JOURNEY TO IXTLAN -- THE LESSONS OF DON JUAN

Saturday, April 14, 1962

Don Juan felt the weight of our gourds and concluded that we had exhausted our food supply and that it was time to return home. I casually mentioned that it was going to take us at least a couple of days to get to his house. He said he was not going back to Sonora but to a border town where he had some business to take care of.

I thought we were going to start our descent through a water canyon but don Juan headed towards the northwest on the high plateaus of the lava mountains. After about an hour of walking he led me into a deep ravine, which ended at a point where two peaks almost joined. There was a slope there, going almost to the top of the range, a strange slope which looked like a slanted concave bridge between the two peaks.

Don Juan pointed to an area on the face of the slope.

"Look there fixedly," he said. "The sun is almost right."

He explained that at midday the light of the sun could help me with "not- doing." He then gave me a series of commands: to loosen all the tight garments I had on, to sit in a cross-legged position, and to look intently at the spot he had specified.

There were very few clouds in the sky and none towards the west. It was a hot day and the sunlight beamed on the solidified lava. I kept a very close watch over the area in question.

After a long vigil I asked what, specifically, I was supposed to look for. He made me be quiet with an impatient gesture of his hand.

I was tired. I wanted to go to sleep. I half closed my eyes; they were itching and I rubbed them, but my hands were clammy and the sweat made my eyes sting. I looked at the lava peaks through half-closed eyelids and suddenly the whole mountain was lit up.

I told don Juan that if I squinted my eyes I could see the whole range of mountains as an intricate array of light fibers.

He told me to breathe as little as possible in order to maintain the view of the light fibers, and not to stare intently into it but to look casually at a point on the horizon right above the slope. I followed his instructions and was able to hold the view of an interminable extension covered with a web of light.

Don Juan said in a very soft voice that I should try to isolate areas of darkness within the field of light fibers, and that right after finding a dark spot I should open my eyes and check where that spot was on the face of the slope.

I was incapable of perceiving any dark areas. I squinted my eyes and then opened them up various times. Don Juan drew closer to me and pointed to an area to my right, and then to another one right in front of me.  I tried to change the position of my body; I thought that perhaps if I shifted my perspective I would be able to perceive the supposed area of darkness he was pointing to, but don Juan shook my arm and told me in a severe tone to keep still and be patient.

I again squinted my eyes and once more saw the web of light fibers. I looked at it for a moment and then I opened my eyes wider. At that instant I heard a faint rumble--it could have easily been explained as the distant sound of a jet plane--and then, with my eyes wide open, I saw the whole range of mountains in front of me as an enormous field of tiny dots of light. It was as if for a brief moment some metallic specks in the solidified lava were reflecting the sunlight in unison. Then the sunlight grew dim and was suddenly turned off and the mountains became a mass of dull dark brown rock and at the same time it also became windy and cold.

I wanted to turn around to see if the sun had disappeared behind a cloud but don Juan held my head and did not let me move. He said that if I turned I might catch a glimpse of an entity of the mountains, the ally that was following us. He assured me that I did not have the necessary strength to stand a sight of that nature, and then he added in a calculated tone that the rumble I had heard was the peculiar way in which an ally heralded its presence.

He then stood up and announced that we were going to start climbing up the side of the slope.

"Where are we going?" I asked.

He pointed to one of the areas he had isolated as being a spot of darkness. He explained that "not-doing" had allowed him to single out that spot as a possible center of power, or perhaps as a place where power objects might be found.

We reached the spot he had in mind after a painful climb. He stood motionless for a moment a few feet in front of me. I tried to come closer to him but he signaled me with his hand to stop. He seemed to be orienting himself. I could see the back of his head moving as if he were sweeping his eyes up and down the mountain, then with sure steps he led the way to a ledge. He sat down and began to wipe some loose dirt off the ledge with his hand. He dug with his fingers around a small piece of rock that was sticking out, cleaning the dirt around it. Then he ordered me to dig it out.

Once I had dislodged the piece of rock, he told me to immediately put it inside my shirt because it was a power object that belonged to me. He said that he was giving it to me to keep, and that I should polish and care for it.

Right after that we began our descent into a water canyon, and a couple of hours later we were in the high desert at the foot of the lava mountains. Don Juan walked about ten feet ahead of me and kept up a very good pace. We went south until just before sunset. A heavy bank of clouds in the west prevented us from seeing the sun but we paused until it had presumably disappeared over the horizon.

