2024-01-12 23:46:46
NOTES: Traditional Mexican Medicine
Javier Hernand Garcés
January 12, 2024
When I was studying Naturopathy at the Popular Autonomous University of Veracruz, we studied a topic within traditional medicines: Clean.
During the previous semester we had read Gonzalo Aguirre Beltrán, Medicine and Magic, the process of acculturation of the colonial structure, 1957. We had literally classified La Médica as part of magical medicine; Later, as the semesters went by, I was able to classify it as energy medicine: it is precisely what it means to me, it has my greatest respect and I bear witness to its energetic medical process.
Alfonso J. Aparicio Mena of the Anthropological Research Institute of Castilla y León. University of Salamanca. He tells us regarding the clean in his article: “The clean in Mesoamerican ethnomedicine”:
“The cleanse is a physical-symbolic rebalancing procedure used in Mesoamerican and Amerindian ethnomedicine. It comes from ancient times and relates the person to himself and his environment (physical-natural, social-community and cultural-religious-spiritual). Through cleansing, the aim is to harmonize the person with their environment, eliminating and expelling from them the elements (physical, social and spiritual) that cause their illness or influence it.
Preventing, healing, re-healing and preventing once more is a constant work of the medicine man/woman, traditional doctors of the peoples of the world, they have always existed in human history. Gonzalo Aguirre Beltrán refers to Father Sahagún on several occasions, and to the Great Nagual in this way:
“…according to Sahagún, he was dressed like a Huaxteca with matted hair that falls downwards, disheveled, parted in the middle, with a gold shield on his forehead and with a gold earring and a feather staff. The priest invokes the Great Nagual, and asks him to exercise magic on the rain.” (Ortiz, Garcés).
The natural healing of the human body itself, a fundamental principle of Naturopathy, was practiced by imagining the body healthy, free of perverse entities, cleansing it precisely, is one of them. Its detractors consider it sorcery without thinking regarding the energetic part, which they cannot see with eyes full of acquired dogmas. “…It would be better to take an Alprazolam pill,” a woman told me, while she was consuming her benzodiazepine; It was her path to healing in any case.
The thing is that natural medicines have been repressed by fear, by not being able to patent plants, by ignorance, by imposition of beliefs, and in recent years by obtaining a better share of the resources derived from the sale of drugs lethal to human health.
“…Alprazolam costs less than a clean one”, the truth is that each traditional medicine has its own culture, Traditional Mexican medicine was formed without the help of Europe, at least before the arrival of the conquerors.
“…Other peoples (Amerindians, Asians, Africans) had no Greek culture, no Christianity, no Judaism, no Renaissance, no French-style Enlightenment. And that did not mean, nor does it mean, that they were (or are) less than Europeans, or Westerners. It is a clear political question” (Alfonso J. Aparicio)
The pre-Hispanic nations needed nothing from European cultures. The mixture and its dominances would be reflected in the Mixture Man, the mestizo. Current Traditional Mexican Medicine practices Cleansing to heal ailments of the soul.
The ritual: whoever directs it has to be a person knowledgeable regarding the tradition, the curandero, the healer, the medicine woman or man, shamans and others come to my attention, they are part of the pre-Hispanic culture, the ceremony in Yes, it is led by the one who, over the course of life, learned from his or her ancestors. Cleaning is practiced every day, yes, this tradition is pre-Hispanic and has nothing to do with Europe. In any case, cleansing is a method of positive physical and psychological tuning with the purpose of achieving purification and mental peace often denied by the difficulties of the economy, finances, corruption and bad governments. Cleansing tools can be plants in general, herbs, flowers, essential oils, floral waters, precious and semi-precious stones, eggs, glass vessels, pieces of cloth and songs that are repeated among the most important ones. It is the approach to the perceptual consciousness of the healthy body and the arrival of the desired fortune. It is contact with the threshold of a possible reality.
Aguirre Beltrán classifies the cleanings as methods of divination. Let us remember that the African guessed with the bones, the Americans with the grains of corn and the Spanish with the beans.
The cleanses diagnose, divination methods arise, the reading of corn, the reading of the body, clairvoyance. One of the practices related to cleanliness is precisely protection: energy shields to prevent bad intentions from the consultant’s environment. Cleansing can also be involved in spiritual massage, with which the fluidic world is connected.
“…the so-called fluidic massages or spiritual massage. It is a technique that connects the fluidic world – the spiritual and imperceptible for human analysis – with ours. As is evident in everyday life, fluids have the ability to take the shape of their containers. In this context, a fluidic element molds to our body, interacting with our thinking and character. Of neutral, pure condition, said fluid can become soaked in negative or positive qualities in the material world.” (Aguirre Beltran)
To return our fluids to their purity, the intervention of another fluidic element (a spirit) is necessary to act in a due healing process. This is a technique as ancient as it is current – although its name has changed in numerous versions, but in the end it is a clean one.” (rituals-cleansing-healing-spiritualism-Mexico-shamans)
In any case, cleansing as an energetic method of spiritual and physical recovery exists and is a possibility on the path to healing. Naturopathy, Natural Medicine sees energy medicines, such as cleansing, as a path to healing.
On December 6, 2018, following a series of vicissitudes, I was finally able to meet with the lady, a medical woman, who performed the procedure. He had spoken to her on the phone. The truth is that there was not a good interaction on the phone, this all changed when we met in person.
I arrived at his house, a beautiful house with a lot of local art, I asked him regarding many things, in five minutes we were already friends, he told me that he had had a false perception of who I was. We go to the place where the cleaning is done. There is fire, which is produced with the 96-degree alcohol that I brought her, the lady reads the fire, “your fire must be healed,” she told me; I left the candle on the altar following the entire ceremony that lasted two hours was over, I learned a lot regarding myself, regarding what she touched me in this world. I understood my cold, I understood my aversion to extreme heat. I decided not to reveal the cleaning step by step, I consider it very personal and it would be useless for me to relate it because it is different for each person.
I decided that if someone wants to know regarding the Clean, they should go through the entire process.
Today I feel much better; From time to time I will return to receive this energy medicine. I thank this person, whose name I will not say, that is how she prefers it. She accepted my proposal to get a clean, that was the most important thing. With all due respect, with all the patience that the moment generates, because to those who I proposed to do a cleanup, some responded with ridicule, others did not answer and others were so afraid that they preferred to hang up the phone. Lady Medicine was so kind that I have the best impression of her wisdom and compassion.
Javier Hernand Garcés has a Law Degree, a Master in Environmental Law from the European Community and a Degree in Naturopathy.
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#clean #Jornada #Veracruz
