7.

Day of Skull

187-203

p. 189

A hallmark of Yaqui women is the ... crescent earrings ... . ... .

p. 190

... on the Day of the Skull ... the dead cross over from ... where they live and exert their timeless influence on the living. ... .

p. 191

Anselmo ... lifted the saint by his wooden head and laid him back down. ... Anselmo whispered that I must also raise the saint by his head. "My people are watching ... . They must find out whether your sins are too heavy to raise the saint. ... If you don't people will think you're a witch. ...," he said. Politely I ... hoisted ... . ...

p. 192

We were going to pay a visit to the musician ... . ...

p. 193

[They discovered an abandoned human corpse, unburied. She asked,] "Why doesn't someone take the body ...? ..." "... It is the body of a Mexican." ... Anselmo! He could talk about the brotherhood of light across the planet, regardless of races ... . ...

{The interracial unity applied only to the living. Praeparing a funeral for a corpse, however, was a ritual dependent of other (praeternatural) factors, and could not be undertaken for a non-Yaki (whose ritual would need to be different, and which the Yaki were unqualified to perform).}

p. 194

Olga leaned toward me. "Your husband is a dark tiger {black panther (black leopard)}. You are a bear {Russian national Bear-mascot? -- Olga is a common Russian women's name}, and you are to the the dark tiger a beautiful semululukit." ... Olga was a Mayo Indian ... from ... the Rio Mayo, which was south of Rio Yaqui. Olga spent the four seasons in different parts of Mexico, gathering the herbs for the medicines she sold. ... . ... I asked her, "do you have any hummingbird ... ?" ...

p. 195

Olga emerged with a ... hummingbird cadaver ... . "Semululukit," she said, indicating the hummingbird. ... My aunt Charmaine had asked many times to keep an eye out for this special love medicine. ... You put the hummingbird in a little cradle with pink roses and nautilus shells and lavender, ... and if anything goes wrong {with the sponsored love-relationship} ... tell it to come alive again in the heart of your love ... . ... She pressed something into my hand ... -- a necklace of fish and rattlesnake bones, dyed red, with red and black beads between the bones. There was also a small peach pit, intricately carved into the shape of a monkey."

p. 187

"On the Day of the Skull ... the greatest deer singers come from ... the Yaqui lands ... to test their powers, and, in

p. 188

certain cases, to take power from those they vanquish ... magicians."

p. 196

"Anselmo told me ... that night he would perform deer singing against Prieto Saturnino, a man from the mountains who had come ... specifically to challenge him. ... "He's a magician. ... Prieto Saturnino has conquered the Dark Flower World through his trickery. ..." ... .

... I had a disjointed awareness of myself walking around double. ... "You!" someone yelled ... . I turned

p. 197

around, ... there was ... behind us, a short Yaqui woman ... . ... "Who was that?" I asked ... . "My cousin Lola from Eloy." ... I realized once more that ... the practitioners of magic are not stopped by the limits of the physical world."

p. 198

"I regarded the dark singer from the Baca Tete Mountains near Vicam, Prieto Saturnino, who had challenged Anselmo. Prieto Saturnino wore a purple scarf covered with an intricate pattern of rhinestones. ... Like Anselmo, Prieto Saturnino even in the dark had on sunglasses. ... . ... when the first deer song started with the rasp, I was startled by the sound of his voice. ... The labored, deep rhythms of the party of Prieto Saturnino exerted a hypnotic effect that drew my spirit toward him, and into him. ... . ... I saw his body in the hub of an irregular, carnelian wheel of light whose glowing edges looked like ... fires ... . ... . ... his aura was expanding, ... growing bigger and bigger ... . ...

The man who deer-danced for Prieto Saturnino was skinny to the point of emaciation. ... I had the anguished feeling that I was being drawn into a vortex

p. 199

with no bottom, dragged out of the present into the abyss where all of human history began again. I felt myself teetering as I was drawn into the current he created, lamenting over ... all the lost eras and millennia of human living that I had endured ... .

After the third song, Anselmo and his entourage ... his singers ... and the chief of Potam Pueblo, Silvario, ... deer-danced ... .

Back and forth it went, however, with each side performing three songs ... . ... Every time Prieto Saturnino sang, I got an intense ringing in my left ear. {Because she was seated to Anselmo's left (p. 198)?} Between the second and third sets ..., there was a little pause. ... When Prieto Saturnino started up again, the air smelled like ozone right before a storm. The ringing in my left ear was almost too loud to bear. Suddenly ... a CRACK! ...

Anselmo's burst heishi necklace. ... After Anselmo sang,

{A bead of Sumerian rosaries is shaped like a fly ("SN"; CEASA, s.v. "Fly", p. 181b).} {"You can also move like ... a fly ... . ...

the dark one, Prieto Saturnino, burst into a fit of coughing that wouldn't subside. ... He ... then withdrew from sight". {Yaki "Chapayeka ... performers must ... not ... cough with the mask on" (CC, p. 65).

