity places her in a class by herself. Guatemalan Rey Pascual and Argentine San La Muerte, of course, are her only counterparts from Buenos Aires to Vancouver. But like the traditional Grim Reaper, these two saints of death, who were kept very busy by murderous regimes in their home countries in the 1970s and ’80s, are unmistakably male figures. Th e word “rey” in Rey Pascual means “king,” and the “san” in San La Muerte is the masculine abbreviation of “saint.” The Guatemalan saint wears a king’s crown and the Argentine typically wears the robes of a monk. In contrast, the Mexican Pretty Girl prefers nuns’ habits, white wedding gowns, and queenly robes. She increasingly appears on altars with long jet-black locks, which sometimes have even been permed into loose curls. As a female skeleton saint, Santa Muerte stands alone in the Americas, if not the entire world. Th e only other saint that rivals her popularity in the United States and Mexico is Guadalupe, Empress of the Americas.  

The Queen of Mexico is of relevance in the construction of Saint Death’s gender identity. We’ve already seen how the Spanish brought their female Grim Reapress, La Parca, to the New World. So if the predominant personification of death for the Spanish was female, it really is the masculine identity of Rey Pascual and San La Muerte that demands explanation. Without delving into details, the Argentine and Guatemalan skeleton saints are the product of a fusion of La Parca with real and imagined Spanish saints. You’ll recall that in the Guatemalan case, Saint Pascual Bailón, a canonized sixteenth century Spanish friar, morphed into a skeleton saint. One of the main creation myths of San La Muerte points to his origins as a Jesuit missionary.

Since there is almost a century and half — from the 1800s to 1930s — in the known historical record in which there is no written trace of Santa Muerte, it is impossible to discern the development of her identity during that period. What is known, however, is that the Santa Muerte who emerges some one hundred thirty years aft er the first mention of her is the same female figure who appears as a love magician in the field notes of anthropologists. Assuming Saint Death continued to operate clandestinely in the same region of central Mexico where the Inquisition came after her, she would have good reason to preserve her female identity during her long period in hiding. It was during this historical era that the mestiza Virgin of Guadalupe, who is believed to have appeared to Juan Diego in 1531 in present-day Mexico City, became the preeminent avatar of Mary, especially in the center of the country where she first appeared. The matrifocality of Ibero-American folk Catholicism reached new heights with the ascendance of Guadalupe as the leading religious figure on the Mexican landscape. Without an equivalent of the ubiquitous Mexican Virgin, there was less pressure on skeleton saints in South and Central America to preserve whatever female identity they might have originally had. In contrast, the greater degree of female-centered folk Catholicism in Mexico, especially in the central heartland, probably served to reinforce the gender identity of an unofficial saint who, as a survival strategy, had hidden in the realm of the occult. Every time I think of the tantalizing tandem of Guadalupe and the Skinny Lady I recall how the eyes of the godfather of the cult lit up when I mentioned the two in the same breath during our interview. Several large portraits of the mestiza Virgin adorn both the sanctuary and office walls of Archbishop Romo’s Santa Muerte church. Reflecting on the commanding position of the two female saints on the Mexican religious landscape, Padre David grinned and uttered a witty pun, which can be translated as both “Mexico is a country of many mothers” or “Mexico is a mother of a country” (“Mexico es un pais de mucha madre ”). Therefore, in the context of matrifocal Mexican folk Catholicism, where until recently Guadalupe has reined supreme, Santa Muerte’s female identity is a major part of her appeal to devotees, especially women and girls. I n addition to the ties of sisterhood and godmotherhood denoted by nicknames such as White Sister, Godmother, and Co-godmother, the Powerful Lady even serves as a mother figure for some of her spiritual children. Ernestina, a fifty-one-year-old ex-con and resident of Tepito, tearfully referred to the maternal side of the Skinny Lady. “Look at me, I just turned fift y-one the day before yesterday, and I’m still with her, and I’ll always be with her. If you could see the miracles that she does for me, in the street, at home, with my kids. I don’t have a mother, but I have her. And she’s all that I have. And my faith in her is so great that I know she’s going to get my daughter out [of prison]. I know she’s going to get her out!”  

