Heritage of Healing
This podcast episode delves into the traditional practice of curanderismo, focusing on the relationship between an apprentice and her master healer, La Maestra Michelle. Michelle explains the various types of curanderos and their specialties, which include massage, midwifery, herbalism, and spiritual healing. The episode also discusses the interchangeable use of terms like curandera, shaman, and medicine person, as well as the cultural roots and misconceptions surrounding these practices.
Listeners are cautioned that the podcast is for entertainment and not medical advice. The episode highlights the importance of lineage and the apprenticeship process in becoming a curandera, emphasizing the long-term dedication required to master the healing arts.
Heritage of Healing
Witchcraft or Healing Magic?
Is the season of witches upon us? As the air turns crisp with Halloween and Dia de los Muertos, we are all exposed to more of the mysterious tapestry of witchcraft. In this episode, we dissect how societal paranoia once turned the word "witch" into a weapon, particularly against women seen as different or threatening. This episode unearths the stories of those who were persecuted, tortured, and executed, alongside the powerful narrative of reclaiming this once-pejorative label as a badge of identity and pride.
Joining us is Michelle, a curandera from New Mexico, who offers her rich insights into the world of curanderismo and its historical ties to witchcraft. As a modern-day healer often labeled as a "brujo," Michelle shares how she and others harness their supernatural gifts to heal and affect change. Discover the empowerment and resilience found in embracing spiritual abilities and learn how these ancient practices are far from relics of the past, but rather vibrant, living traditions that continue to inspire and transform.
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It's the season of Halloween and Dia de los Muertos, but is it also the season of the witch? Witchcraft is recorded as far back as biblical documentation goes, which is thought to have dated somewhere around 931 BC. But are ancient healers like curanderas actually witches? Today we explore just that. Exploring the history of witchcraft is an enormous task. On one hand, you have academic perspectives where they explore how society reacted to witchcraft, and then you have documentation of people that practiced various forms of magic and everything in between. There's an article titled the History of Witches on Historycom which states that witch hysteria overwhelmed Europe in the mid-1400s, and this is after suspected witches were tortured. So some of these individuals confessed to witchcraft amidst the acts of torture, which then fueled aggressive witch hunts. You'll immediately think of Joan of Arc, who was burned at the stake for witchcraft. The evidence held against her included that she wore men's clothing, she cut her hair short and she rode a horse with one leg on each side, which society at that point deemed sexual misconduct, but only for women. Between the years of 1500 and 1660, an estimated 80,000 suspected witches were murdered in Europe.
Speaker 1:The Salem Witch Trials of 1692 marks famous witch hysteria in the Americas. Some assumed illness from mold or other hallucinogens may have sparked this. Now it's widely considered that it was just mass hysteria, stress and impossible expectations and trauma from moving to the new world that may have caused undue stress to the women who were initially accused of witchcraft. Salem is not the only place in the Americas to persecute perceived witches, but throughout New England witch trials had to be held in Salem, massachusetts. So that's why you hear about the Salem witch trials instead of the Massachusetts or New England witch trials. Of course there were acts of brutality that are notably documented throughout parts of Connecticut and Virginia, to name a few.
Speaker 1:Then, if we travel down to the southwest part of the US and Mexico, and likely other places as well my research here had to be brief we see the ancient ways of curanderismo being scrutinized as witchcraft. A very quick and shallow review of historical documentation on witchcraft will show a trend that often it was women, usually older, widowed, or women representing some marginalized group, that were targeted and labeled witch by societies all around the world Because of the danger this put them in. Being called a witch was no compliment. The ones who yielded any power, like the influence of Joan of Arc or that of a matriarchal, curandera were often perceived as extreme threats and were often threatened, questioned and or killed. But what's interesting is that ancient societies and others in touch with their lineage or identities have this amazing way of reclaiming everything, transforming terms meant to be slanderous as those of identity and pride. So let's ask our own curandera, michelle, to talk about witches.
Speaker 2:Here in Nuevo Mexico and in el norte de Nuevo Mexico, in the north of New Mexico, people like me, curanderas, medicine people, are very often considered brujos. And you might say what's a brujo? A brujo is a witch, male or female. Bruja is witch, female, but brujo encompasses both male and female. And so you might ask why did that come about?
