So I'm Fil-Am. I humbling think that a lot of PH problems and be linked to the padrino system?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Padrino_system
It's a perfect recipe for incompetence and corruption. I know many might not care at the minor inconveniences but remember COVID when PH had the worst government response by many measures. Do you think there'll be another COVID-like disease in the future? So lives are at risk.
The thing is US and other countries did that hundreds of years ago and switch to meritocracy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoils_system

Exactamente mañana 23 de marzo cumplimos un año, el echo está que yo amo a mi novio pero el no es el mismo al que yo conocí, lo conocí siendo responsable, con trabajo y estudiando, era más amoroso y no me tenía desconfianza, entrando en detalle todo empezó por ahí de julio o agosto, empezaron los problemas, se peleó con mi mamá por que todo la decisión de ponerme un horario de 5h para ir a verlo, días después se emborracho y me hizo un problema gigante, hable con mi padrino el cual solo me escribió para un favor personal y él me echa las culpas que desde ese día el confía en mí y desde ese tipo el cambio ya no me da tanto amor como antes, me trata de infiel, me dice que todo es mi culpa, me echaen cara el dinero que gasta en mi y esto que yo soy una persona de clase baja y el clase media alta estoy pagando mi universidad y mi economía bajo bastante desde que entre, han sucedido problemas de problemas y yo estoy muy cansada de esto ya él no es el mismo que yo conocí y los problemas son demasiado para los problemas que hay para una relación de tan solo un año y me siento muy cansada de todo esto aparte el es muy tóxico, no puedo dormir en paz sin que el me llame y yo no esté atenta, no puedo hacer nada sin avisarle a el, no puedo no contestar el teléfono por que me llama 80 veces seguidas o me pide una foto para ver dónde estoy, he ido a comprar muchas veces y él me pregunta que estoy comprando para ver si es cierto que estoy ahí, y en las peleas o discusiones el las quiere ganar todas, me echa en cara lo de la plata y me dice que le pague con respeto, exclusividad y fidelidad y yo se lo he dado todo tal vez no tenga plata pero incluso los regalos he tratado de ser creativa y busco cosas que estén en mi casa, y siempre me dice que él ha rechazado un montón de mujeres por mi cuando eso no viene al tema, siento que el se está robando ni energía y no acepta mi forma de ser por que lo acepto no soy muy cariñosa, no me gusta estar encima de las personas y el pretende que me levanté hasta cuando estoy comiendo para darle un beso y aparte de todo esto cuando no quiero tener relaciones como el y quiero hacer algo diferente siempre pero siempre me dice que seguro yo estuve con alguien más todo esto y miles de cosas más me están cansando extraño a mi novio al que tuve 6 meses y luego dejo de existir entonces...
Soy la mala por querer terminar mi relación de un año...

For context:
My girlfriend’s sister is getting married this upcoming July. As such, and I don’t know if this is common or Mexican/Latino thing (they’re Mexican and commonly practice cultural norms), I was told this past Sunday by my girlfriend’s sister that we were lecture “padrinos” of the alcohol for the celebration. From what I understand padrino to mean in Spanish is to be godparent. In any case, while I friends with my girlfriend’s sister and get along quite well with her, so far as to enjoy spending time with her, I was taken aback when I was told that we were selected to be the ones responsible for purchasing the alcohol for the celebration. While I wouldn’t have minded so much if it was a small gathering, they’re expecting over 200 family and friends to attend this celebration. While I am close to her sister, I am not by any means close to their extended family and friends. I’m also put off a bit as I feel minimized when I expressed that’s a lot of money to spend, and the response from the sister was it’s only 30$ bucks or so per bottle. What makes me uncomfortable aside from being asked to spend over $1k on alcohol are a few things.

1. I never throw parties that require these kinds of expenses nor do I splurge this much in one setting.
   
2. I barely know anyone who is going to be attending and feel bitter about spending so much money for people I don’t consider close to me or whom barely know me. Many of the few whom I’ve met have even barely made an effort to get to know me.
   
3. I’m put off that I was told and not asked, much less feel im being pressured into it.
   

TL;DR I was volunteered to contribute over $1k to my girlfriend’s sister’s big wedding.

[CW: a lot of death, implied suicide, disclaimer that none of this is real. Mister Admin had a nightmare, so she's my new target-]
Something doesn't feel quite right as she walks down the halls of the Famiglia headquarters. There is a dark and gloomy vibe to the usually lively place, and Toni feels a suffocating weight on her chest for a reason she can't really place. A familiar figure walks her way and she waves, "Hey, Ge-"
"I already told you to leave me alone, Toni!" Lucas forces by. She tries to stop him, to find out what's wrong, but before she can, Walt shoves past her and runs after him, "Lucas wait-!"
Something is most definitely wrong. It was then she heard a quiet sniffle behind her, and when she turned around, she finds Truman curled up against the wall, his head buried in his arms.
"Tru-"
"Don't... fucking look at me. Go away...."
"He's been like this for a while now. Best to just... let him be." Behind her, Samuel says. "What happened... exactly?" Toni asks. "No one is taking Padrino's death well, Toni."
Samuel pulls his hood over his head and walks away. Toni follows but as they turn the corner, he disappears. "Sammy-?" Toni calls out to no response. Huxley walks by, not looking her way. And a single door now stands in front of her, unlocked, lights illuminating from the other side.
Toni holds her breath and pushes open the door....
"ELI?!" Eliot lays on the ground of his office, a knife through his stomach and blood on the ground. The office is a mess, as if someone or something had gone on a rampage just a while before. Toni hesitantly approaches him, places a finger to his pulse, and sure enough. He is dead.
"... hm?" In a desk to her, Sylvia rubs her eyes, "Oh, I fell asleep again...."
"Via!" Toni lets out a sigh of relief, and approaches her. But as Sylvia looks her way and before Toni can reach her, she simply fades away into darkness.
Toni turns around, looking back at where Eliot used to lay. There is still a body on the ground, but not Eliot's, no. Toni recognizes this young boy....
"Anthony!" She runs over, her surroundings getting gradually larger before she kneels to the ground next to the tiny boy, shaking him. "Anthony! Anthony!"
Her hand is wet. Covered in red. But as she looks from her hands to the boy, he has a small smile on his face. Oh. Right. Toni had used her ability on him.
She stands up, slowly lifting her foot and stepping away. She hears a splash and looks down. The ground is covered in blood, and half-submerged beside her lay two more bodies of grown adult men. One of their eyes snapped open, and she takes off running.
She runs and she runs without turning back-
"What's wrong, Mi Bambina." A voice calls out to her, "Why are you in such a rush?"
'Padrino-!' She turns around.
It was Puzo indeed. Though, much like the men from before, he is on the ground, half submerged. Dead.
Toni wakes up in her bed with a cold sweat, shivering as she sits up. It was a dream. It was just a dream.
But Puzo's death is still inching near....
She takes a deep breath.
So... what now?
[Uh... open rp if La Famiglia Puzo members would want to int somehow- I'm really drained so this probably isn't my best work but... anyways miau-]

This long post is in response to a recent post, but more so to a youtube video referenced in that thread on Olokun direct.
Olokun Direct (crowning) does not exist in the Lukumi/ Regla de Osha tradition, and anyone who has undergone it has possibly been defrauded. (ineligible to entity a lukumi igbodu)
This post will go into detail as to why, and what criteria, if any, must be met for an Olokun direct ceremony to be accepted in the future.
Further, this post is not an appeal to authority. this post is not correct because of who i am.. Instead, I will provide my explanation, and allow my words to stand on their own merit. Those who desire to do their own research or Fact-Check me.. I sincerely hope that you do because that is what our community needs. We need more critical thinkers in this religion.
That being said, I will post the video link here so that any claims I make about the video can be confirmed or rejected... I do not want to be accused of creating a straw-man argument.
By What authority Does ANY initiation in Lukumi occur? The Yoruba people (the modern term for the ethnic groups from where our tradition arrives) poetically say that there are 401 orisha.. 200 on the left and 200 on the right. This is likely a symbolic number as Missionaries and Anthropologists have estimated there were at least 600 being actively worshipped in the 19th century.
Of those, how many have FULL initiation rituals in Cuba? Less than 20. while there are probably over 50 orisha in Cuba actively preserved and worshipped, less then 20 of them enjoy what we would call 'Full Initiation' (direct).
The reason for this is simple... Those Lukumi (Yoruba) people forcibly enslaved and brought to Cuba preserved what they had.. under the conditions that they had them... and none would dare make something up.
Being that the majority of Lukumi people brought over to Cuba where Oyo, Egba/Egbado and Yesa... it makes sense that the customs and practices to survive most saliently in Cuba reflect these specific geographic origins.
Olokun is one of the most popular Orisha in the entire Lukumi religion. No one can deny the influence this orisha had, even during the time when African-born men and women were still alive in Cuba. Of ALL those whose names we know... who were instrumental in establishing Ocha worship in Cuba... we literally have only one strong candidate to have been brought to Cuba and had Olokun initiated, and that is ña Inez, Yenye Tolokun. She was not the only one who brought Olokun to Cuba.. I believe Apoto is also credited with bringing Olokun to Cuba, but she was not initiated to Olokun. And while several Babalawo assisted in the Olokun Masquerade, NONE of them have ever been described as Olokun initiates.
What does this mean? this means, that as far as we know, the only person who would have been in a position to pass this ceremony on (Crowning Olokun)...DID NOT CROWN ANYONE INTO OLOKUN... which means, nobody in Cuba witnessed it.. and as a consequence.. the act, knowledge and procedure of crowning of Olokun NEVER materialized in Cuba. this is a fact.
Egun has an initiation ceremony and is VERY prominent in Oyo.. and yet.. did not survive in Cuba.. think about that..Why isn't anyone running to make an Egun direct in Lukumi? How come the people taking out "angel de la guarda" aren't asking if Egun is their main initiation? Because we pick and choose which inventos we want to fabricate.
Please imagine for a moment, how many dozens if not hundreds of Cuban Alagualaguas (elders).. who, if they believed it could be done, would have done it. Imagine, denying your own child this, just because you don't want anyone to know the secrets.... Its absurd... they didn't do it, because the PROCEDURE is absent.
So, in 2016, it is my understanding that the first ever Olokun directs were done in Cuba. Were they done for the Children of prominent Lukumi elders? NOPE. Were they done because Orisha gave a mandate and divine revelation? NOT AT ALL. IT as a hand-full of Americans, with American $$$ who convinced a group of Cubans to do it.
Where did they get the ceremony from? From a notebook they discovered under their late Grand-father's bed?
As an aside - i take this exact approach to any ceremony, ritual or orisha... Any Modern innovation, tratado etc.... that has no support in history, I consider invalid, a waste of time, and even out-right fraud... if it cannot be shown to have arrived to the present day by UNBROKEN LINEAGE. That being said, that is how i believe Olokun MIGHT become a valid direct initiation in the future for Lukumi -

1. Get initiated by a respected and knowledgeable elder of Olokun in YORUBA-LAND (I guess Edo would work too, but... i have my reasons for not preferring that)
2. Study the requisite number of years necessary to be granted authority to become an initiator of Olokun
3. GET PERMISSION from Yoruba elder to adapt it to the Lukumi structure (not likely to happen)
4. GET Approval from the Lukumi Elders to do so

The fact that all these Olokun-direct folks have been unwilling to go to an authentic source for the ritual should tell you EVERYTHING you need to know. Instead, resorting to fancifully written tratados with lots of guesswork.
Now, to the video.. Here are all the mis-directions, errors and biases i noted in the video:

1. The Title: The video lies to you from the beginning. The title is misleading. The title suggests that a PRIESTESS of Olokun is being interviewed... yet, when you listen to the video, she's not even initiated yet, much less eligible to be called a priestess - Not a great start.
2. Background of interviewee - again going to the credentials of the interviewee - a person who only started their Orisha journey in 2020, has otherwise no background in orisha tradition, and makes no effort to demonstrate any objective research done on the subject. Instead, she appears to be taking her boyfriend's word for it.
3. The man hosting the interview appears to at first ACKNOWLEDGE that Olokun direct is not done in Lukumi when he says that he told his own godchildren: I want you to do it direct, even if it means losing you and you going to Africa to do it. (Paraphrasing)
4. Interviewee states "we have the resources now to do it". but does not explain those resources or under whose authority it was granted.
5. Constantly calls Olokun 'HE' when EVERY Olokun de Santero i know of (i.e. the only one that would birth Olokun at Ocha) is female. The Olokun of Apoto/monserrate (by extension fermina)/Yenye Tolokun - those lineages give a female Olokun. Does she even know who her ocha godparents are yet? If she does, she sure gave them NO CREDIT or acknowledgement in the video... It seems like the Ocha priests don't have much say in this Ocha. (the gender is not a big deal, really... but, the fact that it shows where the source of information is coming from is very telling).
6. NOT Even Asking for Oshun - OK.. so, this one is not a slam dunk. She said she got her Angel de la Guarda taken out BEFORE ikofa.. and, I don't think she said what odu came out then. I only recall her referencing Osa-Roso.. and i'm not sure if that is her kofa odu or the one where her angel de la guarda was taking out.. IF Oshun was not even asked in Osa Roso, and Olokun was asked before Oshun in that odu... then, that goes to show... We went to VERY different schools. That would be absurd. Ochun and Orula eat together in that Odu.. and i'm assuming at least one babalawo in that plante would have known that.
7. The mis-information on Osa Roso in general, the mis-characterization of Obatala

So... If after reading this and fact-checking me... you still want to get crowned Olokun direct.. or if you want to be that special padrino that's King for a day to say you did one... that's on you..
​
https://youtu.be/moNDD8NRvSA?si=0PnxGZlTLKB9WMvi

I have been feeling like I am at a crossroads. I do have belief in my egun and the orisha, but my main reasoning for wanting to leave is because I do not know who to trust to teach and guide me because most of the people I have trusted to be my teachers and family in these faiths, have used and abused their titles and baited people with their knowledge to take advantage of them. In addition, I grew up in this and never actually questioned or truly thought about if this was something I actually wanted.
I want to clarify and reiterate that I do believe. My issue is not with the spirituality of these religions, not with the entities, not with the faith… but the practice and the people in it. Including myself. As I have damaged myself and relationships as a result of following something blindly as an obedient child with no autonomy.
I have been scratched in palo and given a title of a protector of the pots (patanfula) and accepted these but it was mainly as a response to me being an angry teen. I was heartbroken about losing my first relationship in which the religion was a factor into our breakup and then I also was in pain because I expressed my affections to someone who didn’t like me back and I handled the rejection extremely poorly. So because I was in a bad place emotionally, I repressed, I was cold, angry, distant, irritable, and most of my frustrations were taken out on my siblings. So I was told I would be getting scratched because I needed to be put under control. I received my guerreros, collares, and Olokun later on in the same vein because it was “time for me to take steps”. (I lost my guerreros and collares as a result of eviction several years ago and they were locked away in a storage unit without me knowing and now I can’t get them back. I feel like I am not under anyone’s wrath because it was outside of my control due to the circumstances that led to it. I tried to get them but my fault was in trusting and relying on another to help me.)
Managing my emotions was never easy as I imagine that is a truth for most teenagers but I know that I was never taught to process and feel them in a healthy way. My mother is a narcissist who either guilt trips, condescends, or freaks out and my father is cold, passive aggressive, gaslighting, and angry.
My father is the main reason that I want to leave because he has fear mongered the religion against me for a long time. I have lived my life terrified of doing or saying anything because I could be pissing off any said Orisha. Half of the time that he draws down, I’m not even certain if it is authentic. I feel like I was taught obedience through fear under the guise of respect. He has shamed me for not taking steps to make ocha and blames my lack of motivation as a reason why I’ll always have health problems and not that he never took me to see the appropriate specialists for the help I needed when I was living with him because it would’ve been too expensive for doctor visits. But a flight to Cuba and ceremonies aren’t? He put my medical issues in a religious basket without even taking me to see a specialist to look at options because the idea would be that if I crowned, it would guarantee a successful surgery. I saw two specialists who both agreed that surgery is not an option for me at this point in my life because it would significantly limit my mobility and is more suggestible if I were elderly and just wanted to limit pain. I am in physical therapy now and the progress is barely noticeable but it’s the most progress I’ve had in almost two decades.
And the thing that sucks is that I love my father but over the past year and a half I’ve had a lot of time to think about these things and a my relationship with him. So far I’ve come to realize that maybe I never wanted to be in this religion but I have been in it for him because he felt like this was the only path and confusing it for what might be the “right” path for me. And one thing that has been sitting wrong with me like bad takeout is being told “in this religion, I am your salvation” which has always given me such a weird vibe.
There is so much more that I could rag on with my father and I feel like even now I’ve aired too much. I just know that at this point, I feel like I’ve only been doing my part in these religions out of obligation and fear but I don’t feel that my heart is in it and I don’t want to half-ass it anymore. It’s not fair to my protector spirits, egun, Orisha, or probably even myself. They deserve someone who is more committed and confident in themself to properly take care of them and work with them. I don’t even have my madrina anymore to go to and ask for help. She unfortunately passed away from sickness and while she scared the shit out of me and I feel like she didn’t truly get me, I know she cared about me and I cared about her. I dreamt of her just once recently for the first time after she died and I don’t remember a thing that was said or done but I remember seeing her and one of my only friends in this religion told me that it is probably because my chapter in this is starting to close and my madrina represented that chapter of my life. Which I suppose makes sense to me I just wish I could remember more. As for my Madrina’s husband, my padrino, he is a person who I do not feel comfortable enough being in the same room with alone.
I haven’t been to my godparents house in years. I haven’t spoken to my siblings in the house in years. I haven’t seen or spoken to the pots or the spirits in charge in years. I have tried on my own through simple standard weekly dedications with prayers to my bolvida and feel like no one is listening. The theory is that my father stole my spirits to work form him because his turned away from him for not doing what he was supposed to. And now I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.
I was told years ago by the main spirit of the pots in my palo house that if I ever wanted to be relieved of my title to just go speak to them face-to-face and request it. Since I’ve been gone I’m almost sure that I may have been consequentially stripped of my title due to the circumstances but I still don’t actually know. I’ve been afraid to go back and I know I can’t go back alone. All I have in my possession is a bolvida, collares (which I barely wear) and my Olokun. I know I can’t just give my things to a river. I don’t have godparents, godsiblings, or anyone I can trust to leave my Olokun with. I know I could put my bolvida altar away and return to it if I want to just do espiritismo which is essentially what I do now just with an orisha to take care of on occasion (I was advised to not bother Olokun often). But right now, I need time and space to figure out my place in a spiritual, mental, and emotional sense at the same time that I am working on my body as well.
So what do I do? I love my spirits and saints and appreciate them but I feel I need to step away because I think I’m doing more harm than good at the rate I’m currently going. I appreciate anyone who reads this and can provide any advise.

