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I have already mentioned in several posts that the word WALK is used as a metaphor and with different derivations and synonyms. One of them is LEAVE. Undoubtedly I mean in this Post to leave the place where we are from. It is a goodbye to that place (environment) but that will surely return after an indispensable and peremptory time, although it is not vital or mandatory. It has a fairly broad and deep significance, and likewise, of the results it generates in the formation of the personality of the individual who does so.

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Going for a walk is not only a physical impulse to exercise the body and give movement to the mind, but it is closely related to something much deeper in the soul: going out to strengthen the individual personality. That going out for a walk is a metaphor of the unconscious that seeks the healthy awakening of the personality of the being.

I have also mentioned the following aphorism in one or two previous posts, I will use it in this as an epigraph that clearly defines a part of what I will expose regarding the need that human beings manifest to leave their place of origin (city, parental home , school) to be able to develop fully with its own personality: “The human body withers when it does not seek and does not find the way or the path to WALK, in the same way it happens to waters that have no exit and do not move, they transform into a swamp ” (Future Post NOT WALKING IS LIKE TURNING INTO A SWAMP). This thought is quite strong, but it is better to say it in this way than to consider that it is not very important for the development of the being in several aspects.

Using the word “walk” literally and a bit as an allegory, I would like to underline the importance for every human being to leave their place of origin, their “paternal” house, their neighborhood, their block, their town or city, where they have lived –all regularly- the first years of life. We say on some occasion and at some time in our childhood or adolescence: “I would never want to leave my friends”; however, the time always comes to leave them, to abandon them, due to various reasons. The truth is that some do not carry it out and stay the rest of their lives in the same town or in the same city, although not in the same neighborhood. We move house but we remain under the guardianship of our family group, and not only of our parents, but of the rest of the family group: grandparents and grandmothers, uncles and aunts, brothers and sisters, etc. We cannot abandon those brotherhoods. But neither do we want to abandon our playmates, our schoolmates, our teachers, themselves, anyone who has participated in the composition of our social environment. Leaving the place of origin in a timely manner – at a certain age – allows them to function better and to seek their own personality. This is not a mere recommendation on my part, but this is a natural human need to achieve his own personality and not be frustrated, in his immediate future, for not making that exit with opportunity. (Future Post THE WALK AND THE INSTINCTS). However, seeking to obtain a re-integration of the personality that is lost by living comfortably within the family, after a certain age: After having passed our youth, where the interference of the participation of the paternal house – the parents, the family and educators – who have avoided a healthy development of the personality, it is quite complicated from the psychic and behavioral point of view. Many times, experiences are generated in the paternal center, during childhood and adolescence, that if a stage of self-help is not initiated in a timely manner, they do not allow the construction of one’s own intellectual and character identity. This self-help is achieved when we move away from our place of origin, at an acceptable age.

Definitely this is an action that every human being –man and woman- must carry out by themselves, as their own decision and encouraged by their parents. Leaving the parental home at a certain age, in a timely manner, surely we will have positive but also negative experiences, which will reinforce our position of forgetfulness and denial of our own experiences. Something that could help us to better understand this is a question that we carry out in Future Post THE CONCEPT OF EXPERIENCE AND WALKING: “What correlation exists between these 2 scenarios, that of forgetting or denying the experience and the footprints that our feet have left in the journeys along different paths or with staying in the parental home?” This phrase should not be understood that we should abandon our loved ones. For obvious reasons, we must stay away from pathological needs and inclinations to travel (Future Post DROMOMANIA). Of course, this exit should not be carried out before a certain age when the being cannot support itself; nor after a certain age, where the personality already suffers distortions, preventing its autonomous development, and the unconscious work that must be carried out through this departure (evasion, absence), is lacerating for the person who cannot do it in a timely manner.

Adolescence presents in all human beings – men and women – certain drownings that force the individual to make various unconscious decisions; at this age, it is said: “the hormones become turbulent”, and the young person (man or woman) who experiences it does not know or understand why this happens to him. One of these agitated needs is precisely that he needs to leave his place of origin, whatever the definition of origin may be: school environment, friendly setting, home environment, social environment, work space, etc., the sum of some or all of these. The reality is that his temperament spurs him on to develop his own personality, and that is the path: a distance from that which gave him training and strength to develop from birth to this age – between 11 and 15. That separation which must be undertaken in this period will strengthen your personality development: by strengthening your personality you will find your destiny.

