Mal de Ojo - A Story About Healing

Woman in the right-hand side: my Grandmother. One of many brujas in my family.

My grandmother was the healer in our family. The healing arts were passed down to her from her mother and her mother's mother, going back to a lineage and history that has since been lost and forgotten. They traded in their oral traditions, stories, and values when they arrived in this country, for this foreign land had no tolerance for ideas that weren't already pre-packaged and sold at scale.

And yet our traditions prevailed in our private sanctuary - our home. Behind closed doors and away from prying eyes, we continued to unfold in our own unique way. Despite being fed a narrative that we weren't welcomed, we were disposable, and we would never belong, all while taking the pieces of us they found entertaining, such as our culinary artistry, our language, and our sexuality, we continued to heal each other through our community and oral traditions.

By the time I was old enough to absorb these customs, they had been diluted, presented to me as nothing more than lore and bedtime stories. But I continued to see pockets of our ancestral traditions in my grandmother, a woman who had lived a rich but ordinary life, a life steeped in adversity, hope, suffering, and love.

I remember when she would cure me of "mal de ojo", or as the gringos say evil eye. I will never know where she learned this ceremony, but I do know this was an act of love. And that is all that matters. I went through this process with her hundreds of times, mostly away from my mother, too brainwashed by American culture to appreciate this unfolding. So every time I got sick of the common cold or a fever, she would take me away and we would journey together.

The ceremony went something like this.

Preparation

• 1 egg

• 2 toothpicks or similar sticks

• Faith

Ceremony

She would take an egg out of the fridge and set it to room temperature. She'd also take a clear glass and fill it halfway with water. The egg was, in essence, a tool - the magnet that would be used to absorb the negative energy from me.

To begin the Mal de Ojo ritual she'd direct me to lay down on her bed. Her sheets always smelled of Suavitel and smoke, a combination that penetrated the senses, and like an anesthetic, allowed me to sink into the sheets.

Beginning at the top of my head and making her way down to my feet, she would rub the egg on my body while forming a sign of the cross. She would do this over and over as if painting my body with her prayers. She liked to pray to la Virgen Maria. I'd like to think it was because she knew if anyone was equipped to take in pain from another was a Mexican woman. 

She would do this with the utmost patience, making her way through my entire body, channeling the Santa Maria, using the egg as her vessel to channel energy out of my body. When she was done, she would take the warm egg and crack it in the glass of water. She'd take two toothpicks and forming a cross, would layer them at the top of the glass. 

My favorite part was the interpretation. The summary of results. The analysis.

If the egg sat clear and serene, we could eliminate brujeria as a possible reason for my misfortune. We would default to less exciting options such as the common cold, poor nutrition, or a heavy soul. However, if the egg looked afflicted, tumultuous, aggressive or heavy, then I had ojo. My grandmother would turn into an investigative journalist at this point. She would begin by cataloging everyone who may want to cause me harm. I was probably ten at this point, so the list wasn't too long. It was mostly girls from school who liked the same boy I liked, or the occasional teacher who made fun of me in class for speaking Spanish.

Most of the time, we would talk for hours. I would give her my interpretation of the world, and she would listen. Really listen. In many ways, we were the same age.  I would tell her about my American life I didn't quite understand, and she would go back in time and reminisce about her life in Mexico. There were many stories, all a collection of memories too foreign for me to understand.

But in this exchange of lives, we made use of one another. I know now it was her stories that cured me. The antidote was friendship and connection. She learned to assimilate in this country and I learned my origin. She may not have cured me off evil spirits and negative energy, or maybe she did. But most importantly, she cured me of my loneliness and separateness. My grandmother, the most ordinary of women, found a cure most of our society is still searching for. Since then, I have learned to find answers and cures in the places we rarely examine - our history.