Maria de Padilla

A personal, practical, and historical work, Maria de Padilla: Queen of the Souls is a detailed account of the life and death of the Spanish queen María de Padilla, her rise to popularity in the witchcraft of Spain and Portugal, and her later migration with the exiled witches to Brazil where she would become the queen of the souls in Quimbanda. The text includes a comparative study of the symbolism of the sorcerous spirits called pombagiras with entities from other cultures, specifically the dakinis of Vajrayana Buddhism, as well as historical research on the origins of Quimbanda, and a collection of spells from the 17th century up to the contemporary chanted invocations used in Quimbanda.