Who Is Koyote?

Koyote was not born. He just became a possibility.

One night, he got drunk. In the darkness before creation, he tumbled and threw himself into a burning furnace and all the game he had eaten and swallowed whole burned with him in a fiery maelstrom. He exploded, and each piece was writhing and screaming sacred names in agony.

The serpent fire swiftly moved around all other creatures that sprung from the explosion, trying to make a whole out of the chaos. The doves were looking to fly high into the expanses of Father Heaven, looking for a breath of air and the coolness of infinite darkness, the bosom of Nuit. The maggots and earth serpents were struggling to blend into the cool earth and stone, to escape Sister Death, the dark-cloaked huntress.

Death, the hunter who stalks the shaman, threw a net around him, woven from the primordial light and sound from which creation sprung. His consciousness, trapped in a field of light and energy, had lost all perspective. No past. No future. No identity. Not even madness to comfort him. He was nothing but pure, clear awareness of his demise.

To trick Death, he became the fire that consumed the beings. The fire spread through the net, taking the form of the net, becoming the net. Knowing that fire runs out if not fed, Death became Time.

As Grandfather Time, Death surrounded the shaman from all sides waiting for the fire to run out. The shaman became the empty space, the dark hole surrounded by the fiery net—untouched by the demise of the fire and untouched by time.

Death became Desire, bringing an end to the empty silence, destroying the eternal vacuity of space.

The shaman became an Indian. He sat in silence and equanimity. He made the fire of desire and life his core and surrounded it with the cold detachment of pure awarenes—having no qualities or characteristics.

The Indian sat, smoking his sacred smoke and singing the ancient songs.
Even if an earthquake shattered all creation, he would not react.

Death became Language, defining reality and trapping the things that were named.

The shaman became a Talker, a teller of stories. He used not the naming but the scenes around the naming to loosen the grip of Death upon the world. He told stories about himself to avoid the iron gripof the Death of the naming.

Death became Reason. It spread through the world denying the storytelling, making entertainment out of the Sacred Talk.

The shaman became Madness, scrambling words and realities, the mixing of words and symbols without reason.

Death became Reality, the assemblage point around which all talking, all naming, all seeing, and all comporting revolved. She became the Stone of Wisdom around whichboth sanity and insanity revolved.

The shaman became the Nahual, the scrambler of the assemblage point, the destroyer of the world.

Death became Eagle, the eternal Sun World, consuming all consciousness
so that no one could move beyond the point of assemblage.

The Nahual became Koyote, the trickster who moves, who talks,who scrambles what is.

Death became the Hunter, the eternal Stalker of consciousness.

Death became certain. Koyote became a possibility.