My First Encounter with a Bruja and a Curandero
Photo by Sharon McCutcheon
The pain in my knee made walking difficult. It was pain from an old injury a couple of years before when a wave hit me sideways while I had my leg firmly planted in the sandy bottom of the ocean as we waded in a surfer’s sea. Also, I was overweight, and the knee was taking the brunt. Walking for an extended period had become very difficult, and so, on our journey home from the Caribbean Coast of the Yucatan that particular year, I’d suggested that we take a side trip to Catemaco in the state of Vera Cruz, Mexico, known for their curanderos (medicine men) and brujas (female witches), to find a healer.
I had come to believe in the power of stones after success with their healing energies the past few years, but I had none with me at that time, so I thought why not try a talisman from a bruja or a curandero? This inspired the trip to a village near a large lake of the same name: Laguna Catemaco. I wanted to find a talisman that would help take my pain away.
My husband and I had been to the village a couple of years before to explore the outer regions of verdant and lush rain forests and had spent time at some retreats and spas near the lake, but so this trip was to be just for a healing expedition.
Unfortunately, Mac, my other half, wasn’t excited about the prospect of finding a healer among the many who hung up their ‘shingle’ to make a few pesos. He wanted to help me but was not buying into the method I’d chosen. Mac was willing to stay one night to pacify me, but I thought we’d need at least two nights. I didn’t know how long my search would be and I thought we needed to recoup from the horrible drive we’d experienced just to get to the village since the roads in this part of the country were known as some of the worst.
Therefore, with our differences of opinions, and with the stress from the drive, we had our second big fight since we’d been together. I felt hurt, because my husband didn’t understand my desire to be free of pain using unusual methods, and the length I would go to in order to get it, and he didn’t understand why I didn’t understand his reasons. Words and tears ensued. But, as was our way, we settled down and went on with my plan to find a healer, and hoped that our emotions would settle.
We didn’t want to make an appointment for a healer through our hotel, as we thought they’d likely direct us to one that would share the money with the hotel. That made me think they could likely be imposters, so we went searching on our own, using my gut feeling for knowing the right person when I saw him or her.
Wanting to get some of the natural bottled water from a mountain spring we’d experienced on our previous visit, my husband walked up the hilly road with a man who said he would take him to a place with the water, while I meandered along the not-so-steep sidewalk, looking in windows, searching for a sign. I was having no luck, and I was not enticed by the cheap-looking baubles in the windows.
I began feeling a bit desperate, with time ticking by and my pain flaring, when I saw a long cement staircase going up the side of a building across the street that had things on chains or ropes hanging on a rod beneath the roofline of the upper landing. Maybe some are the talismans I need, I hoped, and hobbled across the road to the stairs to investigate. Steps were definitely not my friend at that time, and the throbbing in my knee from the exertion of the climb was agonizing. This exertion better be worth it, I muttered to myself.
When I reached the landing, huffing, and puffing, and began looking at the display of hanging things, I heard a voice behind me.
Photo by Olga Kudriavtseva
“Usted necesita una limpieza!” I turned to see a short, slightly chubby, pleasant-looking woman with an apron over a dress looking at me.
Her words were said as a statement, not a question. I knew enough Spanish to think that she was telling me I needed a cleaning.
“¿Como?” I asked, wanting to hear her words again.
She smiled, repeated what she’d said, but posed it as a question this time.
“¿Usted necesita una limpieza?”
After I responded, “Si, por favor,” thinking, maybe a cleansing is all I would need, she led me into a tiny room not much bigger than an average closet, except square, and had me sit on a chair in the middle of a pentagram painted in red on the concrete floor. Ah, a bruja! But while sitting over a pentagram with a witch at my side, uncertainty took over.
Did I do the right thing? Was I foolish in looking for a bruja to help me? When the realization hit me that Mac didn’t even know where I was, I suddenly felt very apprehensive. I had no idea what to expect, especially when the woman started spewing questions in rapid Spanish that I could not answer.
I had to tell her, “Lo siento. No comprendo. No hablo mucho Español,” afraid that she would not want to work with me, or worse, take advantage of me and my pocketbook.
I felt a bit relieved when she smiled and reassured me.
“No hay problema,” she said as she went about getting ready for her ritual.
