Topic: Florinda Speaks

[nichi]

A witch's farewell is like dust from the road;
                it sinks in as one tries to slough it off.


       The Witch's Dream - Florinda Donner-Grau

[nichi]

"Did you know that one of the basic differences between males and females is how they approach knowledge?"

I had no idea what she meant. Slowly and deliberately, she tore off a clean sheet from my notepad and drew two human figures. One head she crowned with a cone and said that it was a man. On ehe other head, she drew the same cone, but upside down, and said that it was a woman.

"Men build knowledge step by step, " she explained, her pencil poised on the figure crown with a cone. "Men reach up; they climb toward knowledge. Sorcerers say that men cone toward the spirit; they cone up toward knowledge.  This coning process limits men on how far they can reach."  She retraced the cone on the first figure. "As you can see, men can only reach a certain height. Their path toward knowledge ends up in a narrow point: the tip of the cone."

She looked at me sharply. "Pay attention," she warned me and pointed her pencil to the second figure, the one with the inverted cone on its head.

"As you can see, the cone is upside down, open like a funnel.  Women are able to open themselves directly, in the broad base of the cone. Sorcerers say that women's connection to knowledge is expansive.  On the other hand, men's connection is quite restricted.

"Men are close to the concrete," she proceeded, "and aim at the abstract.  Women are close to the abstract and yet try to indulge themselves with the concrete."

Esperanza to Florinda Donner
Being in Dreaming Chapter 15

[nichi]

The dictionary of the Spanish Royal Academy defines nagual as the Spanish adaptation of a word that means sorcerer or wizard in the Nahuatl language of southern Mexico.
   Traditional stories of naguals, men of ancient times who possessed extraordinary powers and performed acts that defied the imagination, do exist in modern Mexico.  But in an urban or even rural setting today, actual naguals are purely legendary.
   The nagual I met, however, was real.  There was nothing illusory about him.  When I asked him out of well-meant curiosity what made him a nagual, he presented a seemingly simple, and yet utterly complex idea as an explanation for what he did and what he was.  He told me that nagualism begins with two certainties:  the certainty that human beings are extraordinary beings living in an extraordinary world; and the certainty that neither men nor the world should ever be taken for granted under any circumstances.
   From those sweet, simple premises, he said, grows a simple conclusion:  Nagualism is at once taking off one mask and wearing another.  Naguals take off the mask that makes us see ourselves and the world we live in as ordinary, lusterless, predictable, and repetitious and put on the second mask, the one that helps us see ourselves - and our surroundings - for what we really are - breathtaking events that bloom into transitory existence once and are never to be repeated again.

The Witch's Dream
Florinda Donner

[SoulFire]

  Naguals take off the mask that makes us see ourselves and the world we live in as ordinary, lusterless, predictable, and repetitious and put on the second mask, the one that helps us see ourselves - and our surroundings - for what we really are - breathtaking events that bloom into transitory existence once and are never to be repeated again.

The Witch's Dream
Florinda Donner

I love this one.  Think I posted at TNF a while back.. or somewhere.
What i like about it is the idea of the masks.
Being able to put on a mask so we can see the beauty in everything.
Thats a good skill to have.
I guess after a point it's not so much a skill as just a way of being, seeing
and loving.