Talk:Witchcraft in Latin America

Etymology
I updated the etymology section with more accurate information on the word. Robskin (talk) 18:47, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

According to Idries Shaw ("The Sufis") and others within witchcraft, the Iberian peninsula became the home of the ecstatic-mystic Brusha clan who migrated from north Africa during the medieval. As the story goes, they herded goats and made brooms (i.e. brushes) for a living, as well as making and selling herbal cures, and they used mandrake root in their extended dancing ceremonies/ecstatic practices. If verified by other sources, this information is consistent with the sufic contributions to traditional european witchcraft, bringing several of the stereotype symbols of the "hunted" witches, who were persecuted in La Reconquista and the following "witch-craze" between the Renaissance and the Age of Reason. I have encountered other historical sources on the pre-romanized Celtic Church of the western British Isles that also found links to North African mystics and symbology as far back as the Roman era, including classic scrollwork designs and tattoos. The suggestion is that "brujería" results from consonantal drift from "brusha-eria" or "broom-maker," or eventually "broom-rider" in the hyperbole of hysterical accusation. The association with goats is obvious:)2001:558:6033:19A:28FF:C354:763A:389C (talk) 21:16, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

Questions and remarks
Brujería per the standard rules of Spanish seplling has always "tilde" (stress mark) on the "i", I believe - else (brujeria) it makes a diphtong, transfers the stress to the -je- syllabe and sounds really odd. I have standarized the spellings along the article but even the title should carry it.

"Brujaría" may exist in some dialect but it is the first time I ever read it.

The article claims:
 * Although bruja/o is used by Spanish-speakers to refer to a witch from any culture, to call onself a brujo/a to non-Spanish speakers is to indicate that you are of Spanish descent. Brujaria is therefore a Spanish witchcraft.

Is it really that way? The article states that Native Americans are also called brujos/as. How "Spanish" are they? Is their witchcraft really "Spanish"? Or is it Native American (or hybrid)? What is "Spanish"? Does it mean loosely "Hispanic" or it means strictly "Spaniard"? The article seems to point to the first sense but it's quite confuse.

The article says:
 * The word bruja is believed to derive from bruxa, which is from the Celto-Iberian dialect in Spain evolving to what is known today as Gallego. It shares its roots with Portuguese. The present day Portuguese use the term bruxsa.

What about the meigas? It's widely know that Galicians call witches that way (they surely use bruxas too). Not a single mention is made about that.

The article says:
 * The female witch is considered the most powerful, and traditional brujos believe that the female passes down the sacred bloodline or spiritual bloodline (matriarchal lineage). This means that the line is inherited from a female but ends with a male.

Sources? I doubt there's such a well estabilished "doctrine" and much less that it is universal for all regions of Spain and all countries and ethnicities of Latin America.

Enjoy, --Sugaar 09:17, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

More remarks
The article starts with incorrects ideas, and follow with the same and a lack of sources of any kind.

First, "Brujería" is the spanish word for Witchcraft. It does nothing to do with a kind of "spanish witchcraft". In traslated terms, Witchcraft = Brujería. Witch = brujo (male witch) / bruja (female witch). I changed the initial phrase.

Second, the roots of this word are still difficult from a scholar point of view. The bruj- root is supposed to be descendant from a pre-roman word (maybe an indigenous language). The -ería suffix means Craft in general. Example: panadería (bakery), herrería (iron-works), fontanería (plumbing). Also, "brujaria" is the first time I read. The article say no word about other terms: meiga (Galician), bruxa (Catalan) and sorgin (Basque).

Third, there is a huge difference between the traditions of witchcraft in the Iberian Peninsula (similars to other branches of Traditional European Witchcraft) and Center-South American witchcraft (american shamans, nahuals) though the word used is sometimes the same (brujería).

