Now I would like to relate a failure that, seems to me, was due to a lack of faith or the bad faith of a patient. I knew a rich American divorcée who suffered from a persecution complex. She was convinced that death pursued her; that it circled around her using her as a channel. Her cleaning lady had drowned in the pool; her mother had died in an airplane accident on her way to visit her; a friend of hers committed suicide. . I advised Pachita that I was going to introduce her to someone possessed. I tried to persuade her to believe, but she was closed in distrust toward the white woman who visits an Indian village. The American arrived at the witch’s house in an ambiguous mood. She entered the room with a repugnant, disdainful air. Upon seeing her enter, El Hermanito, embodied in Pachita, went red in the face and, expelling foam from the mouth and brandishing the knife with the expression of an assassin, attacked her, determined to kill her. Between the eight of us present, we held the witch, who fought with a force that seemed nearly impossible to subdue. We sang a spell, and after several minutes of complete panic and rage — a crisis bordering on an epileptic fit—El Hermanito calmed down. Pachita began to caress the head of the American, who was suddenly very submissive, like a frightened child. “Now I see, my little daughter,” murmured El Hermanito through Pachita’s mouth. “You are possessed by a criminal demon. Without knowing it, you give death. You want to kill. Don’t deceive yourself, be sincere and realize that you, because of fear of the world and out of resentment, you are full of a thirst for destruction. If you want to free yourself, you must follow my instructions to the letter.” El Hermanito ordered her to go to the herb market and buy seven belts of different colors and a piece of coral. For twenty-one days, while sleeping, she should wrap her body with the seven belts and sleep covered like a mummy, with the coral on her chest, like a medallion. For me, the message was clear: she should have slept every night wrapped in the rainbow, symbol of an alliance with God, and purified by the humble beauty of the coral. But the patient did not see it like that. She terminated the consultation, again assumed her old personality, and created every obstacle imaginable in order to not follow the instructions of going to the market. First she broke a toe. Then she suggested she buy the belts in a store in the metropolitan area, because the herb market seemed like a dirty place to her, full of filthy Indians. . After two or three weeks, I convinced her to go with me to the market. Once we were there, she proved to be absurdly mean; she haggled on the price of the coral and the belts until she was angry over a few pennies. Finally we left the market with the package in her hand, but she almost forgot it in the taxi and didn’t show the least interest in taking it with her. That was it! I decided to cut our ties, and I never saw her again. I left her in that world, her world without faith and without love, a victim of herself. Years later, I was informed by the press that she had killed her lover. Pachita was right: that woman was an assassin. El Hermanito, trying to leap on her to kill her, acted as a mirror. The American, moored in her suffering, did not want to change, which was reason enough for her not wanting to benefit from the knowledge transmitted by Pachita, to whom she had gone for a consultation only because I asked her to, although she had no true faith in the power. My point is that it is necessary to collaborate with a sorcerer. El Hermanito could not heal someone who did not deeply desire it or who refused to collaborate.
It could be that a person had faith but did not desire to recover their health. I remember, for example, a woman named Henriette, the patient of a doctor friend of ours, who was told she had no more than two years to live. Henriette was sick with cancer, and they had already removed her breasts. At the request of her doctor, who supported trying anything, she traveled with me to Mexico. Although very depressed, she agreed to an operation by Pachita, who suggested purifying her blood by injecting two liters of plasma that arrived from another dimension, made by El Hermanito. The day arrived and, after the usual ceremony, Henriette found herself lying on the bed. El Hermanito stuck a knife in her arm, and we heard the blood fall into a metal bucket. It was a thick, stinking stream. Then El Hermanito introduced into the wound the end of a meter-long plastic tube, lifting the other end into the air to connect it to the invisible. We could hear the sound of liquid pouring smoothly from an unknown place, while El Hermanito said, “Receive the holy plasma, little daughter, do not reject it.” The day after the operation, not believing in the effects of the “transfusion,” Henriette was sad and listless. I tried to get her to respond, but it was impossible. She was smug like a kid, gruff, egotistical. She accused me of wanting to take her to Calvary. Two days later, a huge infected abscess appeared on her arm. Very afraid, I called Enrique, Pachita’s son, who, after consulting his mother, told me, “Your friend has faith in medicine, but she rejects it. She wants to undo the holy plasma. So tonight have her do her business in a bedpan, and tomorrow morning apply the excrement to her arm to explode the seat of the infection.” I gave the message to Henriette, who closed herself in her room. I do not know if she followed the advice or not, but the truth is that the abscess exploded leaving a very large scar, so deep the bone was visible. Immediately I took her back to Pachita who, converted into El Hermanito, said to the patient in a man’s voice, “I was waiting for you, daughter. I am going to give you what you desire. Come. .” The healer took her by the hand like a little girl and brought her to the bed and surprisingly started humming an old French song, while swinging a knife before the open eyes of the patient. I had the impression that she was hypnotizing her. So she asked her, “Why did you want them to cut off your breasts?” To which Henriette answered, in a child’s voice, “To not be a mother.”
“And now, my dear girl, what do you want them to cut?”
“The glands that swell in my neck.”
“Why?”
“To not have to speak to people.”
“And then, little daughter?”
“For them to cut the glands that swell under my arm.”
“Why?” “To not have to work.”
“And then?”
“That they cut those that swell near my sex, so I can be alone with myself.”