A MINDFIRE ARCHIVE INTERVIEW:
THESE TWO
INTERVIEWS WITH CARLOS CASTANEDA'S SORCERESSES TAISHA ABELAR
AND FLORINDA DONNER
ARE FLOATING AROUND ON THE INTERNET IN AN INCOMPLETE AND
MISLEADING FORM
I REPRODUCE THEM HERE SO THAT YOU CAN READ THEM AS THEY WERE ORIGINALLY
INTENDED..
There is another more
compelling reason for posting these two interviews.
There is extraordinary and highly valuable spiritual
knowledge in these two
conversations. The kind of knowledge that remains deeply
relevant.
FLORINDA DONNER
in conversation with
ALEXANDER BLAIR- EWART
Florinda Donner is a longtime colleague
and fellow dream traveler of Carlos Castaneda. She is the acclaimed author of
Shabono (1982), The Witch’s Dream (1985), and Being-in-Dreaming: An Initiation
into the Sorcerer’s World (1991). Anthropologist and sorceress, Florinda Donner lives in Los Angeles, Cal and
Sonora, Mexico.
A L E X A N D E R B LA I R - E WART: Can you talk about this living myth of
the sorcerer’s world that you were drawn into?
FLORINDA DONNER: The myth of the Nagual is a myth, but a myth that is being
relived over and over again. You see, the myth that exists is the myth that
there is the Nagual and that he has his troop of apprentices and sorcerers. I
was an apprentice of Castaneda who was an apprentice of don Juan. I am one of
the “sisters” who were actually of the women of Florinda, and she gave me her
name. So, in that sense,’ it is a living myth.
A B E: The myth of the Nagual is that there is an unbroken lineage from the
ancient Toltec’s right down to modern times. Can I get you to talk about what
the pattern of the myth actually is?
Florinda. D: Well, there is no pattern to the myth. That’s why the whole
thing is so baffling and so difficult. When I first got involved with these
people my main quest, my main aberration, which I came to call it later, was
that I wanted to have some rules and regulations about what the hell it is I
had to do. There were none. There is no blueprint, because each new group has
to find their own way to deal with this idea of trying to break the barriers
of perception. The only way we can break the barriers of perception, according
to don Juan, is to cultivate energy. Our energy is already deployed in the
world to present the idea of self—what we are and who we want to be perceived
as. Don Juan says 90% of our energy is deployed in doing that and therefore
nothing new can come to us. There’s nothing open to us, because no matter how
“egoless” we are, or we pretend to be, or we want to believe we are, we are
not. Even with, let’s say, “Enlightened” people, or gurus that I have met—at
one time Carlos Castaneda was- going around trying to meet gurus—the ego of
those people was gigantic in terms of how they wanted to be perceived in the
world. And that’s, according to don Juan, exactly what kills us. Nothing is
open to us anymore.
A B E: A real Nagual, a real seer, wouldn’t care how the world perceives them,
particularly, would they?
Florinda. D: No, they don’t. But they still have to fight it. Castaneda
has been at this for thirty years. I’ve been at this for over twenty years,
and it’s ongoing; it doesn’t stop.
A B E: You use the language of the warrior. What’s the nature of the battle? Who
are you fighting?
Florinda. D: The self. It’s not even the self; it’s an idea of the self,
because if we really get below the surface, we don’t know what it is. But it
is possible to curtail this idea, this bombastic idea we have of the self.
Because whether it’s a negative idea or a positive idea doesn’t really matter.
The energy employed to see that idea is the same.
A B E: There’s tremendous emphasis in this tradition on overcoming what is
called self-importance. -
Florinda. D: That’s the main battle, to shut off our internal dialogue.
Because even if we are alone, we are still constantly talking to ourselves.
That internal dialogue never stops. And what does the internal dialogue do? It
always justifies itself, no matter what. We replay things, events, what we
could have said or could have done what we feel or don’t feel. The emphasis is
always on “me.” We’re constantly spouting this mantra—”me... me .me”—silently
or verbally.
A B E: So, an opening emerges when.
Florinda. D: When that dialogue shuts off. Automatically. We don’t have
to do anything. And the reason people reject Castaneda as not true is because
it’s too simple. But its sheer simplicity makes it the hardest thing there is
to do. There are about six people in our world engaged in the same / pursuit.
