Soledad confirmed Magdalena’s ability to adopt different personalities. On one occasion they had been walking past the Palace of Fine Arts, where a foreign dance troupe was putting on a program, and Soledad had complained sadly that she could not go to see them due to lack of money, because tickets were very expensive. Magdalena had told her to follow her: “They will let us in for free.” They were humbly dressed. Soledad felt self-conscious but followed her teacher. Magdalena changed her attitude, and in a few seconds she looked like a princess. One might have said that she was wearing an invisible evening gown. The doormen bowed to her and let the two women pass through. The ushers, with looks of fascinated respect, showed them to a box. They were able to watch the ballet in complete tranquillity, without anyone bothering them.
The recipe for the ointment was a secret. Soledad did not know that Magdalena had done me the honor of telling it to me. It is true that Soledad’s massages were excellent. Her hands, with the fingertips brought together with the thumb, were like snake heads; her arms like the undulating bodies of the snakes that she made slither over the skin, pressing until she seemed to be massaging the bones, not the flesh. At the same time, for every part of the body on which she lingered, she recited the name of some Nahuatl god and an oration addressed to that god. She divided the body into twenty sections, with twenty gods. At the belly (Kath), instead of naming a god, she sang the patient’s name, converting him or her into the center of the divine group. Then she spread on the paste and the marijuana took effect. It was a mystical euphoria. Disease and drunkenness were forgotten. The patient, feeling healthy, regained faith. When the effects of the ointment ceased, the deceived subconscious continued to believe that the body was healthy, so the healing was accomplished.
Don Rogelio is known as the Rabid Healer. He is an old man, thin, yellow skinned, toothless, dressed in black with a skull ring on each finger. He says, “People are envious, and they act on it. Jealousy entangles the spirit; envy causes damage. So they must be found and driven out.” He cites the Gospel of Luke, in which Jesus healed a man possessed by an unclean spirit, shouting at the demon with compelling authority, “Come out of him!”
“When the spirit is tangled, I follow the example of our Lord and liberate it by force.” Don Rogelio, standing in front of the patient, whips the air around the latter’s body with a red rooster, uttering thunderous cries of rage:
“Get out, you fucking bastard! Go! Go! Leave this Christian in peace!”
From him, one learns that one must proceed with total certainty and absolute authority. The slightest doubt causes failure. There is a Zen saying: “One grain of dust in the blue of midday darkens the whole sky.”
I attended the healings performed by Don Carlos Said at various times throughout the years. Beside Pachita he is one of the most creative healers, in constant development and adding new elements to his sessions. When I visited him for the first time he received me in a room of his large apartment in an old building not far from the city center. People were waiting in the lounge amidst vases of flowers and paintings depicting Christ. Many people told me that Don Carlos had cured them of dangerous cancers. He had a small altar, similar to those in Catholic temples. Beside it was an old Spanish-style wooden chair with red velvet cushions. According to Said, although we did not see her, his teacher, Doña Paz, was sitting there. This wise old lady saw the patients and referred to them as “little boxes”—forms containing different elements, illnesses, pains, and so forth. She dictated the remedies to him that would cure these evils. Years later, Don Carlos Said converted the second floor of his home into a temple.
Upon entering, the hopeful visitors find themselves among rows of chairs, arranged as in a church or a theater. There is room for about fifty people. Before them stands an altar, a platform with twelve steps leading up to it, at the top of which is a rectangular table with seven large altar candles burning on it. At each corner of the altar is a vase of chrysanthemums. The walls are covered with pictures, truly in good taste, showing the Stations of the Cross. Don Carlos officiates dressed in white, like a Mexican Indian, and is assisted by two women in white robes who wear no makeup, their hair cut short or else tied at the neck forming a bun. They resemble nuns. To the left of the participants is a row of mattresses where the patients lie wrapped in blankets with bouquets of fresh herbs applied to their bodies.
As soon as the prospective patient enters another assistant pours a little of a magical perfume called Seven Machos onto his hands from a black bottle, then rubs it all over the patient’s head and body, thus severing the ties that bind him to the outside. He is entering a completely sacred place. Whatever the sick person is wearing, it must all be brought into the temple. Nothing may be left outside in the ordinary world. What is left behind cannot be cured. Devils are waiting, and as soon as the sick person came back out, they would pounce on him again.
The patients are treated in strict order of their arrival. But there are some who have arrived at dawn, selected for special treatment. They are sitting on a bench, their bodies and heads covered by white blankets. Under the bench Said has placed a basin full of burning coals and incense. A dense, perfumed smoke rises from it, enveloping them.
The healer asks the patient to stand barefoot in front of the altar on a triangle of salt that has been dyed black, surrounded by a circle of white salt. The first thing he does is to put a thick piece of rope with a slipknot around the patient’s neck. It sends the message, “This sickness is your sickness, your responsibility. You do not come here to give it to me. Let your spirit recognize it and turn away from it.” To emphasize this Don Carlos folds his arms tightly around the patient with his large hands closed, making a cross, then shuts invisible latches in the air. He takes three raw eggs with his left hand and begins to rub the body of his patient with them. Suddenly, he wraps the eggs in a Mexican handkerchief, a red scarf. He keeps rubbing. Then he throws the package forcefully into a container and listens as the eggs explode inside the fabric. He has removed and destroyed some of the damage. Now, holding a knife, he begins to make fierce cuts in the air around the patient. He is cutting away mad desires, mad feelings, mad ideas. He sprays alcohol in a triangle and lights it on fire. When the flames subside he takes the rope, soaks handkerchiefs in the Seven Machos perfume, and unfolding them moves them over the patient from head to toe, using the perfume as a blessing. Before leaving, he gives the patient a paper cup with filtered water and a slice of lemon dipped in black seeds. The purification must not only be external but also internal. He ends the ceremony by giving the patient a heart-shaped sugar candy to suck on. During this complex act, which varies, adding new details for each illness, Don Carlos speaks as if in a trance, revealing that someone has stuck a doll full of pins or hired a negative sorcerer to send evil. Healing is a struggle against an external enemy in which the healer, assisted by invisible allies who gather around him, is always in danger from negative entities that may attack him for having removed the evil. All healers claim that if some heal and others do not, it is because magical operations are not enough: it is necessary for a change to occur in the patient’s mentality. Those who live in constant request must learn to give.