06-15-2005, 12:00 AM
The Writings of Don Antonio
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This is very long. I enjoyed it and you may find it useful.
Antonio Alvarado was one of the first students of the Nahual Quetzal Ocelotl. He has been a good friend of mine for several years. In fact, he is my benefactor. QO has spoken with Antonio about my sharing the work here. Antonio called me to converse about the efforts that he and I are putting forth, in trying to share the tradition. He lives in Ohio and is teaching a few students there. They are present with him physically, so he has been able to share much more, in the way of a feeling for the tradition. He was taught directly by QO, as at the time, the tome was not finished. He was, and is QO's man of action, being the warrior of the North.
Antonio is writing of his time with his guide, QO. He is very familiar with the tome, and knows that it is very clinical and directed toward the Western culture. It does not allow one that only reads it to have much of a feeling for the tradition.
So Antonio has offered to share a portion of his writings with us, and I have received a long chapter. This chapter is about his journey with QO to attend the death of QO's teacher; the Nahual El Viejo. This is new information to me as well, and contains some very good knowledge, in addition to a very real feeling of the Nahual Quetzal Ocelotl.
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QO stood by the window. He was wearing his traveling clothes and was tying a small bundle of something with a piece of string. "So, are you ready to travel?"
"Where are we going?"
He lifted a long hardwood staff from its place in a corner near the door. "To visit a man who has died."
October 17th
Second leg of the trip. Second bus. In spite of his good humor, QO is tired and he is asleep in the seat across the aisle of thise rattletrap. I have ridden buses throughout most of Latin America, but this is an experience. Pen jumping all over the page, but I've nothing better to do, just thankful I have a seat. First bus, gave my seat to an old Indian woman with gas and stood in agony for two hours while she relieved herself as QO slept.
We travel to see QO's teacher in some rural hamlet in northern Mexico. Word came (I don't know how) that this old man is dying, and QO is traveling to be with him. I gather the man we will meet, if we are in time, was his mentor. He referred to him as "the man I learned from".
We've stopped on the road. Barren desert. There is no sign, no building, or plowed field in sight, but three women and a young boy with a pig and two chickens are waiting. I count only two seats. Here we go again.
We got off at a similar stop two and a half hours later. Although we were still in the desert, the character of the land was less flat. We followed a dried up riverbed until the sunset, and then made camp in a little gorge.
We built a fire and its light bounced off the walls of the arroyo.
"There are acts of power "said QO, "acts of confrontation with spirit, with nature, with the unconscious mind, with life. Your decision to abandon your practice and venture into a realm unknown to you is such an act. Your confrontation with your past was such an act."
"And my work with Ramon?"
"No, that was more an act of boldness, of imprudence, although it was instructive. Curious, is it not, how the quest for an exhilarated state leads one to test themselves against death."
"The centers of pain and pleasure lay next to each other in limbic brain," I said. "Also fear can paralyze us, it can also stimulate. Look at the Warriors, the heroes of old."
"Fear is a volatile emotion." He withdrew a piece of fruit from his back. "Nothing robs the mind of its powers as fear does, and as Seneca said, "Such is the blindness of mankind that some men are driven to death by the fear of it." He pried the fruit in half and handed me a portion. "But you cannot face death by creating experiences that bring you near death. Death is the greatest act of power to the warrior. To learn how to die is to learn how to live, for you are claimed by life and can never be claimed by death. In a sense the man of power spends a whole life learning how to die."
"The person who has already died," I said.
"The Jaguar Shaman is a spiritual warrior with no enemies in this life or the next, free from desire and fear: desire formed by our experiences of the past, and the fear of death that haunts our future. He is twice born, once of woman and once of Earth."
"The work of the South and the West."
"Yes. By making the journey West and facing death in life, a spiritual warrior not only frees himself to live in his present fully, but when death finally comes, it will know him and he will know the way." He wiped his hands on a red bandanna. "This is dying consciously, with your eyes open. The way to leave this world."
"Immortality?"
He shrugged. "The body is a vessel of consciousness, of life..."
Of energy."
"Yes." He reached toward the fire and slowly passed his cupped hand through the flames, then made a fist and held it to before me. "When one dies consciously, one leaves behind the vessel and identifies oneself with that which the vessel holds."
He opened his hand and, for the life of me, I thought I saw a light.
"And that is...?"
"And that is God." He shrugged his shoulders. "Life force, energy, call it what you will. The stuff that dreams and the cosmos are made of."
Later
We travel not only to be with this old man, this teacher of QO's, but to share in his rite of passage, to partake in the final act of power of the nahual. Sitting by the fire in a dried up riverbed. Q0 has excused himself and has wandered off to exercise his mourning, so that he may be fully present to celebrate the death.
We are a half day's journey from the old man's home. We got off the bus because, as usual, the way we get to where we are going is as important as what we do when we get there. I hoped aloud that we wouldn't be too late, and QO said no,we would be in good time, and I asked him how he knew that.
"He will wait for me."
Bone tired, I sleep.
We set off the next morning, and there was a lightness and peaceful resolution to QO's manner that I had not seen earlier. I sensed that we were climbing most of the morning and trees began to reappear. At midday we stopped by a solitary tree and shared cornmeal and fruit. QO cleared a small space at the base of the tree, and dug a hole. From his bag he withdrew the little bundle I had seen him tie together at his house.
"What is that?" I asked.
"Fishmeal." He opened the packet and held under my nose and laughed at the face I made. He placed the paper bundle in the hole and covered it over with soil and poured water over it from his canteen.
"What's the idea?"
"The idea!" He sat back on his haunches and his face broke into a smile. He leaned forward and slapped my knee with his palm. He was pleased that we were together again.
"The idea, my friend, is that you give something in return."
"In return for...?"
"You know, or at least begin to suspect, that the plants as well as the animals have spirits. When you use a plant for sacred purposes, you connect with its spirit. That connection becomes unique to you. Last night, I engaged with the spirit of San Pedro to help me summon my power, so that I could attend to my old friend. I offer this fishmeal as a gift in return. One should always leave something: hide a crystal in nature, plant of plant, bury a coin at a crossroads, even, to honor the gift, to give something in return for what you have been given. Fishmeal as a precious fertilizer from the coast"
"You used San Pedro last night?"