Don Juan changed directions then and headed towards the southeast. We went over a hill and as we got to the top I spotted four men coming towards us from the south.

I looked at don Juan. We had never encountered people in our excursions and I did not know what to do in a case like that. But he did not seem to be concerned. He kept on walking as if nothing had happened.

The men moved as if they were not in a hurry; they meandered towards where we were in a leisurely way. When they were closer to us I noticed that they were four young Indians. They seemed to recognize don Juan. He talked to them in Spanish. They were very soft-spoken and treated him with great deference. Only one of them spoke to me. I asked don Juan in a whisper if I could also talk to them and he nodded his head affirmatively.

Once I engaged them in conversation they were very friendly and communicative, especially the one who had first spoken to me. They told me they were there in search of power quartz crystals. They said that they had been wandering around the lava mountains for several days but they had not had any luck.

Don Juan looked around and pointed to a rocky area about two hundred yards away.

"That's a good place to camp for a while," he said.

He began to walk towards the rocks and we all followed him.

The area he had selected was very rugged. There were no bushes on it. We sat down on the rocks. Don Juan announced that he was going to go back into the chaparral to gather dry branches for a fire. I wanted to help him, but he whispered to me that this was a special fire for those brave young men and he did not need my help.

The young men sat down around me in a close cluster. One of them sat with his back against mine. I felt a bit embarrassed.

When don Juan returned with a pile of sticks, he commended them for their carefulness and told me that the young men were a sorcerer's apprentices, and that it was the rule to make a circle and have two people back to back in the center when going on hunting parties for power objects.

One of the young men asked me if I had ever found any crystals myself. I told him that don Juan had never taken me to look for them.

Don Juan selected a place close to a big boulder and started to make a fire. None of the young men moved to help him but watched him attentively. When all the sticks were burning, don Juan sat with his back against the boulder. The fire was to his right.

The young men apparently knew what was going on, but I did not have the faintest idea about the procedure to follow when one was dealing with sorcerer's apprentices.

I watched the young men. They sat facing don Juan, making a perfect half circle. I noticed then that don Juan was directly facing me and two of the young men had sat to my left and the other two to my right.

Don Juan began telling them that I was in the lava mountains to learn "not- doing" and that an ally had been following us. I thought that that was a very dramatic beginning and I was right. The young men changed positions and sat with their left legs tucked under their seats. I had not observed how they were sitting before. I had assumed that they were sitting the same way I was, cross-legged. A casual glance at don Juan revealed to me that he was also sitting with his left leg tucked in. He made a barely perceptible gesture with his chin to point at my sitting position. I casually tucked in my left leg.

Don Juan had once told me that that was the posture that a sorcerer used when things were uncertain. It had always proved, however, to be a very tiring position for me. I felt it was going to be a terrible imposition on me to remain seated in that fashion for the duration of his talk. Don Juan seemed to be thoroughly aware of my handicap and in a succinct manner explained to the young men that quartz crystals could be found in certain specific spots in that area, and that once they were found they had to be coaxed to leave their abode by means of special techniques. The crystals then became the man himself, and their power went beyond our understanding.

He said that ordinarily quartz crystals were found in clusters, and that it was up to the man who had found them to choose five of the longest and best- looking blades of quartz and sever them from their matrix. The finder was responsible for carving and polishing them in order to make them pointed and to make them fit perfectly to the size and shape of the fingers of his right hand.

Then he told us that the quartz crystals were weapons used for sorcery, that they were usually hurled to kill, and that they penetrated the enemy's body and then returned to their owner's hand as though they had never left it.

Next he talked about the search for the spirit that would turn the ordinary crystals into weapons and said that the first thing one had to do was to find a propitious place to lure out the spirit. That place had to be on a hilltop and was found by sweeping the hand, with the palm turned towards the earth, until a certain heat was detected with the palm of the hand. A fire had to be made on that spot. Don Juan explained that the ally was attracted by the flames and manifested itself through a series of consistent noises. The person searching for an ally had to follow the direction of the noises until the ally revealed itself, and then wrestle it to the ground in order to overpower it. It was at that point that one could make the ally touch the crystals to imbue them with power.

He warned us that there were other forces at large in those lava mountains, forces which did not resemble the allies; they did not make any noise, but appeared only as fleeting shadows, and did not have any power at all.

Don Juan added that a brilliantly colored feather or some highly polished quartz crystals would attract the attention of an ally, but in the long run any object whatever would be equally effective, because the important part was not to find the objects but to find the force that would imbue them with power.

