I never understood how the ritual healed bodily trauma, but my family’s firm belief in Catholicism and reliance on holistic methods of healing convinced me that my mother’s health would improve to a pain-free state. In my family, the Spanish word ojo translates to “negative energy” or “bad luck” in English. The egg was supposed to extract the illness, or ojo. My great-aunt passed the egg down to my mother’s toes, making the sign of the cross on each extremity. A bottle of holy water and a wooden cross sat on the nightstand. She held the egg above my mother’s forehead to make the sign of the cross while repeating the Our Father and Apostles’ Creed prayer. A few candles were lit in the dark, curtained bedroom. 3 Essentially, a curandero or curandera removes mental, emotional, physical and spiritual illnesses or imbalances.įrom the upstairs hallway of our home, I watched my great-aunt prepare for the cleansing. These terms are derived from the Spanish verb curar, which means to heal. 1 In our Mexican-American culture, the unbroken egg in conjunction with prayer is “thought to absorb negative forces.” 2 This practice was an ancient cleansing act used by a curandero or curandera. My grandmother called her sister, my madrina at the time, and asked that she come perform the ritual - “the egg,” as we called it - to treat my mother immediately. My mother, sick and feverish in bed, hadn’t kept food down for days. In the early 2000s, my great-aunt performed a holistic healing act on my mother with an egg.
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