Book Review: The Mexican Witch Lifestyle by Valeria Ruelas

A Field Note on Cultural Magic, Lived Brujería, and the Limits of Page-Bound Practice

Witchcraft is lived — not lectured. It simmers in caldo pots, flickers in roadside candles, and hums in the bones of those who walk both barrio and spirit world. The Mexican Witch Lifestyle, written by Valeria Ruelas, is one such spellbook — not of absolutes, but of invitations.

This review is not an uncritical praise song — nor is it dismissal. It’s an offering: a mirror held up to a book that dares to speak from within the tradition, not around it.

The Witch Behind the Words: Identity as Entry Point

Ruelas does not posture. They don’t write from theory—they write from embodiment. As a gay Chicana/Indigenous Bruja/Brujx, their voice in The Mexican Witch Lifestyle offers a vivid, insider’s lens on modern Brujería that pulses with both reverence and realness.

This book does not speak for all of Mexican spiritual practice—and wisely, it doesn’t claim to. Instead, it serves as a living thread in a larger ancestral tapestry, woven through personal gnosis, community knowledge, and frontline experience.

And let’s be clear: representation matters. Not for optics—but for ownership. For lineage. For the power of saying: this is ours. This is mine. This is how I work the magic I inherited.

Aesthetic Meets Intention: The Presentation of the Book

On first glance, the book is beautifully designed—clean, colorful, curated. There’s always a risk when a book is this visually polished: will it be more Instagram than invocation?

Fortunately, Ruelas delivers both. The design does not drown the content—it supports it. Yes, some sections move fast. Yes, some pages crave depth. But what’s here has heart. It smells like mercado herbs and candle smoke and someone’s tía who taught them to pray over eggs and flame.

Still, the formatting occasionally feels rushed — information clustered in a way that, while digestible, sometimes glosses past the deeper context that a working practitioner might long for.

A Note on Language: Brujx as Invocation of Inclusion

Ruelas uses the word Brujx throughout the book — a gender-expansive reclaiming of Bruja/Brujo. For many of us navigating the intersections of queerness, ancestry, and power, this is more than a stylistic choice. It’s a sigil. An open door. A refusal to let language itself exile us from our traditions.

It is, simply put, a blessing.

Practical Workings, Lived Wisdom

Where The Mexican Witch Lifestyle shines brightest is in its immediacy. This isn’t theoretical witchcraft — it’s kitchen-table, street-altar, fix-it-before-sundown magic.

Highlights include:

• Limpias both traditional and adapted, with consent emphasized.

• Water-based workings using river, ocean, and rainwater — practical and potent.

• Candle + crystal spells crafted not for spectacle but support — addiction, grief, injustice, study, caretaking, ancestral healing.

• Santa Muerte devotion laid out with clarity and devotion, including altar work and cloak color associations.

Each section contains spellcraft that feels lived-in — not lifted from elsewhere, but born of use. And that’s rare.

Yet... we wanted more. More rationale behind the tarot interpretations. More rootwork behind the oil blends. The what is plentiful. But the why — the reasoning, the philosophy, the folklore behind the practice — sometimes remains just out of reach.

Where the Book Leaves You Wanting

To be fair, condensing any tradition as layered as Brujería into one book is a Herculean task — especially when writing for an audience that ranges from total beginner to seasoned practitioner.

And Ruelas does this well. But some passages feel like an appetizer plate where you were hoping for a full-course ritual feast. Especially in areas like:

• Candle magic — spell lists abound, but deeper teaching on shapes, timings, and ceremonial structure would elevate it further.

• Tarot + astrology — solid groundwork, but seasoned readers may crave historical or regional context.

• Crystal work + obsidian training — evocative practices introduced, but with minimal unpacking of their cosmological lineage or regional use.

That said — what’s here is workable. And maybe that’s the point. This isn’t the definitive Brujería manual. It’s a living book. One that asks you to meet it halfway, with your own ritual, your own story, your own devotion.

A Sacred Spark, Not a Final Word

The Mexican Witch Lifestyle is not a textbook. It is a torch.

It doesn’t claim to cover all of Brujería — nor should it. It offers what Ruelas knows, what they’ve lived, what they’re ready to pass on. It’s not encyclopedic. It’s initiatory.

For queer readers, for Chicana/o and Indigenous readers, for anyone walking both magical and marginalized paths — this book is a validation. For others, it’s an invitation to read with respect, not appropriation.

Either way, it earns its place on your altar bookshelf.

Before You Close the Cover...

Let’s ask some real questions.

• Have you read The Mexican Witch Lifestyle? What spell or section stayed with you?

• How do you navigate the balance between cultural authority and personal practice?

