The Three-Pronged Nagual
"As you know, my teacher became aware of the Rule for the three- pronged nagual when he tried to analyze certain anomalies in the new group. Apparently, I could not get in tune with the rest of the apprentices. Then he paid me sufficient attention to see that I masked my energy configuration."
"Do you mean that Don Juan's seeing had been mistaken?"
"Of course not! What was mistaken was his looking. To see is the final form of perception; there are no appearances, so it is not possible to be deceived. However, due to the pressure that he had exerted on me for years, my energy struggled to mold itself to his. That is common among apprentices. Since he was divided into four compartments, I also began to manifest a similar energetic weight in my actions.
"Once I was able to shake off his influence (it took me almost ten years of arduous work), we discovered something astonishing: My luminosity only had three compartments; it didn't correspond to an ordinary, modern person, who only has two, nor to a nagual. This discovery caused a great commotion in the group of seers, since they all saw it as a portent of profound change for the lineage.
"Then Don Juan went back to the tradition of his predecessors, and dusted off a forgotten aspect of the Rule. He told me that the election of a nagual cannot in any way be considered as a personal whim, since it is the spirit who chooses the successor of a lineage at all times. Therefore, my energetic anomaly was part of a command. Faced with my urgent questioning, he assured me that a messenger would appear in due time and explain to me the function of my presence as a three-pronged nagual.
"Years later, during a visit to one of the rooms in the National Museum of Anthropology and History, I observed a native dressed in the old-fashioned Tarahumara costume, who seemed to have the most absorbing interest in one of the exhibition pieces. He examined it from all sides and demonstrated such a total concentration that it made me curious, and I went closer to look.
"When he saw me, the man spoke to me and began to explain the meaning of a group of excellent, painstaking drawings sculpted into the stone. Then, while I meditated on what he had told me, I remembered Don Juan's promise, and realized that this man had been an envoy from the spirit, who had passed on to me the portion of the Rule concerning the three-pronged nagual."
"And what does that portion say?"
"It affirms that, just as the party has an energy matrix of the number seventeen (two naguals, four female dreamers, four female stalkers, four male warriors, and three scouts), a lineage, which is formed by a succession of parties, also has a structure of power, of the number fifty-two. The Eagle's command is that every fifty-two generations of four-pointed naguals, there will appear a three- pronged nagual who serves as a cathartic action for the propagation of new four-point lineages.
"The Rule also says that the three-pronged naguals are destructive to the established order, because their nature is neither creative nor nurturing, and they have the tendency to enslave all those who surround them. It adds that, to achieve freedom, these naguals should do it alone, because their energy is not tuned to guide groups of warriors.
"Like everything in the world of energy, the block of fifty-two generations is divided into two parts; the first twenty-six concerning themselves with expansion and the creation of new lines, the rest oriented towards conservation and isolation. This pattern of behavior has been repeating itself millennium after millennium, so sorcerers know that it is part of the Rule. "As a result of the activities of a three-pronged nagual, the knowledge becomes widely known, and new cells of four-point naguals are formed. From that starting point, lineages recapture the tradition of transmitting the teachings in a lineal form."
"How often do three-point naguals appear?"
"Approximately once per millennium. That is the age of my lineage."