For some reason Reddit doesn't like the source links for this page, so they won't be clickable/tappable, but do work if copied and pasted.
http://sustainedaction.org/Explorations/Carol%20Tiggs'%20speech%20at%20Tula.htm
https://web.archive.org/web/20030204122129/http://sustainedaction.org/Explorations/Carol%20Tiggs'%20speech%20at%20Tula.htm
It also means I had to copy and paste the content, because I know most won't take the time to do what's recommended above:
Tula Cathedral
Cathedral in Tula. setting for Carol's "performance"
The following is an account of the "top secret" speech/guided tour Carol Tiggs gave to the Cleargreen insiders on a trip to Tula, Mexico early in 1995. (Corey's acerbic supposition that he ferreted out of a couple of trash pickers who made a habit of spying on Carlos has been omitted.)
Carol Tiggs at Tula
I am going to reveal things that no one has ever known so it is very important that you pay attention. This is not the time for your linear mind. Use it in serious academic discourse. I was once an M.D. and I am now pursuing my degree in symbolic logic. I use all my resources of thinking; inducting, deducting and abducting in my academic studies. I am the most diligent student from ten to four but by the time I get home at five I am no longer Muni Alexander but Carolina Aranha. I am no longer linear. Your best efforts of linear thinking should be used in academic pursuits. Not here in Tula. Mine is not a linear world. Having said that, let's go in.
I'd like to say a word about cyclic beings. Cyclic beings for the old sorcerors [sic] and for the old nagual and us do not mean reincarnation. It means that human beings happen in strands held together by currents of homogenous energy. Think of a curtain made out of beads. Each strand is individual and each bead is even more individual yet they are held together by the same force, the same string. The beads of the same strand could be called cyclic by the old sorcerors [sic] of the old nagual's lineage.
I happen to have the fortune or misfortune of being a bead in the same string that holds a strange creature we know as the death defier. It was not such a far fetched affair for the death defier and Carol Tiggs to have a transcendental agreement, as it is not a far fetched idea that Lorenzo and Julius have a total affinity for the other two elements that disappeared. Nothing could be more absurd, but nothing could be more simple.
Renata is my adopted daughter, my charge. I don't fuss over her the way I would like to because I have such a possessive natural daughter who watches every move I make. But that doesn't mean anything. I'm still responsible for this creature. (touch and kiss Renata) This, besides being my responsibility, is also is my guardian, my chac mool. She is guarding me in this very room. The mystery here is not how I could be cyclic with the death defier, but how I could be sane and talking to you right now.
(Putting my left finger under the statue's nose and looking just like the statue, I address the group) Let's not stay here too long. Let's go see my cyclic chacmool.
At the church, in the small chapel by the leftside.
The Inside of the Chapel
[This "stage direction" refers to the chapel pictured here.]
Here is where the death defier struck an agreement with Carol Tiggs. I am going to tell you as exactly as I can what transpired here.
The death defier says to Carol Tiggs in the most terrifying raspy voice, "I have watched you for a long time, Carol Tiggs" She liked it when people used her whole name; it sounded respectful even though the raspy voice of the creature was more than disturbing. It sounded manly. Carol Tiggs thought that there wasn't anyway she could make sure that the death defier was a woman. The creature seemed to guess what Carol was thinking and said, "There is nothing male left in me. My assemblage point is totally twisted. As a woman you can't see but you can certainly feel my assemblage point or my pussy.
Carol Tiggs was getting more tongue tied and nervous than ever. Suddenly the death defier grabbed Carol Tiggs's hand and stuck it up her skirt. The creature was wearing a long dress with no underwear. Her pussy was hot and wet and slightly sticky. The creature's pussy didn't smell at all. There was a sensation of wet vortex pulling Carol down.
The death defier then said "Why don't you put my hand there?" and pointed to Carol's crotch. At this point Carol was laughing like an idiot. The woman dived through her skirt, pantyhose and underwear and stuck her finger in Carol Tiggs' pussy. The horrible thing is that Carol Tiggs really liked it. The woman had a very fat finger that seemed to grow inside. This is so terrible and so embarrasing [sic] that I have to tell it in the third person - The woman made love to her, right in this chapel and Carol Tiggs had a huge orgasm. She was panting and heaving.
With glazed eyes, Carol Tiggs turned to the voice that was cooing in her ear. The voice asked her "Now aren't you going to do it to me too?" Carol Tiggs was laying there between the pews, half naked. And she did it.