This is merely a reference to the different Oshi No Ko character accounts I've observed, with some commentary.
Holy shit there are a lot.

Akane

Akane_Kurokawa	The OG. The Mod. The one who really needs to fix their sleep schedule. Down bad for Kana
Akane-Kurokawa	A unicorn
Akane_Kurokawa_†	This one is very down bad for Aqua.
Akane_Hoshino	Downbad for both Aqua and Ruby? Pretty sure isn't supposed to be a sibling
Akane_Kurokavva†	Impersonates the mod, usually when a subscriber milestone is reached. Pay attention to that double V.
Akane_Kurokawa-
Akane_Kurokawa_-	Likes pizza.
Akane_From_Alabama†	Is also down bad for Aqua, but also related to him.
Ghost_of_Akane	An Akane who jumped. Primarily communicates via emoticons. Images have their colour inverted. Very affectionate with stars. Appeared after Akane was eliminated from the Best Girl poll.
Kurokawa__Akane	Very fucking horny. Alt of Just Lunch.
Smol-Akane† Smol_Akane	Is smol. very cute. Why has access to guns. Adopted by Frill She previously killed Purple Guy only to be possessed by him. Frill did remove the possession by transferring him into the corpse of Ai, create Purple Ai. She is dating Smol Kana
_Akane_Kurokawa†
akanecco_2323	This one is a reference to Akane's insta handle in the series.
Aikane_Kurokawa	They just deleted their account what the fuck
Learning-Kurokawa	Posts long message to educate people on the subject matter (actually just copy pastes the first google result)
_kurokawa_akane†	Suspeneded now this one was a dog. Woofed a lot. Its Nero.
_Akane_Kurokawa__†
akanake_kurokawa
4kane_Kurokawa†
Barking_Kurokawa†
__Akane_Kurokawa__
Evil_Akane_Kurokawa	Idol, not an actor. Former member of Evil B-Komachi but was fired for some drama
Sayahime	Who?
Revolutionary_Akane	A communist-esque revolutionary who wishes to bring equality to the sub by doing something to the Akane group chat that the rest of this lot are in?
AkaneKuro_	A very nice young lady
Akane_Uchiha	An Akane who is part of the Uchiha clan and has awakened the Sharinagan. Wears a head protector to cover her eyes for incase she spontaneously goes insane and uses it on everyone. Desires the Mangekyou but doesn't know how to get them yet, so watch out kiddos
Akane_Kurokawa_V1	A robot from Ultrakill. Can't talk and is actually very shy. Its pretty cute.
Akane_vi_Britannia	Very Naughty GirlTM who needs to learn to be more helpful
Crowkane_Kurocrowa†	Birds. They aren't real
Akane_Kurokawa_pinup	Akane but Lewd apparently. Whats the difference between this one and Kurokawa__Akane then?
Dragonic_Akane	dwagon
Akane-of-the-Deep	A cosmic entity who destorys universes to return them to nothingness. Counterpart of Kana-of-the-Stars, which is a bit weird when you remember that Stars is dating a Ghost of Akane. She struck a deal with Evil Ichigo to enlist him in said destruction of universes.

Kana

Kana-Arima	The Mod. Down bad for Akane. Even more down bad for Baking Soda.
Smol-Kana	Is smol. Got kidnapped by Armstrong and turned into a Roomba, but was freed. Likes Backing Soda a lot. Dating Smol Akane
Evil-Smol-Kana	Is Evil and Smol. Arrived after crawling through a cardboard box? What the fuck is deal Ichigo seriously. A box. Was kidnapped by Senator Armstrong and turned into a terminator-esque killer cyborg.
Evil_Kana_Arima	Is "Evil." Actually very wholesome. Married to Evil Aqua. Dislikes Akane and Baking Soda and prefers Bell Peppers instead. Oblivious to the flaws of those around her. Has a Fart sniffing fetish. Also shes the founding titan, and also dead, but that's not important. She sniffs farts. Laugh at her. Now.
Kana-Arima_	Much more toned down compared to the rest of the Kanas. Likes Baking Soda still.
Kana-of-the-Stars	Cosmic entity. Primarily communicates through emoticons and the occasional ASCII art. Uses fancy text. Dating Ghost of Akane which is weird when you consider her counterpart is Akane of the Deep. Likes Baking Soda but there isn't enough to satisfy them. Also apparently she created the fucking universe but prefers considers galaxies her magnum opus?
Learning-Arima	Similar to Learning-Kurokawa but much rarer. However, this one seems to use better grammar and slightly less plagarised content. Extreme obsession with baking soda
SmoI-Kana	Appeared while Smol-Kana was kidnapped. Disappeared after she was freed. Unknown affection for Baking Soda
Arima-Kana	Technically another Smol Kana, but this one likes Bell peppers, not baking soda. Still likes Smol Akane, but seems to be willing to settle for Aqua instead
Tsurugi_TokyoBlade	Best girl who needs to really learn to calm down a bit
Kana_Gojo	A Kana who has the powers of Gojo, and also white silver hair. Very cute
Kana_Arima_V2	Another Ultrakill character, this time its V2,
Arima_Kanan	A genderbent Kana. Still crushing on Aqua, though genderbent so its Sapphire. But what about the other 2 Female Aquas?
Ice_Kana_Arima	A Kana who when abandoned, decided to harden up and close off to survive. Basically Kuudere Kana instead of Tsundere Kana.
Kana_Arima_ERA	Kana covered in ERA. Self explanatory, but the person who made the account doesn't even like Kana so?
Crow_girl_kana_arima	Birb Kana
Princess-Kana-Arima	Queen of the Kana Kingdom, she drugs her soldiers with Baking Soda to enhance their abilities
TheGreatKhana	Joining Princess Kana is the Great Khan! Khana. Leader of many armies. Probably
-Kana-Arima-	A very normal Kana. So normal she hasn't realised there are other Kanas yet. Poor girl.
Arima_Kana_	She's a Fairy Knight. Nuff Said.
Kirai-Arima-Kana	She's a serial killer who loves watching stars just wink out. Scary

Ai

Hoshino-Ai	The mod. Quite rare to see.
-Ai_Hoshino-
AIdolofthemojave	An Ai who lives in Falloutesque post apocalyptic world
Ai-Hoshino_†
Ai_Hoshino__
Ai_Hoshino_ERA	This one is actually active. Survived Ryousuke's stabbing by wearing ERA. Down bad for Gorou. ERAi is such a missed opportunity.
Airi_hoshino	Born of incest between Aqua and Ruby. WHY WOULD YOU CHOOSE THIS NAME.
DeceasedAi	Is Dead
Love_Ai_Hoshino	The other active account. Incapable of loving, even for her children. Its actually kind of tragic. Doesn't stop her from being downbad for Gorou though. Uses old reddit.
Hashino-Ai	Simps for other Ais
Hoshino_Ai_Alter	The "Inner" Ai or something. Has black hair and red eyes.
Evil_Hoshino_Ai	"Evil" Ai. Appears with inverted images. Incapable of not loving.
Smol-Ai	Is smol. Very cute. Has T-Rex arms. Is the reincarnation of Ai, child of a Ruby and an Akane? What
Evil_Smol_Ai	Is smol and Is Evil. Is also the reincarnation of Ai. Child of Evil Aqua and Evil Kana from the future. Apparently E Kana died, and in order to bring her back, formed a pact with the eldritch, to save her, but corrupted her memories leading to her thinking Memcho was her mother, and killing Evil Kana. God damn.
The-Purple-Ai† The_Purple_Ai	Ai's Dead Corpse possessed by the spirit of Purple Guy, transfered into here by Frill Shiranui to remove it from Smol Akane. Purple guy has since been removed and Ai is now living?
idol_ai_hoshino
Male_Ai_Hoshino	Self explanatory, needs to be more creative though
Ai-Hoshino-Android	Skynet has returned in the form of Ai Hoshino. Still looking for John Connor. SkAiNet might be ERAi's creation making this one her granddaughter
Ai_BKomachi
Ressurected_Ai	A revived Ai with no memories of her past and possibly eldritch influences
HomunculusHoshino-Ai	Ai Hoshino but a Homunculus. Shocking, I know. Rather than being killed by Ryousuke, its her children who were killed. She then proceeded to sacrifice the entire population of France via an idol performance to resurrect her kids. But why would you use the French as the basis of your children. Have a thought as to the quality man.
2fles_sseR_iA
Evil_Undead_Ai
Ai-Hoshino-Prime	Ai's soul and will so powerful, it broke her flesh prison and became a star. Its an Ultrakill reference. I think
Ai-mechanicus	A robot? Cyborg? Ai that serves the 40K country thing. I dunno I don't play 40K, but they like Frieren so they're cool.
LegionAi_ONK	Another 40K thingy mabob I think. They server the legion. Is that a 40K thing?
Jurassic-Ai	Rawr. Dino Ai best Ai
VampAire-Hoshino	First there were the smols, then the evils, and now we're infested by filthy bloodsuckers. What have we come to.
_Ai_Hoshino	This one is really into Aqua. Sexually. Keep it in your pants
reincarnatedidoltao	Ai, reincarnated into Hu Tao. Or maybe its the other way around. point is they share the same VA. I think

Ruby

Ruby-Hoshino	The Mod. Gex with Mem Cho and everyone else too. Negative towards Incest. Unknowing supplier of my sausages
BigGeteStar-Ruby	Is enslaving Saiyans?
Evil-Ruby-Hoshino	Is "Evil." Preaches to forgive and forget. Not Wholesome though. After some negotiations we have come to an agreement Very wholesome. Even adopted two children. Uses inverted images. Likes cats more than dogs.
Smol-Ruby	Is smol. Has delusions of grandeur, believing she is the reincarnation of Amaterasu and may or may not wish to take over the world. Dislikes incest. Is an alcoholic
Evil-Smol-Ruby	Is smol and evil. Worships a Lamp. Is she a moth?
Hoshino_Ruby	A fighting game enthusiast. I'm pretty sure this is actually the oldest account by almost 2 years.
RubyHoshi	Positive towards incest though may just be joking.
Ruby_hoshino16	Why 16.
Sweaty_Ruby	Likes Incest a lot. And I mean a lot.
_Hoshino-Ruby_	Likes Incest. A lot.
Aquas-Stuff	Is the ol' "Aqua: I'm doing stuff" meme. Another incest joke.
Ruby-Goku-Hoshino	Goku but reincarnated as Ruby after falling off a cliff. Im wondering about gender dysphoria rn
Ruby_Zamasu_Hoshino	Its the Goku account idea, except then Zamsu did a body swap and ended up in Ruby's body
Hoshino-Morganite	Ruby but a boy
hoshino_agate	Also male Ruby, but this one is smol
Neo_Ruby_Hoshino
Love_Ruby_Hoshino	No one panic, BUT I THINK THIS ONE IS NORMAL. Claims to be the daughter of Love Ai Hoshino. Claims.
RubyHoshino-	Just another Ruby account
Ruby_Alternative	Alternivately, look at this Ruby. She is an otherworldy monstrosity creates by TF2's Medic based on a Ruby. The strongest and final of his experiments, she spends most of her time as a chef at the Smol Daycare.
Homunculus-Ruby	HomunculusHoshino-Ai's resurrected daughter, formed from the Sacrifice of the entire French population. Oddly doesn't call Ai mama, but rather by her name
Ruby-Arima	Shes not down bad for Aqua. Finally some creativity 🥳 Its for Kana instead
Ruby_of_the_Night	I mean, being a vampire is one thing, and I can even overlook snacking on your brother. But doing it without his consent? Now that's just rude
Ruby-Sukuna	You know, I'm starting to question that "One in a Million" Thing. This is like the fourth person to eat one of Sukuna's fingers and survive.

MEM Cho

Mem_cho	The Mod. Claims to be an Angel. Several view as a Devil.
Mem-cho
Evil_Mem_Cho	Is "Evil" Uses inverted images. Became an idol in High School instead of waiting until 25 like the old fart.
Smol-Memcho	Is smol. Exists in two comments. One of which is asking for a leak sauce.
memmem_cho_o	Lived for a mere 3 days.
LowQuality-Mem-Cho	A bastion of sensibility in these trying times. Uses diacritics with the letter repeated to achieve a very creative corruption
TheFastestMemAlive†	The Reverse Flash travelled back in time to turn himself into an anime girl, specifically MEM Cho. Do you know how many people would kill for this?
El-Memcho	A member of a drug cartel. Possibly the leader
Mem-Sukana	This Mem decided to eat fingers. For some reason. Fucking cannibals.
Schizo-Mem	If you see this one please ignore. She is the hallucination of The_Crow_Girls Disturbed Mind

Aqua

Aquamarine_Hoshino	The Mod. Please report all sightings to 555-0123-456
Aqua_Hoshino_R	Reincarnation of Ryousuke rather than Gorou. Very murderous.
Aqua_H0shino†	From Alabama.
Aqua_Hoshino
Aqua-Hoshinoo
Aqualad_submarine
Aquaman_Hoshino
Aqumarine-Hoshino
Hoshino_Aqua
AquaHoshiiino
Neo_Aqua_Hoshino
Transmigrated_Aqua
Evil_Hoshino_Aqua	Is "Evil." Quite Wholesome. Does not desire revenge and loves acting and Kana. Uses inverted images,
Prowler_AquaHoshino	wait what
Smol-Aqua	Is smol. Very wholesome. Has a Death Note, but usually doesn't know the name of his desired targets.
Italian_Aqua-Hoshino
SubmarineHoshino	So many water jokes
Touki_Hoshino	From Tokyo blade, needs to stop letting Tsurugi do all the fighting for him
Aqua_Vegeta_Hoshino	Same joke as Ruby-Goku-Hoshino. Reincarnated Vegeta after he fell off a cliff and died
Evil-Smol-Aqua	Another Smol Aqua, but Evil. He blinds his enemies (and himself) with the power of Light mode new reddit (old reddit is still better) Also loves the stars and space. He too worships a lamp. I'm like 80% sure hes a moth
LeAqua-Hoshino	Lebron James but Aqua, plays ball
Hoshino_Sapphire	Aqua but a girl
Hoshino_Howling and also Hoshino-Howling	Another female Aqua
Lapis_Hoshino	A third genderbent Aqua
Evil_Saphire_Hoshino	INverted Genderbent Aqua who also can't spell their name
Smol_Sapphire	A child genderbent Aqua who enjoys a good stabbing
Aqutanbutoncrack	Despite his name, its actually a pretty normal person. Huh. Everybody point and laugh at him
Water_Hoshino	A literal glass of water
Homunculus-Aqua	HomunculusHoshino-Ai's resurrected child, formed from the sacrifice of the entire French population. His dreams are plagued at night by their cries
Evilaqua7384	A very edgy child. Please osmoene find this kid an adult.
Aqua_hoshino4	4. Really? 4? A very horny Aqua.
Gleeplorp_Hoshino	An Alien Aqua. At least, I think it's an Aqua
Werewolf-Aqua	God damn furries
Aqua_Er_Padrino	He's the inheritor to a Mafia family following his Ai's Death. I wonder if he Knows El-Memcho

Gorou

GorouAmamiya	The mod. Simps for Miyako like a normal person
DeceasedGorou	GorouAmamiya but dead
-GorouAmamiya-	Another Gorou but he's a massive degenerate and incest supporter
-DeseacedGorou-	-GorouAmamiya- but dead and unable to spell
Evil_Gorou_Amamiya	A money obsessed doctor
Fem_GorouAmamiya	Gorou but a woman. Should've been MPregGorou but sure

Crows

Crow__Girl	Fumo obsessed incest shipper
The_Crow_Girl	A mostly sane mother of 1
Chica_Cuervo	This one is spanish and unrelated to the other crow girls.
Crowkane_Kurocrowa†	Birds. They aren't real
DRIP_CROW005†	The Coolest of them all
DRIP_CROW_REBORN	Drip crow is back! In the form of a delicious plushie!
A_Crow001†	Caw
Crow_Guy_1	Only caws for AKane
A_Crow002†	Caw Caw
A_Crow003†	Caw Caw Caw
A_Crow006†	Caw Caw Caw Caw Caw Caw
Crow_004	Caw Caw Caw Caw
Crow__010	Caaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaw
Rajang_Crow	Quack
Swol_Crow	Dayum son, look at those gains!
CAWWW_of_the_Crows
Crow_girl_kana_arima	Birb Kana
CrowGirI	Hah! She can't spell!
Evil_Crow_Girl	She's actually a Raven. Why is she called Evil Crow then?
Crowned_Girl	I don't think she can spell. Also a mass murderer but I don't care about that. She can't spell

Minor Characters

Frill - There are three accounts. Frill-Shiranui who exists in a single comment, and FrillShiranui, who adopted Smol Akane and has great powers apparently (and got together with Minami before she passed). The third is FriII_Shiranui
Gotanda - Taishi_Gotanda, Gotanda_Taishi and Evil_Taishi_Gotanda. They might as well all be the same fucking person.
Miyako - Miyako_Saitou is a tired, single parent of two, constantly trying to fend of incest and Oshi-no-miyaKo^† wants to fuck Aqua. Mama_Miyako is a new one and is very similar to number two. Evil_Miyako_Saitou is a jaded old lady who is very bitter about past experiences.
[REDACTED] - This lot can go fuck themselves. No respect. I think there's 12 of them, and only 2 haven't been banned.
Sarina - Sarina_Tendoji recovered from her illness and was adopted by ERAi. She enjoys feasting on crows. Evil_Sarina_Tendouji had a caring mother. She also plots world domination. Smol-Sarina gets lost. A lot. Very confused child. Older_SarinaTendoji live to adult hood and now is an idol at 20. I think.
Raida - Raida_Sumiaki handsome devil who creates the slanders. Sumiaki_Raida is his alt. Probably.
Taiki - There exists four of them: Taiki_Himekawa, HimekawaTaiki, TaikiHimekawa, Himekawa_Taiki. I cannot tell them apart. 2 of them want to fuck Ruby though, and at least one is down for Kana.
Goa - These accounts are pretty dead. GoaONK and The_Actual_Goa
Ichigo - Ichigo-Saitou is the multidimensional traveller responsible for all this mess, creating the schizoverse. Evil-Ichigo-Saitou instead of going fshing and travelling the multiverse, decided to go farming. At the end of his life ended up in a contract with Akane of the Deep to help destroy the universe.
^† Indicates the account has been deleted or suspended.