"Very little, nothing more than a homeopathic dose." He stood and filled his chest with the air of the high plateau. "My lungs are clearing. Let's go."
I had assumed we were destined for a village, but sometime before dusk, we crested a hill and there was a fringe of pine trees and, just before them a house with a low stone wall forming an enclosure for chickens and goats. There were a couple of burros wandering behind the house, and a young Indian boy was removing a simple saddle from the back of an old horse by the break in the wall.
QO told me to wait there and he headed down the hill. I watched him disappear into the house. I started to feel self-conscious. Was it appropriate for me to be here? I saw one or two people move out into the enclosure and back inside. How many were there? Who were there?
They were friends. They were students, healers, Jaguars. They were El Viejo's only living family, and there was a roomful of them, sitting in chairs and on stools arranged around a rocking chair in the center of the room. His only blood relation was a granddaughter and her 50s, who served little sesame cakes to those gathered.
Most of them were in their early '50s, Indians. I counted six women and 4 men. El Viejo, the old nahual, sat in the rocking chair. He was a small man, shrunken with age, covered with a brightly woven Indian blanket. His hands were unusually large and liver spotted, the nails were long. His nose was arched and thin and seemed to start in high on his forehead, also high and sloping, accentuated by baldness on top. The fringe of long gray white hair that surrounded his head was pulled back and tied in a ponytail, and his eyes, under sparse brows, were soft and gray. His skin was delicately wrinkled, pale, almost translucent; the only color was high on his cheekbones, pinkness, wine stained. He was a remarkable looking man.
Two of the visitors, a man with the white shirt and a young woman with a purple shawl, had left their seats for us, had moved to sit on burlap sacks against the wall. I felt like an intruder. I protested to QO.
"It is a place of honor," he whispered. "Accept it graciously."
He said in the chair beside the old man and I took the stool behind him. Next to me set an old woman, a crone with peppery gray hair parted in the center and braided on one side, the braid tied off with a strip of woven ribbon.
El Viejo squinted over at my companion and nodded his welcome, a corner of his mouth lifted in a grin, and QO placed his hand on his teacher's and spoke to him in a whisper. He mentioned my name in the soft gray eyes shifted in my direction, but did not seem to look at me. Like the eyes of a blind man, they had no focus. I smiled at him and he whispered something to QO and QO nodded. I felt the blood rushing to my face, felt lightheaded and embarrassed. Then QO placed his other hand on my knee, and I smelled something acrid, and heard a crackling sound. The old woman was lighting a pipe, a long hardwood bowl carved into the face of a fanciful owl with the stem and bit of bone. She puffed the tobacco without inhaling and the smoke of wafted across my face. She touched QO's shoulder and he took from her and handed it to the old man who raised it ever so slowly to his lips and drew on it, inhaling the smoke of the glowing tobacco.
He exhaled through his nostrils, like a dragon, 2 narrow streams of white smoke, then blew it out his mouth and this streams caught those from his nose and carried them into the center of the room, and I noticed the bed there. The floor was wooden planks. There was an adobe fireplace or stove in one corner, and each of the four walls hadt a large latched wood frame window.
The old man handed the pipe to QO and he drew the tobacco deep into his lungs. Then he handed it back to the old crone, and this time she inhaled before passing it to the man on her left. El Viejo closed his eyes while the pipe was passed to each of his guests, and the room filled with its pungent perfumes, stronger than any cigar. But the windows stayed closed. Not a word was spoken. No one, save QO and the old man, had breathed a sound since our entrance and when the pipe had made the circuit and come back to the crone, she touched my arm and offered it to me. She smiled, a crack and her face, and I took it and looked at the old nahual and he opened his eyes and inclined his head and I drew on the bone bit, inhaled, and thought that my lungs would explode.
I coughed up the smoke and doubled over in uncontrollable fit of coughing. The crone turned to her neighbor and made a wisecrack about "the young one", and the room laughed. The ice was broken and she petted me on the shoulder and took the pipe from me.
"What is this?" I whispered, not out of respect, but because I was still fighting for breath.
"The most powerful huaman tobacco," said QO. "It's the spirit of Falcon, and it is visionary although it is nothing but tobacco. You are an honored guest."
"Thanks." And I looked around the room and they were smiling. The old man's granddaughter was at my side. She offered me a sesame cake and I thanked her. She moved to her grandfather's side and whispered in his ear, and he nodded and lifted his hand as though to acknowledge her words. There was a murmuring behind me, and I half-turned to see a middle-aged couple holding hands, heads together, staring at me into distracting way. I smiled and gave them a nod, and they looked almost embarrassed, smiling back at me. Then, QO touched my shoulder. He leaned close. "We need to perform a healing," he said.
"Huh?"
"The room has been cleansed with sage and tobacco and all present have prepared themselves, cleaned themselves, for El Viejo's death. When he makes his final journey to the West, he will go alone, the moment is his."
"Yes?"
"A number of guests have noted the presence of another, uninvited."
"I'll leave," I said, anxious not to interfere.
"No, no. You have been invited. You are an honored guest. It is not you, it is a spirit that you have brought with you."
"What?"
"I do not know how I missed it. It is very clear now."
"What is?"
"A woman who has died. Her spirit is still attached to your heart well." He touched my chest. Beside me, the crone was loading the pipe from cloth pouch.
"They can see this?"
He nodded. "A im bubble of light, connected to you by a cord, like an umbilical cord of light. El Viejo has asked that we perform a simple healing and release this soul. They have agreed."
I turned and looked at the people seated behind me. It was one of the eeriest sensations I have ever felt. They were looking not at me, but at something before me something near my chest. Maria? The old witch has the pipe going now, and she drew the smoke deep into her lungs, eyes closed, then opened them and blew the smoke at a spot 18 inches or so from my neck. There was a tapping sound and I looked to see the old man, the dying nahual, tapping the arm of his chair with the fingernail of his middle finger.Tap...tap... every 2 seconds.
"Turnaround," said QO, and I shifted on my stool to face the gathering. The crone had started to hum, a low resonant sound with no melody, and it was met by a similar sound at a higher octave by the second person to blow smoke at my chest, pass the pipe, close her eyes. Others were lighting their own pipe's, filling them from the crone's pouch, inhaling the acrid fumes, and soon I was enveloped in a cloud of dense smoke, and the room was vibrating to the haunting sound of their song.
