Estudo etnobotânico de plantas medicinais utilizadas em rezas e benzeduras em municípios do sertão paraibano.

Abstract

The blessing rituals are practiced in many cultures of distinct ways and they count on the help of different elements of nature and religion, however, all of them have the same purpose: to heal, to bless and/ or to protect against negative forces. Many healers and prayers believe in the powers of the herbs and medicinal plants, so doing the use of them in their rituals, although, the cure, according to the same, comes both whose are praying and whose are receiving the prayer, all depends of faith involved. This research was developed with healers and prayers in four cities in Paraíba‘s countryside, northeast of Brazil, that are: Pombal, São Bentinho, São Domingos and Paulista, with the purpose of analyzing the popular knowledge about the importance of the plants most used to the cure of diseases or spiritual illnesses in some cities in Paraíba‘s countryside. The form of seizure of the information was by the free and semi-structured interviews, through the application of questionnaires, with the interviews composing always the first moment of meeting, and subsequent application of questionnaire. Twenty-eight healers/prayers were interviewed, listed by indications of members of society and friends, among the twenty-four are women and four are men. The results highlight that the better part of the prayers use the plants to blessing rituals and heal of the illnesses in general are composed of older people, 87,5% are female sex, 96,43% are of the rural area, 53,57% are literate, 46,43% are married and 64,29% are employees. The religion adopted by all the interviewed was the Catholic one, the insights about the plants in most were ascendants, the obtaining of the plants was mostly through of their own garden, highlighting in this research the plant most used was the broom plant, among the parts of the plants the most used were the leaves, and the breakdown was the disease more combated by the interviewed. These factors make us believe that each society or community has its own classification system, beliefs and popular methods able to promote the heal of its own illnesses.