The Teachings of Doña Juanita, Part 1

In the 1870's, following the Confederate defeat in the
U.S. Civil War, a large number of southerners migrated to
Brazil to start a new life in what they believed would be a
climate more congenial to their ways and customs. They came to be known as Confederados. Among them was Captain Donald Johnson Medley, his wife Sarah and their three children. The Medley family prospered in their adopted homeland and were soon operating a successful Amazonian plantation.

By the early 1960's Donald Johnson Medley's great-grandson
Juan, by this time thoroughly “Brazilianized” but, in the
family tradition still more than a bit rebellious, married
a native woman who still lived with her tribe deep in the
jungle. Juan brought his spirited new bride, who he had
nicknamed Tango, to live in the family plantation house in
spite of the protests of his brothers and sisters.

Juan and Tango soon had a son that they named Juan Tomas
in honor of her grandfather Tomas, who was the elder and
shaman of her tribe. Young Juan Tomas, half Indian-half
white Brazilian was treated as an outsider by everyone but
his mother and father from the beginning and retreated into
a sort of dreamy, solitary isolation.

To escape the pain of this rejection by Juan's community
and family, Tango frequently took little Juan Tomas on
trips into the jungle to visit her village and her grandfather.

Here, Juan Tomas was warmly welcomed, especially by his
grandfather who, as Tango looked on with a mixture of
gratification and foreboding, was shaping the boy into his
protege.

When Juan Tomas was ten years old his father and mother
were killed in a plane crash. Unable to bear the grief of
their loss and the cruel treatment he received at the hands
of his aunts and uncles, who wanted to "give him the
opportunity" of moving back to the U.S. with a relative, a
poor farmer and sometime preacher who lived in rural
Mississippi that they were paying to take him off their
hands, Juan Tomas ran away to Tango's village.

There, his grandfather took him under his wing and taught
him many things. There, he also discovered his
homosexuality, which far from making him an outcast,
instead served to intensify his strangeness, and validate
the perception by the tribe that he was indeed a blossoming
shaman. His grandfather, however, had other ideas.
He told the boy that he would teach him most of what he
knew but then told him that he must leave the jungle and
enter the modern world to complete his education and return
to the tribe with this knowledge. No other member of the
tribe was in a position to do this...because of his family
ties to the U.S., he was.

Reluctantly, Juan Tomas went back to the plantation
and was shipped off to Mississippi.

Juan Tomas' great-great-grandfather's brother's grandson,
Rev. Jack Medley, worked a farm near Medusa Mississippi on
the Gulf Coast near the Louisiana border, and was also a
part time Evangelist, who, at the time of Juan Tomas'
arrival, still conducted tent meetings and healings in the
hopes of attracting enough attention to get his own local
TV show. Juan Tomas, as well as the money he was being paid
to take the boy in, seemed a godsend. Exotic, sensitive,
talented and young (Juan Tomas was twelve at the time), the
strange boy who spoke broken English with a combination
Portuguese-southern accent could be his star attraction in
the tent. Jack Medley had no knowledge of Juan Tomas
apprenticeship with his grandfather, or that the boy
actually was a healer. Jack Medley just wanted to make Juan
Tomas into the next TV Mega-Church phenomenon.

Rev. Medley had Juan Tomas ordained and put him on the
stage. Things went extremely well for a time and in less
than a year Juan Tomas was on television. But not for long.
Evangelical faith healers in south Mississippi are not
supposed to be homosexual.

Juan Tomas ran away to San Francisco where he was soon
taken in by a middle aged eccentric anthropology professor
who became his lover and mentor. He yearned to return to
the jungle but his new teacher convinced him that it was
not yet time...his transformation and education in the
ways of the modern, now post-modern, world was not
complete Also, the professor recognized that Juan Tomas had
learned well from his grandfather.

For the next few years Juan Tomas learned to play both
male and female roles with great skill and concluded that
the next step in his development was to begin the process
of transforming his body into that of a woman. But not
completely...the woman would still have a penis. The
professor encouraged and paid for this.

To acknowledge the many turns in the road that led
to the emergence of this new person, Juan Tomas and the
professor decided to name him/her Rev. Doña Juanita
Medusa.

Currently Rev. Doña Juanita Medusa is conducting a series
of seminars in what he/she calls Alchemical Conjuration Technique (A.C.T.) which involves identifying and manipulating the masks of reality which block human transformation, health, creativity and genuine playfulness and enjoyment of life

A short visit to the jungle is in the planning stages.

To be continued...

Reg. WGAw