The death defier said "Don't be bashful and don't be judgey. Women have an enormous charge of energy in their uterus and the only way they open up to the unknown is through the blast of their orgasm. They are affected by it or they could affect others with it. Now, are you ready for our deal?"
Carol Tiggs was more dead than alive. She didn't know what to do. She felt used, dirty. She thought that everybody in the church had watched her and what would they think. They would certainly believe she was a lesbian. She then asked weakly, "Do you think that people had watched us?"
The death defier replied "No, because you are dreaming inside a dream. This church doesn't exist. We are in a vacuum. The church seems to be here but it is not. I want you to lend me a hand and free me from my chains. I don't know what I can do for you in payment for this turn. It's up to you to use me partially or fully. I will catch a ride and will go piggy-back with you and you could do the same thing with me but it will be up to you. I have no more decisions. My life ends with your line but it turns out that we are cyclic. I will give all the power I have. If you want to be a man, I'll make you a man. If you want to be a superpussy, I'll make you a superpussy."
All at once I heard myself stutter "I- I- I would like to be a superpussy, c-c-can I?" Then something in me said "NO, No I didn't mean it!"
Of course I have to tell you that I didn't look then as I look today. I looked like Nuri, a twerp. The death defier took my nose, my twiggy body ... The death defier was, naturally, the spitting image of that thing in the museum, the one I look like now.
"Do you accept my offer?" the woman urged. "I can't twist your arm. The decision is yours but let me tell you, it'll be an adventure of untold dimensions. Anything that would happen to me is better than what will happen when the energy stops coming from the nagual."
Carol Tiggs couldn't really understand this dialogue. So she continued with her one thought, "What does it mean to be a superpussy?"
"Well you could just take any man or woman you want. You could have orgasms through your nariz, you could rub against the wall of the church and go. A superpussy means that all of you is a pussy."
I was totally schizophrenic frightened and lisping and then at the same time another person was taking over me. Carol Tiggs responded in her lisping manner," Yeth, yeth, it would be thuper, so ethciting!" Yet in another part, she is beginning to comprehend the vast scope of this enterprise but only vaguely... Carol Tiggs continued," okay, what do we do firtht?"
"You could begin by seducing Isidoro Baltazar."
"Oh that's such a thupid idea. He hateth me. But with my new powers.." Carol says that as she begins carressing [sic] her nose.
Today I feel it was such a pitiful exchange between such an awesome creature and the petty concerns of Carol Tiggs worrying about being a superpussy. But that's the way we are, make no bones about it.
"It's time to change dreams. Let's go deeper yet. Let's go sit in front of the sea of awareness," the woman said.
"Yeth, I love the beach but, just before we do, what about Carlos? Isidoro, I mean."
"Let's go see him".
Walk to the plaza.
Park in Tula
[The stage direction above refers to this plaza.]
The next thing I knew I was sitting on this bench. And Carlos was on my lap. I was possessed by extravagent [sic] seriousness. I couldn't lisp even if my life depended on it. Never before had I felt such sureness and at the same time awe. I was me, but the me I know today.
The rest of the story you know. Carlos has written about it and I recommend that you read it.
Hotel
[The stage direction below refers to this hotel.]
Walk them to the hotel, after showing them the two restaurants of the town. Stand at the corner and point to the last two rooms, at the very corner, on the second floor. I as the new creature who wasn't Carol Tiggs took Carlos there and inspite [sic] of the fact he was my brother I seduced him as if there is no tomorrow. But I wasn't Carol Tiggs, I was something else. Something bound and determined, cold and yet passionate. When I closed my eyes I could see scenarios that didn't belong to any experience, strange beings like shadows come to me and examine me. They poked me and turned me around, looking for something unsaid.
I had to keep my eyes open all the time. Finally I fell asleep. I think that was when I merged totally with Isidoro Baltazar. It was then that he became my true brother. We twirled together in the sea of awareness for nine days until there was no more energetic difference. You see, the mystery of mysteries is that Carlos and I are cyclic to one another and to the death defier. That was why I hated and loved him at a the [sic] same time. I saw him as a man. The death defier explained to me that a man and a woman who are cyclic to one another can't see eye to eye in a million years. The only thing Carlos and I could do was to merge together.
