14
About Brujer’a
and Curanderismo
With origins in Mexico and Spain, with Native American and Hoodoo influences, Brujería and Curanderismo represent a thriving and often underground magical system existing predominately in the southwestern United States. Like Hoodoo and Granny Magic, Brujería and Curanderismo focus on basic needs, with an emphasis on concepts such as healing, prosperity, love, fertility, retribution, and “a good death.”
Whereas Hoodoo is thriving in our current magical culture and Granny Magic has all but died out, Brujería is alive and well, but is quite secreted into the folds of Hispanic and Latin communities. Almost everyone within those social constructs knows where to find the local bruja or curandero, but an outsider new to the environment would rarely see a sign advertising their services.
Unlike Hoodoo and Granny Magic, Brujería and Curanderismo use gender-specific terms to identify those within their practices. Throughout the discussion of this fascinating magical construct, I use the male and female terms interchangeably. A brujo is a male witch and a bruja is a female witch. A curandero is a male healer and a curandera is a female healer. Brujería and Curanderismo are the spiritual practices themselves, representing dark and light sides of the same coin. Both genders fill the same roles in Brujería and Curanderismo.
There are many people who take exception to the idea that Brujería and Curanderismo are similar practices. There are certain distinctions that set them apart, but for the most part, their ambitions are the same and their methods are the same. I identify as a part of both, because I can walk with equal ease and capability in both fields.
Brujería and Curanderismo are not a set of techniques you can learn from a book or the internet. That may well be why there is such a dearth of information out there on Mexican magic. Brujería and Curanderismo are not about memorizing the right spells and reciting incantations in the correct way. This path is not about knowing what herbs to use for healing or what acupressure point to use for pain relief. Certainly all those components are important to the practice, but the primary influence in Brujería and Curanderismo is something that cannot be conveyed through print. It is a feeling.
The best way to sum it up is to say that one does not become a curandera or a bruja. One discovers that one is a curandera or a bruja. I became a rootworker, and a very competent one. My results in healing and conjuring were consistently good. The calling to Brujería and Curanderismo is a beacon to come home, not an avocation to adopt. There is a traditional saying in Brujería that is, “Once a brujo, always a brujo.” My belief is that the “always” of that statement extends not only to the future, but also to the past.
As I learned various techniques from my mentor, the feeling was quite different than it was when I learned to be a rootworker. I was not learning, but remembering, even though in this life I had not had those experiences. The many other brujos and curanderos I have met since I began my training all share a story like mine in that respect. Like a sneeze, the feeling is difficult to describe, but you instinctively know what to do when it happens.
When I work with my mentor and other brujas and curanderas, there is an energy flow that binds us together and creates circuits in which the divine power and personal energy, blended with the complimentary energy of the natural products we use, can travel. The erection of that power grid is not something a person can learn academically. It is an experiential process that defies description, and it is within that structure that the real magic of Brujería and Curanderismo happens.
The word Curanderismo derives from the Spanish word curar, which means “to heal.” Curanderismo is a sophisticated process of healing that goes far beyond the management of physical symptoms, to integrate spiritual and psychological components into the scope of treatment. Primary to a curandero’s diagnosis, treatment plan, and prognosis of any condition is the evaluation of the whole of a person. In consideration of injury, illness, or misfortune, the curandero performs a careful and detailed examination to ferret out psychological, social, environmental, or spiritual factors that contribute to the client’s condition, as well as the obvious physical manifestations of illness.
For the Mexican-Americans who engage a curandera, what we think of as magic—meaning the supernatural components of the healing process—is an integral part of the treatment of the “whole” person. The practitioner treating a woman who seeks out a charm to keep her husband from straying does so with the same evaluative and diagnostic approach they would apply to a man showing symptoms suggesting diabetes. A healer in these traditions views disadvantage and misfortune as part of the multi-leveled network of dis-ease. In curing the person, they consider socio-psychological components into the factors they must address within the treatment process.
In her book 1999 book, Woman Who Glows in the Dark, curandera Elena Avila says, “Curanderismo teaches that it is not enough to diagnose a physical problem, as so many modern medical doctors do, without also looking at what is going on in the heart and soul of the patient.”