And the difficulty we all have is in totally shutting off that internal
dialogue. It’s fine if we’re not threatened. But when certain buttons are
pushed, our reactions are so ingrained in its that it’s so easy to fall back
on automatic pilot. You see, there’s one great exercise that don Juan
prescribes—the idea of recapitulation. The idea is that you recapitulate your
life, basically. But it’s not a psychological recapitulation. You want to
bring back to yourself the energy you left in all the interactions you’ve had
with people throughout your life. You start from the present moment and you go
backwards in time. But if you really do a good recapitulation, you discover,
by the time you are three or four years old, that you have learned all your
reactions already. Then we become more sophisticated, we can hide them better.
But basically the pattern has already been established of how we’re going to
interact with the world and with our fellow human beings.
A B E: So the human being travels the path of the “Tonal,” or the world of the
social person. But this other world, this other opening, is something that has
apparently always been there.
Florinda. D: Yes, it’s always there. Nobody really wants to tap into it,
or people think they want to tap into it, but as don Juan pointed out, the
seeker is usually involved in something false, because a person who seeks
already knows what he’s seeking. The disappointment that so many people who
are “seekers” have with Castaneda is they have already made up their mind how
things should be. So they’re not open.
A B E: My version of that is that I’m interested in self-realization, not self
improvement. I’m not concerned with whether or not what I turn out to be
in the process of realization is something nice and spiritual and acceptable,
because it’s going to contain elements of madness as well as everything else.
Florinda. D: Exactly. -
A B E: But this is a very deeply disturbing idea for most people.
Florinda. D: It is, definitely. You see, we believe in this idea that
we are basically energetic beings. Don Juan said everything hinges on how much
energy we have. Even to fight the idea f the self requires an enormous amount
of energy. And we move always to the easiest path. We go back to what we know,
even we who have been involved in this for so long. It would be a lot easier
just to say, “Oh, to hell with it, I’m just going to indulge a little bit.”
But the thing is, that little bit of indulging would plunge you right back to
point zero again.
A B E: Except for one thing that we both know, Florinda, which is this: that
once you pass a certain point within yourself, if you have reached that
silence, I believe, even for one moment, if it’s real...
Florinda. D: . . . you can’t stop it. Exactly. But to reach this moment
of silence you need the energy. You can reach what don Juan calls this
momentary pause, this cubic centimeter of chance, and you can “stop the world”
immediately. If a critical mass of people could arrive at that feeling or at
that knowledge, we could really change things in the world. The reason nothing
can change is because we’re not willing to change ourselves, whether because
of our attachment to political dogma, economic or social issues, whatever.
What the hell is the whole thing with the rain forest and the environment at
the moment? flow can we expect someone to change if we’re not willing to
change ourselves? The change is phony; it is a restructuring or replaying of
the pieces. Basically we are predatory beings, you see. That hasn’t changed in
us. We could use that predatory energy to alter our course, but we’re not
willing to change ourselves.
A B E: Now, in the myth, the individual seer and/or Nagual is selected by
providence, the unknown, the ineffable.
Florinda. D : Yes. Carlos has been “tapped” energetically. In terms of
energetic configuration some people are energetically different. They call
Carlos a three-pronged Nagual; don Juan was a four-pronged Nagual. So what
does that really entail? Basically, they have more energy than the rest of the
group, and that’s something very curious. Why the hell him, or why, for
instance, are always the men Naguals? We have women Naguals in the lineage,
but the men have more energy, the ones that have been selected so far at
least. They’re not better. There were people in don Juan’s world who were
infinitely more spiritual, better prepared, men of greater knowledge, it
didn’t make any difference. It is not that Carlos is more or less than
somebody else. It’s just that he has that energy to lead.
A B E: And he can give of that energy, too, give somebody a boost.
Florinda. D: We draw from that energy, yes. But it is more that he has
the energy, if nothing else, not to become what the world presents. For
instance,—the worldly goodies that have been presented to Castaneda are
unbelievable. But he has never wavered from his path. If I had been put in
that position for that many years, I could not honestly say that I would have
been so impeccable. And you see, for that you need energy. That’s when you
need whoever is then the leader of the group to point out that way. If
somebody else who didn’t have the energy had been the Nagual, he would have
succumbed.
A B E: Can a Nagual succumb and then recover?
Florinda. D: No. There is no chance.
ABE: Why is that?
Florinda. D: Go back to the myth. The Eagle flies in a straight line. It
doesn’t turn around.
A B E: So, the Nagual works in different ways to fulfill the unfolding of the
myth.
Florinda. D: Don Juan had more people behind him. Energetically he had a
larger mass, so he could practically pluck you out and put you someplace.