"Close your eyes," said QO. "Concentrate on this spirit. Exercise your vision."
I closed my eyes, watery with tears from the smoke, and felt Q0's fingers tapping a circle on my forehead.. There was talking in the room, someone giving an opinion and another agreeing.
"What is happening?" I asked QO, without opening my eyes.
"They are directing energy toward her. She is glowing. They are charging her spirit so it can free itself from you."
There was a general murmur now. "Where they saying?"
"She's angry with you, this woman. You have taken something from her." I felt the warm bowl of the pipe placed in my hands. "Take the smoke and give it to her. She died in the hospital and you have taken her dignity."
I placed the stem between my lips and took the smoke into my mouth and exhaled. El Viejo caughed.
QO said, "you have picked that the bones of one who has not yet died. She is not free."
I opened my eyes and the smoke was there, suspended before me, shapedlike a watermelon.
"You have taken something from her..."
My hand flew to my chest. My medicine pouch, a leather pouch, a gift from Stephanie.
"....her hair..."
I grabbed the leather thong at my neck and pulled it out from under my shirt, opened in the flap, and withdrew the lock of hair. The crone drew in her breath through her teeth, a gentle hiss. There was an astonished silence.
The man in the white shirt stood up.
"What is that?" Asked QO.
"It is a lock of hair."
He raised an eyebrow. "Why do you carry it with you?"
"I... a friend gave it to me."
"You carry it like an object of power," he said.
"It is," I said. "For me, I learned more from this person..."
Do you see her spirit? Do you see how she is attached to this?"
"No. I thought I saw..."
"You must make peace with her. Free her spirit. She is ready now. She has stayed with you because through you she can find her final rest. It is not your fault. Spirits are drawn to light, like fireflies to a candle. Go. Go outside into the woods and offer this to her, return it to her and release her. She can go now, you will perform her final healing."
I looked at him pleadingly.
"I will explain it to them," he said. "Come back when you are finished."
I stood and the room rocked, shifted dizzily, and I steadied myself, a hand on QO's shoulder.
We must find our own ritual. We must find our own ceremony, our own access to the realms that exist within and without.
Writing has become an ingredient of my ritual, and that faithfully executed here, within the little tree line beside El Viejo's Rancho. Waiting in the dark.
Maria, I don't know how you died, but I can guess that your moment came in hospital, while the healthy and the living did everything they could to keep you in their world. You may have been well schooled in living, but surely, death was unfamiliar to you and came early and you fought it and if you have been somehow attached to your physical body, the vessel that held you, I am sorry. Sorry that it was not honored, that you were not helped to be free from it before it was defiled. It is our tradition.
Now, I am sure that your body has been burned, and the sun has been released from the flesh and all that is left is this morsel of hair that is yours. But all that was you has not ceased to be, and isn'tit a wonder that your spirit should follow the last remnants of your body and find freedom here, so far from home, and the company of such remarkable men and women.
I buried it near the base of a pine tree.
Thank you for which you taught me. I will cherish the knowledge in my head and your spirit in my heart, forever.
I spent more than an hour there in the woods with Maria. The moon had passed between the Earth and the Sun. A new moon, a crescent sliver, and the night was unusually dark. When I returned to the house, the room had been filled with candles. The windows were open now, but no wind disturbed the 50 or so tapers of light. The old nahual was lying on the bed in the center of the room, and the crone was singing a faint melody. I took my place on the stool, behind QO, beside the crone, four feet from the old man's body. Then he turned toward me as I sat, and he stared at me, stared into my eyes and my mind when blank, blank like the gray of his eyes. Then he coughed a shallow cough and turned his head away, eyes toward the ceiling, and he closed them.
The shush-shush of a rattle started up somewhere behind me, and someone whistled, like you'd whistle when you call to a bird, and a song started, a murmured chant, and it was as though this simple song was a vehicle that carried with the the peace that settled on the room. I leaned forward slightly and saw that QO's eyes were closed. Before us the old nahual's chest was rising...and falling, and a sort of tremor shivered through him. I closed my eyes and allow my body to measure itself to the rhythms of the rattle and the song...I found myself transported effortlessly, to a state of serenity, perfect harmony with the song...
It was much later when I opened my eyes, and the recent past had the feeling of a dream. I awoke to the dream of the room, the faces, the dying man before me. The rhythms of the rattle was constant. The old man's breathing, slow and regular, and the rattle shook 13 times for each breath. There was time to count the breaths, time to feel the texture of the air, the sweet intensity of it. The candles had burned low since I closed my eyes.
There was rapture in the air, on the faces of these men and women, these students of El Viejo, and it was bewitching, as tangible as the smell of spring in April. Then, QO turned to look at me, and I realized that I had been staring at the old man, the rise and fall of his chest, counting the 13 shakes of the rattle, breathing with him. QO reached out and touched my left temple with his middle finger, then tapped, drummed his fingertips, in a circle on my forehead. "Look," he whispered. "Look carefully."
I let my focus go, and my eyes shifted to a spot six inches above the old man's chest, and there it was, that intangible form, a hazy violet hue there... and gone...there again, disappearing with each long breath, rising with every exhalation.
The crone squeezed my left hand. I turned to look at her, then down at her brown, calloused hand, dry and cool. I covered her hand with my right hand and nodded, and her eyes sprinkled with a smile. She raised the pipe to her lips and inhaled and blew smoke at me, dipped her head and neck and blew it from my lap up, up my chest to my face, and there was something wonders about her face and the dipped overhead and neck, something tender, caressing. Almost erotic.
She put the pipe in my hands, clammy, sweaty palms. The rattle stopped and the room hummed with silence.
When I turned my head, I couldn't see the energy body. I saw the old man's body convulse once, twice, and settle in the silence.
And I raised my eyes to an orb, a luminous ball of opalescent light, cords of light spiraling from his forehead, wrapping around it, blending into it, a radiant egg supported by a helix of spiraling light, and if I looked at it, it was gone, so I focused on empty space, for it could be perceived, but not seen.
Then QO took the pipe from my hands. I had forgotten that I was holding it. He drew on it and the last ember glowed. The rose and blew the smoke across the dead man's forehead, and, as though out of the top of my vision, I saw the spirit pulsate and scatter into a thousand points of light, like the light you see when you close your eyes and press on the lids. They scattered through the room, leaving trails, tracers of light, and seemed to touch the heads of the old man's students. The rattle went shush-shush and when I looked again, the orb was back, hovering in the center of the room, and QO was standing with the granddaughter beside the nahual's body, dipped in his fingers in a bowl of herbs and touching the old man's wells, kneecaps, souls of his feet, elbows, and hands.
