A cura de doenças físicas e da alma” O uso de plantas medicinais da caatinga e a prática do benzimento no município de Olho D’Água do Casado – AL

Abstract

Blessing is a healing art full of magic, faith and prejudice. In view of this, this research aimed to address the healing rituals of healers in the municipality of Olho D`Água do Casado, Hinterland de Alagoas, seeking to understand the reasons that built a religious intolerance towards this healing practice. This study also aimed to integrate other traditional medicinal knowledge, which is part of the life of the country people, such as knowledge about the use of medicinal plants from the caatinga, both by faith healers from Olho D`Água do Casado, and by the population itself. Experiencing the blessing through the ethnography of healing rituals, through participant observation and audio-recorded interviews, we sought to reach answers to the discussions brought up and an understanding of the reality of this office, which was sewn to pieces of the history of the hinterland. Through the deepening of the bibliography on the territorial formation of the northeastern hinterland, one can understand how the weight of the European social world designated discrimination still seen in today's society. While individuals inserted in this social world with marked characteristics of popular religiosity and medicinal knowledge, are trapped in thoughts built in this idealized social world in colonial Brazil, their worldviews were trapped in a past marked by struggle and blood, making it difficult to the creation of thoughts and reflections free of analyzes with traces of colonialism. Thus, we conclude that popular traditional medicinal knowledge is still materialized in cities in the hinterland, however, the blessing is a healing practice that is still discriminated against, causing the blockage of the transmission of knowledge arising from this craft.