"What's the use of having beautifully polished crystals if you never find the spirit giver of power?" he said. "On the other hand, if you don't have the crystals but do find the spirit you may put anything in his way to be touched. You could put your dicks in the way if you can't find anything else."

The young men giggled. The most daring of them, the one who talked to me first, laughed loudly.

I noticed that don Juan had crossed his legs and was sitting in a relaxed manner. All the young men had also crossed their legs. I tried to slip casually into a more relaxed posture, but my left knee seemed to have a pinched nerve or a sore muscle and I had to stand up and jog on the spot for a few minutes.

Don Juan made a joking comment. He said I was out of practice kneeling down, because I had not been to confession in years, ever since I had begun running around with him.

That produced a great commotion among the young men. They laughed in spurts. Some of them covered their faces and giggled nervously.

"I'm going to show you fellows something," don Juan said casually after the young men had stopped laughing.

My guess was that he was going to let us see some power objects he had in his pouch. For an instant I thought the young men were going to cluster around him, for they made a sudden movement in unison. All of them bent forward a little bit, as if they were going to stand up, but then they all tucked their left legs in and went back to that mysterious position that was so hard on my knees.

I tucked my left leg in as casually as possible. I found that if I did not sit on my left foot, that is, if I kept a half-kneeling position, my knees did not hurt as much.

Don Juan stood up and walked around the big boulder until he was out of sight.

He must have fed the fire before he stood up, while I was tucking in my leg, for the new sticks chirped as they ignited and long flames spurted out. The effect was extremely dramatic. The flames grew twice as big. Don Juan suddenly stepped out from behind the boulder and stood where he had  been sitting. I had a moment of bewilderment.  Don Juan had put on a funny black hat. It had peaks on the side, by the ears, and it was round on top. It occurred to me that it was actually a pirate's hat. He was wearing a long black coat with tails, fastened with a single shiny metallic button, and he had a peg leg.

I laughed to myself.  Don Juan really looked silly in his pirate's costume. I began to wonder where he had gotten that outfit out there in the wilderness, I assumed that it must have been hidden behind the rock. I commented to myself that all don Juan needed was a patch over his eye and a parrot on his shoulder to be the perfect stereotype of a pirate.

Don Juan looked at every member of the group, sweeping his eyes slowly from right to left. Then he looked up above us and stared into the darkness behind us. He remained in that position for a moment and then he went around the boulder and disappeared.

I did not notice how he walked. Obviously he must have had his knee bent in order to depict a man with a wooden leg; when he turned around to walk behind the boulder I should have seen his bent leg, but I was so mystified by his acts that I did not pay any attention to details.

The flames lost their strength at the very moment don Juan went around the boulder. I thought that his timing had been superb; he must have calculated how long it would take for the sticks he had added to the fire to burn and had arranged his appearance and exit according to that calculation.

The change in the intensity of the fire was very dramatic for the group; there was a ripple of nervousness among the young men. As the flames diminished in size the young men went back in unison to a cross-legged sitting position.

I expected don Juan to step out from behind the boulder right away and sit down again but he did not. He remained out of sight. I waited impatiently. The young men were sitting with an impassive look on their faces.

I could not understand what don Juan had intended with all those histrionics. After a long wait I turned to the young man on my right and asked him in a low voice if any of the items don Juan had put on--the funny hat and the long tail coat--and the fact he was standing on a peg leg had any meaning to him.

The young man looked at me with a funny blank expression. He seemed confused. I repeated my question and the other young man next to him looked at me attentively in order to listen.

They looked at each other seemingly in utter confusion. I said that to me the hat and the stump and the coat made him into a pirate.

By then all four men had come closer together around me. They giggled softly and fretted nervously. They seemed to be at a loss for words. The most daring of of them finally spoke to me. He said that don Juan did not have a hat on, was not wearing a long coat, and was certainly not standing on a stump, but that he had a black cowl or shawl over his head and a jet black tunic, like a friar's, that went all the way to the ground.

"No!" another young man exclaimed softly. "He didn't have a cowl."

"That's right," the others said.

The young man who had spoken first looked at me with an expression of total disbelief.

I told them that we had to review what had happened very carefully and very quietly, and that I was sure don Juan had wanted us to do so and thus he had left us alone.

The young man who was to my extreme right said that don Juan was in rags. He had on a tattered poncho, or some sort of Indian coat, and a most beat-up sombrero. He was holding a basket with things in it, but he was not sure what those things were. He added that don Juan was not really dressed as a beggar but rather as a man who was coming back from an interminable journey loaded with strange things.

