During training, the body seems to weigh more than twice as much. The tendons stiffen. A heat zone forms like a crown around the top of the head. Movements become sluggish. Sweat trickles down the temples. It lines the curves of the face. A single drop falls into his eye, causing it to sting.
Its sour smell enters the nostrils. It causes a lump in the throat. The airways seem too small for all the hot air climbing up the windpipe. The lungs let out a loud snore. It's the body overcome by physical and mental fatigue. It pleads for mercy. However, it must be tensed.
The comfort zone is no longer a home to live in. Conflict is precipitating in the atmosphere. Peace is the time when men prepare for war. Those who understood this were prepared when she knocked on the door with her red cloak. They had to be vigilant on Chrome Hill, because war was coming.
After three days of training, Akachi could no longer think. During the day, he joined his Guardian Ori and his mediumistic master. At night, he helped Okafor in his store to pay for the damage to the hydro buggy. In those days, he had overcome the fatigue of a lifetime. Fenyang and Yasini's training regime was intense.
They demanded strict discipline from him. There was no time to lose. Yasini was aware of the challenges and tried to overcome them. There was a problem of rhythm in the spiritual synchronization between the medium and the Ori Guardian. To meet this need, he authorized the use of percussive music during the maculelê training sessions.
Akachi thought the whole thing was a waste of time. He didn't understand how dancing with two sticks and listening to music under the hot sun would help him become a medium. He declared his concern to his master during a break.
"Master Yasini, until now I haven't understood the relationship between maculelê and mediumship. Shouldn't we be doing more spiritual training?"
"Akachi, you're amnesiac. Ancestral worship depends on memory. To not possess it is to disconnect from ancestry. It's like a tree whose roots have no contact with the ground. How can it nourish itself? So is man without memory. In order to strengthen the spirit of our ancestors, it is essential to know their history and their names. Only those who look to the past can see the future. To keep this link active, mnemonic techniques, or forms of memorization, have been created. They are all practiced orally. The word in ancestral cults is the means of communication between forces, between worlds. Through the word, song and rhyme, poetry and narrative were born. Each serves a different purpose."
Fenyang was curious. He had never heard a medium speak with such authority on the subject.
"And what are they?"
"The Adurá are songs addressed to the Entities, the fourteen divinized ancestors. Seven men and seven women who heeded the precepts of the Greatest Creator, the Lord of Heaven and Earth, the divinity Fante Obatayie. It is said that when an Adurá is recited with great power, if specific conditions are met, it can materialize an Entity in our world. Oriki, the praise of the ancestor, which allows his spirit to be fixed in the medium's body. Ofó, the incantation that allows reality to be transformed. The Ìtan, the stories of our ancestors from the seven primordial couples."
Akachi put both hands on his head. Yasini was talking about things that were very complex for him.
"The more you talk, the less I understand."
"That's because you're dumb, kid!"
Zuber never missed an opportunity to humiliate Akachi. It was his way of showing himself superior. He marked his so-called distinction by the way he treated the boy.
"Don't say that, my grumpy Ori Guardian. We weren't born with this knowledge, so we have to remember it every generation, Zuber."
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Yasini asked Akachi to close his eyes. The medium asked him to imagine a network of electrical energy wires, distributed inside his body. A circuit like the blood circulation that vivifies the body. It allowed the Axé to circulate through all his limbs, organs and tissues.
Axé circulated from left to right, and from right to left. Two forms of current, one ascending and the other descending, circulated from the top of the head to the soles of the feet. One was strong, the other weak. One was positive, the other negative. This is the force that operates and is present in the divine world, the natural world and the spiritual world.
The Axé that the medium uses to anchor the Ori Guardian in their body is the union of natural and spiritual force. It manifests itself as an electromagnetic energy which, when channeled properly, has two basic properties.
To make this even clearer, Yasini scratched two lines on the ground with her javelin. One vertical, the other horizontal. This formed four quadrants.
ATTRACTION
REPULSION
PROPAGATION
CONCENTRATION
"At the top, there are two magnetic properties that meet the criteria of negative and positive poles. They are in the first quadrant at the top right, and in the second quadrant at the top left. Below, there are two electrical properties. One in the lower right third quadrant, and the other in the lower left fourth quadrant. The mediumistic profile is based on the configuration of these properties. Each medium develops these properties unevenly and in combination. This enables them to create different ways of acting."
"What if someone develops only one, or none, Master Yasini?"
"That's impossible, Akachi. Every medium develops both properties, but each one will have a different affinity. One will develop more than the other. It will depend a lot on the level of the medium, the way they train, even their long-term experience. Now, look."
Yasini made a basic diagram to show how it worked. He wrote a table with two columns and four rows. He wrote some words in the cells of the table.
DOMINANT FUNCTION
Attraction
AUXILIARY FUNCTION
Propagation
TERTIARY FUNCTION
Repulsion
LOWER FUNCTION
Concentration
"The Dominant Function is the one we develop the most throughout our lives, and the one we use the most. The Auxiliary Function acts in conjunction with the Dominant Function, maintaining the balance between the magnetic and electrical force of the Axé. The last two are the least developed by the medium. They have a compensatory and harmonious character in the individual."
"I noticed that you organized the diagram by taking turns with the magnetic and electrical properties of the Axé."
"Well observed, Akachi. When we develop a property axis, be it magnetic or electrical, we automatically place one in the first function and the other in the third function. One property is in the second function and another in the fourth function. If an individual's mediumistic profile was based on the Magnetic Property as the Dominant Function and the Auxiliary Function, they would collapse. Axé is a potential and intelligent energy, it doesn't contradict itself."
"Wow, and how can I tell what my mediumistic profile is?"
"It's too early to tell. If you continue to develop your Axé emission, you'll expand your knowledge of ancestral worship and the mediumistic arts."
"But before that, you'll have to learn maculelê. If you improve in training, we'll let you take the test."
"I agree with Fenyang. Don't be anxious, it could get in the way of your training. All in good time, Akachi."
The boy tried to connect all this new information, to no avail. Fenyang and Yasini had told him that he had no links with his ancestors because he had lost his memory. He thought that was unfair. He had Axé like everyone else, so why couldn't he be a medium like Yasini?
The maculelê training would strengthen his body, mind and spirit. His spiritual synchrony with Fenyang had improved, but he was far from realizing a Firmness. Martial art would artificialize spiritual synchrony with someone outside the amnesiac boy's ancestry. There was something in that question that hadn't been explained to him.
The break ended, and everyone returned to training with more intensity. Akachi was very curious to know what his mediumistic profile was. He would have to work hard to get that information. Yasini wouldn't give it to him for free.