The Spellcaster's Source Hoodoo and Voodoo Witchcraft Blog of Talia Felix

The desert is a peculiar mistress. She offers beauty that steals the breath and danger that stops the heart. New Mexico, my home, is no exception. It’s a land where legends and reality often blur, where the line between truth and myth is drawn with a shaky hand. It's a place where old women swear centipedes crawl under your fingernails and eat your heart. It's not just a story whispered to frighten children but a genuine belief held with the fervor of religious conviction. Old New Mexican women of Spanish extraction will scream in horror at the sight of a centipede, not merely for their swift-moving many-legged terror, but because these women honestly think that the bugs are deadly, murderous creatures. In the arid sun beaten expanses of New Mexico, I remember my own grandmother, a woman of strange, deep-set, and often confused beliefs, who would warn us against these nightmarish creatures. Rollie-pollies (pill bugs) she would say, were the same as centipedes. Now it is general...

  The tales of La Llorona are as varied as the rivers she's said to haunt. From the somber lament of a spurned lover to the chilling image of a vengeful hag, each retelling adds a new layer of intrigue to her spectral existence. Yet, amidst the cacophony of narratives, one thing remains certain: her presence transcends the boundaries of mere folklore. It is usually said that the wicked ghost La Llorona (Spanish: "the weeper") was a beautiful woman who married an unfaithful man, bore him two children, and then out of spite or despair she drowned the children in " the river" (it is always whatever river is nearest.) She then either died herself, or sometimes simply became an immortal roamer like the Wandering Jew, and now her ghost haunts waterways, weeping loudly, looking for children who will replace her own. Admittedly, I have only ever heard this version of the story in books. My grandmother when I was little told me that La Llorona was "a crazy woman, w...

  Well, you live in New Mexico long enough, eventually you will see La Llorona .  Short version of the legend: she's a ghost or a zombie or something in that unnatural vein, a weeping woman. Her reason for weeping is that she murdered her children -- traditionally said by drowning them in a river, and so she is frequently sighted around rivers.  October 31st, 2021, I saw her! In broad daylight. Maybe it was just a crying lady by the river, but strictly that's all her name means. Here it goes: I was out for a walk downtown in Santa Fe, going along the river. It was around one in the afternoon. In the area up near Canyon Road I was walking on a dirt trail directly beside the river, down in the ditch. (The Santa Fe River never has much water in it, it's more like a ditch with a little trickle going through.) As I am walking, I start to hear the sound of a woman sobbing and wailing very very loudly.  I think this can be one of two things: someone pulling a Halloween pran...

I'm not sure what the deal is lately, but as of this initial writing I have all in the last month been getting a lot of inquiries regarding my ethnicity and race -- some of them rather rude, too. (Edit: The cause was found to be some guy's YouTube video where he was criticizing my books with racist ad hominem attacks and accusing me of being "some white person" without having done any looking into the matter.)  So, let's just put this out there for everyone who is questioning the matter: Did you know a person can be TWO races, or even MORE?! It's even COMMON in some places! We ought to start filming Two Girls One Cup style reactions of people vomiting as they learn this treacherous idea of Two Races One Person. My family is really into the study of genealogy and as a result I have a good knowledge of my ridiculously complicated ancestry. No joke, we have the family lines traced all the way back to Ancient Egypt. But as far as the last 200 years go, I...

Figured I'd throw forth this little family recipe I just coaxed out of my grandmother. She says this is what her grandmother, who was the midwife and herbal-remedy person around La Cienega, NM , would make when anyone had a cold. Lavender (called alhusena in the local Spanish dialect) Lemon Honey Boil together into a tea. For very serious colds and flus, replace the honey with onions. (She is said to have saved a lot of people in the 1918 Flu Epidemic with her onion mixture.)