The desert is a peculiar mistress. She offers beauty that steals the breath and danger that stops the heart. New Mexico, my home, is no exception. It’s a land where legends and reality often blur, where the line between truth and myth is drawn with a shaky hand. It's a place where old women swear centipedes crawl under your fingernails and eat your heart. It's not just a story whispered to frighten children but a genuine belief held with the fervor of religious conviction. Old New Mexican women of Spanish extraction will scream in horror at the sight of a centipede, not merely for their swift-moving many-legged terror, but because these women honestly think that the bugs are deadly, murderous creatures. In the arid sun beaten expanses of New Mexico, I remember my own grandmother, a woman of strange, deep-set, and often confused beliefs, who would warn us against these nightmarish creatures. Rollie-pollies (pill bugs) she would say, were the same as centipedes. Now it is general...
Folklore, magic, facts and fiction from Talia Felix and hoodoo-online.com where those who need magic can DO MAGIC.