Carlos will not do that. For him, whoever he is working with— there are six of
us—it’s a matter of decision. That’s all. Our decision is all that counts,
nothing else; He will not cajole us; he will not beg; he will not
tell us what to do. We have to know. Having been exposed to this for so long,
having been with don Juan, any way that we can try to walk on this path has to
be enough for him.
A B E: Different Naguals work in different ways. I’ve heard Castaneda
described as the Nagual of stalkers.
Florinda. D: Yes, but I would say... I don’t know.., he’s a dreamer.
A B E: Yes, that emerges, too. Could you talk about dreaming?
Florinda. D: What is this idea of dreaming, dreaming and being awake?
It’s a different state. It’s not that you’re zonked out. No, you are totally
normal and coherent, but something in you plays energetically on a different
level.
A B E: There is something in your eyes, too, something in your eyes that is able
to learn to look at two worlds simultaneously.
Florinda. D: Exactly. And again the idea is that you have collapsed the
barrier of perception. Whatever we perceive has been defined for us by the
social order. Intellectually we are willing to accept that perception is
culturally defined, but we will not accept it on any other level. But it’s
absurd, because it exists on another level. And I can only say, because I’ve
been involved with these people—and certainly I’m also in the world—that it is
possible to see on those two levels, and to be totally coherent and impeccable
in
A B E: In the book Being-in-Dreaming you talk about how women are actually
enslaved by their attachment to the sexuality of men.
Florinda. D: Definitely. First of all, to me, one of the most shocking
things which I denied and refused to believe for quite some time was this idea
of the fog created by sexual intercourse. They went even further to explain
that basically what goes on is that when we have sexual intercourse, when the
male ejaculates, not only do we get the semen, but in that moment of energetic
outburst, what really happens is that what don Juan calls ‘ worms” or
filaments are passed into the woman. And those filaments stay in the body for
a long time. From a biological point of view, those filaments ensure that the
male returns to the same female and takes
care of the offspring. The male will, at a totally energetic level, recognize
that it is his offspring by their filaments.
A B E: What is the exchange of energy in sexual intercourse?
Florinda. D: She feeds the man energetically. Don Juan believes that
women are the cornerstone for perpetuating the human species. The bulk of that
energy comes from the woman, not only to gestate, to give birth, and nourish
her offspring, but also to ensure the male’s place in the whole process.
A B E: So, the woman is enslaved, then, by this fog. How does she release
herself?
Florinda. D: If we talk about it from a biological point of view, is she
enslaved? The sorcerers say yes, in the sense that she always views herself
through the male. She has no option. I used to be excruciatingly mad about this
whole discussion. I used to go over and over it with them, especially because
this was in the early seventies when the women’s movement was at its peak. And
I said, “No, women have come a long way. Look at what they have accomplished,”
and they said, “No, they haven’t accomplished anything.” They said that for
women to be liberated sexually, in a way, enslaved them even more, because
suddenly they were feeding energetically not just one male, but many males
They were not prudes, and they were not interested in morality. They were only
interested in energy.
A B E : That’s interesting..
Florinda. D: So, for them, it was absurd, and don Juan foresaw in the
seventies what is happening now. He said that women were going to dive down on
their noses, were going to be weakened. And they are. The few women I’ve
talked to at my lectures and during the writing of my books agree. I thought I
would have a great deal of difficulty with this subject, but especially women
who have gone through the process of having multiple lovers said they were
exhausted arid they didn’t know why.
A B E: So we are talking about something beyond the sexual.
Florinda. D: Beyond the sexual aspect, the female womb ensures that the
woman is the one who is closest to the spirit in this process of approaching
knowledge “being-in-dreaming.” The man cones upward, and by the sheer
definition of the cone, it comes to a finite end. He strives because he is not
close to the spirit, or whatever we want to call that great energetic force
out there. According to the sorcerers, the woman is exactly the opposite. The
cone is upside down. They have a direct link with it because the womb for the
sorcerer is not just an organ of reproduction; it is an organ for dreams, a
second brain.
ABE: Or heart.
Florinda. D: Or heart. And it does apprehend knowledge directly. Yet We
have never been allowed to define what knowledge is in our society or in any
society. And when women do create or help to formulate a body of knowledge, it
has to be done in male terms. Let’s say a woman does research. If she does not
abide by the rules already established by the male consensus, she won’t be
published. She can deviate slightly, but always within that same matrix. It is
not allowed for women to do anything else.
A B E: So the sorceress is removed from the hypnotism of all of that.
