Maria Sabina, Mazatec Curandera

Part 2
... “We smoke cigarettes and we smoke the heart of our father.”
“I go in the world with nothing…”
She talks about taking care of the hens as a girl, protecting them from hawks and foxes in the hills. One day she was up there and saw the mushrooms, and remembered the old ones talking about them with great respect. “They called them 'little things' (cositas) or (holy ones) 'santos'. I call them los Niños Santos, 'the holy children'.” She chewed and ate some, and so did her sister; they were bitter and tasted like earth. “We got dizzy and started to cry. Later we felt better, and felt that the mushrooms were talking to us. We heard a voice tbat came from another world, a sweet voice but at the same time authoritative, like a father who loves his children. I felt that I spoke a lot and that my words were beautiful. I felt that everything around me was god. Later on I found out that the mushrooms gave wisdom, that they cure diseases… and that they had power, that they are the blood of christ.”
“You have to have respect for the Niños Santos.”

She talks about how hard she had to work all her life. She was courted but said she didn't need a man; she could work for herself. One suitor was a drunk. She finally agreed to marry him, but only on condition he moved to her house, she wasn't about to give up her mother and children and metate and other household goods. He often beat her. He lived with her for three years and they had three children. Only one daughter survived.

Part 3
Her husband was killed with machete for womanizing, by one of his lover's relatives.
She says her destiny was to be a wisewoman and do healings.
The camera shows her home altar with candles, a shrine to the Guadalupana, with a small crucifix in front, saints and other pictures, and a copal burner shaped like a chalice.

“The Niños talk to me and counsel me. … the book that was given to me. I'm the one who reads, the interpreter.” [This is so close to what another non-literate healer, Bellezza Orsini, told the inquisitors in Italy when she was imprisoned and tortured as a witch. For them books are a metaphor for receiving wisdom directly from the source.]

The people who come to her have been enchanted and [tested?] by spirits. She asks them, “What happened on the day you got sick?” ... When you sleep, the spirit wanders.
“The Niños Santos cure the wounds, the injuries of the spirit. The spirit is what makes you sick.”

The mushrooms are taken at night, in a velada. The ceremony is named after the many candles that are burning. Before she starts, she finds out the sick person's name. If they don't reveal the cause of the disease, she divines it. She lights the copal, gathers the mushrooms on a piece of paper, and holds it over the smoke. The sick person takes several, sometimes others in attendance too. She eats as well, chewing numerous mushrooms.

“I let myself be carried off. I don't resist, and I fall into a deep well, endlessly, and I feel a vertigo. When the Niños Santos work inside my body, I talk to them, I ask them the favor of blessing us and teaching us the way, the truth, the healing. That they will give us the power to dredge las [vollas?] of the evil, in order to end it. I tell the mushrooms, I will take your blood, I will take your heart, because my consciousness is pure, it's clean like you, I don't have any brujería [lit. witchcraft] or anger or lies, because I don't have any garbage or dust.”

Part 4
“Madre Santísima, Padre Jesucristo, Espiritu Santo, and Sts. Peter and Paul.
I am eagle woman, I am hawk woman, I am the clock woman, because you have your clock.I am the woman who examines, who looks inside. Santo Santo Padre Santísima Ay María María la Santísima. Speak to God to show you favor.”

Another woman chants to Maria Guadalupana, Magdalena, and Sabina. She too sings that she is eagle and hawk spirit woman.

Part 5
“How did this illness come about? How did you feel?”
They anoint the sick with San Pedro tobacco, and call on the “woman of the hearthstones”
María Sabina lights a cigar, has been mostly watching the others. Her sister is participating also; Maria is squeezing her leg.
“The illness comes out of the sick people who vomit. If they don't I vomit for them. Those who believe heal, those who don't, don't heal.”

A woman puffing on a cigar. They're saying Catholic prayers. The sister is vomiting. MS is striking her own hands together while looking at her. The moment arrives of putting out the many candles, and everyone looks into the deep darkness.

“I found out about this when I was 8 years old. I took them every day. It would have been different if I was a shaman or a an adult woman. There were plenty of them. I took them because it felt good. There under the cornfield we took them, both of us. We got to know them when an uncle of mine got sick. And a curandera who took mushrooms cured him.”

Part 6
“So we got to know them, talked with them and we liked it. We used to say, What would happen if we ate them? And we took them. Before, they were everywhere. They got big. But people did away with them. Then my sister Rosalia got sick and nearly died. Some people came and filled my house with eggs. I decided to cure her. I took like 30 pairs of niños santos. I would have been 25 years old then, or thirty since I had my three children. With the 30 pairs of niños, I cured my sister.”

“No school, no literacy, no Spanish. If there had been a school, I wouldn't have gone, because there was so much work to do. Later, important men came with papers and books and asked about my life.” She told them not to think it was just the mushrooms, because people could take them and go crazy.
”I use candles and flowers, calla lillies and gladiolas, and a copal burner.” They're wrapping up mushrooms in fig leaves. There are different kinds of mushrooms, the ones that grow in the [caño?], those that grow in dead wood, and the ones that grow in damp earth.” She's eating them.

Part 7
Pressing on a woman's foot. “When the niños are working inside my body, I pray and ask god to help me to cure. The saints guide my hands to press and massage them where it hurts. I speak and sing. I feel that it's beautiful. I say what the Niños Santos make me say. I'm a daughter of god, and chosen to be a wisewoman. In part of my house I have images of the saints. They help me to cure and to speak in the veladas. I clap and blow/whistle, and am transformed by that.”

Her sister is chanting. María smokes a cigar, a rooster next to her. She's talking about how they gave her a book. “It's not a book of lies, it's the truth. Whatever form the malevolent forces take, I'll fight them. If I told you what I've done in my life! It makes me laugh. Even makes you laugh! I just talked to San Juan. [something about her being more masculine] I can swim in the water. Only those of us who walk this road know how the world is. Talk to my son, he's an authority, his name is Raimundo. By the road he arrived on, by that he'll return.” She calls on him to bring his 13 tlacuaches (opossums) with him and to take them on his road. [The opossum reference is interesting because this is a very important animal in Maya religion, east of Oaxaca.]

“Wise in medicine, wise in herbs.” She's asking the spirits of mountains, rivers and rains for help. Find the spirits, carry out healing, paying them with cacao, eggs, and feathers. The women are holding a cock. They smudge him and let him go. They may have plucked feathers from him. She smudges an egg, passes it over the woman's cheek and face, puts it between her joined hands and closes them over it. The woman holds it over the copal smoke and does own feet and the rest of her body. (Is this her sister?) MS holds her shoulder and hands and pulls. Then slowly passes the egg along her leg and foot. “It's true what the language says, you're not sick, María Roberta. War on illness! come with guards and commanders.” [A series of varied clappings and outward gestures, throwing off the ill.] “I'm coming with all of them, all the tlacuaches, I have lots of them. I know how to drink and smoke-but this! Warrior woman. Look at this. How is it that I'm a wisewoman. I diagnose and examine. [Smokes a puff, continues clapping, notes that watchdog is barking.] Maria Roberta says she feels a little better. “Not enough. You talk.” MR: “What a great miracle…”

Daytime, women sewing. María Sabina talks about past attacks by her neighbors, beatings, two bullets still in her body. Robbers stealing from her house. Now she's old and sick, her back and chest hurt. “I ask god to bless me, and give goodness to this world where there's evil and discord. I feel I'll die soon. I've suffered. I lived poor, and poor I'll die. I know what death is: no sounds. God reigns there, and Benito Juarez.” [the Indian rebel leader who became first Indian president of Mexico]