The Sorcerers' Crossing: Chapter 18.

The Sorcerers' Crossing - A Woman's Journey ©1992 by Taisha Abelar.

Chapter 18.

I found a plate of tamales on the kitchen table.

I knew that Emilito had prepared them, but he was not anywhere in sight.

I poured some water into my mug, and ate all the tamales, hoping that Emilito had already had his breakfast.

After I washed the plate, I went to work in the vegetable garden, but I tired easily.

I made myself a nest of leaves under a tree, the way Clara had showed me, and sat on it to rest.

For a while, I watched the swaying branches of the tree across from me, and the motion of those branches brought me back to my childhood.

It was not that I was just remembering it. I was actually there.

I must have been four or five years old and I grabbed onto a handful of willow branches.

My feet were dangling beneath me, barely touching the ground. I was swinging. I screamed with delight as my brothers took turns pushing me.

Then they jumped up to grab higher willow branches and brought their knees up. They swung back and forth, putting their feet down only to push off the ground to gain momentum for another ride.

As soon as the scene ended, I breathed in everything I had been reliving; the joy, the laughter, the sounds, and the feelings I had for my brothers.

I swept the past away with a turning motion of my head.

Gradually, my eyelids grew heavy.

I slumped down on my nest of leaves, and fell into a sound sleep.

I was awakened by a sharp poke in my ribs.

Emilito was nudging me with a walking stick.

He said, "Wake up. It is already afternoon. Did you not sleep well last night in the tree house?"

As I opened my eyes, a beam of light kindled the treetop with orange hues.

Emilito's face, too, was lit up by an eerie glow that made him look ominous.

He had on the same blue coveralls he had worn the day before, and tied to his belt were three gourds.

I sat up and watched as he carefully removed the stopper of the largest gourd, lifted it to his mouth, and took a gulp. Then he smacked his lips with satisfaction.

Emilito peered at me curiously, and asked again, "Did you not sleep well last night?"

I moaned, "Are you kidding? I can truthfully say it was one of the worst nights of my life."

A torrent of whining complaints began pouring out of me.

I stopped, horrified, when I realized that I sounded just like my mother.

Whenever I would ask her how she had slept, she would give me a similar discourse of discontent.

I had hated her for that, and to think I was doing the same thing!

I said, "Please, Emilito, forgive me for my petty outburst. It is true that I did not sleep a wink, but I am fine."

Emilito ventured, "I heard you screaming like a banshee. I thought you were either having nightmares, or were falling out of the tree."

I said, wanting sympathy, "I thought I was falling out of the tree. I nearly died of fright.

"But then a strange thing happened and I got through the night."

Emilito sat down on the ground a safe distance from me, and asked curiously, "What strange thing happened?"

I saw no reason not to tell him, so I described in as much detail as I could the events of the night, culminating with the light that came to save me.

Emilito listened with genuine interest, nodding at the appropriate times as if he understood the feelings I was describing.

He said, "I am very glad to hear that you are so resourceful. I really did not expect you to make it through the night. I thought you would faint.

What this all boils down to is that you are not as bad off as they said you were."

"Who said I was bad off?"

"Nelida and the nagual. They left me specific instructions not to interfere with your healing.

"That is why I did not come to help you last night, even though I was greatly tempted if for no other reason than to get some peace and quiet."

Emilito took another gulp from his gourd, and held it out to me and offered, "Do you want to take a swig?"

I wondered if it was liquor, in which case I would not have minded having a sip.

I asked, "What is in the gourd?"

He hesitated for a moment, then he turned the gourd upside down and gave it a few strong shakes.

I scoffed, "It is empty. You were trying to trick me."

Emilito shook his head and retorted, "It only seems empty.

"It is filled to the brim with the strangest drink of all.

"Now, do you or do you not want to drink from it?"

"I do not know," I said.

For an instant, I wondered if he was toying with me. Seeing him in his neatly ironed blue coveralls with gourds tied to his belt, I had the impression that he was an escapee from a mental institution.