From a small cupboard, she retrieved an empty glass, a bottle of water, an egg, and a purple candle which she sat on the small table in the corner. She then brought out an amber-colored jar and sat it beside the other items.
After draping a towel around my shoulders, she opened the jar and poured out some kind of aromatic oil into her hand then rubbed her hands together. She began smoothing her oiled hands over my hair, face, shoulders, arms, on my lap, and down my legs.
This is messy! I mused, knowing I’d need a shower as soon as I returned to our hotel room and a change of clothes.
The woman then had me stand. She lit the purple candle and began waving it and the smoke over my body while chanting incantations. Even though I could not understand the words, I was calmed by the cadence and her soft voice. I was suddenly feeling good about the experience. It was certainly interesting if nothing else. After finishing with the candle, she guided me back onto the chair. I felt my mind accelerate into happiness mode. I was loving this.
The woman then gave me the glass that she had filled half full of water to hold in one of my hands then placed the egg in the other. As I sat holding the items, she waved her hands around, up and down in front of me while she chanted more indecipherable words, then took the egg and the water glass from me to sit back onto the table. She cracked the egg’s shell and poured its contents into the water.
As she held the glass up to the light to look at the contents, she said some things that contained the words ‘muy mal’ among many others I didn’t understand, but I got the gist of her reactions to what that egg in the water represented. It was something very bad.
About that time I heard a familiar voice outside yelling my name. My husband was trying to find me. I was thrilled at his timing. He could translate.
I yelled down to let him know that I was upstairs, and he was soon my savior. I was not going to be uninformed for long. Not understanding the woman’s words, made me feel unsure of everything she was doing, except what I was surmising. Comprehension of her actions would fortify my good feelings tremendously.
After giving me a relieved hug, I explained what was happening so far and asked him to ask the woman what the egg in the water meant. She showed him the results, which was cloudy water with clumped and cloudy albumen and yolk. She explained that the egg represented what she had just cleansed from my system. Ick! But this assured me that I was on the road to recovery.
She asked if I was interested in having her husband, the curandero, find out why I needed cleansing and what more he could do to help me heal.
I said, “¡Si! ¡Por favor!” And she left, I assumed, to tell the curandero that he had a customer.
After a short wait, a man about my height with broad shoulders wearing a white shirt came through a door from behind the broom closet we’d been in. He sat at a large table out in the waiting room near the landing and asked me to sit across from him. He spoke no English either, so Mac was ready to translate as best he could.
Photo by Edz Norton
The serious-looking man took a deck of tarot cards from a drawer, had me touch them before he shuffled, which he repeated three times, before placing the cards face down neatly in rows. I was to then choose which card I wanted to see. After each choice, the man deciphered the meaning, and on this went for a while.
The man told me these things: “Tu esposo te molestó esta mañana.” I could even translate this one. Your husband upset you this morning.
Whoa! How could he know this?
I was upset with my brother, which was the truth, but how could he know?
I had been hurt in the ocean.
Wow!
And then he said that my weight was hurting my knee. Not new news to me.
The meaning of his words was familiar but from a deck of cards? I was dumbfounded by his revelations.
The bottom line I was hearing from him was: stress was causing these problems. The extra weight I was carrying could also be caused by stress, he’d said, and so, get rid of the stress, and all would be good!
Great! At least there were no major diseases or malignancies!
The woman gave me a pendant with an eye on one side and some other symbols, letters, and numbers on the other, telling me to wear it for a year, and to never take it off. That was so they each could send out prayers for my healing every month. They also gave me two wine bottles full of, what looked like, weeds in wine, and told me to drink an inch of it from a glass every night.
We thanked the couple for their time and paid them for the cleansing, the chain and pendant, and the two bottles of vino with weeds. It was a cheap price for a doctor’s visit, especially since I walked out with no more pain in my knee, and the heaviness of my heart from that morning’s argument was lighter. I agreed that we didn’t need to stay another night. I was cured!
I pondered the moral of this story for a long time and decided a few things:
It pays to have an open mind;
It’s exciting to try new experiences, no matter how unorthodox;
And a person shouldn’t negate other means of doing something, like healing, just because it was out-of-the-ordinary, or unbelievable.
I’m now a believer in the unbelievable.
Read two of my healing stories related to this one: