History & overview · every faith gets one
The orisha crossed the ocean wearing saints' faces.
Yoruba religion as it survived slavery in Cuba: the orisha syncretized with Catholic saints — Shango behind Santa Barbara, Yemaya behind the Virgin of Regla — initiation lineages intact, drums intact, and today practiced openly across the Americas.
The founding
Enslaved Yoruba met forced Catholicism and made a code of it: the saints' feast days kept the orisha's calendar, the church's images kept their altars. What looked like conversion was preservation.
No single founder — Santería / Lucumí accreted rather than began.
What it holds
The divine. Olodumare distant; the orisha present — the saints their public faces.
Death and after. The dead are tended; the ancestors (egun) come first in every rite.