Mexican Spirituality

Jacobo Grinberg nos sumerge en un viaje revelador hacia la esencia vibrante de la sabiduría ancestral de los chamanes y psicólogos autóctonos de México. A través de testimonios, anécdotas y reflexiones, Grinberg nos invita a explorar los antiguos conocimientos indígenas que han permanecido entretejidos en nuestras tradiciones, mitos y rituales.

Many scholars have come to think of the European Christian mission to the Americas as an inevitable success. But in its early period it was very much on the brink of failure. In 1576, Indigenous Mexican communities suffered a catastrophic epidemic that took almost two million lives and simultaneously left the colonial church in ruins. In the crisis and its immediate aftermath, Spanish missionaries and surviving pueblos de indios held radically different visions for the future of Christianity in the Americas.

A modern Mexican bruja is a powerful person, one who reads the tarot and performs spellwork and rituals of devotion to their spirit guides and deities. Brujeria, which translates as witchcraft in Spanish, is a unique form of spirituality that blends core elements of Afro-Indigenous beliefs. Having originated in Mexico, brujeria is now practiced in Latinx communities across the world.

We live in a world of extreme polarization. We are constantly bombarded with opinions and arguments. As a result, church culture can become segregated from the rest of the world. But Jesus walked on both sides of the dividing line. He spoke with religious people, and he ate with town rejects. What if God's truth is somewhere between the division?

At a time in antiquity when most of Europe was covered with forests and wandering tribes, Mexico had already developed complex civilizations, beginning with the Olmecs and followed by the Maya, a civilization with advanced knowledge of medicine, engineering and astronomy. The Maya calculated the precession of the equinoxes and cycles of the Pleiades, on which they based their year, since they believed they had come from that constellation.