In this gorgeous scholarly photo-book, veteran scholar of African diasporic religions Joseph M. Murphy illustrates botánicas—religious supply stores, predominantly in Hispanic communities—in all their diversity. He offers a brief history of these U.S. American institutions, and covers their variegated multiculturalism, their healing traditions, and the people involved in using them as healing and religious spaces.
In a brief, poetic introduction, Murphy notes the botánica’s “deep roots in Latin American folk piety,” and its grounding in diverse traditions “such as santería, brujería, espiritismo, or curanderismo” (14), characterizing the “celestial storefronts” as expressing “an extraordinary layering of cultural experience, juxtaposing European, African, Asian, and Native American symbols” (15). Murphy locates the origins of these shops in the rich cultural mixtures of New York City. He dates the first documentation of a botánica in the U.S. to the early 1940s—the Botanical Gardens in East Harlem (subsequently called La Botánica and La Casa de las Velas)—founded two decades before that documentation by a Guatemalan herbalist who soon catered to West Indians, African Americans, and Puerto Ricans. Murphy frames his subject as falling within Carolyn Morrow Long’s history of “spiritual merchants” in the U.S., and provides a brief and broad historical sketch discussing the storefronts in their service to those involved in folk Catholicism, Espiritismo, Cuban Palo Monte and Santería, Dominican Vodu, Gagá, and 21 Division, Haitian and New Orleans Vodou and Hoodoo, Mexican curanderismo, and Guatemalan and Salvadoran Mayan and folk traditions.
Murphy’s description of the “Wares of the Botánica” allows him to provide a quick survey of some of the many practices and traditions that the stores support. Herbs and herbal lore, he explains, are the “foundation of the botánica,” making these markets “a pharmacy for [the] poor,” providing connections to immigrants’ homelands, and serving up treatments for “spiritually caused disorders” (34). Candles, the biggest sellers in these outlets, are used both for magic and religion, and seem to be marketed “overwhelmingly” to women and their concerns. Diverse statuary is available to adorn the shrines often featured in Latino homes as centers of devotional worship. Murphy also describes a variety of items employed in the worship of the Orishas of Yoruba origin, such as beads, soperas, and clothes needed for initiation. “All these wares,” Murphy explains, “are the objects of la fe, material symbols of divine power that can be arranged in patterns to change consciousness and fortune” (48).
Murphy soon broadens the scope of his subject, from shops to spaces for people to “come with problems of health… money… and love” (50). He describes botánicas as places where diverse people come for spiritual consultation and treatments and healing of many forms and from many traditions. Murphy considers botánicas as “sacred sites” for the veneration of Native American, African, and European spirits, allowing him to discuss Palo Monte and Lucumí traditions, the folk Catholic promesa, relationships between Saints and Orishas, conflicts and collusions between Catholicism and other modes of worship, the mestiza nature of the spirits of the botánica, syncretism, hybridity, and creolization. Murphy explains that “Botánica devotees are…engaged in a struggle to maintain and adapt identities in a difficult and often hostile environment. The hybridities of the botánica are strategic tools of power in that struggle” (95). He provides a more detailed introduction to “Three Santos” venerated at botánicas—the Orishas Eleggua and Chango from Yoruba and American folklore, and Maximón/San Simón from Guatemalan, Mayan, and Catholic cultures.
Murphy’s chapter 6 is a scholarly essay on the “Power” of the botánica: “Botánicas provide their patrons with access to power: power from the natural world, the social world, and the world of the spirit. Devotees are seeking power to meet the challenges of ordinary life: problems of health, wealth, and love” (134). He reviews scholarly literature discussing the botánica as a space of community that assists U.S. immigrants: “By becoming ‘Latino’ or ‘Hispanic,’ people become American” (138). He also reviews scholarship on botánicas as spaces that assist with healing physical, psychological, and spiritual maladies, and act as a gateway to “Latino folk healing.” Murphy then locates his subject within classic scholarly debates on magic and religion, concluding that both “are techniques of power…allowing patrons access to the sacred world in order to address their problems” (159). He continues with a discussion of the “role of the botánica as a sacred space of spiritual encounter and transformation” (159), due to its “sacred and liminal nature.” Grounding his argument in Durkheim and Eliade, Murphy asserts: “This is the power of religion: its capacity to remake the person by revealing that identities are ephemeral constructions” (163). In both “trance mediumship” (where “human beings…[incarnate] the santo into their bodies” [162]) and in ritual “trabajos and despojos” of the botánica, its devotees are opened to “new possibilities” (163).
Murphy ends with an epilogue that warns that many of the storefronts he photographed in the book and whose owners and patrons he interviewed have gone out of business in the wake of the internet and economic pressures.
Murphy does not attempt to reduce the complexity of the botánica. Instead he speaks in terms of layerings and multicultural and multiple practices occurring simultaneously: “The ‘religion of the botánica’…comprises many religions and many magics” (159). Yet neither does he give much space to the socio-historical scholarship that looks critically at assumptions embedded within such terms as “Yoruba” and “Santería.” Nor does he address the many controversies or conflicts—of race, culture, commodification, gender, sexuality, authenticity, or money—in the religious communities that center upon botánicas. Instead, this book is a celebration of the multiculturalism and dynamism of a unique American institution. Through much of the book, Murphy offers an expansive breadth rather than a depth of subject – one geared well to an introductory survey of the subject matter. However, he not infrequently delves more deeply, offering a great many gems to the more experienced student of Latino/a folklore and religious practices. Accessible and eloquent, in Botánicas the diversity and the photos are truly extraordinary.
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[Review length: 995 words • Review posted on May 18, 2016]