Brujo: Grimoire of a Puerto Rican Witch
Brujería is the Spanish term for witchcraft—a spiritual path focused on personal power, direct communication with spirits, and the practical application of herbal wisdom passed down through generations of traditional healers. A male practitioner is a brujo, a female practitioner is a bruja, and this practice welcomes everyone regardless of background or heritage because Puerto Rican folk magic evolved as inherently syncretic tradition that has always absorbed new influences while maintaining its core principles. This grimoire documents authentic Puerto Rican traditional healing practices as they exist in both the island and the diaspora, teaching the methods that actual brujos and brujas use to help their clients achieve mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual wellbeing through the power of plants, prayer, and spirit work.
Puerto Rican brujería emerged from the convergence of multiple spiritual currents that met in the Caribbean and blended into something new while preserving elements from each source tradition. The practice carries Indigenous Taíno knowledge of local plants and relationship with land spirits, African Traditional Religion's understanding of ancestor veneration and spirit possession, Folk Catholicism's saint devotion and ritual structure, and European Spiritism's frameworks for mediumship and communication with the dead. This fusion happened organically over centuries as enslaved Africans, colonized Indigenous peoples, and European settlers shared knowledge for survival, creating healing systems that drew strength from all contributing traditions. Contemporary brujos inherit this legacy of creative synthesis, working with herbs that grow in Caribbean soil, calling on spirits from multiple pantheons, and adapting practices to serve communities that mainstream medicine often fails.
Traditional Puerto Rican healers enhance their herbal preparations with music, dance, prayer, and direct invocation of spiritual forces, understanding that healing addresses the whole person rather than isolated symptoms. This is not faith-based healing that requires belief to function, nor is it snake oil medicine peddling false hope—the plants used in brujería possess real physiological effects that Indigenous peoples and African herbalists documented through millennia of careful observation and experimentation. The grimoire teaches how to prepare these medicinal plants as teas that deliver active compounds through digestion, tinctures that concentrate healing properties in alcohol bases for precise dosing, tonics that build strength over time through regular use, salves that deliver medicine through skin absorption, infused oils that combine carrier oils with plant essences, and spiritual baths that work simultaneously on physical and energetic levels.
Beyond herbal preparation, the grimoire covers the complete toolkit of Puerto Rican folk magic including candle work for focusing intention and marking petition, crystal charging for creating portable talismans, spiritual investigations for diagnosing the root causes of persistent problems, and techniques for working directly with spiritual energies through invocation, offering, and reciprocal relationship. These practices complement rather than replace Western medicine—brujos understand that sometimes you need antibiotics alongside spiritual cleansing, that therapy helps certain conditions while herbal nervines address others, and that the most effective healing often combines multiple approaches tailored to individual circumstances. The grimoire emphasizes safety protocols for herb-drug interactions, situations requiring medical referral, and boundaries between spiritual healing and licensed healthcare practice.
Written by Philip Ryan Deal from decades of study with traditional Puerto Rican healers and personal practice as a working brujo serving actual clients, this manual provides practical instruction grounded in lived experience rather than academic folklore study or romanticized fantasy about island magic. Deal teaches the materia medica of Caribbean plants, the prayers and invocations actually used in traditional practice, the methods for diagnosing spiritual illness versus physical ailment, and the ethical frameworks that keep brujos accountable to their communities. Whether you're Puerto Rican reclaiming ancestral practices, a practitioner from other traditions looking to expand your herbal knowledge, or simply someone called to this path of direct spirit communication and plant partnership, this grimoire offers authentic teaching that honors the traditions it draws from while remaining accessible to sincere seekers regardless of background.
The old ways, preserved and shared
Traditional magic for contemporary healers, egbe.