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THIS story in the Jew York Times shows how dangerous wop cults can be.
Did you see that? This wizard is even contaminating the NYC Police with his evil sorcery! And it's spreading! 
Crystals and Persuasion
Angel Silva sleeps in a cot-size bed next to a massive homemade shrine in the small room he rents in Astoria, Queens.
The shrine is a collection of iron urns filled with animal bones, sticks and machetes, surrounded by an assemblage of wooden statuettes and masks, conch shells, crystals and cash offerings.
Mr. Silva practices Palo Mayombe, an African-Caribbean religion related to Santeria. He is a fixture near the corner of Broadway and 14th Street in Manhattan, selling healing crystals from a sidewalk table on the edge of Union Square Park.
Each morning, to summon the spiritual energy to activate the crystals and heal another wave of New Yorkers, he prays to spirits of nature and of his ancestors. On Wednesday morning, he swigged from a gallon jug of gin and spewed a mouthful of it in a sputtering mist over the shrine as an offering.
“They love gin — it revives them,” he said, and then he lighted candles, rang bells and chanted prayers in Spanish to the spirits.
“I just told them I’m going to heal in Union Square today, and I asked the spirits to enter this stone so they could come with me,” he said, putting the stone in his pocket. Then the self-described witch doctor grabbed his skateboard and headed to the N train to reach Union Square in time for the lunch crowd.
There, his hand-painted sign next to his tables advertised “Energy Art and Healing Sculptures.” Dressed in a T-shirt, jeans and sneakers, Mr. Silva, 51, stood at his tables, which are covered with stones that he polishes himself in a rock tumbler and sells as remedies for physical and emotional imbalances. Some can attract prosperity, love or inner peace, he said, and others can protect and activate inner energies.
For cancer patients undergoing radiation treatments, Mr. Silva recommends tektite. For hung-over college students, he prescribes a cool bloodstone pendant. Tucking a carnelian stone in the navel can help relieve menstrual cramps, he said, and pressing a selenite stone against the head is great for migraines. For office workers drained of energy, rose quartz can help, and for those suffering from voodoo spells and witchcraft hexes, black tourmaline and kyanite are good defenders.
Mr. Silva has not yet found the right crystal to thwart the New York City police officers who have repeatedly confiscated his crystals and arrested him on charges of unlicensed vending.
Mr. Silva insists he needs no city permit because his stones are artistic sculptures covered under the First Amendment, and he hopes to convince a judge of this in Manhattan Criminal Court at a trial next month.
Lines of customers form on Mondays, when Mr. Silva offers free spiritual healing. He delivers his psychic readings of their life issues, from cheating spouses to chakra imbalances, and he treats some people at the nearby sidewalk tree, to better connect to the gods of the forest.
Mr. Silva, who is divorced with seven children, is a former licensed plumber but earns his living from selling the crystals. He said he was raised by parents who were Santeria healers in the Grand Concourse section of the Bronx. By age 10, he said, he was initiated as a Santeria healer, in a ceremony in a Bronx apartment, with drums, dancing and the sacrifice of a live chicken.
Mr. Silva said his mother would send him to elementary school dressed all in white, as a santero, or Santeria priest, which led to teasing and schoolyard fights. By adolescence, he had moved with his family to Puerto Rico and lived on the Vieques island.
Mr. Silva fashions the stones into pendants with copper wire. Each stone comes with a “spiritual activation” so that it can be “programmed” to the needs of its buyer, he said.
On Wednesday Hessam Hosseinipour, 35, an architect visiting from Iran, spent $40 on chunks of pyrite and bracelets of carved onyx and amethyst to help “find my higher being and help heal the earth,” he said.
Mr. Silva put on a red skullcap and shook a small whisk broom — an African cleansing broom, he said — over the stones, praying “to the energy of the river and the trees and the ancestors.”
Despite his problems with the police, Mr. Silva said he had helped police officers with crystals, most recently dispensing some black tourmaline and an obsidian arrowhead to several officers seeking to ward off evil spells from voodoo practitioners they had arrested.
