Thanking Santa Muerte for Sparing My Welsh Workplace from Covid with a Pilgrimage to Mexico

By guest contributor Soror Brigantia*

It was 2020 and I was working as a key worker in a residential social care establishment as covid began to rage through houses in multiple occupations. It was difficult supporting residents and staff through such a trying and uncertain time, hoping each day when I left the house for work that this would not lead to my contracting the virus.  I’m not as young as I used to be and less able to fight off infections. It seemed like the most natural thing in the world to me then to call upon Saint Death for protection at this time. What I specifically asked for was to spare my workplace from a covid outbreak. This was a Big Ask- so many other social care projects were suffering from outbreaks why should mine be spared? What made my place so special to escape the scourge that was affecting so many others?

A Big Ask requires a big promise so I made one. I promised Santa Muerte that if my work place was spared a covid outbreak that I would take a pilgrimage to Mexico and would light candles in gratitude at some of her shrines. I was so convinced that Santa Muerte would grant my request that I started making plans to visit Mexico immediately by doing research on what shrines I could visit and looking at the history of Mexico.

This is how in October 2023 I found myself at the Aeropuerto Internacional de la Ciudad de Mexico having taken a long bus ride and a longer flight to reach Mexico City from Wales, UK, with more than a little trepidation in my heart. This was my first attempt at International travel since the pandemic, I don’t speak Spanish, I had never been to Mexico before, I am a solo female who while not weak is a lover not a fighter, and I had heard so many stories about the sketchiness of Mexico. I found myself asking myself “Why… why did you make this promise? It sounded great in 2020 but now you’re going to have to actually do it…why…???” 

Nevertheless I was there at arrivals, a little worse for wear having been awake for 24 hours but doing OK. As a chaos magician the concept of the magical will is very significant to me. If I did not keep my promise, Santa Muerte may no longer work with me and failure to keep any promise weakens the magical will and leads to one becoming less effective in the world. One does not want to give your unconscious mind the message that you have no integrity and do not mean what you say.

My first stop was to visit the White Girl’s shrine at the market by the Basilica of Guadalupe having negotiated my way there via the subway. On route to the Basilica I could not help myself from being amazed by the sheer volume of spiritual supply stores on the road leading to the site. So I had to visit some and I saw statues upon statues of the Virgin in a single shopping arcade, but behind a counter I saw a 6 foot statue of Santa Muerte in what was essentially Guadalupe’s store. The person at the store did not want any photographs taken but seemed pleased by my interest.

Guadalupe’s Basilica is worth a visit in and of itself but I was here for the White Girl and easily found the market. Finding the shrine within the market took longer as I must have taken a wrong turn and I wandered the labyrinth of vendors for some time. I saw the shop first. I was strolling along wondering if I would ever find this shrine and I saw a large number of 3ft Santa Muerte statues for sale. 

In the British Isles, while Santa Muerte is known and there are a number of devotees here, retail has not quite caught up with this. At the time of writing one will not see Santa Muerte statues or associated products at magical shops and botanica’s in the UK, with the exception of a store in Brixton that carries the Santa Muerte Negra candle. For a Brit to see so many Santa Muerte statues in one place simply took my breath away – given that I was a bit short on breath anyway due to acclimatising to the altitude alongside a bit of jet lag this led to me doubling up when I saw them!

I then turned round and saw the shrine and in that moment my British reserve failed me and I promptly burst into tears. That turned out to be par for the course for me throughout my visit to Mexico. I’d visit a shrine, get tearful, light a candle, speak with Santa Muerte, then buy some stuff. So I managed to blubber my way through a large portion of Mexico! The gentleman looking after the shrine gave no reaction; I guess he’s used to seeing all sorts of things from people as they pass the shrine. 

A huge wave of love hit me in my stomach as I was facing the shrine and I could hear a whispering “You kept your promise, you were afraid to come here but you came anyway, I respect that. You do not need to worry, I will look after you.” I lit a candle for her and stayed there a while.  I spent the best part of the day at the Basilica and market, as I said it is worth a visit in its own right. During the course of the day my feet at intervals would weave their way back to the shrine over and over. It was difficult to leave.

On day two I visited the Mercado de Sonora. I had heard very different descriptions of the Sonora market that went a bit like this:

Review A- Watch out for pickpockets, don’t take photographs without permission and you’ll be fine.

