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The Names of the Religion

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The Names of the Religion

The tradition in which Diloggun is cast goes by several names and they are not interchangeable in tone. Santeria is the most widely recognised outside the religion and the most contested inside it, since it began as an outsider's description built on the veneration of Catholic saints. Many practitioners prefer Regla de Ocha, or Lucumi, or Regla de Ocha-Ifa, as names the tradition gives itself.

The atlas uses Lucumi and Regla de Ocha where the context allows and Santeria where a reader would otherwise not know what is being discussed, which is a compromise rather than a resolution. There is no single term every practitioner accepts, and reporting the disagreement is more accurate than choosing quietly.

The same care applies to the word Diloggun itself, which is variously spelled in English and Spanish sources, and to the names of the sixteen parent signs, which vary in transliteration between authors.

Obara, the six-mouth throw, is documented across that literature under a name shared with the corresponding figure in Ifa. Its proverbs and the remedies it calls for are held within initiated practice and are not reproduced here.

A naming dispute of this kind is rarely only about words. Which term a writer uses signals whose account of the religion they are working from, an outsider's or a practitioner's, and a reader is entitled to know which they are being given. The atlas states its choice rather than making it silently.

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