Land of Witches
Wednesday, 19 March 2014 17:56
Written by Angélica Abelleyra
“I began driving around the country in search of folk healers and shamans, until one day they told me about a school for witches in a small town in the desert. I came to a lonely village in San Luis Potosi. There, whenever I asked about the school for witches, people looked at me suspiciously, denying the existence of witches there. However, they knew of a legend: of their power, their evil, how they flew and how they sucked children’s blood. A man who knew a witch showed me how to get to her house but asked me not to tell her that he had told me.
When I got to the house, I knocked on the door, which had a Mexican flag hanging on it, and an old lady who was making tortillas opened it and quickly invited me in.
She offered me something to eat and told me about her life. She had lived alone at the edge of town and been very much in love but had had a difficult experience. In front of me was a woman who was quite different from the other women in the village: independent, strong, with no children, who had experienced her love and sexuality freely and rebelled against the town’s rules. I returned a week later. She was wearing a white dress that was covered with dirt at the back. She told me she had flown the whole night with the dead and was glad to see me because I had come into her life to heal her. She had visions in the water, but was losing her powers. When we were in her kitchen, she told me about the relationship she had with the dead and, for a moment, I felt a chill run through my body. I felt that she was dead, when I told her so she reassured me and said that she was alive. After having tea, we went into a room where she cured people and cast spells. I asked if she would let me take her picture. When I did, she looked at me and I had no doubt she was a witch, who moved in several dimensions. It was the start of a long journey of learning.
This photograph marked the start of my project about witches who heal and rebel against fate, seeking to change it and working with illusion, revenge and justice.”
“I began driving around the country in search of folk healers and shamans, until one day they told me about a school for witches in a small town in the desert. I came to a lonely village in San Luis Potosi. There, whenever I asked about the school for witches, people looked at me suspiciously, denying the existence of witches there. However, they knew of a legend: of their power, their evil, how they flew and how they sucked children’s blood. A man who knew a witch showed me how to get to her house but asked me not to tell her that he had told me.
When I got to the house, I knocked on the door, which had a Mexican flag hanging on it, and an old lady who was making tortillas opened it and quickly invited me in.
She offered me something to eat and told me about her life. She had lived alone at the edge of town and been very much in love but had had a difficult experience. In front of me was a woman who was quite different from the other women in the village: independent, strong, with no children, who had experienced her love and sexuality freely and rebelled against the town’s rules. I returned a week later. She was wearing a white dress that was covered with dirt at the back. She told me she had flown the whole night with the dead and was glad to see me because I had come into her life to heal her. She had visions in the water, but was losing her powers. When we were in her kitchen, she told me about the relationship she had with the dead and, for a moment, I felt a chill run through my body. I felt that she was dead, when I told her so she reassured me and said that she was alive. After having tea, we went into a room where she cured people and cast spells. I asked if she would let me take her picture. When I did, she looked at me and I had no doubt she was a witch, who moved in several dimensions. It was the start of a long journey of learning.
This photograph marked the start of my project about witches who heal and rebel against fate, seeking to change it and working with illusion, revenge and justice.”