He shrugged and stared at me wide-eyed.

I watched as he re-corked the gourd, and securely tied it to his belt with a thin leather thong.

I was driven by curiosity, and a sudden urge to find out what his game was, and I said, "All right. Let me have a sip."

Emilito uncorked the gourd again, and handed it to me.

I shook it and peered inside. It was indeed empty.

But, when I put it to my lips, I had a most unfamiliar oral sensation.

Whatever flowed into my mouth was somehow liquid, but it was not anything like water. It was more like a dry, almost bitter pressure that suffocated me for an instant, and then filled my throat and my entire body with a cool warmth.

It occurred to me that the gourd had a fine powder that had gotten into my mouth. To find out if that was true, I shook it onto the palm of my hand, but nothing came out.

Emilito noted my surprise, and said, "There is nothing in the gourd that the eyes can see."

I took another imaginary sip, and was jolted nearly out of my shoes.

Something electric flowed through me and made my toes tingle.

The tingling went up my legs to my spine like a lightning bolt, and when it entered my head I nearly passed out.

I saw the caretaker jumping up and down laughing like a prankster.

I grabbed onto the ground to steady myself with my hands.

When I had somewhat regained my equilibrium, I confronted him angrily and demanded, "What the hell is in this gourd?"

In a serious tone, he said, "What is in it is called 'intent'.

"Clara told you a little about it. It is now up to me to tell you a bit more."

"What do you mean that it is now up to you, Emilito?"

"I mean that I am your new usher. Clara did part of that work and I must do the rest."

My first reaction was simply not to believe him.

He himself had said that he was merely a hired hand and not part of the group. It was obvious that this was a prank, and I was not going to fall for any more of his tricks.

I forced a laugh, and said, "You are just pulling my leg, Emilito."

He said, "I am now." Emilito then leaped over to me, and actually gave my leg a yank.

Before I could get up, he celebrated his own joke by tugging my leg again.

He was so animated that he hopped around in a squatting position like a rabbit and laughed playfully.

He giggled, and inquired, "You do not like your teacher to pull your leg?"

I did not like him to touch me, period, and definitely not my leg.

But I did not like Clara to touch me either.

I began to toy with the idea of why I did not like to be touched. Despite my having recapitulated all my encounters with people, my feeling regarding physical contact was as strong as ever.

I filed this problem away for future examination because the caretaker had settled down, and was beginning to explain something that needed all my attention.

I heard him saying, "I am your teacher. Besides, Clara, Nelida and the nagual, you have me to guide you."

I snapped at him, "You are a mass of misinformation, that is what you are. You yourself told me that you are merely a hired caretaker. So what is this business that you are my teacher?"

Emilito said seriously, "It is true. I really am your other teacher."

I disliked the prospect immensely and I shouted, "What could you possibly have to teach me?"

Emilito blinked like a bird as he said, "What I have to teach you is called 'stalking with the double."

I demanded, "Where are Clara and Nelida?"

"They are gone. Nelida said that in her note, did she not?"

"I know they are gone, but where exactly did they go?"

Emilito, with a grin that looked like a painfully suppressed desire to burst out laughing, said, "Oh, they went to India."

I felt vicious and I said, "Then they will not be back for months."

Emilito replied, "Right. You and I are alone. Not even the dog is here.

"You have, therefore, two options open to you.

"You can either pack your junk and leave, or you can remain here with me and settle down to work.

"I do not advise you to do the former, because you do not have any place to go."

I informed him, "I do not have any intention of leaving. Nelida left me in charge to take care of the house and that is what I am going to do."

Emilito replied, "Good, I am glad you have decided to follow the sorcerers' intent."

Then, since it must have been obvious to him that I had not understood, he explained that the intent of sorcerers differs from that of average people in that sorcerers have learned to focus their attention with infinitely more force and precision.

I stared at Emilito, and asked, "If you are my teacher, can you give me a concrete example to illustrate what you mean?"

He thought for a moment as he looked around.

