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Palo Monte is a living Afro-Cuban religion descended from the Kongo peoples of Central Africa. It is not Yorùbá and it is not a branch of Santería, though the two have lived side by side in Cuba for two centuries; it is not “black magic”, a name given to it by those who policed it. What follows is for education: what scholars and the tradition's own elders have recorded about the nganga, the people who keep one, and the ways a palero asks a question. A consultation belongs to a tata or yaya nganga and to the dead they work with, and nothing on these pages stands in for one.
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What is Palo Monte?
A religion of the dead and of the forest, organised around a vessel — and the first thing to say is what it is not.
From the Kongo to Cuba
The tradition descends from the religion of the BaKongo; its words still say so.
The nganga
The vessel at the centre: what the record says is in it, and what these pages will not describe.
Tata, yaya and the house
Who keeps a nganga, who is received into a house, and the names of the ranks.
The mpungu and the firma
The powers a prenda is named for, their Cuban correspondences, and the signatures drawn in chalk.
Ways of asking
The chamalongo, the vititi mensu, the gunpowder and the dead who speak: how a question is put to a nganga.
Palo Monte is an educational section. Satin Cradle is not a tata or yaya nganga, a palero, an initiated practitioner or an oracle, and does not offer consultations. Nothing here is needed for any practice, and nothing on these pages is for sale.