Puerto Rican Vodou: Sanse and Espiritismo Cruzado - The Hidden Tradition

The words Voodoo, Vodou, and Vudu have captivated and terrified the American imagination for centuries, generating enduring fascination mixed with profound misunderstanding that reveals more about American racial anxieties than about actual African diaspora spiritual practice. Most people's exposure to this tradition comes through New Orleans Voodoo as filtered through Hollywood horror films and sensationalized media—a deliberately provocative image of black candles burning in graveyards, chicken feet scattered across altars, and human skulls grinning from shadowed corners, all designed to trigger fear in white outsiders while commodifying Black spirituality for entertainment and profit. In mainstream United States culture, "Voodoo" has devolved into lazy catch-all terminology applied to any kind of dark or ominous magic regardless of actual origin, carelessly mixing together distinct practices including European witchcraft, biblical necromancy, African American rootwork and conjure, and completely invented Hollywood nonsense that bears no resemblance to any living tradition.

However, in the Caribbean where this spiritual current actually lives and thrives rather than existing as caricature, the religion is known as Vodou and practiced as legitimate, sophisticated African Traditional Religion (ATR) commanding the same respect that practitioners of Yoruba, Ifá, or any other African spiritual system rightfully demand. The enslaved Africans forcibly brought to Caribbean islands during the brutal centuries of the transatlantic slave trade demonstrated remarkable spiritual resilience and tactical brilliance by managing to preserve their ancestral faith despite systematic attempts at cultural genocide by colonial powers and the Catholic Church. They accomplished this preservation through strategic syncretism—the deliberate blending and disguising of African spiritual practices behind the acceptable veneer of Catholicism, matching their gods and goddesses (called Lwa in Haitian Kreyòl, Misterios in Spanish-speaking islands) with Catholic saints and their feast days, allowing open worship of what appeared to be Christian devotion while maintaining African essence beneath the surface.

These African practitioners also faithfully preserved the memory and honored the spirits of the Indigenous Arawak-Taíno peoples who inhabited the Caribbean islands before European invasion and who were systematically exterminated through disease, enslavement, and outright genocide. This inclusion of Indigenous spirits alongside African ancestors and Lwa creates the distinctive tri-cultural foundation of Caribbean Vodou—African cosmology and ritual technology, Indigenous knowledge of local plants and land spirits, and Catholic ceremonial structure and iconography all woven together into coherent spiritual systems that are simultaneously preservation of the old and creation of something new. The Vodou practiced in Haiti and the Dominican Republic represents powerful forms of spiritism, ancestor veneration, spirit possession, and practical magic that have been continuously practiced and refined since the first enslaved Africans arrived in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, surviving colonial oppression, political upheaval, and ongoing marginalization to remain vibrant living traditions serving millions of practitioners today.

Yet there exists another tradition of Caribbean Vodou that remains virtually unknown in the United States despite Puerto Rico's complicated political relationship with the mainland and the massive Puerto Rican diaspora living throughout American cities. This hidden tradition is called Sanse—sometimes written 21 Divisiones in reference to the spiritual court structure, or practiced as Espiritismo Cruzado (Crossed Spiritism) emphasizing its fusion nature—and it represents the unique and powerful form of Vodou developed by Puerto Ricans through centuries of spiritual innovation and cultural synthesis. Sanse shares the tri-cultural foundation of other Caribbean Vodou expressions, drawing from Kongo and Dahomean African spiritual technology, Taíno Indigenous practices that survived colonial genocide through strategic hiding and oral transmission, and Spanish Catholic ritual frameworks imposed by colonizers but subverted for African and Indigenous purposes. However, Sanse developed distinct characteristics shaped by Puerto Rico's particular historical trajectory, geographic isolation from other Caribbean islands, and eventual colonial relationship with the United States rather than European powers.

