Praying for healing: the magical-religious resort in the search for health

Abstract

This article contains part of the findings of anthropological fieldwork conducted by the author in the field of popular Catholicism in Andalusia (Spain), work funded by the Commission of Ethnology of the Andalucian government for the realization of her thesis PhD. In order to fight and end disease, different cultural systems offer both empirical and supernatural answers, especially in situations where scientific medicine lacks one. In those circumstances, people resort to metaphysical explanations in an attempt to propitiate supernatural beings so that they apply their healing powers. In traditional catholic societies Andalusia for the case that concerns us people have used, and still do, a magical-religious model based on the belief that supernatural beings (God, the Virgin or the saints) possess enough power to interrupt the course of any disease. In addition, this model comprises a ritual to invoke the participation of the supernatural beings in the rearrangement of some fact in exchange for a votive offering. My aim in this paper is to present this religious ritual whose main motivation is the resolution of health-related problems. The votive offering is the last link in a ritual process that begins with a situation of disease, accident or risk suffered by a subject; this circumstance is followed by an invocation and a promise to be fulfilled by the subject or another person in her name, requesting the intervention of the supernatural being to end that threat. When the request is granted to the petitioners satisfaction, it commits her to fulfill the promise. Here is where the votive offering plays its part a material object of lasting character that appears as the materialization of the miraculous fact