In a ‘magical’ town, a shaman used an egg to diagnose me. She was right

The shaman steps forward, a basket of eggs, jars and feathers over one arm and a swatch of dried leaves under the other. Are those chicken bones in her hair? I wonder, stealing a glance at the ghostly filaments gleaming amid her grey hair.

Keeping my eyes lowered, the heat of the thatched room is making me dizzy, as my three-legged stool rocks in the dirt, its uneven legs threatening to buck me off.

“Drink,” she gestures, handing me a jar of sugarcane rum, while indicating that I must spit it out over the leaves. In return, she takes a swig and hisses it on the back of my neck. I have no time to brace before she begins hitting me with the swatch like she’s banishing El Diablo himself.

I’m in the Sierra Juarez mountains in the 1200-year-old Oaxacan town of Capulalpam de Mendez for a “Limpia” cleansing and a diagnosis by one of the local Curanderos, or female shamans.

A visit to Capulalpam, one of Mexico’s designated Pueblos Magicos, or “magical” towns, is part of a Day of the Dead tour, a deep dive into cultural traditions with hands-on fun along the way.

And it’s all fun, until she starts on me with the egg.

Holding my wrist she rubs the egg around my elbow, up my neck and into my ear, giving it a few good cotton-bud twists before moving onto the other ear and down the opposite side. Without warning, she cracks the egg against my skull and tips it into a glass of water.

I know I am in trouble when she calls for a second, and third opinion, the sunken yolk triggering a volley of tut-tuts and scowls. Through a series of charades – there’s little English spoken and my Spanish is rudimentary at best – a conclusion is finally reached.

Sorry senora, you have serious problems with your eyes.

So much so, that an older shaman grabs the offending yolk, with its pimple-like growth, and scarpers away to bury it.

I leave feeling a little uneasy. Both my mother and grandmother had battled glaucoma. But I’ve been seeing an ophthalmologist regularly for years and have been reassured that my vision is fine. What can these healers see – or sense – that my specialist can’t?

Turns out quite a lot. Less than 12 months later, during a trip through Vietnam, I’m hit by a rare, “acute-angle-closure” event, where my interocular pressure rises quickly, damaging the optic nerve and leaving me with significant (and permanent) vision loss in one eye.

Seven years and four eye operations later, I often wonder if things would be different if I’d heeded the warning. Perhaps I could have researched more about the condition, sought a second opinion or started preventative treatments.

I’ll never know. What I do know is that when we are far from home, subliminal messages often pop up along the way. Who hasn’t felt that tingle when things don’t seem right, or has made last-minute changes based on instinct alone?

In Indigenous cultures, with their extraordinary knowledge systems and holistic perspectives, intuition is a central part of life. I’d travelled to Capulalpam de Mendez in search of magic, but somehow I’d missed what this trip was really about.

The writer travelled at her own expense. See gadventures.com