Manual for freeing a captive soul
Celia was born at nightfall, on a day with very clear skies, full of stars. Her physical type was not typical of Brazilian women, if there is such a thing. She had fair skin like the face of the moon and light brown, almost blonde hair that curled into loose curls, like a baroque angel's halo.
When Celia turned one year old, her mother began to worry because she still hadn't spoken a word. All the other children of the same age with whom she played at nursery school already spoke daddy, mommy, papa..., but Celia was still mute. Her mother noticed that every time she tried to get Celia's attention by calling her name, Celia would start screaming inconsolably. One day, sitting on her aunt's lap, while she was excitedly talking to her parents about all the work the new mayor was doing in the city, Celia uttered her first word: every time her aunt said city, Celia repeated citlali and everyone burst out laughing. Her mother then decided to correct her, but she continued stubbornly repeating citlali, citlali, citlali until she broke down crying as usual and had to be taken to her room. "She must be tired, the poor thing," said her father.
The story of the time Celia uttered her first word soon became a family legend that everyone liked to repeat to visitors and friends. From there, she began to be called Citlali. Citlali was soon shortened to Tali, and now Celia turned around smiling every time someone called her that. At the age of seven, when she started school, every time someone asked her her name, she would say very seriously "Citlali, or Tali, for short". After some initial confusion, everyone soon got used to this strange girl who presented herself with a different name to the one recorded on the attendance sheets, and started calling her by her nickname. Even the teachers did this.
Tali was an introspective child who found it difficult to integrate with the others, as she preferred to spend her time drawing. "She's always daydreaming, that girl!" her mother kept repeating. But what her mother didn't know was that Tali also dreamed a lot at night, very beautiful and colorful dreams. She never had nightmares or woke up scared talking about monsters. Tali loved to sleep. Sleep was the best part of her day.
Every night, just after her mother turned off the light and kissed her goodnight, Tali began to feel light, very light, and before she knew it, she was floating in a sky full of stars. Driven by a cold wind coming from the top of the snow-capped mountains at her back, she was flying low over marshy ground, towards an immense, placid lake. The waters of the lake reflected the moonlight like a mirror on a clear night. In the middle of the lake stood some low, flat-topped, almost white hills, which became immense as she approached. She flew slowly, lingering on every detail of the landscape. The next day, these images would come back as flashes and would be diligently incorporated into her drawings.
Every dawn, at around three o'clock in the morning, when the night breeze stops and the temperature rises, Tali's parents and brother would throw the covers on the floor and wriggle around, sweaty, in search of a cool corner of the sheet. Just then, Tali would lose momentum and finally land. Almost always, the place she chose was a shallow corner of the lake, amidst the reeds. There, she would undress and take a long bath. She would float on her back, feeling her body rise and fall with the small waves. Sometimes a fish would come and nibble at her heels.
As the sky began to lighten, and pastel tones invaded the sky, Tali would rush out of the water, wring out her hair to remove the excess moisture and, dressed, take off again in the rising breeze, which was now blowing towards the mountains. For years, this dream repeated itself every night. Each time she landed in a different spot on the shore, because the breeze was never enough to carry her to the white hills that floated in the deepest waters of the middle of the lake. When the alarm clock went off, Tali simply rolled over in bed, still exhausted from the night's intense activity. Her father came to shake her awake. "Wake up, it's bath time. Otherwise, you'll be late. "Let me sleep. I've already showered. Look at my hair, it's still wet". Her astonished father didn't even reply to this silly argument. He just shook his arm once more and said, "Wake up".
When Tali turned 21, her godmother offered her a trip to Switzerland, where they had relatives. This godmother worked in the events industry and was very sociable. When she saw her goddaughter always alone and lost in her dreams, she worried. "How is this girl going to find a boyfriend?". So, she decided to spend her miles on a plane ticket and send Tali to meet the huge group of cousins around her age who lived in Bern, Switzerland. Tali thanked her politely, but as she had no intention of going to Switzerland, she secretly changed the destination of the plane ticket. She was going to Mexico City, which she had seen on a Discovery program the night before and had thought was amazing.
Once there, Tali hired a tour company to give her a guided tour of the city. One of the 25 largest cities in the world, Mexico City was an enigma that was difficult to unravel without the help of a guide for someone with as little travel experience as Tali. On the very first day, she realized how lucky she had been. Instead of an ordinary guide, one who takes you to the obvious places and repeats the same information in the best-known travel guides, her guide was a retired history teacher and archaeologist, who now only worked for pleasure.
Esteban Caballos, Tali's guide, began by explaining the duration of the tour, what points would be visited, and asked everyone to give a brief introduction of themselves before he began the lesson on the history of Mexico that he had prepared. When Esteban asked Tali to introduce herself, she replied in a low voice, "Citlali". "What?" he asked, puzzled. "Citlali", she repeated, and had to explain to the group the origin of her name, which was not Brazilian at all. To Tali's dismay, the group burst out laughing at such an odd origin for her name. Esteban then asked everyone to calm down so that he could start the lesson, as they were already behind schedule.
When they reached the Basilica of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, on the slopes of Cerro Tepeyac, Tali looked to the north and saw a beautiful range of rocky mountains with their snowy summits. "How beautiful!" she said to herself, and stood there, gripped by a strange feeling. Esteban noticed that she seemed uninterested in the basilica and came to find out what was going on. She then told him that she had been dreaming the same dream night after night since she was a child, and that in this dream she was leaving and returning from a mountain range identical to the one in front of her. Esteban gently pulled her by the arm towards the rest of the group, while saying, "You can tell me about your dream later".
