Wikipedia:Main Page history/2021 August 25
From today's featured articleSantería is an African diasporic religion that developed among Afro-Cuban communities during the late 19th century. It arose through the syncretism of the Yoruba religion of West Africa, the Roman Catholic form of Christianity, and Spiritism. Santería is an initiatory tradition with no central authority. It is polytheistic and revolves around deities called oricha. Deriving their names and attributes from traditional Yoruba divinities, they are equated with Roman Catholic saints. Each human is believed to have a personal link to a particular oricha. Practitioners venerate the oricha at altars, where offerings include fruit, liquor, flowers and sacrificial animals. A central ritual involves practitioners drumming, singing, and dancing to encourage an oricha to possess one of their members and thus communicate with them. Healing rituals and the preparation of herbal remedies and talismans also play a prominent role. The number of initiates is estimated to be in the high hundreds of thousands. (Full article...)
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The Fiancée of Belus is a large narrative painting by the French artist Henri-Paul Motte based on a fanciful Babylonian ritual associated with the deity Belus (Bel). According to that ritual, the deity was offered a girl who sat on the lap of Bel's statue overnight, to be replaced the following day by another. All the girls were said to have been winners of daily beauty contests. For the interior of the Babylonian temple, Motte copied the Greek temple in Olympia, while the sculpture is inspired by the Assyrian deity Lamassu. The painting is in the collection of the Musée d'Orsay. Painting credit: Henri-Paul Motte
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