The shared center — held across the tradition
The saints' faces kept the orisha alive.
Syncretism was strategy: Santa Barbara's feast fed Shango for centuries. The masks can now come off, and often do.
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Initiation makes the priesthood.
The orisha is seated in the head (kariocha); lineage godparents carry the ashe forward — no self-made santeros.
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The egun come first.
No orisha is greeted before the ancestors — the dead of the lineage open every ceremony.
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