Magic and Power in Brujería: Tales of Mexican Witchcraft

Part I – Roots of the Craft

Chapter 1 – The Birth of Brujería: From Pre-Hispanic Rituals to Colonial Shadows

Long before the word brujería entered the Spanish language of Mexico, the land pulsed with a complex network of spiritual beliefs, rituals, and magical practices. The people who inhabited these territories—Mexica, Maya, Zapotec, Mixtec, Purépecha, and countless other nations—saw no sharp divide between the sacred and the everyday. To plant maize was an act of magic. To heal with herbs was to invoke divine breath. The wind, the rain, the night sky—each was a living presence to be honored, persuaded, or feared.

The Pre-Hispanic Roots of Power

In these early civilizations, magic was not a marginal practice but a cornerstone of social and spiritual life.

• Priests (tlamacazque) served as mediators between humanity and the gods, conducting elaborate rituals with incense, blood offerings, and chants that resonated through temple courtyards.
• Healers (ticitl) mastered an encyclopedic knowledge of plants—cempasúchil for guiding the dead, copal resin for purification, peyote for visions.
• Diviners (tonalpouhque) read the sacred calendar, interpreting the cosmic patterns to advise on wars, marriages, and the timing of planting seasons.
• Nahuales—men and women believed to have the power to transform into animals—were both revered and feared. They were protectors, hunters, and, sometimes, bringers of illness.

Magic was not merely superstition; it was an integrated technology of the spirit, tied to cosmology, agriculture, medicine, and governance.

The Coming of the Cross

When the Spanish arrived in the early 16th century, they brought not only swords and muskets, but a faith whose priests saw the indigenous gods as demons, the healers as sorcerers, and the sacred rituals as witchcraft in need of eradication.

The friars who followed the conquistadors burned codices, toppled temples, and outlawed ceremonial dances. But magic is resilient—it survives by changing shape. Unable to practice openly, the old ways began to hide behind the images of Catholic saints and the rites of the Church.

• The rain god Tlaloc found new life in the figure of San Isidro Labrador.
• Tonantzin, mother of gods, reappeared cloaked as the Virgin of Guadalupe.
• Offerings once given to mountain spirits were placed at church altars instead.

This was the birth of syncretism—a blending of two worlds into a single, layered spiritual practice. The word bruja, once meaning “witch” in the European sense, began to describe indigenous practitioners who wove together the old magic with Catholic iconography.

The Colonial Shadows

Under colonial law, witchcraft was both a spiritual crime and a legal one. The Spanish Inquisition in Mexico targeted not only those accused of sorcery but also anyone practicing medicine outside sanctioned channels. Court records reveal cases of women accused of “flying at night,” men charged with calling storms, and healers condemned for using herbs with “diabolical powers.”

Yet, behind closed doors, the practices persisted:

• Herbs still boiled in clay pots under whispered incantations.
• Midwives still placed obsidian knives under beds to cut the cord between mother and malevolent spirits.
• Families still called on brujos to protect their land from theft, crop failure, or envy.

Colonial brujería became a hidden dance between fear and survival—one that kept the core of pre-Hispanic magic alive, even under the gaze of the cross and the sword.

The Legacy of the Birth

The fusion of indigenous ritual with Catholic imagery created something neither fully European nor fully native, but entirely Mexican—a living tradition with roots deep in both soil and shadow. Brujería as it emerged from this era carried two opposing faces: the healer who cures with prayer and herb, and the sorcerer who binds with curse and candle.

What was once temple ritual became kitchen magic. What was once public ceremony became a whisper over an altar in the corner of a darkened room.

This chapter of history is not merely an origin story—it is the seed from which all later forms of Mexican brujería would grow, nourished by the memory of the gods and the quiet persistence of the people.

Chapter 2 – When the Saints Spoke: Catholicism and the Magic of Syncretism

When Spanish missionaries fanned out across New Spain after the conquest, they came with crucifixes in hand and catechisms on their tongues, determined to convert the “pagan” peoples of Mexico. Yet, as they preached the stories of saints and martyrs, something unexpected happened: the saints began to take on new voices, new faces, and, to the indigenous imagination, old familiar powers.

Syncretism—the blending of two religious systems into a single, seamless practice—did not occur by accident. It was survival. For the indigenous peoples, adopting the outer form of Catholic devotion offered protection from persecution, while quietly safeguarding the essence of their ancient beliefs. For many Spaniards, the conversion seemed successful—after all, the churches were full, the people knelt before the Virgin, and processions wound through the streets. But beneath the surface, the saints had begun to speak in the tongues of the old gods.

From Temple to Altar

When missionaries told the story of San Isidro Labrador, the humble farmer who prayed for rain and fertile harvests, indigenous farmers recognized an echo of Tlaloc, the rain-bringer, and Chicomecóatl, the maize goddess. When they knelt before the Virgin Mary, they saw Tonantzin, revered mother of creation, whose temple once stood on the hill of Tepeyac—the same hill where, in 1531, the Virgin of Guadalupe was said to appear.

For the people, these were not contradictions but continuations. The saints became masks through which the old gods could remain present in the daily lives of the faithful.

• San Miguel Arcángel took on the warrior strength of Huitzilopochtli.
• San Rafael mirrored the healing wisdom of the ticitl.
• Santa Bárbara carried the storm-wielding might of ancient lightning deities.

The Language of Prayer and Spell

Indigenous ritual specialists adapted their incantations into Catholic prayers, sprinkling Ave Marías and Padre Nuestros between ancient invocations. Candles—already present in pre-Hispanic fire ceremonies—were blessed in churches before being used for protection, love spells, or curse-breaking. The rhythm of the liturgical calendar became intertwined with the agricultural cycle: planting, harvest, and the honoring of ancestors.

A healer might invoke San Cipriano—himself a figure with a legendary background as both sorcerer and saint—when performing a binding or a banishing. In these acts, the saint’s name acted as both shield and channel, giving legitimacy to acts the Church would otherwise condemn.

To continue reading click here