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On a moonlit night: witchcraft in rural Portugal – in pictures

In his series The House of the Seven Women, Portuguese photographer Tito Mouraz delves into a world of myth and witchcraft. A book of the images is published by Dewi Lewis. All photographs: Tito Mouraz

In the Beira-Alta region of Portugal, where Mouraz comes from, there is a house that is said to be haunted by seven sisters

One of them was a witch, and, come full moon, they would all fly across the road in white gowns to roost in a chestnut tree

‘In The House of the Seven Ladies, chatting, getting to know what it was like before me, listening and imagining were as important as the act of photographing,’ Mouraz says

‘I started by doing some portraits. These people interested me because they have always lived here and are attached to the land just like trees’

‘This series gives an account of a persistent return to the same place, so as to scrutinise its differences (the slow deactivation of agricultural practices, the gradual transformation of the territory, ageing . ), in spite of listening to the same owl, the same fox, the same stories’

‘The same as in legend, perhaps the magic and appalling features, this cyclical experience, were my greatest wound: night, fumes, corpses, moon, ruin, sounds’

In the earlier series Rua da Cabine, he documented the street where he spent his summer holidays as a child

In his series Open Space Office, he headed into the bowels of quarries, showing how humankind has carved its way into the natural environment

Portuguese art critic Nuno Crespo says of Mouraz: ‘For this photographer, landscape does not mean something one describes, represents or witnesses, but a place which is inhabited by tension and where the visible elements seem to invoke not only material presence, but also absences, spirits and magic’

Culture : Bewitched in Portugal : Exorcists, hypnotists and, yes, witches assembled in a rural village for a special congress.

It may be a new Europe, but a lot of the old ways live on in remote villages like this one, the site earlier this month of the seventh Congress of Women of Virtue and Healers. Witches to you.

There were no broomsticks, no pointed hats nor any black cats in sight, and the only caldron spotted was being used to heat up a potent local brew of moonshine. But the hundreds of participants and spectators were not disappointed.

A colorful list of celebrants included the Exorcist of Barcelos, famed for his power to drive the devil from people, places and even computers; Jose Borges, who says he can cure cancer with scorpion stings, and Iara the Brazilian, who performs pathology with the help of semi-precious stones and the sun’s rays.

Among the witches, exorcists, hypnotists and mediums converging on this village--a traditional stopover on an ancient Christian pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela in northern Spain--came scores of serious scholars anxious to learn the secrets of alternative medicine that, peppered with pagan rites, is still widely used here in one of Europe’s poorest and most backward corners.

The congress, organized by Villar de Perdizes’ parish priest Father Antonio Fontes, began in 1980 as a backwater meeting of oddball anthropologists and local herbalists. It has since gained so much stature that this year, the European Community contributed $40,000 to help organize the gathering and publish its findings.

The congress is now officially dubbed the Congress of Popular Medicine, but locals still give it the more colorful name, or just call it “The Witches’ Meet.”

Papers delivered this year ranged from “Healing by the Power of the Holy Spirit” by Father Antonio Raposo, a Roman Catholic priest, through “Witches, Wizards and Wisemen” by Lisbon University lecturer Helena Neves, to “Linen in Popular Medicine” by Manuel Gens, one of many locals who swears by alternative cures.

“In the middle of this modern Europe, there is a very ancient world,” Fontes said. “So this region has been for centuries, and still is today. But not for much longer.

“The European Community is turning everything upside down here,” he explained. “And I feel like I must climb to the top of the trees and shout: ‘Come and see a world that is coming to an end”

The region is called Tras-os-Montes, meaning “behind the mountains.” Sandwiched against Portugal’s mistrusted neighbor, Spain, it is a place of two seasons--scorching summer and freezing winter--where farmers have eked out a hardscrabble existence for centuries while young folk have emigrated to seek prosperity abroad.

Europe is still dotted with such regions, from Tras-os-Montes in the West to Transylvania in the East--regions seemingly bypassed by progress, where superstition rivals that found in the Third World and a belief in the occult goes hand in hand with faith in God.

