Hope you feel like reading
Yes I have read them and others, try Don Quixote,
You'd get to run around Mexico with a cooking pan on your head killing wind mills.
"Don" is a formal "Sir" almost like a knighthood ie; Don Juan.
The Nagual & tonal from Carlsos's books.
One represents the nothing or un-knowable-Nagual
One represents everything else- Tonal.
Everything comes into the known
from the un-known(able).
So it would Be "DoNJiM" :haha:
NAGUAL
The Quiché of Santiago El Palmar employ the term nagual in varying ways. The range of application of the term, insofar as I was able to trace it, may be subsumed under five categories.
(1) Several informants, when questioned as to the meaning of the term, reported that "some people" believe that there is an affinity between a human being and a single, living animal, which is the person’s nagual. Integral to the assumed affinity between a person and his nagual is the belief that the character traits of the animal are likely to find an echo in those of the human being whose destiny is linked to it. Should, for instance, an individual's nagual be a balam (tigre in Spanish), the person is likely to be "brave," "outspoken," physically "strong" and adroit, and possibly even a bit "savage." It was also said that if a person's nagual were injured or killed, the person himself might suffer harm, but informants were vague as to the particulars and probabilities. No informant, however, went so far as to insist that the relationship between an individual and his nagual is such that harm to the latter must inevitably be mirrored in harm to the former.
Although several informants thus approximated in their reports the definitions of nagual as companion animal spirit encountered in the ethnographic literature, none appeared to subscribe seriously to this conceptualization. They maintained that nagual in this sense is a creencia, a belief that some people entertain and others do not. Yet while none of my informants seemed to give emphatic credence to the notion of a companion animal spirit, neither were they prepared to reject it entirely, to place it beyond the pale of the possible.
(2) Many informants associated the word nagual with the signs of the zodiac. Soon after a baby is born its parents, or some other relative, or, more rarely, non-kin friends of the parents, may search out the baby's birthday in an almanac or request someone to do it for them if they are illiterate. (A number of Indians own almanacs; those who do not can consult one in a neighbor's house or in the municipal building.) The almanac, thus utilized, reveals under which of the twelve signs of the zodiac the baby was born. The zodiacal sign is said to be the baby's nagual and to have some predictive value as to the character the baby may manifest as it develops. If the nagual is a bull (Taurus), the baby may grow into a person who is physically strong and resolute; if it is a balance (Libra), the baby may develop into a fickle person, etc. But while the zodiacal nagual is thus imbued with some value as a predictive device, it is far from being regarded as a pre-eminent and inevitable causal factor in the development of personality dispositions. The Palmarefios take cognizance of other determinants of personality, and they do not ascribe even major causality to the zodiacal nagual. As is the case with horoscopes elsewhere, correlations of an ex post facto nature are sometimes made, reinforcing the identification between prediction and actuality.
(3) Several informants referred the term nagual to that day of the 260 days in the Maya-Quiché calendar round on which a person was born. While recording a man's army experiences, for instance, his mother interrupted the narrative and said that her son was able to endure the rigors of army life "because his nagual is four horses" (cuatro caballos). That is, she went on to explain, her son had been born on the day 4 kiej. Translating kiej as "horse," she maintained that her son had great strength--the strength, metaphorically speaking, of four horses. A calendar shaman with whom I discussed this particular case, however, found the woman's interpretation of 4 kiej to be uninformed and unsophisticated. A person's nagual, the shaman asserted, is the day name of the day on which the person was born --- not the day number. In the case under discussion, the man's nagual is kiej, but not 4 kiej. Kiej, the shaman went on to point out, can be translated variously as "horse," "camel," or "deer," but this is not to say that the man's nagual is a real horse, camel, or deer. The day-name nagual signifies something; it is a symbol which must be interpreted in accordance with the canons of calendrical. divination. Kiej is a day name especially associated with shamans; to be born on a day with this name suggests that one may become a shaman. But the day number of the day on which one was born must also be considered. The numbers, from one to thirteen, are held to represent a continuum, the lower numbers being "weak" and the higher ones "strong." For divinatory purposes, the weaker (i.e., the lower) the day number, the less probable are the implications in the day name; conversely, the stronger (i.e., the higher) the day number, the more probable is the interpretation of the day name. The calendar shaman interpreted 4 kiej as follows: kiej suggests that the person might become a shaman, but 4 is a weak number, and consequently there is no great probability that the individual will actually become a shaman. With reference to the differing interpretations of 4 kiej by the shaman and the woman, the distinction made by Radin (1927, 1953) between "the thinker" and "the man of action" is possibly relevant. [Footnote: I shall discuss Radin's distinction at some length in a monograph on Palmar Quiché calendar shamanism now in preparation.]
