Chiasm is a complex phenomena (plural intended). It can be a person, place, event (including speech and music events), or performative (Austin 1975), as well as performed or enacted, or it can simply exist in situ. For example, powerful singers of ceremonies and powerful medicine people can be, and are, chiasms at Mescalero. Similarly, caves, owls, visions, and the girls’ puberty ceremonial are also chiasms, as are a host of other things.
When a chiasm is perceived, people are able to see simultaneously that which is before them, its structure, alternatives to it, and what it potentiates. People see this present lived reality (what we usually call the everyday), the special event or person before them, the relationship of lived reality to That Which Is and That Who Sustains All, as well as potential reorderings or rearrangements of the present lived reality. A chiasm is a moment or an eternity of seeing through and beyond the lived present. It is through the opening of a chiasm that people understand the mythic present: understand, for example, that the Warrior Twins truly are not dead nor gone beyond reach, but that they exist here, now, within, without, next to, behind, in front of, above, and below. People understand why one does not say their real names unless one is calling them into immediate presence. Chiasms are powerful. And, usually, only the powerful dare enter them, have the courage to experience them on an equal footing, for one risks obliteration from too much knowledge, too much power, too much seeing, too much knowing, just as one risks obliteration from the seduction of having the ability to know beyond and to see into and around with a measure of understanding. People’s proper place is in this present lived reality existing with the mythic present in the lived present; people’s proper place is not forever in a chiasm. All singers know this; they know the risks involved in probing chiasms. But not all singers of ceremonies are equally gifted. Only some singers also know how to create chiasms for their people and how to lead their conjoint visions and how to conduct the group and individual journeys to and from chiasms.
I believe that people in all cultures experience chiasms, although not all cultures validate chiastic experiences. Regardless of cultural validation or the lack of it, it is helpful in understanding when I consider the “berdache” phenomenon in conjunction with the theoretical construct of chiasm. The one who opens and closes chiasms, the one who presents alternatives and potentialities to others, the one who sees both as it is and as it can be, the one who enters and leaves alternative reality at will, the one who understands how the mythic present and lived present are truly the same; that one is a person of enormous power. That is one who can instruct another—even a white woman—how to attend properly to the messages of the wind. Such a person can create the stage on which another is both audience and actor while also knowing what was in the head of the playwright and the motivations leading to the play—not only in the drama of the lived present but also in the construction of the drama and its relationship with the mythic present and with all that is, was, will be, or may be. The multigendered person, at least at Mescalero, is living a chiasm permanently in that such a person is said to “see two ways,” meaning to be able to comprehend and structure the world in both male and female ways simultaneously.