  '''Santería''' is a syncretic religion of West African and Caribbean origin, also known as '''Regla de Ocha''', '''La Regla Lucumi''', or '''Lukumi'''.[ Santeria] Religions of the World. ReigiousTolerance.org. Retrieved on 4 January 2009.[ LUCUMI REL'GION] New Orleans Mistic. Retrieved on 4 January 2009. Its liturgical language, a dialect of Yoruba, is also known as Lucumi.  ==Clergy== Priests are commonly known as &quot;olorishas&quot; or owner of Orisa. Once those priests have initiated other priests, they become known as ''babalorishas'', &quot;fathers of orisha&quot; (for men), and as ''iyalorishas'', &quot;mothers of orisha&quot; (for women). Any priest can commonly be referred to as ''Santeros'' and ''Santeras'' (depending on gender), and if they function as diviners of the Orishas they can be considered Italeros, or if they go through training to become leaders of initiations, they are known as Oba or Oriate. Considered to be highest in rank are priests of Ifá (ee-fah), which in santeria is an all male group. Ifá Priests receive Orunmila who is the Orisha of Prophecy, Wisdom and Knowledge. Ifa Priests are known by the title ''Babalawo'' or &quot;Father Who Knows the Secrets&quot;. In the recent years, the practice of traditional Yoruba Ifa priests (from Nigeria) has come to the diaspora of initiating women to be ''Iyanifa'' or &quot;Mother of Destiny&quot;, but santeria or &quot;lucumi&quot; practitioners do not accept this practice as dictated by the Odu Ifa Irete Untelu which states women cannot be in the presence of Olofin or Igba Iwa Odu and so cannot be initiated as divining priestesses. This is a major difference between santeria Ifa practitioners, and traditional Yoruba practitioners from Nigeria (though it should be noted that not all areas of Nigeria have this practice). Instead, women are initiated as Apetebi Ifa (bride of Ifa) and are considered senior in Ifa to all but fully initiated Babalawos. There is little evidence of Iyanifa existing in West Africa until very recently, so the existence of the Iyanifa is likely to be of modern origin in Yorubaland and therefore does not appear in the Cuban variant. The foremost Western academic authority on Ifa, William Bascom, traveled throughout Yorubaland studying the Ifa cult in a series of visits in 1937–1938, 1950–1951, 1960 and 1965, and never encountered a single Iyanifa nor was he told of their existence by any of his informants.Bascom, William. Ifa Divination: Communication Between Gods and Men in West Africa. P.  81 However, Maupoil in his work in the early 20th century does note the existence of IyanifaMaupoil, Bernard. &quot;La Geomancie L'ancienne Côte des Esclaves&quot;  and Chief Fama, is a Nigerian born Iyanifa with several books considered to be academic worthy.[ Amazon.com: Chief Fama: Books]  ==History== Santería is a system of beliefs that merge the Yoruba religion (brought to the New World by slaves imported to the Caribbean to work the sugar plantations) with Roman Catholic and Native Indian traditions. These slaves carried with them various religious traditions, including a trance for communicating with their ancestors and deities, animal sacrifice and sacred drumming.  In Cuba, this religious tradition has evolved into what we now recognize as Santería. In 2001, there were an estimated 22,000 practitioners in the US alone,[ American Religious Identification Survey, 2001]. but the number may be higher as some practitioners may be reluctant to disclose their religion on a government census or to an academic researcher. In Puerto Rico, the religion is extremely popular especially in the towns of Loiza and Carolina.  Of those living in the US, some are fully committed priests and priestesses, others are &quot;godchildren&quot; or members of a particular house-tradition, and many are clients seeking help with their everyday problems. Many are of Black Hispanic and Caribbean descent but as the religion moves out of the inner cities and into the suburbs, a growing number are of African-American and European-American heritage. As a religion from Africa was recreated in the Americas it was transformed.  &quot;The colonial period from the standpoint of African slaves may be defined as a time of perseverance. Their world quickly changed. Tribal kings and families, politicians, business and community leaders all were enslaved in a foreign region of the world. Religious leaders, their descendants, and the faithful, were now slaves. Colonial laws criminalize their religion. They were forced to become baptized and worship a god their ancestors had not known who was surrounded by a pantheon of saints. The early concerns during this period seem to indicate a need for individual survival under harsh plantation conditions. A sense of hope was sustaining the internal essence of what today is called Santería, a misnomer for the indigenous religion of the Lukumi people of Nigeria.  &quot;In the heart of their homeland, they had a complex political and social order. They were a sedentary hoe farming cultural group with specialized labor. Their religion based on the worship of nature was renamed and documented by their masters. Santería, a pejorative term that characterizes deviant Catholic forms of worshiping saints, has become a common name for the religion. The term ''santero(a)'' is used to describe a priest or priestess replacing the traditional term ''Olorisha'' as an extension of the deities. The ''orishas'' became known as the saints in image of the Catholic pantheon.&quot; (Ernesto Pichardo, CLBA, ''Santería in Contemporary Cuba: The individual life and condition of the priesthood'')  As mentioned, in order to preserve their authentic ancestral and traditional beliefs, the Lukumi people had no choice but to disguise their ''orishas'' as Catholic saints. When the Roman Catholic slave owners observed Africans celebrating a Saint's Day, they were generally unaware that the slaves were actually worshiping their sacred ''orishas''.[  In Cuba today, the terms &quot;saint&quot; and &quot;''orisha''&quot; are sometimes used interchangeably.  The term Santería was originally a derisive term applied by the Spanish to mock followers' seeming overdevotion to the saints and their perceived neglect of God.  It was later applied to the religion by others.  This &quot;veil&quot; characterization of the relationship between Catholic saints and Cuban ''orisha'', however, is somewhat undermined by the fact that the vast majority of ''santeros'' in Cuba today also consider themselves to be Catholics, have been baptized, and often require initiates to be baptized. Many hold separate rituals to honor the saints and ''orisha'' respectively, even though the disguise of Catholicism is no longer needed.  The traditional Lukumi religion and its Santería counterpart can be found in many parts of the world today, including Cuba, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Panama, Colombia, Venezuela, and even the United States, which was mainly the result of Puerto Rican migration. A very similar religion called Candomblé is practiced in Brazil, along with a rich variety of other Afro-American religions. This is now being referred to as &quot;parallel religiosity&quot;Perez y Mena, SSSR paper, 2005. because some believers worship the African variant that has no notion of a devil and no baptism or marriage, yet they belong to Catholic or mainline Protestant churches, where these concepts exist.  Lukumi religiosity works toward a balance in life on earth (androcentric) while the Christian European religions work toward the hereafter.  Some in Cuban Santería, Haitian Vodou or Puerto Rican spiritualism (Afro-Latin religions) do not view a difference between saints and orishas,[ universalbances.com] the ancestor deities of the Lukumi people's ''Ifa'' religion.  There are now individuals who mix the Lukumí practices with traditional practices as they survived in Africa after the deleterious effects of colonialism. Although most of these mixes have not been at the hands of experienced or knowledgeable practitioners of either system, they have gained a certain popularity.  In 1974, the first Santería church in the US was incorporated as the Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye.  ==Controversies and criticisms== * In 1993, the issue of animal sacrifice was taken to the United States Supreme Court in the case of ''Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah.'' The Supreme Court ruled that animal cruelty laws targeted specifically at Yoruba were unconstitutional;[ 508 U.S. 520] Full text of the opinion courtesy of Findlaw.com. the Yoruba practice of animal sacrifice has seen no significant legal challenges since then.  * There have been a few highly publicized cases where injuries allegedly occurred during Lukumi rituals.  One such case reported by ''The New York Times'' took place on January 18, 1998 in Sayville, New York, where 17-year-old Charity Miranda was suffocated to death with a plastic bag at her home by her mother Vivian, 39, and sister Serena, 20, after attempting an exorcism to free her of demons.  Police found the women chanting and praying over the prostrate body.  Not long before, the women had embraced Lukumi. However, Lukumi doctrine does not postulate the existence of demons, nor does its liturgy contain exorcism rituals. The mother, Vivian Miranda, was found not guilty due to insanity, and is currently confined in a New York State psychiatric hospital for the criminally insane.  