The Shaman and the cotton cloth

Ven (green) the shaman sat in his hut and meditated on what the women of the village had told him about their inability to weave the cotton cloth from the new harvest. He had been searching for and finding answers for the people in the village where he was born, but also for the people in other surrounding villages.
His wisdom came not only from the long life with which the gods had blessed him but also from the fact that through his spiritual gift he entered into a deep trance, and the signs of the dream brought light to him in the difficulties that the people in the village faced.
This time the women had told him how the cotton cloth, once ready, turned into a soft warp whose thread was without hardness, and they had to stretch it again and give it the shape and strength it needed to be used in the fabric. He walked and saw with his own eyes how the woven fabric yesterday and this morning, had become a pile of fluffy cotton.
He had decided to make the women fast for a day and a night only with water from the spring with which they watered the small field where the cotton grew, so the spirit of the water, which fed the harvest, would be happy and could help them.
That evening, after the whole village had fallen asleep, the shaman lit a small fire in the altar from a few twigs of dried cotton, added dust from the bark of an old mango that the women used to dye the fabrics and some flowers from a lime. , which had just blossomed on the edge of the village near the spring. In a short time a fragrant smoke spread inside the hut, and the old man fell into a deep sleep.
He could see in a clear dream how the smoke from the altar slipped through the doorway and made its way to another hut at the other end of the village.
The next morning the shaman went to see what path his spirit had shown him. In that house lived a man who was famous for having the strength of a buffalo, and who always helped where his strength was needed. In front of the house, his wife was preparing a stew in a pot that would be their food for the day. The old man approaches, greets her and asks her what she is doing there. Surprised by the man's presence and question, the woman answers that she makes a special soup, which her husband eats before leaving for hard work. That soup gave him strength and resilience all day and was a stew of rice flour and corn flour in which at the end she added a few lime leaves. The old man left and thought what would be the meaning of these events. He stopped at the Karbah Saut (silk touch), the oldest of the weavers, and told her what his spirit had shown him in his sleep and what he had learned in the morning. The woman immediately understood that if they wanted a strong thread, which would be straight and could be woven into a sturdy cloth, they would have to make the stew, which fed the strongest peasant in their village.
They boiled rice flour with corn flour, added lime leaf to bring to their work the spirit that had shown them the way, strained it, boiled the cotton thread, dried it and then wove the cloth or gave it in exchange for cereals or herbs to other peasants in remote villages. The original methods that cloth weavers invented and used over time are still present in many regions of the world, today.
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