Featured Article - February 2009

Under My Spell

Fresh out of love potion number nine? Arin Mckenna tells us about the everyday folk remedies that have helped New Mexicans find and keep love for centuries. Hold your nose, close your eyes, and take a drink.

Anyone who has dreamed of romance or experienced unrequited love understands the desire to make things happen quickly. The popularity of computer dating services attests to that.

But what did people do before the Internet offered virtually unlimited opportunities to meet people? Colonial New Mexico comprised small, isolated villages with few potential mates from whom to choose. The watchful eyes of a dueña (chaperone), usually a grandmother or an unmarried aunt, ensured decorum in social interactions, and parents arranged marriages with little input from their children. But people are infinitely creative about securing their desired partner, and early New Mexicans were no different.

One of the oldest customs for attracting a mate began with the indigenous people and was adopted by the
Spanish: A woman would rub a few drops of menstrual urine on her hair or skin. “If she does this, then the male of the species will come, catch the scent, and fall madly in love with her,” says Larry Torres, an associate professor at the University of New Mexico and an expert on New Mexican folklore. As strange as this custom may seem to us today, recent research on sexual behavior and the influence of pheromones, which are found in urine, indicates that colonial New Mexicans were on to something.

If you are searching for that perfect mate, you might follow the example of the fictional Aunt Carmen, from Pat Mora's book of poems Aunt Carmen's Book of Practical Saints. Aunt Carmen, a sacristan, has a close relationship with the santos; in the book's first poem, "Oración a los Santos" (Prayer to the Saints, she recounts how she prayed to 27 saints to send her a husband, asking each to provide a different attribute to ensure the perfect mate. These include:

Saint Clare,
for Mother, could he be a millionaire...
Saint Francis,
please don't make him a pessimist...
Saint Gertrude the Great, forgive me, but make him passionate...

The poem is a reminder that if you're considering dropping the computer dating service in favor of love potions, be careful what you ask for. Rather than spells, you might, like Aunt Carmen, call on a range of divine helpers. Be specific about what you're looking for in a spouse. Images of the saints or divine beings can help you focus. You can light candles as you pray. And don't forget one of Aunt Carmen's most important pleas:

Saint Rose, have him soon propose...

A village matchmaker, or alcahueta, also provided young girls with potions to bring them love. The simplest potion, perfumed talc, would usually do the trick. But usually, an alcahueta’s bag of tricks included more potent polvitos de enamorar (love powders). Valeriana (valerian), sometimes called the workingman’s Viagra, was also thought to increase a woman’s fertility. A tea of valerian mixed with champes (rose hips) is “a surefire starter for infusing love and desire,” says Torres.

Love potions often included animal products, such as crushed hummingbird bones. Hummingbirds were known for their stamina, so dusting the bone powder on a man was thought to increase his sexual potency. Tobacco or belladonna were also rubbed on the skin, sometimes surreptitiously, to increase desire.

In one popular spell with Moorish roots, a person obtained a hair from his or her desired love. One end of the hair was tied to a cockroach’s leg, the other to a nail. As the roach tried to escape, it circled the nail. The spell caster exclaimed “Ojalá”—a corruption of the Arabic Inshala (will of Allah)—at the insect’s completion of its first revolution, then dropped one letter from the end of the word for each subsequent revolution. When she finally cried “O,” she crushed the cockroach to bind her lover to her.

In New Mexico, the patron saint of lovers was not St. Valentine but St. Anthony of Padua. Young girls, especially, prayed to St. Anthony for help in attracting a husband. Torres recounts one northern New Mexican tale of an unmarried woman who appealed to St. Anthony to bring her a husband: “She prayed for nine nights, lighting little votive offerings in front of her statue of St. Anthony. On the ninth night of the novena, no man had presented himself at the door. In anger, she took the little statue and hurled it out the window. Just at that moment a handsome man happened to be passing under the window, and it whacked him on the side of the head. He let out such a yell that she went outside to see what was happening. She nursed him back to health, and he fell in love with her. The moral of the story is that St. Anthony always comes through, but in his own good time.”

Nasario Garcia, folklorist and author of several books, including Old Las Vegas: Hispanic Memories from the New Mexico Meadowlands, says that St. Anthony often had a little help from the dueña in answering a young person’s prayers. “Though it was not collusion between the grandma and her grandchildren, she could serve, and invariably did, as a kind of a ‘secret’ agent who worked behind the scenes to fulfill her grandchild’s dream of marrying the queen or Romeo of their life. How? Most grandmothers enjoyed unparalleled influence, and invariably the boy or girl’s father acquiesced to the grandmother’s input. After all, there was no better cupid—or magical wand—behind the scenes than the grandmother.”

As colonialists waited in anticipation to see if their interventions worked, they used simple techniques to divine whether or not that knock at the door meant that their lover had arrived. If a man dropped a teaspoon, it was said, a young lady would visit him that night (a woman would hope to drop a knife). If he dropped a tablespoon, a man expected a visit from the girl’s mother. A dropped fork signified an older man calling, and if someone should drop—heaven forbid—a washcloth, that could only portend a visit from a dirty old man.

Arin McKenna is an award-winning writer who lives in Nambé. She is grateful to all the people, such as Larry Torres, who have shared the lore and history of New Mexico with her. The more she learns, the more she loves this remarkable state.

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