ABSTRACT
The opening notes from 2010 address another aspect of that cosmology; it takes one into the realm of evil and culturally recognized beings that not only have the power of transformation but can also cause harm to individuals. Such ideas are part of a spiritual landscape that entails mythological stories involving magical powers, beliefs about transformation into animal familiars, and a notion that one's soul can be dislocated from the physical body, instigating various kinds of illnesses. Alongside the public practice of Catholicism or Protestantism reside a transformed realm of indigenously inspired myth and a set of spiritual ideas connected to the action of cultural heroes, malevolent beings, and folk health beliefs. Perhaps the most intriguing of the beings in Amanalco's cosmological universe are the ahuakes, who are also more recently talked about in Spanish as duendes, or owners of the water sources.
