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Originally Posted by Chirimoya
Santeria (Cuba), vodou (Haiti), candomble (NE Brazil) and the 'religiosidad popular' rituals in the Dominican Republic... they are all very similar. There are many anthropological studies that trace all these syncretic beliefs to their African roots.
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Most folk religious beliefs lack the defining institutional structures of dogma and priest(ess)hood. They're much like wild flowers that cross-pollinate with other beliefs (It would be pretentious to even call them belief 'systems'), continuously changing and morphing (syncretizing) over time. In the case of the DR, the folk religious belief system that shows the most structure is called 'La 21 Division'. It took me years of interviews with practitioners to find out that there's no such thing as 21 individual and separate divisions. That '21 División' is an emblem, a symbol from unknown origin, used in a cabalistic manner, and stands for 'El Misterio'. In numerology 3 X 4 = 7, 7 X 3 = 21 goes way back, even to the Upanishads, as the number Seven was used to represent all association with God. And 3, the divine triad, La Santísima Trinidad....