His face lit up and he pointed at the house, and said, "This house is a good example.

"It is the result of the intent of countless sorcerers who amassed energy and pooled it over many generations.

"By now, this house is no longer just a physical structure, but a fantastic field of energy.

"The house itself could be destroyed ten times over, which it has been, but the essence of the sorcerers' intent is still intact because that is indestructible."

I asked, "What happens when the sorcerers want to leave? Is their power trapped here forever?"

Emilito said, "If the spirit tells them to leave, they are capable of lifting the intent from the present spot where the house stands, and can place it somewhere else."

I said, "I have to agree that the house is really spooky."

I told him how it had resisted my detailed measurements and calculations.

Emilito remarked, "What makes this house spooky is not the disposition of the rooms or walls or patios, but rather the intent that generations of sorcerers poured into it.

"In other words, the mystery of this house is the history of the countless sorcerers whose intent went into building it.

"You see, they not only intended it, but they constructed it themselves, brick by brick, stone by stone.

"Even you have already contributed your intent and your work to it."

I was sincerely taken aback by Emilito's statement, and I asked, "What could my contribution be? You can not possibly mean that crooked garden path I laid."

Emilito laughed as he said, "No one in his right mind could call that a contribution. No. But you have made a few others."

He remarked that on the mundane level of bricks and structures, he considered my contributions to be the careful electric wiring, the pipe fitting, and the cement casing for the water pump I had installed to pump water from the stream up the hill to the vegetable garden.

He went on, saying, "On the more ethereal level of energy flow, I can tell you in all sincerity that one of your contributions is that never before have we witnessed in this house anyone merging her intent with Manfred."

At that moment something popped into my mind and I asked, "Are you the one who can call him 'toad' to his face? Clara once told me that someone could do it."

The caretaker's face beamed as he nodded and said, "Yes. I am the one.

"I found Manfred when he was a puppy. He had been either abandoned or he had run away; perhaps from a motor home in the area.

"When I found him he was almost dead."

I asked, "Where did you find him?"

"On Highway 8, about sixty miles from Gila Bend, Arizona.

"I had stopped on the side of the road to go to the bushes, and I actually pissed on him.

"He was lying there almost dead from dehydration. I was impressed that he had not run onto the highway as he could have done so easily.

But what impressed me most was that he was lying right where I went to piss."

I was so overtaken with sympathy for poor Manfred's plight that I forgot all my anger at Emilito.

I asked, "Then what happened?"

"I took Manfred home and put him in water, but I did not let him drink.

"And then I offered him to the sorcerers' intent."

Emilito said that it was up to the sorcerers' intent to decide not only whether Manfred lived or died, but whether Manfred would be a dog or something else.

He lived and became something more than a dog.

Emilito explained, "The same thing happened to you. Maybe that is why the two of you got along so well.

"The nagual found you spiritually dehydrated, ready to make a shambles of your life.

"Since he was at the drive-in movie with Nelida, it was up to them to offer you to the sorcerers' intent, which they did."

I asked, "How did they offer me to the sorcerers' intent?"

Emilito asked surprised, "Did they not already tell you?"

I considered for a moment before I replied, "I do not think so."

Emilito explained, "The nagual and Nelida called intent out loud, no doubt right there by the concession stand, and announced that they were putting their lives on the line for you without hesitation or regrets and without holding anything back.

"And both of them knew at once that they could not take you with them at that time, but would have to follow you around wherever you went.

"The nagual's and Nelida's invocation worked.

"You can now say that the sorcerers' intent took you in.

"And look where you are! Talking to yours truly."

He looked at me to see if I was following his argument.

I stared back with a silent plea for a more precise elucidation of the sorcerers' intent.

Emilito shifted to a more personal level and said that in matters of intending, if he took all the things I had said to Clara about myself, he would conclude that my intent had been one of total self defeat.

He said that I had, in a sustained fashion, always intended to be a crazy, desperate loser.

Emilito clicked his tongue and said, "Clara told me everything you told her about yourself.