Too superficial, without any sources or serious research. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.8.72.164 (talk) 01:08, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Is this page even really necessary?
It's rather poorly written, and I see no reason for it to be separate from witchcraft since it's just the Spanish word for the same thing. I'm pretty sure this warrants a nomination for deletion, especially since both of the other items on the talk page seem to express dissatisfaction with the article. I'm a new user though, so if I'm being over-zealous, feel free to reject my nomination. Namaps (talk) 22:58, 21 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Wellllllll.... I can see your concerns, but this does look at some more specific regional facets of the whole idea, as well as etymology (though the latter isn't as important, since Wikipedia isn't a dictionary). I'd be more tentatively inclined toward keeping this, but not passionately. - Vianello (talk) 21:18, 24 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I definitely agree that it's necessary to separate them considering the fact that there's a particular stigma surrounding being a witch, and this has the distinction of also being a boogey man of Mexican/Central/South American culture. In addition, if there are articles surrounding specific religious practices that follow under the witch category then this would be one of those as well....their practices are similar to Native American boogeymen as well as being somewhat similar to Santeria.  They're more like the antithesis of a curandera.173.88.17.25 (talk) 21:35, 15 January 2011 (UTC)OH

I came here after seeing "brujo" in an article about the southwestern United States. Learning about "witchcraft" in general would not have been as enlightening as what I found. This being the en wikipedia pages, the contexts in which the foreign word might used be English (pre- and post-colonial North America?) could be the focus. Oaktown Ted (talk) 20:23, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

Brujería is a specific school of witchcraft, and it includes hybridizations of saint-prayers and other aspects of Roman Catholic rituals during spell-casting. In some cases practitioners consider themselves still essentially catholic or christo-witches. It predates and is distinct from the Golden Dawn and other northern european strains of hermetic witchcraft-revival that generally led to modern Wicca and similar schools; and almost entirely separate from the runic witchcraft of the far north. I suggest it is worthy of its own page, although someone with a more intimate knowledge of its particulars would be helpful to round it out. 2001:558:6033:19A:28FF:C354:763A:389C (talk) 21:31, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

More on etymology
(material originally added to article, moved here for discussion purposes)


 * [Added by the author of the website: profejeff.blogspot.com  also known as "The Linguistics Club"]:  I have been searching for a definitive etymology of "bruja" for years. Everyone, including Corominas, says it is of uncertain origin. I am frankly puzzled by this, because the origin of the word seems to me to be absolutely clear. However, to discern it, one must know some Hebrew.


 * We must keep in mind that in the minds of many Spaniards of the age of Fernando and Isabela and their predecessors, Jewish religious practice was viewed with a range of feelings ranging from curiosity to deep suspicion, fear, and even to rank hatred. Those Spaniards who might have heard Jews at prayer would doubtless hear the opening words of most prayers: "Baruch ata Adonai Eloheinu, melech ha-olam..." (Blessed are you Lord our God, king of the universe...") The spelling "-ch-" is pronounced almost exactly as the Spanish letter "j". So, Baruch ata doubtlessly would sound like: "Bruja ta..." Thus, the Jews would be known unofficially as the people who say: "Bruja" when they pray, which must (in the Spanish mind) be the word that Jews use to characterize themselves. Since many Spaniards considered Jews to be evil, even of Satan, the word became associated with hechiceria (a synonym of "brujeria").


 * If anyone can supply a sounder hypothesis than this, I'd appreciate it if you would share it with me.


 * Jeff French Segall
 * M.A. Linguistics

--Alan the Roving Ambassador (talk) 00:29, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

This was also added into the article, placed here for sourcing and cleanup (SchmuckyTheCat (talk) 23:24, 25 October 2010 (UTC)):
 * While a definitive etymology of "bruja" has not yet been demonstrated, interesting and perceptive possibilities, such as the pluscia > bruja described above are of interest, but not definitive. My main argument with the hypothesis is that the author offers no evidence from literature of the intermediate steps that are hypothesized. Additionally, the positing of the putative /pl-/ evolving to /br-/ defies the more common pathway in which Latin /pl-/ > Castilian /palatalized l/, as in Latin "plenus" evolving to "lleno." /pl-/ may have evolved differently in other dialects of Spanish, as Rafael Lapesa has demonstrated in his Historia de la Lengua Española, but that complicates this questionable phonetic development even more.


