When somebody gets very sick in my country, there are two paths: go to a hospital or look for a traditional healer.
If you are not rich enough to pay a private hospital, you face the reality of going to public hospitals and pass by an authentic nightmare, not because the services are bad, it is simply because the services are overcrowded, and the capacity of our health facilities are beyond its limits. If you have the chance of receiving medical attention, it is also very possible that there is not a diagnostic for you. Yes, many health conditions don't come from strictly physical disorders but from emotional or even spiritual states of imbalance, may also be just pure stress, due to the kind of societies we are living in.
I am going to tell you, very briefly, because my story is not the goal of this article, that I passed by a situation where there was not a diagnostic, nor a medical cure for a four months cough that I had been suffering a few years ago. The cough was so severe that didn't let me work, You know that as a guide, you have to speak all the time explaining the different highlights of a tour, so I stopped working. In that desperate situation, I posted a note in one of my chats explaining my situation and received a message of an angel, her name is Tlawi, the lady that is in one of the photographs of this article, saying..."take a bus and come to Cuernavaca, I will be waiting for you in the bus terminal". Without knowing her, I arrived at the terminal and she was waiting for me with a big smile. She said, "I will bring you with Las Jefas, they are going to help you" They were two ladies that were leading a Calpulli, a group dedicated to following the ancient tradition of our ancestors, they dance, heal, and perform the due ceremonies according to the Aztec calendar. They made me lay in a petate (straw mat) and applied a hot mixture of plants and wrap me with a sheet. I didn't know that, it was only the beginning of a large diversity of experiences and that I was going to follow, a path of knowledge with many other people and practices that led me to, not only the recovery of health but also to be part of the red path of Toltec knowledge.
Now it is fashionable to call abuela or abuelo to people over 52 years old (calendar cycle of 4 cycles of thirteen days) who have specific knowledge in the field of traditional medicine, be they healers, dancers, witches, etc. Among their activities is the creation of mixed groups of people who participate in rituals, dances, or events related to important dates in our original calendars. There is a wonderfully rich cosmovision or worldview in many Latin American cultures, some of which has been recovered over the years. Of course, it is not homogeneous and there are different views but, what is undoubted, is that it is extremely interesting, authentic and enriching.
Among the different practices that some of the abuelos bring to life is the dance, we call it simply la Danza. This term in Spanish is different than el baile,(in English there is only one word for both). El baile is more casual, spontaneous; the word Danza, the way we use it, has the connotation of being ritual, or of sacred, spiritual use. There are, though, different kinds of Danza, the concheros, the culturals and the power dances. The concheros are the dances that have survived since the conquest of America by the Spaniards and are syncretic dances, that means that are mixed with Catholic symbolism; the culturals are dancers that want to practise the traditional dances, as pure as possible, according to the rescued traditions. And the power dances are dances that are created or channelled for special moments according to a specific purpose that can be collective healing, energy cleansing of a place, or even paying honour to a person or an entity whether alive or passed, or belonging to another time, space or level of existence.
Another very important practice is the temazcal steam bath; this ritual bath is normally related to the practice of the dance and many other activities that you are going to be aware of, as long as I am going to continue my story. Temazcal bath has been used since the beginning of our civilization as part of the integral healing of body, soul and spirit. It has been described as a return to a mother's womb as this bath is performed in the dark, in a humid, hot space full of aromatic smells. During this ritual bath, there are salutations to the fourth directions with the respective spirits and goddesses; there can be the music of drums and shells, can also be confessions, blessings, expressions of gratitude, etc. The fact of being in contact with the four elements is more than a guarantee of recovering part of what we can describe of a sense of being alive. In a ritual temazcal bath, there are four doors, and at every door, we welcome 13 incandescent stones that come from the fireplace inside the bath. Thirteen times four, we end the last door with the 52 stones that represent the before mentioned cycle of 52 years, The New Fire.
With this two elements, the dance and the temazcal, I conclude the first part of this article, wishing to include in the second part other important elements that, I am sure, you are going to find as interesting as the first ones.
Sincerely, Nydia De la Llera Villena