And there were hands on mine. The old woman to my left, the man with a white shirt on my right. QO and the granddaughter were joined by others, and we stood, hands joined in a circle, and the old woman beside me singing a song. Her voice sounded like a flute, and I recognized the weird melody. I had heard at the night before, heard QO singing it in the night. It was a song of the woods, the high plateau, the song to summon the spirits of the grass and the pines, for as QO later explained, the elementals, the forces of nature that were El Viejo's power animals had been set free. And as I saw the energy body, the light of this old soul swirled and dissipated like a drop of dye in a glass of swirling water, and QO led me to the window, rubbed my forehead, stimulated my vision, and said "Breathe. Breathe deeply and look quickly!"
In that instant to the woods were alive with a light like I had seen in the jungle, radiant halos outlining the trees with pinpricks of light like fireflies scattering, flashing, playing in the spaces between the trees, and the tops of the pines swayed ever so slightly and the scent of the pines swept out of breeze through the room.
The candles wavered, and the smoke cleared. And the song ended.
October 19th
The morning after the death of the old warrior, the party feasted on fruit and cornmeal. The mood was festive and there was much talk, mostly about local diseases and afflictions. QO explained that these people have traveled great distances to be present for the old man's birth into the spirit world, that they were Jaguar shamans and healers, all touched by the teachings of El Viejo. He smiled at the mood of the group. Their joy, he said, was from the knowledge that the spirit of their teacher was with them fully now, that he was free from the confines of this world.
The old man's medicine bag was laid out, and each of his students went to it, and took an object: a staff, a crystal, a stone, ancient objects of power; and there was no argument, no hesitation or indecision. QO told me that specific objects had been given to them during the old man's death. They had been told what was theirs by the spirit of the nahual.
We left the house at about 11 AM. We talked about immortality. The knowledge that we are made of somatic and spiritual matter is fundamental to the spiritual experience. If one learns during his lifetime to separate themselves from the physical, to experience themselves as "beings of light", to learn the spirit flight, one may die consciously, die to the flesh and be born into the spirit, the spirit that one has already met and claimed. If one does not die consciously, one's energy body returns to "the great pool of consciousness.
When I pressed QO to explain this great pool, he shook his head. I hated when he does that.
"It is a metaphor of the myth," he said, "in a poetic expression of a concept. Leave it at that. If you are not satisfied with the image, inform your own, my friend, but do not base it on the experience of others."
"All right," I conceded. "But this... Individuation of the spirit: is it believed that by dying consciously you maintain your individuality after death?"
"Individuality?" He asked. "Another is a muddy concept. If you must insist on reducing everything to theoretical formulas you would do better to be more precise."
"Dammit!" I stopped, shrugged off my pack, and dropped it on the ground. "I'm trying to understand with a means that I'm accustomed to!"
"Yes, you are in a delicate position. You are on the path of experience. A path that will lead you to understanding. Caught between two worlds, between a waking state and a dream state. You have experienced power, yet you are still confused by the difference between your experience and your beliefs. But your beliefs are based on the theories of others."
"Theory is important," I said. "For gods sake! Theory what allows us to exercise foresight. It's what has led the human race into the future: think ahead, propose the possibility, test it, prove it, move forward. Logic is a fact, a formal Western talked. It cannot be discounted just because other cultures approach the mystery of the cosmos from a different direction! Besides, even Western science is ending up in the mystical realm. Look at quantum physics."
"What will I see?"
"What you already know. That consciousness is a determining factor of reality. The photon, subatomic light, is not a wave and not a particle. It is neither ended his bolt. It's astonishing! The whole process of the Western scientific method is based upon reduction." I started taking off points on my fingers. "We're trying to explain brain function by studying the molecular biology of the central nervous system. Molecular biology is studied in terms of atomic physics, and atomic physics is in the realm of quantum mechanics, the uncertainty principle: the observation of an event influences its outcome, the mind of the observer is integral to determining the nature of reality."
"So," he said. "Scientific reductionism has reduced itself to consciousness. Physicists are becoming poets."
"Yes. The study of the human mind and evidently turns to the consciousness of the one who studies."
"And the new Jaguars will come from the West."
"What?"
"It is a vision I have had," he said
He lifted my pack from the ground and handed to me. "Now," he said. "For the sake of theory, let us say that one may maintain, not individuality, but integrity of consciousness after death."
I slipped to pack over my shoulders. "All right," I nodded and we continued on.
"What does that suggest to you?"
"Immortality," I said.
"And?"
"I'm not sure. It's like Infinity. How do you resolve such a concept in a practical way?"
"How do you apply quantum mechanics to everyday life?" He challenged. "Does quantum theory teach you out of walk on the earth? How to change the weather? How to identify yourself with the creative principle, with nature, with the divine? Does it teach you how to live every moment of your life as an act of power? No. The theory. Logic. Conceptualizations. Games to amuse ourselves with us something that transcends all human research unconscious thought." Now it was his turn to stop in these me.
"It is through the experience of life through death that one becomes a spiritual warrior and identifies oneself with the life force." He held out his hand and formed a fist, reminding me of the fire two nights ago. "My old teacher has died to his flesh and yet maintained the integrity of his consciousness. You, on the other hand, have maintained the integrity of your body. You exercise your body, but your consciousness atrophies. El Viejo knew the truth for most of his life, and he walked in the snow without leaving tracks."
He placed his and on my shoulder. "Our brains are not 72 year clocks. We are not connected to the Earth for a finite time between birth and death. And the divine does not come from somewhere above, it exists beyond time and space, and informs life. The Earth is our home, and once we have transcended the shadow play that we call biological reality and identified ourselves with this divine force, we realize that we have no choice but to become caretakers of this Earth." He turned and walked ahead.
"Caretakers of the Earth" I said and caught up to him.
"It is our responsibility. Ours." He spread his arms, gestured toward the land around us. "Honor thy mother and thy father. Mother Earth and Father Sun. The person of knowledge has no choice."
"In the new Jaguars will come from the West?"
"Of course."
