"Magic between Two Worlds": Sorcerers, Toads, and the Transit of the Christian Super- and Preternatural into Colonial Peru

Claudia Brosseder

My paper suggests a hermeneutics on how to read the complex history of the transit of the Christian understanding of the super- and preternatural into colonial Peru. The point of focus is the contention of Catholic Spaniards, Creoles, and Mestizos in Peru with Andean hechizeros—priests and sorcerers at the same time—and especially with their use of “toads.” The example of the “toad” allows me to illustrate the encounter of two symbolic languages: the language of the Andean pre-Columbian world and that of early modern Europe. I will indicate how New World Christians tried to deprive Andean hechiceros of their assumed preternatural powers and how they offered saints and relics instead. Christian officials in Peru remained very conscientious of the need to supervise the “correct” understanding of the supernatural and to renounce anything that reminded them of the Andean understanding of the superhuman, as the beatification process of Martin de Porres in the late 1600s shows.

[WP #0617]