A Visit to Papa Jim's Botanica

Botanicas, for those unfamiliar with the term, refers broadly speaking to retail stores that sell a variety of items and services, often related to Latin American folk magic and alternative medicine. San Antonio have several, most of them located in the southern, mostly Mexican, part of the city. The largest one in San Antonio is Papa Jim's Botanica. Visiting Papa Jim's is a bit of a strange experience. You get the feeling that you are in a esoteric supermarket with rows of incense, candles, statues, oils and anything else you might need. In contrast to many other botanicas most of the items and services are provided in English. This is probably not mainly to court the non-hispanic people who visit the store, but because a rapidly growing section of Mexicans in San Antonio no longer speak Spanish.

In the sale section some things stand out. The most obvious being the enormous popularity of Santa Muerte, a personification of death who can help her devotees with a variety of requests. 

Santa Muerte is a Mexican folk saint, who by various people will be described as an angel, saint or even a goddess (the later based on a probably erroneous identification of her with the Aztec goddess of the underworld Mictecacihuatl). The cult around her have grown rapidly in the last decade in both Mexico and in the United States. 

The saint is highly controversial due to her popularity among drug cartels and people connected to it. Still most people who consider themselves her devotes are ordinary people, mainly poor urban workers and people regarded as social outcasts in various forms. Today her cult is starting to spread outside these groups and there is also a growing interest in her outside Mexican communities. There is, as we can see here also a large commerce around her.

The other notable thing is the syncretism, the items sold come from a variety of traditions one would expect to find like Santeria, Bruja, Curandero and Catholicism, but there is also items and books related to Wicca, Satanism, New Age and Western Esotericism. For example, one of the most popular items at the store is The Witches Calender by Llwellyn. In contrast to what one will find in most Western Magical traditions the focus is very practical. The main question is if it works, not spiritual development or a re-enchantment of the world. Neither are there any moral concerns as to what you need the items for. You want to get your boyfriend back or ruin his life, get more money or make the law stay away, regardless, there is something here to help.

Papa Jim's is a good place to start if one happens to be in San Antonio and want to start exploring the world of Mexican folk magic. The people who work there are friendly and very helpful and most of the items very cheap. There is also a large variety of items to chose from. For academics like myself the place is almost like a smorgosbord when looking for examples of cultural syncretism and the problematic division of the sacred and the profane. 

And if when you have finished visiting Papa Jim's Botanica feel to buy a pet-fish on the way home, right next to the botanica is Papa Jim's Tropical Fish.  

How to survive the Apocalypse with a smile

The Rapture can happen at any moment. Who knows, I might not even finish this sentence before the faithful are caught up in the air to be with the Lord. If that is the case have no fear, there is still hope, sort of, and thanks to Salem Kirban you can survive the coming tribulation and not end up as a pile of burning flesh when Christ returns. Kriban have written a compelling book that clearly proves that the end is upon us and that it will happen at any moment. Just look at the evidence he presents like “uncivilized music”. So there is no question, this is it, we are one blink away from the rise of the Antichrist. For those unfortunate to be left below there is the Guide to Survival, where you can learn what to avoid, basically everything but a one world religion and a certain number seems to be particularly bad. Also there will be giant scorpions one would do well to avoid. 

So be sure to pick this up before it's to late and remember, if the end was just around the corner in 1968, when it was first published, it must be even closer now.

Salem Kirban is also the author of the novel 666 and the sequel 1000 but most likely the greatest of his works apart from Guide to Survival must be Unlocking Your Bowels for Better Health. 

Revelation Road 3, another series for the end of days

Pure Flix Entertainment ended 2013 with announcing that Kevin Sorbo, famous for playing Hercules in the TV-series with the same name, will be a lead actor in the third part of their apocalyptic film series Revelation Road. Sorbo, no stranger to Christian movies or to Pure Flix Entertainment, is also the star of God is not Dead (2013) where he plays an atheist professor who, to nobody’s surprise, gets defeated by a young evangelical student in a debate about the existence of God. Sorry for the spoiler.

Kevin Sorbo as an atheist professor in God is Not Dead (2013)

Revelation Road then is one of several movies produced by Pure Flix about the world after the Rapture and all of these have been produced in the form of serials with the exception of In the Blink of an Eye from 2009, which is more of a stand alone movie. But apart form this exception, when dealing with the Rapture and the Great Tribulation the method of choice is serials. This means that all these movies will end with a cliffhanger and the audience expects that there will be a follow up. For Pure Flix this is something of a problem, right now there is at least three different film series that concerns the Rapture from Pure Flix, Jerusalem Countdown (2011), The Mark I and II (2012 and 2013) and Revelation Road I and II (both 2013). To this we can add several more film series from other similar companies like The Moment After (1999 and 2006), and of course the Left Behind-movies, that will be rebooted this year starring Nicolas Cage.

Considering this, one has to wonder if the market for Rapture-movies is starting to become overcrowded and also, why continually start new series? Why not for once finish one storyline to the end? Just as Rapture-movies mainly have been made as series they also have never reached their conclusion. The first of these, A Thief in the Night from 1972 spawned three sequels but even here we find that the last one The Prodigal Planet (1983) still ended with a cliffhanger. Maybe Revelation Road or the rebooted Left Behind-series will be so successful that they will continue to the end but I remain skeptical. Also regarding Left Behind I question if they will manage to make movies out of all 13 books, not counting the three prequels, even if it's a big success. However one can hope that one of these will at least see the return of Christ and finally we can get to enjoy the battle of Armageddon on the big screen. If that is the case I hope they will make it in 3D.

Rapping for Christ

Daniel Radosh described in his highly entertaining 2008 book Rapture Ready Christian pop culture as a parallel universe where basically everything one can find in the secular world exists as a Christian mirror version. This is particularly true when it comes to music. For almost every genre you can think of there is a Christian version of it sometimes there is even a list of what secular band their Christian counterpart sounds like. So it is no surprise that there is a fair amount of Christian hip hop as well. A clear example of this is the Houston based rapper II Crunk 4 Christ whose message is quite unmistakable.

I first saw II Crunk 4 Jesus when he performed at Lakewood church in Houston, Texas last year in March. The song he performed was called “Trust in God” and with lyrics like; “Trust in, trust in, trust in God” we were hardly dealing with any subtlety. Listening to his album Struggle Muzik one can summarize that this is the basic message in all of the songs. Like with most Christian contemporary musicians there is a fear for subtlety and ambiguity. This makes one wonder how well suited II Crunk 4 Jesus music is to reach people beyond the evangelical subculture he is a part of. Now, he is not a bad rapper and the music is well produced, also II Crunk comes from a rather troubled background and spends a lot of energy to work with at risk youth in areas like the Fifth Ward. So we are not dealing with an outsider who tries to talk to young people “in their language”, at times with disastrous results like Carmans 1993 “Who's in the house?” (the answer is JC). Still I wonder how many secular people will ever listen to him or contemplate his message. Compare this with another Houston rapper, Bun B, who is also a Christian but whose songs contain no explicit religious references. Still in interviews Bun B has repeatedly stated that his Christian faith plays a significant part in his lyrics. As Bun B also runs a course on hip hop and religion at Rice University, one can wonder if his music might not be in the end more effective to create thought and discussions about faith, morals and existential issues. But for those who would like some Jesus with their rap here is II Crunk performing two of his greatest hits: