Using Limpias to Cleanse Your Energy in the Bruja Curandera Way

My earliest memory of a limpia (a ritual practice of energy clearing) is from when I was around 6 or 7 years old. I was going through susto, a moment in time when my soul was fragmented due to a traumatic experience, and I was having trouble sleeping, eating, and feeling the happiness that a kid at that age should feel.

My mother took me to one of my aunts to rebalance my energy. Growing up in Mexico, I got to witness how, despite colonization, we still practice and keep some of our pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican rituals, including the upe of limpias with herbs, eggs, and copal.

Although there are some protocols to follow when performing a limpia, and certain energetic spaces in the human body to focus on, you can still tap into the principle of transference to rebalance yourself.

Why I Love Egg Limpias
One of my favorite ways of performing limpias is with eggs, which, to be honest, until a few years ago I believed was only a Mexican practice. After doing research for my book Bruja Curandera and my workshops, I learned that this practice is also part of the traditions in other countries of Latin America and Europe. Each country has its own way, and in Mexico every family has its own way.

I prefer egg cleansing because besides being excellent energy cleaning agents, they allow us to "see" information in the egg itself. With evomancy we can determine what kind of energies have been absorbed from the body, if we need to perform a second limpia, or even more detailed information (like the gender of the person producing the energy, or even the letter of their name; sometimes you can see faces in the egg or information on when the stagnation happened).

I always advise my clients not to get too stuck in the story of the egg; most of the time it really does not matter what is weighing you down, but that you release it from your body and do not start a toxic loop of returning it to sender and then getting the energy back. While I am not at all against return-to-sender magic, I do still believe that we do that more than we should, instead of just dusting off the annoyances and moving on to better things.

Traditionally, we are advised to cleanse our energies with eggs that are farmed, and even more specifically to use the eggs of the chickens that we keep in our household and that we have a relationship with, but this is not quite realistic; many are lucky to have that in their lives, while many others do not. I would really piss off my HOA if I had chickens in the house!

For the times that it is not possible to get the eggs from your own chickens or farm, grocery store eggs would do just fine. When it comes to brujeria and curanderisimo, we aim to be practical and keep moving forward instead of aiming for perfection (which is also, in my opinion, why brujeria and curanderisimo are more connected to folk healing and folk magic than traditional witchcraft.

Spiritual maintenance is important for our energetic stability. I highly recommend that you give yourself the opportunity to cleanse your energy at least once a month, or even better (if you can find the time and discipline to do so) once a week.

How to Perform the Limpia
To perform a limpia on yourself (regardless of your cultural background or level of training), all you need is an egg, a glass of water, and 10 or 15 minutes of uninterrupted time.

I like starting my self-limpias by holding the egg in my hand and connecting to its energy, thanking it for being an ally in my life, and for giving its life to help me (after all, eggs are a chicken that did not hatch!)

Depending on where the egg comes from and the conditions of that location, you may want to rinse it in running water first, as you will be passing this egg through your skin. For even more efficient egg limpias, you can begin your limpia by cleansing your body with smoke or taking a salt water bath.

Some traditions begin their limpias from the head to the feet, and others from the feet to the head; the limpia will work either way but is best if you stay consistent to whatever you have chosen. I begin my limpias from the head to the feet, rubbing it in the top of my head, my forehead, eyes, ears, throat, shoulders, arms, chest, stomach, hips, legs, arms, elbows, wrist, belly button, and from my hips all the way down to the bottom of my feet.

If you do this limpia on someone else, you can also cleanse the back of their body and pay special attention to the spine. My aunt, abuela, and the people I grew up observing would pray during the cleansing, asking Jesus to support with the energetic release, but although I grew up Catholic, I am not any longer. My practices are fully pagan; in my limpias, instead I focus on animism and the spirit of the egg itself as a symbol of healing and the earth, as well as paying attention to how the body feels during the limpia.

You can also pass the egg in a zig zag movement through the body or go even deeper by focusing in the top of the head, the forehead to cover the third eye, the throat, and all the articulations in the body (including shoulders, elbows, wrist, hips, knees and ankles), as well as the belly button—which we believe is the center of connection to your lineage and ancestral timelines.

The energetic releases generated actually tend to occur pretty quickly. A limpia would not necessarily repair fractures in your energetic field or release energetic parasites or cut cords. Still, it will help you release the everyday energies that we carry as humans.

Timing
You can set up a time in your schedule for your monthly limpia, or you can make the time in the schedule if you are feeling disoriented (without a medical reason), tired, restless, uneasy, or having trouble sleeping or simply not feeling like yourself.

If you witness an act of violence, participate in a confrontation, visit haunted places, or suffer a spiritual attack, this is also a good time to do a limpia.

After performing the limpia, we traditionally crack the egg in a glass with water. If you are going to do this, please be sure that you are not reusing this glass for drinking water! After we crack the egg, we wait for 10 to 15 minutes for the egg to settle in the water, and we "read" it.

Reading the Egg?
In the same way that each family carries a different protocol of limpias, there are also several languages and symbolic interpretations for an egg reading; for me, I base my interpretations on this:

White dots usually point to mal de ojo (evil eye), which may or may not have been sent to you on purpose. Sometimes people desire what you have, and they send negative energy to you unconsciously.

Thread-like strings or webbing point to mental patterns, worries, or attachments that you are carrying.

Bubbles are associated with overthinking, or mentally carrying more in our mind than we should.

Blood or black dots point to something heavier, such as a spiritual attack, deep trauma, or grief. When seeing this, it is important to perform a second or even third limpia, for the egg to fully absorb what we were carrying.

A yolk that is thick or that looks like is cooked or boiled is the clearest sign that something intense was trying to interfere with your energy, such as a spell, a hex, or a working. But, before you spiral down with this, please know that it can also mean that you may be stuck in your own ways a little too much so is not necessarily someone sending you bad juju. It can of course also be that the egg was exposed to hot environments.

Some people dispose of the egg in the toilet, some others in the earth, some more give it to a river or a tree; do whatever is more practical for you, but also remember to take into consideration your environment.

You can either wash the glass or throw it away, but please do not reuse it for drinking water and under no circumstances eat the egg.

A Note on Cultural Appropriation
The practices shared here are not closed; you can use them to make your life better. The line of cultural appropriation is crossed if you try to teach practices that are not associated with your cultural background or not passed to you, but using them for living an even better life is a good thing, as long as they are used with respect.

Create a beautiful life by taking care of your energy, and remembering that you have the magic and power within to shift your reality.

Wendy Mata
Bruja Curandera | Fire Priestess