 Welcome again, folks. More from the three halves of Ino Mosho by Cesar Calvo. Teachings of the wizard of the upper Amazon. Let's cut right into the heart of the book, shall we? Ino Mosho says that words are born, grow, and reproduce, but not in Spanish. The truth is not the truth, but our truth, exclaims Maestro Ino Mosho with a hard and dark voice. It is the truth of Oni Juma, the truth of the Chaluchaki, the curse of Jimu. I see him angry for the first time, breathing strongly toward the Meshawa River, which slides into the night. He slightly lowers his voice. Jimu dedicated himself to teaching me all of our truths and overcome by darkness. He goes on, I would lie if I told you that I easily adapted to Amowaka existence. I would lie if I simply told you that I adapted. In reality, it was as if I had always lived here, rising early in the morning with them, going hunting, fishing at midnight, feasting, warring, loving, cutting down trees for canoes and branches for firewood, accompanying women to capture turtles and cupiso eggs under the sand, learning to row without the sound of a single drop, preparing arrows and their poison, polishing blowgums, great bows and blowing darts without letting the air know about it, and above all else, being always near Maestro Jimu, going everywhere with him, witnessing his fasts, his intoxications for invocation, of call, of exchange of knowledge, spelling out his Icaros word for word as if I were his third lip, and listening to him always. He taught me that one can know. He taught me what one can know, what one should know for the benefit of human beings, of human men and things and animals, of all humans. My initial apprenticeship with Jimu lasted until I was 15. Then it continued with other chiefs who came to teach me from afar and to practice. But at that age, the great Maestro died shortly after naming me his heir. He donned his ritual kushma when he felt death near. To enter death, he donned his yellow kushma. He said farewell to me, saying nothing to the others, and he went into the forest. Jimu's body disappeared, spewing smoke." It has been four days since we arrived at Ino Maestro's village. It is almost noon. Several black lizards bask in the sun in front of us and to our side on the shining pebble beaches on both sides of the Mishawa. The river right at this moment is about to win. It pulls out and carries away the remains of the Renako tree downriver to the vast and sacred Uru Bamba. Some of those things, only some of them will I tell you, says Ino Mosho slowly, gazing at the Renako, which sinks and resurfaces, stumbling, grasping the water, which dislodges it beyond the Muyuna. Maestro Jimo returned to me, returned me to my true nation and its wisdom. He taught me that the miracle is in the eyes, in the hands that touch and search, not in what is seen, not in what is touched. The childhood of the kidnapped boy passed in a long celebration, a noisy ceremony of potions and fierce nostalgias in the climax of which he was re-baptized. He stretched his arms and from the high bush his new life rained down. Ino Mosho, said the branches above, struck by a heavy downpour. Ino Mosho, as the talisman made of roots and darkness, as a talisman made of roots and darkness. Ino Mosho, black panther, enrolled in the wisdom of plants, warm animals, absent animals, things, stones, and souls. Expert in conflict and in counsel, worthy of being listened to by shadows and the bodies of shadows. As Jimo intended, the kidnapped youth was to reach the loftiest depths, disguised in his former identity. With mestizo clothes and manners, he would deceive the deceivers and obtain carbines and bullets from the light merchants. Later, returning to his real life, he would demonstrate how these iron blowguns, which spewed thunder and explosions, were to be used. So Jimo ordered and so it happened. He trained the youth, starting with a first night he has never forgotten. Naked and white among naked coppery men, surrounded by the bodies of the tribe, he received his destiny at the end of a ritual ayahuasca session. Visions begin, exclaimed Jimo, while calibrating the hallucinogenic apparitions in the mind of the young man. And with those two words, taking over his emotions, his soul, his life, the youth learned that all barriers, all walls between his existence and those of old Jimo began to disappear. The slightest gesture of the old man developed in his consciousness the caresses of an order. Whatever Jimo thought was seen and heard by the boy, they understood each other through flashes of lightning and through shadows. Amid slow visions and colors, and Jimo began to confide his patience and his strength, the boy was told which orders to accept from the souls that live in the air, which directions to ask for and listen to from ayahuasca, which intentions and operative words. He was fertilized with the capacity to carry out these orders and to transmit them to heal bodies and souls, to mold his own life with hands of service. First of all, the youth had to learn to know dark, unclear forests in full detail, to understand the jungle and to recognize plants one by one, their uses, spirits and names. Because each plant has a spirit and a vocation, the same applies to animals, even the most useless ones, one by one, even those that don't exist. He started with the birds, overwhelmed by the ayahuasca in the first amowaca intoxication. Did you remember what a Panguana, that lovely partridge, looks like? Jimo insisted. I want you to visualize one now for me. And the youth closed and opened his eyes. And there was the Panguana. You know Mosho tells me with a bright smile. There it was next to Shif Jimo and next to me, the Panguana. I could see it perfectly well. Tailless with its green plumage spotted with brown. The colors of the bird were one with the reminiscences of the light, with the shades moving behind the torches upon the leaves on the ground. I could see everything without limits. Never again in my life have I been able to see like that, with so much clarity, with so much details. The Panguana will begin to move, Jimo alerted him. And the Panguana moved, began to turn around the youth's field of vision. Jimo invoked and produced a male Panguana from the air by wheeling it. And the two partridges began a courtship dance, flapping their wings and gently pecking each other. A shadow appeared between the two partridges, something that made a nest on the ground and five eggs. The male Panguana sat on the five blue eggs. It is the male that incubates, says Jimo. And I saw how the eggs began to crack open, exclaims Jimo. And from each egg grew two Panguanas, big ones, adult ones. It wasn't a man. It was a woman, says Don Javier, to my memory. Because the God, Pacha Maketa, had ordered that Kameitza and Naroe were to have five. Ino Mosho interrupts him. Later, by just gazing at Jimo's visions, I learned that there are several classes of Panguanas. I learned about the trumpet birds and the wapapas. About many birds, all of them, all the birds. Chief Jimo went about imitating their song and they would appear and enter my field of vision. Day animals, night animals, later they sang on their own, alone. And their songs passed into my life, forming that other part of my repertory forever. Lovely languages. I still remember them. Chief Jimo put them in my heart and my mouth in those years, in the voice of those years. My spiritual body and my material body. He taught me all the languages, the speech of the birds, the languages of the plants, the more complex ones of the stones. He taught me to tame the powers of the plants and of the stones, the dangerous and honest vocations of herbs. More than anything else, he taught me to listen. He taught me to listen to them. He put my ear to their powers, their knowledge and their ignorance using ayahuasca. Now, if I come across a root, a flower or a vine that Maestro Jimo did not show me in his visions, I can listen to that root, to that bush, flower or vine. I am able to determine its soul, which solitude rules it or which company it keeps, how it was born, what it can be used for, which disease it can banish, which ills feed it. And I know with what diet, with what ikaro, you might increase or diminish the powers of that plant, with what songs I can nourish it, with what powerful thoughts I can graft it. The same applies to people. Chief Jimo taught me the same things about them. Something for better or worse. Jimo taught me to distinguish the days of the plants, because on some days a plant is female and is good for certain things, and on other days the plant is male and is good for the opposite. If I get to a large river, I'll be safe," said the absent Renako in my vision. Later, now, I listen to the sound of that, later. Now I listen to the sound of the sight where its branches defy the current, and hear myself inevitably saying, ayahuasca in the Yama Waka dialect, how did you say it? Your question is not fair, interrupts Jimo Maestro with pity in his voice. In the language of the yoras, not a dialect, in their language, phrases can go away forever, join together, intermingle and separate for all times, further away than infinity itself. And turning his face away, nostalgic, losing himself in the absence of the Renako in the middle of the Mishawa. Perhaps because of the character of these jungles, this world of ours is still in its formative stage, like rivers that suddenly change course or increase or decrease the flow in a few hours. You must have seen it. If you tie down your canoe without taking it out of the water, you will find it next morning hanging in mid-air. If you find it at all, the river will look at you from below and you see nothing but stones. All of last night's water has been converted to stone. The reverse may also happen. Your canoe may be gone with the currents, which increase without warning and give you no time to react. This world is still being formed, carving out its niche, putting in place its future, falling with the canyons, the gigantic trees sprouting in islands that today sleep here, like the Renako tomorrow may wake up far, far away and in a few moments be again populated by plants, animals, people. In order to see and understand and name a world like that, we must be able to speak in that same way, a language that can decrease or ascend without warning containing thickets of words that are here today and may wake up far away tomorrow, can in this very instant and inside the same mouth be populated with other symbols, other resonances. It will be hard for you to understand this in Spanish. Spanish is like a quiet river when it says something, like a quiet river. When it says something, it says only what that something says. It is not so in Amowaka. In the Amowaka language, words always contain things. They always contain other words and with a voice that only now I recognize, Inomoto said in the voice of those times in the Hotel Teriri in Pukalpa, flowing from the closed mouth of Don Javier. Quote, our words are similar to wells and those wells can accommodate the most diverse waters, cataracts, drizzles of other times, oceans that were and will be of ashes, whirlpools of rivers, of human beings, and of tears as well. Our words are like people and sometimes much more, not simple carriers of only one meaning. They are not like those bored pots holding always the same water until their beings, their tongues forget them and then crack or get tired and lean to one side almost dead. No. You could put entire rivers in our pots and if perchance they break, if the envelope of the words cracks, the water remains vivid, intact, running and renovating itself unceasingly. They are living beings who wander on their own, our words, animals that never repeat themselves and are never resigned to a single skin to an unchanging temperature to the same steps. And they couple like Panguanas and have offspring. From the word tiger, coupled with the word dance, may be born orchids or perhaps Tohe, poison, night inseminated by gull gives birth to lightning. A twin brother of the word that in Amowaka means silence after the rain because not just one silence exists in Amowaka as it would in your generally quiet language, which says nothing. In Amowaka there are many silences as there are in the jungle, as there are in our visible world and also as many silences as exist in the world that cannot be seen with the eyes of the material body. Words therefore have descendants.