Florinda. D: On the social level, yes. It’s very interesting that you
mention the idea of hypnotism, because don Juan always said that when
psychology produced Mesmer and Freud we were too passive. We are mesmeric
beings. We never really developed that other path.
A B E: Yes. The path of energy.
Florinda. D: And this would never have happened to us if Freud hadn’t
attained the upper hand.
A B E: Well, he’s lost it now.
Florinda. D: No, not really, because who knows how many generations it
takes to change something so deeply ingrained? He may be discredited
intellectually, but people who don’t even know who Freud is still talk in
those terms. It’s part of our language, our culture.
A B E: Yes, I know. It’s very frustrating dealing with people who approach
the whole of reality from this hackneyed psychological viewpoint.
Florinda. D: Yes. And they don’t even know where it comes from. It’s
part of our cultural baggage.
A B E: So the sorceress is freed from this condition.
Florinda. D: Well, free in the sense that once you see that the social
order really is an agreement, then at least you are more cautious in accepting
it. People say, “Oh, but look how different life is from your grandmother’s or
mother’s time.” I say that it’s not. It’s only different in degree. But
nothing is fundamentally different. If I would have lived my life the way it
had been established for me—yes, I was more educated, I had a better chance—I
still would have ended up the same way many do: married, frustrated, with
children that by now I would probably hate, or who would hate me.
A B E: What occurs now that you’ve realized that there is that thralldom and
you begin to free yourself from it? What is it that opens up to perception?
Florinda. D: Everything. First of all, in your dreams you can “see.” For
instance, my work is done in dreaming.
A B E : Now you’re using the word dreaming in a very specific sense as
understood in this tradition. Can you talk about what dreaming actually is?
Florinda. D: In the traditional sense, when we fall asleep, as soon as we
start entering a dream, in that moment when we’re half awake and half asleep,
we know from Castaneda’s work that the assemblage point flutters, it starts
shifting, and what the sorcerer wants to do is that he wants to use that
natural shift to move into other realms. And for that we need an exquisite
energy. We need an extraordinary amount of energy because we want to be
conscious of that moment and use it without waking up.
A B E: Yes, a very high accomplishment.
Florinda. D: For me, it’s very easy to enter, to use it. The thing is, I
had no control at that time—although I have now—over when it was going to
happen. But I could enter into this state of what they would call the “second
attention” or “dreaming awake.” And you can reach different levels. What
happens is that in that dreaming state eventually you have the same control
you have in your daily life. And that’s exactly what the sorcerers do.
A B E:
So you are now able to exist in another reality?
Florinda. D: Well, I don’t really know. You see, we don’t have the
language to talk about it, except in known terms. So in a weird way, when I
ask myself, Do I exist in another reality? I have to say yes and no, because
it is all one reality, there is no difference. Let’s say there are different
layers, like an onion. But it’s all the same. So how am I going to talk about
it? In metaphors? Our metaphors are already so defined by what we already
know.
A B E: Yes, the problem of language.
Florinda. D: But it is as real as any other reality. What is reality? It
is, again, a consensus, and it all hinges on energy.
A B E: That’s right. But it also hinges on something called “Intent.”
Florinda. D: Exactly. “Intent” is out there, it’s this force. Don Juan
was not interested in religion, but in a weird way maybe “Intent” is exactly
what we call God, the supreme being, the one force, the Spirit. You see, each
culture knows what it is. Don Juan said you don’t beg for it, you ask. And in
order to ask for it, you need energy. Not only do you need energy to hook
yourself onto it, but you want to stay hooked.
A B E: This idea of “Intent” is easy to talk about, but it’s actually quite a
complex operation, isn’t it?
Florinda. D: Yes, exactly, very complex. For don Juan and his people,
sorcery is an abstraction, and it is based on this idea of expanding the
limits
of perception. For them, our choices in life are limited by the social order.
We have boundless options, but by accepting these choices, of course, we set
a limit to our limitless possibilities.
A B E : And yet the human being seems...
Florinda. D: * . . . constantly to be searching for that which has been
lost or caged in by the social order. They put blinds on us the’ moment we are
born. Look at the way we coerce the child to perceive the way we perceive.
A B E: Yes, the transmission of culture.
Florinda. D: It’s the most perfect example. Children truly perceive
more, obviously, a great deal more. But they have to make some order out of
that chaos, and we, of course, are the perennial teachers of what is proper to
perceive within our group. And if they don’t abide by that, my god, we shoot
them with drugs, or lock them up in therapy with psychiatrists.