This post is based on the 12 layer MEGA ICEBERG. Shout out to H3H3_PLUS for putting that together!
This was too large to fit into a single reddit post so you can find Layers 1-7 in my other reddit posts:
Layers 1-4
Layers 5-7
If you find any corrections let me know - Enjoy!

LAYER 8

Barefoot Brothers Drive

Have you ever wanted to take drive barefoot, video tape it, and make money doing so? Then C-Man, and his website, https://www.barefootbrothersdrive.com/, is your ticket! In October of 2021 a peculiar ad surfaced on YouTube with this exact business offer. A man named Liam would take up the offer, and call into the Podcast discussing the drama that happened because of it. Eventually C-Man and Liam would confront one another on the Podcast, and it would be revealed that Liam was trolling the entire time. As an act of good faith, Love would make a website called https://www.barefootbrothersdrivesmotorcycle.com/ that contained a single video of Love riding a motorcycle in his barefeet. The site is still active, but the video is no longer available.
Ads on YouTube Liams Side C-Mans Side Liam & C-Man Call Liam Was Trolling Loves Motorcycle

Ben Affleck's Back Tattoo

Back in 2019 Ethan showed Hila Ben Afflecks back tattoo, and she declared it to the the worst tattoo of all time. This became a re-occurring segment on the show where Ethan would show Hila bad tattoo's to see if they could find an even worse tattoo. For years Ben Afflecks tattoo would reign supreme as the worst tattoo, but eventually it would be de-throned by none other than Ed Sheeran.
OG Tattoo Moment Bad Tattoo's More Bad Tattoo's Beef n' Ched Now vs. Later Even More Bad Tattoo's MORE Bad Tattoo's Adam Levine Ed Sheerans Victory Elon Tattoo

"This Smells Like my Butthole" candle

In January of 2020 Gwenneth Paltrow began selling a 'Smells Like My Vagina Candle'. They bought one to smell on the show, and it just smelt like a nice candle. Ethan thought it would be funny to create a 'Smells Like My Butthole' candle, and soon after they began working with a company to make this come to life. In December of 2020 the candle would be sold, raising $8,000 for prostate cancer.
Vagina Candle Discussion The Candle Arrives Making it Selling the Candle The Candle Arrives MoistCritical Smells the Candle

GERD Gang

Ethan has GERD, Gastroesophageal reflux disease, which causes stomach acid to repeatedly flow backwards into the tube connnecting your mouth to your stomach. This causes him to hack and cough fairly often on the show. But Ethan is not alone, and many in the comments shared the sentiment of having GERD. They were declared GERD Gang!
Ethan Coughing GERD Gang Unite!

DD Megadoodoo

This is referring to a viral moment from a news anchor who was caught stumbling to pronounce someone's name live on the air. For some reason all that she could muster was DD Megadoodoo. This became a popular soundbite that is often used when Ethan incorrectly names someone on the Podcast..
The Moment

808-HOT-MEME

A phone number that fans can use to call into the Podcast. It has come and gone multiple times over the years. The last time it was used was in 2022.
Previous Number 808-HOT-MEME Lines Re-Open Re-Open AGAIN Last Mention

Swami

A security guard at the studio who has made multiple appearances on the podcast. Swami's confusion when in on camera is always a beautiful sight to behold.
First Mention Food Competition Shoot to Kill (Members Only) Swami in BTS Last Mention of Swami

Vape God NFT

In March of 2021 Ethan and Crew got into the NFT game. Each member of the crew got their own custom NFT. The Vape God NFT is a one of a kind minted NFT that had an entire episode dedicated to it's sale. A bidding war broke out and in the end it sold for 33 ETH ($60,769.50 at the time).
First Mention Bidding War Episode Moment of Sale

Gatsby

An early gag that originated with Ethans obsession with watching video's of people doing crazy things in mobility scooters, which led to Ethan wanting to get a mobility scooter of his own. There would be a stream where chat got to choose what scooter Ethan should buy and The Gatsby would be the victor! For a brief period of time guests would ride the scooter onto the set at the start of the show, however this was short lived due to Bobby Lee being an absolute maniac. which would end up being The Gatsby. Many skits would include The Gatsby, but it has begun to appear less and less over the years.
First Scooter Videos First Mention of Buying Looking to Buy Office Debut Lovebot vs. Gatsby Ethan Entrance Hila Entrance Casey Neistat Bobby Lee Rage Room Destroy the Studio Bobby Lee Rewatch The Hogwarts Express

Wendy Williams Fartgate

Wendy Williams has been suspected of farting on her show more times than I can count. She denied ever farting, and this was dubbed Wendy Williams Fartgate
Wendy Williams Rips Ass Again... And Again And Again... And AGAIN

LAYER 9

Dan had Hair

Yes, it may be hard to believe but Dan actually had hair for a very long time on the podcast. Although it was almost always hidden beneath a hat or beanie, you can see here in an early episode - Our boy's got the goods.
Dan's Hair

Mr. Beast cease and desist

When Mr. Beasts feastibles chocolate were first hitting the shelf they tried them on the Podcast. This led to a Zilly Zonka bit that required Love to make a fake website so that Ethan could get ZONK'D. At the time they joked about the website getting a C&D, but a few months later that's exactly what happened.
Zonk'd Joking About It It Happens

Mobility Mary

In the height of Ethan's love for mobility scooters he came across what is perhaps the most famous scooter vigilante - Mobility Mary! She had a YouTube channel where she would film herself cruising around in public on her scooter to record evidence of people mistreating her as a handicapped person. Unfortunately it would be revealed in recent years that Mobility Mary has passed. Ethan and crew attempted to get her scooter, but unfortunately missed the mark on that one.
Mobility Vigilante People HATE Mary Iconic Soundbites 2019 Back on the Radar She is Died Unable to Get Scooter Additional MM Scooter Lore

Braco

The stare of Braco is a magical thing. Look into his eyes, child. He is waiting for you.
Ethan and Hila Video 👀

Belle Delphine Spit Jar

In the summer of 2019 Belle Delphine was all the rage, and she sent the H3 Podcast a special surprise - A jar of spit. Throughout the years it would be smelt because they are disgusting, and when they moved to the new office a mystery revealed itself - The spit simply disappeared from its jar.
Box Arrives Her Video Opening the Jar Discussing the Spit Checking up The Spit is Gone?!

Ghost Stories

In the early days of the Podcast Ethan and Hila would always ask their guests if they had any paranormal experiences that they would like to share. Fans loved this segment but Ethan, being extremely skeptical, really didn't care and always found the stories bullshit. Ethan would eventually explain that this was the reason for them stopping.
Post Malone Markiplier and Ian Hecox Ethan's Mom Steve-O Internet Comment Etiquette Hugh Mungus Video Game Dunkey & Leah Dr. Disrepect Rhett & Link Shane Dawson VSauce3 Deadmau5 Bobby Lee Epic Meal Time Ninja Why They Stopped Asking

Zach's Lawn Shit

Zach once had to shit so bad he pulled his car over while driving and shit on some dude's lawn. He would later admit to taking a picture of said lawn shit.
The Shit An Alpha Move Brief Mention Zach Arrested
*The episode of Zach talking about taking a picture was on After Dark #46, which was famously removed from YouTube by Keemstar. Because of this I cannot provide a link. If anyone has a mirror I'd love to get it added!

I Gotta Pee So Bad

On episode #106 of the Podcast Ian declared to the world I Gotta Pee So Bad. It was the start of the Ian soundbites and has become one of the most famous soundbites on the Podcast.
The Moment Ethan Said it Too

Inspired by the Howard Stern Show

It has been mentioned multiple times that Ethan has taken a lot of inspiration from the Howard Stern Show, and many of the members of the crew love the show as well.
Earliest Moment Zach

Dr. Faddel Deleted Segment

It was long suspected that Jimmie Lee has Hysterionic Personality Disorder, and so they decided to have a doctor call into the Podcast to diagnose him LIVE ON AIR! This would prove to be a bad call on the doctors part, and he has since gotten in huge trouble for doing this. It is presumed that the segment was deleted for this reason.
Edited Episode

Ian the Intern Powerpoints

In the earlier days of the Podcast Ian was known for creating detailed PowerPoints about various topics. While this segment didn't last too long, they are hilarious, and hold a special place in many long-time fans' hearts.
Adidon Aliens, Cults, Hip Hop Kanye West Lil Nas X Jay-I and the March of the Musical Machines

LAYER 10

Patrice Wilson Countdown Stream

Patrice Wilson is a music producer who wrote Rebecca Black's song Friday (along with many others). In the early days of the Podcast Ethan would often rag on him for being a creep. In November of 2017 Patrice would post a livestream with a countdown to December 1st with h3h3 in the title. Ethan would show this to Post Malone on Podcast #39, and afterwards fans would point out that the live stream has began to change. This led to a whole series of creepy events that would genuinely freak Ethan out.
Showing Post Malone Scene Changes to Curtain In a Cemetary Ethan Calls the Police Ethans Debrief

The BacH3lor

Ethan and Hila are long time fans of the Bachelor series, which led them to create a series of segments called the BacH3lor. Ian would be the bachelor looking for love, and he would immediately break the rules and drama would unfold between Ethan and him. There were only 2 segments before the show was cancelled. They tried again later with Trish as the BacH3lorette. It once again failed, and was dubbed a cursed segment. Ironically, both Trisha and Ian found their current SO's through these segments, but not at all in the way they were suppose to.
Ian Round 1 Ian Round 2 The Wildcard Ian's Ultimatum Trisha Round 1 Season 2 Cancelled

Shoenice

Shoenice is a YouTuber best known for eating really weird thinks (ie: Stick of deodorant, raw bacon, etc.). The relationship between Shoe and the Podcast has been a rollercoaster and whether Shoenice likes or hates Ethan and the Crew truly seems to depend on the day. He's been brought onto the pod multiple times in the past, but lately has not been mentioned much.
Shoenice Hates Us He's a Lunatic Caller Met Him Calling out Ethan and Hila Eating Raw Bacon Video About H3 First Call-In The Aftermath of the Call In Speculating on the Aftermath Defending Ethan Call In #2 Timed Out Eating the Fika Fish

Anal Fissures

In a time long before anal prolapses were even mentioned, a conversation around anal fissures would begin to unfold. Zach would pipe in and discuss the surgical process of fixing anal fissures. This would turn out to be entirely incorrect, and Zach would apologize for the misinformation.
Medical Information Zachs Apology

Leonard Katzman

Ethan's grandpa. He left Ethan's grandma when Ethans dad was very young, and went off to become a pretty famous film producer. He never re-connected with Ethan's father.
Ethan's Dad Talking About It Discussing with Theo Von Ethan See's Him For the First Time

Creedance Clearwater Curse

Zach has a phobia against the band Clarence Clearwater Revival. He believes that hearing their song or mentioning their name gives everyone bad luck. He is completely serious, and the crew often makes gags out of it.
First Mention Crew Discussing the Curse Halloween Special On Leftovers

Lil Tracy Beef

Back when the song Old Town Road was the most popular song on the planet a discussion arose around whether it was stolen from Lil Tracy. Ethan said no, and that Lil Tracy needs to stfu and deal with it. Lil Tracy then wrote a series of negative tweets at Ethan. It's all made even funnier that every time he is brought up Ethan never remembers who he is.
Did Lil Nas X Steal It? Lil Tracy Tweets Ethan Forgets Lil Uzi Vert Confusion Lil Tracy Strikes Again The Guy I Have Beef With? What Was Our Beef?

Fatburgs

Before Ethan got a bidet, he used to swear by flushable baby wipes at the end of his poops. But one day he learned about fatburgs - A buildup of sewage that happens all over the country. A large contributing factor to this is flushable baby wipes. It turns out flushable does not mean decomposable, and they build up into these horrific creatures. He has since sworn off baby wipes and spreads the good word to anyone still using them.
Baby Wipes Eric Andre

The Regula Shmegula

After Ethan Bradberry fell off he began making videos about... Coffee? Honestly just watch the first video, this one cannot be explained with words. Ethan and Hila later go down th Bradberry hole to discuss further what the hell is happening.
The Rawest of the Raw Down the Bradberry Hole Looking at Views

Goof Gang

As mentioned earlier, the Podcast takes a lot of inspiration from The Howard Stern show. Good Gang is a play on words for Howard Sterns Wack Pack - A group of interesting personalities that often appear on the show. It was something they mentioned in the earlier years of the pod, such as with Shoenice, but the term itself never really stuck.
In Reference to Stern Discussing names Shoenice Zach Says it About Jimmie Lee

Sharky's Giftcard

In the early days of the podcast Ethan let Ian use his car for a day. In response, Ian got Ethan a $40 gift card to Sharky's Woodfired Mexican Grill. This gesture of good faith spiraled into an absolute fiasco, and as a running gag the crew often gives Sharky's giftcards as gifts to each other.
The Fiasco Explained The Giftcard Incident Ian's Giftcard Ian's Birthday

LAYER 11

The Drunk Stream

On Podcast #29 Ethan, Jacksfilms, and Erik all got quite drunk, and Ethan mentioned his Podcast with iDubbbz where he said some derogatory terms. He not ony mentioned these terms, but did not censor himself when saying them. The episode has since been edited for obvious reasons, and Ethan has apologized many times for his remarks. This is best showcased on the Gokanaru episode.
The Edited Episode Ethan Apologizes

Bert Kriescher Lost Episode

A very early episode of the Podcast was actually with Bert Kriescher, but the footage got mysteriously corrupted and it was never aired.
Mentioning Him Discussing with Bert

Blocked on Twitter by OJ Simpson

In June of 2019 Ethan couldn't stop watching OJ Simpson on Twitter. He relentelessly dug into OJ for being, you know, a murderer, and eventually got blocked by him. The popular soundbite Hey Twitter World, this is Yours Truly came from these videos.
Watching OJ Please Stop Watching OJ Ethan gets blocked

n****** f******

Ethan has had a storied past with some dark moments. In an early episode with iDubbbz they had a discussion about how a racial slur is just a word and they should be able to use it... And so they did use it. And they used a gay slur afterwards. Not a good moment. The episode has since been edited for obvious reasons, and Ethan has apologized many times for his remarks. This is best showcased on the Gokanaru episode.
The Edited Episode Ethan Apologizes

Chet Hanks Threats

Chet Hanks has been an often talked about and criticized on the podcast, and eventually Chet had enough and started sending threatening DM's to Ethan.
Andrew Santino White Boy Summer Joker Impression Chet Hanks Threats Highlight
The clip itself was on H3TV #1, which has since been removed. I have linked to a clip of the moment instead

Bill Burr Episode 1

Notoriously considered one of the worst episodes of the Podcast. This was still pretty early on in Ethans career as a Podcast host and he was still getting his footing. Bill Burr is known be a tough interviewer, and Ethan could not hold up. This led to a lot of awkward moments between the two, and Ethan discusses the effect that it had on him later. Bill Burr has since come back on with much better reception.
Bill Burr Episode 1 Bill Burr Returns Ethan's Thoughts

Triller Lawsuit Lost Episode

Early on in the Triller Lawsuits and episode was made that was nixxed by Ethan's lawyers. It has never been released.
First Mention

The Wildcard's Identity

Back during Ian's time on the BacH3lor he famously began talking to a girl who was not on the show. She was dubbed The Wildcard and would inevitably be the reason Ian pushed to get the segment cancelled. It has since been revealed that Sam is the wildcard, and they have been dating happily since.
Ethan Outs Sam

LAYER 12

John William Kirby Kelley

Back in 2019 Ethan and Hila got swatted multiple times. It would later come to light that the man behind this was some dude named John William Kirby Kelley. He would be sentenced to 33 months in prison.
Talking About Getting Swatted Reading the Article About Him

Cody Padrino

A co-host on Jeff Wittiks Podcast JEFF FM. Ethan made some jokes about him that he took very personally, and would make a video of him driving by Ethan's House and threatening Ethan. Jeff would later apoologize for his behavior.
Jokes About Cody He Comes to Ethan's House Jeff Apologizes Jeff as a Guest

VoiceFlamingo-R

A user that posted about Ethan on /conspiracy stating that he thinks Ethan is using an FBI confirmed pedophile symbol on social media.
Reacting to the Post

