This book tells the stories of women from Spain, North Africa, Senegambia, and Canaries accused of sorcery in sixteenth-century Mexico for adapting native magic and healing practices. These non-native women – the mulata of Seville who cured the evil eye; the Canarian daughter of a Count who ate peyote and mixed her bath water into a man's mustard supply; the wife of a Spanish conquistador who let her hair loose and chanted to a Mesoamerican god while sweeping at midnight; the wealthy Basque woman with a tattoo of a red devil; and many others – routinely adapted Native ritual into hybrid magic and cosmology. Through a radical rethinking of colonial knowledge, Martin Austin Nesvig uncovers a world previously left in the shadows of historical writing, revealing a fascinating and vibrant multi-ethnic community of witches, midwives, and healers.

‘This is a beautifully crafted historical reflection on how dozens of mid sixteenth-century humble women from Spain, North Africa and West Africa used Nahua herbs and spells to manipulate bodies and nature to heal, seduce, and curse. The Inquisition did not try any of these women as witches, but it left rich documentation on the massive acculturation of Old-World newcomers to indigenous practices and ideas.’

Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra - The University of Texas at Austin

‘Martin Nesvig brings astounding historiographic erudition and irreverent humor to this tour de force of archival scholarship, this time guiding readers through the Nahuatlization of love and sex magic as practiced by plebeian women in sixteenth-century Mexico City and beyond.’

Nicole von Germeten - author of Death in Old Mexico: The 1789 Dongo Murders and How They Shaped the History of a Nation

‘Martin Nesvig has written a gripping study of the occult in early colonial Mexico. This book, the first of a projected trilogy, is a gripping collection of the histories of non-native women who had recourse to activities considered sorcery or witchcraft. This is a truly outstanding study that breaks new ground on nearly every page.’

John F. Schwaller - Professor Emeritus, University at Albany (SUNY)

‘One of the book’s key contributions is its attention to linguistic evidence in tracing cultural hybridization, inviting comparisons with other colonial knowledge systems … Overall, this book is both methodologically rigorous and accessible. The author is refreshingly open about the challenges of working with fragmentary sources and it vividly illustrates the curiosity and method required to reconstruct lives from the margins of the historical record.’

Charlotte Ortiz Source: The Americas

‘… an intimate and moving picture of women coping with ‘living in the very earliest stages of a monumental culture encounter’.'

Susan Kellogg Source: Hispanic American Historical Review

‘This intriguing study from historian Nesvig catalogs the ways in which Native and European supernatural beliefs met and intermingled in post-conquest Mexico … worth checking out for those interested in the intersection of women’s history and magic.‘

Source: Publishers Weekly