Version 2007.02.24

## “The Witch's Dream: A Healer's Way of Knowledge” - ©1985 by Florinda Donner-Grau

### Chapter 2

Years later, following Florinda's suggestions, I finally went to Venezuela, the country of my birth.

On the surface, I went to gather anthropological data on healing practices. Actually, I was there to carry out, under Florinda's guidance, the maneuvers necessary to discover whether I possessed hidden resources, without which I could not remain in the nagual's world.

The agreement that my journey must be a solitary one was nearly drawn out of me by force. With strong words and decisive gestures, Florinda served notice that under no circumstances should I seek counsel from anyone around me during the trip.

Knowing that I was in college, she strongly advised me not to use the trappings of academic life while in the field. I should not ask for a grant, have academic supervisors, or even ask my family and friends for help.

I should let circumstances dictate the path to follow; once I had taken it, I must plunge into it with the fierceness of women on the warrior's path.

I arranged to go to Venezuela on an informal visit. I would see my relatives, I thought, and gather information on any possibility for a future study in cultural anthropology.

Florinda praised me for my speed and thoroughness.

I thought she was humoring me. There was nothing to praise me for.

I mentioned to her that what worried me was her lack of instructions. Again and again I asked her for more details about my role in Venezuela.

As the date of my departure approached, I became increasingly anxious about the outcome of it all. I insisted, in no uncertain terms, that I needed more specific instructions.

Florinda and I were sitting in wicker chairs, comfortably padded by soft cushions, under the shade of one of the many fruit trees growing in her huge court patio.

In her long unbleached muslin dress, her wide-brimmed hat, fanning herself with a lace fan, Florinda looked like someone from another time.

"Forget about specific information," she said impatiently. "It won't do you any good."

"It certainly will do me a lot of good," I insisted. "I really don't understand why you're doing this to me, Florinda."

"Blame it on the fact that I am in the nagual's world; on the fact that I am a woman and that I belong to a different mood."

"Mood? What do you mean by a different mood?"

She gazed at me with remote, disinterested eyes. "I wish you could hear yourself talking. What mood?" she mocked me. Her face expressed tolerant contempt. "I don't go for seemingly orderly arrangements of thought and deed. For me, order is different from arranging things neatly. I don't give a damn about stupidity and I have no patience. That's the mood."

"That sounds dreadful, Florinda. I was led to believe that in the nagual's world, people are above pettiness and don't behave impatiently."

"Being in the nagual's world has nothing to do with my impatience," she said, making a humorous, hopeless gesture. "You see, I'm impeccably impatient."

"I really would like to know what it means to be impeccably impatient."

"It means that I am, for instance, perfectly conscious that you are boring me now with your stupid insistence on having detailed instructions. My impatience tells me that I should stop you. But it is my impeccability that will make you shut up at once.

"All this boils down to the following: If you persist in asking for details guided only by your bad habit of having everything spelled out, in spite of my telling you to stop, I'll hit you. But I'll never be angry at you, or hold it against you."

In spite of her serious tone I had to laugh. "Would you really hit me, Florinda? Well, hit me if you have to," I added, seeing her determined face. "But I've got to know what I am going to do in Venezuela. I'm going crazy with worry."

"All right! If you insist on knowing the details I consider important, I'll tell you.

"I hope you understand we're separated by an abyss, and this abyss can't be bridged by talk.

Males can build bridges with their words: Women can't. You're imitating males now.

"Women have to make the bridge with their acts. We give birth, you know. We make people.

"I want you to go away so that in aloneness you'll find out what your strengths or weaknesses are."

"I understand what you say, Florinda, but consider my position."

Florinda relented, dismissing the retort that arose to her lips.

"All right, all right," she said wearily, motioning me to move my chair next to hers.

"I'm going to give you the details I consider important for your trip.

Fortunately for you, they are not the detailed instructions you are after.

What you want is for me to tell you exactly what to do in a future situation, and when to do it. That's something quite stupid to ask. How can I give you instructions about something that doesn't yet exist?

I'll give you, instead, instructions on how to arrange your thoughts, feelings, and reactions. With that in hand, you'll take care of any eventuality that might arise."

"Are you really serious, Florinda?" I asked in disbelief.

"I'm deadly serious," she assured me.

Leaning forward in her chair, she went on speaking with a half smile about to break into a laugh.

"The first detailed item to consider is taking stock of yourself. You see, in the nagual's world, we must be responsible for our actions."

She reminded me that I knew the warrior's path. In the time I had been with her, she said, I had received extensive training in the laborious practical philosophy of the nagual's world.

Therefore, any detailed instructions she might give me now would have to be, actually, a detailed reminder of the warrior's path.

"In the warrior's path, women don't feel important," she went on, in the tone of someone reciting from memory, "because importance waters down fierceness.

"In the warrior's path women are fierce. They remain fiercely impassive under any conditions.

"They don't demand anything, yet they are willing to give anything of themselves.

"They fiercely seek a signal from the spirit of things in the form of a kind word, an appropriate gesture; and when they get it, they express their thanks by redoubling their fierceness.

"In the warrior's path, women don't judge. They fiercely reduce themselves to nothing in order to listen, to watch; so that they can conquer and be humbled by their conquest; or be defeated and be enhanced by their defeat.

"In the warrior's path, women don't surrender. They may be defeated a thousand times, but they never surrender.

And above all, in the warrior's path, women are free."

Unable to interrupt her, I had kept gazing at Florinda, fascinated though not quite grasping what she was saying.

I felt acute despair when she stopped as though she had nothing more to tell me. Without quite wanting to, I began crying uncontrollably. I knew that what she had just told me could not help me to resolve my problems.

She let me cry for a long time and then she laughed. "You really are weeping!" she said in disbelief.

"You are the most heartless, unfeeling person I've ever met," I said between sobs. "You're ready to send me God knows where, and you don't even tell me what I should do."

"But I just did," she said still laughing.

"What you just said has no value in a real-life situation," I retorted angrily. "You sounded like a dictator spouting slogans."

Florinda regarded me cheerfully. "You'll be surprised how much use you can get out of those stupid slogans," she said.

"But now, let us come to an understanding. Fm not sending you any place. You're a woman in the warrior's path, you're free to do what you wish, you know that.

"You haven't yet grasped what the nagual's world is all about. I'm not your teacher; I'm not your mentor; I'm not responsible for you. No one but yourself is.

"The hardest thing to grasp about the nagual's world is that it offers total freedom. But freedom is not free.

"I took you under my wing because you have a natural ability to see things as they are; to remove yourself from a situation and see the wonder of it all.

"That's a gift: You were born like that. It takes years for average persons in the nagual's world to remove themselves from their involvement with themselves and be capable of seeing the wonder of it all."

Regardless of her praise, I was nearly beyond myself with anxiety.

She finally calmed me down by promising that just before my plane left she would give me the specific detailed information I wanted.

I waited in the departure lobby of the airline, but Florinda didn't show up at all.

Despondent and filled with self-pity, I gave free rein to my despair and disappointment. With no concern for the curious glances around me, I sat down and wept.

I felt lonelier than I had ever felt before.

All I could think of was that no one had come to see me off: No one had come to help me with my suitcase. I was used to having relatives and friends see me off.

Florinda had warned me that anyone who chose the nagual's world had to be prepared for fierce aloneness.

She had made it clear that to her, aloneness did not mean loneliness but a physical state of solitude.