Estube bien por esos meses de alivio asta que en la casa empezamos a quedarnos sin comida y mi madre otra ves empezó a salir a trabajar buscando la manera de darnos de comer algo importante q me olvidé de comentar era que por todo el estrés generado tomaba pastillas para poder dormir ningún médico me lo recomendó yo misma me los compraba y tomaba para no sentir nada y así en las noches no sentía cuando mi padre abusaba de mi para tratar de no pasar en la casa conseguí un trabajo en una tiendita y pues un día que no avía trabajo le menti a mis padres para verme con mi novio siempre que nos veíamos lo aviamos así yo no me sentía tan asqueada les digo la verdad en ese tiempo empeze a sentirme como un muñeco sexual para los hombre pero mi novio me fue quitando poco a poco ese pensamiento como les decía lo somos y nunca nos cuidamos nose porque no lo dimos pero quedé embaraza no sabía que estaba embarazada porq no pasó ni 4 semanas que tuve una caída de un pequeño barranco que perdió otro bebé ese bebé q se me fue era de mi novio como me di cuenta que aborte por la sangre q no paraba en la noche pensé que moriría la cosa esque mi familia pensaron que todo ya avía terminado pero no era así ví solo una solución volver a mi pueblito en una de esas que le digo a mis tíos que nada avía parado que seguía igual fueron que se pusieron más furiosos yo decidí que me IVA a escapar y así lo Ise me escape y me fui a vivir con mi abuelita materna y sin más ideas en mente me despedí de mi novio y me fui donde vivía no avía wifi debes en cuando coje señal me comunicaba con mi novio la verdad esq no me importo aver dejado a mi madre enferma pero bien dicen que no traten de escapar de sus problemas que siempre los alcanza a mi me alzando casi al mes de estar viviendo con mi abuela empeze a tener síntomas de embarazada tuve miedo pero sabía que estaba embarazada y esta vez era de mi padre porq lo sabía porque no me avía encontrado con mi novio a se meses i pues lo que más yo no quería que pasara paso estaba embarazada de mi padre le dije a mi novio que terminemos que ya no quería lastimarlo que se vea a otra chica q no esté dañada como yo pero no el no me dejó en ningún momento sola y pues en mi pueblito tenía a mi padrino le conté y me devolvió a mis padres quería que mi padre se aga responsable y que me hiciera abortar por sus propias manos y luego de eso me IVA a llevar bien lejos para que ya no me pudiera Aser nada de daño y así fue como perdí a mi bebé pues me tomé una pastilla para el dolor de cabeza que no aguantaba era la presión de una decisión que me decía un aparte de mi familia como otra parte de la familia mis tíos maternos decían que lo denuncie y mi familia paterna q no lo hiciera pero en todo ese tiempo nadie me preguntaba cómo me encontraba yo por esa pastilla y el dolor de cabeza perdí a mi bebé en mi madre me llevo al hospital y me digo que ya no mintiera que diga la verdad de quién era el bebé y lo Ise por primera ves una sicóloga hablo conmigo me ISO entender que nada de lo que estaba pasando era mi culpa me dijo q volvieron yo quería volver pero mi madre dijo que eso era solo para gente loca en fin mi papá paro por fin de abusar de mi uno de mis tíos dijo que me quería meter a un convento de monjas para alejarme de mi padre pero yo no quería separarme de mi madre y ni de mis hermanos solo pensé que iba a Aser lo mejor y denunciar a mi padre y lo Ise en un momento de desesperación para que no me alejen de mis hermanos mi padre me odio por eso mi madre solo lloraba y yo me sentía culpable talvez si eras ves me hubiera quitado la vida de una ves nada de este sufrimiento estaría pasando pensé pero como dicen lo echo echo está no podía Aser nada más mi novio ya me avía propuesto que me escape con el así que nos vimos y así fueron mis días asta que sentía que estaba embaraza de mi novio talvez fue un embarazo sicológico le conté a mi madre ella en ese momento estaba de mi lado me dejó plata para que me compre una prueba de embarazo y el me acompaño para hacerme pero yo muy en el fondo sabía que no estaba embarazada nunca tuve la intencion de que el se casara conmigo teníamos un lugar donde nos encontramos para tener intimidad ese lugar se volvió nuestro refugio la cosa esque me propuso que me escape con el no hicimos la prueba cuando me dijo que me escape con el no lo pensé y acepte igual no tenía nada que perder fuimos a mi casa por mis cosas y algo de colchas mis hermanos pequeños sabían muy bien por qué me IVA y no sé opusieron para nada al contrario me apoyaron pero como son unos niños solo les pedía que ya no lloraran más y así empezamos otra historia quieren 3 parte

During a debate on HBO's Real Time last October, host Bill Maher declared that Islam is "the only religion that acts like the mafia, that will f***ing kill you if you say the wrong thing, draw the wrong picture, or write the wrong book."
​
Maher was apparently referring to Islam's "blasphemy" laws, which ban on pain of death any "insult"—as found in a statement, a picture, a book—to Islam and especially its prophet, Muhammad.
​
While Maher has been criticized for his "Islamophobic" assertion, he and others may be surprised to learn that the similarities between Islam and the mafia far exceed punishing those who say, draw, or write "the wrong thing."
​
In what follows, we will examine a number of these similarities:
​
We will begin by looking at the relationship between Allah, his messenger Muhammad, and the Muslims, and note several parallels with the relationship between the godfather, his underboss, and the mafia.
​
Next, we will examine the clannish nature of the mafia and compare it to Islam's tribalism, especially in the context of the Islamic doctrine "Loyalty and Enmity." For example, in both Islam and the mafia, members who wish to break away, to "apostatize," are killed.
​
We will consider how the mafia and Islam have both historically profited from the "protection" racket: Islam has demanded jizya from non-Muslims under its authority/territory and the mafia has demanded pizzo from people that fall under its jurisdiction.
​
Finally, we will consider what accounts for these many similarities between Islam and the mafia, including from an historical perspective.
​
1. Allah and Muhammad/Godfather and Underboss
​
The padrino of larger mafia organizations and families—literally, the "godfather" or "boss of bosses"—has absolute control over his subordinates and is often greatly feared by them for his ruthlessness. He has an "underboss," a right-hand man who issues his orders and enforces his will. The godfather himself is often inaccessible; mafia members need to go through the underboss or other high ranking associates.
​
Unlike the Judeo-Christian God ... Allah is unreachable, unknowable, untouchable.
​
Compare this with the relationship between Allah and his "messenger" Muhammad (in Arabic, Muhammad is most commonly referred to as al-rasul, "the messenger"). Unlike the Judeo-Christian God—a personal God, a Father, that according to Christ is to be communed with directly (Matt 6:9)—Islam's god, Allah, is unreachable, unknowable, untouchable. Like the godfather, he is inaccessible. His orders are revealed by his messenger, Muhammad.
​
If the Judeo-Christian God calls on the faithful to "come now, let us reason together" (Isaiah 1:18), Allah says "Do not ask questions about things that, if made known to you, would only pain you" (Koran 5:101). Just follow orders.
​
2. A "Piece of the Action"
​
The godfather and his underboss always get a "piece of the action"—a "cut"—of all spoils acquired by their subordinates.
​
So do Allah and his messenger, Muhammad. Koran 8:41 informs Muslims that "one-fifth of all war-booty you acquire goes to Allah and the messenger" (followed by Muhammad's family and finally the needy).
​
3. Assassinations
​
The godfather, through his underboss, regularly sends mafia men to make "hits"—to assassinate—those deemed enemies of the family.
​
So did Allah and his messenger. One example: A non-Muslim poet, Ka'b ibn Ashraf, insulted Muhammad, prompting the latter to exclaim, "Who will kill this man who has hurt Allah and his messenger?" A young Muslim named Ibn Maslama volunteered on condition that to get close enough to assassinate Ka'b he be allowed to lie to the poet.
​
Allah's messenger agreed. Ibn Maslama traveled to Ka'b and began to denigrate Islam and Muhammad until his disaffection became so convincing that the poet took him into his confidence. Soon thereafter, Ibn Maslama appeared with another Muslim and, while Ka'b's guard was down, slaughtered the poet, bringing his head to Muhammad to the usual triumphant cries of "Allahu Akbar!"
​
4. Circumstance is Everything
​
While the mafia adheres to a general code of conduct, the godfather issues more fluid orders according to circumstances.
​
This is reminiscent of the entire "revelation" of the Koran, where later verses/commands contradict earlier verses/commands, depending on circumstances (known in Islamic jurisprudence as al-nāsikh wal-mansūkh, or the doctrine of abrogation).
​
While other religions and scriptures may have contradictions, only Islam rationalizes them through abrogation—that is, by giving prominence to later verses which are seen as the "latest" decision of the deity.
​
Thus, whereas Allah supposedly told the prophet that "there is no compulsion in religion" (Koran 2:256), once the messenger grew strong enough, Allah issued new revelations calling for all-out wajihad till Islam became supreme (Koran 8:39, 9:5, 9:29, etc.).
​
While other religions and scriptures may have contradictions, only Islam rationalizes them through abrogation—that is, by giving prominence to later verses which are seen as the "latest" decision of the deity.
​
5. Clan Loyalty
​
Loyalty is fundamental in the mafia. Following elaborate rituals of blood oaths, mafia members are expected to maintain absolute loyalty to the family, on pain of death.
​
Similarly, mafia members are expected always to be available for the family—"even if your wife is about to give birth," as one of the mafia's "ten commandments" puts it—and to defend the godfather and his honor, even if it costs their lives.
​
Compare this to the widespread violence and upheavals that occur whenever Allah or his prophet is offended—whenever non-Muslim "infidels" blaspheme them. Or, as Bill Maher put it: "Its' the only religion that acts like the mafia, that will f***ing kill you if you say the wrong thing, draw the wrong picture, or write the wrong book."
​
Islam's "Loyalty and Enmity" doctrine (al-wala' wa'l bara')—which calls on Muslims to be loyal to one another even if they dislike each other—is especially illustrative. Koran 9:71 declares that "The believing [Muslim] men and believing [Muslim] women are allies of one another" (see also 8:72-75). And according to Muhammad, "A Muslim is the brother of a Muslim. He neither oppresses him nor humiliates him nor looks down upon him…. All things of a Muslim are inviolable for his brother in faith: his blood, his wealth, and his honor"—precisely those three things that mafia members respect among each other. This is why Muslims like U.S. Army Major Nidal Hassan, whose "worst nightmare" was to be deployed to fight fellow Muslims, often lash out.)
​
6. Death to Traitors
​
Once a fledging mafia member takes the oath of loyalty to the mafia—including the Omertà code of silence and secrecy—trying to leave the "family" is seen as a betrayal and punishable by death. Any family member, great or small, is given authority to kill the traitor, the "turncoat."
​
According to Islamic law, if born Muslims at any point in their lives choose to leave Islam, they are deemed "apostates."
​
Compare this to Islam. To be born to a Muslim father immediately makes the newborn a Muslim—there are no oaths to be taken, much less any choice in the matter. And, according to Islamic law, if born Muslims at any point in their lives choose to leave Islam, they are deemed "apostates"—traitors—and punished including by death. Any zealous Muslim, not just the authorities, is justified in killing the apostate (hence why Muslim families that kill apostate children are rarely if ever prosecuted).
​
In the words of Muhammad—the messenger ("underboss") of Allah ("godfather"): "Whoever leaves his Islamic faith, kill him."
​
7. Distrust and Dislike of "Outsiders"
​
Aside from loyalty to the family, mafia members are also expected not to befriend or freely associate with "outsiders"—who by nature are not to be trusted, as they are not of the "family"—unless such a "friendship" helps advance the family's position.
​
Similarly, the second half of the doctrine of Loyalty and Enmity—the enmity (al-bara')—calls on Muslims to maintain distance from and bear enmity for all non-Muslims, or "infidels."
​
Thus Koran 5:51 warns Muslims against "taking the Jews and Christians as friends and allies … whoever among you takes them for friends and allies, he is surely one of them." According to the mainstream Islamic exegesis of al-Tabari, Koran 5:51 means that the Muslim who "allies with them [non-Muslims] and enables them against the believers, that same one is a member of their faith and community," that is, a defector, an apostate, an enemy.
​
Similar scriptures include Koran 4:89, 5:54, 6:40, 9:23, and 58:22; the latter simply states that true Muslims do not befriend non-Muslims—"even if they be their fathers, sons, brothers, or kin." Koran 60:1 declares, "O you who believe! Do not take my enemy and your enemy [non-believers] for friends: would you offer them love while they deny what has come to you of the truth [i.e., while they deny Islam]?" And Koran 4:144 declares "O you who believe! Do not take the infidels as allies instead of the believers. Do you wish to give Allah ["godfather"] a clear case against yourselves?"
​
8. Deception and Dissimulation
​
As mentioned, close relations to non-mafia individuals that prove advantageous to the family (for example, collaboration with a "crooked cop") are permissible—as long as the mafia keeps a safe distance, keeps the outsider at arm's length.
​
Compare this to Koran 3:28 which commands "believers not to take infidels for friends and allies instead of believers… unless you but guard yourselves against them, taking precautions." According to the standard Koran commentary of Tabari, "taking precautions" means:
​
If you [Muslims] are under their [non-Muslims'] authority, fearing for yourselves, behave loyally to them with your tongue while harboring inner animosity for them … [but know that] Allah has forbidden believers from being friendly or on intimate terms with the infidels rather than other believers—except when infidels are above them [in authority]. Should that be the case, let them act friendly towards them while preserving their religion.
​
After interpreting Koran 3:28 as meaning that Muslims may "protect" themselves "through outward show" when under non-Muslim authority, Ibn Kathir, perhaps Islam's most celebrated exegete, quotes Islam's prophet ("underboss") saying: "Truly, we smile to the faces of some people, while our hearts curse them."
​
Similarly, a few years ago, Sheikh Muhammad Hassan—a leading Salafi cleric in Egypt—asserted on live television that, while Muslims should never smile to the faces of non-Muslims, they should smile, however insincerely, if so doing helps empower Islam, especially in the context of da'wa.
​
The idea of hating "outsiders" is apparently so ingrained in Islam that another leading Salafi cleric, Dr. Yasser al-Burhami, insists that, while Muslim men may marry Christian and Jewish women, they must hate them in their heart—and show them that they hate them in the hopes that they convert to the "family" of Islam.
​
(For more on the doctrine of "Loyalty and Enmity," including references to the exegetical sources quoted above, see al-Qaeda leader Dr. Ayman Zawahiri's comprehensive treatise by that name in The Al Qaeda Reader, pgs. 63-115.)
​
9. "An Offer You Can't Refuse"
​
Although the novel-turned-movie, The Godfather, is fictitious, it also captures much of the mafia's modus operandi. Consider, for example, that most famous of lines—"I'm going to make him an offer he can't refuse"—spoken by the Godfather to one of his "godsons," an aspiring actor and singer. After being turned down by a studio director for a role that he desperately wanted, the godson turned to his Godfather for aid.
​
As the movie progresses, it becomes clear that the offer that can't be refused consists of nothing less than violence and death threats: after the Godfather's messenger to the director asking that the actor be given the role is again rejected, the director awakens the next morning to find the bloodied and decapitated head of his favorite stallion in bed with him. The godson subsequently gets the movie role.
​
Throughout history, converting to Islam has been an "offer" that countless non-Muslims could not refuse.
​
Throughout the context of the entire Godfather trilogy (which captures well the mafia's approach to business) making someone "an offer they can't refuse" means "do as I say or suffer the consequences," possibly death.
​
Compare this to Islam's threefold choice. On Muhammad's orders, whenever Muslims conquer a territory in the name of Islam, its non-Muslim inhabitants are given three choices: 1) convert to Islam ("join the family"), 2) keep your religious identity but pay tribute (jizya, see below) and live as an "outsider," a subjugated dhimmi or 3) execution.
​
Throughout history, converting to Islam has been an "offer" that countless non-Muslims could not refuse. In fact, this "offer" is responsible for transforming much of the Middle East and North Africa, which were Christian-majority in the 7th century when the jihad burst forth from Arabia, into the "Muslim world."
​
And this offer is still alive and well today. For example, several older and disabled Christians who were not able to join the exodus out of Islamic State controlled territories opted to convert to Islam rather than die.
​
Like the mafia, then, Islam's offer to conquered non-Muslims ("outsiders") is basically "join our 'family,' help us and we will help you; refuse and we hurt you."
​
10. The "Protection" Racket
​
Once the mafia takes over a territory, one of the primary ways it profits is by collecting "protection money" from its inhabitants. While the protection racket has several aspects, one in particular is akin to an Islamic practice: coercing people in the mafia's territory to pay money for "protection," ostensibly against outside elements; in fact, the protection bought is from the mafia itself—that is, extortion money, or pizzo. Potential "clients" who refuse to pay for the mafia's "protection" often have their property vandalized and are routinely threatened and harassed.
​
Compare the collection of pizzo with the Islamic concept of jizya: The word jizya appears in Koran 9:29: "Fight those among the People of the Book [Christians and Jews] who do not believe in Allah nor the Last Day, nor forbid what Allah and his Messenger have forbidden, nor embrace the religion of truth, until they pay the jizya with willing submission and feel themselves subdued (emphasis added)."
​
In the hadith, the Messenger of Allah, Muhammad—in our analogy, the "underboss"—regularly calls on Muslims to demand jizya from non-Muslims: "If they refuse to accept Islam," said the prophet, "demand from them the jizya. If they agree to pay, accept it from them and hold off your hands. If they refuse to pay jizya, seek Allah's help and fight them."
​
The root meaning of the Arabic word "jizya" is simply to "repay" or "recompense," basically to "compensate" for something. According to the Hans Wehr Dictionary, the standard Arabic-English dictionary, jizya is something that "takes the place" of something else, or "serves instead."
​
Simply put, conquered non-Muslims were to purchase their lives, which were otherwise forfeit to their Muslim conquerors, with money. As one medieval jurist succinctly puts it, "their lives and their possessions are only protected by reason of payment of jizya" (Crucified Again, p. 22).
​
And to top it off, just as the mafia rationalizes its collection of "protection money" by portraying it as money that buys mafia protection against "outsiders"—when, as mentioned, the money/tribute serves only to protect the client from the mafia itself—so too do Islam's apologists portray the collection of jizya as money meant to buy Muslim protection from outsiders, when in fact the money/jizya buys protection from Muslims themselves.
​
Conclusion: Mafia—What's In a Word?
​
What accounts for all these similarities between Islam and the mafia? One clue is found in the fact that the very word "mafia," which means "hostility to the law, boldness," is derived from an Arabic word, mahya, which in translation means "bragging, boasting, bravado, and swaggering."
​
This etymology is a reminder that Sicily, birthplace of the mafia, was under Arab/Islamic domination for over 200 years. Aside from a borrowed etymology, could some of the mafia's modus operandi also have been borrowed from Islam? Isolated on their island, could native Sicilians have co-opted the techniques of social controls that they had lived under and learned from their former overlords—albeit without their Islamic veneer?
​
The mafia is not the only historical example of a non-Muslim criminal organization to be influenced by Islam. For example, the Thuggees — whence we get the word "thug" — were a brotherhood of allied bandits and assassins who waylaid and savagely murdered travelers in India, often by first feigning friendship. Although they were later associated with the Hindu cult of Kali, the original Thuggees were all Muslim. As late as the 19th century, a large number of Thuggees captured and convicted by the British were Muslim.
​
The similarities are clear: Along with assassinating his opponents, including, as seen, through treachery, Muhammad also personally engaged in banditry, ransacking the caravans of enemy tribes.
​
And if the words "mafia" and "thug" have Arabic/Islamic etymologies, the words "assassinate" and "assassin" are derived from a Medieval Islamic sect: the Hashashin, who pioneered the use of political assassination—with promises of a hedonistic paradise for the assassin who almost certainly died—in the name of Islam.
​
At any rate, when HBO personality Bill Maher recently proclaimed that Islam is "the only religion that acts like the mafia, that will f***ing kill you if you say the wrong thing, draw the wrong picture, or write the wrong book," he was barely touching on the similarities between the mafia and other criminal organizations, and Islam.