 * Let us examine the far more proven evolution of a markedly important Spanish word from its medieval source. The slow but steady development of Middle Spanish "vuestra merced" (your grace, your majesty) to "usted" is proven by evidence from literature of many of the intermediate forms (vuestra merced > vuessa merced > vosarced > vuartsed > vutsed > utsed > usted). That particular example is fortuitous in that the word for "you" is clearly a very common locution and one would expect to see many examples of this over the centuries. However, "bruja" is not so common a locution and thus there is far less opportunity to follow it through the centuries. The indisputable Dean of Spanish etymology, Joan Corominas (ref. to be supplied shortly), himself says it is of uncertain origin.
 * If Corominas and other Romance linguists were familiar with Hebrew, they might have plumbed the history of Jews in Spain and possibly solved this seemingly intractable conundrum. They would have come to realize that in the minds of many Spaniards of the age of Fernando and Isabela and their predecessors, Jewish religious practice was viewed with a range of feelings ranging from curiosity to deep suspicion, fear, and even to rank hatred. Those Spaniards who might have heard Jews at prayer would doubtless hear the opening words of most prayers: "Baruch ata Adonai Eloheinu, melech ha-olam..." (Blessed are you Lord our God, king of the universe...") The spelling "-ch-" is pronounced almost exactly as the faucal voiceless fricative represented by the Spanish letter "j". So, the first three syllables of "Baruch ata" doubtlessly would sound to a Spaniard like: "Bruja" Thus, the Jews might become known in popular parlance as the people who say: "Bruja" when they pray. It is easy to hypothesize that in the Spanish mind "bruja" must be the word that Jews use to characterize themselves. Since many Spaniards considered Jews to be evil, even of Satan, the word became associated with hechicería (a synonym of "brujería"). It is reminiscent of the error the Romans made when, upon first landing in a cove at the tip of Southern Greece, they encountered a small tribe who called themselves "Graeci," and made the error of assuming that therefore, all natives of this country were "Graeci," hence the name by which they came to be known to the Romans, rather than "Hellenes" which is what most of the natives called themselves. A similar error was made by the Spaniards who called the natives of the New World "indios," thinking they had reached India; and that error stuck too, enshrined by tradition and ultimately by history and yet another such error was made in Central Mexico when the Spanish colonizers happened upon the indigenous Huichol tribe in what is now the state of Michoacán. When they married the native women, their families called the Spaniards "tarascos," meaning "brother-in-law," but the Spaniards thought they had just been inducted into the tribe of Tarascos and that now they, too, were Tarascos. Thus, the Mexicans to this day call the Huichol natives by that ancient misnomer.


 * In sum, given the weakness of any of the extant etymologies of "bruja" and "brujería," I would suggest that etymological investigators give the same consideration to this hypothesis as they give to hypotheses suggested elsewhere.


 * Jeff French Segall, M.A., linguistics
 * profejeff.blogspot.com

once again argentinian peolpe trying to hijack wikipedia
reading this article an english speaker is being led to believe that somehow argentinian people are responsible for the term brujeria. this is absolutely incorrect. it is a word used by millions of people in dozens of countries. there is a systematic attempt by people of argentina to hijack all sorts of wikipedia articles by somehow attempting to claim authorship, or ownership, or creation of all sorts of ideas and terminlogies. don't fall for it. what they are doing is practicing cultural cyber war. everyone in the spanish speaking world uses this word. and it did not originate in argentina. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.211.161.74 (talk) 06:41, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Can you maybe not be racist? I see none of this “claiming it’s ours” shit anywhere on the internet during my studies, and we are right to at least partially claim it because it’s also ours to claim. RainbowLinings (talk) 18:12, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

Importance
I came to this topic trying to find information about Bruja and found it very informative moreso than it would have been as part of a more general Witchcraft topic because in the US, the word is used or understood differently. While we know it connotes Wichcraft, the word here is meant more as an insult when applied to a woman. Rather than meaning "witch", it takes on similar meaning to the word "bitch" in practical application. In generic slang, it is often used this way even by people who don't know it means witch.

I regards to complaints I read in this Talk section, I don't see where it's necessary to include the word Meagas as that could be added as a Stub to this article. However, since more than one person brought it up and the topic is about Brujeria, maybe it should be included since to document the possible root origin of the word it would require looking at similar words which may contribute to it.

In regard to it being claimed as originating in Argentina, it could be that the author is indicating where it begins to take on a separate meaning from our traditional understanding of the word witch much as Voodoo differs and took on a new direction separate and apart from it's African origins as Vodu. This is the way I understood the author as speaking. Maybe, to satisfy critics, the author could do a bit more research on the origins of Brujeria in Europe and separate it into two parts addressing first how it is the same as European witchcraft and then second, how it evolved into something different combining with Native American beliefs which the author does point to as making Brujeria different in the America's than elsewhere.