This impulse is an instinct of the human being, however there are other incitements that impel the individual to perform acts by which he tries to break the monotony (Future Post THE CORRECT MANAGEMENT OF THE FLOATING TIME IN THE DECISION TO WALK). For example, the IMPULSE TO TRAVEL or the ONLY WANTING TO CHANGE PLACES by going to another place, just by leaving that place where he has stayed for long hours or months; MODIFYING A STYLE OF ANY ACTIVITY, for example, the style that a painter uses in his works, there comes a moment that bothers him and he needs to create with another artistic style; CHANGE THE RHYTHM; MODIFY THE WORK ACTIVITIES, for example, if an individual is acting in a play, there comes a time when he gets bored and tired of performing the same performance and saying the same parliaments; BREAK THE BALANCE AT ANY TIME; ANNULL THE SIMETRY; THE ASSOCIATION IS INQUIRED, and so on. Most of these impulses or inclinations are sought and incorporated after long periods of being in a MONOTONY, situation very different from the process we have described, because, apart from being instinctive and congenital, this is a teleological need, recorded in the individual unconscious of the human being, in order to develop his personality, without which he cannot reach his goals in life, the meaning and destiny of his life, being that it has no direct relation with monotony.

“Strengthen your personality and you will find the way, when you find the way you will find your destination” [or DISCOVER AND WALK YOUR OWN PATH, IT WILL LEAD YOU TO FIND YOUR DESTINATION]. (Future Post THE HOMO SOCIABILI versus HOMO SOLITARIUS).

Let’s see what a character in one of my novels “Dialogues in a place of La Mancha” (*) says about this: “-The journey, symbolically means the intrinsic need to free oneself, like the search for an initiating experience, of change. It is a symbol of transcendence. Trying to break with the social status that surrounds you: friends, colleagues, family, work, studies, etc. Journeys on pilgrimage or in solitude. It is a ‘going out’ with the desire to take the first steps in life. Searching to face new experiences and discoveries, liberation, renunciation, atonement. It is generated by a natural state of discontent with oneself and with the environment around us. Search for change, search for knowledge of the nature of life and death; to know what to do with one’s existence. Depending on the individual, it can be a journey around the world, leaving one’s village or simply moving house. To transcend internally towards a new way of living and dying“.

This simply means starting a life for yourself, no matter if you are still financially dependent on your parents. What you should not allow yourself to do is to depend on them completely.

To paraphrase Lincoln, with respect to our topic, we would say: We can depend on the economic, we can depend for some time, but what we can’t afford is to depend on them in every way, all the time.

So: let’s walk!, because every walk we take can metaphorically and symbolically induce us to leave that “place” that our instinct points out to us.

(*) Loya Lopátegui, Carlos, Dialogues in a place of La Mancha, EMULISA, Mexico, 2019: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CJ3BW1T1.

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The concrete proposal is to walk in any street, which we have previously selected for some aspects that we wish to observe and enjoy directly and personally.

Ortega y Gasset used a lot the concept of “FORESHORTEN” and because of his special inclination towards philosophy he generally referred -I consider it- to the intellectual or intellectualized foreshortening that things presented in their aesthetic, metaphysical and doctrinal forms.

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Ortega y Gasset writes something about this, although he does not exactly call it INTELLECTUAL FORESHORTENING. The concept of foreshortening was an ideal means for a model of perspective in which the Spanish philosopher tried to highlight a certain detail (or several of them) in his analysis of some subject, even using it to contrast some element (or several) of it, and he stated: “foreshortening is the organ of visual depth; in it we find a borderline case where simple vision is fused with a purely intellectual act”. (Ortega y Gasset, Meditaciones del Quijote). I very much agree that it occurs in the sensitive intellectual limit, senses and mind of the plastic creator.

With this I only wish to emphasize that we can make some walks with the purpose of observing, during them, some elements that conform the streets. That is to say, to put into practice that orteguian foreshortening when we are walking within the perspective of a street. To obtain several positions, during our walk, to observe different perspectives by which we will be able to have other (dissimilar) “city-planning, artistic and aesthetic expressions”, and thus to capture different impressions and sensations from a same street by which we have decided to transit.

Once we have selected the street, let’s get ready to walk on either of its two sidewalks, being aware of its cardinal directions. According to its orientation we will know, at the time we make the tour, which of them will be sunny or shady. Let’s choose the one that interests us on that day (Future Post WALKING AND THE CARDINAL POINTS).