So I have always been interested in spiritual things and wanted to learn more. But I was never raised in this faith and I truthfully didn’t know anything about it until about a year ago. But then I encountered someone who is a part of the religion and is a padrino. At first I got a cleaning and received a set of beads and was told it was for protection. I was okay with this as I figured spiritual protection is always good. I was also told that I had spirit guides that were with me and that I needed to get my Elegua. To me it seemed like a big step and a huge responsibility. Something to not take lightly. But I was convinced that I was overthinking it and I should take a leap of faith. So I did.
But later I found out that once I have Elegua, if I get rid of him, not only could I not have protection but that my spirit guides would abandon me. Now I feel conflicted because I never really wanted to join a new religion but I dont want to lose the protection that I’ve had from my spirit guides since birth. It feels like I had this spiritual protection all my life, but because I made a decision without knowing what I was doing, now I have nothing.
UPDATE: I decided to give my Elegua back because the fight wasn’t worth it. He did in fact ask me to pay him for the energy it’s gonna require to deal with my Elegua. I politely declined that yet he’s still very insistant. I’m now looking for a new place to stay because I dont think this is going to stop as long as I live there.

DISCLAIMER: I want to proceed this post by saying I am still just a student in this, though I've been close to the religion my entire life, and waited 40 years before getting initiated, ( I come from the street and know hustle when I see it, And here in Oakland, California in the 1970s a large part of the religion was in disarray with lots of hustle and lots of wars between the Iles), only receiving my Elekes 8 years ago, And my warriors just yesterday. This is strictly my opinion, and observation, and nothing more. THANKS!

After spending some time with my unofficial padrino and my official Madrina, during some conversation, I realized that a trend I have seen developing since I was young, is still strong in the Bay area. Many of the godchildren of prominent padrinos and madrinas, Get what they need from them, and then move on, rarely to be seen at the Ile, or the botanica, which gave them their first Diloggun, Elekes, Guerreros, or Santo. One Baba in particular, is one of the kindest and most generous people I have ever met in or outside of the religion, and is getting on in years, dragging things twice his weight around his botanica, with some of the backyard, and surrounding areas going to waste and looking badly in need of a paint job or a cleaning. Not once have I seen ANY of his godchildren, (many live nearby) helping him, or seeing to his well-being. I remember this vibe from back in the day.
One of the reasons I didn't get involved in this until I felt I was truly ready is because of what I felt was a tourist attitude by a lot of people, like they're just visiting, they get what they need and move on, often. Often some of them make great money and have great futures, but rarely do they come back and pay homage to their godparents, and see to their needs as they grow old.
I'm not trying to virtue signal here, I've been a selfish person a lot of my life and I have no halo to hit anybody with, but this seems very wrong, and also bad for the religion and practice, as an example for people that are new to this observing us in our practice.
I know a few people that immediately upon getting their Ocha, who immediately took to making and combating Hechizos (spells), often for money, and acting a lot more like "brujos for hire", then Santeros with a lineage and responsibility.
Have any of you seen this, or how do you feel about this?
I appreciate you all taking the time to read this, and listen to me rant like I know something (which I don't) It just affected me emotionally and I wanted to share it. Thanks!. MB

before i post the article, is it not "ironic" how when other countries "saber rattle" corporate news and the u.s. go all ape shit ballistic and say "see, see" they are bad people. but when this country constantly does it, its "business as usual"
America’s Looming War With Venezuela_ What You’re Not Being Told
April 5, 2018 at 12:17 pm
Written by Darius Shahtahmasebi
(ANTIMEDIA) — Countries that don’t eagerly follow the U.S.-led global order make prime targets for American-led invasions, particularly when those countries challenge the status of the U.S. dollar.
Right now, Venezuela is one of these countries. Venezuela sits on the world’s largest oil reserves, and in order to free itself from what it calls the “tyranny of the U.S. dollar” in maximizing its potential on these oil reserves, the country began publishing its oil and fuel in Chinese yuan in September of last year. It recently added further insult to injury and launched the world’s rst state-backed cryptocurrency,
known as the petro. According to TIME, however, the petro is “in fact a collaboration – a half hidden joint venture between Venezuelan and Russian ocials and businessmen, whose aim was to erode the power of U.S. sanctions.”
This development was enough to provoke the Trump administration into signing an executive order designating anyone who buys or uses the cryptocurrency as in breach of economic sanctions the U.S. slapped on Venezuela in August of last year.
Altogether, Trump has already imposed more than 20 individual and economic sanctions on Venezuela.
For those who believe America’s infatuation with the country is about human rights concerns and that it has nothing to do Venezuela’s untapped oil reserves and its ties to currency, think again.
The main opposition leader who is up against incumbent leader Nicolas Maduro, Henri Falcon, currently has a former Wall Street economist advising him who believes that in order to solve Venezuela’s problems, it should rid itself of the bolivar as its ocial currency and replace it with the U.S. dollar. The U.S. has been spending millions supporting opposition activity in Venezuela and was doing so even under the Obama administration. Whether it is done subtly or overtly in Trump-esque fashion, the seeds of regime change in Venezuela are being sown throughout media discourse.
In mid-February, U.S. Admiral Kurt Tidd, head of the U.S. Southern Command, visited Colombia’s coastal city of Tumaco. This visit, combined with Trump’s statement last year that he was considering a “military option” in Venezuela, irked Venezuela into getting itself into a state of military preparedness.
Venezuela has not only reportedly been building up its military along the border with the South American nation of Guyana, but around the same time that Tidd visited Colombia, the Venezuelan Interior Minister, Néstor Reverol, allegedly also advanced the possibility of military action against Colombia.
In response, Guyana set up two army bases around the end of February, following similar moves from Brazil and Colombia. While the ultimate extent of this particular stand-o is still unclear, Reuters claimed that Venezuelan troops were already entering Guyanese territory. In the meantime, hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan citizens are making their way toward Brazil and Colombia in what is fast becoming a migrant crisis that will eventually surpass Syria’s.
Last year, a group known as the Lima Group was established to “restore democracy” to Venezuela. It consists of Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Guyana, and Saint Lucia. The group’s declarations include designating Venezuela non-compliant with the requirements of the Human Rights Council (remember that Canada is a country that supports Saudi Arabia), blocking the transfer of arms to Venezuela, and keeping track of the situation in Venezuela until “the full restoration of democracy” has been achieved.
Another geopolitical development worth keeping an eye on is Donald Trump’s appointment of notorious war-hawk John Bolton as national security advisor. While Bolton is known for his position on the Iraq war and his current animosity towards Iran and North Korea, he has used this anti-Iranian stance to demonize Venezuela even more so than is typically done in the corporate media.
In 2013, Bolton alleged that Iranians were operating in Caracas under the “largest Iranian diplomatic facility in the world,” laundering their money in Venezuelan banks. Together with Cuba and Nicaragua, Bolton already has his sights on Venezuela, countries he believes undermine American interests in the Latin American region. U.S. Senator Marco Rubio praised Bolton’s appointment — the same Rubio who advocated for the Venezuelan military to overthrow Maduro in a coup.
The other appointment to note is that of former CIA director Mike Pompeo to the position of secretary of state. He previously admitted that the CIA would like to see Maduro overthrown.
It appears Venezuela is well aware of these impending issues. Last year, Reuters also reported that Venezuela had 5,000 Russian-made MANPADS surface-to-air weapons, the largest known stockpile in Latin America.
Further, according to Russian state-owned TASS, this week Venezuela invited Russian military pilots who fought in Syria to share their experiences with Venezuelan personnel.
“We have discussed matters of our cooperation. We want to go beyond regular military and defense cooperation, to strengthen it and to develop cooperation at the operative level,” Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez allegedly told reporters after talks with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Shoigu, on Tuesday.
Lopez said he suggested “sending Venezuelan Su-30 pilots to share their experience in Russia and to invite Russian pilots, who received precious combat experience in Syria, to come and share it with their Venezuelan colleagues.”
Perhaps Venezuela is preparing for something worth us paying attention to in the not-too-distant future.

