A shaman helps clients with a variety of problems
Albert Ponce had a broken spirit. Life for the 25-year-old Clifton resident had recently hit a bumpy patch. He couldn't land a job working in an office. He didn't want to settle for a retail job, or working in a factory; he wanted to make use of his business degree from Gibbs College. And his personal life was spinning out of control. He faced a legal issue regarding a domestic matter. The stress showed in his face. The young man's shiny eyes turned dull and lifeless, rimmed with dark half-moons. Ponce then did what people of many cultures around the world have done for thousands of years. Believing the source of his troubles was spiritual, he consulted a shaman, also known as an energy healer, an intermediary who can communicate with the spiritual world.
Conveniently, Ponce's shaman, Jose Juarez, whom he had last visited more than a year ago, was located in Clifton's Botany Village. Juarez owns New Age Store Leecatzin, a botanica, a Latin American spiritual shop that sells amulets, oils, religious candles and statues of the Blessed Virgin. Exotic medicinal plants crowd the storefront, creating a tiny sidewalk jungle. Painted on the shop's window, in Spanish and English, is a saying: "Remember everything is fragile, the mind and body can be easily sick." Juarez, a compact man with dark, silver-flecked curly hair that bounces to his shoulders, belongs to the Totonac Indians, a Mesoamerican indigenous group. He descends from a long line of shamans, born in a mountain village in Mexico's Puebla state. Like most Latin American shamans, he has a mythic story that explains his origins as a medium. When he was barely a year old, he became gravely ill. His mother consulted several shamans, who helped him recover. They told her they saw eagles in the infant's spirit, a sign that he, too, someday would become a healer.
Juarez, 41, who has never married and has no children, settled in Clifton 16 years ago, seeking new opportunities and a better life. He hoped to take a break from practicing shamanism, and thought he'd be content working as landscaper. But old friends and acquaintances from Mexico who lived in the area kept calling him for healing services. "I couldn't escape my destiny, what I am," he said. Since then, he said, he's cured sick babies and helped alcoholics go dry. He's cleansed homes of bad spirits and mediated family disputes. Using tarot cards, he's read the future of worried immigrants. When word got around, his client base expanded into the Russian, Polish and black communities. Juarez said he'll never get rich being a shaman. But his goal is to preserve his traditional culture and enable people to get in touch with God. "For someone to take in healing, they have to invite God into themselves," he said, explaining how clients must take an active interest in their healing.
One aspect of Juarez's services is practical: he's part psychologist, life coach and practitioner of traditional medicine, dispensing herbs and teas for ailments from bad circulation to infected wounds. But there's the other intangible aspect to being a shaman. He believes he is a middle man who can connect with the spiritual world. These spirits lurk around us, and above and below us in heaven and the underworld, he said. They have the power to bring about good and bad in people's lives. Albert Ponce (a diminutive that he requested be used in lieu of his full name) believed his recent string of bad luck was caused by bad spirits invading his body. He can't put his finger on the source; perhaps an envious friend wished bad thoughts upon him, or maybe it was a stranger. And though Ponce is a practicing Roman Catholic, he felt that a priest couldn't help. Seeking the help of a shaman was actually familiar to him. His parents, immigrants from Peru, often took trips home to receive spiritual cleansing.
So when Ponce recently contacted Juarez in desperation, the shaman calmly listened and reassured him everything would be fine. "He has insecurity and a lot of confusion in his mind that attracts bad energy," said Juarez. The shaman arranged to perform a cleansing ceremony in the mountains last Saturday. But they couldn't go to just any mountain. He needed lush trees, soaring eagles in the sky and a clean, flowing river to summon the spirits. No spot in Passaic County would suffice. So they drove in Ponce's car an hour west on Interstate 80 to the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area, to a tranquil spot in the forest where the shaman brings many clients year-round. The hours-long ceremony would cost $300. Juarez charges a range of prices for his services depending on the client and the circumstances. Arriving in the tree-covered parking lot, Ponce unloaded bags of fruits and vegetables from his trunk that he was instructed to purchase as an offering to the spirits. A pinstriped suit jacket and a silk Geoffrey Beene tie were folded in the trunk, waiting to be worn for the office job he hoped to get.
Carrying backpacks filled with bottles of sweet wine and Jose Cuervo tequila, oils and towels, they followed a path a few minutes into the forest. Preparing the ceremony, Juarez knelt to the forest floor and placed coal bars and incense into a tiny censer. His thick, small hands lit a cigarette, producing swirls of smoke. In the middle phase of the ceremony, which took two hours, he ordered Ponce to place the fruit and vegetables -- including a peach, a carrot, an ear of corn, a kiwi and zucchini -- into a large ring as an offering to the spirits. Then Ponce was instructed to stand barefoot, with his eyes closed and arms spread, in the center of the ring. Juarez then tapped his body with the various produce and a bouquet of colorful flowers. Grabbing 13 purple eggplants, he tapped Ponce's shoulders, back and head. He swigged a mouthful of tequila and spit it into the fire. His face grew flush, his lips wet and swollen from the alcohol. He was in a trance-like state.
At the end of the offering, Ponce opened his eyes and said he started to feel better. They left the ring of produce untouched and proceeded down a hill to the riverbank to perform the final step, a herbal cleansing in the river. As Ponce nervously stepped into the waist-high water in jean shorts, canoeists and kayakers paddled by staring at the scene. The shaman dictated a prayer to Ponce in Spanish, who repeated it in English: "I want this water to clean everything in my life. All the bad energy, the bad times, the bewitching things, all types of energy. I want everything to be clean in my life." He then ordered Ponce to dunk himself in the water three times. But Ponce froze, because he had a phobia of submerging his head underwater.
The shaman then came to his side, and gently held his back, guiding him slowly into the water while whispering a prayer. Ponce stepped out of the water shaking, his skin goose-bumpy. Once he dried off his face looked lighter, and he said the bad spirits had "popped out" of him. On Monday Ponce said he got an offer from Columbia University to work as an administrative assistant. And on Tuesday he had a date in Passaic County Court, where, he said, the legal issue he faced was resolved in his favor.