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INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY— PUBLICATION NO. 3 



about a gallon of the San Tedro brew (No. 7) to 

 the patient after he has been "raised." The recipe 

 for two patients is as follows : Peel one cactus, but 

 save the skin ; the peeled cylinder is then disked and 

 quartered and placed in the gasoline can one-half 

 full of water, together with 16 grains of white maize, 

 and a bit from each herb in the bottle of scguro (Nos. 

 28 and 29). The mixture is heated over the fire, 

 but is cool by the time of the seance. Some brujos 

 administer this brew or something similar to all 

 persons present at the seance. It is said to produce 

 vomiting, diarrhea, and visual hallucinations. 



Usually the brujo has divined the cause of the 

 trouble before the patient is "raised" for the second 

 time. While he is calling the spirits, he continues to 

 chewjMw/ia, replenishing his cud from time to lime, 

 and also has usually inhaled several shellfuls of alcohol 

 because of interruptions by contrary spirits. Gradu- 

 ally his singing, whistling, and monologic exclama- 

 tions increase in tempo and he begins to be more 

 certain. "Now they're coming. Here it is," and so 

 on, he mutters excitedly. Finally, when the posses- 

 sion is full upon him, he stops shaking the rattle and 

 lights a candle. Then he stops and sits motionless as 

 if in a trance, gazing fixedly at the framed pictures 

 of the saints on the mesa. Finally he sighs, and says 

 with conviction, "Yes, now I see it. Aha, so that's 

 the way it was," and so on. He calls other members 

 of the company to come and look at the framed photo- 

 graphs. "You see that figure in back there. A man, 

 no? What is he doing?" In the flickering light it 

 is not too difficult to see a ghostlike form in the cloudy 

 backgrounds of the photographs. At the first seance 

 I attended, I was the only one for some time able to 

 "see anything." The maestro announced to the others 

 that I was the only one present who had true spiritual 

 sight. The trouble with the others, he said, was that 

 they were letting their minds wander. Members of 

 a seance must concentrate only on the matter at hand. 

 After he has received some agreement that there are 

 forms or figures to be seen, the master then asks cer- 

 tain questions of the patient. "Did a woman visit you 

 on Thursday of last week ? Did she have anything in 

 her hand ? It was your cousin, wasn't it ?" And so 

 on. If he has not completely made up his mind con- 

 cerning the cause, the identity of the persons involved, 

 and other features of the case, the master puts out the 

 light and continues to call the spirits for a further 

 time. 



If he has decided in his own mind the diagnosis of 

 the trouble and how the case should be handled, he 



tells the patient so, and advises him that he will de- 

 scribe the atTair to the patient next day and advise 

 further magical measures to be taken. For the 

 moment, the next thing to do is to relieve the patient 

 of his symptoms. The patient is stood up again and 

 "raised"' by the assistants moving closely alongside 

 his body. This time, however, the assistants move 

 over all parts of his body, not just along the two sides, 

 and, whenever they come to a part which hurts, the 

 patient so advises the master. The assistants then 

 finish the contents of the shells, holding their heads 

 closely pressed to the complaining spot, while the 

 master speaks reassuringly to the patient and prepares 

 one of the herbs from the mesa to be administered at 

 once and/or to be taken home. Patients usually feel 

 better after this treatment. 



The work of the mesa usually continues until at 

 least 2 a. m., and often until daybreak, before all mat- 

 ters have been satisfactorily cleared up. Sometimes 

 the brujo requires two or three seances to cure the 

 case. 



In this kind of cure, the patient always e.xpects to 

 be told that some specific person has had black magic 

 worked on him. If the divination has been completed, 

 usually the next day the maestro visits the patient and 

 relieves his curiosity concerning the identity of the 

 enemy. The herbs are considered to act as neutral- 

 izers of this baleful influence. 



Without a precise knowledge of the physiological 

 effects of the cures given, we may concede that they 

 perhaps have some therapeutic value. Serious illness 

 in Moche, however, is always accompanied by strong, 

 but difTuse, anxiety feelings. Doubtless this is true 

 of sickness in most human societies, but in the Moche 

 context the patient is certain that his trouble comes 

 from baleful magic wrought against him bv some 

 person or persons; the uncertainty is the identity of 

 his persecutor or persecutors and the type of magic 

 which has been used. Once a plausible identification 

 of these elements has been provided by a seance, 

 the individual is able to reintegrate himself. His 

 dififuse anxiety is lowered by identifying its source 

 (channelizing it) and also by the protective or 

 neutralizing measures believed to be taken by the 

 prescriptions of the brujo. By countervailing magic 

 the patient may even transform his anxiety state into 

 aggression aimed at a definite object. This change 

 in the feeling state of the patient which is wrought 

 by the briijo's treatment also is apparently thera- 

 peutically efTective in certain types of somatic com- 

 plaints. From the point of view of psychosomatic 