At the end of the afternoon, when everyone had said their goodbyes and gone back to their hotels, Esteban took Tali aside and proposed that they go to the bar in front of them to have a beer together, a 100% Mexican beer. "Cerveza Minerva," he asked the waiter, while Tali chose a table. "Minerva?" she asked, "I've never heard of that beer. I always believed that the best Mexican beers were 'Corona' and '3 equis'." "They now belong to a Dutch group," replied Esteban dismissively. "But tell me about this dream you've had since you were a child."
She then told him about the flight propelled by a cold breeze, the snow-capped mountains, the immense lake with its small islets full of cornstalks, her rustic cotton clothes and the flat-topped hills that floated in the middle of the lake. He listened in amazement. "Citlali, your name is very beautiful. Did you know that it's a name in the ancient Nahuatl language? It means star. I think that every night you make an astral journey to Tenochtitlán. I just don't understand why you don't go beyond the edge of the lake. I think you're afraid. Is that it?" Open-mouthed, not knowing what to say, she finally asked, "Tenoch what?". "I'm not going to tell you; you'll figure it out for yourself. But for that to happen, you must lose this fear. Tonight, I'm going to try to fly with you and, in my company, you'll make it to the middle of the lake. But for that to happen, you don't have to waste time in places you already know.
She went back to the hotel in a daze. "Was that a flirt? But the guy was too old to think he could get along with me. Even him, who I'd thought was so nice!". She then decided to forget the story and went to find a restaurant for dinner. Then she would go to bed early, as the next day promised to be tiring. At bedtime, she repeated her usual ritual. After turning off the light, she concentrated on the moment her mother kissed her goodnight when she was a little girl and then began to relax all her limbs, one by one, until she felt herself floating. When she opened her eyes, she saw the starry sky as usual. She turned her face back slightly and saw the snow-capped mountains, ahead she saw the lake. Only then did she notice that this night the level of the lake was lower than usual. Around the moon, there was a red halo. These were dry times.
She remembered Esteban's advice not to waste time in places she already knew. She concentrated on her goal and immediately felt that she was flying higher and faster. She then relaxed, happy with this new discovery. It was at this moment that the whistling of the wind in her ears seemed to diminish. Disturbed, she turned her face from side to side, trying to figure out what was going on. The fright she felt when she saw Esteban flying to her right made her lose altitude and frighten her even more. "Concentrate," Esteban shouted from above, and she gradually began to regain her altitude until she was at his side again. "Today we're going to reach the middle of the lake. You'll see lots of different things and you won't be scared," he told her. She just nodded, serene.
When they had passed a few dozen meters from the edge of the lake, she noticed that what was floating in the middle of the lake were not hills, but a group of pyramids, resembling the pyramids of Egypt, but with flat roofs and a more complex architecture. From the shores of the lake ran wide, straight roads, flanked by canals and aqueducts, which led towards the main pyramid. The city was immense, all criss-crossed by canals and streets connected by bridges. It was somewhat reminiscent of Venice. The lake had a dyke that separated the area around the city from an inlet of brackish water, allowing the meltwater that flowed down the slopes of the hills to form a freshwater lake, where the population bathed and grew corn on small artificial islands.
As he got closer to the pyramids, Tali noticed that a ceremony was being conducted at the top by a group of priests. The blood from the sacrifice made on a stone table flowed down the channels at the top of the pyramid and then gushed down the steps. A group of people watching this impressive scene behaved hysterically, screaming, while the next sacrificial victims waited peacefully for their turn, forming a long line that snaked around the sides of the pyramid. Tali was slowly approaching the top when she realized that the next victim was identical to her. Esteban then gently held her hand and said, "Come on, you don't have to keep watching. You just had to understand why you were so afraid to go near the pyramids." When she heard this, she felt a strong pull and the impression that she was flying backwards at an absurd speed. She woke up with a feeling of vertigo, as if she were falling into her bed when she opened her eyes. It was the alarm clock going off, signaling the start of another day of intense sightseeing in Mexico City.
She arrived early at the meeting point, where Esteban was already waiting for her. "Now do you understand the dream you've had since you were a child? You were a woman from the Aztec nobility who was sacrificed to the gods on top of the main pyramid when a severe drought hit the area where Mexico City is today. That's why you were afraid to go near this place. At that time, this was a marshy area with a large lake, situated at the foot of this mountain range. Here the Aztecs built the city of Tenochtitlán, which soon occupied the largest islands in the lake and had to be expanded over an extensive embankment on stilts driven into the bottom of the lake. An immense stone plaza and a complex of pyramids were built in the central part of the city, where sacrifices were made to appease the wrath of the gods."
"Now that you know the reason for the suffering that has imprisoned your soul for the last 1500 years, free yourself from this pain and choose the direction you want to take your life. Go, and send me news". Esteban, she later learned, as well as being a historian and archaeologist, was a well-known exotericist in Central and North America. How lucky she was to meet someone like him!
Tali immediately went back to the hotel and managed to book her ticket back to Brazil for the same day. When she arrived home, the whole family was waiting for her, eager to hear the news. After handing out the souvenirs she had brought for each of them, plus a special gift for her godmother as a thank you for that very special trip, her godmother asked, "Now tell us, what did you discover that was so special there in Mexico?". She looked at them all and with a mysterious smile replied, "It was Cerveza Minerva, the only 100 percent Mexican beer". They all looked at each other in astonishment, trying to understand this crazy answer, when the cousins called out "Tali, come and tell us about your trip". "Tali, no," she replied. "My name is Celia. And she ran off happily to join the group.
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