No one warned me, until I found it in a later edition, the statement that bans volunteers, which put a stop to my intention of becoming a seer’s apprentice and made it quite clear that the sole means for accessing the world of divination and witchcraft is by being singled out by the power.

Neither was I foretold that that same power meets you halfway most straightforwardly and monstrously after it finds out you’re trying to pry, even under the best intentions, into the world of the seers without having been invited.

I had to meet scenarios brought from hell to finally understand that I was not welcome in their world; although I had been seduced by it, enthralled by descriptive passages of incredible beauty and overflowing imagination that also offered powers only imagined by “common humans.” Alas, but in exchange for inscrutable and terrifying darkness populated by menacing beings.

I knew also, first hand, that the price to pay is too steep if one lacks the ‘permission’ to abandon what is human (the tonal), before opting for something so obscure and evil-like, as witchcraft (the nagual).

To belong to that world is not optional. Only the ones who, by their aural complexion and no other distinctive trait, are accepted by the shape of the light in the form of balloons emanating from their bodies. They can be ‘double’ or ‘quadruple’; (only the quadruples can be naguals, the doubles are only accessories). Most humans possess a single balloon of light and only seers can see them. It is precisely that condition that keeps common folk out of the game.

I found out that I wasn't up for abandoning the familiar safety that surrounds the common mortality of the ones banned; that I lacked what it takes to confront that violent wind that hits the darkness without feeling the panicked terror that outdoes all fears and ends up in a perilous (and sometimes violent) death. I realized that I was as defenseless as a leaf in a windstorm moving through the terrifying aisles of the unknown and the diabolical.

I knew that to sneak alone is like being a sheep on a wolves’ turf and that to face those beings in their abode equals a terrifying cul-de-sac, a spiritual suicide for the common man who lacks the purpose of the seers in their secret, ultra-terrene, and Millenary quest. The Reading I refer to in the opening paragraph is the account of a sorcerer's apprenticeship, contained in books of twelve installments. It is narrated in first person by a Californian anthropologist who fell into the hands of an indigenous Yaqui seer (nagual) of inexplicable power and skill, an inhabitant of the Desert of Sonora, Mexico.

Lured by the nagual, he was to function as a seer’s apprentice, for he was being singled out by the power, against his will, and without noticing he was being enrolled to join the lines of apprentices under his wing, the nagual’s tutorship, to become himself the nagual's successor. Those naguals lead, instruct and help groups of Mexican indigenous apprentices with distinct qualifications to achieve a common goal that challenges death and takes them to transcend existence. To succeed, they have developed practical techniques that defy common sense and the human condition, perfected throughout time, even way before the Conquest of Mexico.

For centuries, they endeavored to find a concrete ending, but in the meantime wasted their time in vicious practices to cheat death which had taken them to a stagnant plateau. (Some are still alive after 2,000 years lamely roaming the Earth with the help of an enslaved entourage aiming to prolong their accumulated power just to remain ‘alive.’) But with no tangible gain, ignoring where to go once they had mastered the power, other than to remain artificially alive to eventually die like any other mortal.

But, many years ago, the New Seers finally arrived with the good news of a change of direction. They discovered that to perpetuate life (even at the cost of innocent lives) was not going anywhere and that their practice had become sterile and vacuous; that they had reached an impasse with no tangible improvements that could entail a shared benefit, final and eternal.

Those new seers forced the group to re-adjust their pursuits and rituals. They confirmed that worldly existence is ephemeral for all forms of life; and that their advances didn't measure up to the monumental power they had at their disposal; that their findings up to that point were futile, and that there was no future.

That change in direction was a respite for the world of sorcerers. They discovered through dreaming that their goals should not come from this world, that their advancements would go far beyond. They found out that that power equals what common humans instinctively call God. But, according to seers, a God sterile and motionless, mute and absent. Contrasting with the hyperactive, even overwhelming and demanding, interaction that seers have with it every single moment of their lives and to whom they simply call power, one which rules every movement of the practitioners.

They understood or interpreted it as an eagle in midflight which holds in one single wing flap the entire elapsed time since life began. They understood that it lacks any bit of compassion or misericord, and that it resembles more accurately the numerical exactitude: the cosmos, cold and inexorable, the unstoppable universal expansion.

Most importantly, they found that, through the shared effort of the whole group (which by the way encompasses individuals of other nations, not only Mexican) they could finally join, in a group, the Eagle in its flight, which became an awesome discovery, and their ultimate goal. But it is not an easy task. It is, in fact, the most perilous, risky and rigorous ‘human’ activity. They must follow dozens of rituals and precepts applied to pre-established minutiae procedures neatly organized and where everyone plays a role, where concentration, forbearance, valor, patience, discerning, and sacrifice have no equal in any other mundane endeavor.

Stupidly, I started to put into practice some instructions I interpreted as methods for self-improvement due to their demanding nature, rigidity, difficulty and risk, oblivious to what I was getting into. I don't know anything as horrific, chaotic, and profoundly scary as what I found once I started seeing results. The regular demons used by religions to scare congregations could be saints, compared to what there is out there.

I don’t recommend it to anyone trying to get in touch with that power. Better, stick to unharmful praying even if there is no answer because the answers coming from the power are unbearable by those who have not been singled out by it. Even the chosen ones. They must face all that horror, that rigor; to confront demonic forces until obliterating them to their benefit, ever at the constant risk of dying violent deaths, as often happens. Because otherwise, they'd never be one with the Eagle.

And all that in the most absolute secret while leading their lives as regular humans among regular people, avoiding any suspicion, even by their families, of their intimate doings, occult fraternity, seances fueled by peyote (or mitotes), and all the stances that encompass the art of seeing and dreaming. They have to acquiesce to the rules the power imposes on them. An invisible power for the rest, but inexplicably accessible for some.

As if it were saying:

Now that you have discovered that your particular nature and rituals allow you to go where no one should, I´ll leave the door ajar at your own risk to the astounding, the unsaid, the horror that encompasses entering the place where life is being cooked in the universes, and fly with me. I'll let you be, but my conditions are harsh and terrifying, and the risk is not only the possibility of losing your life but your whole soul in the bargain.