(R. Andrew Chestnut, Devoted to Death, pages 60-62)

[babylon-crashing]

SANTA MUERTE'S GOLD CANDLE: DEATH, READ ALL ABOUT IT

Despite the supremacy of the spoken word over the written one in the cult of Saint Death, Mexican publishers profit from the sale of devotional literature. Most important is the omnipresent monthly magazine Devoción a la Santa Muerte (Devotion to Saint Death), which is sold at corner newsstands throughout the country. In retrospect, my initial call to study the skeleton saint may have actually occurred when I bought the inaugural issue of the colorful magazine at a Mexico City newsstand in July 2005. I was still researching the Virgin of Guadalupe at the time, but as a student of popular religion in general I couldn’t resist examining a glossy magazine that had a strange skeleton dressed like one of the many different Latin American images of the Virgin Mary. Mina Editores, one of the largest magazine publishers in Mexico, produces  Devoción a la Santa Muerte,  as well as  San Judas Tadeo and  Trolls,  in their “esoteric” line of monthlies, which also includes Mi Boda (My Wedding),  Tatuajes (Tattoos), and Pickups  in their other categories of magazines.  

The publisher prints 25,000 copies of Devoción  each month and distributes them to newsstands throughout the country, where they each sell for $1.65. Among the different sections of the magazine, the one called “Altar” claims the most pages, twelve of thirty-one. Here devotees proudly display their home altars in high-quality photos and tell readers how they have lovingly developed a sacred space for the Powerful Lady in the intimacy of their own homes. In Issue 118, Verónica García of the San Cosme district of Mexico City shows off  unusual dresses that she has knitted for her Santa Muerte statues. The caption beneath a picture of one of the statues dressed in a blue and white knit outfit reads, “The Garcías keep an impeccable altar. They clean it and regularly provide offerings.” Ritual instructions, questions and answers, advice, testimonials of miracles received and “dreams about the White Girl” constitute the other sections in which pretty much every page has a photo of the saint. In the same issue (118) in which the García family reveals their home altar to the cameras, there is a description of a Saint Death rituals designed “to eliminate bad energy from your vehicle.” In addition to spraying the car in question with abrecaminos (road opener) aerosol, readers are instructed to pray, “O my great Lady, I ask you from the bottom of my heart and with much faith that you keep me away from danger and that you remove from my path any curse or people who want to do me harm, and don’t allow any accidents on my way. May your will be done.”

Devotees looking for more detailed ritual instructions and collections of prayers can choose among several books, booklets, and manuals published in Mexico in Spanish. The most widely available, which is sold both online and at yerbería in both the United States and Mexico, is  La Biblia de la Santa Muerte (The Saint Death Bible), published by the large Mexican press, Editores Mexicanos Unidos. The promotional blurb on the back cover appeals to personal problem solving: “Find the solution to family problems, enjoy protection from your enemies, avoid being robbed, help your children, grow your business, and much more through prayer and devotion to Saint Death.” In the next paragraph Pablo López and Marcia Nielsen, authors of several books on Santería, underscore the utility of the ninety-six-page book. “In this book you will find a compendium of prayers, rituals, novenas, and basic rules for her cult. You will be able to get close to her and ask her anything—from advice to the improvement of your health and finances, and even protection for your business. And you will also learn how to give thanks for favors that have been granted. All this through  The Saint Death Bible.”  

Oddly, the image of Santa Muerte on the front cover is not the usual female figure. Rather, the black-robed skeleton holding a scythe made from a human spine in one hand and planet earth in the other looks decidedly androgynous. Most of the booklets and manuals tend to be abbreviated versions of the  Bible focusing more on prayers and less on rituals. Reflecting her increasing number of English-speaking devotees,  The Magical Powers of the Holy Death  was the first major ritual guide to be published in English in 2008. The major online vendors of esoterica and occult paraphernalia sell the booklet.  