(Contributed from the personal writings of Don Antonio Alvarado)
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This is very long. I enjoyed it and you may find it useful.
Antonio Alvarado was one of the first students of the Nahual Quetzal Ocelotl. He has been a good friend of mine for several years. In fact, he is my benefactor. QO has spoken with Antonio about my sharing the work here. Antonio called me to converse about the efforts that he and I are putting forth, in trying to share the tradition. He lives in Ohio and is teaching a few students there. They are present with him physically, so he has been able to share much more, in the way of a feeling for the tradition. He was taught directly by QO, as at the time, the tome was not finished. He was, and is QO's man of action, being the warrior of the North.
Antonio is writing of his time with his guide, QO. He is very familiar with the tome, and knows that it is very clinical and directed toward the Western culture. It does not allow one that only reads it to have much of a feeling for the tradition.
So Antonio has offered to share a portion of his writings with us, and I have received a long chapter. This chapter is about his journey with QO to attend the death of QO's teacher; the Nahual El Viejo. This is new information to me as well, and contains some very good knowledge, in addition to a very real feeling of the Nahual Quetzal Ocelotl.
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QO stood by the window. He was wearing his traveling clothes and was tying a small bundle of something with a piece of string. "So, are you ready to travel?"
"Where are we going?"
He lifted a long hardwood staff from its place in a corner near the door. "To visit a man who has died."
October 17th
Second leg of the trip. Second bus. In spite of his good humor, QO is tired and he is asleep in the seat across the aisle of thise rattletrap. I have ridden buses throughout most of Latin America, but this is an experience. Pen jumping all over the page, but I've nothing better to do, just thankful I have a seat. First bus, gave my seat to an old Indian woman with gas and stood in agony for two hours while she relieved herself as QO slept.
We travel to see QO's teacher in some rural hamlet in northern Mexico. Word came (I don't know how) that this old man is dying, and QO is traveling to be with him. I gather the man we will meet, if we are in time, was his mentor. He referred to him as "the man I learned from".
We've stopped on the road. Barren desert. There is no sign, no building, or plowed field in sight, but three women and a young boy with a pig and two chickens are waiting. I count only two seats. Here we go again.
We got off at a similar stop two and a half hours later. Although we were still in the desert, the character of the land was less flat. We followed a dried up riverbed until the sunset, and then made camp in a little gorge.
We built a fire and its light bounced off the walls of the arroyo.
"There are acts of power "said QO, "acts of confrontation with spirit, with nature, with the unconscious mind, with life. Your decision to abandon your practice and venture into a realm unknown to you is such an act. Your confrontation with your past was such an act."
"And my work with Ramon?"
"No, that was more an act of boldness, of imprudence, although it was instructive. Curious, is it not, how the quest for an exhilarated state leads one to test themselves against death."
"The centers of pain and pleasure lay next to each other in limbic brain," I said. "Also fear can paralyze us, it can also stimulate. Look at the Warriors, the heroes of old."
"Fear is a volatile emotion." He withdrew a piece of fruit from his back. "Nothing robs the mind of its powers as fear does, and as Seneca said, "Such is the blindness of mankind that some men are driven to death by the fear of it." He pried the fruit in half and handed me a portion. "But you cannot face death by creating experiences that bring you near death. Death is the greatest act of power to the warrior. To learn how to die is to learn how to live, for you are claimed by life and can never be claimed by death. In a sense the man of power spends a whole life learning how to die."
"The person who has already died," I said.
"The Jaguar Shaman is a spiritual warrior with no enemies in this life or the next, free from desire and fear: desire formed by our experiences of the past, and the fear of death that haunts our future. He is twice born, once of woman and once of Earth."
"The work of the South and the West."
"Yes. By making the journey West and facing death in life, a spiritual warrior not only frees himself to live in his present fully, but when death finally comes, it will know him and he will know the way." He wiped his hands on a red bandanna. "This is dying consciously, with your eyes open. The way to leave this world."
"Immortality?"
He shrugged. "The body is a vessel of consciousness, of life..."
Of energy."
"Yes." He reached toward the fire and slowly passed his cupped hand through the flames, then made a fist and held it to before me. "When one dies consciously, one leaves behind the vessel and identifies oneself with that which the vessel holds."
He opened his hand and, for the life of me, I thought I saw a light.
"And that is...?"
"And that is God." He shrugged his shoulders. "Life force, energy, call it what you will. The stuff that dreams and the cosmos are made of."
Later
We travel not only to be with this old man, this teacher of QO's, but to share in his rite of passage, to partake in the final act of power of the nahual. Sitting by the fire in a dried up riverbed. Q0 has excused himself and has wandered off to exercise his mourning, so that he may be fully present to celebrate the death.
We are a half day's journey from the old man's home. We got off the bus because, as usual, the way we get to where we are going is as important as what we do when we get there. I hoped aloud that we wouldn't be too late, and QO said no,we would be in good time, and I asked him how he knew that.
"He will wait for me."
Bone tired, I sleep.
We set off the next morning, and there was a lightness and peaceful resolution to QO's manner that I had not seen earlier. I sensed that we were climbing most of the morning and trees began to reappear. At midday we stopped by a solitary tree and shared cornmeal and fruit. QO cleared a small space at the base of the tree, and dug a hole. From his bag he withdrew the little bundle I had seen him tie together at his house.
"What is that?" I asked.
"Fishmeal." He opened the packet and held under my nose and laughed at the face I made. He placed the paper bundle in the hole and covered it over with soil and poured water over it from his canteen.
"What's the idea?"
"The idea!" He sat back on his haunches and his face broke into a smile. He leaned forward and slapped my knee with his palm. He was pleased that we were together again.
"The idea, my friend, is that you give something in return."
"In return for...?"
"You know, or at least begin to suspect, that the plants as well as the animals have spirits. When you use a plant for sacred purposes, you connect with its spirit. That connection becomes unique to you. Last night, I engaged with the spirit of San Pedro to help me summon my power, so that I could attend to my old friend. I offer this fishmeal as a gift in return. One should always leave something: hide a crystal in nature, plant of plant, bury a coin at a crossroads, even, to honor the gift, to give something in return for what you have been given. Fishmeal as a precious fertilizer from the coast"
"You used San Pedro last night?"
"Very little, nothing more than a homeopathic dose." He stood and filled his chest with the air of the high plateau. "My lungs are clearing. Let's go."
