What is ojo de venado

Log in No account? Create an account. Remember me. Previous Share Flag Next. You can say that we're actually losing our indigenous past. An ojo de venado is a type of seed. Back when I was 14, I got my first ojo de venado. One day, my mom saw my ojo de venado and she laughed. She asked me if I knew what I was wearing.

By making it formally known to the outside world the ritual becomes real. The sense of personal agency is undermined as every task in the entire operation becomes reactive. Attending to a screaming baby 24 hours a day, never recuperating any strength while running a demanding project turns out to be a far too ambitious endeavor. We are strangers who have come to another part of the world with an uncanny request: to create an electronic version of the Virgin of Guadalupe.

Although all our co-workers are nothing but sweet and utterly engaged in our communal efforts, we cannot help but wonder what the word in the barrio might be. Magical rituals often come into play in such situations in order to surmount the passivity brought on by alienation. Through jokes we conceal a growing conviction that newborns could in fact experience existential pain.

Our wrongful presumption is not in treating child psychology as magical thinking, but in believing that ours is a problem that does not concern anyone else.

And here we find ourselves, in fact, part of such a community that treats existential ailments as a general concern,where all magic beliefs, techniques, and institutions exist in order to respond to the situation; to restore threatened presence.

A committee of concerned pueblans approaches us suggesting a solution, a so-called limpia : a cleansing ritual that would fix all our problems. The presence of a white baby in this setting, they suggest, may have stirred some unwarranted emotions—covetousness, envy or other dark sentiments—which might well have led to the casting of the evil eye.

We agree to the traditional cleansing as long as it does not involve the baby ingesting any substances. Anonymous Joan : That is also why in Mexico if you stare at someone's child or try to get them to smile and the person sees you doing it they will often times quickly place themselves between you and the child lest you give the child the evil eye. It took me awhile to figure that out. Within the first week, someone put this symbol around his neck.

They called in an asabache. It was a seed, but it actually had a natural design shaped eerily like an eyeball on it. When I went to the pediatrician, he said, "What the hell is this? I figured it couldn't hurt.

Beryl, Azabache isn't a seed. It is a polished piece of fossilized wood that is similar to lignite coal. It is known the world over as a sort of soft gem stone but in Latin America it is often used as protection against the Evil Eye. In English it is called "jet" after the French "jaiet". We get the phrase "jet black" from this material. Thank you very much for your interesting addition to this discussion. Post a Comment. I was just as surprised as she was because the people involved are fairly middle class and well educated but apparently old superstitions and traditions die hard.

The "ojo de venado" is an amulet made from the seed of a flowering vine and this seed is large and dark and about the size and shape of the eye of a deer. It's purpose is to ward off the "mal de ojo" or "evil eye" which is also called "el alojamiento". All rights reserved. Send your comments to: cat yronwode. Did you like what you read here? Find it useful? Then please click on the Paypal Secure Server logo and make a small donation to catherine yronwode for the creation and maintenance of this site.

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