Old traditions abound here: Cows still graze on common pasture land and the milk is shared among villagers; bread is baked in communal village ovens. Houses are built of huge granite blocks hewn from the surrounding hills. Upstairs are the living quarters, downstairs the stables where the body warmth from cattle and donkeys provide rudimentary central heating for their owners above. Most dwellings have a cross at the entrance to ward off the devil.

Since Portugal joined the European Community in 1986, millions of dollars of EC funds have flown into Tras-os-Montes, sponsoring new roads and better communications that now mean the area is not nearly so isolated as before.

But the region still has fewer telephones and televisions per inhabitant than other EC region and only one doctor for every 1,000 people, compared to the national average of one per 300 Portuguese.

The 800 villagers of Villar de Perdizes, whose average age is well over 50, are treated by a visiting doctor once a week.

“Most people come to me anyway,” said Ana Pita, a wizened 76-year-old known as Pitinha , who is the village’s resident herbalist. “My herbs are better than anything classical medicine has to offer. If I could read and write, I’d be rich.”

Although illiterate, her vast knowledge of traditional cures drew admiration from learned professional herbalists at the congress. Pitinha began learning herbal lore as a child when she began to ask neighbors for traditional remedies to cure her sick parents.

Although many locals consider her a bruxa (BROO-shah), or witch, she denies links to magic of any kind.

“I go to church every Sunday.”

But that, for many, is no guarantee she is not a witch.

Father Fontes, whose 18th-Century residence is packed with devil-like sculptures and books such as “The Dictionary of the Devil” and “The Book of Sects and the Occult,” says the dividing line between religion and traditional rituals and superstitions in Tras-os-Montes is hazy.

“Separating the sacred from the profane means the death of God in the people’s soul,” he said.

Parishioners still dress the statues of saints in the village chapel with gaudy silks and jewelry.

Most refuse to look over their shoulder after passing a crossroads, believing that will conjure the devil who waits for sinners at intersections.

Pre-Christian paintings of fertility rites and sun worship can be found on stones in and around Villar de Perdizes. Until a few years ago, Fontes said, pregnant women who feared their child would be still-born would walk one hour through forest for a pagan prenatal baptism with water from the river under the Misarela Bridge. The bridge, according to local legend, was built by Lucifer himself.

Manuel Narciso, an electrician from the central market town of Torres Vedras, was at the congress looking for a successor. An avowed witch, he said his powers in combatting two popular scourges--”the evil eye” and “envy sickness”--were passed down from his mother and grandmother, who served apprenticeship with Portugal’s famous Witch of Arruda, who died in 1972.

“My daughter doesn’t want to learn and my granddaughter doesn’t seem interested either,” he complained.

By the third day of the congress, he had found no suitable candidate to whom he could pass on his skill.

“Maybe I’m the last of the line,” he sighed, adding that instances of the two scourges, in any case, were less frequent than in his youth when villagers who dabbled in the occult often would put curses on their neighbors, their crops or their cattle.

“Such practices are disappearing with economic progress,” said Jose Martins, a sociologist from Lisbon’s Piaget Institute attending the congress. “But beliefs in such powers will not disappear--all you will see is change in the type of practices, a sort of professionalization of witchcraft.

“Many of the so-called witches here are writing their resumes by being at this congress,” he added.

Along with Joao Rosa Boucas, the Exorcist of Barcelos, and Iara the Brazilian, Borges claimed to have been shown his healing mission in life in visions or dreams.

Borges, who charges 7,000 escudos (40 dollars) for a sting delivered by small scorpions he finds locally, claims that 12 of the 500 cancer patients he has treated over the past decade have recovered completely.

Boucas said he does not charge for his services, which include banishing computer viruses via exorcism, but Iara was handing out T-shirts that read “Bare-handed Healing--Glands and Ganglions” and gave her telephone number in the nearby town of Chaves.

