The Devil - The
Evil Eye - The
Curse of Envy - Evil Air
- Witches
The
Devil
(See
Saint Cyprian for a discussion of a
popular book connected to belief in the Devil)
The
devil is a feared being in the life of the Barroso.
He is imagined as an animal figure, with a long tail, goat’s or
ram’s horns, goat’s hooves, and cat’s claws.
In the statues he is represented in the form of a serpent, a
dragon, a deformed angel, with horns on his head.
He
is the causer of all the evil and misfortune of men.
He appears to them in many forms, being able to transform himself
into whatever he wants. He
always appears at night, to tempt people, making them go crazy.
He has appeared to people in the form of a cat, mole, wolf, dog,
sheep, goat, horse, donkey, or tall and dark fairies.
The
Devil is the terror of many people who use several rites to defend
themselves against him and his dangers.
Some use figas on their chest.
These are amulets with a closed fist.
Others make the figa with their right hand, placing their
little finger between the index finger and the middle finger.
A horseshoe is placed behind the entrance door of every house,
even those that are not lived in.
For the same purpose, people use blessed water, the blessing of
the house, and exorcisms read by a priest or any person of virtue.
But it is said that the Devil possesses whoever drives him out.
For that reason many priests used to refuse to do exorcisms.
There are even people who wear two steel keys on the chest, which
were placed under the main altar, in the form of a cross, on a folded
linen towel.
When
one is afraid, or when one is about to die and it is necessary to
frighten away the Devil, one should say 12 “said and returned” words.
During the recitation there cannot be a mistake, because then it
won’t work and the soul could become lost and return to haunt the one
who made the mistake. The
12 said and returned words are:
“Tell
me the 12 “said and
returned” words, tell me the first.”
“One
is for the house of Jerusalem, where Christ died for us, amen.”
(You
ask again.)
“Tell
me the second.”
Two
is for the 2 tablets of Moses, where Christ put his feet.
Three
is for the 3 persons of the Holy Trinity.
Four
is for the 4 Evangelists.
Five
is for the 5 wounds of Christ.
Six
is for the 5 blessed candles.
Seven
is for the 7 sacraments.
Eight
is for the 8 choruses of angels.
Nine
is for the 9 months that Our Lady carried her son in her sacred womb.
Ten
is for the 10 Commandments.
Eleven
is for the 11,000 virgins.
Twelve
is for the 12 apostles.
At
the end you have to repeat everything going back to the beginning; that
is why they are called “returned.”
At the end you say: three rays has the sun/three rays has the
moon. Get out of here devil/this
soul is not yours.
According
to Padre Fontes, this prayer, in several different versions with small
differences, comes from Iran, or Persia, and was part of the doctrine of
Zarathustra.
Some
sayings and proverbs related to the Devil are:
The
Devil does not tear down crosses. He
is in the fonts of holy water in the church to distract us.
It
is necessary to light a candle to God and another to the Devil.
God
is good, but the Devil is not bad.
The
Devil always lets us see his tail.
When
you open your mouth to yawn you should make the sign of the cross with
the right thumb from one side of your mouth to the other and say the
Creed. If you don’t, then
the Devil will come into you.
Let
God come in here and the Devil in the priests’ houses.
The
most interesting legend concerning the Devil is about the building of
the the Misarela Bridge, located in
the district of Braga, in the concelho of Vieira do Minho.
The
Evil Eye
In
addition, there is a common belief in the evil eye.
This attacks everything: objects,
people, and animals. It
breaks bottles, needles, sewing machines, everything.
There are people who have the evil eye and all the villagers know
them. If you wear a blessed
object or garlic, salt, a good luck charm called a figa, a half
moon, or a little bag with the names of the four gospels, the evil eye
cannot enter your body. But
the greatest protection is a leaf of arruda (rue).
Whoever cuts the leaf of the arruda should leave an object
in the place of the leaf. This
is called a penhora, the object you leave when you pawn something.
This can be a piece of cloth, a button, or a piece of thread so
that the tree does not dry up. When
someone with the evil eye walks by you should put the tail of your shirt
outside your trousers. If
you are with your cattle you should place your cap over your testicles
and then pass it over the head of the cows.
The
Curse of Envy—"O mal de inveja"
Besides
the evil eye there is the curse of envy, which can cause enormous harm
to those it is cast upon. There
are safe moments to cast these curses.
It is during mass, between the raising of the chalice and the
offering of the host. When
someone has a chronic illness or a serious physical defect people say:
it was a curse that they put upon him.
Curses include asking for death, illness, or broken bones. The
people say, “May you have what you wish for me.
May the medicine be your poison; may whatever you desire be
lacking; may wolves eat you; may death sweep you away; may a thousand
lightning bolts strike you.
