Curanderismo: Mexican American Folk Healing

7. The Mental Level

THE MENTAL LEVEL THE MENTAL LEVEL (nivel mental] was the least commonly encountered of the three levels. The relative scarcity of this don, combined with the necessity for undergoing extensive training and rigorous discipline in order to practice on the mental level, greatly limits the number of healers who use those healing techniques. The best way of detailing the activities of a curandero working on the mental level is to describe an encounter as a patient might see it and then provide the curandero's perspective of the energies and processes they use. For the most part, the patient who is going to the curandero has no concept , or at best a vague idea, of how the curandero does his work. Most patients, according to the healers, expect something like a barrida, at least some kind of ritual performance . Consequently, many curanderos who work on the mental level add rituals to the healing process even though they are not felt to be necessary. Of the three levels, the mental level has the fewest rituals and the least complex visible behavior. It is not at all spectacular, although it is felt to be extremely effective. The patient often begins an encounter with a healer by waiting. Some of the curanderos are extremely popular and may see twenty to sixty people each day. If the curandero 149 5eVen 150 Curanderismo practices in his home, the patient will normally wait in another room of the house, separate from the special room where the curandero practices but often within earshot of it. Sometimes the waiting room is a separate room, but most of the time it is merely a chair in one of the living rooms of the home, and as the patient waits to see the curandero, all of the normal household activities flow around and sometimes interact with the patient: children, pets, cooking, and friends. Some curanderos have offices or workrooms separate from their house (an older house, a trailer, or a garage), and there the waiting room is often a bench in the shade outside or a small room with old chairs or benches inside. The patient is rarely alone. If the patient is a stranger to the curandero, he is normally accompanied by someone who does know the curandero. Even when the client is well known to the healer, it is common for another family member to accompany him. This is true even when the actual patient is not present. In that case two or more family members or friends will often approach the curandero to do healing at a distance. Although most of the informants said that they prefer for the client to come to them, and to come willingly, they all perform healing at a distance at the request of a concerned family member or friends. One of the reasons given for learning the mental level was to increase the healer's effectiveness in healing at a distance. After a while the curandero will finish his current consultation and give that patient time to leave. Then the healer will either come to the door of the workroom and ask the waiting patient to enter, or simply call out for whoever is waiting to come in. We never observed very much interaction between patients leaving and those going in, beyond an occasional greeting. We do not know whether this was normal or simply peculiar to the situations we observed, but there was far less interaction between patients entering and leaving the healers' workrooms than we might have expected. The Mental Level 151 Altar in a curandero's workroom The patients enter the workroom and sit on chairs, couches, or benches. All of the workrooms had similar qualities, although each clearly reflected the personality and circumstances of the individual curandero. Each workroom contains an altar on a bench or table in the room. One or more crucifixes are displayed on the altar; sometimes one will be fixed to the wall above the table, with another lying on the table, handy for use in one of the curandero's rituals. Several sorts of candles are often displayed on the altar, and one or more are normally lighted, especially if the healer works primarily on the material level. Some of the candles could be ordinary table candles in various colors. Other can- 152 Curanderismo dies used are large and small votive candles. The large candles frequently have the drawing of...