A B E: There have been these traditions, which have existed for a long, long
time, and now in the last twenty or thirty years in particular we start to
hear about them. Why did Castaneda write his books?
Florinda. D: Writing those books was a sorceric task that don Juan
impressed upon him. For our mentality as the Western ape, as don Juan always
called us, we have to be hooked first intellectually, because that’s how our
whole being works.
A B E: So, the knowledge is made available to millions of people, and people
become hooked by it. And does that mean that the tradition has now begun to
proliferate itself in that way, also?
Florinda. D: I don’t know. If I go by Castaneda’s mail, which he doesn’t
read, I would say yes. But I open letters from time to time, and they’re mad,
they’re crackpots most of them. Some of them are very, very serious
inquiries,, but most of them are just truly cracked people. [ Like, “I am the
new Nagual,” or “I have been visited by you in dreams.”
A B E: Well, there are many levels to that, as you know. But I think that the
whole Castaneda reality has actually affected the mass collective
consciousness of, particularly, North America.
Florinda. D: It is as you say. The work is out there. There’s a great
many people reading it. And some people are truly very serious about it.
A B E: Some of them are people who are non-Natives who have become involved in
Native spirituality. And in a way, the work that has come from your group has
had a tremendous quickening effect on Native spiritualities all over this
continent, who have found a track back into their traditions.
Florinda. D: You see, the whole point of don Juan was that you don’t go
back, because we get caught again in the myth and the rituals. Don Juan said
that originally a ritual is only to hook your attention. Once your attention
is hooked, you drop it. As the apes that we are, we of course are very
comforted by the ritual. People that truly transcend a certain knowledge do it
by exactly getting out of it. Yet the rest of the mass is mesmerized by the
ritual.
A B E: Castaneda describes you as the new seers. What does this mean for you?
Florinda. D: The new seers? For the women, it is very important, this
idea that the womb is not just an organ of reproduction. In order to activate
this, our intent has to be different. In order to change our intent, we go
back again to energy. You see, we don’t really know what it means to use the
womb as an organ for being, an organ -of light, of intuition. For us,
intuition really is something that has already been defined. There is no real
intuition anymore because we intuit with our brains. Don Juan was interested
in
- women, and people always ask, “How come there’s always so many women? Do you
have orgies?” He said, “No, it’s because the male doesn’t have the womb.
He needs that magical “womb power” [ It’s very important, you see.
A B E: Let me ask some technical questions there, if I may, on behalf of our
female readers. Does the womb have to be fully functioning? I mean, if a woman
had her tubes tied, would her womb still work?
Florinda. D: Yes, as long as she doesn’t have a hysterectomy.
A B E: So long as the womb isn’t removed.
Florinda. D: Yes. The only thing is you need to summon that intent. I
was talking to some women a month ago, and they were all in goddess groups.
Every month they go into the forest; they go up to Sequoia or someplace and
they groove in the forest, among the trees, and oh, they have a great time
hanging out, debating making rituals in the river. And I said to them, “But
what the fuck are you doing? You go back home, and then you are the same
assholes you were before. You open your legs whenever the master says, ‘I need
you.’” And they were shocked. I mean, they quite disliked me because they
don’t like to hear that. They said, “But we felt so good for three days.”
And I said, “What’s the point of feeling good for three days if your life
continues the same way?” What are we resting from? Why don’t we change? The
idea of these rituals and even going back to the Native beliefs—well, it
didn’t even work back then, on one level. We were conquered.
A B E: So it’s something that has to live now in a completely authentic way.
Florinda. D: It has to be fluid, and the practitioner has to be fluid to
accept these changes. Even within us, things are changing constantly, and
we’re so comfortable in a certain groove until something blasts us out of it.
And we resent it. But we have to be fluid, and only energy will give us that
fluidity.
A B E: How do you accumulate energy?
Florinda. D: To start off with, at least at the beginning, it was don
Juan’s idea that the best energy that we have is our sexual energy. It’s the
only energy that we really have, and most of our sexual energy is squandered.
A B E: Is it the same for men and women both?
Florinda. D: Of course it’s the same for men and women. The only
difference is that with women you see that energetically the woman takes on
the burden of feeding the man through her energetic filaments. So, in that
sense, it’s worse for women, and for the man, too, because the man is hooked.
Energetically he is hooked, no matter what. And we have all kinds of
psychological explanations for this to do with the people we’ve had affairs
with, or our obsession with certain relationships, or whatever. You see, we
have this gray barrage of psychological description, but what really is going
on is on a totally different level, a level that we don’t want to talk about
because it’s not part of our cultural kit.
