"The following story told me that happened on the Island of Santa Catarina - Island of the three hundred mills to manufacture manioc flour - Mr. José Silveira resident in Canto da Conceição Lagoon: that their ancestors cleared Morro da Lagoa to plant cassava and millet. It happened - continued the narrator - that on the edge of the field they knocked down a large, well-drained taco tree, which was lying at the foot of a large tree that had a tangled vine in it and which from the top of the branches let down a large breast in the form of a balance. When they started to plant, they smelled kerosene smoke, which came out of the tank's vat, and also because they made the food there, they noticed that the pots were dirty in the morning and the tools were thrown on the ground, as if someone inside the night appeared there only to do mischief. Distrustful of the situation, they began to watch the place and found that at night, the branches of the tree that had the swing, were taken by lights of various shapes and sizes and that moved in different directions. Encouraged by a very knowledgeable and powerful woman healer of these things from other worlds, they climbed the hill protected with bentinhos, breves, figas, mustard, rue, speck of the three tides, holy water, holy candle, guinea leaves, which are true weapons against the diabolical power of these goblins from hell. What they found and saw was horrifying to human eyes. The trees had at their base the shapes of the feet of various animals, lamps danced metamorphosed into human form; in the mouth of the felled woodcutter was an animal in the form of a bat; at the top of the tree the yoke of the oxcart was resting beside a lamp; a little below, an bullock-wheel-faced owl decked with a pair of blinkers; and at the center of it all, of all phantasmogenesis, a witch was swinging on the vine dressed as an ox head with hind legs and front hands, also of an ox, and the head being an ox cart wheel. All the stones that lived there were metamorphosed into an attitude of exorcism. The owl that appears metamorphosed in the middle of the tree stands out as a cultural observer, of this type of culture that the ancient People carry in their traditional baggage..." Franklin Cascaes.
ADVERTISING