"For instance, I would say that you jumped into that arena in Japan, not to demonstrate your martial arts skills, but to prove to the world that your intent is to lose."

Emilito pounced on me, saying that everything I did was tainted by defeat.

Therefore the most important thing I had to do now was to set up a new intent.

He explained that this new intent was called the sorcerers' intent because it is not just the intent of doing something new, but the intent of joining something already established.

This intent reached out to us through thousands of years of human toil.

He said that in this sorcerers' intent there was not room for defeat. Sorcerers have only one path open to them; to succeed in whatever they do.

But in order to have such a powerful and clear view, sorcerers have to reset their total being, and that takes both understanding and power.

Understanding comes from recapitulating their lives, and power gathers from their impeccable acts.

Emilito looked at me and tapped his gourd.

He explained that in his gourd he had stored his impeccable feelings, and that he had given me that sorcerers' intent to drink in order to counteract my defeatist attitude and prepare me for his instruction.

Emilito said something else, but I could no longer pay attention to him. His voice began to make me feel drowsy.

My body got heavy all of a sudden.

As I focused on his face, I saw only a whitish haze, like fog in the twilight.

I heard him tell me to lie down, and cast out my ethereal net by gradually relaxing my muscles.

I knew what he wanted me to do and I automatically followed his instructions.

I lay down and began moving my awareness from my feet upward to my ankles, calves, knees, thighs, abdomen and back.

Then I relaxed my arms, shoulders, neck and head.

As I moved my awareness to the various parts of my body, I felt myself become more and more drowsy and heavy.

Then the caretaker ordered me to make small counterclockwise circles with my eyes allowing them to roll back and up into my head.

I continued relaxing until my breathing became slow and rhythmic. It expanded and contracted by itself.

I was concentrating on the lulling waves of my breathing, when he whispered that I should move my awareness out of my forehead to a place as far above me as I could, and there make a small opening.

I muttered, "What kind of opening?"

"Just an opening. A hole."

"A hole into what?"

Emilito replied, "A hole into the nothingness your net is suspended on.

"If you can move your awareness outside your body, you will realize that there is blackness all around you.

"Try to pierce that blackness. Make a hole in it."

I tensed up and said, "I do not think I can."

Emilito assured me, "Of course you can. Remember, sorcerers are never defeated. They can only succeed."

He leaned toward me and in a whisper said that after I had made the opening, I should roll my body up like a scroll and allow myself to be catapulted along a line extending from the crown of my head into the blackness.

I protested feebly, "But I am lying down. The crown of my head is nearly against the ground. Should I not be standing up?"

"The blackness is all around us," he said. "Even if we are standing on our heads, it is still there."

He changed his tone to a hard command, and ordered me to place my concentration on the hole I had just made, and let my thoughts and feelings flow through that opening.

Again my muscles tightened because I had not made any hole.

Emilito urged me to relax; to let go and act and feel as if I had made that hole.

He said, "Throw out everything that is inside you. Allow your thoughts, feelings and memories to flow out."

As I relaxed and released the tension from my body, I felt a surge of energy push through me.

I was being turned inside out. Everything was being pulled out from the top of my head and rushed along a line like an inverted cascading waterfall.

At the end of that line, I sensed an opening.

Emilito whispered in my ear, "Let yourself go even deeper. Offer your whole being to nothingness."

I did my best to follow his suggestions.

Whatever thoughts arose in my mind instantly joined the cascade at the top of my head.

I vaguely heard Emilito say that if I wanted to move, I only needed to give myself the directive and the line would pull me wherever I wanted to go.

Before I could give myself the command, I felt a gentle but persistent tugging on my left side.

I relaxed and allowed this sensation to continue.

At first, only my head seemed to be pulled to the left, then the rest of my body slowly rolled to the left.

I felt as if I were falling sideways, yet I sensed that my body had not moved at all.

I heard a dull sound behind my neck, and saw the opening grow larger.

I wanted to crawl inside; to squeeze through it and disappear.

I experienced a deep stirring inside me.