This book provides the first comprehensive English-language exploration of Puerto Rican Vodou, documenting a tradition that has remained largely invisible even within academic study of African diaspora religions and Caribbean spirituality. The text traces Sanse's historical development from its African and Indigenous roots through the colonial period when enslaved Africans and oppressed Taíno peoples shared knowledge for mutual survival, examining how these spiritual currents blended with European Spiritism introduced in the late 19th century to create the distinctive practice contemporary Puerto Ricans recognize as Espiritismo Cruzado or 21 Divisiones. Readers discover how Sanse differs from better-documented Haitian and Dominican Vodou traditions while sharing the same fundamental principles of ancestor veneration, spirit possession, divination, and practical magic for addressing life's challenges.

The book explores the Misterios (Mysteries)—the spiritual court of African Lwa, Taíno cemíes, and Catholic saints who serve as intermediaries between practitioners and the divine—explaining how these forces are organized into divisions or commissions with distinct characteristics, ritual requirements, and areas of spiritual jurisdiction. You'll learn about the spiritual hierarchies that structure Sanse cosmology, the role of mediumship and spirit possession in religious ceremonies called veladas (vigils) or misas espirituales (spiritual masses), the importance of boveda construction (spiritual altar housing ancestral spirits in water glasses), the use of cigars, rum, perfumes, and specific colors to honor different Misterios, and the integration of Catholic prayers, Indigenous herbal knowledge, and African ritual technology into coherent spiritual practice that serves Puerto Rican communities throughout the diaspora.

Puerto Rican Vodou serves multiple audiences with different relationships to this hidden tradition. Puerto Ricans practicing Sanse or Espiritismo Cruzado who learned through family transmission discover historical context and documentation that enriches understanding of practices they may have inherited without complete explanation, validating experiences that mainstream culture dismisses or pathologizes. Practitioners of other African diaspora traditions including Haitian Vodou, Dominican 21 Divisiones, Cuban Santería, or Brazilian Candomblé gain comparative perspective showing how similar spiritual principles manifest differently across Caribbean contexts. Spiritual seekers drawn to ancestor work, mediumship, and spirit possession find accessible introduction to a powerful tradition that welcomes sincere practitioners regardless of ethnic background. Scholars of religious studies, anthropology, and Caribbean culture encounter primary source documentation of an understudied religious system that deserves recognition alongside better-known African Traditional Religions.

The book addresses common questions about Sanse practice including the role of initiation and spiritual development, how practitioners receive their Misterios and learn which spirits walk with them, the function of padrinos and madrinas (godparents) in transmitting knowledge and providing spiritual guidance, the relationship between Sanse and other Puerto Rican spiritual practices like brujería (witchcraft) and curanderismo (traditional healing), and how this tradition survived and adapted through Puerto Rico's complex colonial history under Spanish then American control. Special attention goes to the Taíno component of Sanse that distinguishes it from other Caribbean Vodou expressions—the Indigenous spirits, plant medicines, and cosmological concepts that enslaved Africans learned from Taíno peoples and incorporated into their spiritual practice, creating syncretic tradition that honors both African and Indigenous ancestors.

Written by Philip Ryan Deal from years of initiation, practice, and study within multiple Puerto Rican spiritual traditions, this book offers insider perspective on Sanse while making this knowledge accessible to readers outside the culture. The text honors appropriate secrecy around certain initiatory mysteries while providing sufficient information for understanding what Puerto Rican Vodou is, how it functions, and why it matters as vital expression of Afro-Caribbean spirituality that has been systematically ignored in favor of traditions from larger islands or former French colonies. This is not superficial overview but deep exploration of living religion that continues serving Puerto Rican communities on the island and throughout the diaspora, proving that Sanse represents resilient spiritual technology capable of adapting to new contexts while maintaining connection to ancestral sources.

The hidden tradition steps into light. The Misterios speak. The ancestors of three continents stand together in Puerto Rican Vodou, proving that what survives genocide and enslavement carries power that no amount of marginalization can destroy.

Three currents, one river—African, Taíno, Catholic flowing together