The skeleton saint has also earned profits for a few Mexican and American novelists who have portrayed her in works of fiction. Most notably, the Mexican writer, environmentalist, and former diplomat Homero Aridjis introduced many of his compatriots to the Bony Lady in his 2004 novel  La Santa Muerte: Sexteto del amor, las mujeres, los perros y la muerte  (Saint Death: Sextet of Love, Women, Dogs, and Death). An engaging piece of pulp fiction, the novel portrays the saint as a gruesome Grim Reapress, straight out of a bad horror flick. Aridjis portrays himself as Miguel Medina, a Mexico City crime reporter who receives a mysterious invitation to attend the fiftieth birthday party of a major drug lord. During the twenty-four-hour bacchanalian bash at a ranch outside the city attended by powerful narcos, politicians, actors, and even Catholic bishops, Aridjis secretly witnesses a satanic type of human sacrifice in which one of the party-goers is knifed at the Santa Muerte home altar of the drug lord. In a recent interview, Aridjis claimed that his novel is a fictionalized account of events that he witnessed at a Saint Death birthday bash. In its third edition, the book has generated handsome profits for the Mexican intellectual, who is not a devotee himself and is actually resented by many Santa Muertistas, most significantly devotees associated with Doña Queta who have read the novel and object to his portrayal of the Bony Lady as a satanic sorceress.  For Irish crime novelist John Connolly, the profits generated by the Dark Angel have been even greater. His 2005 novel  The Black Angel, the fifth in a series, helped push his career sales over seven million. On his website Connolly lists Santa Muerte as one of the three main sources of inspiration for his 624-page tome.    

(R. Andrew Chestnut, Devoted to Death, pages 166-169)

[babylon-crashing]

SANTA MUERTE'S PURPLE CANDLE: HEALING

In addition to healing the broken bodies of her devotees, the Powerful Lady helps her flock overcome their abuse of alcohol and other drugs. That the cult of Saint Death offers a special votive candle—the yellow one—and specific prayers for devotees trying to kick the habit gives testament to the importance of her role as a supernatural rehab counselor. Precise figures on the incidence of drug and alcohol abuse among Mexicans and Americans don’t exist, but most estimates indicate that between 5 and 10 percent of the United States population are alcoholics. Based on both academic studies and my own personal experience in Mexico and the United States, I can attest to a pattern of binge drinking among a sizeable minority of men. In contrast to the classic European pattern of consuming small quantities frequently, such as a glass or two of wine with dinner, millions of Mexican and American men imbibe vast quantities of hard liquor and beer in drinking bouts that tend to take place on weekends. I myself have joined male friends and relatives in such outings and have been made fun of for calling it quits aft er a few rounds of tequila or beer. Being in a drunken stupor has never much appealed to me. In accord with my own experience, one study posits that 75 percent of alcohol available in Mexico was consumed by just 25 percent of drinkers, while in a very similar pattern another claims that in the United States 20 percent of drinkers consume 80 percent of the alcohol.  

Beyond alcohol, addiction to the very same psychotropics that the Mexican cartels export in great quantities is on the rise. While the U.S. illicit drug market remains the largest in the world by far, the Mexican domestic one has grown considerably since the 1980s. Hundreds of new rehab centers have opened in the past couple decades that specialize in the abuse of methamphetamines, cocaine, ecstasy, and heroin, among others. No longer is the abuse of stimulants and narcotics only an “American problem.” A young inmate in one of the Mexico City penitentiaries for women who claimed to have painted over a thousand images of the Bony Lady for fellow prisoners hadn’t yet asked her spiritual patroness for help with recovery but explained that she held her hand when she got high in the Bony Lady's cell to protect herself from an overdose.  Here again we see the appeal of Saint Death’s nonjudgmental attitude. Devotees who aren’t ready or willing to give up their habit can ask the Godmother to watch over them as they drug themselves. Substance abusers who are ready to beat their addiction can recite the “prayer for breaking a habit,” as can their loved ones:

Most Holy Death of the light of the moon. You who control the earthly dimension. You who spread joy and remind us that happiness is the goal of life before your arrival. Most Holy Death, do away with liquor, drugs, and other vices and bring tranquility to my home. Help [the name of the person] so that the blindfold comes off  his eyes and transformation takes place. Show him clearly the reasons why vice must not take hold of our hearts so that it doesn’t extinguish his inner light, and may your moon-colored wings alight on his spirit so that he feels your powerful presence. Most Holy Death, do away with liquor, drugs, and other vices and bring tranquility to my home. I sow seven seeds in the ground and may it be your name that cultivates the decision that leads to new circumstances, which through respect will open the doors of light. Most Holy Death, do away with liquor, drugs, and other vices and bring tranquility to my home. Protective and Blessed Death, by the virtue that God granted you, I want you to free me from all curses, dangers, and sickness, and instead give me luck, happiness, and money. I want you to give me friends and free me from my enemies. Also make [name of person] come to me in a humble way, like a lamb that lives up to its promises, to ask me for forgiveness. May he always be loving and submissive for the rest of our lives. Amen. (Pray three Lord’s Prayers.).  

The prayer is obviously intended for family members and friends seeking the recovery of a loved one. And though written in gender-neutral language, it seems aimed at wives and girlfriends who suffer the consequences of having a substance-abusing mate. The request for Santa Muerte to bring the addict back humbled and submissive recalls the classic love-binding prayer stamped on the red candles, which, of course, is primarily for jilted women. Moreover, Mexican men become substance abusers at higher rates than women, so more oft en than not it is the wives, girlfriends, and mothers who approach the Lady of the Shadows asking that she return their men to the place of light, free from enslaving addictions.  

A former prayer leader at Doña Queta’s monthly rosary service, Jesse Ortiz Piña, sounds like a Pentecostal convert in describing how the White Girl helped him kick his habits of frequent partying and beer drinking. Santa Muerte, he says, made him “more responsible at work and home.” Indeed, in my previous research on Pentecostalism in Brazil I discovered that a search for sobriety is the primary reason why men convert to this charismatic branch of Protestantism. Forty percent of my male interviewees in the Amazonian city of Belém became Pentecostals as a result of a desire to sober up. In a similar vein, a substantial percentage of female converts came to the Pentecostal Jesus hoping that he could cure their husbands and sons of their drinking problems.

What is salient here is that for some adherents the skeleton saint operates as an evangelical faith healer who offers a radical personal transformation along with the promise of overcoming substance abuse. Addictions to alcohol and the stimulants methamphetamine and cocaine are notoriously difficult to overcome, so it shouldn’t be surprising that many abusers find the promise of complete transformation an appealing and often necessary stage on their road to recovery.

Nonetheless, it’s intriguing to think that the same saint whose altars are awash in tequila and beer and is not exactly a paragon of sobriety is able to off er the same type of radical healing of substance abuse that is offered by the Pentecostal Jesus and Holy Spirit. Since Pentecostals conceive of Jesus as a teetotaler, it’s easier to understand how this moral miracle worker would serve as a better model of sobriety than would a parched skeleton saint. But herein lies one of the great advantages of Santa Muerte in the increasingly competitive religious marketplace of Mexico and even in the greatest faith economy on earth here in the United States. Much more than Jesus, the canonized saints, and the myriad avocations of Mary, Santa Muerte’s present identity is highly flexible. For some devotees, such as Jesse Piña, the Pretty Girl is also a moral miracle worker who, like Jesus and the saints, offers and encourages positive personal transformation as part of her healing repertoire.

For others she serves more as an amoral sorceress offering healing without demanding behavior modification and sometimes even in conjunction with causing harm to others. Recall the aforementioned Argentine adherent of San La Muerte asking the skeleton saint to both facilitate a successful operation for her loved one and to, “use your scythe to get those responsible out of our way, so they disappear from our lives and from the world—all of them, but especially MBL.” As her cult develops in the future it’s quite possible that a more fixed identity will be established. However, at this particular historical moment, the Godmother possesses both distinctly Christian and non-Christian identities depending on how individual devotees perceive her.    

(R. Andrew Chestnut, Devoted to Death, pages 181-185)