My awareness began moving along the line at the crown of my head and slipped through the opening.

I felt as if I were inside a gigantic cavern. Its velvety walls enveloped me.

It was dark, but my attention was caught by a luminescent dot. It flickered on and off like a beacon, appearing and disappearing whenever I focused on it.

The area in front of me became illuminated by an intense light, then gradually everything became dark again.

My breathing seemed to cease altogether and no thoughts or images disturbed the blackness.

I no longer felt my body. My last thought was that I had dissolved.

I felt a hollow popping sound.

My thoughts returned to me all at once, tumbling down on me like a mountain of debris, and with them came the awareness of the hardness of the ground, the stiffness of my body, and some insect biting my ankle.

I opened my eyes and looked around.

Emilito had taken my shoes and socks off, and was poking the soles of my feet with a stick to revive me.

I wanted to tell him what had happened, but he shook his head.

He warned, "Do not talk or move until you are solid again."

He told me to close my eyes and breathe with my abdomen.

I lay on the ground until I felt I had regained my strength, then I sat up and leaned my back against a tree trunk.

Before I asked Emilito anything, he said, "You opened a crack in the blackness and your double slid to the left and then went through it."

I admitted, "I definitely felt a force pulling me, and I saw an intense light."

"That force was your double coming out," he said, as if he knew exactly what I was referring to. "And the light was the eye of the double.

"Since you have been recapitulating for over a year, you have also been, at the same time, casting your energy lines. And now they are beginning to move by themselves.

"But because you are still involved in talking and thinking, those energy lines do not move as easily and completely as they are going to someday."

I had no idea what he meant when he said that I had been casting my energy lines as I recapitulated. I asked him to explain.

Emilito said, "What is there to explain? It is a matter of energy.

"The more energy you call back through recapitulating, the easier it is for that recovered energy to nourish your double.

"Sending energy to the double is what we call casting your energy lines.

"Someone who sees energy will see it as lines coming out of the physical body."

I asked, "But what does that mean to someone like me who does not see?"

"The greater your energy," he explained, "the greater your capacity to perceive extraordinary things."

I tried not to sound facetious as I said, "I think what has happened to me is that the greater my energy becomes, the crazier I get."

Emilito remarked, "Do not run yourself down in such a casual manner.

"Perception is the ultimate mystery because it is totally unexplainable.

"Sorcerers as human beings are perceiving creatures, but what they perceive is neither good nor evil. Everything is just perception.

"If human beings, through discipline, can perceive more than is normally permitted, more power to them. Do you see what I mean?"

He refused to say one more word about it.

Instead, he took me through the house then out the front door to my tree.

He pointed to the top branches and said that because this particular tree had living quarters in it, it was equipped with a lightning rod.

He said, "In this area, lightning is sudden and dangerous. There are lightning storms even without a drop of rain.

"So when it does rain, or when there are too many cumulonimbus clouds in the sky, go to the tree house."

I asked, "When there are too many what in the sky?"

Emilito laughed and gently patted me on the back.

He said, "When the nagual Julian put me in the tree house, he told me the same thing. But at that time I did not dare to ask him what he meant, and he did not tell me either.

"I found out much later that he meant thunderclouds."

Emilito laughed at my look of dismay.

I asked, "Is there any danger of lightning striking the tree?"

"Well, there is, but your tree is safe," he replied. "Now get up there while it is still light."

Before I hoisted myself up, Emilito gave me a sack of walnuts that were cracked, but not shelled.

He said that if I had to be a tree dweller, I had to eat like a squirrel; little bits at a time and nothing at night.

I told him that was fine with me because I never really liked to eat anyway.

Emilito asked, chuckling, "Do you like to shit?

"I hope not, because the worst part about living in a tree house is when you have to evacuate your bowels.

"Human excrement is difficult to deal with. My philosophy is that the less you have of it, the better off you are."

Emilito found his statements so utterly funny that he doubled over laughing.

Still chuckling, he turned around, and left me to ponder over his philosophy.