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The Hermit Crab and the Scarab Beetle

The spinal cord is the central column of this house. The house has many floors, and a spiral staircase, see? Some night, in the heat of the sun, comes something down one of the stairs, and the moonlight pulls up something from the earth and it goes up the other stairs.

The central column is hollow and it's flexible. It sways back and forth when the wind comes. Inside the column, inside the hollowness of the column, there are creatures of the earth that crawl inside, and they move up. For the most part, there are a lot of black ants going up and beetles carrying dung. These creatures are moving up the central column while the staircases, both of them, are passing down sunlight and moving up the moonlight.

On the top floor, something strange happens. In an ancient initiation of the dreaming, you're given a hermit crab, and your companion, your partner, is given a beetle, a scarab. And you must take them up to the top floor of this house. And in the top floor of this house there is a bed made of sand, and in this sand, these two unlikely animals must mate and become one.

From the Toltec tradition, the hermit crab and the dung beetle are equivalent animals. One is of the desert and the other one is of the ocean. For the Toltecs, the ocean and the desert are one and the same thing. They're just two different ways of looking at the immensity of the ocean. But in this world, they seem to be opposites. When you take them upstairs to the sands that live on the top of this house, they become one. There is a problem, however. When you begin to walk up the stairs, every time the two spiral staircases cross paths, the animal you're carrying becomes heavier. So when you're walking up, you're carrying the hermit crab in a bag of water, because it needs water to survive. But the higher you go, the hotter the water becomes. If it gets too hot, you're going to boil the hermit crab. So we cannot go too fast. If it boils before you get to the top, it dies, ok?

On the other hand, your companion is carrying the beetle, and the beetle is getting heavier and heavier as they go. So if they go too slow, it's going to get way too heavy and then they?re going to be unable to move. It's going to get so heavy it's going to break down the container, make hole in it, then fall all the way to the ground. If it falls all the way to the ground then they cannot carry it to the top. It is very difficult to carry both at the same time, and then put them together in this bed of sand at the top of the stairs. You have to try it many times. You have to find the right rhythm you both must walk so that you make the crossing at the right time. Never drop the beetle too soon and never boil the hermit crab. Never heat it up too much. Heat it up gently and slowly. This was an old initiation that was given to all the dreamers in the Toltec tradition.

Now, if you successfully brought them upstairs, you came to a room. In this room you would see the moon going up; it's in the horizon. It's always to your left, and it's coming up and at first it's huge and red, a blood moon, and then it becomes yellow and then pure white. On the other horizon there's the sun. In this room, because it's very high up, it receives the light from both?the burning, blazing sun and the light of the moon. Together they descend on you and on the scarab and on the hermit crab. That's when you see, under that light, both together mating. You see a different kind of animal whose shape and color I cannot talk about.

Koyote the Blind

Koyote the Blind is an Hablador (Master Storyteller) in the 9th century Toltec tradition. He is also the one responsible for bringing the Aka Dua to the public in the Western Hemisphere. The Tequihua Foundation has attempted to assist him in that aim.

The Hermit Crab and the Scarab Beetle is excerpted from the forthcoming booklet Dew Drops by Koyote the Blind.

www.tequihuafoundation.org