The capital of Bolivia, La Paz, located at an altitude of three kilometers in the mouth of an extinct volcano, has become a meeting place for many, many magicians, sorcerers and healers of the country.
And recently it has also become a popular tourist destination. The reason for this is the famous Witch Market, El Mercado de las Brujas.
Bolivia is an unusual country. Local beliefs are an explosive mixture of Catholicism, shamanism and pagan cults of the Incas and tribes of the Amazon. Therefore, it is not surprising that many local healers flock to the Witch Market.
After all, here you can buy everything that the soul of a sorcerer desires: amulets and talismans, black candles for imposing a curse, literally next to them - icons, dried toads, dead armadillos and cats.
All kinds of herbs are easy to find here, including coca leaves and hallucinogenic ayahuasca, which many healers use to supposedly communicate with spirits. By the way, it is precisely because of how easy it is to get such hallucinogens here that more and more tourists, eager for thrills, visit the Witch Market. Local authorities turn a blind eye to this.
Among, so to speak, professional market visitors, their own hierarchy can be traced, which is explained by a complex system of local beliefs, where Christianity is closely intertwined with paganism and popular superstitions.
The brightest representatives of such syncretism are brujos (witches and witchers). In their rituals, they can easily use Catholic attributes, for example, crosses and images of saints in combination with prayers to pagan gods, such as Pachamama, the goddess of fertility, very popular in Bolivia.
There are also more qualified healers - callawaya. As a rule, callawaya are well versed in the properties of herbs and are actively using the methods of traditional medicine in practice, helping to correct the dislocation and to calm the fever with decoctions. According to legend, the roots of Callawaya go from healers who healed the great Inca emperors.
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On the other hand, on the market you can find curandero - shamans who speak to spirits. They are the ones who actively buy hallucinogens at the Witch Market. Curandero, in turn, are divided into subgroups: Jerberos, that is, herbal experts; ueseros, which specialize in bones and muscles; parteras - midwives; orakyonistas, that is, those who directly communicate with spirits and gods.
Accordingly, many regulars of the Witch Market can combine several functions and be for the client who he needs at the moment: a healer-herbalist, a sorcerer at the household level who will help heal cattle, or an intermediary in communication with the gods. The main thing is to pay well.
But most of all at the Witches Market it is not even the motley crowd and the abundance of herbs and amulets that are striking, but the dried and not very carcasses of baby llamas, and sometimes even their embryos, found literally at every step. These lamas are actively bought for a lot of money.
The fact is that the llama is the favorite animal of the very revered goddess of fertility Pachamama, and not only her. Bolivians believe that the gods love to eat lamas. In addition, a lama is a kind of delivery person, she can bring prayers of people addressed to the gods into another world. And it is on the sacrificial lama that the shaman travels to the spirit world to talk to them.
That is why so many llamas are sold in the Witch Market. With the help of the summoned witch - the bruja - superstitious Bolivians prepare a special sacrifice, where the main ingredient is a llama, and pleasant trifles, such as sweets, trinkets and cigarettes, are already attached to it. All this is burned to convey to the spirits of prayer and simply to please them. Moreover, such offerings are by no means made by inveterate pagans, but also by citizens who consider themselves devout Christians.
CHERNYAVSKAYA DARYA
