Intellectual projects have ways of their own. Some appear to spring from our heads in the manner of Athena, fully formed, ready to en- gage the world, and be engaged by it in turn. Others appear to sneak up on their authors, revealing their contours only in occasional, blurry glimpses at the limits of one’s visual field that one catches, seemingly fortuitously, while pursuing other questions. Such fleeting glimpses, however, can gradually build up to where they begin to force upon us the dawning realization of a presence that has begun to work itself into the author’s life, demanding recognition and acknowledgment. So it was in the case at hand. I did not know it at the time, but in the after- math it seems to me as if the project that became this book had been following me around ever since I was twenty-four years old, setting out to do ethnographic fieldwork on what I then thought was Afro-Cuban religion. I like to think of it as a patient companion, looking over my shoulder and watching over the years with detached bemusement how I again and again practically stumbled over it, without ever fully perceiv- ing it. But while many such presences surely never attain recognition, and many books remain forever unwritten, this one eventually took me by the hand and said, “Write me.” I can even date the moment with some precision.