Chapter One (continuation)
Technorituals
José pressed play and then sat on a small stool with a pile of herbs tied with a red cloth and a bucket of cool, clean tap water. At his feet was a plastic tub (palangana) where he would make his sacred waters (omiero) for a healing bath to the oricha Babalú Ayé (San Lázaro). It was September 2007 in Oakland, California. He had already prayed over the herbs, asking for the blessings of his ancestors and spiritual lineage of his godparents in Cuba. He sang along to the video of a similar ritual that had been recorded in Havana on one of his earlier trips, where a room full of priests had made sacred waters. As José sang along to the recording, he, like the priests in the film, twisted and ripped the herbs to make the bath. In the Oakland garage I could hear the crowing of roosters and the background chatter of the Cubans in the video as José, a Salvadoran by birth, sang along to the songs.
"Ewe ayé" (herbs and earth), José sang the chorus, responding to the lead singer (obá) in the Cuba video singing in Lukumí. When he was done, he asked me to stop the recording so he could "season" the waters. The bath would then sit a whole evening in front of Babalú Ayé with two candles, and then would be portioned out to his godchild, who was sick with cancer. José told me that he did not know all of the songs himself.
"I have a hard time with the language [Lukumí]," he tells me. "I use the recording to make sure I do the songs right."
"Why don't you work with other priests in the area?" I asked him after the omiero was placed and prayed to in front of Babalú Ayé.
"People here are very exclusive," he told me. "They are all about power trips and money, and charging so much for things. . . . My [religious] house [in Cuba] is not like that. They are more about helping . . . about making sure things are done correctly. . . . [With the recordings] it's like they [his Cuban religious family] are here. Están presentes [They are present]."
Other examples of using videos in rituals are fewer, as this is not a commonplace practice, primarily because the physical presence of other priests is typically considered a requirement of Santería. However, there are many cases when technology has been used to expand and facilitate long-distance relationship or spiritual needs that mirror José's use of the video-inspired sacred waters. They are technorituals in that technology is not simply a tool of practice but an integrated element of ritual gestures. Gloria and Hugo, for instance, mentioned getting readings over the phone. "I call my madrina [in Cuba] and she gives me the ebbó [prescribed ritual offering]." Gloria told me that sometimes she would do the ebbó herself in the United States, but in certain cases, her madrina would do it for her in Cuba. It is increasingly common for people to get divinatory consultations over the phone or online from great distances. Priests will use a stand-in to embody the client, or speak directly to the oricha on behalf of the person using coconut or cowry shell divination, while the person is present through the phone and, more recently, video chat. As long as the person's name is called forth, and the oricha understand whom they are being asked about, then the oracle can be questioned this way. This is the case, for example, even in non-techo-based consultations, where during the itá divination it is common that parents, loved ones, and other relatives of the initiate are spiritually diagnosed and discussed, even given ebbó, when they are not physically present at the ceremony. This form of long-distance messaging (both spiritually near and far) transposes the question of space in unique modalities. It can be likened to what Villepastour (20120, 38) describes in Yoruba batá drumming as a form of "ancient text messaging," where the drums are "extensions of the mouth." Similarly, long-distance messaging in techno-assisted rituals extends the bodily capacities of oricha and other copresences, collapsing, time, space, and place.
In another example of techno-assisted long-distance rituals, Caridad, a young Cuban woman initiated in Miami, was told that her mother (a white Cuban still living in Cuba) would only be allowed to travel to the States if she received her "beads" (collares, also elekes, religious necklaces that mark the first level of initiation) and "fed" Yemayá an animal sacrifice at the "foot of the ocean." Yet her mother did not practice or believe in Santería. Caridad was told to do the ebbó on her mother's behalf and then place a doll in her mother's name and give the doll collares. She then had to send her mother a necklace that did not appear to be Santería-related but which had been washed (sanctified) without her mother's knowledge. She also had to find a way to get her mother to pray at the Church of Regla in Havana (the Virgen of Regla is the Cuban-Christian avatar of Yemayá). Caridad used a video of herself to implore her mother to pray to the Virgen of Regla (Yemayá incognito). I found out later that Caridad's mother hit the lottery (el bombo), eventually coming to live with her in the United States.
Other more controversial stories circulate about people receiving and paying for oricha rituals online. While these tend to be dismissed as farces and swindles, I did meet one woman from Texas who had initially paid online for her Orula initiations, "hand of Orula," and had received an Eshú oricha and several other items in the mail. This woman was undergoing in-person rituals in Cuba and telling the story to Cuban priests in Havana, who were having a good time laughing at how gullible the woman was to have actually purchased such a ceremony. The conversation quickly turned to the "atrocities" that American santeros committed for the sake of money, with one Cuban asking me, was it true that in the United States we "bought blood from a market in a plastic bag and poured it on Eleguá?" Coming to the defense of American Santería, I denied that this was a common practice and let the incredulous Cuban santeros know that American santeros did indeed use live animals - that it was in fact a hot controversy that had ignited police and animal rights groups against Santería in the States. Still, one American-based priest assured me that certain groups of "non-traditionalist" Santería and ifá groups did indeed initiate people online, and also purchased blood at super markets. However, I did not interview anyone who admitted to conducting or knowing people who did these practices.
Technoritual interspaces facilitate the emergence of copresence. For instance, OmiTalade told me that he and another friend initiated to Changó did indeed feel the power of Tina's Kabiosile.org videos. Unaware that I knew the produce of Kabiosile.org or that the videos were about my godfather, OmiTalade related to me how his friend actually got "shook" with the energy of Changó while watching the presentation of the three Changós in the Vamos Al Tambor DVD that they had purchased online. He sent me a link to "the most powerful thing he had even seen" that turned out, to my surprise, to be the video of Padrino Alfredo singing. OmiTalade then proceeded to tell me that instead of going to Havana, he now wanted to travel to Matanzas. Even Tina admitted to me that during the editing and production she had also felt something while listening to Padrino Alfredo's voice:
"I did almost get possessed once [laughing]. And I don't even get possessed."
"Through the video?" I asked her.
"No, when I was working on the CD and I was listening to it through headphones. I was staying at my friend's house in San Francisco. . . . I was working on the website and I was working on the marketing, and everything like that and I had been listening to the music, you know, to inspire me because I was working on this stuff and trying to describe certain things and the next door neighbors came over to complain about the 'jungle drumming'" she laughed heartily.
"Oh my god!" I exclaimed at the "jungle drumming" comment.
"And so, I had to start using headphones when I was working on stuff. And I was listening to it and working on the Web site and it got the Changó part, the part where everybody always gets possessed. And I started to shake." Laughing, she paused for a moment and the said, "But, to me, I don't know. It's always spiritual . . . whenever I watch them."
In another interesting academic moment of copresence, an anthropologist and friend told me that while teaching Katherine Hagedorn's book Divine Utterances (2001), which includes a CD of Cuban Lukumí music and indicates in the text when to listen to certain songs, one of his students approached him during office hours to say she was uncomfortable about what she was feeling while listening to the CD. To paraphrase this professor's comment on his student's discomfort, he told me, "She tells me that the book addresses how the music and songs are used to call the oricha down, and then of course felt strange when listening to the recorded songs, asking if she was 'calling them down.'" The student asked if listening to the CD was required and said that she felt uncomfortable with possibly attracting the energies; that she had "felt something." Through their somatic copresence, the oricha made themselves known to the student who was uncomfortable with their sensations. Needless to say, the professor did not require her to continue to listen to the CD.
While practices are indeed being transformed, challenged, and reconfigured by technology, I prefer not to examine these spaces as contaminations or transgressions of any one type of singular Santería, but instead I note the ways that technoritual interspaces reflect a larger relationship emerging in and through specific Santería ontologies. I suggest that we must start with understanding Santería modes of perceiving first. Indeed, I argue that it is only through Santería ontologies that we might learn to appreciate any new forms of practice and ethos that emerges, especially within these technoritual sites.
Spiritual Contagions
Arguments for and against recording and the use of cameras have been described to me in practical and sensual terms. Alex, an African American initiated to Oyá in New York City who came "from a long line of spiritualists," told me about having to constantly take spiritual baths, "feed" the earth with grains and other offerings, and be careful of simply "picking things up" from other people, places, and especially videos. "Hazardous ritual waste" is part of the spiritual work needed to cleanse practitioners but also the esoteric dangers that might be encountered in Afro-Cuban religious worlds (Wirtz 2009). This hazardous waste includes anything from bad intentions to coins, candles, animal carcasses, food offerings, or even the bodies of practitioners. Bags of rotting flesh, fruits, and other offerings are left in bags at different natural sites and are part of the material elements that gesture toward a larger phenomena of spiritual contagions that practitioners are concerned with as affecting copresences.
For santeros, paleros, and espiritistas (spiritualists), food is a "potent vehicle for establishing and manipulating the spirit-human dynamic" (Espírito Santo 2010, 73). For paleros in particular, food is sometimes used "to distract their victim's spirit guides so as to more easily pierce his or her spiritual 'space' and inflict the intended damage or death" (Espírito Santo 2010, 73). The oricha are often the only remedy that can counteract the spiritual damage inflicted by palo twistings (trastornos). In Cuba and Florida, where Santería is practiced very openly, ritual waste left at cemeteries, oceans, rivers, mountains, crossroads, and other public places have caused uproar from local government and residents (Palmié 2013, 152; Wirtz 2009, 478-79). A concerned resident in Hialeah, Florida, who claimed to have "lived next to Santería for seven years," described "the dead creatures, as you know, are thrown into our waterways or streets and our vacant lots." In response to some of the sloppy disposal of ritual waste, the Church of Lukumí Babalú Ayé, which won the 1993 Supreme Court ruling against the city of Hialeah, recently published an "Eco-Lukumí" public service video on its Web site, informing practitioners on the proper disposal of ebbó (offerings) in order to not contaminate the environment, enforcing a message that "Nature worship demands good stewardship." Nevertheless, hazardous ritual waste does have the capacity to do spiritual harm by transgressing "boundaries between bodies against the will of those affected" (Wirtz 2009, 481). Alex's concerns about contaminating spirits and, by extension, videos thus follow Santería epistemologies of hazardous spiritual and ritual materials as containing affecting copresences.
Alex wears white most of the time because, as he explained, "Spirits just like me. And so, I have to be careful where I go. The white [clothes] keep things calm." Alex does not condone any type of filming during Santería rituals and, like many self-claimed "traditionalists," is opposed even to the photographing of oricha and new initiates (iyawó). Like Alex, priests in Cuba and the United States often describe how they felt religious presences through the screen. Armandito, a Cuban godfather in Havana, described videos as another form of batá drums, which he likened to a "telephone that calls the oricha." This technological expansion of spirit has a long history for Afro-Cuban practitioners, as has been noted with phonography, where technology has been understood to take on the ambiguities of ritual materialities and their affects since at least the early 1900s.
Practitioners I spoke with who identified themselves as "more traditional" described the use of religious media as "contaminating," as having the potential to "steal one's soul" or "allow in" evil, negative spirits (malas influencias); some even claimed to get mounted by a spirit through the screen. Laura, a white Central American teacher who lives in Miami and was initiated in Matanzas in 2002, echoed similar concerns. "Anyone who records will fall into osogbo [bad fortune]. It's okay to watch [the videos] though. The spirits only take it out on the person who recorded them." She told me the story of a woman who had "invited spirits in by recording things. . . ' She lost her marriage, her job . . . even her home. She left herself open to anything." In both Cuba and the United States, priests expressed trepidation that capturing a person on film (whether through video or photograph) captured their spirit, soul, or essence and is linked to forms of spiritual control and enslavement. Spiritual morality is extremely important. Santeros, paleros, and espiritistas must constantly be attentive to the dangers of falling into the dark side of spiritual works: "That good and evil, moral and immoral, are categories that are in many contexts implicitly or explicitly referred to as dichotomous alternatives, naturally embedded within the potentialities of these practices, tells us that we are dealing with a frame of reference that is understood and transferable in these same contexts" (Espírito Santo 2010, 72-73).
Jay, a white American priest in Miami, spoke of how he had to unplug his phone and television at night because the spirits "wouldn't let him rest." He talked about his spiritual "communications," referencing several times the 2005 popular Hollywood thriller White Noise, in which an architect played by Michael Keaton uses electronic voice phenomenon to contact "the other side." Jay believed that Keaton's character had fallen into negative paranormal activities, tapping "hostile spirits" because he "didn't know what he was doing." On the other hand, Jay felt the oricha and egun protected him. While the example is certainly not ubiquitous, it was not the only time that popular movie representations of spirituality were invoked when I interviewed Santería priests about their understandings of video recordings. Indeed, Santería practitioners drew from multiple subjective realms to understand and interact with these influential copresences. The spiritual-religious agents are often referenced through representations in popular culture (from both the United States and Cuba) such as films, songs, or books. Within the large gamut of diverse Santería practitioners I interviewed, videos were recognized as active sites of spiritual transmission.
Teodoro, a priest in Matanzas, asked me to sit in and video record a cowry shell divination ritual for one of his American clients. During the reading I played several roles: I was an English translator, a videographer, and a religious secretary (known in Matanzas as fifíta and in Havana as feícitá). The fifíta handwrites what the oricha "speak" when they are "brought down" (bajada) through cowry shell divination. Indeed, cowries are called the "tongue" (la lengua) of the oricha. As the following except demonstrates, divination utterances frame practitioners' encounters and negotiations with techno-engaged copresences and show how this system often educates copresences in proper spiritual conduct.
Teodoro began the reading by collecting energy from Olorun (the sun) using a glass of water. I set up the video camera in a unobstrusive space, capturing the entire procedure so that his American client would have multiple copies of his reading. "Lo que se sabe no se pregunta," I translated to English: "Do not ask what you already know." Teodoro advised the client, "Your mother has passed and is unhappy." The client nodded in agreement. "Until you fulfill your role as a good son, you will be unhappy." Teodoro kept looking at the camera when he spoke, saying he could feel the client's mother in that area of the room. Tears streamed down the man's face. I wrote quickly and translated poorly. The client needed to offer his mother her favorite meal and speak to her kindly in order for her to halt her affliction. Since she was an "unenlightened" spirit, he needed to do several lifting rituals to align her with the light and bring her to the positive side, as she had died "in darkness." Only then, Teodoro claimed, could his mother be venerated and added to the client's boveda table, which was her proper place. The client was immediately referred to a local spiritist to begin the process of training his mother's spirit and also needed to be cleaned at the foot of the palo cauldron (nganga). After the video recorded reading, the American told me how he was estranged from his mother when she died. He was going to show the reading to his sister, who did not believe there is an afterlife.
During this process, the oricha, Teodoro, the client, his dead mother, the video camera, and I were elements of an embodied interarticulation of multiple systems of Afro-Cuban remedies. When the shells are brought down, all copresences are moving, and any system - ocha, palo, or espiritismo - can be activated through the shell's gaze. Enviornments are manipulated and work directly with the fields of energy, in, on, and around the client and the priests' bodies and, as was shown, the spirits themselves often need their own training in order to understand how to properly interact with the living in death. While some remedies, such as the earlier example, are simple ceremonies to bring the afflicted spirit toward the light, in other cases extreme forms of spiritual training are needed. Some Cuban espiritistas follow a version of "scientific spiritism" that considers their practice to be higher than the animistic mysticism of more material-based African-inspired practices such as Santería or palo. Espiritismo de cordón (spiritism of the cord), on the other hand, fuses African, indigenous, and Catholic practices, and practitioners of Santería often use this system to work spirit.
Santería initiations multiply the spirit space (see Clark 2007, 89; Sandoval 2008, 365; Fontañez 2006, 269). While people are alive, the connective spirit energy (ayalá) sits in back of the neck at the base of the skull (monokú eleda). The oricha is seen to enter initiates through the crown and lives in the head-organ (orí). Conceptually inspired by Enlightenment principles in French Kardecian Spiritism of the cord, priests' "spirit-souls" are understood to embark on journeys to obtain ever-expanding forms of "light" (luz), "progress" (progreso), and "development" (desenvolvimiento) while they are also considered to travel in "the dark" (la oscuridad) through their encounters with the difficulties and contaminations of life, dangers, and negative spirits and people (Sandoval 2008; Feraudy Espino 2002). Each practitioner has a set of protector spirits that are part of their cord. Photographs and videos are increasingly seen as doorways to these spaces and facilitate access to a person's embodied subjectivity in different spiritual environments. Along with the common congo (male and female) African slave spirits, there are Spanish gypsies, nuns, priests, and various forms of indigenous spirits that normally hail from the person's genealogy or ethnic makeup. I know a Filipina priestess who has a small Filipino pygmy as part of her spiritual cord.
The cordón espiritual connects the various different spirits to the person's body and life-worlds. Like an electrical cord, the spiritual cord allows for the spirits to give energy to and assist practitioners. While there are normally between five to seven spirits identified during the spiritual cord masses, there can be as many as nine or twelve. One woman I met had twenty-one different spirits. Each spirit must be attended to with specific elements that reflect their characteristics. For instance, nuns often like rosaries and crucifixes so they can pray to God on your behalf. I've seen female warrior spirits who ask for machetes, bows and arrows, or a mortal and pestle to make magic and charms. Intimate details of the various copresences' lives will come out through divination, spiritual masses, dreams, or messages. One must pay attention to these signals as they are ways to become more spiritually in tune with your cord. These copresences are sites of embodied environments, where spirit is felt in the air, on the body, and through the cord.
Teodoro's reading draws on espiritismo de cordon's understanding of a connected link of spiritual energy between spirit, oricha, and palo copresences and the body of the client (like an electric umbilical cord). The reading, also known as a gazing (mirada), is an ontological shift in energy. Rather than just seeing, the gaze is experienced as a punctum that Barthes described as an act of bodily feeling. These piercing gazes are registered kinesthetically through a sensorimotor awareness of space, copresence, and materiality. In divination gazes, oricha can make change through movement, what is called standing up for or defending the person. When this is done, the situation or problem that needs resolution is said to be "at the feet of the oricha" (see chapter 2).
The camera are also more recently used as another form of sacred notebook (libreta) - a "video-libreta" of speaking and seeing copresences. While the American's deceased mother was an active agent making his life unhappy, the oricha, Teodoro, the camera, and I participated in her punctum - in linking her copresence to heal the spiritually damaged body of her son. By training the deceased mother, Teodoro and the oricha negotiate the parameters for the work (trabajo) that the spirit demands. In divination, practitioners consult (consultar) the multiple pathways (caminos) that are walkable as well as the ones that are inevitable - those laid out by oricha and Olofi (the creator). The recording taps into the copresences' series of networks, where the mother's pain, even in death, profoundly impacts her son but can also be mutually affected by the living. The camera, in this instance, forms an additional witness (testigo) in Santería ontologies, and, in this case, Teodoro noticed the mother's spirit hovered by the camera. Cameras also thus attract spirit.
Copresences are not mutually exclusive. Energies of nature, death, different ancestors, and humans are constantly transgressing in and out of energetic intra-actions. The momentum of these energies electrifies the bodies of practitioners in close proximity, as they pull (jalar) other copresences down (bajan) into and emerge through other nearby bodies. This spiritual current is measured, rated, and experienced by practitioners in a qualitative differential of feeling ritual power, the aché (Daniel 2005; Matory 2005). J. Lorand Matory (2005, 123) explains that the terms ase in contemporary Wester African Oyo-Yoruba, axé in Brazilian candomblé, and aché in Cuban Santería are virtually the same word used to denote the power and life force "embodied in human agents, animals, and inanimate objects." Indeed, the spiritual power of aché is often measured by the communal feelscapes of the current.
Tina described this ranking in terms of place. She felt aché in the "calling power" of priests in Matanzas that she rarely felt in the U.S. Santería: "Generally speaking [in Matanzas], the energy . . . comes from a group of people all on the same page with the liturgy, knowing what they are doing, knowing what the responses are, knowing what dances are, knowing what to do when oricha comes down. Everything becomes more natural but it also becomes more intense." During drum rituals, both aña (batá) and cajón de muerto (wooden box drums for the dead), a strong current will bring down multiple copresences. The assessment of a weak current, where only one or no copresences come down (bajar) to the ritual space, corresponds to an event being considered unsuccessful; the copresences have decided to ignore the call and not attend. Practitioners discuss currents in terms of bodily feeling. "I felt the current, it was strong." Or "I did not feel a thing; there was no current there." No sentía nada. Ahí no había corriente. If current is "weak," then something is missing (algo falta), perhaps practitioners' "hearts" (okán) are not sincere or in the right places. Whatever it may be, the quality of spiritual currents is registered on the body and is crucial in the successful feelings of ritual spaces; Villepastour (2013, 63) describes this as "leading from the inside."
To be continued...
A Problem with Mediation

