Folklore 

Text: Egg Cleansings (Limpia de huevo)

My informant is a friend’s sibling

Context: 

My informant says that Egg cleansing is a form of healing and ridding an individual from illness and negative energies.

According to their knowledge there’s different ways of using the egg for cleansing, but essentially the egg is supposed to absorb the illness or negativity from the person. For a fever the egg may cook after absorbing and for negativity, the egg is placed in water and will show how much negativity was affecting a person depending on how it floats or cracks.

She said “My great-grandma did these cleansings. I never saw her do them, but my mom as a kid saw her perform these on people. One instance was a baby who had a fever. Prayers were said over the egg before it was placed on the baby and left there for a while. When the egg was removed, the egg was cooked (like a hard boiled egg) and the baby got better afterwards”. 

She thinks egg cleansing is more of a superstitious approach to healing than common medicines. Whether it actually works in curing people or not, it must have some effect if people have continued doing it for centuries.

Analysis: 

Egg Cleansings or Limpia de huevo are certainly a superstition and a folk tradition for cleansing and healing. This tradition is also cultural.

Based on my informant’s context and personal experience with this superstitious tradition, the egg seems to have beyond meaning besides just for healing the ill. Using the egg in the first place has a lot of significance. Especially with the added context that my informant has heard and learned of this tradition through family, specifically a motherly or paternal figure. The egg being a “child” of a chicken and the added factor that it is passed on by mothers implies that this is a superstition carried on by mothers to protect their own children. Superstitions around the potential danger around children, and motherly instincts seem to coincide. 

I believe that humans just have a certain vulnerability, that they fear of negativity or negative energies and potential threats coming to them. The egg cleansing is to get rid of these worries through some magical thinking. But it seems to have several meanings because of the maternal side of this superstition.