Brujeria Brujeria, the practice of Witchcraft that has distinctly Mexican cultural and religious roots, involves the use of magic to appease and control the gods/spirits specific to the Brujeria religion. As such, Brujeria combines many cultural and ritualistic traditions of ancient Aztec myths, European Witchcraft and Cuban Santeria with the religious traditions of the Catholic faith. The roots of this syncretic belief system can be traced to the mid-16th Century when Mexican religious legend asserts the Virgin Mary appeared to an Indian convert and informed him that she wanted a church constructed on the spot. Subsequently, the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe was built. The Aztecs, who for many centuries had worshipped the Pagan goddess Tonantzin, almost immediately disguised their goddess in the safety of Guadalupe, and in the process, took the first step in creating Brujeria. When the Spanish priest baptized Tonantzin a Roman Catholic and demanded Aztec allegiance, the padres were unaware that they had helped preserve the very Paganism they had hoped to destroy. "By Christianizing Toantzin, they'd made it safe for nominally Catholic Indians to venerate her, with the provision that they call her Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe and attend Mass regularly." Subsequently, the former priestesses of Tonantzin went underground, becoming "brujas whose native magic lay hidden under a thick veneer of popular Catholicism." (Devine,1982:2.) Brujeria was born. Researcher, Mary Virginia Devine, provides an illustration of how the brujas adapted to each culture with which they came into contact: "The conversion of the northern tribes to Catholicism not only gave the brujas more clients, but also exposed them to the herbal lore of the Yaqui curanderas, thus helping revive the almost forgotten Aztec tradition of medicine. Contact with urban Latinos added European ceremonial magic...to their system. And when the brujas left their homeland to settle in America's inner cities, they found a treasure trove of black folklore, hoodoo and voodoo, which they promptly incorporated into their teachings. By the nineteen-fifties, brujeria had taken root in Chicano communities from Los Angeles to New York and from Tulsa to Detroit." (Devine, 1982:5.) In contemporary America, brujas practice a magico-religious system. Its religious nature centers around Guadalupe; the bruja (priestess) is her representative on earth. Brujas worship Her as an all-knowing and all-powerful goddess who grants believers every wish when propitiated according to the rituals of Brujeria. Such rituals constitute the magical nature of the belief system. The female bruja, usually working within the safety and serenity of her own home, conducts the rituals and rites of the faith as she sees fit. Brujeria adherents who wish to use the brujas' services approach her with a particular problem and entrust her to create a spell to eradicate the problem. Her spell will involve divination techniques, and in some cases, using the Tarot cards and, increasingly more often in the United States, astrological signs. In essence, the brujas' services are enlisted to extinguish the deeds of two spirits: the elementales and the diablera. The elementales, nature spirits who cause problems "because their stupidity leaves them open to exploitation by devils," are of four types: gnomes (earth); undines (water); sylphs (air), and salamanders (fire). (Devine, 1982:81.) The bruja evokes a spell to make the particular elementales depart or, in the most serious cases when the spirit is working directly for the devil, to kill the elementales. The diablera, the evil spirit who is directly under Satan's employ, is the brujas' primary enemy. Diableras encourage promiscuity and homosexuality, inflict disease on people, and cast evil spells on good people. It is the brujas' task to cast a spell to undo the diablera's hex. The brujas' magical instruments and tools are very basic, originally designed for easy disguise upon a surprise visit from the Catholic priest. The new necessary instruments are the cuchillo, a plain knife, and the wand which is most commonly a recently-cut tree branch. The brujas' altar usually consists of a dresser upon which a white cloth is spread and several tools are placed: two long white candles and a candle holder; a votive candle; glass for holy water; incense; and a statue of Guadalupe. The brujas' spells are kept in a Libreta, similar to a Book of Shadows, in which all their individual and collective secrets are written. Like Wiccan practitioners, brujas do not share their spell books. Most are written in nonacademic Colonial Spanish or in a "Tex-Mex dialect which borrows from American English." (Devine, 1982:211.) Most brujas are solo practitioners; however, many meet for spiritual worship and a few practice together. The organizational structure of such groups, drawing heavily from the Witchcraft tradition, consists of covens or contradias of thirteen or less. Wearing white cotton robes tied with white silk ribbon or a cord and a silver metal of Guadalupe, brujas gather for several ceremonies during which they pray to Guadalupe that their powers will be great and strong. They usually meet for thirteen New Moon Ceremonies and several of the Wiccan sabbats.