• What are your trusted sources for learning Brujería, Curanderismo, or other regional traditions rooted in ancestry and lived place?

Drop your thoughts below or bring them to your next circle. Witchcraft isn’t just what we do — it’s what we talk about. What we question. What we pass down.

The Mexican Witch Lifestyle Contents:

• Introduction

• The Essentials of Brujeria

• Botanicas, Yerberias, and Mercados

• Build Your Altar

• Preparing Your Altar and Space

• How to do a Spell

• How to use Magic Words

  • Sound Magic

• Pre-Ritual Herbal Nasal Steams

  • Version 1

  • Version 2

• Yerba Readings with Tea

• Obsidian Dagger Preparation

  • Documenting Your Spells

• Limpias

  • Consent and Limpias

  • How to Perform a Limpia

  • Long-Term Limpias

  • Additional Limpias

  • After-Limpia Protection Candles

• How to Charge an Object to Give it Purpose

• Working with Nature

  • Ocean Water Spell

  • Rainwater Money-Drawing Spell

  • River Water Protection Ritual

• How to Recite Magic Words

• Obsidian Mirror Training

• Fixing Your Energy with Crystals and Candle Spells

  • Using Crystals

  • Scrying with Crystals

  • Tarot and Crystal Scrying Rituals

• The Practice of Brujeria

• The Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot Deck

  • Astrology basics for Tarot

  • Using the Tarot

  • Tarot Meditation

• The Cards

  • Cups

  • Wands

  • Swords

  • Pentacles

  • The Major Arcana

• How to work with Yerbas

  • Making Spell Oils

  • Brujeria Sprays

  • Making the Tinctures

• Candle Magic

  • Candle Color

  • Candle Shapes

• Candle and Crystal Spells for Common Problems

  • To Help with Addictions

  • To Help the Client Manifest Money and Jobs and to Open Channels of Luck

  • To Improve Memory and Study Habits

  • For Healing Friendships and Family Relationships

  • Lunar Spells

  • For General Exhaustion Prevention

  • For Exhausted Parents or Caretakers, Those Who Take Care of Others, and Empathy Fatigue

  • To Heal After Theft, Auto Accidents, Fires, or Other Tragedies

  • For When You Need to Release the Past

  • For Peaceful Sleep

  • To Save up Money for a Big Occasion

• Candle and Crystal Spells for Common Problems (continued)

  • To Help Manifest Money and Jobs and to Open Channels of Luck

• Lifestyle Spells

  • Send Love to Your Enemies Spell

  • Breakup Spell

  • Fighting Injustice Spells

    • Free Someone From Prison Spell/Abolition

    • Help Someone Gain Victory in an Election

  • Surgery and Medical Procedure Support Spell

  • Enemy Maintenance

  • Basic Ancestral Magic

  • Spray and Oil recipes

    • Energy Increase/Energy Change oil and Spray

    • Medical Support, Health, and Healing Oil Spray

    • Job Drawing

    • Limpia

    • Luck Spray and Oil

    • New Moon

    • Protection Oil

    • Saturn

    • Solar Oil

    • Sex Worker/Sexual Healing

    • Spell Break

    • Stop gossip

    • Trauma and Grief Relief

    • Universe Spray and Oil

    • Full Moon/Tlazolteotl

    • Waning Quarter Moon/Tochtli

    • Waxing Quarter/Sad Release/Mayahuel

    • Money

    • Last Long

    • Pay me back

    • Receive Messages Oil

    • Haunted Home Help

    • Academic Success Oil and Student Life Spray

    • Venus

    • Jupiter

    • Stay Away Racist

    • Mercury

    • Uranus

    • Neptune Spray

    • Mars Spray

    • Election Help/Political Activism

    • Break Them Up

    • Love Attraction

    • Come Back to Me Oil

• Santa Muerte

  • Connecting to Santa Muerte

  • The Universal Magic Words of Santa Muerte

  • The Universal Magic Words of Santa Muerte II

  • Her/Their Magical Attire and Symbols

  • The Cloaks and their colors

  • Santa Muerte Altar

  • Medalla Blessing Ritual

  • Welcome Her/Them in Ritual

• Afterword

• Appendix 1: Crystal Index

• Appendix 2: Yerbas of Brujeria

• Index

Final Take

Who it’s for:

• Queer, Chicanx, Indigenous witches looking for representation and practical work

• Beginners in Brujería seeking an approachable yet authentic entry

• Practitioners craving workable spells rooted in lived experience

Who might need more:

• Readers seeking academic depth or historical sourcing

• Those looking for cross-regional analysis or comparative theology

• Advanced workers craving deep theory behind technique

Star rating (if we did stars, which we don’t):
Bright as a vigil candle. Burns quick, but leaves warmth behind.