Overall, I think this article falls within Wikipedia's rules regarding source material, quality standards and neutrality when it is read with understanding of the authors views. If it needs changes, then let's see the changes made and remove the warnings relating to the topics truthfulness and integrity.

I needed the information this article provided and it verifies some of the meanings / history I found elsewhere but needed an single source to link to.

My own contribution is just to add the meaning of the word Bruja in slang as a general insult.

Thank you for posting this article. (Armorbeast (talk) 13:45, 8 June 2012 (UTC))

removing POV tag with no active discussion per Template:POV
I've removed an old neutrality tag from this page that appears to have no active discussion per the instructions at Template:POV:
 * This template is not meant to be a permanent resident on any article. Remove this template whenever:
 * There is consensus on the talkpage or the NPOV Noticeboard that the issue has been resolved
 * It is not clear what the neutrality issue is, and no satisfactory explanation has been given
 * In the absence of any discussion, or if the discussion has become dormant.

Since there's no evidence of ongoing discussion, I'm removing the tag for now. If discussion is continuing and I've failed to see it, however, please feel free to restore the template and continue to address the issues. Thanks to everybody working on this one! -- Khazar2 (talk) 12:26, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Witch-Healers? This article needs more citations and less OR
This article states, "Brujería also refers to witch-healers" though neither of these links directly address Brujería in the context as it's presented here. Also, of the three citations given they all are incomplete, for example, where can I find, "sunt mulieres plusciae, sunt nocturnae",63.9? Is it even a book? Under the Etymology section, we see OR lines like, "The word may be inherited from ..." though I can't find any reference (or page numbers) backing this claim up in the Oxford Latin Dictionary. The trivia section (which makes up half of this article) indeed seems trivial. So a character on a TV show who practices Santeria gets called a witch in Spanish? That's noteworthy? The link to La Llorona doesn't actually refer to her as a witch, she is a ghost. There is a difference. Likewise, the article on Curandero are about shamans, not witches. The claim that "Both men and women can be witches; brujos and brujas respectively" might be true grammatically but there is no citations backing this claim up so, once again, it is OR. I don't mind trying to fix this but of the research material on Latin American witches that I have none of it will back up the claims presented here. Xenomorph erotica (talk) 15:14, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

Latest edits
As previous discussions on this talk page demonstrate, the article is still a mess of original research and original thought. The lede is supposed to be a summary of what is address later in the article with proper references. But such history is not addressed and so it remains in the lede, just a series of unreferenced claims about history. The etymology is referenced but everything else is unreferenced.

The "see also" links are indeed relevant - an example of a significant and notable Brujería and Catalan history of whichcraft from which these traditions come and on which the etymology is based. Removing the popular culture section was silly - that's a common inclusion and is among the only content in the article which can be easily verified.  St ★ lwart 1 1 1 04:25, 13 January 2015 (UTC)
 * I will address the WP:OR issue soon by finding sources; witchcraft in Europe is different from witchcraft in the Americas. As for La Llorena, it is of no relevance from what I can tell (editor whom issued tags also agrees) so I will be removing that; Catalan witchcraft is fine because the historical connection is noted. Also, the "in popular culture" is rather unnecessary (editor also agrees) so I will be removing that as well unless multiple users object. Omo Obatalá  (talk) 12:59, 13 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Which "editor also agrees"? You can remove things once you have established a consensus for doing so.  St ★ lwart 1 1 1 14:13, 13 January 2015 (UTC)
 * You don't get to decide the content of articles based on your POV and the lack of multiple objectors to that POV. An editor has objected so you come here to discuss it per WP:BRD. Issuing ultimatums and edicts is not the same things as "discussion".  St ★ lwart 1 1 1 14:17, 13 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Did you even read the post above from Xenomorph erotica? Omo Obatalá  (talk) 14:23, 13 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Of course, and the article has been edited extensively since then. Some of the sections referenced don't even exist. The original research concerns remain a concern, yet that is the tag you are seeking to remove, without addressing the issues in that thread, this thread or in the article. There is nothing wrong with an "in popular culture" section (note all the other articles that have them) and you don't resolve a concern about one particular entry by section-blanking anyway. Instead of blindly reverting, how about you actually read what has been written and take a look at the article edit history?  St ★ lwart 1 1 1 14:29, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Brujeria from the Hebrew
I don't know if this helps at all, and I am not Jewish in any way but I am Spanish. When I was a little child I feel like it was generally understood that the word Bruja came from Hebrew. My Mom had told me that Jews use the word a lot in their blessings, and that Spaniards believed the Jews were performing a form of witchcraft and were always doing their "Barujerias". I don't know if this information is helpful.

