Also called milagritos, promesas, dijes, ex-voto, retablo, lámina
Milagros are small metal charms shaped like body parts, people, animals or objects, pinned to a saint's image to ask for healing or to give thanks; ex-voto paintings tell the story of a miracle in thanks for help received.
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Take care: Ask before attaching anything to a church statue; some parishes collect milagros in a box instead. Milagros are no substitute for medical care.
Mexican ex-votos, also called retablos or láminas, were often painted on sheets of tin. They show the accident, illness or danger, the saint or Virgin floating above, and a written account below. Shrines such as San Juan de los Lagos hold thousands.
Durand and Massey collected ex-votos from Mexican shrines that thank saints for safe border crossings, finding work or returning home. They read the paintings as first-person records of migration.
At the San Miguel Mission in Santa Fe, milagros are nailed to the old church bell, and many New Mexico churches have saint statues hung with ribbons of charms. Visitors still buy them from vendors near shrines.
Offering a model of the healed body part goes back to the ancient Mediterranean, where Greeks and Romans left clay feet, eyes and limbs at healing sanctuaries such as those of Asclepius. Iberian Christians kept the habit, and Spanish colonists brought it to the Americas. The word milagro means miracle, and the charms are made of silver, tin, brass, wax, wood or bone depending on the place and what the petitioner can afford.
Ex-voto, from Latin for from a vow made, names any offering given to fulfill a promise to a saint. In Mexico painted ex-votos on tin flourished in the 19th and early 20th centuries, made by local painters for ordinary families. Artists such as Frida Kahlo collected them, and today museums and scholars value them as a record of everyday life, illness, accidents and migration told in the words of the people who lived it.
An open right hand, often with an eye in the palm, hung in the home or worn to push back the evil eye and bless a household.
A blue glass eye bead hung in the home or worn on the body so that envious or admiring looks are caught and reflected before they can do harm.
The ancient practice of sleeping in a sacred place to receive a guiding or healing dream, made famous at the sanctuaries of Asclepius such as Epidaurus. Given here as a modern dream-question practice; it is not medical care.
Tell us what you need and we will craft a custom spell, charm or reading for it. Or call to book a reading or a road blessing in person.