The emissary ... coughed" (AD).}

p. 200

"I nevertheless heard ..., "She is in there talking with the ancestors, they are using her, they are talking to her, she is in the Other Place that takes her on the Trail of Ashes." ... I realized I'd been seeing a tide of ancient faces for some while, but they hadn't registered ... . I had a fleeting memory of ...

p. 201

passing between worlds and the eternal time of the Other Place ... . ... I felt, as soon as I noticed them, that I was aware of myself ..., and as I focused on this feeling, the feeling deepened and got layered and then wasn't me anymore, but layer after layer of Yaqui men and women -- an accumulation o generations.

It is easy to go between worlds, I thought, once I sensed their benevolence. ... I had two selves that I was aware of; one of me ... was carried easily and relentlessly among the dead ... in spirit form ... .

The dead were omnipresent, and so light they floated to the surface of the faces of the living ... .

{It is usual (in Bauddha mysticism) to regard such praeternatural "face-forms" visionarily reposing upon the faces of the living, as indication of their faces in their (the living's) own praevious lifetimes.}

I simultaneously felt a crowd had gathered around ..., and they were watching me sleep. Ringed round them were the dead who knew everything.

I saw that there was no difference between the living and the dead, I couldn't tell them apart except by ... the actual place I wanted to be in. ... Otherwise, I saw ... I kept traveling farther into the timeless place. The ancestors, who didn't ask anything of me, were happy to have me with them. ...

p. 202

My {subtle (mental?), not material} body had expanded and diffused so greatly, if I stayed much longer with the ancestors I would never return to my husband ... . ... I could see the faces of the people illuminated by the {praeternatural} incandescence of my {subtle} body."

8.

Return to Paradise

204-25

p. 204

"WE DROVE THROUGH EMPALME. A LITTLE WHILE LATER ANSELMO POINTED ... at

the old volcano. "See if you can find the mouth of the serpent." A round line of sharp, needle-like rocks jutted together like snake fangs. ... "In the time when the big lizards walked the earth, my people say, this same huge serpent came and was eating all the Yaquis. Fire came from his mouth.

{"this fire-breathing monster must probably be sought for in the volcano of the name of Chimaera near Phaselis, in Lycia (Plin. H. N. ii. 106, v. 27; Mela. i. 15) " (DG&RB&M)}

A young boy saved our people. He placed himself below the serpent's head and shot a poison dart into the roof of the great serpent's mouth ... . ..."

{"The hero Bellerophon ... driving a lead-tipped lance down the Khimaira's flaming throat, suffocated it." ("ThKi")}

At that time ..., during the days of the waterfly society -- the waterfly is the dragonfly -- the waterfly dancers made a big ceremony to honor the slaying of the great serpent, and they said that the body conquered the serpent world with his little arrow and the waterfly people would always serve him. The waterfly society, Anselmo explained, was a society of dreamers.

The Surem used to ride back and forth between the

{"Bellerophon mounted Pegasos, his winged horse born of Medousa and Poseidon, and flying high into the air brought down the Khimaira" (A:B 2:32).}

p. 205

worlds on the wings of the waterfly."

p. 208

"Chonita ... said in a lilting way, "Elena! You are just as pretty as you were in my dreams. ...""

p. 212

"over and over the women of the pueblos would repeat it : "We have seen you in dreams. ...""

p. 214

[her dreaming de'ja` vu during the 1950s in Missouri, revealing her later visit to Torim pueblo :] ""I've seen this place before. ... I used to see this ... when I was a girl back in Hannibal." ... In the summer that I began having my dream about the Dark Lord and the underground kingdom ..., I would be the woman Zyla at a window looking out at a temple carved from the green mountain. The temple led inside the mountain".

p. 215

"That night, the women told me later, many people saw shooting stars falling over the hill where we made love. The rumor was that there was treasure buried beneath the place where the bodies of Achai and Elena had lain together."

p. 216

"Torim was once very big and had many buildings ..., even an aqueduct system -- all of it laid out long ago."

p. 220

p. 219

"we prepared wayaa, the Dead Pudding made from black ragweed seeds. ... This food ... was the single most important food for the dead. ...

{In Ireland, "Ragweed is sacred to fairies, and when a little girl was mysteriously lost [in a field of it]" (ESF&OSW, p. 1407a), after she re-appeared (ESF&OSW, p. 1407b) "She said the fairies had taken her away a great distance" to where "she saw a big river, and the man who had tried to keep her from being carried off was drifting down it in a cockleshell." (cited from CT)}

Since ... the Day of the Skull ..., the dead had been walking among us, and at the end ..., they would return through the wall between worlds ... . We would all feed them and pay tribute with our ... food. ... .

p. 220

... Anselmo steamed chunks of calavasa, green pumpkin ... . ... When I

{In Skt., /Kus.man.d.a/ (or /Kus.man.d.a/) 'Pumpkin' is the name of a category of deities : "The Kus.man.d.as were a branch of the Pis`acas" (ID, p. 168).}

p. 221

slept, the dead visited me, all manner ... of Yaqui people, asking for ... their food".