I left the hotel on a very normal day, me as I am today. And I went to meet the woman. She took me by the hand through that chapel and a second later I was facing again the sea of awareness. It's not a sea. It's an inconceivable surge of energy, a peculiar energy that is aware and talks to you. Perhaps the mystics of ancient times experienced this. Carlos thinks that at best they only reach the mold of man, a clump of energy fields, like luminous strings that man wants man is. Something like a cosmic mold that stamps energy in the form of man, just like a machine that makes crackers. But I think that perhaps they went beyond it. The sea of awareness ts [sic] the closest thing to the concept of God; it is an all inclusive force. In front of it, you're not even a spark, a speck, a virus. Yet it is aware of you. In that sea of awareness my cyclic being, the death defier turned into that something not foreign to me, not disgusting at all. She was me filled to capacity with indifference. Everyone of my concerns shut off like one turns off an electric bulb... There were powerful organic sensations, flashy images like in a dream. Finally I was in a concise dream which gained precision until it was the real world.
It took months to find Carlos because I was groggy, I was stupid. One day they said he was giving a lecture. I had lost hope. Of course I nearly gave him a heart attack. He thought I had gone as the rule dictated. The rest you know.
When the death defier and I were in front of the sea of awareness, she told me my name Muni, She said that some day when I had succeeded to integrate myself, or when nothing matters anymore and my eyes were aligned with hers I would be herself, Xoxopanxoco.
Since I am running after my brother; like a possessed woman, every other sorcerors' [sic] concern is nothing to me now. His fight is the only thing I know, nothing matters any longer so I can tell what the death defier's name and what it means. It means fruit of eternal spring.
The final twist of this endless chain of possibilities is that Xoxopanxoco -I don't know the name of the death defier as a man; outlived a subsidiary goal. She said that she had been alive for thousands of years not because she was greedy for life but because she loved life and mankind. Her one dream, which had nothing to do with survival, was to help mankind reach a level of reason and intelligence which we do not have. She said that we are ritualistic and repetitious and we have deleriums [sic] of grandeur that have no justification. We are a mess.
She said that to evoke her name in Tula would be like a cue to wake her. And that there could be some daring beings who would evoke her name in my presence. By invoking her name in my presence which is her presence, their internal dialogue would stop and they may even catch a glimpse of dreams upon dreams that were woven in this marvelous locale, now occupied by this absurd crummy little town.
She told me to say this:
Can a nicuicanitl huiya
Xochitl in noyollo ya
nicmana nocuic a ohuaya
ohuayao xoxpanxoco o xoxopanxoco
15 Comments
Earlier Discussion on this Topic - 2 years ago
Carol/death defier confirms that orgasms release womb energy!
yes. thank goodness we are living in a world where women are encouraged to orgasm...
wait.
forget it.
in any dream I am ever allowed to remember women are shaming women for their own slutty behavior and men are rap[ing
thanks mom
Working links
http://sustainedaction.org/Explorations/Carol%20Tiggs%27%20speech%20at%20Tula.htm
https://web.archive.org/web/20030204122129/http://sustainedaction.org/Explorations/Carol%20Tiggs%27%20speech%20at%20Tula.htm
Those trash pickers were the ones who were either kicked out of private classes, or never made it in, and were extremely bitter. So they resorted to basically harassment, collecting stuff from Carlos's trash, and taking pictures at a distance, so they could put together a book and sell it.
At the time Carol gave this speech, she likely still hadn't gotten back all of her functional recall of what happened to her in heightened awareness (it takes YEARS). So it's no surprise that she had to write things down ahead of time, so she wouldn't leave anything out when she got to Tula.
Some of us just aren't that good at public speaking.
And all of an actual sorcerer's activities in the human domain are a "stage play" (controlled folly), since their base inner dialogue is way below the needed threshold for natural interactions with those still mired in their dialogues.
So maybe those last 3 that attacked here were "trash pickers"? They were sniffing around everywhere, trying to find something to use.
If we survive longer, we might have broader categories for trouble makers. Like Fart, Piss, and Puke. Those aren't the same as petty tyrant categories, even if they overlap.
So the "bad players" list on the side is perhaps not adequate. We need something more basic, which doesn't require reading so much.
1 Cry babies
2 Trash pickers
3 Book dealers
4 Warners
5 Name Droppers
Why can't we get some actual "Groupies", by rock and roll definitions?