The
owner of a café in Chaves was suffering from an illness that the
doctors couldn’t diagnose. He
began to lose weight and “dry up” as his wife put it.
Taken to a famous “brujo” in the south of the country, he was
diagnosed as suffering from the curse of envy put upon him by his own
sister through his drinking of a fruit juice at her house containing
menstruation blood. He was
told to drink a special potion, which he did, vomiting up a hairy ball.
This he had to throw into the river at midnight.
Whether true or not, the man’s health did improve.
He and his sister have never spoken again.
Evil
Air
There
are also evil airs. There
is the air of the menstruating woman ("mulher com o mês")
that if it hits a cake will keep it from rising; if it hits a wound this
will never heal; and it if goes into the place where wine is being made
this will become sour and turn to vinegar.
There is also the air of the pregnant woman, the air of the
excommunicated, the air of the corpse, and the air of the cemetery.
When a child has an incurable illness it is often because it was
exposed to the air of the cemetery ("apanhou ar de cemeterio").
Another
family from Chaves had a granddaughter with an allergy to food.
She began to lose weight. The
“brujo” diagnosed the problem as being caused by the child having
been exposed to a combination of the air of the corpse and the air of
the cemetery. It came out
that the child had been taken to a cemetery while her parents attended a
burial. There a curse of
envy had been put on the child and she must have eaten some of the dirt
from the burial ground. After
drinking the specially prescribed liquid her allergy went away.
Witches
A
doll of a Meiga or witch in Galicia
Similar
to neighboring Galicia, there is a strong belief in witches in the north
of the district. According
to Padre Fontes, it is not well defined what the people understand for
witch. In each village they
have different attributes. They
are often confused with sorceresses, wise women, healers, and anyone who
deals with cures that are not orthodox.
It
is believed that the witches work together.
They can ride a broom at night without hitting the trees or
bushes, having to say this when they go out:
“over brambles and under oak trees.”
It is said that some men fly with them either voluntarily or
involuntarily. These
witches come together in places, usually near fountains.
They make fun of the men, hit them, take their trousers off, and
make them fly with them. The
liquid or “cream” which appears on old branches is called
“witches’ cream”. The
tannin produced by green wood when it burns is called “witches’ milk”.
If someone has dark bruises on his body, people say that the
witches caused these. Likewise,
people believe that a witch suckled a child who is not afraid, or who
has rough hair.
Manuel
Viegas Guerreiro tells this story about witches:
Once
they told a young man that his girlfriend was a witch.
He hid
himself and looked out of the window at the hour when they came
together, but they saw him. In
these situations you should say, “Hello cousins!”, to make them feel
good. But the young man
said: “Hello, you big
whores!” A comb from a
spinning wheel was hurled from a great distance and it hit the window,
which he just had time to close. His
girlfriend told him later: “Why
did you say that? If I
hadn’t been there, you would be dead.
I defended you. “ “You
defended me? If I hadn’t
closed that window, who would have defended me?”
“The one who gave you strength to close it was me.” (Guerreiro,
Pitões das Júnias, pp. 221-22).
The
people have several methods
to discover a witch. If the priest, at the
end of the mass, leaves the missal open, on the page of the Saints,
where there is a cross of Christ, then the witch cannot leave the church
until the missal is closed again. Also, if you put nine beans in
the font of holy water, or a white coin, with the head facing up, the
witch must stay in the church. If you put a needle on a path, and
a passerby pricks herself and turns back, then she is a witch.
In
more recent times, the traditional village witches or healers have been
replaced by more sophisticated mediums and spiritual healers who have
taken up residence in the larger towns.
Many of these charlatans are Brazilian and have knowledge of the
Afro-Brazilian cults such as Macumba, Candomblé, or Umbanda.
Unlike the old-fashioned healers these women are fast talkers and
display a pseudo-scientific knowledge that easily fools the illiterate
people who seek them out. Vast amounts of money are handed over to
these spiritual healers, who often leave town quickly when the promised
cures are never realized. One famous woman, called Vovó (Grandmother),
started out as a poor shop assistant in Vila Real, and now has amassed a
sizable fortune. Taxis bring villagers in from isolated villages
and they participate in sessions that can only be done at midnight.
Sadly, the village witch--really a healer--has given way to these
criminal elements who get richer and richer at the expense of the
ignorance of the people and the failure of the medical system.
At
the time of writing this article (May 4th, 2000), the "witch"
of Pico Island in the Azores was sentenced to ten years in prison for
applying a green cream containing a lethal pesticide to wounds on
people's bodies in order to extract the cancer the patients supposedly
had. Four people died and several were seriously injured.
This sordid case is a far cry from the traditional "witches"
of the mountain villages of the Barroso and neighboring Galicia.
A
"witch" in Galicia
The Book
of Saint Cyprian
Introduction
to Religion Festivals
and Pilgrimage Sites
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