Speaker 2:People like have supernatural gifts, supernatural powers to do certain things, and not everybody has the same gift and not everybody has the same level and capacity of gifts.
Speaker 2:But we have gifts or we can read a person's mind, or we can read their field, their energy, or see their energy, or see the future or the past, or create spells, manifest certain circumstances. We're called brujos. I think that when somebody has really tapped in to their gifts and their supernatural abilities and powers, I think then you become very powerful at quote unquote being a witch, and I think the more you practice something and you have the ability, let's say, to heal, the more you do that work, the more potent and the more powerful you are and the easier it is to do. And so it's outside of the box in the ways of operating, and so that makes you a real life witch. You have real powers and you have the capacities to do certain things with your command, with your items, if you will, with your charged items. You have the ability to do it and the proof is in the pudding so to speak.
Speaker 2:You have some people who they're very drawn to witchcraft and they're drawn to being a witch and they do things.
Speaker 2:You hear a lot about Wiccan people and people who are doing all kinds of supernatural things and are really into it, and for me it's awesome, even if you don't, even if a person like they don't have the gift really, but they're practicing and they're trying. I think it's, I think it's a beautiful thing. I think the one warning I would say and the one caution I would say is, if you're really not a witch and you're tapping into things that you're not fully understanding, you do need to have shields of protection, because you are opening up to other spirits and things and that are real and that are around, and so you do have to be somewhat careful. I've had that happen a lot, where people come and they're like help me, reverse this, because I did a, b, b and C or I was doing this and all of a sudden I have all of this supernatural stuff going on in my house, or bad luck, or this, and that my dreams became something, and so you have to handle it with respect and reverence.
Speaker 1:Speaking of the supernatural, you often see fantastical images in movies about witches who can change their shape and transform into an animal or a different looking person. What does curanderismo have to say about shapeshifting we?
Speaker 2:understand shapeshifting in our ways tied to the ability to manipulate energy. Ok, so think about that for a second. What does that mean? When you manipulate energy, you're imprinting your field into something so powerfully and so directly that you can shapeshift into another entity. You can shapeshift into a bird, an owl, you can shapeshift.
Speaker 2:Here in Nuevo Mexico, there are many witnesses who have seen balls of fire rolling down, including myself rolling down the road and those are witches their abilities to shift frequency. So let's say, you look at fire, fire is a very high frequency. It's not dense, you can put your hand through the fire, you can put your fingers through the fire, you can put your fingers through the fire, and so it's a high frequency. And so if I had the capacity to transform my frequency to that level, that octave of frequency, and command myself to be a ball of fire, that would be a certain kind of gift, supernatural gift, and a certain kind of ability. I personally do not have that ability in the physical level. I have done certain things in the dream time level in terms of that shape-shifting and turning into something else, creating wings, for example, and flying and stuff like that. But on this level I don't have it, but I do know people that do and they have that ability to do it.
Speaker 2:And in our ways here and in the Pueblo people and then the Northern New Mexico ways and in curanderismo, here everybody knows that owls are very often shapeshifters. They're very often shapeshifters and so they come. Crows are also another one, but the owls are very well known. That an owl comes. You might not be dealing with an owl, animal owl. You might be dealing with a quote, unquote, familiar, a guide or an actual witch that has shapeshifted into an owl to bring harm. And there's many stories.
Speaker 1:I bet this topic has you asking questions already, so I decided to ask one to La Maestra Do you have a story that you can share about shapeshifting? Do you have?
Speaker 2:a story that you can share about shapeshifting. I was exposed to a legal situation in which a man went into a sacred temple and he shapeshifted into a creature and he was threatening the people in this temple. This is a real story and it's documented with photographs and records police records anyway. He went into this temple and he started yelling at the people in the temple and and when the people started chasing him, he transformed. He shapeshifted into an animal that had a tail off the back and his feet were turned from human feet into hooves, and he ran from this temple into a river area nearby and went into that river and disappeared In the process of this. The police were called. There was photographs, documents, photographs of the feet shifting from feet into the in mud. It was muddy, it had been raining and turning into hooves, and so this was the talk of the town, of this particular place in which this happened and the shapeshifter. This shapeshifting is very familiar to our people.
