Version 2007.03.04

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

### Epilogue

I returned to Los Angeles, and then I went to Mexico to face Florinda.

Upon hearing a detailed summary of my experiences, she found it quite extraordinary and inexplicable that my life in dona Mercedes' world began with her own handwritten note, hidden among my clothes, and ended with Candelaria's, hidden among my tapes.

Although Florinda made fun of what she called my compulsive thoroughness, she urged me to see if I could use my numerous tapes to write my dissertation.

Working with the material, I became aware that in spite of the fact that I had had no theoretical plan to organize my objectives, the events in dona Mercedes' house seemed prearranged to introduce me to spiritualists, witches, healers; and the people they deal with; and what they do in the context of their daily activities.

Having followed dona Mercedes' activities in healing, and having learned to use her own system of interpretation, I sincerely believed that I had mastered, at least intellectually, the way healers see themselves, each other, and their knowledge.

I was certain that my experience and the notes I had collected would suffice to write a dissertation.

However, after transcribing, translating, and analyzing my tapes and notes, I began to doubt my intellectual mastery of healing.

My attempt to organize the data to fit a meaningful framework proved to be futile: My notes were ridden with inconsistencies and contradictions, and my knowledge of healing could not fill in the gaps.

Florinda then made a cynical suggestion: Either alter the data to fit my theories, or forget about the dissertation altogether.

I forgot about the dissertation.

Florinda has always urged that I look beneath the surface of things.

In the case of my experience with dona Mercedes, she suggested that I look deeper than the possible academic value. She thought my academic bias blinded me to more important aspects.

I read and reread the stories dona Mercedes had selected for me and finally understood what Florinda wanted.

I realized that if I removed the academic emphasis from my own work, I would be left with a document about human values- human values definitely foreign to us, yet perfectly understandable, if we momentarily placed ourselves outside our usual frame of reference.

With those stories, dona Mercedes proposed to show me that witches, or even ordinary people, are capable of using extraordinary forces that exist in the universe to alter the course of events, or the course of their lives, or the lives of other people.

The course of events, she called 'the wheel of chance,' and the process of affecting it, she called 'the witch's shadow.'

She claimed that we can alter anything without directly intruding upon the process; and sometimes without even knowing that we are doing so.

For Westerners, this is an unthinkable proposition.

If we find ourselves affecting the course of events without directly intruding upon them, we think of coincidence as the only serious explanation; for we believe that direct intervention is the only way of altering anything.

For example, men of history affected events with complex social decisions.

Or in a more reduced scope, people directly intervene through their actions in the lives of others.

In contrast, the stories selected by dona Mercedes make us aware of something that we are not familiar with.

The stories point to the incomprehensible possibility that without direct mediating, we can be more influential than we think in shaping the course of events.

On the whole, Florinda was satisfied with the results of my journey to Venezuela.

She said that she had wanted me to get firsthand knowledge of my hidden resources.

Her idea was that I had to function effectively in an environment unknown to me, and that I had to learn to adapt quickly to situations outside the boundaries of what I know, accept, and can predict.

Florinda maintained that nothing could be more appropriate for bringing out those hidden resources than a confrontation with the social unknown.

My life in dona Mercedes' house, and my interaction with her patients and friends was that social unknown.

I admitted to Florinda that her admonitions about the woman-warrior philosophy- which were quite incomprehensible to me at the time- actually became the basis for all my acts while I stayed with dona Mercedes.

"There are many ways of behaving when one is in a normal setting," Florinda commented, "but when one is alone, in danger, or in darkness, there is only one way: the warrior's way."

Florinda said that I had discovered the value of the warrior's way and the meaning of all its premises.

Under the impact of an unfamiliar life situation, I had found out:..

.. that not surrendering means freedom;..

.. that not feeling self-important breeds an indomitable fierceness;..

.. and that vanquishing moral judgments brings an all-soothing humbleness that is not servitude.