The first time don Juan talked to me at length about magical passes was when he made aderogatory comment about my weight. "You are way too chubby," hesaid, looking at me from head to toe and shaking his head in disapproval."You are one step from being fat. Wear and tear is beginning to show inyou. Like any other member of your race, you are developing a lump of fat onyour neck, like a bull. It's time that you take seriously one of the sorcerers'greatest findings: the magical passes."

"What magical passes are you talking about, don Juan?" Iasked. "You have never mentioned this topic to me before. Or, if you have,it must have been so lightly that I can't recall anything about it."

"Not only have I told you a great deal about magicalpasses," he said, "you know a great number of them already. I havebeen teaching them to you all along." As far as I was concerned, it wasn'ttrue that he had taught me any magical passes all along. I protested vehemently."Don't be so passionate about defending your wonderful self," hejoked, making a ridiculous gesture of apology with his eyebrows. "What Imeant to say is that you imitate everything I do, so I have been cashing in onyour imitation capacity. I have shown you various magical passes, all along,and you have always taken them to be my delight in cracking my joints. I likethe way you interpret them: cracking my joints! We are going to keep onreferring to them in that manner.

"I have shown you tendifferent ways of cracking my joints," he continued. "Each one ofthem is a magical pass that fits to perfection my body and yours. You could saythat those ten magical passes are in your line and mine. They belong to uspersonally and individually, as they belonged to other sorcerers who were just likethe two of us in the twenty-five generations that preceded us."

The magical passes don Juan was referring to, as he himself hadsaid, were ways in which I thought he cracked his joints. He used to move hisarms, legs, torso, and hips in specific ways, I thought, in order to create a maximumstretch of his muscles, bones, and ligaments. The result of these stretchingmovements, from my point of view, was a succession of cracking sounds which Ialways thought that he was producing for my amazement and amusement. He,indeed, had asked me time and time again to imitate him. In a challenging manner,he had even dared me to memorize the movements and repeat them at home until Icould get my joints to make cracking noises, just like his.

I had never succeeded in reproducing the sounds, yet I haddefinitely but unwittingly learned all the movements. I know now that notachieving that cracking sound was a blessing in disguise, because the musclesand tendons of the arms and back should never be stressed to that point. DonJuan was born with a facility to crack the joints of his arms and back, just assome people have the facility to crack their knuckles.

"How did the old sorcerers invent those magical passes, donJuan?" I asked.

"Nobody invented them," he said sternly. "To thinkthat they were invented implies instantly the intervention of the mind, andthis is not the case when it comes to those magical passes. They were, rather,discovered by the old shamans. I was told that it all began with theextraordinary sensation of well-being that those shamans experienced when theywere in shamanistic states of heightened awareness. They felt such tremendous, enthrallingvigor that they struggled to repeat it in their hours of vigil.

"Atfirst," don Juan explained to me once, " those shamans believed thatit was a mood of well-being that heightened awareness created in general. Soon,they found out that not all the states of shamanistic heightened awarenesswhich they entered produced in them the same sensation of well-being. A morecareful scrutiny revealed to them that whenever that sensation of well-beingoccurred, they had always been engaged in some specific kind of bodilymovement. They realized that while they were in states of heightened awareness,their bodies moved involuntarily in certain ways, and that those certain wayswere indeed the cause of that unusual sensation of physical and mentalplenitude."

Don Juanspeculated that it had always appeared to him that the movements that thebodies of those shamans executed automatically in heightened awareness were asort of hidden heritage of mankind, something that had been put in deep storage,to be revealed only to those who were looking for it. He portrayed those sorcerersas deep-sea divers, who without knowing it, reclaimed it.

Don Juan saidthat those sorcerers arduously began to piece together some of the movementsthey remembered. Their efforts paid off. They were capable of re-creatingmovements that had seemed to them to be automatic reactions of the body in astate of heightened awareness. Encouraged by their success, they were capableof re-creating hundreds of movements, which they performed without everattempting to classify them into an understandable scheme. Their idea was thatin heightened awareness, the movements happened spontaneously, and that therewas a force that guided their effect, without the intervention of theirvolition.

