Gloria is an energetic woman dressed in shorts and a t-shirt. She is tall, muscular, and the mother of three children. Her loyal assistant is her husband, a small, thin man. Gloria does not appear to have anything extraordinary about her. She lives in an apartment and sells dolls in the likenesses of characters from children’s television shows. There is nothing on the bare walls but one large portrait of María Sabina because when Gloria falls into a trance she receives the spirit of this sage of the mushrooms. Her patients then address her as Abuelita (Grandma). She does not have a special sacred place. She receives people in her bedroom, which is almost completely filled by a very wide bed and a wardrobe. She sits on a corner of the bed and has the client stand in front of her. She closes her eyes, bends down, and then straightens up transformed into Abuelita, an old woman who speaks broken Spanish mixed with Nahuatl phrases. She examines the person with her hands, after which she begins to dictate a long series of herbs, flowers, and ancient medicines. Her husband religiously writes down these recipes in a school notebook. Finally, “María Sabina” intertwines her fingers and makes a purifying circle with her arms. The patient puts her legs into the circle, draws them back out as if pulling a sword from its sheath, and then does the same with the arms, head, and torso. “You are cleansed, my grandchild.” While Abuelita says goodbye and Gloria begins to emerge from the trance, the husband makes photocopies of the handwritten notes on an old machine. Here is one that advises fumigation for purifying a house to expel negative spirits: “Put a little oil and twenty-one chiles de arbol (seeds removed) into a frying pan, fry them, and burn them. As the smoke from the pan passes through the house, say ‘I cut, I separate, I remove, I destroy everything that is not in harmony with us and every being of darkness.’ Once the pan has passed through the house, leave it in a secure place outside the house for about ten to fifteen minutes. Return to the house and open the windows. Do this on three occasions as close together as possible, but not on the same day.”
Éliphas Lévi, in his book Transcendental Magic: Its Doctrine and Ritual, summarized this in a few words: “To know, to dare, to will, to keep silence.” One could say that Abuelita summarized healing witchcraft in four phrases. I cut: the ties are cut that join the patient to negative desires, feelings, and thoughts. I separate: the spirit is separated from its material prison. I remove: the harm is removed (the disease is seen as a demon sent by envious people or malevolent entities). I destroy: the harm is destroyed outside the patient’s body. The disease has been assimilated into an object and is still considered alive. Gloria, in a trance, adds a new dimension to the act of possession when Abuelita tells the patient, “Now that you have made contact with me, I am also in you. You go, but I go with you. I will not abandon you. When you want to help your fellow humans call for me and, through you, I will help them.” She is telling us that the sublime values of the spirit, once revealed, are irreversible.
Don Ernesto lives in a more affluent neighborhood and has adapted his apartment to use it for his business. The room looks like a little railway station. There are long wooden benches along each side. Clients sit on them, patiently waiting to be cleansed after having previously stopped at the desk by the door and paid his wife the equivalent of three dollars. In the back of the room there is a square on the floor made of white tiles, three by three meters. There Don Ernesto officiates, assisted by his daughter.
The applicant is asked to write what he or she wishes to be rid of on a sheet of paper: illnesses, financial problems, emotional troubles, family tensions, anxieties, and so forth, and to stand at the center of the square. The daughter, squeezing a plastic bottle filled with alcohol, squirts a stream in a circle around the client. Don Ernesto sets light to it. The sheet of paper with the list of evils is consumed in the flames. Once the ring of fire has burned out, he sweeps the client’s body with a bouquet of chrysanthemums. Then he extends his open palms in an act of supplication. He stretches his right hand toward the ceiling, makes as if to take some of the air (the divine world), places it in his open left palm, and has the patient grab hold of the invisible gift. Don Ernesto defines this gift with a single word: sometimes peace, other times love, prosperity, or health. The client leaves with clenched hands as if holding a treasure. From Don Ernesto, one understands that in order to give something, it is not necessary to possess it materially.
Don Toño is a Huichol Indian. His clothes are white with beautiful embroideries mixing yellow, sky blue, black, and white. Once a week, an avid promoter picks him up on the mountain and brings him into the capital so that he can practice his medicine in the back room of an esoteric bookstore. The shop owner, equally avid, charges the equivalent of fifty dollars in advance for each consultation. After bowing and uttering an invocation to the four cardinal points in his language, Don Toño asks what the illness is and where the client feels pain. After pressing his fingers on the exact spot he begins to “sweep” the body with a fan made of stiff feathers, from the outermost points to the center of the pain. He gives the impression that he is gathering up the evil that has spread throughout the body. Then, with arms open like the wings of an eagle, he puts his mouth on that center and starts sucking. Next he looks up and spits out a stone of various colors that range from sepia to black, sometimes small, sometimes larger. He has removed the evil. I had a wart on the corner of one eye. After sucking up and spitting out my evil (a greenish pebble), Don Toño put his hands together as if in prayer. He sucked on my fingertips and spat a beautiful crystal into my palm. Then he gave me a beaded necklace with his four sacred colors. From him, one learns that the purpose of medicine is not only to cure, but also for the patient to see his or her own values revealed.
Soledad is a mature woman, brunette, very strong, an actress by profession, who keeps the doors of her apartment open all weekend giving free massages. She is a medium and is possessed by the spirit of Magdalena. When she saw me coming she recognized me, which did not surprise me since she is part of the world of theater and film. But this was not the reason why she saw me before seeing anyone else. She led me to the small room in which she practices, where there was a small white enameled iron cabinet, like those one sees in hospitals, a black leather massage table, and on the wall a photograph of a woman, looking very Mexican, whose face with strikingly bright eyes was familiar to me.
“She’s my lady, Magdalena. She was Don Juan’s teacher. You knew her; she told me about you. You went to see her because you had a shortage of energy due to a theatrical failure, right?”
Indeed! I had had so much trouble with the vanity of the actors, the meanness of the press, the little interest shown by the public, and the huge economic loss, that both my energy and my joy of living had deserted me. Someone recommended that I visit Magdalena for an energetic massage. I did so. I found her to be an indefinable woman. On the one hand she was primitive, with simple and direct folk wisdom, and on the other hand at times she revealed an educated mind, using phrases worthy of a university professor. The only way I can define her is to say that she was a like diamond, always showing some new and different facet. She had me undress and lie face down on her rectangular table. She showed me a large jar filled with a paste that looked like Vaseline, and told me that the Mayans of Quintana Roo had taught her how to make this ointment. She smeared it all over my back and also my neck and legs. There was no massage, just a gentle application of the paste. Then she put her hands on my head and prayed in a strange language. I felt lighter, more and more cheerful, and had a fit of the giggles. My depression and fatigue vanished. Before I left, I wanted to pay her. She stopped me. “I did very little. The ointment is what helped you, thank it.” I asked what it was made of and, smiling mischievously, she replied, “A few herbs that you wouldn’t know and a lot of marijuana ground into a powder and dissolved in hot petroleum jelly. Marijuana awakens joy in the body. The body transmits it to the spirit, and the spirit realizes that beneath all of your troubles, it remains intact, like a bright jewel. Then the weight vanishes because it was just a bad dream.”