The fundamental purpose is to recommend an inter-environmental “Metaphoric dialogue” with the elements that call our attention to the passage of our walk, in the street, the sidewalk, the sense, as well as all the environment that has been chosen to develop the walk; same that will be endorsed by other specific sub-objectives such as the artistic motive (plastic, urban, etc.), or that of aesthetics: beauty, ugliness, attraction or repugnance.

For example, through one of the streets within the city: the units that make up the urban equipment: a fountain, a monument, a streetlamp; all of which could awaken or stimulate the imagination; or the natural elements that it finds in its path. In any of these cases, it will always be possible to initiate a dialogue -in figurative language- with them. Asking yourself what you might be questioning and/or answering; a window with the curtains in the air, or that winding staircase, or the slabs (tiles) on the floor.

What you perceive in this imaginative (fictitious) dialogue could give way to a certain type of literary narrative. If it is not your intention to write it, in any case, the exercise will be orienting you to awaken and develop your sensibility, by granting -imaginatively- communication or fictitious life to the inanimate material elements -which of course do not have it- and to perceive the possible responses of those organisms that do have it, both from the vegetable and animal kingdom, which are found in its path.

With this, besides benefiting your imagination, awakening it or increasing it, you will be favoring your degree of consciousness regarding those things, which in general, we subtract or do not give importance to.

These advances in the levels of consciousness will lead you to a clearer and greater knowledge of yourself and your socio-natural environment, which will lead you to continue walking.

If you are walking in some streets of the city, then you will be able to notice their respective names and this could impel you to develop a dialogue – again of the fictitious type – with the character or with the concept that gives the name to the path of your walk on that day, involving concepts (such as Freedom, Spring, Canyon) or individuals (such as Washington, Lincoln, Bolivar, Gandhi, etc. ), all of them as characters within a novelized scheme that can lead us to know new psychological profiles and literary styles (Future post ANACRONIC DIALOGUE WITH LITERARY CHARACTERS WHILE WALKING).

In the following days you will be able to make the characters and concepts that name the streets talk, with the purpose of writing those allegorical dialogues (fictitious) that will arise in your imagination, every time you walk through them and you want to do it, which could constitute, why not! a small creative story, of literary type.

When I mention “Dialogue” I do not mean specifically that we should start talking to the objects, animals or plants, but that we should make an effort to think about what they mean to us, what we have thought they are or whether they have influenced our lives.

For example, we find the name of a street: Freedom; think or imagine what this concept has meant or represents for us; that “dialogue” will be done with ourselves, not with the street name tag. If, for example, we encounter a great silence, to question why this part of the street will be so silent; in itself, we can conjecture what the silence represents: Is it the absence of sound? or the presence of a void? Will the noises and silences walk together?

In an instant we look at some corner of any street: Which colors are dominant? Could colors explain our state of mind?

Can we hear the wind? This is another element that we usually overlook; let us look for its presence.

If it is raining: Does it bother us? We might question whether it is pleasant to have water falling on our faces. (Post WALKING IN THE RAIN. PART I).

We could walk on the sidewalk without shoes, but … then we’d say that’s not right; or maybe our feet would answer: You’ve never done that before! Will we feel uncomfortable or will we feel good about doing it? (Post WALKING BAREFOOT. PART I).

Any element that we observe could invite us to reflect on it or on aspects that can be related. For example: cars, bicycles, clouds, churches, parishes, taverns, canteens, street vendors of all kinds, water pipes, sewers, buttresses of light, parks, dogs, cats, any animal that we see during our walk through the streets. In my book Pueblo Quieto. Las caídas de la Libertad (Quiet Town. The falls of Liberty), I try certain metaphorical dialogues, in which several streets participate, within the literary development of the novel.

The important thing is that we enjoy our walks on the streets and do not feel that we are bored and that the next day we are encouraged to go out on a walk because we will find something else that will encourage us to put our feet, shoes or no shoes, on the pavement of the sidewalks and the streets.

Now, it is different to walk the streets of a city during the day than at night. It goes without saying that we must take certain extra care when we walk at night. Urban configurations are different when viewed with natural daylight than those that are generated with artificial light. Many times the shadows of the night show living forms that by day appear dead to our eyes.