Don Juancommented that the nature of their findings always led him to believe that thesorcerers of ancient times were extraordinary people, because the movementsthat they discovered were never revealed in the same fashion to modem shamanswho also entered into heightened awareness. Perhaps this was because modemshamans had learned the movements beforehand, in some fashion or another, fromtheir predecessors, or perhaps because the sorcerers of ancient times had moreenergetic mass.

'What do youmean, don Juan, that they had more energetic mass?" I asked. 'Were theybigger men?" "I don't think they were physically any bigger," hesaid, "but energetically, they appeared to the eye of a seer as an oblongshape. They called themselves luminous eggs. I have never seen a luminous eggin my life. All I have seen are luminous balls. It is presumable, then, thatman has lost some energetic mass over the generations."

Don Juanexplained to me that to a seer, the universe is composed of an infinite numberof energy fields. They appear to the eye of the seer as luminous filaments thatshoot out every which way. Don Juan said that those filaments crisscrossthrough the luminous balls that human beings are, and that it was reasonable toassume that if human beings were once oblong shapes, like eggs, they were muchhigher than a ball.

Therefore,energy fields that touched human beings at the crown of the luminous egg are nolonger touching them now that they are luminous balls. Don Juan felt that thismeant to him a loss of energy mass, which seemed to have been crucial for thepurpose of reclaiming that hidden treasure: the magical passes.

"Why arethe passes of the old shamans called magical passes, don Juan?" I askedhim on one occasion. They are not just called magical passes," he said,"they are magical! They produce an effect that cannot be accounted for bymeans of ordinary explanations. These movements are not physical exercises ormere postures of the body; they are real attempts at reaching an optimal stateof being. "The ~c of the movements," he went on, "is a subtlechange that the practitioners experience on executing them. It is an ephemeralquality that the movement brings to their physical and mental states, a kind ofshine, a light in the eyes. This subtle change is a touch of the spirit. It isas if the practitioners, through the movements, reestablish an unused link withthe life force that sustains them."

He further explained that another reason that the movements arecalled magical passes is that by means of practicing them, shamans aretransported, in terms of perception, to other states of being in which they cansense the world in an indescribable manner. "Because of this quality,because of this magic," don Juan said to me, "the passes must bepracticed not as exercises, but as a way of beckoning power. "But can theybe taken as physical movements, although they have never been taken assuch?" I asked.

"You can practice them any way you wish," don Juanreplied. "The magical passes enhance awareness, regardless of how you takethem. The intelligent thing would be to take them as what they are: magicalpasses that on being practiced lead the practitioner to drop the mask ofsocialization."

"What is the mask of socialization?" I asked. "Theveneer that all of us defend and die for," he said. "The veneer weacquire in the world. The one that prevents us from reaching all our potential.The one that makes us believe we are immortal. The intent of thousands ofsorcerers permeates these movements. Executing them, even in a casual way,makes the mind come to a halt."

"What do you mean that they make the mind come to a halt?"I asked.  "Everything that we do inthe world," he said, "we recognize and identify by converting it intolines of similarity, lines of things that are strung together by purpose. Forexample, if I say to you fork, this immediately brings to your mind the idea ofspoon, knife, tablecloth, napkin, plate, cup and saucer, glass of wine, chili concame, banquet, birthday, fiesta. You could certainly go on naming things strungtogether by purpose, nearly forever. Everything we do is strung like this. Thestrange part for sorcerers is that they see that all these lines of affinity,all these lines of things strung together by purpose, are associated with man'sidea that things are unchangeable and forever, like the word of God."