A B E: So the primary way of accumulating energy is to be celibate?
Florinda. D: Well, it’s very difficult, but it would be a good start.
A B E: If a person was called to this path, that is if they got “hooked,” how
would they know that they had been hooked by a tradition and not just by some
damn obsession?
Florinda. D: You will know that something has changed because you
will feel it energetically. And you know that you are not part of the social
agreement. You see, if you let something go, something in you will know.
A B E: These books that you and others have written are affecting a change
in the way people perceive themselves.
Florinda. D: Yes. Basically the goal is realizing how we perceive the
world and ourselves, and breaking those parameters of perception. But we don’t
want to focus on the “I.” We want to be a witness. Because everything
in our society is filtered through the “I,” through the ‘me,” we are incapable
( of telling a story or recounting an event without making ourselves the main
protagonist. You see, don Juan was interested in letting the event unfold
itself, and then it becomes infinitely richer, because then it opens up. And I
even in the world, as an exercise, just become a witness. Stop being the
protagonist and it’s amazing what opens up.
A B E: Now, on this long path, one of the things that’s described in the
Castaneda literature is that the person, the seer and the Nagual, everybody,
will reach a period of despondency, where they’re sure it’s going to fail. And
the reason I
raise this is because I have a sense that this feeling is actually being
shared
by many people now.
Florinda. D: I’m going to add to your depression. [laughter] It is true.
Something in us knows, and that’s why there’s the urgency with don Juan.
The imperative from the point of view of Nature, is the perpetuation of the
species, and we are no longer interested. We are interested in evolution,
because evolution is an equal, if not a greater, imperative than procreation.
If we don’t evolve, if we don’t mutate into something different, we are truly
going to blast ourselves out of this planet, I think irredeemably. We have
destroyed our resources. Whether we have fifty or a hundred more years in a
terms of time, as a planet, is immaterial. It doesn’t really matter. We as a
species are doomed. And in that sense, evolution is our only way out. And as
don Juan stresses, evolution is in the hands of women, not of men.
A B E: So, as a male, what do I do? I just sit here and wait for women to
save the world?
Florinda. D: Yes and no. You see, the man has to relinquish his power, and
he’s not going to do it, not peacefully. I not saying that, you know,
you’re beating your chest, saying, “I will not relinquish my power!” No, it’s
much more insidious than that. For instance, here are these sensitive men who
have been in men’s groups, trying to come to terms with their spirituality,
and who have moved into a place of total agreement with their wives, or the
female they are with... but not quite. There are certain things they will not
relinquish because it’s too threatening. This whole idea of the men’s movement
originally started out as a truly spiritual movement. But something in the
male is threatened. There is this fear of relinquishing something that will
have to be relinquished for us as a species to go on. We certainly know that
the female has to be given time for something to evolve. For instance, for us
to become erect, when the vagina had to change position, well, who had to
adapt? The males. The penis had to grow larger. Well, the female again needs
time. And the male has to give her that time. From one point of view the male
has to give the female time for the womb to try to switch into its secondary
function. There have to be enough females who have that time so that something
will change in the womb. They have to dream a new possibility. Don Juan said
our evolution is Intent. You see, that leap from the large crawling reptiles
to flying creatures, this idea of wings, was intended. It was an act of
Intent.
A B E: That’s very interesting. So you feel that women all over the world
currently, sisterhoods of different kinds, are intending a new human future?
Florinda. D: They’re not aware of it although some women, I think, are.
A B E: And the man is now going to take a backseat in the evolution of the
species?
Florinda. D: Not a backseat, really. Again, those are words that suggest
a positive/negative kind of connotation. No. It’s more that you have to
provide the time.
A B E: How can the man do that? Talk about that functionally.
Florinda. D: You see, we women are relegated to the status of second
class citizens. No matter what power we attain, we still don’t have any real
power. We don’t decide anything. And even for us to talk in little groups is
almost like banging against a huge iron door, because whoever decides,
whoever’s in power, is not going to relinquish this for the hell of it. Do you
think for a moment those men in Washington or Ottawa are going to even listen
to what we’re saying? Not in the least. But some kinds of pockets have to be
found for something new to develop. Otherwise we’re doomed. And in terms of
this idea of saving the planet, the environment, well, all we are really
thinking is that we as a species will not survive. The Earth will certainly
survive; it might go into some kind of horrendous winter, but eventually it
will come out of it. But we as a species will not survive.
