Holy Death Found Me Through Santa Muerte
Looking back, I no longer believe Santa Muerte was my first encounter with Holy Death.
Years earlier, she had already begun introducing herself through Hel and later through Nephthys. Those encounters were real and deeply meaningful, yet I struggled to understand them. It felt rather like trying to squeeze square pegs through round holes. My spiritual framework simply wasn’t ready.
Then, in 2020, my faith fell apart, and my entire worldview was shattered.
It was only during a second period of intense religious trauma in 2022–23 that I began to understand the deeper pattern. This time, I consciously set out to rebuild my relationship with the Divine from the ground up. I wasn’t looking for a new religion or trying to replace Christianity. I was simply searching for a spiritual-but-not-religious way home.
It was then that Holy Death came to me through Santa Muerte.
Looking back, I can see how perfectly timed that encounter was. Santa Muerte stands at a unique crossroads of Christian and Pagan spirituality. She spoke both languages because, at that moment in my life, so did my soul.
That encounter became one of the first stepping stones on what I now call the Christo-Hekatean Path.
Jump to the Holy Death and Anima Mundi Tarot Spread
Who Is Santa Muerte?
Any attempt to answer this question depends, at least in part, on who is asking.
To millions of devotees, Santa Muerte is Nuestra Señora de la Santa Muerte (Our Lady of Holy Death), a powerful folk saint who offers protection, healing, justice and comfort without discrimination. She is especially beloved by those who have found themselves on the margins of society, including people whom the institutional Church has often overlooked or rejected.
Historically, Santa Muerte emerged in Mexico through a remarkable blending of Catholic imagery, Indigenous cosmologies and popular folk religion. Although she is not recognised as a saint by the Catholic Church—in fact, her veneration is strongly condemned—devotion to her has grown rapidly over the past few decades and has spread far beyond Mexico’s borders.
For some, she is a folk saint. For others, she is the personification of death. Some understand her as a goddess or divine being in her own right, while others see her as a powerful spiritual intermediary. There is no single authoritative interpretation, and I have no desire to argue that one is more valid than another.
Instead, I would simply like to tell you how I came to know her.
Death Calling
Although I felt deeply drawn to Santa Muerte, I was reluctant to rush into a devotional relationship. My earlier encounters with Nephthys and Hel had been profound, yet I had never fully understood how they could fit into my spiritual life.
By then, I had consciously embraced a Pagan path and was practising witchcraft. Outwardly, I had left Christianity behind. Inwardly, however, I was still interpreting many of my spiritual experiences through theological assumptions I had absorbed over years as both an Evangelical and later a Catholic. I hadn’t yet realised that changing my spiritual practice was one thing; examining the metaphysical framework beneath it was quite another.
The Roe Buck Skull
One morning, not long after first feeling called to Santa Muerte, I decided to ask for a sign.
If Holy Death truly wished to reveal herself to me through Santa Muerte, I asked her to make that unmistakably clear. Bones seemed the most obvious sign to ask for. If I was imagining the whole thing, nothing would happen. If I wasn’t, I trusted she would find a way to let me know.
A little later that morning, I met a friend to walk our dogs.
Within a couple of hours of whispering that prayer, I looked down and saw the complete skull of a roe buck lying directly in my path.
Not a single bone.
An entire skull.
I remember stopping in my tracks. It felt as though it had been waiting there for me.
I took the skull home, carefully cleaned it and later painted it. It has remained on my altar ever since as a reminder of the day Holy Death answered a prayer that I had barely dared to pray.
Looking back now, I no longer see the roe buck skull merely as a sign from Santa Muerte. I see it as the moment Holy Death met me in the language my soul was finally ready to understand.
The Face I Needed
When Holy Death first came to me through Santa Muerte, I knew very little about her. Like many people outside Mexico, my understanding was limited to the occasional sensationalist headline or passing mention online. The deeper I looked, however, the more I discovered a living devotional tradition rooted in extraordinary love, loyalty and trust.
Santa Muerte emerged in Mexico through a unique meeting of Catholic imagery, Indigenous cosmologies and popular folk religion. Although the Catholic Church rejects devotion to her, millions of people have found in her a compassionate protector who makes no distinction between rich and poor, saint and sinner, the powerful and the forgotten. She is approached for healing, justice, protection and comfort, especially by those who feel they have nowhere else to turn.
Looking back, I can see why she appeared when she did.
At the time, I was trying to rebuild my relationship with the Divine without abandoning everything that had once been sacred to me. I still loved Christ. I still loved the saints. I still found myself drawn to candles, prayer and sacramental symbolism. At the same time, I could no longer deny the reality of my encounters with Pagan deities or the transformative power of a magical worldview.
Santa Muerte stood effortlessly at that crossroads.
She didn’t ask me to reject either my Christian or my Pagan experiences. She simply invited me into relationship.
Only years later would I begin to understand why that mattered so much.
Holy Death and the Anima Mundi
For a long time, I thought my task was to work out who Santa Muerte really was.
Was she a folk saint?
A goddess?
The personification of death?
An aspect of Hekate?
The Great Mother?
Looking back, I think I was asking the wrong question.
Today, I find myself asking something much simpler:
What did Holy Death come to teach my soul?
The Faces We Rise to Meet
Over the past few years, I have gradually come to believe that the Divine does not reveal every face at once. Instead, the faces of the Divine that we most need for our souls’ evolution are the faces we gradually rise to meet.
Looking back over my own journey, I can now see that Holy Death first revealed herself to me through Hel, then through Nephthys, and finally through Santa Muerte. None of those encounters was a mistake or a detour. Each met me where I was spiritually while gently preparing me for the next stage of my journey.
A Living Hierarchy
This has also changed the way I understand the Anima Mundi.
Rather than thinking of the World Soul as an abstract philosophical principle, I have come to experience it as the living communion of Divine Life permeating the whole of creation. Within that living reality exist many orders of being, each participating in the One according to its own nature and vocation.
Some, like Christ and Mary Magdalene, I understand as Revealers: historical embodiments of the eternal Logos and Sophia. Others, such as Hekate, Santa Muerte, Mother Mary and the angels, are divine presences in their own right. They are not interchangeable. Each has its own place within the sacred order of the cosmos and reveals something unique about the inexhaustible mystery of the One.
Coming Home
For me, Holy Death came wearing the familiar robes of Santa Muerte because that was the face my soul was finally ready to receive.
She did not ask me to abandon Christ or deny my earlier encounters with Nephthys and Hel. Instead, she quietly revealed that the Divine had been leading me all along, patiently teaching me through different encounters as my own capacity for understanding grew.
Today, I no longer feel the need to force every holy being into a single theological category. Unity does not require uniformity. The Divine is infinitely richer and more unfathomable than that.
What matters to me now is not whether I can explain every encounter, but whether it helps me become more capable of unconditional love, forgiveness and communion with the Divine.
What Holy Death Has Taught Me
When I first encountered Santa Muerte, I imagined that Holy Death would teach me about death and transformation.
She has.
But not in the way I expected.
She has taught me that every genuine spiritual path involves countless little deaths long before our physical one. The death of certainty. The death of false identities. The death of beliefs that once sustained us but have become too small for the soul that is emerging.
Most painfully of all, she has taught me the death of the need to be right.
Looking back, I can see that every encounter with Holy Death has invited me to surrender something that no longer served my soul. Sometimes it was fear. Sometimes it was certainty. Sometimes it was grief. More recently, together with Hekate, it has been the slow death of resentment, making room for forgiveness and a deeper understanding of unconditional love.
I no longer think Holy Death came into my life to teach me about dying.
She came to teach me how to love.
The Holy Death and Anima Mundi Spread
This spread invites you to contemplate what Holy Death may be revealing about your own soul’s journey at this moment. Approach the reading prayerfully, allowing each card to become a doorway into deeper self-knowledge and communion with the Divine.
1. The Face
How is Holy Death revealing herself to me at this stage of my journey?
2. The Invitation
What is Holy Death inviting me to surrender?
3. The Gift
What new life is waiting to emerge through this surrender?
4. The Wisdom
What aspect of Divine Love is Holy Death teaching me?
5. The Path Forward
How can I walk more consciously with Holy Death in my daily life?
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Final Thoughts
When I first encountered Santa Muerte, I thought I was beginning a new chapter of my spiritual life.
Looking back, I can see that I was actually remembering one that had been unfolding all along.
Holy Death didn’t lead me away from Christ. Nor did she ask me to abandon the wisdom I had received through Hekate, Mother Mary, the angels or the many other holy presences that have accompanied my journey. Instead, she taught me to recognise a deeper unity within that diversity.
Today, I understand my Christo-Hekatean Path not as a system of beliefs but as a path of communion. Every authentic encounter with the Divine invites us to become a little more truthful, a little more compassionate and a little more capable of unconditional love.
That, for me, is the true work of theurgy.
Holy Death has never asked me to worship death.
She has simply taught me, again and again, to let die whatever stands in the way of Love.
Lisa Eddy — Tamar Iris LeFay
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