"I don't see, don Juan, why you bring theword of God into this elucidation. What does the word of God have to do withwhat you are trying to explain?" "Everything!" he replied."It seems to be that in our minds, the entire universe is like the word ofGod: absolute and unchanging. This is the way we conduct ourselves. In thedepths of our minds, there is a checking device that doesn't permit us to stopto examine that the word of God, as we accept it and believe it to be, pertainsto a dead world. A live world, on the other hand, is in constant flux. Itmoves. It changes. It reverses itself.

"The most abstract reason why the magical passes of thesorcerers of my lineage are magical," he went on, "is that inpracticing them, the body of the practitioner realizes that everything, insteadof being an unbroken chain of objects that have affinity for each other, is acurrent, a flux. And if everything in the universe is a flux, a current, thatcurrent can be stopped. A dam can be put on it, and in this manner, its fluxcan be halted or deviated." Don Juan explained to me on one occasion theoverall effect that the practice of the magical passes had on the sorcerers ofhis lineage, and correlated this effect with what would happen to modempractitioners.

"The sorcerers of my lineage," he said, "were shockedhalf to death upon realizing that practicing their magical passes brought aboutthe halt of the otherwise uninterrupted flux of things. They constructed aseries of metaphors to describe this halt, and in their effort to explain it,or reconsider it, they flubbed it. They lapsed into ritual and ceremony. Theybegan to enact the act of halting the flux of things. They believed that if certainceremonies and rituals were focused on a definite aspect of their magicalpasses, the magical passes themselves would beckon a specific result. Verysoon, the number and complexity of their rituals and ceremonies became moreencumbering than the number of their magical passes.

"It is very important," he went on, "to focus theattention of the practitioner on some definite aspect of the magical passes.However, that fixation should be light, funny, void of morbidity and grimness.It should be done for the hell of it, without really expecting returns." Hegave the example of one of his cohorts, a sorcerer by the name of SilvioManuel, whose delight and predilection was to adapt the magical passes of thesorcerers of ancient times to the steps of his modem dancing. Don Juandescribed Silvio Manuel as a superb acrobat and dancer who actually danced themagical passes.

"The nagual Elias ," don Juan continued, "was themost prominent innovator of my lineage. He was the one who threw all the ritualout the window, so to speak, and practiced the magical passes exclusively for thepurpose for which they were originally used at one time in the remote past: forthe purpose of redeploying energy.

"The nagual Julian , who came after him," don Juancontinued, "was the one who gave ritual the final death blow. Since he wasa bona fide professional actor who at one time had made his living acting inthe theater, he put enormous stock into what sorcerers called the shamanistictheater. He called it the theater of infinity, and into it, he poured all themagical passes that were available to him. Every movement of his characters wasimbued to the gills with magical passes. Not only that, but he turned thetheater into a new avenue for teaching them. Between the nagual Julian, theactor of infinity, and Silvio Manuel, the dancer of infinity, they had thewhole thing pegged down. A new era was on the horizon! The era of pure redeployment!"

Don Juan's explanation of redeployment was that human beings,perceived as conglomerates of energy fields, are sealed energetic units thathave definite boundaries which don't permit the entrance or the exit of energy.Therefore, the energy existing within that conglomerate of energy fields is allthat each human individual can count on.

"The natural tendency of human beings," he said, "isto push energy away from the centers of vitality, which are located on theright side of the body, right at the edge of the rib cage on the area of theliver and gallbladder; on the left side of the body, again, at the edge of therib cage, on the area of the pancreas and spleen; on the back, right behind theother two centers, around the kidneys, and right above them, on the area of theadrenal glands; at the base of the neck on the V spot made by the sternum andclavicle; and around the uterus and ovaries in women."

"How do human beings push this energy away, don Juan?" Iasked. "By worrying," he replied. "By succumbing to the stressof everyday life. The duress of daily actions takes its toll on the body.""And what happens to this energy, don Juan?" I asked. "Itgathers on the periphery of the luminous ball," he said, "sometimesto the point of making a thick bark-like deposit. The magical passes relate tothe total human being as a physical body, and as a conglomerate of energyfields. They agitate the energy that has been accumulated in the luminous balland return it to the physical body itself. The magical passes engage both thebody itself as a physical entity that suffers the dispersion of energy, and thebody as an energetic entity which is capable of redeploying that dispersed energy.