CHAPTER ONE: ELECTRIC ORICHA
Cyber Ocha
In 2006 I traveled to Los Angeles, California, to meet with two Mexican American priests, Hugo and Gloria, in their home to view some of their travelogues with several of their godchildren. Their oricha were in a private room so that if one did not know they were practitioners, this would not be visibly evident upon entering their home. They were concerned with stigmas and di not want to be visible as Santería priests. Cuba travel allowed them to limit the rituals they conducted in their home. They used videos as personal notes for their own religious learning, as a mean to introduce their godchildren to the idea of traveling to Cuba, and as a form of communication with their Cuban godmother, Lourdes.
Five of their godchildren - Frank, who had traveled to Cuba previously, and the other four, who had not - sat around their large flat-screen television as the video played. The video showed a drum ceremony and also featured portions of a cajón (wooden drum ritual) that Gloria's African slave spirit (congo) had requested. Hugo, Gloria, and Frank would interrupt to elaborate and give details. For those of us who were not familiar, we soon were able to identify different people, their roles, their importance, and how Hugo and Gloria felt about them. Like many of the travelogues I experienced in the United States, this video featured mostly black Cubans. Many were in states of possession, which enhanced the sensing of Cuban copresences by the mostly Latino group. An underlying theme was how the energy, spirit, or essence of Cuban oricha could be sensed through the television. One godchild mentioned that he felt he knew his oricha family in Cuba and could not wait to be able to visit. Overcome with emotions, he stated that he could sense the spiritual current in the video. "I can feel their power!"
In most cases, "showings" of ritual videos are selective. Most priests I spoke with in the United States only allowed practitioners to view their videos. While in Cuba, a whole room would sometimes be packed around a small television set watching a video that in some instances had been filmed the previous day, with many of those present in the recording. In Cuba there is an underlying recognition that, unlike most of those watching themselves onscreen, the video would soon be traveling. Indeed, a clear marking of a cosmopolitan religious tourist in Cuba (whether Cuban or foreign) is the use of a camera during rituals. Video cameras are items of especulación (conjectural boasting), seen as a coveted symbol of status in Cuba (Cabezas 1998; Fernandes 2003; Holbraad 2005; Pertierra 2009; Routon 2010). They are examples of Santería's spiritual power (aché) to attract positive benefits (iré), often translated in economic and commodity terms in practitioner's everyday lives, bringing a foreign cache of mobility, money, and power to Cuban rituals (Holbraad 2005). They mark Cuban casas de santo as having access to foreigners, dollars, and ritual tourism (Hagedorn 2001).
Still, many priests feel that capturing on video oricha possessions and sacred rituals is sacrilegious and absolutely abominable. In a conversation with Pastor, a half Jamaican, half American priest in Miami, about recent practice of recording and producing videos he asked me with disdain: "Do you think it is right that they are taking our most sacred religious secrets and showing them to the world only to make money?" I told him that I believed that it was a decision that had to be made individually as a priest and that I tried not to judge people for doing it, however I did not think it was right if any priests were exploited or not adequately compensated in the process. He went on to tell me, "I've done recordings, but I would never show them to anyone who is not initiated, and I would not sell them on the Internet as if it were a cheap thrill. Our ancestors were sold on chopping blocks and now our traditions are being sold on eBay!"
Pastor references black traditions being consumed on eBay, hailing a spiritual epistemology that references the economies of violence in slavery through which blackened bodies emerged. By disposing of the historical codas against outsider visibility established to ensure its secrecy and protection, he saw videos as revealing Santería, laying it bare to a hostile world that only wished to purchase blackened exotica. Pastor told me, "Technology is like a nganga [palo cauldron]. It can turn on you!" This ocha-centric rhetoric that envisions technology as a palo nganga relies on perceptions that palo is evil and unvirtuous. Nganga "capture" spirits of the dead (often dead slaves) in order to perform forced spiritual labor (Espírito Santo 2010, 72). Spirits captured in nganga for evil purposes are referred to as "dogs" (perros), similar to the slave-hunting dogs used in colonial Cuba to capture cimarrones (runaway slaves). Nganga dogs are given animal blood in exchange for illicit spiritual works:
That paleros are known to value spirits whose lives and deaths have been characterized by violence or insanity is suggestive of the idea that moral vulnerability is a fundamental trope in understanding a perros's efficiency. Paleros are often thought to manipulate this ignorance to their own ends for, as the saying goes: 'arriba de la nganga, no hay sentimiento' (where the nganga is concerned, there is no room for sentiment) and, just like their perros, being recognized as a palero can entail being regarded as naturally unvirtuous (Espírito Santo 2010, 74).
...
Envisioning technology as an nganga - a potentially dangerous vehicles that can enslave spirits and turn them toward illicit deeds, Pastor reads media through a complex network of racialized copresences. If, for him, technology is palo, then learning from elders in the "true traditional" manner is the more enlightened and positive ocha (see also Ochoa 2010a, 389). Pastor sees technology as contributing to a loss of cohesive understanding and disrespect in Santería through a degradation of spiritual moral behavior, likened to palo, but particularly with younger practitioners: "Nowadays . . . because they [young priests] read something or talk to someone online, [they] think that is the only way it is done. In my time, you could never question your elders. Now, people go from one godparents to the next, or learn online," he told me.
In an interesting contrast to Pastor's story, I chatted online with a young man from New York, OmiTalade (his online identity), who told me how he used video recordings to learn prayers, song, and dances since he had fallen out with his godfather and had problems with local priests. He had purchased all of the Lázaro Ros's and Abbilona's oricha CD collections, as well as any book or DVD that came out on Santería, and he was in the process of planning a trip to Cuba with a friend of his who had a connection to a "cheap" but "well-respected" priest in Havana. He told me how at first he was reluctant to go to Cuba "because of the whole communist stuff," but after watching videos that his friends had recorded in Cuba and online, he could not wait to go.
Other young priests that I spoke with in the United States echoed this sentiment. Through encounters with video travelogues that they saw online or at other santeros' homes, they experienced Santería in Cuba as more "authentic," "less expensive," with fewer "power plays," and they were willing to make the (usually illegal) trek through third countries to experience it for themselves (see chapter 2). Mary, a Filipino American Santería priestess in San Francisco, told me how for years she had gone from one godparent to the next, always feeling like she was getting "ripped off" and never "learned anything." She felt that through the use of religious videos, music, and Santería websites, she could now learn directly from Cuba - referencing an e-community of oricha that sounded romantically like an idealized Habermasian public sphere. This "Internet Diaspora," Joseph Murphy (2008) points out, is ever expanding through a proliferation of Web sites, chat groups, social networking, e-botanicas, technorituals, and more. People can learn from "cyber elders," while heated disputes over practice, authority, and ethno-nationalist centricity are played out in a global ochasphere in the "Virtual Atlantic," as Stephan Palmié (2013) has described it. Mary was initiated for five years at the time I interviewed her, and she said that she had only recently learned how to moyuba (pray) through the purchase of a CD online. Similarly, Nick, a black American Santería priest in his late forties living in Chicago, told me he was in the process of learning how to drum through videos sold over the Internet. There is even an iPhone app to instruct drummers on Havana-style batá.
In this virtual ochascape, there have been declarations of war between different communities of practitioners. For example, fierce debates between Yoruba traditional religion and Cuban American Santería priests have disputed authenticity, orthodoxy, and practice (Palmié 2013, 178). As I examine in chapter 5, the attempts of Cuban babalawo to virtually strip "African-style" ifá priests of their titles for initiating women in Cuba have also played out both on- and offline. In a particularly bizarre case, the ingestion of Giant East African snail juice by African Traditionalists in Florida in March 2010, which became news for the Miami Herald,
created an outcry of regla de ocha practitioners who wanted to distance themselves from this oddity (Palmié 2013, 173-79). This event led to the construction of the Lukumí Council of Obá Oriatés of South Florida in the spring 2010, consisting of twenty-seven priests who spoke out against Yoruba traditional religion "detractors" from Santería: "Those priests ordained in the Lukumí Religion for whatever reason wish or are desirous to be ordained by/or convert to the practices of the Traditional Yoruba Religion will abandon and renounce any and all rights - heirarchical and practical. We will not recognize nor validate the consecration or the privileges of those priests that abandon Lukumí worship to adapt to those of the Yoruba Traditionalists" (in Palmié 2013, 177-78).
Despite these more dramatic disputes, cyber ocha and video rituals are nevertheless important modalities of practice and learning that are productive of global oricha assemblages. While learning under the direct tutelage of an elder continues to be seen as a more authentic and privileged site of religious knowledge acquisition, many priests both in the United States and in Cuba admit to using some form of religious media or technology to aid in their spiritual learning process. Tina, a white American priestess and friend who married a Cuban and moved to Matanzas, and who eventually produced videos on Alfredo Calvo, her father in-law, told me that films have become a "game changer" in terms of the transmission of religious knowledge and the impact on oral traditions. For her, whereas books could be confusing or tainted by the author's interpretation, films were unmediated: "I think technology has done even more than books ever could to document and preserve the elders' knowledge, still with filters of course, the camera person's eye and the editor's cuts both impact hugely what is finally preserved, but I still think it is more 'raw' than the analysis and interpretation imposed by a written chronicle. So much more of the interpretation imposed by a written chronicle. So much more of the interpretation is left [to] the viewer." Tina described how she was first chastised by elders for filming and then publishing recordings, but she holds that technology and the Internet has allowed for people to share information in ways that have been highly policed in the past. After reading an earlier version of this manuscript, Tina wrote me about the impact of recordings and the Internet and her role in capturing teachings through these technologies:
Before, we relied on one person's interpretation of what another person said, the essence of an oral tradition. Now, we have Alfredo's [Calvo] words . . . edited by me, of course, but still, his words, his understanding. . . . It is pretty powerful stuff, particularly in a religion that has traditionally rested on the interpretation and passing on of an elder's knowledge verbally by someone else. . . . Not to aggrandize my role in it, I quite honestly didn't think about it that much at the time . . . but now that he is gone I realize the force of what was recorded and the power of the Internet in transmitting it.
...
Attesting to the idea that there is a sense of newfound sharing enabled through the Internet, many priests emphasized that technology had become a new form of learning that allowed them to have more "freedom" from elders who policed the religion and held on to coveted religious knowledge. Much of this was described in neoliberal terms that offered the Internet as a site of individual freedoms from tradition. Younger priests described how elders "took advantage" or policed godchildren, refusing to teach them if they did not become "indentured" to them. OmiTalade mentioned that he had only recently begun to rely more on religious media after falling out with his godfather, who had charged him exorbitant prices and did not properly conduct his ceremonies. When I asked OmiTalade how he knew that they had been done improperly, he told me that it was through conversations with priests online. The following chat conversation from my logged field notes shows the types of Santería chat interactions that often challenge offline relationships (note, I am La_Matancera):
OMITALADE: . . . he only gave one ram to my yemaya and chango [sic], and charged me for both.
OMITALADE: I paid twelve [thousand dollars] for my santo. So I should have had all my animals.
LA_MATANCERA: Did you know that at the time?
OMITALADE: I posted on OLU [oricha social networking group] and found out that I should have had two rams, one for each of them.
OMITALADE: and, a yemaya [priesthood initiation ceremony] should only cost six or seven [thousand dollars] not twelve.
LA_MATANCERA: So what happened with your padrino?
OMITALADE: I broke it off with him. He does a lot of stuff wrong like that. But I still got my santo. And I'm planning on going to Cuba to do my pinaldo [knife ceremony].
​
OmiTalade's frustration with being exploited by his godfather is an interesting contrast to Pastor's nostalgia of a recent Santería past, without YouTube or eBay, where younger priests would never think to challenge their elders. While the dynamic of breaking ties with godparents over money issues and questioning their religious authority is nothing new, technology has become a key element in the credentialing and discrediting of priests. Practitioners who incorporate media are often seen as "inauthentic" and nontraditional, similar to the use of the term "modern" to disparage religious "deviations." An obá from Miami discredited another obá from Los Angeles by telling me, "he doesn't know anything. Everything he does is an invento [invention]. He learned from his iPod." "Invento" is often invoked as a universal term to dismiss other santeros. This resonates with the Cuban term "inventar" where Cubans invent creative (and often illicit) economic activities as part of the mundane survival techniques employed in response to economic crisis and the shortages of living under the U.S. embargo.
While many echoed a negative attitude toward videos, others thought that the notion of "secrets" was archaic and stemmed from a colonized epistemology that needed to be shed. For instance, the "African-style" babalawos in Cuba, who began initiating foreign women to ifá (iyanifá) in 2004, thought that all knowledge should be accessible to those who desired to learn it (see chapter 5). While I never witnessed them filming their rituals, one of the priests told me, "If we learn from books now, why not videos?" Indeed, one Cuban babalawo I know has his entire ifá manual on his laptop and reads directly from the screen during divination consultations. While media technologies are certainly connected explicitly to commercial endeavors and alternative personalistic economies, I do not suggest that they exist in some tainted space. Rather, I find it interesting how videoscapes emerge as specific negotiations of translocal Santería, expanding and energizing Santería copresences.
​
"My name is not money"
While in Habana Vieja, I stayed at the house of the former members of Ibbú Okún, an all-female folkloric dance troupe that had traveled to the United States in the 1990s. The head of this group, Amelia Pedroso (oñi Yemayá, ibae), was a highly regarded female lead singer (awkpón) and drummer who recorded several CDs before her untimely passing of lung cancer in May 2000 (Villepastour 2013, 69; Vincent and Woolfe 2004, 58). She had been initiated to regla ocha at age three and at the time of her death had been a priestess for fifty years. At her family's home we would often sit and watch videos of their previous performances, listen to CDs of them recorded in the United States, sing, and even sometimes get up and dance along with the videos. Alina, a priestess of Ochún, and Gordo, a priest of Eleguá, would sometimes correct my pronunciation and give me advice and suggestions. For them, videos were a way of bringing past experiences and people "back to life." For instance, Amelia Pedroso's copresence insists on attention where she is known to halt or delay rituals in order to be attended to. She continues to teach her extensive knowledge of Lukumí songs, dance, and dumming through her videos and CDs. Amanda Villepastour (2013, 67) describes how Pedroso's voice "cut through the drums" as a rare female lead singer. Indeed, her energetic power has been expanded through death, where her recordings and copresence continuously bring her back to present.
On several occasions while watching videos of Ibbú Okún's U.S. tours and performances, the group members would relate to me why they returned to the island, why they loved Cuba. Alina described her and Amelia's impression of "the cold" (both literal and metaphorical) that penetrated U.S. religious spaces, and how this "coldness" had brought them "home" even when they could have stayed in la yuma (abroad). Amelia and Alina both have many foreign godchildren, and Amelia had a following of American female drummers (Villepastour 2013, 67). This coldness also referred to an economic presumption of ownership - as Alina told me, "My name is not money." Addressing some of the ways that many Cubans like Amelia, and even Alina herself, had felt taken advantage of by Americans' filming, she told me: "They think they own us because they have money. . . . They come here with their cameras, and record in a moment what has taken us years to learn and study. . . . Then they take it and make money off of it and we stay in our humbleness." Frustrated, Alina took a drag from her cigarette, nodded her head, and emphasized, "Es así." That's how it is.
While religious recordings are valuable in multiple ways, it is not only Cubans who feel "taken advantage of." Americans described hoping to feel a sense of solidarity with Cuban priests, but when they arrive on the island, they felt like "passports" or "bank accounts." I spoke with foreign santeros who produce music and videos for profit in Cuba, and they mentioned the sometimes unrealistic expectations of Cuban musicians and priests, where stories are riddled with "intrigue," discord, and gihts over money, power, and recognition. This also occurs between Cubans and Americans themselves. One American man told me of another American who travels constantly to Havana, saying that he "uses Cubans" and takes advantage of the American practitioners by taking them on Santería tours. Cubans criticize other Cuban priests for "selling rituals" to tourists and being willing to do anything for money. Indeed, while many Cuban women were prohibited from playing batá drums, foreign women have been learning to play and recording videos of drumming since the 1980s (Villepastour 2013, 69-70). Increasing frustration with this double standard and marginalization of Cuban women was what gave Amelia Pedroso the gumption to teach herself how to play the unconsecrated batá (aberikunlá) and start Ibbú Okún. In a 1999 interview, Amelia described how, after being a lead singer for thirty-one years, she had read in a book that women were allowed to play unconsecrated drums in Nigeria, and it "moved" her; she was "called" by the drum (see Villepastour 2013, 51; Vincent and Woolfe 2004). Indeed, drums are often described as telephones that "call down the oricha." Specifically citing the double standard, Amelia explained, "In Cuba, for many years now, the men still do not want their Cuban women playing drums, but a foreigner arrives and they teach them. . . . They are not a threat because they leave" (Villepastour 2013, 70).
In a more personal example of the politics of videos and recordings, my father, Piri Ochún, a drummer who has a private collection of personal interviews with elders (such as Amelia and others who have now passed), is extremely protective of his collection. In fact, even I have only see a few of them. When I explained some of the video recording experiences that I had been studying, he told me about his own personal relationship with videos. In a 2008 conversation with him, he told me how he first began recording religious elements of his life in the late 1980s a few years after making santo because he was told by the oricha to "document everything he did in life." "I've only let one video out of my hands, and that person went and published it in a book," he said, holding up the book (which will remain unnamed here) that had transcribed Piri's recording in order to create a "manual" of religious songs for practitioners. "Look, at this. And [they] even gave me credit [in the acknowledgements] as if I had given permission for this!" Stories of practitioners being taken advantage of by broader circuits abound in Santería discourses, warning of people who come to the religion for "the wrong reasons," for economic "interés" (interest). While many harness the economic power of these religious media, this practice is part of a long lineage where economic exchange and transnational religious transaction are at the core of Santería and other similar practices across African diaspora "interspaces," as Wirtz (2007b) calls them. These concerns about videos thus emerge within a longer history of skepticism and caution that permeate religious interactions (Johnson 2002).
On the other hand, those Americans I spoke with who do record and publicize videos of music and rituals often feel that they are "called to do so" by "spiritual paths" laid out for them by copresences. For instance, Tina, who, as I mentioned previously, produced several DVDs and a CD on drumming and music of Santería in Matanzas (two of which were specifically on Padrino Alfredo), explained that she made recordings because "everything appeared in [her] path." She had come from a publishing and marketing background in the United States and was in her forties when she was initiated there to Obatalá. "I knew nothing about the religion. . . . I made ocha [priesthood] to save my life," she told me. While she had to hide her practice from her family, when she finally went to Cuba for the first time to undergo her "knife" ceremony (kuchillo) in the late 1990s, Tina felt for the first time that she "could be who [she] was and really glory in this spiritual awakening that was happening" for her. Speaking of her first experience of Santería in Matanzas, she told me: "It was all around you. . . . [Santería] could be an integrated part of who I was. You know, I wasn't hiding my beads under my blouse and all of that stuff. I couldn't imagine being without that. . . . It was about living that ocha life that just felt very, very right to me. . . . It was spiritual. It was a relationship with ocha and a relationship with Matanza that was very strong."
Compelled by the experience, she told me, "it was so beautiful, and so vibrant and so powerful in Matanzas that I wanted to share that with the world." She felt that the oricha had brought her to Cuba for a number of reasons, and that the Matanzas traditions of Fermina Gómez practiced in Alfredo's house needed to be "shared," "preserved," and "demystified." She was "pulled" to do it. She described how she took care with what she chose to show in the films: "I tried to be very respectful about it. I have a lot of stuff behind the curtain that I would never use. . . .Everything that I used . . . you know everything that I published was stuff that was public, that you could walk in off the street and see."
She told me that Alfredo was always very open with her filming but that she still always asked his permission to record. When Alfredo died in August 2011 she realized how essential his permission had been to her ethics of publishing videos, telling me, "It was funny when he died, I just couldn't even think about filming his [death] ceremonies at the end, because he wasn't there to ask him permission." However, Padrino Alfredo's children and family members did film certain elements of his death rituals with a camera my father had given to them many years earlier.
Filming is part of the emerging practice of transnational Santería world. Tina started Kabiosile.org, an online Web site dedicated to publishing religious videos and information, which began with one CD. One of her Puerto Rican American godbrothers had brought her in to help finish the music CD because, since she was living in Cuba at the time, she had local resources available. They started making DVDs because, as she related, when Americans began filming their presentations to take back to the United States for verification of their rituals, "Cubans also wanted copies of their presentations" for keepsakes. She was approached by several Cubans to film these public drumming presentations, and when she was asked to join the CD project Bata y Bembe de Matanzas (CD, 2003), Tina decided to pull from her own video collection of presentations to create the first video, Vamos Al Tambor (DVD, 2003), which is a film of the drum presentations of three Cuban Changó initiates. After receiving positive responses to the CD and DVD, she went back to her archives and gathered footage with her husband, Alberto, and put together a series of unique drumming clips, along with interviews that she thought might be useful. However, when she showed it to a friend, an American priest and drummer in the San Francisco Bay Area, he told her that, given how different Matanzas Santería drumming is in relation to Havana drumming, which is what most people in the States were familiar with, "people wouldn't understand what was going on." So, in the second DVD, La Fuerza del Tambor (DVD, 2006), she decided to do interviews to explain the different drumming that had rarely been seen outside of Matanzas. For the last film, El Lenguaje del Tambor (DVD, 2007), Daniel Alfonso Herrera, a famous drummer in Matanzas, approached her to do an instructional video on how to play batá. According to Tina, she was just going along for the ride that oricha had for her, and these opportunities kept "appearing in her path."
While the economy of religious videos is a rather recent phenomenon, these media are increasingly prolific and play a crucial role in multilateral exchanges while produced (and reproducing) new and old forms of belonging. In Cuba, travelers like Tina, Piri, Gloria, and I are often asked to videotape rituals and ceremonies, leave cameras and other equipment with Cuban priests, and dub or deliver videos and other media to religious family members in the United States. Drawing on Wirtz's (2007b, 51`) metaphor of the "interspace," which extends beyond only physical spaces, Santería has continually been "constituted and reconstituted at the juncture of competing metacultural stances." She described these stances as "the sacred," "the suspicious," and "the folkloric." Wirtz argues that the "sacred stance" - or that which embodies practitioners' historical relationship to sacred power and communication between humans and the divine - is marginalized in relation to the other stances. The sacred stance references practitioners' understandable obsession to remember ritual procedures, and to debate the correctness of each other's ritual performances. Based on slavery and feelings of loss - loss of ritual knowledge, language, and tradition - priests guard ritual secrets and idealize the "deterioration of a once small tight-knit religious community." As Wirtz suggests, this preoccupation with loss and an emphasis on secrecy has served as a form of protection from the oppositional or "outsider" perspective, which is "suspicious" toward Santería. The "suspicious stance" thus "ascribes danger and criminality to Afro-Cuban ritual practices . . . [it is a historical consciousness] of linear scientific progress according to elite, Eurocentric norms, a progress threatened by the corrupting influence of what white elites generally understood to be anachronistic practices" (Wirtz 2007b, 52). The more recent "folkloric stance," on the other hand, understands Santería to be a marker of Cubanness and national heritage that, while celebrating racial mixing discourses (mestizaje) emphasizes the syncretic nature of an "African past" with Yoruba roots. The folkloric, I would add, effectively secularizes Santería forms hailing dance, music, and artistic elements over "religious" practice. If we understand the relationship of ritual videos as an extension and expansion of this "interspace," it would be helpful to see how the three stances are also constitutive of "the transnational" in Santería. Video recordings form part of a reconfiguration of transnational religious communication, ethos, and praxis. Priests in Cuba, like Tony and Dunieski, talked about how they could video travel even though they could not physically leave, and even some American-based priests see Cubans as spiritually present through videos.
To be continued...
Technorituals

