Within Sanse regular mention is made of commisiones, los seres, en corrente spirits and mysterio. However alot of the time it can be confusing for someone new to sanse to see these terms and understand what they mean. As such I thought I would write a blog post explaining the difference between these spiritual forces. Now these terms all refer to various groups of spirits which are vital to the practise of sanse, most of these beings are ancestral spirits that are at various levels of spiritual elevation.
The first group I will discuss are the mysterio, now these are the exceeding powerful and elevated spirits. They are ancestral forces that are seen as having come directly from african deities, the spirits of dead african slaves or from the native gods of the Taino people (the Native American people who originally inhabited the islands around Puerto Rico and the Dominican republic). These spirits tend to be the foundation of a sansista's spiritual court, they will oversee a medium's spiritual and physical development throughout a medium's life. They tend to be associated with various environments, forces or ideals such as love, luck, the sea, rivers, beauty, anger, war, etc. As such they are often prayed to or invoked for there protection or aid when it comes to the matters over which they preside. Because the mysterio are seen as being more elevated and therefore bigger and more abstract forces, they are also correspondingly harder to call into possession. Therefore in sanse they often work through proxies.
Which leads us nicely to the subject of en corrente spirits, these are muertos (dead spirits) that have agreed to become a proxy for a particular mysterio in order to elevate themselves. They will turn up in possession in that mysterio's place and will talk and act for her or him. Because they were once a living person they will have their own personal likes and dislikes that may be different from the spirit that they serve. They will also have their own name, for example a en corrente spirit of Zili Danto might be called Hannah Danto or a sanse of Belie Belcan could be called Robert Belcan. The advantage of a mysterio sending one of these spirits is that are smaller and less elevated and therefore will be easier to call. This also means they will take less of a toil on the medium if they possess him or her (in terms of how tired the medium becomes afterwards).
Finally the last type of spirit that can be worked with in sanse is a commisiones spirit, there are many types of these spirits. Most of the time when a medium refers to a commisiones spirit, he is normally talking about los seres. These are muertos that have reached an elevated state (although not normally as elevated as a mysterio or a deity) and have become associated with a particular class, job, role or ethnic origin. In some ways they are almost like smaller versions of the mysterio themselves, as their own particular role allows them to have specialities within that sphere. for example the marinero commisiones (sailor commission) are particularly good at aiding in giving a person's life direction. The madamas (black slave spirits of the home) specialise in folk and kitchen magic and the arabes (arabic spirits) aid in teaching the magic of the djinn and islamic magic. As los seres are generally less elevated then the mysterio their possessions are easier to achieve and they require less energy to summon.
There are also a number of commisiones that have reached levels of elevation equal to the mysterio, for example the hindu gods, orisha, saints and buddhist spirits can all be served in sanse (long with a number of other spirits). They are generally conceived to be within the same scope of elevation and power as the mysterio.
