- Marta Moreno Vega , The Altar of My Soul

"We generally accept that there is a divine, invisible intelligence at work on

our behalf. We sense it. Santeria provides the means to live in the sacred
moment and benefit from divine energy. Rather than viewing our
premonitions, dreams, and sacred moments as extraordinary, Santeria
teaches us that we are protected by guardian angels and orishas, who make
the extraordinary seem ordinary.

Native American religions worship every aspect of nature, and their

affirmation that we live on sacred Mother Earth is similar to Santeria's belief
that all aspects of nature are divine. Asian religions identify the energy force,
or qi, as well as the divine principle of yin-yang, our equivalent of ache and
the positive and negative balance embodied in the orisha, Ellegua. In
Judaism, practitioners sacrifice and cleanse with animals as we do, and they
also burn candles to create a spiritually charged environment during rituals. I
always make comparisons between other religions and my own, because
they show we are not so different as we appear to be."

- Marta Moreno Vega , The Altar of My Soul