Review B- Do not go to the Sonora Market, if you go there you will DIE!! You will DIE I tell you, do not go to this market.

I found that review A was more akin to my experience. Yes, it was busy, I went there on Saturday and it’s bright, colourful, large and confusing but I did not feel unsafe there. Having done my research prior to my visit to Mexico, I knew roughly in which direction to go in. I waded past the stalls selling soft toys and headed towards the left at the front of the market and then I caught the smell of copal drifting through the air. Where there is copal there will be magick. My internal dialogue said “follow that smell” so I did and found what I was looking for. I encountered several shops with rows and rows of Santa Muerte statues as far as the eye could see in a variety of styles and hues. If I was amazed at the market at the Basilica my eyes must have looked like saucers as I wandered around Sonora! 

I only had one problem: if I’m going to buy a statue how do I narrow my choices down? I used the method of quieting my mind and allowing the statue to choose me. About an hour later she called me and not the statue I was expecting to purchase as I was on the lookout for one in pink or purple but it was the 7-coloured Santa Muerte that caught my eye and my heart and drew me to her. On reflection this makes perfect sense as it was the 7-coloured Santa Muerte that I had originally made my promise to. I also found myself drawn to the reversible statue and I could hear Santa Muerte whispering to me. Telling me what while it had not been in my mind to purchase a reversible statue that I do in fact need it. 

On my return to the UK I found out why, but that’s a whole other story. I found the traders in magical goods to be extremely friendly and helpful. Through the magick of Google Translate I was able to communicate that I was a devotee, that I practice magick, what I was looking for in the market and people were very eager to help. What appears to put a lot of foreign visitors off the market are the wet market areas. As a vegetarian I accept that some countries have wet markets and I have seen them before but it’s not my bag. No problem, wet markets also have a very distinctive smell and when I smelt the smell I simply turned around and went the other way and followed that copal. 

One of the things that surprised me was the volume of devil statues and devil devotional candles for sale. While I have worked collaboratively with Satanists before in the UK there was no hint of actual devotional work to the devil as an entity. Clearly this is not the case in Mexico as the presence of devotional candles means devotional work is going on.  Some of the statues were dead ringers of Levi’s Baphomet, only coloured red. I was also amazed by the shops selling Santeria products that while I have seen photographs of, had never seen in the flesh before. Santeria is clearly thriving given the number of women I saw at the market looking beautifully dressed head to toe in white.

The religious landscape in Mexico is clearly very diverse as several different traditions were represented at the market such as all types of witchcraft, Christianity, Santeria, Satanism, Hinduism and Buddhism. As I was taking a stroll around the Zocalo I also noticed the presence of Chinese Gods at Chinatown and encountered the Hindu god Ganesha. I have that exact same banner at home.

Next stop Puebla, by now I had become more used to the altitude and while a busy city, compared to Mexico City Puebla seemed very chill. I began to relax. Finding some of the churches and shrines in Puebla was very easy, a 20 minutes walk from the town square. As the city is built on a grid system it was a very simple process to make my way to Calle 9 where I had heard that both a chapel and a shrine were located. I found the botanica first, where there is a Santa Muerte shrine one will find a botanica.  This is helpful as there’s always a place nearby to purchase your devotional candle if the shrine itself does not sell them. 

Well you know what happens now, I went to the chapel, the Primer Santuario de la Santa Muerte, I got tearful, spoke to Santa Muerte, lit a candle, and I bought some stuff. Via Google Translate I was able to explain to the gentleman looking after the chapel what I was there for and it was clearly not unusual for someone from the English-speaking world to turn up to the chapel. He offered me the red candle first and he was not the only person to do this during my shrine visits. What I read into this is that the red candle is the one that is possibly asked for the most often, which is why it was offered to me first. I was able to communicate that it was the 7-coloured candle that I wanted. 

The same exchange occurred when I visited the Majestuoso Altar de la Santa Muerte situated opposite the chapel. Again I found the people extremely welcoming despite my lack of Spanish and I was invited to a fiesta that was occurring for the Day of the Dead. Sadly, I was only in Publea for a few days so was unable to attend.

There was a further church, The Church of La Santa Muerte, in a different location to Calle 9, so armed with Google Maps I went out that afternoon to locate it. Google Maps took me to a town square that was clearly more for locals than for tourists, which is where I would expect a Santa Muerte Church to be. If you want to find Santa Muerte you need to leave the tourist trail and go where the locals go. However, I could not find this church anywhere. Google maps took me to a large building that seemed like a public building with an exhibition of some kind going on in there. 