(4) An old woman, with whom I was discussing the saints, spontaneously referred to St. James the Apostle, the patron saint of El Palmar, as "the nagual of El Palmar." I questioned several other people regarding this usage, and they all maintained that it was acceptable, but I never heard anyone else employ the term in this way.
(5) An Indian medium who is said to suffer possession by the Earth Essence, "El Mundo" or "Santo Mundo," is known as an aj-nagual mesa, which title I translate as "one who pertains (aj) to the spiritual essence (nagual) of the Table (mesa)." The medium allegedly becomes possessed while sitting at a consecrated wooden table (see Saler 1962a for further details), which immediately suggests that El Mundo, the Earth Essence, is the nagual of the table. In point of fact, however, nagual mesa is best appreciated within a wider context. The calendar shaman (aik’ij, "one who pertains to the days") also employs the term mesa, but in his case it does not mean a specific, consecrated wooden table. For the shaman, the mesa of the World is any place on which people burn copal to El Mundo, the Master of the World and the spiritual essence of the material earth from which man draws his food. And the mesa of a shaman is a special power, symbolized by the possession of a wooden cross, which distinguishes a minority of shamans "who have received the mesa" from the majority who have not. The potsherd altars which surround the village are the consecrated "burning places" or "tables" of El Mundo, and a shaman, when divining, will often invoke the altars by name, in effect invoking their spiritual essences to come to his aid. Since each altar is a material manifestation of the Holy World, El Mundo is the spiritual essence of each altar. The shaman's conception of El Mundo as the spiritual essence of the material earth, and particularly of certain consecrated landmarks thereof, is paralleled by the contention of the aj-nagual mesa that he receives the Earth Essence at the locus of a consecrated wooden table.
As is apparent from the above, no single, simple lexical definition of nagual can approximate the total psychological reality of the term for all the Quiché of Santiago El Palmar. The term is employed in varying ways by different individuals, depending on context. Even an apparently idiosyncratic usage--the reference to St. James the Apostle as "the nagual of El Palmar"--was judged acceptable by my informants, presumably because it fell within the semantic range of tolerance with which the Palmareños have invested the term.
All the varying meanings, however, attest to certain pervasive themes and associated attitudes in the Quiché world view. In the first place, the Indians hold that there are a variety of extra-human forces at work in the cosmos which affect the unfolding life histories of human beings. Every man is under the influence of his special fate, and one may sometimes gain a predictive understanding of such influences from the zodiacal nagual or the Maya-Quiché day nagual. But human life is not exclusively shaped by extra-human forces. Man is not passive and without responsibility. Human and extra-human agencies interact in structuring the course of one's life. Some of the extrahuman forces which influence human life are favorably disposed, or can sometimes be persuaded to be favorably disposed, toward individual persons. Thus the Earth Essence which possesses the aj-nagual mesa, according to those who believe in such possession, is held to possess the medium in order to help the latter's clients. The emphasis is on aid and assistance to the individual qua individual. But the woman who called St. James the Apostle "the nagual of El Palmar" seems to me to have generalized on this theme, extending it to the level of the societal. Just as the Earth Essence may favor and succor an individual, so, too, a patron saint may be supposed to favor and succor the community at large.
