Also called Saint Expeditus, San Expedito, Saint Expédit
Saint Expedite is a Roman soldier-saint invoked for urgent problems and against procrastination, honored in New Orleans and across Latin America with candles, flowers, a slice of pound cake and a public thank-you.
Tonight's moon is read when the page loads.
Take care: Keep candles in glass on a heat-proof surface and never leave them burning unattended. Offer cake on a plate and remove it after a day so it does not draw pests.
A local story says the chapel on Rampart Street, now Our Lady of Guadalupe, received a shipment of saints' statues and one crate was stamped only expedite. The puzzled recipients took it for the saint's name. His statue stands in the chapel today and is visited by Catholics and members of Spiritualist churches seeking fast help.
An older version says a convent in Paris received relics from the catacombs in a case marked expédit to speed delivery, and the nuns, thinking it was a martyr's name, prayed to him. When their prayers were answered, his cult spread through France.
His feast day of April 19 draws huge crowds to churches in São Paulo, sometimes in the hundreds of thousands. People ask for fast solutions to job, money and legal problems.
Expeditus appears in the early Hieronymian Martyrology as one of a group of soldiers martyred at Melitene in Armenia, probably around 303 under Diocletian. Little else is known, and the scholar Hippolyte Delehaye suggested his name was a copyist's error for Elpidius. The name's resemblance to the word expedite made him the patron of speed, and his image shows him trampling a crow that says tomorrow, raising a cross marked today.
His popular cult grew in 18th-century Europe, especially France and Sicily, where he is patron of Acireale. The Vatican took a dim view; Pope Pius X ordered his name removed from the list of martyrs in 1905, without much effect on popular devotion. In New Orleans he became a fixture of both Catholic and Spiritualist practice, and in Latin America he is a hugely popular saint for urgent causes.
A calming justice ritual for someone facing a hearing, built on hoodoo court case work with galangal root and on the Egyptian image of Ma'at's feather of truth. It is a ritual for steadiness and a fair hearing. It is no substitute for a lawyer.
A Sunday ritual that borrows the ancient laurel crown of victory: you name one goal, write it on a bay leaf, and keep the leaf where you will see it until the goal is met. It is a focus ritual for a specific achievement.
A Hoodoo and Latin American botánica working to clear blocks from your path, used before a trip, a job search or any new start. A candle and oil or herb wash dressed with abre camino and citrus 'opens the road' ahead.
Tell us what you need and we will craft a custom spell, charm or reading for it. Or call to book a reading or a road blessing in person.