Let’s make a foreshortening of the urban-walker type, that allows us to have several aesthetic-urbanistic positions, during our walks by (in) the streets, (Future Post WALKING IN A NEW URBANISTIC PERSPECTIVE) and let’s enjoy the creation of those individual and unrepeatable perspectives, that for the same reason are original expressions of our interiority.

Loya Lopategui, Carlos, Pueblo Quieto. Las Caídas de la Libertad, EMULISA, Mexico, 2015.

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The title of this post is due to the fact that, a few weeks ago, while dancing a little bit of tap dance with a selection of songs, a little bit old, I realized that several of them that I have recorded to make some sequences of this dance, have in their lyrics this phrase “Walking in the rain”. And it seems incredible that, until this Christmas of 2019, I have not noticed these songs -which I have danced all my life- have a relationship with the walking blog.

I would like to mention that I have two books where I have been able to transmit this dance being performed at the same time with poetry and plastic arts; one of them is “Tap Tap and Poetry” and the other is “Tap Tap, Plastic and Poetry”, and in both of them I try to transmit my experience of creating music with Tap Tap percussion to harmonize Poetry and Plastic Arts, together, in a tri-artistic harmony. I emphasize that I don’t use any commercial music, but fundamentally I set to music the percussion of the sound created by the Tap Tap dance.

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In spite of this way of dispensing with commercial music, I now find several melodies, I repeat, with the phrase of walking in the rain, which truly surprised me and I decided to make them participants of this synchronicity (Post READING AND SYNCHRONICITY-PART I, and the future post WALK-RWD SYSTEM AND SYNCHRONICITY-PART II), because it truly fills me with joy to be a participant in these meetings.

One of them is Houston, sung by Dean Martin

Another is Just walking in the rain, sung by Johnny Ray

Another one is Singing in the rain, sung and danced by Gene Kelly

And the last one is Walking on the sunny side of the Street sung by Frankie Laine, a situation totally contrary to the previous ones (the sun rays), but within the context of walking.

It has no other purpose than to comment that my inclination for dancing and walking has led me to this synchronicity, which encourages me to try to investigate and experiment more about how interesting -and possibly healthy- walking in the rain could be.

Already in Post WALKING BAREFOOT, PART I, I had commented the following: “Walking barefoot on different types of ground are experiences that we must have, all of us. Practices as unexpected and surprising as – I take the opportunity to say it – walking in the rain ”; However, I had not considered it so important to develop this option, which may be transcendent. I am going to take this communication from my unconscious into account and proceed to investigate and further experiment with this alternative.

In Post THE ANCIENT MAYAS AND THEIR WHITE ROADS PART I, I have commented on the monumental arches and the white roads; we said that the ancient Mayas associated those ritual arches with the rainbow phenomenon, symbolizing the great threshold of the vault of heaven, being the celestial doors, which led the human works into the space of the divine; That threshold was at the same time an arch and a way, because it united the heavenly kingdom with the earth with the element RAIN, being this the heavenly flow that inseminated mother earth, granting her life and new beings that would germinate in her entrails. It also said: “This artistic and cultural architectural binomial ‘white road-arch monumental’ of the ancient Mayans allows us to lead us through a spiritual path that crosses a portal of time to enter the various moments that this ancient people had to walk in their daily lives, as well as cross each arch as spiritual thresholds to use them in so many different artistic and constructive uses.

Although I have eventually experienced walking with some rain during the day, and also at night with “rain in the form of dew”, I do not have many conscious experiences about this walking under the rain.

Everything indicates that I should take more into account this uniqueness of walking, under the circumstances of walking in the rain.

So, I will begin to investigate about this but above all I will experience the different options of walking under the rain, and independently of this, I invite you to experience it immediately and give it more strength and power, through this absorption of energy by the contact of our body with the rain, to the mind and the spirit.

There are different intensities of rain, and of course I will have to select light rains that will not cause me any discomfort.

I consider that it is not difficult to define in which type of rain by its intensity we should be able to walk without complication.

According to the form of manifestation of the rain, we will be able to walk in periods of dew and drizzle. Also surely, according to the gender of the person (male or female) and the ages of each one, in rain that is called “Liquid”.

What is not advisable is to go out for a walk during “heavy shower”, of course, less with stronger rains.

In general, it is advisable with intensities with weak type of rains (less than 2 mm/hour or 2 inches/24 hours) and also with moderate rains (from 2 to 15 mm/hour or 2 to 15 inches/24 hours). From this level of rainfall, greater than 15 mm/hour (or 15 inches/24 hours), STRONG RAIN, is no longer recommended.

