Gilding the Stephenie
Here's a story about Oaxaca...
Stephenie asked about local healers, and Demetrio's aunt is a curandera.
Well, I'm always up for an adventure (especially if I'm not going it alone...) so I asked if I could go along. Eric, our tour guide, drove and Demetrio acted as interpreter and local guide.
When we got there (oh why didn't I write down her name???), her house was like a typical house in Oaxaca. The tall masonry fence is right next to the sidewalk, and there is a sliding gate that allowed the van to pull right in to the yard. The house has a courtyard in the middle, and all the rooms open onto it.
The yard was quite large, unmown but not overgrown at all. I got the impression that they have quite large gatherings in that yard. Demetrio led us to an open garage-type area. (hmm- I may be showing my cultural biases here.)
The curandera invited Steph to go first. Steph sat in a chair, and the Curandera rubbed her head, shoulders, arms and legs with an egg, as if she were giving Steph a massage. After that, she broke the egg into a glass of water.
After swishing us all over with damp eucalyptus leaves, as if to cleanse us, she'd read the egg to divine what was wrong with us, physically. She could see that I have digestive troubles, but read them in the hiatal hernia area instead of the lower intestine/bowel area. And she didn't say anything about my back problems.
Interestingly enough, she did prescribe a tea for me, that is the same herbs as the herbal laxatives I already take every day! (on a doctor's advice, no worries.) And just remembering it all gives me the same kind of goose bumps, the kind I get when I hear a great piece of music.
The session ended with the curandera spitting a mouthfull of water and rubbing alcohol on us, front and back. It wasn't as icky as it sounds, I promise! More like being spritzed with a spray bottle, and feeling very cooled.
Stephenie went back again, on the advice of the curandera, and that's when she got the gold plaster. Doesn't it look cool? It did wash off in the shower the next day.
posted by Ruth S. @ 3:21 PM
2 Comments:
My mother-in-law does the egg thing too, though she doesn't read it like your lady did...I never did understand why she cracked it into a glass of water, but she did say not to use the glass to drink from again.
Darn! My silly temporary tattoo pales in the face of this.
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