Growing up Catholic: How The Church And Superstition Helped Shape My Craft

I was raised in a Roman Catholic home, even if our adherence wasn’t terribly strict. I also grew up much closer to my mom’s side of the family which meant my relationship to our religion was intertwined with Cuban culture and heritage. As I was coming to terms with my sexuality in my teens, around the same time I discovered Wicca, I all but ran from the church. For years I told myself I had left everything about it behind except the “Catholic Guilt” but its only in recent years that I’ve really begun to realize just how much of my craft is influenced by my Catholic upbringing as well as the uniquely Hispanic faith-based superstitions surrounding it.

One of the earliest memories I have about the unique intertwining of my Cuban heritage and Catholic faith is around the vigils my grandmother would hold for Santa Barbara (Saint Barbara). According to the Catholic faith, Santa Barbara was the daughter of a pagan lord who locked her way in a tower to preserve her from the outside world. What her father didn’t know, however, is that Barbara had become a Christian. When he found out he had Barbara tortured, but she refused to renounce her Christian faith and was sentenced to death by beheading. Her father carried out the sentence, and cut her head off with his sword. He was afterwards struck by lightning and burned. The site of her burial become associated with various miracles. (This is the quick and dirty version, depending on the source there are various other details.) I would also later come to learn that Santa Barbara is syncretized with Chango, the deity of fire and lightning in Santería - something I thought my family had absolutely no association with.

Growing up, one of the staple fixtures in my grandparents house was a large statue of Santa Barbara. I’m talking almost three feet tall, real gold for the crown and sword, and a ruby in the sword hilt. She had her own pedestal, and was constantly given fresh flowers and had various candles lit throughout the day. The day of veneration for Santa Barbara is December 4th, and on that day we would all gather at my grandparents house with a number of other folks, mostly older Cuban friends of my grandparents and their adult children. Me, my brother, and the other kids were set up in a back room with a stack of VHS movies and snacks while the adults would gather in the front of the house to hold an all night vigil praying to Santa Barbara.

It’s important for me to stress this is what I grew up with. This is what I knew and understood Catholicism to be. Hell, this is what I thought all of Christianity was because in South Florida if the folks I knew weren’t Catholic then they were likely Jewish. I didn’t realize that not everyone had a patron saint for the their family, with their own shrine and overnight vigils, until I met my husband. He also grew up Catholic, but in the Mid-Atlantic in a more Irish Catholic family. At some point while we were dating we started talking about religion, and growing up Catholic and gay, and I kept making off-hand remarks about things I thought were typical only for him to pause and go “Wait…you did WHAT?”.

Things that could best be described as “superstition” also permeated my families relationship to our faith. For example, my family firmly believes that my grandmother “cursed” us to have massively bad luck if we go out on Good Friday. When I was in elementary school my uncle decided he was going to go out clubbing on Good Friday instead of going to church or staying home and doing something less “sinful”. My grandmother warned him that he shouldn’t be so disrespectful to God and they got into a fight before he left. That night coming home my uncle got into a very severe car crash that he was lucky to survive. Ever since if anyone in the family goes out on Good Friday to something other than church things go terribly wrong - cars breakdown, pipes burst at home, food poisoning, etc. It’s become such an accepted reality that the days leading up to Good Friday are full of text message reminders: “Good Friday this week. Don’t go out. Remember we got cursed.”

For a long time after I left the church and began exploring paganism and honing my personal craft I thought the spiritual side of me was something I would have to keep separate from my family. It wasn’t that I thought my family would disown me or be angry with me, it was mostly that I didn’t think they could relate or understand. My assumptions were radically altered when I finished graduate school and was desperately looking for a job. My fruitless job search was triggering a very bad depressive episode and my family was worried about me. My grandmother reached out to let me know she had mailed me a saint card of San Pancrasio (Saint Pancras of Rome), the patron saint of jobs, with instructions to keep it in my wallet so that I would attract a job. If I was internally chuckling at how “pagan” this seemed coming from my Catholic Cuban grandmother I was absolutely floored at what came next.

My grandmother asked me if there were any bodegas near me that sold candles with images of the Virgin Mary. I said yes, and she told me to go buy one. I was confused as to how or why Mary would work with a job search which is when my grandmother explained that I was only sort of asking Mary for help. I was actually asking Oshun, a Yourba-deity that had been syncretized with a very specific aspect of Mary, for help. The patron saint of Cuba is the Virgin Mary under the title “la Virgen de la Caridad” - Our Lady of Charity. I was asking this specific aspect for a blessing. In hindsight this was a truly transformative moment for my craft. I mentioned this to my mom and she just sighed and told me some of the stuff she went through going up, like when she would come home late in high school after being out with friends to find my great-grandmother waiting with holy water and a cigar. My great-grandmother would walk circles around my mom puffing the cigar and throwing holy water to try to chase the “lustful spirits” out of my mom.

Shortly after this I landed a job and moved to the Mid-Atlantic. I entered a “fallow time” in my craft and spirituality for a few years as I reoriented and took advantage of being nine hundred miles away to discover aspects of myself I had ignored or dismissed. Eventually, however, I felt called to reconnect with my spirituality. This time I approached it with a greater recognition and acceptance of the spiritual, faith-based, and superstitious underpinnings that had helped shaped the person I am. For example, one of the biggest obstacles for me in modern paganism, specifically when I was exploring Wicca, was the disconnect I felt between myself and the way I had been told to approach ritual. It never “clicked” and I always felt like I was just going through the motions. I thought back to the last time I truly felt like I was in the flow with a ritual practice and realized it was the years I spent as an altar boy. I dove deep into the history, meaning, and pagan associations in Catholic mass and ritual and adopted some of it into my own craft. The way I approach cleansing a space now is not by burning sage or palo santo but by using a swinging censer and a blending of different incense including frankincense.

I’ve also incorporated some of the practices I saw my family doing while growing up, while modifying them based on the things I’ve learned and connected with through the course of discovering my own personal craft. I’ve worked to establish and cultivate a relationship with what I regard as my own patron saint and have an altar set up for them in my home. This altar receives incense almost daily, gifts of alcohol or tobacco or candy, and has two large novena candles that I light frequently. I’ve included a Pride flag on this altar to help represent and assist with my work with Queer Ancestors.

I also recognize that my time in the church, especially as an altar boy, has directly influenced my desire to connect with and support community. There was even a time when I was younger that I seriously considered the priesthood because I saw it as a way to provide care and support to folks around me. When I look at the type of work I hope to accomplish with White Rose Witching its impossible to not acknowledge my experiences in the church having impacted it - I see this as a way of providing care and support for the folks around me, and as a way to connect with and form community.