It is not easy to know what these numbers refer to in terms of rainfall, even when it is raining, because we cannot measure these intensities; however, that is why we just have to keep in mind: whatever level of rain makes us feel uncomfortable or at risk, let’s not go out for a walk. On the other hand, the experience of walking under a light drizzle is very pleasant.

We should experience it to know what direct effects (real and evident) the rain has on the organism, the sensations it provokes, how our senses respond, and what are the mental and emotional effects (levels of satisfaction and well-being) that a short walk in the rain generates. It is something we are not used to do, let’s go for a walk one day with a light drizzle.

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As we have already mentioned in post PRESERVING AND AFFIRMING HEALTH, CREATIVITY AND TRANQUILITY, the WALK-RWD system is an integral method where movement is one of its most relevant aspects as it stimulates creative thinking, but It also has other benefits, such as self-knowledge of ourselves. Its practice, including its structural activities such as reading, writing and drawing, allows us to approach both the knowledge of internal reality (our intimate feelings) and of knowledge in general (external reality).

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Regarding self-knowledge, it is generated consciously and unconsciously, and allows us to orient ourselves to an internal, personal and individual healing.

The daily dialogue that we carry out with ourselves provides us with thousands of words and images per day, since it contains a good amount of concepts and questions: How to understand what we feel? How to interpret our feelings? How to capture the best ideas? Of course it is not ignoring what is stored within us. All those images that are generated when reading, writing or drawing, while we walk, are accompanied by great cascades of words and concepts, containing various revelations of our inner being.

We just have to keep waiting for them to appear in our minds, as if we were fishing, we just have to wait for the fish to bite the hook. Keeping us walking, but always at the same time, reading, writing or drawing, our mind will catch that image, concept or idea at any moment that we do not suspect, an identical circumstance to the trapped fish and pulling the line. (Post THE WALK-RWD SYSTEM ENCOURAGES CREATIVE THINKING. PART I).

The prejudices, afflictions, thoughts, norms, precepts, dogmas, worries, fears, are part of the process that sometimes help and sometimes hinder that revelation of the great insights, when we dialogue in this way with ourselves. All thoughts, positive or negative, are necessary to carry out that dialogue with ourselves; We must not cut the negative aspects that come to our mind, nor the negative feelings either, because they also all belong to our inner and outer reality.

In several previous posts we have pointed out the possibilities we have of dialogue with ourselves, through writing and drawing. In the post DRAWING AND THRESHOLDISM, TO KNOW OUR INNER SELF, in the post WHY AND WHAT TO DRAW FOR? THE GREAT BENEFITS WHILE WE WALK, and in the post DRAWING, TO KNOW BETTER OURSELVES, we mention the great ability to achieve this through drawing, pointing out some mechanisms to achieve a creative dialogue with ourselves. In the post WHY AND WHAT TO WRITE FOR? we mention precisely that enormous benefit that we can obtain through writing. Even in the post WALKING AND THE ELECTION OF LONELINESS. PART I, we mention the dialogue with us in solitude while we are walking.

In the post OTHER DEVICES TO READ AND WRITE, WHILE WE WALK, we express: “Many books distract and teach; all enrich our knowledge and improve our ideas and thinking. Each book can be transformed into a dialogue with the author, and the synthesis obtained from it can be transmuted into a compendium of ideas that we can always organize as a new work written by us. This dialogue is carried out with oneself and the author serves as an intermediary and pointer. You talk to yourself, considering that the author may be listening to you in your reinterpretation, and you can address him as if he were present with your thoughts.”

Borges has expressed: “Those who practice this game [the game played in metaphysics or art, as an infinite combination of possibilities] forget that a book is more than a verbal structure, it is the dialogue that it establishes with its reader and the intonation that he imposes on his voice and the changing and durable images that he leaves in his memory. That dialogue is infinite; […] Literature is not exhaustible for the simple and sufficient reason that a single book is not. The book is not an incommunicado entity: it is a relationship, it is an axis of innumerable relationships. One literature differs from another, later or earlier, less by the text than by the way it is read. […] I have said that a book is a dialogue, a form of relationship… ”

Specifically, I can recommend 3 ways of action to start the process of dialogue with ourselves, when we are reading and walking, and which we can later include in our writings and drawings:

1. Carry out the reading of the document or book that we have chosen, and point out some words, phrases, points or parts of the text that we feel are relevant according to our own experiences;

2. Write notes and develop short texts on the topic (or topics) that we are enjoying or investigating;

3. Make drawings –exclusively- of the mental images we are creating, while reading, writing and walking.

As can be seen, these pathways contain the 3 structured activities within the WALK-RWD system, and this is what makes it creative, highly dynamic and motivational.