This is the comments of DEA agent David Herrera, Hector Berrellez' instructotrainer at the DEA:
https://www.martinpi.com/kiki-camarena-david-herrera/
The Initiation of Operation LeyendaThe Search for Truth and Justice in the Kiki Camarena Investigation By David Herrera
The Kidnapping of Enrique Camarena
On Thursday, February 7, 1985, my friend and fellow US Drug Enforcement Administration Special Agent, Enrique “Kiki” Camarena was kidnapped shortly after he had departed the US Consulate in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico for a luncheon date with his wife, Mika. Kiki never arrived to that luncheon date even though it was located just a few blocks away from his office. Thugs comprised of corrupt Mexican security officers and Mexican drug traffickers kidnapped him as he exited the US Consulate on the way to his vehicle. They placed him into another vehicle and eventually took him to a residence at 88 Lope de Vega in Guadalajara where after about 24 plus hours of interrogation and torture, he was killed. Shortly thereafter, his body was taken and crudely buried in Primavera Forest until it was exhumed and discovered about 30 days later on a roadside. His wife assumed that Kiki had been called away on official business as the reason for not meeting with her. As the day passed and the night entered, Kiki never arrived back home. Mika fearing the worst notified James Kuykendall that following morning and Kuykendall immediately notified DEA Headquarters where I was stationed and assigned to the Cocaine Desk.
Kiki was my Guadalajara contact as I coordinated the Operation Padrino investigation
I knew Kiki as he was my Guadalajara contact as I coordinated the Operation Padrino investigation which touched upon the cocaine traffic between South America, Mexico and the Western part of the United States. I recall that Friday morning of February 8, 1985 when we received the information and notice that Kiki was missing, I was asked to go into the DEA Administrator’s office and brief him on how some of the personalities in Operation Padrino could possibly fit into what would eventually be named as Operation Leyenda. As investigation proved, many of the principals in Operation Padrino were the leaders and operators in Operation Leyenda. Personally, as far as finding Kiki alive, I feared the worst and hoped it was nothing more than a kidnapping and that the ransom would be an exchange of Mexican prisoners that had been captured as part of Operation Padrino. Several days of investigation passed which turned into weeks until we received word that Kiki’s body along with his informant, Captain Alfredo Zavala, who had also been kidnapped and murdered the same day, were found in Guadalajara.
Trying to reconstruct what happened 35 years ago, and now at age 76, is no easy task but because this incident was the most trying of all my BNDD/DEA experiences, I have always kept more memories of it than what I ever wanted to have. My two-fold purpose of this writing is to memorialize my recollections of some of the actions that DEA took following the kidnapping of Kiki, and to outline some of responses the US Government took to try and locate Kiki and bring him home, as well as to let our newer DEA Special Agents some of whom were not even born in 1985 know that DEA stood by us then, and they will stand by you today. At no time is this an effort to write a book as others before me have done but rather tell this story as a representative slice of some of the memories that still linger in my head about this subject matter.

I’m crowned Chango and have needed to receive mano de Orula for a few years now. The thing that’s held me back is the money because every time there was an opportunity I didn’t have enough money to get it done. I also ran into the problem where I don’t know any babalawos and there has been a stigma in the Chicagoland area about babalawos doing cocaine and stuff like that. Was a huge scandal years back and idk if it’s still an issue or not tbh because of my lack of contact with anyone in Ifa. My original padrino was very anti babalawo so we would interact with them very minimally and my Padrino after that initial one (first one turned out to be a scammer) always said that unless we were meant to be Babalawos then we didn’t need to worry about seeing them except to receive Mano de Orula or unless it was directed by the Orishas or muertos in a consulta.
I understand there are varying schools of thought on this. I don’t know right or wrong in this matter. I just know what I’ve been told and taught all these years. At this point my padrino is unreachable and I have no one to turn to except for an elder in Palo (I’m also scratched and a Tata) who told me recently during a consulta that I needed to get a reading from a babalawo. I’m nervous and apprehensive because of the stigma towards babalawos I’ve always encountered but I realize that other people’s negative interactions doesn’t have to dictate my perceptions. Ultimately I just need help and guidance. I read on a previous thread on this page that babalawos can do consultas over the phone. I can count on one hand how many times I’ve had a consulta with a babalawo and still have several fingers to spare. One that I saw like 18 years ago was named Juan (no idea last name) and another one was Hector 14 years ago who I believe was the babalawo that set up the Ifa/Lucumi exhibit at one of the museums out here. From being scammed by my original padrino I’m nervous working with people I don’t know let alone can’t see but I know at some point I have to take that leap of faith and have faith in the Orishas to guide me to the person that will help me with this.
So my questions are:
Does anyone know of a reputable babalawo in Chicago or surrounding suburbs?
If not, do any babalawos here do consultas over the phone and would you be willing to help with that?
I appreciate the responses and please understand that none of my responses were meant to cause offense at all just explain what my experience has been with all this and what I’ve been told.

1946-1965. Born poor in Bellavista. Sells food, toys, fruit with his bro Jose Luis.
1966. Joins Sinaloa State Judicial Police with his brothers Jose Luis and Pancho. Assigned to Governors Mansion to protect the wife and children of Rodolfo Sanchez Celis
1969 Attends Websters Business College in Culiacan, studying business administration.
1970-1975. Using his influence as a ex State Police officer and hired gun for Sanchez Celis, hes introduced to the rural hick opium and marijuna crime lords of Badiraguato and Mazatlan highlands. He becomes a "madrina" - a civilian used by the Feds or Staties to commit crimes they can't technically do (kidnap perps, hold them illegally, beat information out of them)
1970s Now Senator Leopoldo Sanchez Celis serves as godfather at MFG and Maria Elvira Murillo's wedding.
1975. Becomes a lieutenant for Don Lalo Fernandez, boss of the Badiraguato mafiosos. Meets Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo and Rafael Caro Quintero and others.
1975 MFG establishes Imobiliaria Delia and Imobiliaria Elvira in Culiacan, two real estate companies that acquire buildings homes pharmacies and motels used to launder money.
1976 Miguel is now leader of several gangs of smugglers and pistoleros. He finances or protects heroin and marijuana loads to the border.
1976. After Alberto Sicilia Falcon is detained, Miguel meets Honduran chemist Ramon Matta Ballesteros and becomes his contact to the Colombian drug mafias.

1. Operation Condor is implemented in the Golden Triangle area of Sinaloa Chihuahua and Durango states. Violence is out of control in Culiacan, averaging 2 murders a day.

1977 DEA agents receive a tip that 300 kilos of coke have arrived in Culiacan and being sent to Tijuana via airplane. Baja State Police raid shipment and find 130 keys at a safe house. The owner of the shipment was MFG.
1977. MFG deals with a Baja judge t be cleared of any wrong doing in the 130 kilos case- no evidence hes the owner of said drugs and case is tossed out.
Late 1970s MFG acquires Motor Hotel Las Americas and Suites Montreal and Suites del Real in Guadalajara, used to house visiting Federales, celebs and rich clients.
1978. MFG is friends with Federal Police commander Margarito Mendez Rico one of the top comandantes in Operation Condor. Mendez and Condor commander Jaime Alcala set up and ambush Don Pedro Avilez Perez, 4 bodyguards and 2 teenage girls at a rural roadblock northwest of Culiacan.
1979. MFG finances marijuana fields and partners with Fonseca and Caro Quintero.
1979 MFC sits on the board of directors of two banks in Guadalajara and City of Chihuahua.
1979. MFG hosts Pablo Escobar, Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha and Ramon Matta Ballesteros at his beach house in Altata, Sinaloa. They discuss a pipeline from Medellin to Guadalajara and to the Mexican border.
1979 New Sinaloa State Police commander Jose Lozano Calva takes over and refuses to play ball with MFG. He starts to hit Miguels legit and illegal businesses and associates. Miguel moves from Culiacan and Mazatlan to Guadalajara permanently.
1979 Medellin decided to gift Sicilia Falcons routes and business to MFG, finding him serious, welll connected abd less flamboyant and flashy.
The Guadalajara Cartel flourishes. Rafa and Fonseca run huge marijuana operations along with El Azul, Gil Caro Rodriguez. Ex lawyer Javier Barba and Don Netos nephew Rafael Fonseca Caro are enforcers and chief hitmen. MFG and Matta handle the cocaine from Guadalajara to the California, Arizona, Nevada and Texas markets. Cash is driven back from the US to Mexico in RVs. The money is wired and deposited in Bank of America accounts in San Diego and Los Angeles and Laredo Trust in Texas.
1980 Kiki Camarena arrives at the GDL DEA office.
1981. A marijuana field tended by Caro Quintero in Caborca, Sonora is surrounded by military on DEA intelligence from the Hermosillo office. RCQ threatens to kill any soldier who gets close. General gives him 6 days to harvest and escape.
1982 Operation Padrino is run out of the GDL DEA office by agent Butch Sears, aimed at dismantling the MFG criminal network/GDL cartel
1982 San Luis Potosi and Yaqui Valley Sonora marijuana fields are raided and destroyed. Millions lost.
1983 MFG offers truce to Sinaloa police commander Lozano Calva. He sends his pilot brother in law to pick up Lozano in Culiacan and bring him to Guadalajara. Cessna explodes near Puerto Vallarta, killing the pilot (bro in law), Lozano and three aides.
1983. MFG and wife Elvira serve as godparents at the wedding of Rodolfo Sanchez Duarte and Theolinda Lopez. They are photographed and attend party with Mexican and Sinaloan political elite.
1983. MFG donates money for the construction of a new library at the Culiacan campus of the Autonomous University of Sinaloa.
1983-1984 MFG's DFS goons and bodyguards routinely follow detain and harass DEA agents in Guadalajara in response to Operation Padrino. A top Jalisco commander visits DEA RAIC Jaime Kuykendall to suggest (threaten?) the DEA stop focusing on MFG and instead focus on violent hothead Rafael Caro Quintero.
1984. Zacatecas fields are raided using intel by the Guadalajara DEA office. Half the weed is destroyed and half given back to the Cartel.
Autumn 1984. DEA confiscates cocaine and cash in busts in Anaheim and Gila Valley Arizona. Millions in dollars lost.
Late 1984. Gang warfare breaks out in Guadalajara. Antonio Fonseca, cartel enforcer and Don Netos half brother is shot and killed by Guadalajara police. Cartel responds by shooting officers anywhere they find them. Shootouts erupt at restaurants, streets and funeral parlors.
1984. Cesario Garcia Bueno, a Guadalajara attorney friend of Fonseca and a Camarena informant is shot at a restaurant and paralyzed. DEA Agent Roger Knapps car is machine gunned outside his home in Guadalajara. A bulls eye pattern is shot into his drivers side door.
1985. Camarena/Zavala kidnapping and murders. MFG gives up location of Rafa and Don Neto to Mexico City and alleges he had no part and no say in the murders. MFG befriends Guadalajara zone commander Guillermo Gonzalez Calderoni before his transfer to Monterrey.
1985. MFG relocates from Guadalajara back to Sinaloa. New Culiacan police comandante Armando Barraza serves as protector and executioner. Businessman Miguel Rico Urrea is MFGs right hand man and godson Rodolfo Sanchez Duarte begins to finance the purchase of large cocaine shipments into Mexico with the blessing and protection of El Padrino. Tomas Valle Corral is his accountant and handles the drug money.
1985-1987. Despite being a fugitive over the Camarena case and having 11 arrest warrants against him, MFG is well protected by Feds, Army and Senators. Sinaloa Governor Antonio Toledo Corro routinely has him as a guest at his ranch in Escuinapa, Sinaloa. He also stays at his Mazatlan home, next door to the US consuls home.
1987 MFG travels to Spain in an attempt to try to break into the Euro drug market.
1988. General Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo, commander of the Culiacan military zone travels to Guadalajara to arrest and kill Manuel Salcido El Cochiloco, now one of MFGs lieutenants in Mazatlan and Colima. Gutierrez troops, out of their jurisdiction corner Cochi and MFG at a cabin in Primavera Forest and a shootout ensues. MFG calls the Guadalajara military zone commander, Gen. Vinicio Santoyo Feria for rescue and a gunbattle between two army troops ensue. Cochi and MFG escape and the embarrassing incident is covered up by the government.
1988. Abelardo Retamoza and Guero Palma Salazar, MFG lieutenants in Sonora hijack a truck with 2 tons of cocaine belonging to Rodolfo Sanchez Duarte and MFG at a warehouse in Los Mochis.
1988. Police commander Armando Barraza kidnaps, tortures and kills Retamoza outside Culiacan but fails to find Guero. MFG orders Palmas and Retamozas friends and crews killed. Guero responds in kind, shooting and killing MFG friends and associates wherever he finds them.
1989. MFG arrested by Guillermo Gonzalez Calderoni on April 8th in Guadalajara. Army takes over Culiacan city police and Sinaloa state police headquarters and disarm entire police forces. Whatever officer that isnt detained on charges of bribery, flees the military dragnet. MFG lieutenant, Miguel Rico Urrea is arrested in May in Mexico City. The Attorney General's (PGR) office confiscate ranches, homes and businesses- some comandantes end up illegally keeping MFGs properties as trophies. Behind close doors Gonzalez Calderoni begs MFG not to tell the Attorney General that they are friends in exchange Calderoni helps to get him out.
Summer 1989. Guero Palmas wife and children are murdered on orders from MFG because of the drug thefts and his ongoing feud with Chapo, Rayo Lopez, Guero and Retamoza crews.
1989-1990. MFG attempts to still control drug trade via cell phone and emissaries from Reclusorio Sur prison in Mexico City. His friends and relatives are allowed to stay with him for however long he wants. He sends Gonzalez Calderoni to gather drug lords in Acapulco; Tijuana goes to Chuy Labra and nephews Arellano Felix, Nogales to Miguel Caro Quintero. Chapo Guzman gets Tecate and Aguaprieta, Guadalajara Colima and Mazatlan to Cochiloco. Rafael Aguilar Guajardo in Ciudad Juarez and Mayo Zambada and best friend Baltazar Diaz in Culiacan and Cancun.
1990. Godson Rodolfo Sanchez Duarte and two friends are kidnapped from Mexico Citys airport as they arrived to visit MFG in prison. Rodolfo is beaten shot with machine guns and run over with a truck. Guero Palma is blamed.
1990-1992 Guero suspects MFG had a hand in his family's murder and goes on the war path killing anybody related to him. With MFG ally police commander Armando Barraza fired, Guero pays for his ally Commander Mario Alberto Gonzalez Treviño to be named Sinaloa State Police chief. Using this ally, Guero retaliates against Felix. Attorney Carlos Morales is machine gunned outside Reclusorio Sur prison. One of Miguels brother is kidnapped from Guadalajaras airport and never seen again. Police commanders, friends of MFG are ambushed and killed.
1992 Guero gains power and wealth and connections to President Carlos Salinas De Gortari. He continues to go after Miguel Felix. He pays for MFGs relatives to be expelled from Reclusorio Sur and one by one he and brother in law Ramon Laija Serrano kidnap MFG brother Jose Luis and Pancho in Guadalajara and Mexico City. There they kidnap several more nephews and two attorneys working for the Felix family. The nine tortured and bullet riddled bodies are found hundreds of miles south in Iguala, Guerrero
1992 Two car bombs explode in Culiacan outside of MFG associates Armando Barraza and Miguel Rico Urreas homes.
1992. Hours before Miguel Rico Urrea is released, a sicario enters Santa Martha Acatitla prison in Mexico City and shoots him dead.
1993. MFG is transfered to Almoloya maximum security prison, housing the people he betrayed - Rafa, Don Neto and Chapo Guzman. Its said Rafa and Chapo beat up MFG on two diffrent occasions.
2007. MFG family sets up a now defunct website MiguelFelixGallardo.com, where they try to "clear him name" and El Padrino offers advice and answers questions. He was a successful businessman who owned hotels and such. No, he didnt kill Gueros family. He prefers pop music over banda and narco corridos.
2009. MFG writes his memoirs on paper napkins and smuggles them out to Gatopardo magazine, who prints them.
Sources: O Plata O Plomo, by James Kuykendall. Desperadoes by Elaine Shannon, Various online news articles.