It seems ok now, after Carol's revelations.
Cool post. Gonna respond so i can save this for later.
there is an article about the chacmools (and carlos) from 2024.
https://www.altaonline.com/dispatches/a60923618/carlos-castaneda-cult-geoffrey-gray/
or https://www.thetedkarchive.com/library/geoffrey-gray-the-case-of-the-missing-chacmools
interview of journal with author:
it's a 22.000 words cover story of a magazine called "alta". the author, goeffrey gray, says in the youtube interview that it took him 1 year to collect the info. he believes that carlos was a cult leader - so it's written from a perspective which is not friendly towards carlos. but there a few interesting things in there in the later chapters (money flows, found carol, chapel in tula). he met carol, who slammed the door in his face, and he believes he has found evidence that the chacmools are still alive and meeting in tula once a year.
he recited the spell in the chapel in tula – that is supposed to summon the death defier, and then the story ends. so i suspect that nothing really happened and he just used it as a stylistic device to make the text more interesting. but maybe this was actually the chapel where carlos met the death defier. picture of the chapel from wikipedia:
origin of pic: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catedral_de_Tula#/media/Archivo:TulaCathedral11.JPG
a summary of the article:
chapter 1: author meets older sister chris ahlvers of kylie (dee ann ahlvers): pregnancy of kylie while in high school, turned to sex work, homeless, reading new age books as escape, left her 2 young children 85/86, wanted her sister to come with her, after moving she found carlos and joined, disapperead 1998
chapter 2: carlos books and the 70s and "his cult", quotes from the books
chapter 3: how author got idea for his investigation during a tennis match, follow money - books still in print, email and meeting with private investigator jennifer stalvey in los angeles,
chapter 4: talk with jennifer stalvey, “You have to be intelligent to be brainwashed,” Stalvey says, amalia marquez (talia bey) joined carlos, her brother luis contacted police when they were missing, "..they didn’t seem particularly interested. So he and his family turned to Stalvey for help.", stalvey: ".. “Why would you kill yourself when you have just learned that you have hit the lotto and are about to become rich?” she says, referring to Castaneda’s will, yet another mystery surrounding the chacmools. ..", chris ahlvers about his sister: “I can’t see my sister walking away from that money and going, Oh, I’d rather shoot myself,”
chapter 5: margaret runyan & carlos, ".. regaling Runyan with tales of his privileged childhood in South America, of growing up in the political courts of Brazil—not Peru ..", mateus wine, carlos in art school, ".. spent his days ath the racetrack .." (horse races), girlfriend became pregnant, he fled to US, ".. reporter tracked down Jose Bracamonte, one of Castaneda’s friends from his gambling days at the Lima racetrack. “He was witty, imaginative,” Bracamonte recalled. “A big liar and a real friend.” ..", "..Looking back, Runyan believes that Castaneda stumbled on the idea for Don Juan at a Thanksgiving dinner party. They and their friends were talking casually about the power of wise man archetypes in literature. ..", his phd thesis: ".. Other professors were hesitant. Castaneda had offered no photographs, no field notes, no evidence that his Don Juan even existed. How could the professors be sure that the research underpinning the thesis was accurate? .."
chapter 6: "address is 1672 Pandora Avenue", "just steps from UCLA’s vibrant campus life", amy wallace met florinda at a talk at gaia books, carlos has sex with amy, ".. “Me make you pregnant? Impossible! The nagual’s sperm isn’t human. It doesn’t match your juices. You’re human!”. The experience is cold, odd. She doesn’t want to repeat it, and she tells him so. ..", taisha (maryann simko), nuri alexander (patricia partin),
".. Despite her graying hair, Partin acted like a child, claiming to be stuck in another dimension, at the age of seven, and trapped in time. For nearly 20 years with the cult, she played with dolls and spoke like a little girl. ..", carol (kathleen pohlman), ".. she was overcome by a shape-shifting supernatural force—Xoxopanxoco—that Castaneda and Don Juan called the Death Defier. ..",
".. Ahlvers appeared to take an active role in helping some of her fellow chacmools plot their exit from this world. With his death imminent, she and other chacmools considered purchasing a massive boat. According to one correspondence from the group, they were looking to spend around $400,000 for a “cargo/crew vessel” that was “100 to 200 feet long,” with a “range of 10,000 miles” and “unlimited navigational capability.” ..", “I know exactly what to do,” Ahlvers tells Wallace, though she doesn’t reveal any specifics.