I had assumed we were destined for a village, but sometime before dusk, we crested a hill and there was a fringe of pine trees and, just before them a house with a low stone wall forming an enclosure for chickens and goats. There were a couple of burros wandering behind the house, and a young Indian boy was removing a simple saddle from the back of an old horse by the break in the wall.
QO told me to wait there and he headed down the hill. I watched him disappear into the house. I started to feel self-conscious. Was it appropriate for me to be here? I saw one or two people move out into the enclosure and back inside. How many were there? Who were there?
They were friends. They were students, healers, Jaguars. They were El Viejo's only living family, and there was a roomful of them, sitting in chairs and on stools arranged around a rocking chair in the center of the room. His only blood relation was a granddaughter and her 50s, who served little sesame cakes to those gathered.
Most of them were in their early '50s, Indians. I counted six women and 4 men. El Viejo, the old nahual, sat in the rocking chair. He was a small man, shrunken with age, covered with a brightly woven Indian blanket. His hands were unusually large and liver spotted, the nails were long. His nose was arched and thin and seemed to start in high on his forehead, also high and sloping, accentuated by baldness on top. The fringe of long gray white hair that surrounded his head was pulled back and tied in a ponytail, and his eyes, under sparse brows, were soft and gray. His skin was delicately wrinkled, pale, almost translucent; the only color was high on his cheekbones, pinkness, wine stained. He was a remarkable looking man.
Two of the visitors, a man with the white shirt and a young woman with a purple shawl, had left their seats for us, had moved to sit on burlap sacks against the wall. I felt like an intruder. I protested to QO.
"It is a place of honor," he whispered. "Accept it graciously."
He said in the chair beside the old man and I took the stool behind him. Next to me set an old woman, a crone with peppery gray hair parted in the center and braided on one side, the braid tied off with a strip of woven ribbon.
El Viejo squinted over at my companion and nodded his welcome, a corner of his mouth lifted in a grin, and QO placed his hand on his teacher's and spoke to him in a whisper. He mentioned my name in the soft gray eyes shifted in my direction, but did not seem to look at me. Like the eyes of a blind man, they had no focus. I smiled at him and he whispered something to QO and QO nodded. I felt the blood rushing to my face, felt lightheaded and embarrassed. Then QO placed his other hand on my knee, and I smelled something acrid, and heard a crackling sound. The old woman was lighting a pipe, a long hardwood bowl carved into the face of a fanciful owl with the stem and bit of bone. She puffed the tobacco without inhaling and the smoke of wafted across my face. She touched QO's shoulder and he took from her and handed it to the old man who raised it ever so slowly to his lips and drew on it, inhaling the smoke of the glowing tobacco.
He exhaled through his nostrils, like a dragon, 2 narrow streams of white smoke, then blew it out his mouth and this streams caught those from his nose and carried them into the center of the room, and I noticed the bed there. The floor was wooden planks. There was an adobe fireplace or stove in one corner, and each of the four walls hadt a large latched wood frame window.
The old man handed the pipe to QO and he drew the tobacco deep into his lungs. Then he handed it back to the old crone, and this time she inhaled before passing it to the man on her left. El Viejo closed his eyes while the pipe was passed to each of his guests, and the room filled with its pungent perfumes, stronger than any cigar. But the windows stayed closed. Not a word was spoken. No one, save QO and the old man, had breathed a sound since our entrance and when the pipe had made the circuit and come back to the crone, she touched my arm and offered it to me. She smiled, a crack and her face, and I took it and looked at the old nahual and he opened his eyes and inclined his head and I drew on the bone bit, inhaled, and thought that my lungs would explode.
I coughed up the smoke and doubled over in uncontrollable fit of coughing. The crone turned to her neighbor and made a wisecrack about "the young one", and the room laughed. The ice was broken and she petted me on the shoulder and took the pipe from me.
"What is this?" I whispered, not out of respect, but because I was still fighting for breath.
"The most powerful huaman tobacco," said QO. "It's the spirit of Falcon, and it is visionary although it is nothing but tobacco. You are an honored guest."
"Thanks." And I looked around the room and they were smiling. The old man's granddaughter was at my side. She offered me a sesame cake and I thanked her. She moved to her grandfather's side and whispered in his ear, and he nodded and lifted his hand as though to acknowledge her words. There was a murmuring behind me, and I half-turned to see a middle-aged couple holding hands, heads together, staring at me into distracting way. I smiled and gave them a nod, and they looked almost embarrassed, smiling back at me. Then, QO touched my shoulder. He leaned close. "We need to perform a healing," he said.
"Huh?"
"The room has been cleansed with sage and tobacco and all present have prepared themselves, cleaned themselves, for El Viejo's death. When he makes his final journey to the West, he will go alone, the moment is his."
"Yes?"
"A number of guests have noted the presence of another, uninvited."
"I'll leave," I said, anxious not to interfere.
"No, no. You have been invited. You are an honored guest. It is not you, it is a spirit that you have brought with you."
"What?"
"I do not know how I missed it. It is very clear now."
"What is?"
"A woman who has died. Her spirit is still attached to your heart well." He touched my chest. Beside me, the crone was loading the pipe from cloth pouch.
"They can see this?"
He nodded. "A im bubble of light, connected to you by a cord, like an umbilical cord of light. El Viejo has asked that we perform a simple healing and release this soul. They have agreed."
I turned and looked at the people seated behind me. It was one of the eeriest sensations I have ever felt. They were looking not at me, but at something before me something near my chest. Maria? The old witch has the pipe going now, and she drew the smoke deep into her lungs, eyes closed, then opened them and blew the smoke at a spot 18 inches or so from my neck. There was a tapping sound and I looked to see the old man, the dying nahual, tapping the arm of his chair with the fingernail of his middle finger.Tap...tap... every 2 seconds.
"Turnaround," said QO, and I shifted on my stool to face the gathering. The crone had started to hum, a low resonant sound with no melody, and it was met by a similar sound at a higher octave by the second person to blow smoke at my chest, pass the pipe, close her eyes. Others were lighting their own pipe's, filling them from the crone's pouch, inhaling the acrid fumes, and soon I was enveloped in a cloud of dense smoke, and the room was vibrating to the haunting sound of their song.
"Close your eyes," said QO. "Concentrate on this spirit. Exercise your vision."