The Voodoo That We Do

My friends don’t believe me when I say my family believes in witches. They don’t believe that I had to carry around garlic in my pocket when I visited my dad’s childhood village, in case the jealous witches there tried to curse me. They don’t believe me, but it’s true.

When I would visit the rural parts of northern Portugal as a child, not many people escaped the poor farm life, and many less made it to America, a place of dreams and riches. Our allegedly rich life spurned a lot of jealousy, and there were a few people who my parents believed would seek vengeance. The garlic kept them away.

But not all Portuguese witchcraft and Pagan beliefs stem from jealousy or spite. Most are based on healing and protection. I grew up without thinking much about not taking food from strangers, or not crossing my silverware at the table. I didn’t even mind when my mother would air a cross with her fingers near my yawning lips. I never questioned any of it until I was older.

I started my first novel without any intention of writing about these experiences, and then, as most writers’ minds work, I found myself questioning every one of these memories. After some research, I couldn’t not write about it. I had to explore it, to question the origin of my own superstitions, which rarely connected with those of the American half of my culture.

Church of Saint Ildefonso in Porto, Portugal

Why did I always want a black cat, when they were considered bad luck in American culture? Possibly because in Portuguese culture, black cats are good luck. When your black cat dies, it is believed it’s in some way sparing you. Or at least that was what I was told as a child when a truck hit my first cat late at night. Blackie had a penchant for sleeping in the middle of road in the pitch dark of night, but that, of course, had nothing to do with it according to my parents.

When my family would go through months of medical procedures, only to never discover what was ailing them, they often turned to a witch doctor as a last resort. I, too, found a cure that way myself.

I was in grade school when I had visions of bees swarming me when I closed my eyes at night. It frightened me awake every time, and it’s the origin of my fear of bees. My mother, aware that I suffered from sleeplessness, took me to a witch doctor for a diagnosis. The woman suggested it was my deceased great-grandmother trying to communicate with me in the only way she knew how. My great-grandmother wanted to connect with me through these visions, not realizing she was scaring me in the process. I never experienced those visions again.

Figa charms like this one are used to ward off voodoo spells such as the Evil Eye.

These Portuguese folk-religious practices, muddled with Roman Catholicism, are common in the rural villages of Portugal. Children and women are especially vulnerable to curses such as the “Evil Eye” and the “Curse of Envy.” Both of these curses can be fended off by wearing a symbol of the Figa, a fist with the thumb sticking out between the index and middle finger, which was first worn in Africa. I carried mine in the form of a charm on a gold necklace I wore daily throughout my teens.

Though they are prevalent in Portugal, these voodoo practices go as far back as the slave trade era of the 1500’s and originate in African culture, which the Portuguese adapted over their years of trading slaves on the African coast now known as Ghana. About four million of these slaves are estimated to have been brought to Brazil, a former colony of the Portuguese empire. This is not a part of my cultural history that I’m proud of, but I will not deny it.

Unlike other European slave trading countries, Portugal and Spain both embraced the Pagan beliefs of their African slaves, and so the rituals of witchcraft and voodoo seeped into their Christian customs. It is so prevalent in Brazilian culture, there are approximately two million followers of a faction of this blended religion, named Candomblé, in South America and Europe, and many dedicated temples scattered throughout these regions.

Centuries have passed, and though my youngest kin no longer practice many of these rituals, there are still a few I prefer to hold on to as tradition. Mainly, eating twelve raisins at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve while making three wishes, even though I hate raisins. It was a tradition passed down by my grandmother, who died of Alzheimer’s many years ago. It’s my way of paying my respects to her every year while rekindling my Portuguese culture, as it seems to slip away every day I spend thousands of miles away from my family.

I don’t practice any organized religion, but I find myself still believing in all these Pagan superstitions ingrained in my psyche. This is why I remain Agnostic. I can’t say any of it exists, but then again, I can’t dismiss these unusual experiences. So until I find proof of one or the other, I’ll continue to keep my silverware separated and my raisins ready.

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The Science Behind the Magic of Coloring Books