chapter 7: ".. Antoine was his grandmother’s adopted son, and Castaneda worshipped him.", partin's death in the desert,
".. Pohlman later told Wallace that she tried to convince Partin that there was no need to kill herself. ..",
".. “I brought her a lot of money—a lot!—and told her to go to Ireland and start a printing business,” Pohlman told Wallace. “Why not? She has her whole life ahead, and all that money!” ..",
".. Pohlman’s story about bringing a great deal of cash to Partin is also problematic. Like other top chacmools, Partin was the recipient, in Castaneda’s will, of a lump payment of $100,000 and a share of future royalties. If Pohlman brought the money with her, then what happened to it? ..",
".. The closer I get to the dunes, the less I believe that Partin would have killed herself out here. How could she have done it? ..",
".. need more information, from someone with access to crime databases and 20-year-old police reports ..",
".. Nearly two weeks later, back at home, I receive the following email: “I was the one who found the missing person’s car.” I call Ranger Dave immediately. .."
chapter 8: ".. Dave Brenner spent three decades working in Death Valley and can see things others cannot ..",
".. “This was a one-way trip,” he says. ..",
".. Brenner remembers the day well. May 2, 1998. ..",
".. Nothing was inside. No coffee cup. No loose change. No stick of gum. It was suspicious. ..",
".. when he noticed that the license plate had been stripped. The front one was missing too. ..",
".. Using a law enforcement database, he checked the vehicle’s identification number and learned that the car had been registered to Partin. The address and contact info were for Cleargreen in Los Angeles, the company through which Castaneda and the witches conducted their workshops. When Brenner called the office, the employee who answered did not seem to care about the missing car. ..",
".. He remembers thinking that the person’s cavalier attitude was strange. The lack of empathy and concern for Partin gave him pause. “They were never like, ‘Oh, is she OK?’ ” ..",
".. A week later, I receive another message: he’s found the negatives. He emails the images to me to review along with him. ..",
".. “Surprisingly, I have found a possible clue to add some [intrigue] to the missing person’s car,” he writes in a follow-up email, directing my attention to the trunk lock. “It appears on the first examination to be???” ..",
".. Its diameter could be the width of a dime or maybe a nickel, and the edges are frayed, as if something tore right through it. Wait, really? A bullet hole? Brenner’s not sure how he missed this possibility. Could there have been foul play? .."
".. Brenner’s voice perks up. “So, the beneficiaries are either dead or missing, yet the company continues to collect their assets?” he asks. That could explain the clean car, I think. Someone wanted to keep Partin’s disappearance a secret and went to great lengths to dump her vehicle without leaving a trace. ..",
carlos claimed adrian vashon as his son
chapter 9: meeting with adrian, ".. Vashon is not the writer’s biological son. ..",
".. Did he remember Ahlvers? Pohlman? Marquez? Simko? Thal? Partin? “They were my babysitters when I was little,” he says. ..",
".. Yet in this foggy and depleted state, and only four days before his death, according to legal documents, Castaneda signed a new will. Instead of leaving a part of his estate to Vashon, the document transferred his real estate, royalties, intellectual property rights, and possessions to the chacmools and other disciples. ..",
".. Vashon filed his lawsuit, and a lengthy discovery process followed ..",
".. The case eventually went to probate court. Drooz attempted to paint Vashon as an estranged acquaintance from another time, only now emerging to seek his payday. Vashon’s attorney claimed that the witches had methodically sought to take over the estate and controlled Castaneda’s correspondences. ..",
".. After hearing the arguments, a judge ruled against Vashon ..",
".. I wonder about the discovery documents, the files he and his lawyer dug up to prepare for the case. Does he still have them? .."
chapter 10 - mysterious bank accounts:
".. Chris Ahlvers was correct. According to the trust document, her sister was due to receive the same lump-sum payment and shares of future royalties as Thal, Pohlman, Simko, Marquez, and Partin. According to the chacmools’ probate filing, Castaneda’s estate was worth just over $1 million. ..",
".. At the bottom of one of the court documents, I find the name of the CPA who prepared many of Castaneda’s estate forms. Thomas Cajka is now the owner of TCA Management Group. ..",
".. “He had a pretty good sense of humor, I remember that,” Cajka says. ..",
".. My exchange with the accountant bothers me. He wasn’t exactly stonewalling. .."
