A guide to Mexican spiritual practices today
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In Mexico, spirituality isn’t confined to temples or sacred texts. It is alive in rituals, healing circles, and quiet altars tucked within everyday life. These practices (ancient, evolving, and profoundly rooted in community) allow us to see the divine in the earthly and the invisible in the ordinary. Whether through steam, song, sacred plants, or silent reverence, Mexican spiritual practices are a doorway into a slower, more embodied understanding of self and soul. If you are a mindful traveller seeking deeper ways of seeing, these traditions offer rare wisdom.
Mexican traditions that still breathe
🔥 Temazcal (sweat lodge ceremony)
Temazcal, from the Nahuatl word temazcalli (meaning “house of heat”), is a sacred Indigenous ceremony that honours the Earth, ancestors, and cycles of rebirth. Participants enter a dome-like structure symbolising the womb of the Earth. The ritual is deeply symbolic of death and rebirth. Inside, hot volcanic stones are placed in a central pit, and herbs such as sage or eucalyptus are added to create steam.
A temazcalero leads the group through chants, prayers, and multiple rounds of intense sweating. It’s a space for purification (physically, emotionally, and energetically). Many emerge feeling renewed, reconnected, and deeply grounded.
🌿 Curanderismo (folk healing)
Curanderismo is a deeply rooted healing tradition practised across Mexico and parts of Latin America. It weaves Indigenous knowledge with Catholic prayer, Spanish mysticism, and African influences. This practice is rooted in community, nature, and a deep listening to what is unspoken.
Healers (known as curanderos or curanderas) may specialise in physical ailments, spiritual cleansings, or emotional imbalances. Their role often includes acting as a bridge between the material and the spiritual. Key rituals include limpias (energy cleanses using herbs, eggs, or copal), spiritual baths, divination through tarot or candles, and herbal remedies. Healing is seen holistically, aiming not just to treat symptoms but to restore harmony within and around you.
✨ Astrology and energy work
While not native to Mexico, astrology, reiki, aura readings, and other forms of energy healing have become integrated into the modern spiritual landscape. Common themes include personal alignment, energy cleanses, full moon rituals, and soul purpose exploration.
ractitioners often blend traditions, mixing tarot with Catholic prayers, crystals with curanderismo, or astrology with Indigenous cosmology. These practices are less about dogma and more about intuitive guidance. They support inner clarity, emotional release, and energetic attunement.
💀 Día de los Muertos (day of the dead)
This iconic Mexican celebration, held on November 1st and 2nd, honours the memory of ancestors and deceased loved ones. Families build ofrendas (altars) with photos, food, marigolds (cempasúchil), candles, sugar skulls, and personal mementoes. Each object holds symbolic meaning and represents a bridge between the living and the dead.
At its core, the celebration expresses a sacred understanding that life and death are not opposites but part of the same continuous cycle. Ancestors are never truly gone; they walk beside us. Despite its themes, the atmosphere is joyful and filled with music, dance, colour, and gratitude.
🌸 Catholic-mystic hybrid devotion
Mexico’s spiritual landscape is deeply infused with Catholic imagery, yet it often blends seamlessly with mystical and folkloric elements. The Virgin of Guadalupe is revered as a national mother, protector, and Earth goddess archetype. Her image is found in homes, churches, and altars across the country. Santa Muerte, a controversial yet deeply beloved folk saint, represents death, protection, and justice. She is especially venerated by those who feel marginalised or unprotected.
Popular devotions include lighting candles for specific petitions, praying novenas, making symbolic offerings, and asking for signs or miracles. This is a spirituality of heart and ritual: practical, poetic, and deeply personal. Even in its religious wrapping, it often transcends formal doctrine.
🐺 Nagualism and animal spirits
Nagualism is the belief that each person has a spiritual twin (often in the form of an animal) that accompanies and protects them throughout life. These naguals are viewed as spirit guides or shapeshifting companions, linked to dreams, the subconscious, and ancestral wisdom.
This belief is rooted in the cosmology of Mesoamerican peoples, particularly among the Zapotec and Mixtec. To understand your nagual is to understand your nature. Animals become mirrors, reflecting your instincts, shadows, and deeper truths.
🌵 Use of sacred plants (peyote & psilocybinmushrooms)
In Indigenous ceremonies, certain sacred plants are used not recreationally, but reverently, to commune with the divine. Among the Wixárika (Huichol) people, peyote (a cactus containing mescaline) is central to rites of vision, healing, and communion with deities like Tatewari (Grandfather Fire). Among the Mazatec, psilocybin mushrooms, known as niños santos (“holy children”), are used under the guidance of sabias (wise women) for healing trauma, seeking answers, and spiritual growth.
These ceremonies are held with great care, often incorporating silence, nature, songs, and prayers. The experience is about surrender. A shedding of ego and a receiving of insight.
Rooted in reverence, open to all
Spirituality in Mexico is fluid. It lives in the soil, in song, in the way people honour the unseen. Inherited from ancestors or discovered through modern exploration, these practices reflect a culture unafraid of mystery. They remind us that healing is not linear, that death is not the end, and that spirit is present in both ritual and rhythm.
Which of these practices speaks to you most right now? Is there a ritual you might integrate into your journey (at home or while travelling)? Let this guide inspire reflection and reconnection. The sacred doesn’t always shout; sometimes it whispers in the steam, the candlelight, or the silence between steps.
About the author: Thaíz Lara is the creator behind New Hermits, a New Zealand-based storyteller who believes in the power of story and soul-filled travel. After living in 5 countries and exploring 60, she has come to understand that the most meaningful journeys often begin within. Learn more about Lara.
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