On witchcraft and other matters
I grew up in a world full of magic, where dreams carried the future within and women stopped the rain at will. So, naturally, I always wanted to be a witch.
Some people would argue that my perception of reality was simply shaped by the magical realist Latin American literature that fills up entire bookshelves in my room, and I agree – though only partially.
It has been said before that magical realism was a response to the existence of multiple realities – within a single context – that hardly ever integrated, leaving all of us who coexist with the consequences of colonialism highly confused. In the end, that is what the so-called literary movement was all about: reconciling the multiple layers that construct our character, because if there is one thing we Latin Americans wrestle with, God knows it’s identity.
However, even though I position myself against the exoticization of my culture and the otherness with which we are usually approached by those who belong to dominant societies, I still do believe that there was definitely something more magical about my upbringing, in the most stereotypical of ways, than the childhoods of those around me raised in more thoroughly westernized environments.
In fact, one of my earliest memories is that of my grandma stopping the rain.
In Jaumave, a tiny rural area in the northeastern state of Tamaulipas, Mexico – where she is from – it is said among the locals that all firstborn females possess a supernatural ability to control a fraction of the weather. All they ought to do is whisper a few prayers and then stick a knife into the earth. It sounds impossible. And yet, I saw it happen – again and again.
Every June 14th, on the occasion of my birthday, my grandma would rise before the sun to perform her ritual. I can still picture her figure standing in the middle of the garden as she mumbled words I never fully deciphered. Her hand, gripping the knife tightly as she raised it toward the sky, only to then lightly bow as she threw her magical weapon with just enough force to make it spin in the air, a few times, before it finally struck the earth, blade-first. And it never rained, not even once. Despite it being the wettest season of the year in Mexico City, my birthdays were always sunny and warm.
Then, there were the hummingbirds.
Native to the Americas, the species had always fascinated me. Perhaps, it had to do with the way my grandma used to offer them to me – dissected, yet delicately placed inside their small nests – a gesture that, in retrospect, clearly contributed to my ongoing fascination. I innocently believed them to be nothing but peculiar gifts. I was quite used to peculiarities.
But later, I learned about their true significance – their real purpose.
At that point, I was already enrolled at university, pursuing a degree in Art History, and had begun to dive into the iconography embedded in the artistic production of post-revolutionary Mexico. There was one piece, though, that finally quenched my thirst for answers.
And I hate to bring her up – since she has fallen victim to the very things I so deeply despise when it comes to mainstream global consumption of Mexican culture – but it was Frida Kahlo, and her 1940 Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird that finally confirmed my suspicions. In the painting, Kahlo wears a painfully symbolic thorn necklace that pierces the skin around her neck, causing her to bleed, while a beautiful hummingbird hangs from it – its wings stretched wide, as if about to take flight.
Except it won't. Not anymore.
Instead, it falls still against her chest, close to the heart.
Since the times before the conquest, hummingbirds were believed to be both omens of good luck and messengers between the worlds of the dead and the living. A few centuries later, and with a little African influence, it became common practice to hunt the small creatures and turn them into rather popular love charms, meant to aid the person in need in keeping their loved one from ever leaving.
So essentially, they are love spells. To ease the longing. To make them stay.
I never asked my grandma the reason behind her bizarre offerings. I like to believe she was hoping to ensure a life abundant in romantic love for me, her only granddaughter.
I also never saw another dissected hummingbird ever again. And even though my family slowly drifted away from those cultural traces that once made my world feel so rich and enchanted, I carry those memories with tenderness – as part of my own quiet inheritance.
As for my grandma, it was only later, when she got much older and therefore overly concerned with matters of the afterlife, that she embraced a more traditionally catholic faith – and willingly severed ties with her otherwise pagan spirit.
Now, every June 14th, I sit by the window and watch the rain fall.