chapter 11: interview with tony karam,
".. “This is not simply the story of a cult leader who fabricated everything,” he says. “There was something there.” ..",
".. “He was addictive to be with,” Karam says. “You couldn’t distance yourself from it.” ..",
".. The arrival of Kathleen Pohlman changed the dynamic. When Castaneda appointed her to be his spiritual counterpart, the female nagual, there was blowback from the other chacmools. Pohlman did not have the spiritual training, or the time logged with Castaneda, to be their leader, they argued. She lacked gravitas. “They didn’t believe in her,” Karam says. ..",
".. Yet as part of his initiation into the cult’s inner circle, Karam says, Castaneda instructed him to have sex with Pohlman, whom Castaneda had also married ..",
".. “It was not a passionate thing,” Karam says of the encounters. “It was simply like a mechanical thing you have to do to get that gene.” ..",
".. Sleeping with the witches was also a way to control them. “This sexual, predatory attitude he had to all of them was not the sign of a person that was spiritually developed,” Karam says. ..",
karam declining to be successor
chapter 12: ".. Drooz, the executor of Castaneda’s estate", ".. Drooz represented Castaneda in the 1990s in lawsuits against two individuals who were once friendly with her client, Victor Sanchez and Margaret Runyan. ..",
".. Drooz also facilitated a lawsuit by Castaneda against his ex, Runyan, for planning to include letters from Castaneda in a book. Drooz argued that Runyan lacked his consent. The lawsuit was dropped after Castaneda’s death. ..",
".. For about the first year and a half after Castaneda’s death, five of the missing chacmools appear on service lists as recipients of certified mailings, with all of them residing at the Pandora Avenue address. It is as if nothing has happened and they are still living there. Then, starting in January 2000, the five names—Thal, Simko, Ahlvers, Marquez, and Partin—no longer show up on the service lists. Curiously, Pohlman’s name now appears on them. Why? The paper trail is maddeningly incomplete. ..",
".. Then there was Hollywood, where Don Juan had been hot intellectual property ever since Castaneda invented him, although no film or TV series adaptation would be made in the cult leader’s lifetime. Which is why talking to Bruce Wagner is so important to me. ..",
".. He then introduced Castaneda to Tracy Kramer, an aspiring producer and a friend of Wagner’s from high school. Kramer joined the cult too, using the alias Julius Renard, and became Castaneda’s agent. ..",
".. “I’m calling about your message about 1672 Pandora,” the person on the other end says.
His name is Stephen Ross, he’s a doctor, and he received my note in his mailbox. He knows all about Castaneda and his witches. “He used to live in the home that I’m living in now,” Ross says.
I press the phone to my ear to hear him better.
“We bought the house from the witches,” he says, and he puts his phone on speaker. Juliet Taff, his wife, gets on the line too.
What? That means that at least some of the chacmools had not disappeared. They had to be alive to complete the real estate transaction in 2009, nearly 10 years after they went missing.
“One, I believe, was German,” Taff says. “Is that correct?”
Yes! Thal! Soaking wet and grasping my towel, I can’t believe my luck. While we’re talking, I dry off my hands and send them pictures of her over email.
“Yeah, she does look familiar, actually,” Taff says after receiving and examining the photos. “That’s the one.”
Ross explains that the women were instrumental in his and Taff’s purchase of the compound. Other offers had come in from developers. “They didn’t want the house torn down,” he says. “We were just going to remodel it. They liked that a lot.”
“There’s so much garden,” Taff adds. “One came back and told me if I removed any plants, she would come and pick them up immediately.”
The shower has not stopped running. Plumes of steam are filling the room like a Turkish bath. I am wet and in my towel and laughing at my good fortune. Pick up the plants? The chacmools had not gone missing in 1998! Some of them might still be alive! .."
chapter 13 - the nagual woman: carol tiggs and the death defier, ".. Ritter Avenue, Pacific Palisades. I am getting close to Pohlman’s home, and getting nervous. ..",
".. “Kathleen Pohlman,” I say to the dad.
“Oh, you mean Kate,” he says and looks at an apartment across the street.
My gaze tracks his.
“Yeah, she lives there,” he says. ..",
".. From under an open window, I can hear someone talking. It’s a woman’s voice. It’s her. The nagual woman.