I closed my eyes, watery with tears from the smoke, and felt Q0's fingers tapping a circle on my forehead.. There was talking in the room, someone giving an opinion and another agreeing.
"What is happening?" I asked QO, without opening my eyes.
"They are directing energy toward her. She is glowing. They are charging her spirit so it can free itself from you."
There was a general murmur now. "Where they saying?"
"She's angry with you, this woman. You have taken something from her." I felt the warm bowl of the pipe placed in my hands. "Take the smoke and give it to her. She died in the hospital and you have taken her dignity."
I placed the stem between my lips and took the smoke into my mouth and exhaled. El Viejo caughed.
QO said, "you have picked that the bones of one who has not yet died. She is not free."
I opened my eyes and the smoke was there, suspended before me, shapedlike a watermelon.
"You have taken something from her..."
My hand flew to my chest. My medicine pouch, a leather pouch, a gift from Stephanie.
"....her hair..."
I grabbed the leather thong at my neck and pulled it out from under my shirt, opened in the flap, and withdrew the lock of hair. The crone drew in her breath through her teeth, a gentle hiss. There was an astonished silence.
The man in the white shirt stood up.
"What is that?" Asked QO.
"It is a lock of hair."
He raised an eyebrow. "Why do you carry it with you?"
"I... a friend gave it to me."
"You carry it like an object of power," he said.
"It is," I said. "For me, I learned more from this person..."
Do you see her spirit? Do you see how she is attached to this?"
"No. I thought I saw..."
"You must make peace with her. Free her spirit. She is ready now. She has stayed with you because through you she can find her final rest. It is not your fault. Spirits are drawn to light, like fireflies to a candle. Go. Go outside into the woods and offer this to her, return it to her and release her. She can go now, you will perform her final healing."
I looked at him pleadingly.
"I will explain it to them," he said. "Come back when you are finished."
I stood and the room rocked, shifted dizzily, and I steadied myself, a hand on QO's shoulder.
We must find our own ritual. We must find our own ceremony, our own access to the realms that exist within and without.
Writing has become an ingredient of my ritual, and that faithfully executed here, within the little tree line beside El Viejo's Rancho. Waiting in the dark.
Maria, I don't know how you died, but I can guess that your moment came in hospital, while the healthy and the living did everything they could to keep you in their world. You may have been well schooled in living, but surely, death was unfamiliar to you and came early and you fought it and if you have been somehow attached to your physical body, the vessel that held you, I am sorry. Sorry that it was not honored, that you were not helped to be free from it before it was defiled. It is our tradition.
Now, I am sure that your body has been burned, and the sun has been released from the flesh and all that is left is this morsel of hair that is yours. But all that was you has not ceased to be, and isn'tit a wonder that your spirit should follow the last remnants of your body and find freedom here, so far from home, and the company of such remarkable men and women.
I buried it near the base of a pine tree.
Thank you for which you taught me. I will cherish the knowledge in my head and your spirit in my heart, forever.
I spent more than an hour there in the woods with Maria. The moon had passed between the Earth and the Sun. A new moon, a crescent sliver, and the night was unusually dark. When I returned to the house, the room had been filled with candles. The windows were open now, but no wind disturbed the 50 or so tapers of light. The old nahual was lying on the bed in the center of the room, and the crone was singing a faint melody. I took my place on the stool, behind QO, beside the crone, four feet from the old man's body. Then he turned toward me as I sat, and he stared at me, stared into my eyes and my mind when blank, blank like the gray of his eyes. Then he coughed a shallow cough and turned his head away, eyes toward the ceiling, and he closed them.
The shush-shush of a rattle started up somewhere behind me, and someone whistled, like you'd whistle when you call to a bird, and a song started, a murmured chant, and it was as though this simple song was a vehicle that carried with the the peace that settled on the room. I leaned forward slightly and saw that QO's eyes were closed. Before us the old nahual's chest was rising...and falling, and a sort of tremor shivered through him. I closed my eyes and allow my body to measure itself to the rhythms of the rattle and the song...I found myself transported effortlessly, to a state of serenity, perfect harmony with the song...
It was much later when I opened my eyes, and the recent past had the feeling of a dream. I awoke to the dream of the room, the faces, the dying man before me. The rhythms of the rattle was constant. The old man's breathing, slow and regular, and the rattle shook 13 times for each breath. There was time to count the breaths, time to feel the texture of the air, the sweet intensity of it. The candles had burned low since I closed my eyes.
There was rapture in the air, on the faces of these men and women, these students of El Viejo, and it was bewitching, as tangible as the smell of spring in April. Then, QO turned to look at me, and I realized that I had been staring at the old man, the rise and fall of his chest, counting the 13 shakes of the rattle, breathing with him. QO reached out and touched my left temple with his middle finger, then tapped, drummed his fingertips, in a circle on my forehead. "Look," he whispered. "Look carefully."
I let my focus go, and my eyes shifted to a spot six inches above the old man's chest, and there it was, that intangible form, a hazy violet hue there... and gone...there again, disappearing with each long breath, rising with every exhalation.
The crone squeezed my left hand. I turned to look at her, then down at her brown, calloused hand, dry and cool. I covered her hand with my right hand and nodded, and her eyes sprinkled with a smile. She raised the pipe to her lips and inhaled and blew smoke at me, dipped her head and neck and blew it from my lap up, up my chest to my face, and there was something wonders about her face and the dipped overhead and neck, something tender, caressing. Almost erotic.
She put the pipe in my hands, clammy, sweaty palms. The rattle stopped and the room hummed with silence.
When I turned my head, I couldn't see the energy body. I saw the old man's body convulse once, twice, and settle in the silence.
And I raised my eyes to an orb, a luminous ball of opalescent light, cords of light spiraling from his forehead, wrapping around it, blending into it, a radiant egg supported by a helix of spiraling light, and if I looked at it, it was gone, so I focused on empty space, for it could be perceived, but not seen.
Then QO took the pipe from my hands. I had forgotten that I was holding it. He drew on it and the last ember glowed. The rose and blew the smoke across the dead man's forehead, and, as though out of the top of my vision, I saw the spirit pulsate and scatter into a thousand points of light, like the light you see when you close your eyes and press on the lids. They scattered through the room, leaving trails, tracers of light, and seemed to touch the heads of the old man's students. The rattle went shush-shush and when I looked again, the orb was back, hovering in the center of the room, and QO was standing with the granddaughter beside the nahual's body, dipped in his fingers in a bowl of herbs and touching the old man's wells, kneecaps, souls of his feet, elbows, and hands.
