The Dance of Reality: A Psychomagical Autobiography Read Online Free PDF

ashes.”
     
    At night, when I awoke alone in the dark house, it became essential for me to imagine this double of myself from the future. Listening to him I calmed myself little by little, and a deep sleep came, gloriously allowing me to forget myself.
     
    During the day I did not despair, despite the anguish of living unappreciated, a Robinson Crusoe on my inner island. In the library my friends the books, with their heroes and adventures, blocked out the silence for me.
     
    There was someone else who used books to escape from silence: Morgan, the gringo. Like all the English, he worked for the electric company that provided energy to the nitrate company offices and the copper and silver mines. He liked to drink gin. When they forbade him to drink any alcohol, dying of boredom he buried himself in the “esotericism” section in the library. The Freemasons had provided shelves crammed with books in English that dealt with mysterious topics. Jaime claimed that The Secret Doctrine by Helena Blavatsky had disturbed Morgan’s brain. “He’s got bats in the belfry!” he would often say. The gringo believed in a group of invisible Cosmic Masters and began fervently believing in the reincarnation of the soul. In accordance with the author he idolized, he declared to anyone who would listen to him that the veneration and burial of cadavers was a barbaric custom because they infected the planet. They should be burned, as was done in India. He sold all his possessions and with the money thus obtained, plus his savings, opened a funeral parlor called River of Ganges Sacred Crematorium. The place of business was decorated with wreaths of artificial flowers, sweets made of almond paste in the shape of fruits, and plaster models of exotic gods, some of which had elephant heads. It opened onto a long courtyard covered with orange tiles, and at the center was an oven similar to those used for making bread with room enough for a Christian inside. The priest, launching diatribes against this sacrilegious monstrosity, was preaching to the choir. Who among the citizens of Tocopilla would permit their deceased loved ones to be burned in some big stove? No one, for sure, wished to see the carnal remains of their dear departed converted into a pile of gray ashes. Morgan, whom people called the Theosophist, shrugged his shoulders: “It’s nothing new, the same thing happened to Madam Blavatsky and her partner Olcott in New York; ancestral customs have deep roots.” He changed his strategy: if the priest contended that according to Christian theology animals did not have souls, then it was highly advisable to burn their remains. The oven began its function: first dogs, then, thanks to a discount, cats, followed by the odd white mouse or plucked parrot. The ashes were placed in milk bottles painted black with gilded stoppers. Drawn to the nauseating odor, a multitude of vultures came to land on the orange tiles, covering them with their white excrement. The Theosophist would shoo them away with a broom, but the stubborn birds would fly in circles, which eventually turned into spirals, finally returning to the tiles, squawking and defecating. The fetid odor became insufferable. The Theosophist closed the funeral parlor and began to spend most of his time reclining on a bench in the town square, promising reincarnation to anyone who would accept him as their master. It was there that I struck up a friendship with him, for I was saddened to see him become the laughingstock of the whole town.
     
    To me, he did not seem to be a lunatic, as my father claimed. I liked his ideas. “My boy, all evidence suggests that we were something before being born and we will be something after dying. Can you tell me what?”
     
    I rubbed my hands together, stammered, and then said nothing. He began to laugh. “Come to the beach with me!” I followed him, and when we got to the beach he showed me the towers joined by cables on which steel cars glided,