I stop. I listen. Pohlman is on the phone. I am so close to the condo that I can hear her feet as she paces the wooden floors just above me. Who is Pohlman talking to? Should I come back? What if I miss her? ..",
".. The door swings open. Pohlman—nagual woman, keeper of secrets—stands in the frame. She does not look like a witch. She gazes at me through a pair of cool, chunky, black eyeglasses, the type graphic designers wear. She’s stylish and well put together, in a white pressed blouse with black clamdigger pants, the cuffs cut above the ankle. Her feet are bare, toes manicured. How hard can this interview be?
“I’m not interested,” she says and starts to close the door.
I introduce myself, make my case, and putter through my points. I want to learn about her story, too. Genuinely, I do.
“Only a few minutes,” I say.
Her phone is nesting in her neck, her eyes are gray, her hair a silvery black like a raven. She starts to close the door ..",
".. “I’m going on a trip,” she says and turns inside. I watch the door close and hear the cylinder of a dead bolt click into place. .."
chapter 14 - the path taken: visiting chacmools statues in tula,
".. After all, I say to my friend, Tula is the crossroads. It’s home to the Death Defier, the capital of the ancient Toltecs and their pyramids, the site of the giant warrior statues. And as it happens, Bucher has a contact there, a guide who can help me navigate the modern and spirit worlds. ..",
".. I ask for Apolonio, my new friend in the feathered hat.
“He only comes on Sundays,” says Jesus de Tula, the guide on duty.
I am a day early.
“Tours are 400 pesos,” Jesus says, and without any other option, I accept the price and follow him to the old warrior statues. ..",
".. “They meet here every year,” he says.
I am stunned. Wait, the chacmools gather here in Tula? Where?
“In a house over there.” Jesus points across the valley. I follow his finger past the bell towers and spires of the cathedral and toward a hill in the distance. ..",
".. “And they would reunite here every year, in the house of divinadoras over there.”
I want to go to this house of the fortune tellers. Does he know where it is? ..",
".. “That’s the house,” he says.
He’s now speaking in a tone so soft that I struggle to hear him.
“The house of the divinadoras,” he whispers.
I look. I see only a concrete structure. A sign hangs in its window. “Lavala Malinche,” it reads.
The place is a laundromat. I read the sign again. Its motto, translated from the Spanish: “Your clothes. Your time. In only a minute.”
I step inside the place. There are no bedrooms. No chairs to sit on. And sadly, no witches either. Just cinder block walls and laundry machines chugging through their sudsy cycles. .."
chapter14 part2 -->
chapter 14 part 2:
".. I recall a spell that Pohlman once claimed could summon the Death Defier. Its words call to me, I feel, and even though an ancient incantation makes no sense at all, walking through Tula, the magical place that the chacmools shared, I now feel that Pohlman wrote down the spell just for me, somehow knowing that I’d find it in my research.
“To evoke her name in Tula would be like a cue to wake her,” Pohlman had said of the Death Defier, “and that there could be some daring beings who would evoke her name.” .."
".. I scribble down the ancient spell to summon Xoxopanxoco and fold the paper neatly in my shirt pocket. Perhaps if Pohlman would not talk to me in her home in Pacific Palisades, the spirit that ravished her here in Tula will. ..",
".. The cathedral gate is open. I climb the stairs and pass under the spire, following the same path that Pohlman took. ..",
".. I walk down the aisle and approach the altar, just as Pohlman did. I duck into the chapel on the left. The space is smaller and very quiet. The pews are empty. I take a seat. In the corner is a collection of candles, flickering against the thick walls. The simple altar is inscribed with a message: “No estoy yo aquí, que soy tu madre?” The words spook me. “Am I not here, I who am your mother?” .."
".. “Can a nicuicanitl huiya, Xochitl in noyollo ya,” I read aloud—roughly, “Oh, I am the singer of joy, and there are flowers in my heart.”
“Nicmana nocuic a ohuaya ohuaya, oh Xoxpanxoco oh Xoxopanxoco” is the next phrase. “I offer my song, joy, joy! Intoxicated with total freedom!” ..",
".. Maybe I read the spell wrong? I speak the words again under my breath. Then one more time. ..",
".. An old lady has entered the chapel. She smiles and shuffles her way toward me. The padding sounds of her feet are soft, sweeping their way up the aisle. She is getting closer now, ready to take her seat by me. .."