"Having energy on the periphery of the luminous ball," hecontinued, it energy that is not being redeployed, is as useless as not havingany energy at all. It is truly a terrifying situation to have a surplus ofenergy stashed away, inaccessible for all practical purposes. It is like beingin the desert, dying of dehydration, while you carry a tank of water that youcannot open, because you don't have any tools. In that desert, you can't even finda rock to bang it with."

The true magic of the magical passes is the factthat they cause crusted-down energy to enter again into the centers ofvitality, hence the feeling of well-being and prowess which is thepractitioner's experience. The sorcerers of don Juan's lineage, before theyentered into their excessive ritualism and ceremony, had formulated the basisfor this redeployment. They called it saturation, meaning that they inundatedtheir bodies with a profusion of magical passes, in order to allow the forcethat binds us together to guide those magical passes to cause the maximumredeployment of energy.

"But don Juan, are you telling me thatevery time you crack your joints, or every time I try to imitate you, we arereally redeploying energy?" I asked him once, without really meaning to besarcastic.

"Every time we execute a magical pass," he replied,"we are indeed altering the basic structures of our beings. Energy whichis ordinarily crusted down is released and begins to enter into the vortexes ofvitality of the body. Only by means of that reclaimed energy can we put up a dike,a barrier to contain an otherwise uncontainable and always deleteriousflow." I asked don Juan to give me an example of putting a dam on what hewas calling a deleterious flow. I told him that I wanted to visualize it in mymind.

"I'll give you an example," he said. "For instance,at my age, I should be prey to high blood pressure. If I went to see a doctor,the doctor, upon seeing me, would assume that I must be an old Indian, plaguedwith uncertainties, frustrations, and bad diet; all of this, naturally,resulting in a most expected and predictable condition of high blood pressure:an acceptable corollary of my age.

"I don'thave any problems with high blood pressure," he went on, "not becauseI am stronger than the average man or because of my genetic frame, but becausemy magical passes have made my body break through any patterns of behaviourthat result in high blood pressure. I can truthfully say that every time I crackmy joints, following the execution of a magical pass, I am blocking off theflow of expectations and behaviour that ordinarily result in high bloodpressure at my age.

"Anotherexample I can give you is the agility of my knees," he continued."Haven't you noticed how much more agile I am than you? When it comes tomoving my knees, I'm a kid! With my magical passes, I put a dam on the current ofbehaviour and physicality that makes the knees of people, both men and women,stiff with age."

One of the mostannoying feelings I had ever experienced was caused by the fact that don Juan, althoughhe could have been my grandfather, was infinitely younger than I. Incomparison, I was stiff, opinionated, repetitious. I was senile. He, on theother hand, was fresh, inventive, agile, resourceful. In short, he possessedsomething which, although I was young, I did not: youth. He delighted intelling me repeatedly that young age was not youth, and that young age was inno way a deterrent to senility. He pointed out that if I watched my fellowmencarefully and dispassionately, I would be able to corroborate that by the timethey reached twenty years of age, they were already senile, repeatingthemselves inanely.

"How is it possible, don Juan," I said, "that youcould be younger than I?"

“怎么可能，唐望，你比我还年轻？”我说。

"I have vanquished my mind," he said, opening his eyeswide to denote bewilderment. "I don't have a mind to tell me that it istime to be old. I don't honor agreements in which I didn't participate.Remember this: It is not just a slogan for sorcerers to say that they do nothonor agreements in which they did not participate. To be plagued by old age isone such agreement."