“Hey, they’re still human beings,” he said.
Angel Silva sleeps in a cot-size bed next to a massive homemade shrine in the small room he rents in Astoria, Queens.
The shrine is a collection of iron urns filled with animal bones, sticks and machetes, surrounded by an assemblage of wooden statuettes and masks, conch shells, crystals and cash offerings.
Mr. Silva practices Palo Mayombe, an African-Caribbean religion related to Santeria. He is a fixture near the corner of Broadway and 14th Street in Manhattan, selling healing crystals from a sidewalk table on the edge of Union Square Park.
Each morning, to summon the spiritual energy to activate the crystals and heal another wave of New Yorkers, he prays to spirits of nature and of his ancestors. On Wednesday morning, he swigged from a gallon jug of gin and spewed a mouthful of it in a sputtering mist over the shrine as an offering.
“They love gin — it revives them,” he said, and then he lighted candles, rang bells and chanted prayers in Spanish to the spirits.
“I just told them I’m going to heal in Union Square today, and I asked the spirits to enter this stone so they could come with me,” he said, putting the stone in his pocket. Then the self-described witch doctor grabbed his skateboard and headed to the N train to reach Union Square in time for the lunch crowd.
There, his hand-painted sign next to his tables advertised “Energy Art and Healing Sculptures.” Dressed in a T-shirt, jeans and sneakers, Mr. Silva, 51, stood at his tables, which are covered with stones that he polishes himself in a rock tumbler and sells as remedies for physical and emotional imbalances. Some can attract prosperity, love or inner peace, he said, and others can protect and activate inner energies.
For cancer patients undergoing radiation treatments, Mr. Silva recommends tektite. For hung-over college students, he prescribes a cool bloodstone pendant. Tucking a carnelian stone in the navel can help relieve menstrual cramps, he said, and pressing a selenite stone against the head is great for migraines. For office workers drained of energy, rose quartz can help, and for those suffering from voodoo spells and witchcraft hexes, black tourmaline and kyanite are good defenders.
Mr. Silva has not yet found the right crystal to thwart the New York City police officers who have repeatedly confiscated his crystals and arrested him on charges of unlicensed vending.
Mr. Silva insists he needs no city permit because his stones are artistic sculptures covered under the First Amendment, and he hopes to convince a judge of this in Manhattan Criminal Court at a trial next month.
Lines of customers form on Mondays, when Mr. Silva offers free spiritual healing. He delivers his psychic readings of their life issues, from cheating spouses to chakra imbalances, and he treats some people at the nearby sidewalk tree, to better connect to the gods of the forest.
Mr. Silva, who is divorced with seven children, is a former licensed plumber but earns his living from selling the crystals. He said he was raised by parents who were Santeria healers in the Grand Concourse section of the Bronx. By age 10, he said, he was initiated as a Santeria healer, in a ceremony in a Bronx apartment, with drums, dancing and the sacrifice of a live chicken.
Mr. Silva said his mother would send him to elementary school dressed all in white, as a santero, or Santeria priest, which led to teasing and schoolyard fights. By adolescence, he had moved with his family to Puerto Rico and lived on the Vieques island.
Mr. Silva fashions the stones into pendants with copper wire. Each stone comes with a “spiritual activation” so that it can be “programmed” to the needs of its buyer, he said.
On Wednesday Hessam Hosseinipour, 35, an architect visiting from Iran, spent $40 on chunks of pyrite and bracelets of carved onyx and amethyst to help “find my higher being and help heal the earth,” he said.
Mr. Silva put on a red skullcap and shook a small whisk broom — an African cleansing broom, he said — over the stones, praying “to the energy of the river and the trees and the ancestors.”
Despite his problems with the police, Mr. Silva said he had helped police officers with crystals, most recently dispensing some black tourmaline and an obsidian arrowhead to several officers seeking to ward off evil spells from voodoo practitioners they had arrested.
“Hey, they’re still human beings,” he said.
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