Curanderismo is a vocation specific to healing on multiple levels and is culturally accepted and appreciated. Brujería, on the other hand, is magic, and never represents itself as anything else, even though healing is involved in that process as well. Brujería shares the perspective of Curanderismo in that it treats the client as a systematic whole. Brujos simply do so from the other side. A curandera sees a patient displaying symptoms in the physical world and considers whether there is also a spiritual or psychological component. The bruja sees a client displaying spiritual symptoms and considers whether there also is a physical or psychological component.
Most Mexican-Americans who work from a traditional perspective view the bruja and brujo with disdain, rather than showing them societal distinction and acceptance afforded to practitioners of Curanderismo. As with Granny Magic, a witch is not seen as a Pagan person who heals with herbs and engages supernatural energies through spellwork to achieve the desired outcome. That is, in fact, what a curandero does, almost to the letter. And yet neither a curandera nor her clients would ever dare consider what she does to be Brujería. A bruja is mistrusted and often ostracized, but is the last resort for those in crisis who are unable to find solutions elsewhere.
Most Mexican and Mexican-American cultures think of the brujos as those who possess the same powers to access the supernatural or divine energies that the curanderos engage to heal, but who do so with the full intention of inflicting evil and misfortune upon others. There is a presumption of malice and lack of moral or ethical restriction assigned to the bruja. This denigration seems to come from the willingness of the bruja to go to extreme measures if necessary on behalf of their client. The ability and willingness to do so often generate the idea that the motives of the brujo are always malicious, cold-hearted, or otherwise vicious.
The brujas and brujos I know, including myself, focus on determining the outcome most likely to improve the quality of life of the client and work aggressively to achieve that outcome. I tell my clients that we must approach Brujería as we do any medicine. We start at the lowest dose of the safest “medicine” and then increase the dosage or shift to a stronger “medicine” as needed. Another phrase I often use is “Don’t bring a gun to a knife fight,” meaning to tailor your magical firepower to the situation rather than wading in with guns blazing. Knowing what resources and techniques to use demands a complete evaluation of the client and their circumstances, with the same degree of care and discernment that the curandera would use.
People engage a bruja when there is no other hope, often under the cover of night, in secret to avoid others seeing that they did so. You do not speak to her if you see her on the street. You train your eyes straight ahead and cross to the other side if possible, even if she saved your life, your marriage, your job, or your children the week before. The bruja solves your problems for you and you always make certain your accounts are settled with her on the spot. As a bruja, I always tell my client that their account is settled and they owe me nothing once their bill is paid. This reassures them that they are not indebted to me on any level.
While the brujo is maligned, despised, and feared, the curandero is loved, revered, and more importantly, legitimized. Both use roots, herbs, eggs, fruits, stones, crystals, candles, animal and botanical products, and divinatory tools to help their clients. Both pray with and for their clients and use energy movement to create change in their clients’ lives. Both access supernatural forces from “beyond the veil” to intervene with and influence their client’s travails and desires.
Although there are still brujas and curanderas working throughout the United States, the practice is diminishing as modern health care choices become more available to the average Mexican-American.
When I began public practice as a bruja in my botánica in Roseville, California, a few years ago, I asked a dear friend of mine who is Hispanic if she felt I should use my title of “curandera,” rather than identifying as a “bruja,” to avoid the negative connotations some of the Hispanic community held against the brujas. She shrugged and said, “Those who matter will know and those who do not know do not matter” and advised that I stay with the label of bruja, which I mostly do. My personal blending of Brujería with Hoodoo also allows me to use the more generalized term rootworker.
Curanderismo is a set of ancient Mesoamerican medical and ritual practices that create proactive physical and spiritual healing on all levels. In modern parlance, we would call what Curanderismo does, “holistic healing.” Brujería is a systemized magical practice that uses rituals, herbs, and magical tools to access the supernatural world in such a way as to create physical, mental, emotional, sexual, social, or spiritual change that manifests in our material world.