{They were asking for black ragweed seeds. Cf. another black seed, BeNNe (of BeNin and India), whose name may be related to that of /BuNa/ (the Siberian abode for souls of the dead) and of Teutonic /BaiNa-/ 'bone'. Benne leaves (like okra pods, another reputed food for souls of the dead -- the woman Maho who had been given "okra", "SR" p. 188, had a son Agbagugu who put Death "to sleep", "SR" p. 189; "After a human being has died his or her okra will lead him {or her}to the immaterial world, "RS" p. 175) "yield a mucilage the consistency of the white of egg" ("AOSC", p. 103).} {"The Pis`acas ... were to be propitiated with ... sesamum ... or black cloth." (Vayu Puran.a 69.242-89 -- ID, p. 168).}

p. 221

"before sunset Anselmo and I ... drove over to the cemetery on the Papago Reservation ... . The Papago graveyard is ... where Bobby had first seen Anselmo sitting in midair. ... . ... I noticed some tendrils of smoke had wound loosely up my ankle. ... I watched the ground where the smoke was. It promptly returned to my feet and began curling up my leg again. ... It came up from the ground in a single vine-like stream about the diameter of a large hose. And then ... I saw a weathered, unpainted cross about three feet from where the smoke started. ...

p. 222

At the unkempt grave of Rosario Moses, the smoke became more urgent. It seemed to ask me in a beseeching, moaning way to help it. ... . ... I was ... hearing it, and the voice of the smoke said in a quavering ... way that if only I would honor the father of the great Yaqui chief, his son Anselmo Valencia Tori, I could have the gift of a choni. ...

"Your father came to me again ..., and said if I would honor his grave, he would give me all his dark powers. He told me he would give me a choni. ... What did he mean by a choni ...?" Anselmo said that in Yaqui

a choni is a long black braid of somebody's hair with a red ribbon in it, the hair of a man or woman with power, {with ribbon for aute : "The symbol of Ihungaru was a lock of human hair braided with aute bark." (CM, p. 462)}

{Cf. praemature birth of Maui : "Taranga cut off her tikitiki -- topknot -- wrapped the foetus in it and flung the bundle into the sea." ("MR", p. 247; see also HTF, p. 224, on Maui as a Polynesian instance of Fijian "water babies")}

and if you own a choni, you can send it to do work for you. Chonis are used by people who do dark work.

{Maui is primarily the god of "sorcery" (HM, p. 121), the name /Maui/ meaning 'witchcraft' (R&CBCP, vol. II, p. 166, n. 1).}

p. 223

"... Marciana was hanging out clothes when she started coughing. ... Something was stuck in her throat, she could feel it with her finger. Then she started pulling out a long black hair {braid?} that seemed to have no end. She couldn't even lie down to sleep because if she did, she'd start to choke on all the black hair in her throat. ..." ...

{"Omacatl [Ome Acatl '2 Reed'] was god of Uitz[-]nauac ['Nigh unto the Thorns' (fn. 101.i)]. ... And if he were sorely enraged, ... he often caused ... to swallow a hair ... . ... Thus he afflicted him : he choked ... stuck in his throat" (FC 1:15, pt. II, p. 33).}

Anselmo ... put ... horsehair rope all around her in a big circle.

{Rescue from the netherworld abode for souls of the dead by Mata-ora of his own wife Niwa-reka was via (LWhC, cap. III) the Pohutu-kawa (in Maori) = (in Hawai>ian) /pohuku/ "piled up, as a coil of hair on the head" (HD, p. 310b).}

When the choni came ..., it got trapped by the horsehair rope and

{This may possibly be aequivalent to Norse /Hross-hars-grani/ "horse-hair bearded" (NM, p. 280).} {Hrosshars-grani (foster-father of Starkad) occupied the thitherto-unoccupied 12th seat (cf. the Siege Perilous of Arthurian legend) on an island (Gautreks-saga -- TM, p. 858) reached via ("HHG") rowing in a rowboat : cf. the rowboat rowed (E:A; A:F -- "KhKh") by Kharon.}

... it let out a horrible, whistling scream. Anselmo was able to see it and then catch it. ... For a while after this incident, if I went to Leoway's {R.M.'s wife, A.V.T.'s mother} grave at sunset I would hear a high-pitched whistling. It only happened when I went without Anselmo, and only at Leoway's grave.

I asked Anselmo what it was.

{"deer, mouth open, use a higher pitched ... squeal or whistle. ... Carlos Castaneda, in Journey to Ixtlan ..., tells of ... "... I heard a sweet whistle. ... I knew it was a magical being, a deer. ..."" (WS, p. 163)} {For the sika, "a long drawn out, slightly mournful whistle that first rises then descends at the end. It is the sound of a male deer calling." ("SWhD")}

"There's a choni out there ... . If you want it, ... put ... my hat on [Leoway's] grave, and the choni will come into and you can have it and use it.""

{With this Yaki hat entered by human hair, cf. the "Maori helmet" commonly covered with human hair.}

p. 224

"We took ... over to the Yaqui cemetery ... candles".

{"Inorganic beings are long and candlelike but opaque" (AD).} {"candlelike" = cylindrical. The eucharist of Ome Acatl is "a sacred cylinder ["of dough"]" (FC, 1:15, pt. II, p. 33).}