Speaker 1:So what can we do with this newfound knowledge? Perhaps you're looking at owls a bit differently, or maybe there's something more extreme, like the story Michelle just told, but what can we do to put a barrier between us or to have some kind of protection against a shapeshifter that we might be encountering?
Speaker 2:If it's a shapeshifter and it's a very powerful witch, you need to recognize one that somebody's trying to bring you bad. They're trying to bring bad energy, bad juju, bad magic, black magic to you and you would want to clear that out in any way that you would clear out somebody doing mal to you. So our methodologies would be we would have if somebody came to me with that, I would do a platica with them, I would talk with them, and a platica is not just a conversation, it's spirit talk and I'm transferring energy and reading energy of that person when I'm doing the platica, even if it's over the phone. And so you would do a platica and then there would be a limpia, a cleanse, and that cleanse could range from the uses of fire, smoke and removal, internally or on the energy field, of whatever was placed on you, doing the banyos and then aligning the person's field and mind into their center, making sure that no other energies are attached to them and just making sure that they're in the integrity of their own selves. And that's a very basic, typical way in which we would do that.
Speaker 2:Oftentimes people are so funny, they want to know who did that. Inquiring minds want to know who is that witch? Who is the person doing it? Why are they doing it? What did they do? How did they do it? And of course that's normal.
Speaker 2:But we don't want to connect in our thought to a witch and their black magic. We want to disconnect that because then they have access to you in the mind. Once they have access to you through the mind, they've got access, easy access. So let's say, I do all of my work and my traditional ways to sweep you, to cleanse you, to get you right, and then I tell you oh, that was Maria who did that. Oh, I know Maria, that bitch. And there it is. There it is, you're connected. You walk out the door and you're thinking about Maria and you've just opened the door again. So you really have to be clear about when you come and you do that kind of sacred work, that kind of energetic work, that kind of ancestral work, that you are done, you're done. You have your mind made up that you're done. You don't necessarily need to know and be thinking about them.
Speaker 1:Taking the time and doing the deep work of healing cannot be minimized. It's so important and sometimes it does require at least a little bit of magic to help you along your way. So, considering what time of year it is, I asked Michelle does it make any difference to be doing your magic or your work around Halloween time?
Speaker 2:We believe yes, because the energies and the veil is opening. Everything is more potent during this time. So we believe that this is a very good time to manifest and create. Do your spells, if you will. When I say that word sometimes, let's say a Christian or a Catholic they might say, oh, this is all stuff of the devil. And I just want to bring it back to Jesus Christ and I want to say he transformed the water into wine. He was a great quote, unquote magician. He did all kinds of things. He healed people, he made the blind see, he did all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 2:What is that? Yes, you take out your religious belief and you can just say, wow, this being showed us how we can be and how we can be operating. Not everything is of the devil. Understanding and reading, reading a tarot card or reading the leaves, or doing a limpia with a huevo or with the flowers or with the yivas, and shaking the energy and transforming the energy, using music all of that, doing our rituals, our ceremonies that is not necessarily evil. Those are just ways, those are just tools in which we can learn and grow and command and manifest and create, positive or negative If it's of the devil, if you want to say that in those words, then that's of the darkness, and the darkness that's again where we come back into the creation of where are we at, what are we coming from, what do we want to create and what do we value as individuals?
Speaker 1:As we wrapped up the show, I asked Michelle what should our Halloween listeners leave this episode with?
Speaker 2:Realize the magic that you are. You're a magical being. We're not here to do the things that we're doing and participate in the stupid paradigms that we're participating in. We're here to create magic. Yeah, it's beautiful. It's beautiful. I would also say, which is fun pay attention to the owls. See what you feel when you see an owl. Pay attention to the owls. See what you feel when you see an owl. Pay attention to the signs of that owl. Do you sense something is watching?
Speaker 1:over you.
Speaker 2:Do you sense something? Is bringing you an omen, or do you sense something?
Speaker 1:else. That is all for this week. As always, we ask if you got anything out of this show. Please consider rating us and leaving us a review on iTunes and, most importantly, please share the episode with anyone who you think might enjoy it. If you want more from us, you can find us at Kurandera Podcast on Instagram, and we will see you here next week.