Settling an Initiates Death

Itutu is the funerary rite of Santeria (Lucumi) and of the related Yoruba tradition for an initiated priest of the orishas, the ceremony that settles the affairs of the dead priest in both the human and the spiritual world. Because an initiate has, through their initiation, become the seat of an orisha and holds consecrated objects and a web of ritual relationships, their death requires more than an ordinary burial: the itutu determines, through divination, the disposition of their sacred stones and implements, which are to be inherited, which buried with the priest, which returned to their source, and formally releases the deceased and their spirits from their earthly ties.

The rite thus manages the transmission or dissolution of the religious authority the initiate carried. As with much of the tradition, its detailed procedure belongs to initiated practice; what can be stated is its purpose, the orderly closing of an initiated life and the correct handling of the sacred things entrusted to it.