I wandered around the square looking for likely signs. As not everyone approves of Santa Muerte worship, I decided against asking a local for help and instead gave it up as a bad job. I was about to leave but then I spotted some Santa Muerte statues for sale in a shop so I thought well I can ask them. If they sell her statues they can’t object to my asking where the Church is. They indicated with gestures that I was to walk to the end of the shop and I then saw that the Church is actually located at the back of the shop. I followed the same process, lit my candle, got tearful, said my prayers and bought some stuff.

I enjoyed my stay in Puebla so much I was sorry to leave but onwards to Oaxaca. Timewise we are now getting closer to the Day of the Dead and Oaxaca City’s town square was so full of display ofrendas that the scent of marigolds permeated the air. In my culture, as a child, visiting a cemetery was actively discouraged so it was fascinating to see how the culture in Oaxaca takes a completely different and in my opinion healthier view of death. 

In my own culture one did not talk about death, it was brushed under the carpet which led to me in later life having some difficulties in dealing with it due to a lack of experience. Time has moved on in the UK since my childhood and often now a preoccupation with death can be seen as “edgy”. Both approaches deny death as a natural part of life and remembrance of the dead as an important act. Being in this environment enabled me to deal with a few issues of my own in relation to bereavement achieving some measure of peace following turbulent times.

As a further exploration of the ancestors I took a trip to the caves of Mitla. I considered carefully whether I could do this as people younger and fitter than I have described it as “a bit of a climb”. I was uncertain whether I could achieve the task of getting up those mountains, in this body, with an outside temperature of 29 degrees Celsius. This region is what I refer to as “cactus country,” and it was awesome to see so many giant cacti growing in the wild but this also means a climate that is unfamiliar and challenging to a person from rainy Wales. 

It was very dry, hot and arid when I visited there and difficult for me to manage. What decided it for me was the fact that in my nearly 55 years on this planet I have never before had the opportunity to see ancient cave paintings and the likelihood is I will never have that chance again. So by hook or by crook I was going to get this body up that mountain in some shape. I was in some shape when I finally got up there and not a great one, but it was worth the effort. 

My guide told me that her ancestors lived and died in these caves and that the bodies of the ancestors were literally in those caves which is why the caves would shortly be closed off to visitors as her Zapotec community held their Day of the Dead ceremonies there. The name Milta is very apt coming from the word Mictlan meaning “place of the dead”. I learned that at some time a skeleton had been discovered at the site along with other artefacts known as “the red lady” whose body and artefacts have become lost. 

This of course put me in mind of the red lady at Paviland Caves in Wales- who turned out to be a man, whose artefacts were also lost and the bones now reside in a museum in England. The healthy relationship that Mexico has with the concept of death and their close connection with the ancestors led to some self-reflections. I could see why Santa Muerte would have chosen Mexico as her place of manifestation as well as understand her growing popularity within my own culture that has suffered spiritually due to its denial of death as a normal part of life.

Next stop, San Cristobal, Chiapas ,l and praise Heaven and all their Angels. The temperature drops and it starts to rain, much more comfortable for a person who is from a country that rarely gets over 20 degrees. While there were no Santa Muerte shrines that I could find in the town centre there is clearly a lot of magick going on. Evidenced by the number of signs I saw offering tarot readings, the presence of herbal and complementary therapies plus the two botanics by the municipal market. One of the two botanics carries mostly herbs with a few products related to Santa Muerte with extremely friendly staff. The second botanica, which is a very pretty pink botanica, carried a lot of Santa Muerte products. I was in the shop for quite some time and some of the other customers had Santa Muerte tattoos and pendants so clearly devotees. 

No visit to San Cristobal is complete without a trip to the Church at Chamula. I took an organised tour there and en route went past a large botanica with three 6 foot Santa Muerte Statues outside. The driver was not going to stop for me as no one else on the tour was interested, but clearly Santa Muerte is popular in this region.  Magick was in the air and it smells of flowers, copal and pine and something else that I cannot quite identify. The magick of Mexico smells good.