Let us remember that the unconscious uses various symbolic languages to transmit what we are, what we feel and what we want to be, and these 3 ways are a very important part of them, being very descriptive, truthful and effective to get closer to our interiority and get to know us better. It goes without saying that we must be very careful, reflective and descriptive in carrying out our readings and in the other actions of the process described.

On the second way, the recommendation (assigment) is that, during the reading of a certain document or book, the writing of:

Write notes, ideas, clarifications, doubts, annotations, various notes, records, citations, comments, observations, explanations, plans, general and specific data, references, news, warnings, indications, definitions, concepts, characteristics, evaluations, objections, censures , issues, questions, answers, memories, forgetfulness, considerations, all this while reading, as it helps to better understand the reading (Future Post THE WALK-RWD SYSTEM AND COGNITIVE PERFORMANCE); Likewise, the environment that surrounds us, while we walk, makes us more conscientious, attentive and and conscious.

The process that we have pointed out in post READING-WRITING-DRAWING: VIRTUOUS CIRCLE favors the 2 activities, reading and writing; However, Borges stresses that the deliberate anachronism technique not only enriches the craft of writing but also the skill of reading, since for Borges reading, before anything else, is writing. Recurrently in several of his essay-stories, he argues that writing is actually a rewriting of what we have read.

About the activities of drawing the images, we must be spontaneous and expressive, because as we already mentioned in previous posts (post OTHER DEVICES TO READ AND WRITE, WHILE WE WALK) the binomial read-write, while we walk, causes both to be more pleasant, reading on its side, more dynamic, enriching and deep, and writing more practical, positive and true; undoubtedly achieving a “dynamic reader” and an “authentic writer”, and drawing –as we have already mentioned- involves the 2 activities of reading and writing, graphically; that is, being a “dynamic reader” leads to being an “authentic writer”, but being an “expressive drawer” implies the two previous personalities, graphically.

These 3 ways must lead us to achieve a dialogue with ourselves, a conversation that will be patently shaped in our memory, in our notes and in our drawings that we have elaborated when reading while walking. Information that will contain a draft of our inner reality and that we can organize and systematize according to our particular needs.

Let’s walk with that book that we have relegated for several months, even years, or the one that attracts us the most, and let’s try these 3 ways of action, and we will immediately see the results. We will begin to know ourselves better.

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Eating chili when walking could be heard out of context of what we are looking for when using the WALK-RWD system, however, I am going to explain this based on some engravings that were found some decades ago in the ruins of Cacaxtla, Tlaxcala State , Mexico, and of certain images designed in codices (in Nahuatl amoxtli or analte) of the pre-Columbian cultures of the New World. Images that I have drawed using my character called Quale, with the sole purpose of trying to use my own illustrations.

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All of them have representations of human beings, who are observed in some way related to the chili (Nahuatl). You can see various activities represented such as harvesting (in markets), commercial exchange, transportation, storage and preserved in special bags, as well as people walking, running or doing some physical exercise, which at the same time are perceived they are eating chili. Chili is a fruit native to this part of the world that was named Capsicum in the early 16th century, after the discovery of these lands, although the first Europeans to try it assumed it was a variant of pepper.

The tlacuilo (in Nahuatl, scribe or painter) was the drawer in charge of representing and explaining this type of activity through images and hieroglyphs, in the different media used in those pre-Columbian nations, such as codices, murals, steles, etc.

Capsicum is the Latin name that was thus designated in the 16th century by European botanical specialists, surely paying attention to its shape and its spicy content in its veins: from the Latin capsa, capsae: box, capsule, container, wrapper, encapsulate; hence the name of the substance Capsicin (or Capsaicin) was derived, which is what contains the irritant of this fruit and which is located mainly in its veins: from the Latin ina: function, peculiarity, characteristic, to generate. This spicy substance contained in chili peppers is found in the filaments or glands, and also in the seeds in less quantity. Capsicin is located in these veins (or placenta). See my “Capsicupea book. Mexican marinades”, in which I present the 27 varieties of chili that are produced in Mexico and 440 culinary dishes that are made with this capsicum fruit. On the subject I must explain that the 4 hundred ADOBOS dishes that I present in the book are all made with DRIED CHILES, not with fresh chilies.

