Psychomagic: The Transformative Power of Shamanic Psychotherapy

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Having lived many years in Mexico City, I had the opportunity to study the methods of those called “witches” or “folk healers.” They are legion. Every neighborhood has one. Rising up in the heart of the city is the great Sonora market, which sells exclusively magic products: colored candles, dissected fish shaped like the devil, images of saints, medicinal plants, blessed soaps, tarots, charms, plaster sculptures of the Virgin of Guadalupe turned into skeletons, and so on. In some back rooms, plunged in semidarkness, women, each with a triangle painted on her forehead, rub bunches of herbs and holy water on those who come for consultations; they practice “cleansing” the body and the aura. . Professional doctors, being faithful sons of the university, despise these practices. According to them, medicine is a science. They would like to find a precise, ideal remedy for every illness, with each treatment distinct from all others. They want medicine to be one official method, with no variations, to be applied to patients who are treated only as bodies. None of them proposes to cure the soul. To folk healers, on the other hand, medicine is an art.

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