I took a trip to Chichen Itza. Ever since I was a child and learnt that it was not only Egyptians that built pyramids, there were also pyramids in the Americas. I had wanted to see the Latin American pyramids. I felt a stronger draw towards them than to the ones in Egypt and it did not disappoint. My guide was surprised but pleased that I had made an attempt to read the Popul Vu and as I was asking him questions it became apparent to me- the Mayan religion is alive and well in Mexico and this guy follows it. 

No visit to Mexico is complete without a trip to a cenote which the Mayans regarded as portals to the underworld and a place where rebirth occurred. Mayans did various ceremonies there. Upon arriving at the cenote I could see why, the location is perfect for a ceremony. Due to the presence of other visitors I was not able to do one but I did some toning chanting for some time to acknowledge the presence of the Mayan gods and thank them for allowing me to visit their place. I found this a very healing experience as if anything that I did not need was being washed away from me and transmuted into positives. 

I arrived in Merida rather late in the day on November 1^st but headed off to the Lucas de Galvez Market to see if I could locate a Santa Muerte shrine. The market itself was almost as confusing as Sonora. When I arrived there were so many places selling things in the vicinity of the market it was difficult to locate the covered market where I felt the shrine would be. Eventually I saw a number of people entering and leaving a building so I figured that may be it. 

It’s not signposted so this was my best guess and I went and immediately found a botanica selling Santa Muerte products with two very friendly young men working there. I bought some stuff. Closing my suitcase was now becoming an issue. The presence of devil statues was not to the same extent that I saw in Mexico City but old horny was there. Having wandered around the market for a while and seeing a number of closed shops I figured this was a bad day for finding the shrine as they may have closed early due to the evening’s celebrations.

There was not much happening in Merida city centre on November 1^st– the cemetery and the outlying areas is where it’s at. However, not speaking the language and being unfamiliar with the local bus services made it a difficult jaunt. Plus I do have a few personal golden rules for solo travel, one of them being “don’t stray too far from your hotel after dark” and I decided not to breach that rule.

I decided to visit one of her shrines the next day on November 2^nd. There are a number of shrines for Santa Muerte in the outlying areas of Merida so I popped in a cab to the Santa Muerte mi Reina Hermosa S.M.I  as soon as the cab driver stopped I knew where the chapel was due to the large image of Santa Muerte over the doorway. At this point my signal on my phone had failed me which made communication difficult. The women who looked after the shrine were extremely friendly and I did understand that they had a fiesta the previous night. They were showing me the enormous amounts of lit candles at the chapel that had been placed there the night before. This was an extremely pretty chapel and I was again overcome with emotion and was very reluctant to leave.

I returned to the market and once again met the two friendly young men at the botanica near the entrance- yep I bought more stuff. The market is a bit busier today and I located one shrine which did not fit the description of the one I was looking for, so I guessed there was more than one shrine at the market. Having made my devotions at this shrine I meandered happily around the market and eventually happened upon the second shrine, with a large Santa Muerte statue looking pretty in pink. 

As I was coming to the end of my time in Mexico I figured this shrine was my last hurrah and spent time thanking Santa Muerte for keeping my workplace safe from Covid, for looking after me during my time in Mexico, enabling me to see so many amazing things and to experience these awesome cultures. By now my attitude had changed from my initial feeling of trepidation to being a little in love with Mexico. It was however not my last hurrah as during a stopover at Playa del Carmen on route to Cancun airport I happened upon a further church which is where I made my final devotions on Mexican soil.

I arrived back to Wales exhausted from another long plane journey followed by a long bus journey but having recovered from that I feel renewed with an increased sense of confidence and purpose. I made a promise and I kept it thus strengthening my relationship with La Madrina and strengthening my magical will. I felt the fear and did it anyway; I feel an increased commitment and enthusiasm for my path in life.

 During the years since Covid I have had to deal with a number of difficult situations, it was one thing after another and this had taken its emotional toll. I was pretty much running on empty, drained and worn out. Visiting Mexico renewed me and that was due to the relationship between myself and the White Girl becoming closer and closer via the pilgrimages to her shrines and the time I spent with her in prayer. Mexico smells of marigolds, and copal and pine and the cleansing effects of this washed over me during my visit there. I still smell it in my dreams.

*Soror Brigantia has been a practitioner of magick for over 30 years. She is a 2* witch, Priest of Chaos and former Section Head of the British Isles Section of the Illuminates of Thanateros. She holds an MSc in Applied Social Studies. Illuminates of Thanateros- British Isles Section – Nothing is True — Everything is Permitted (iotbritishisles.com)