No Historical Context
I see nothing here describing witchcraft from the Spanish context, and how it would function separately or uniquely as a practice throughout history. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.58.179.196 (talk) 04:27, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

Deletion in 2020?
As a native Spanish speaker, I was surprised there was an English-language page for this term and reading it only made me more confused. I'm glad there is an active discussion about deleting it. It makes no sense that there is a separate article talking about Brujería as if it were something different from Witchcraft. In 99% of cases when a Hispanic person uses the term "brujería", they are talking about "witchcraft" and nothing else. Redirecting to the Witchcraft page in English would make more sense because otherwise it leads to the wrong assumption that there is one specific kind of witchcraft for the entire Spanish speaking world (400 million people) called Brujería.

A more accurate way to portray witchcraft in Latin America and the Caribbean would be to have a list of individual practices separated by country or region. Brujería is a very broad term and general statements don't really work, for example "Brujería doesn't participate in community, hierarchical, or initiation-based practice or membership". That may be true of one kind of "brujería", but not all of it.

Also, there is already a page for Brujería in the Spanish version of Wikipedia but it's not linked to this one. I guess that's because the English word "brujería" somehow means something different than the same word in Spanish? Then how is this page ever going to be translated into Spanish? "Anglocentric perception of Hispanic witchcraft"?

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Fs2338 (talk • contribs) 20:25, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Requested move 24 February 2020

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

Brujería → Witchcraft in Latin America – The title of the page simply means "witchcraft" in Spanish, which is confusing. There is clearly a subculture of witchcraft in Latin America, so the title should be changed to better correspond to articles like Witchcraft in Italy. ZXCVBNM (TALK) 10:04, 24 February 2020 (UTC)


 * I am neutral, but it seems that English language sources like to use this term. "Brujería" having a wider meaning in Spanish doesn't really influence how it's used in English. – Thjarkur (talk) 13:44, 24 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Support - I think so. Brujería means witchcraft, sorcery, wizardry, and enchantment and that should be covered within the article itself. Moving it to Witchcraft in Latin America would be good, since there are similar articles such as Witchcraft in the Bible, ...in Anglo-Saxon England, etc.... --The Eloquent Peasant (talk) 20:07, 24 February 2020 (UTC)


 * Oppose - The literature in this area seems to support using the term Brujería, and Anglicizing this as Witchcraft in Latin America seems to dilute what makes this a somewhat unique form of practice. --- FULBERT (talk) 09:37, 25 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Support. "Witchcraft in Latin America" is a more precise description of what the article is about. "Brujería" can refer to any type of witchcraft. The Spanish Wikipedia article Witchcraft is titled Brujería, for example. Surachit (talk) 23:20, 1 March 2020 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Evaluation of "Witchcraft in Latin America"
Firstly, why is there no mention throughout this article of a key Latin American alternative spiritual and medicinal practice?: Curanderismo. Secondly, this article needs major revision in terms of the usage of the term "Brujería" as it is being used as though it is its own unique religion or spiritual practice. While this can be - and often is - the case, it is ALSO and more significantly used as an umbrella term for the forms of spiritual practices detailed in the "Concept" section. In addition, "Brujería", "Bruja", or "Brujo" are all commonly used as pejoratives - backed by hundreds of years of superstition and Roman Catholic-influenced persecution - against individuals who follow non-traditional forms of belief or are, in general, nonconformist. This is all extremely necessary information to include as the cultural, spiritual, and sociological/anthropological understanding of the term has shaped its usage and influence to this day.Aravoir (talk) 02:14, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

Bruxa
Bruxa redirects here but the article doesn't define it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.61.180.106 (talk) 07:21, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

Many traditions
Some traditions are from areas of Africa but other from native, some from Europe. Ed 2607:FEA8:4A2:4100:21D2:54F6:19BC:D682 (talk) 09:41, 6 April 2023 (UTC)