Sacred place: Monte Sorte, Lionza Sanctuary
The week of October 12, hundreds of spiritualists, followers of Santería and citizens in search of health, comfort or protection come together in this Venezuelan mountain, where according to tradition appeared María Lionza, female deity and pillar of this belief.
In all the altars, Maria Lionza is represented as a beautiful and smiling Virgin, surrounded by flowers, fruits and perfumes and always accompanied by the Indian chief Guaicaipuro and Negro Felipe, a fighter during the wars of independence of Venezuela. In lower links, Santeria mixes liberators, doctors, healers, Vikings, slaves and even famous thieves.
"I've already lost count of the years that I've been here. I am the grandmother of the mountain. I have stayed many times alone here with my queen and the spirits. I owe everything to her, even my healing, "says Nerbis Probasta, an old woman who smokes her cigar before one of the altars, while remembering that before she could not get out of her wheelchair and now she gets it.
"It's a very special place, with a lot of strength and energy because the queen was seen here. Sorte is so powerful that at night the roots of the trees give off light, "says the santera Meyra Peña.
Every corner of this jungle mountain, planted with small paths and streams, serves as an altar.
The atmosphere is magical and even dreamlike. The cries and moans of those who receive the spirits resound in Sorte, the smell of pure, used by the faithful to call the "saints", becomes unbearable and the drums and chants repeated mechanically reverberate without pause to push the santeros trance.
The oldest references to the cult are found in oral testimonies dating from the late nineteenth century, in which peasants from the Yaracuy region - and some adjacent areas - began to affirm the existence of a campesino and Afro-Venezuelan piety in the mountains. of Sorte.
These stories, although different, coincide in pointing to Maria Lionza as a superhuman being, who inhabits the mountains of that state, from where the cult spread to the rest of the country around the year 1900.!
It is the central figure of the so-called 'Spiritualism Marialioncero', a cult that mixes rites and beliefs Catholic, indigenous and African, and has absorbed elements of the Yoruba and Voodoo religion, as well as mystical and theological elements of other cultures.
The importance that his devotion has in Venezuela is such that, according to the American anthropologist at Tulane University, Wade Glenn, more than half of the population has participated in some 'marialioncero' ritual.
For this reason, the region of Sorte is a place of constant pilgrimage for the believers of that cult.
They go to the mountain and fill all the available places to build their portals and perform their rites.
Climbing to the side of the river that goes down the hill, you can see the parishioners who dive in the wells and bathe under the waterfalls, to purify and dispossess.
In the portals, people observe admired when one of them is possessed by some of the spirits of the court of Queen Lionza, who are invoked to make purifications.
These entities speak through who is possessed and bring messages to those present
It is an obligation for any devotee to bathe in the river after each healing and walk barefoot. Any corner of this sacred mountain serves as an altar, between streams and small roads, for Maria Lionza, always smiling and accompanied by flowers, fruits, candles, cakes and perfumes.
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