November 2025 - Mexico City, Mexico
La Tercera Sangre
This project explores the spiritual and cultural heritage of traditional Mexican healing, curanderismo, through the eyes of Marlen, a third-generation curandera. Through photography and dialogue, it documents how ancestral intuition and energetic rituals persist as a vital form of emotional and physical care in the modern world.
Marlen does not view her work as something taught through formal instruction; rather, she sees it as a gift that develops organically. Her lineage is deeply tied to healing: her mother, grandmother, and aunt were all healers, and she has uncles with similar intuitive abilities. She describes this process as a personal discovery driven by curiosity and the spiritual environment in which she was raised.
In her daily work, Marlen uses traditional elements to diagnose and heal. Her primary tool is the egg (specifically a fertile egg), which she passes over the client's body to absorb negative energies. Afterwards, she breaks it into a glass of water to interpret the resulting shapes, allowing her to identify specific blocks or spiritual situations.
In addition to the egg, Marlen employs:
Herbs and Bouquetssed to sweep and cleanse the aura.
Sahumerios (Incense): She uses copal, frankincense, and myrrh to purify.
Candles and Light: Essential for her decrees and intentions.
Water: To her, water is the ultimate element of purification; she maintains a constant ritual of washing her hands immediately after every session to avoid absorbing the client's "heavy" energy.
One of the most revealing aspects of Maria is her ability to feel in her own body the ailments of those she treats. During sessions, she can experience headaches, high blood pressure, or chills that mirror the patient's state. She describes intense physical sensations, such as excessive sweating or suffocating heat, when she perceives dark energies or complex spiritual work. Although she has had terrifying experiences, such as encountering negative entities, she chooses to remain in the light and refuses to perform dark magic, guided by her own ethical transparency.
Despite living in a modern world, Marlen observes that people continue to seek her out because of trust and the fundamental need to be heard. Her faith is eclectic: she entrusts her work to Saint Jude Thaddeus, the Virgin Mary, and the Archangels, but she also integrates concepts like the seven chakras and emotional management.
For Marlen, traditional healing is a bridge between physical and energetic reality. Her advice is simple: "Everyone believes in something." She maintains that power resides in the confidence one has in oneself and the ability to transform energy through thought and intention. Her daily life is a constant flow of mental effort directed toward solving her clients' problems, a labour that exhausts her physically but which she embraces as her purpose.