The peppers -red, green, yellow and orange-, so called, do not contain any dose of Capsicin, so they are sweet on the palate. The determination of this name “pepper” results from the confusion that occurred at the time of the discovery of the New World, with pepper thinking that it was a variety of it, and still in some languages certain names are still preserved with the pepper root: peperone (Italian), piment (French), pepper (English), pimentao (Portuguese), allspice (English), pepper (Jamaica), etc.

For illustrative purposes we attach – as I had said – certain images, where you can see very clearly some of these activities carried out by New World cultures in relation to chili. Said images were elaborated based on the originals extracted from the respective codices.

In an “engraving” we observe a Tepatiano or healer who was the doctor who was in charge of prescribing the procedure that was used by placing the patient, in a certain position, in order to receive the emanations (vapors) generated by the water that was brought to a boil [steam, which was put to heat (on the fire, to boil)] with some varieties of chili, a mixture that generated an infusion that when vaporized and absorbed by the patient – as can be seen in the image-, gave him a medical remedy and healing.

In this case of aspirations of chili vapors, I would like to pause a bit to comment on certain totemic aspects, apart from having a direct relationship with the practical procedures of healing through these emanations with chili, as can be seen in the pre-Columbian codices on the medical care that were practiced by this New World culture, the Totem is a “material” representation of an animal, plant or thing, which is the object of veneration and worship by a primitive group of human beings. From the socio-anthropological point of view, it is the image of any of those 3 representations that a group of people, large or small, be it a tribe, clan, etc., venerate and value for various characteristics, and are linked in a way soulish or spiritual with all members of the human group. The social group that adopted the Totem invariably took the name of the animal, the plant or the thing chosen; thus they had the tribe “Wolf”, “Corn”, “Rock”, “Deer”, “Eagle”, “Chili”, “Hawk”, “Beaver”, etc. During Totemism, the soul of the being flows to identify itself with the “Totem-Plants” (or animals or things) and takes possession of that totem and receives various benefits that the soul of the adopted Totem-Plant contains. That totemic soul was an image -and replacement- unconscious -and also conscious- that flowed from a personification and incarnation, from one body to another, with absolute and complete mobility, leaving one body and entering the other, and this soulish mobility it gave sustenance to the unconscious of the individual, urgently in need of it. From here a new way of invoking human spirituality is born, but above all flourishes, and perhaps also, is the genesis of the conscious repression of certain stimuli from the external environment, which begins to replace the belief in the natural environment -to trust that objective reality- by the spirits and very later, with the gods (religion). Thus, these vaporizations was also a conscious practice of exchanging positive influences with the soul of the Totem-“Chili”. Future Posts TOTEM AND WALKING, and THE WALK OF ANCIENT MAYAS AND THEIR TOTEM “CHILI”.

We also find in another “engraving” a mother with her child using the same healing procedure, by spraying with chili. And perhaps it represented a soulish exchange with the Totem-“Chili”.

I would like to comment that the conquerors had impregnated in their minds the “evil of their fellow men” from that part of the New World and when observing these healing images they only interpreted what they for millennia had heard, read and seen. These interpretations occurred in a general way in all the sectors and activities that were having contact, both with artistic and literary works and in the pre-Hispanic codices and their daily activities.

In this image you can see a tameme (from the Nahuatl meme: carry on his back; ta: on the subject that the action of the verb falls on) who were the people who carried packages or baskets on his back, using a mecapal. The baskets or motetes were made with vines. This loader, who carries a bag of chilies, also received the name of tlamama (From Nahuatl mama: carry piggyback; tla: thing, anything) is walking with his load and will be able to eat some chiles during the journey.

The following image does not represent an individual who is hungry (mayana: in Nahuatl wanting to eat something), but the only provision (in Nahuatl itacate or tlahuacal) of food for their walk, are the chilies.

It is observed a walker who undoubtedly was recommended to walk with that itacate of chili peppers of various types in order to strengthen his body and get some medical remedies or the prevention of discomforts because he is walking in a hurry (totoca, in Nahuatl someone who is going rush).