And there were hands on mine. The old woman to my left, the man with a white shirt on my right. QO and the granddaughter were joined by others, and we stood, hands joined in a circle, and the old woman beside me singing a song. Her voice sounded like a flute, and I recognized the weird melody. I had heard at the night before, heard QO singing it in the night. It was a song of the woods, the high plateau, the song to summon the spirits of the grass and the pines, for as QO later explained, the elementals, the forces of nature that were El Viejo's power animals had been set free. And as I saw the energy body, the light of this old soul swirled and dissipated like a drop of dye in a glass of swirling water, and QO led me to the window, rubbed my forehead, stimulated my vision, and said "Breathe. Breathe deeply and look quickly!"
In that instant to the woods were alive with a light like I had seen in the jungle, radiant halos outlining the trees with pinpricks of light like fireflies scattering, flashing, playing in the spaces between the trees, and the tops of the pines swayed ever so slightly and the scent of the pines swept out of breeze through the room.
The candles wavered, and the smoke cleared. And the song ended.
October 19th
The morning after the death of the old warrior, the party feasted on fruit and cornmeal. The mood was festive and there was much talk, mostly about local diseases and afflictions. QO explained that these people have traveled great distances to be present for the old man's birth into the spirit world, that they were Jaguar shamans and healers, all touched by the teachings of El Viejo. He smiled at the mood of the group. Their joy, he said, was from the knowledge that the spirit of their teacher was with them fully now, that he was free from the confines of this world.
The old man's medicine bag was laid out, and each of his students went to it, and took an object: a staff, a crystal, a stone, ancient objects of power; and there was no argument, no hesitation or indecision. QO told me that specific objects had been given to them during the old man's death. They had been told what was theirs by the spirit of the nahual.
We left the house at about 11 AM. We talked about immortality. The knowledge that we are made of somatic and spiritual matter is fundamental to the spiritual experience. If one learns during his lifetime to separate themselves from the physical, to experience themselves as "beings of light", to learn the spirit flight, one may die consciously, die to the flesh and be born into the spirit, the spirit that one has already met and claimed. If one does not die consciously, one's energy body returns to "the great pool of consciousness.
When I pressed QO to explain this great pool, he shook his head. I hated when he does that.
"It is a metaphor of the myth," he said, "in a poetic expression of a concept. Leave it at that. If you are not satisfied with the image, inform your own, my friend, but do not base it on the experience of others."
"All right," I conceded. "But this... Individuation of the spirit: is it believed that by dying consciously you maintain your individuality after death?"
"Individuality?" He asked. "Another is a muddy concept. If you must insist on reducing everything to theoretical formulas you would do better to be more precise."
"Dammit!" I stopped, shrugged off my pack, and dropped it on the ground. "I'm trying to understand with a means that I'm accustomed to!"
"Yes, you are in a delicate position. You are on the path of experience. A path that will lead you to understanding. Caught between two worlds, between a waking state and a dream state. You have experienced power, yet you are still confused by the difference between your experience and your beliefs. But your beliefs are based on the theories of others."
"Theory is important," I said. "For gods sake! Theory what allows us to exercise foresight. It's what has led the human race into the future: think ahead, propose the possibility, test it, prove it, move forward. Logic is a fact, a formal Western talked. It cannot be discounted just because other cultures approach the mystery of the cosmos from a different direction! Besides, even Western science is ending up in the mystical realm. Look at quantum physics."
"What will I see?"
"What you already know. That consciousness is a determining factor of reality. The photon, subatomic light, is not a wave and not a particle. It is neither ended his bolt. It's astonishing! The whole process of the Western scientific method is based upon reduction." I started taking off points on my fingers. "We're trying to explain brain function by studying the molecular biology of the central nervous system. Molecular biology is studied in terms of atomic physics, and atomic physics is in the realm of quantum mechanics, the uncertainty principle: the observation of an event influences its outcome, the mind of the observer is integral to determining the nature of reality."
"So," he said. "Scientific reductionism has reduced itself to consciousness. Physicists are becoming poets."
"Yes. The study of the human mind and evidently turns to the consciousness of the one who studies."
"And the new Jaguars will come from the West."
"What?"
"It is a vision I have had," he said
He lifted my pack from the ground and handed to me. "Now," he said. "For the sake of theory, let us say that one may maintain, not individuality, but integrity of consciousness after death."
I slipped to pack over my shoulders. "All right," I nodded and we continued on.
"What does that suggest to you?"
"Immortality," I said.
"And?"
"I'm not sure. It's like Infinity. How do you resolve such a concept in a practical way?"
"How do you apply quantum mechanics to everyday life?" He challenged. "Does quantum theory teach you out of walk on the earth? How to change the weather? How to identify yourself with the creative principle, with nature, with the divine? Does it teach you how to live every moment of your life as an act of power? No. The theory. Logic. Conceptualizations. Games to amuse ourselves with us something that transcends all human research unconscious thought." Now it was his turn to stop in these me.
"It is through the experience of life through death that one becomes a spiritual warrior and identifies oneself with the life force." He held out his hand and formed a fist, reminding me of the fire two nights ago. "My old teacher has died to his flesh and yet maintained the integrity of his consciousness. You, on the other hand, have maintained the integrity of your body. You exercise your body, but your consciousness atrophies. El Viejo knew the truth for most of his life, and he walked in the snow without leaving tracks."
He placed his and on my shoulder. "Our brains are not 72 year clocks. We are not connected to the Earth for a finite time between birth and death. And the divine does not come from somewhere above, it exists beyond time and space, and informs life. The Earth is our home, and once we have transcended the shadow play that we call biological reality and identified ourselves with this divine force, we realize that we have no choice but to become caretakers of this Earth." He turned and walked ahead.
"Caretakers of the Earth" I said and caught up to him.
"It is our responsibility. Ours." He spread his arms, gestured toward the land around us. "Honor thy mother and thy father. Mother Earth and Father Sun. The person of knowledge has no choice."
"In the new Jaguars will come from the West?"
"Of course."
(Contributed from the personal writings of Don Antonio Alvarado)