We were silent for a long time. Don Juan seemed to be waiting, Ithought, for the effect that his words might cause in me. What I thought to bemy psychological unity was further ripped apart by a clearly dual response onmy part. On one level, I repudiated with all my might the nonsense that donJuan was verbalizing; on another level, however, I couldn't fail to notice howaccurate his remarks were. Don Juan was old, and yet he wasn't old at all. Hewas ages younger than I. He was free from encumbering thoughts and habitpatterns. He was roaming around in incredible worlds. He was free, while I wasimprisoned by heavy thought patterns and habits, by petty and futileconsiderations about myself, which I felt, on that occasion, for the first timeever, weren't even mine.

I asked don Juan on another occasion something that had beenbothering me for a long time. He had stated that the sorcerers of ancient Mexicodiscovered the magical passes, which were some sort of hidden treasure, placedin storage for man to find. I wanted to know who would put something like thatin storage for man.

The only idea that I could come up with was derived fromCatholicism. I thought of God doing it, or a guardian angel, or the HolySpirit.

"It is not the Holy Spirit," he said, "which is onlyholy to you, because you're secretly a Catholic. And certainly it is not God, abenevolent father as you understand God. Nor is it a goddess, a nurturingmother, watching over the affairs of men, as many people believe to be thecase. It is rather an impersonal force that has endless things in storage forthose who dare to seek them. It is a force in the universe, like light orgravity.

It is an agglutinating factor, a vibratory force that joins theconglomerate of energy fields that human beings are into one concise, cohesiveunit. This vibratory force is the factor that doesn't allow the entrance or theexit of energy from the luminous ball.

"The sorcerers of ancient Mexico," he went on,"believed that the performance of their magical passes was the only factorthat prepared and led the body to the transcendental corroboration of the existenceof that agglutinating force."

From don Juan's explanations, I derived the conclusion that thevibratory force he spoke about, which agglutinates our fields of energy, isapparently similar to what modern-day astronomers believe must happen at thecore of all the galaxies that exist in the cosmos. They believe that there, attheir cores, a force of incalculable strength holds the stars of galaxies inplace. This force, called a "black hole," is a theoretical constructwhich seems to be the most reasonable explanation as to why stars do not flyaway, driven by their own rotational speeds.

Don Juan said that the old sorcerers knew that human beings, takenas conglomerates of energy fields, are held together not by energetic wrappingsor energetic ligaments, but by some sort of vibration that Tenders everythingat once alive and in place. Don Juan explained that those sorcerers, by meansof their practices and their discipline, became capable of handling thatvibratory force once they were fully conscious of it.

Their expertise in dealing with it became so extraordinary thattheir actions were transformed into legends, mythological events that existedonly as fables. For instance, one of the stories that don Juan told about the ancientsorcerers was that they were capable of dissolving their physical mass bymerely placing their full consciousness and intent on that force.

Don Juan stated that, although they were capable of actually goingthrough a pinhole if they deemed it necessary, they were never quite satisfiedwith the result of this maneuver of dissolving their mass. The reason for theirdiscontent was that once their mass was dissolved, their capacity to actvanished. They were left with the alternative of only witnessing events inwhich they were incapable of participating. Their ensuing frustration, theresult of being incapacitated to act, turned, according to don Juan, into theirdamning flaw: their obsession with uncovering the nature of that vibratoryforce, an obsession driven by their concreteness, which made them want to holdand control that force. Their fervent desire was to strike from the ghostlike conditionof masslessness, something which don Juan said could not ever be accomplished.

Modern-day practitioners, cultural heirs of those sorcerers ofantiquity, having found out that it is not possible to be concrete andutilitarian about that vibratory force, have opted for the only rationalalternative: to become conscious of that force with no other purpose in sight exceptthe elegance and well-being brought about by knowledge.

"The only permissible time," don Juan said to me once,"when modern-day sorcerers use the power of this vibratory agglutinatingforce, is when they burn from within, when the time comes for them to leavethis world. It is simplicity itself for sorcerers to place their absolute andtotal consciousness on the binding force with the intent to bum, and off theygo, like a puff of air."