This preventive and strengthening treatment was also used in pre-Hispanic ball games, undoubtedly with mythical and divine purposes.

The ball game facilities were great sanctuaries where divine communication with the gods was achieved. Surely the fruit of the chili was considered an ambrosia of the gods, and for that reason it was ingested in these sport competitions. Its ingestion during these contests was a mythical representation that facilitated that divine communication.

The Pok-a-Tok (ball game in Mayan) was one of the most important rituals in the Mayan world, through which a communication with the gods was established, and was developed as such to represent diverse myths, mainly that of the Original Creation.

The game was played between two teams formed with seven players per side (This number of seven players is defined in the mural of the ball game of Chichen Itza, but there are opinions that it was also played with eight, nine and ten players per side). It was played with a rubber ball, which could not be touched with the hands or feet. The players were dressed in ex (loincloth in Mayan) and wore sandals, thick gloves for the hands and protected elbows and hips.

The objective of the game was to introduce the ball through a hole, in the shape of an ear that was placed on both sides of the playing field. The hole through which the ball had to pass represented the center of the maximum energy, that is, it was the direct link with their gods. It was built with two holes, one on each side of the playing field, to which any of the two teams could pass the ball, indistinctly. Having two holes represented ambivalence and duality, that is, their coexistence with the gods in that divine trance obtained during the encounter. One of the interpretations given is that the movement that the ball took during the game represented the positions of the stars (the divinities) in the sky and every time the ball was introduced through any of the two holes, a communication with the gods was made.

The rubber ball was propelled with the elbows and hips, to try to introduce it in any of the 2 rings located and embedded on both walls of the field, from 12 to 14 inchs in diameter in its interior hole and at a height of 16 feet from the ground.

The playing field where the Pok-a-Tok was played measured 480 feet long, by 118 feet wide, although these dimensions could vary. The floor was made of stucco which was a floor prepared of white material, just like the sacred paths or sacbéoob. (Post THE ANCIENT MAYAS AND THEIR WHITE ROADS. PART I).

Before the beginning of each contest, players from both sides were invited to eat chili, as part of the mythical ritual of ingesting the sacred totem “Chili” (Future Post THE WALK OF THE ANCIENT MAYANS AND THEIR TOTEM “CHILI”). Another possible mythical interpretation about the game of ball and above all about the configuration of the playing fields, is that there was a small enclosure where the different varieties of chili that the players ingested were deposited and distributed, according to their needs and the prescriptions of the tepatians specialized in sports activities.

The purpose of this post is not to invite you to eat chili peppers when you are walking, but only to convey you that this fruit has been used for many millennia, in many parts of the world and in different human actions (*): to walk while eating it, to strengthen the players and chargers, to heal (to cure in general), as an offering to the divinities, to prepare culinary dishes of “adobo” and “mole”, to fumigate food storage areas and dwellings (housing), also as Vegetable-Totem (in totemic times), for food preservation, and other uses.

I consider it quite relevant to know the great diversity that exists of this product, and I will allow myself to present you a table of the most important varieties, where you can see the relationship that exists between dried chilies and their corresponding fresh chilies, from which they are obtained by certain drying processes. The combinations that can be made for the preparation of dishes that in Mexico are called ADOBOS and MOLES, is truly incalculable. In my book “CAPSICUPEA. Los adobos Mexicanos (Mexican Marinades)”presented 440 different dishes and all of them are very representative of the Mexican taste (Nahuatl-Mexica).

Source: Loya Lopategui, Carlos, CAPSICUPEA. Los adobos Mexicanos (Mexican Marinades), EMULISA, Mexico, 2017.

(*) Information extracted from the Mayan texts and books (CODEXS) in reference to health, food, disease cure, its medicinal practices, its specialized books on medicine and diseases, and how to diagnose and cure through the prescription of medicines and exercises such as walking, and how they also pointed out the expiration or validity of certain herbal and mineral medicines, which lost their effects after a certain time of having prepared them. The recommendations made by the ancient Mayans in their codices on health, such as that of the Cruz-Badiano (1552) in which medical knowledge is gathered and the Madrid Codex. It is important to point out the investigations carried out by the doctor of Felipe II, Francisco Hernández, as the fact that he was the first to use some of the plant remedies that were used in pharmacological medicine in Europe, based directly on the herbal knowledge of the original of the New World.

Currently there are about 100 varieties of chili peppers, only in America.

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