The young man who had seen don Juan with a black cowl said that he had nothing in his hands but that his hair was long and wild, as if he were a wild man that had just killed a friar and had put on his clothes but could not hide his wildness.

The young man to my left chuckled softly and commented on the weirdness of it all. He said that don Juan was dressed as an important man who had just gotten off his horse. He had leather leggings for horseback riding, big spurs, a whip that he kept beating on his left palm, a Chihuahua hat with a conical crown, and two .45 caliber automatic pistols. He said that don Juan was the picture of a well-to-do "ranchero."

The young man to my extreme left laughed shyly and did not volunteer to reveal what he had seen. I coaxed him, but the others did not seem to be interested. He appeared to be rather too shy to talk.

The fire was about to be extinguished when don Juan came me out from behind the boulder.

"We better leave the young men to their doings," he said to me. "Bid them goodbye."

He did not look at them. He began to walk away slowly to give me time to say goodbye.

The young men embraced me.

There were no flames in the fire, but the live coals reflected enough glare. Don Juan was like a dark shadow a few feet away and the young men were a circle of neatly defined static silhouettes. They were like a row of jet black statues set in a background of darkness.

It was at that point that the total event had an impact on me. A chill ran up my spine. I caught up with don Juan. He told me in a tone of great urgency not to turn around to look at the young men, because at that moment they were a circle of shadows.

My stomach felt a force coming from the outside. It was as if a hand had grabbed me. I screamed involuntarily. Don Juan whispered that there was so much power in that area that it would be very easy for me to use the "gait of power."

We jogged for hours. I fell down five times. Don Juan counted out loud every time I lost my balance. Then he came to a halt.

"Sit down, huddle against the rocks, and cover your belly with your hands," he whispered in my ear,

Sunday, April 15, 1962

As soon as there was enough light in the morning we started walking. Don Juan guided me to the place where I had left my car. I was hungry but I felt otherwise invigorated and well rested.

We ate some crackers and drank some bottled mineral water that I had in my car. I wanted to ask him some questions that were overwhelming me, but he put his finger to his lips.

By mid-afternoon we were in the border town where he wanted me to leave him. We went to a restaurant to eat lunch. The place was empty; we sat at a table by a window looking out at the busy main street and ordered our food.

Don Juan seemed relaxed; his eyes shone with a mischievous glint. I felt encouraged and began a barrage of questions. I mainly wanted to know about his disguise.

"I showed you a little bit of my not-doing," he said and his eyes seemed to glow.

"But none of us saw the same disguise," I said. "How did you do that?"

"It's all very simple," he replied. "They were only disguises, because everything we do is in some way merely a disguise. Everything we do, as I have told you, is a matter of doing. A man of knowledge could hook himself to everyone's doing and come up with weird things. But they are not weird, not really. They are weird only to those who are trapped in doing.

"Those four young men and yourself are not aware yet of not-doing, so it was easy to fool all of you."

"But how did you fool us?"

"It won't make sense to you. There is no way for you to understand it."

"Try me, don Juan, please."

"Let's say that when every one of us is born we bring with us a little ring of power. That little ring is almost immediately put to use. So every one of us is already hooked from birth and our rings of power are joined to everyone else's. In other words, our rings of power are hooked to the doing of the world in order to make the world."

"Give me an example so I could understand it," I said.

"For instance, our rings of power, yours and mine, are hooked right now to the doing in this room. We are making this room. Our rings of power are spinning this room into being at this very moment."

"Wait, wait," I said. "This room is here by itself. I am not creating it. I have nothing to do with it."

Don Juan did not seem to be concerned with my argumentative protests. He very calmly maintained that the room we were in was brought to being and was kept in place because of the force of everybody's ring of power.

"You see," he continued, "every one of us knows the doing of rooms because, in one way or another, we have spent much of our lives in rooms. A man of knowledge, on the other hand, develops another ring of power. I would call it the ring of not-doing, because it is hooked to not-doing. With that ring, therefore, he can spin another world."

A young waitress brought our food and seemed to be suspicious of us. Don Juan whispered that I should pay her to show her that I had enough money.

"I don't blame her for distrusting you," he said" and roared with laughter. "You look like hell."

I paid the woman and tipped her, and when she left us alone I stared at don Juan, trying to find a way to recapture the thread of our conversation. He came to my rescue.

"Your difficulty is that you haven't yet developed your extra ring of power and your body doesn't know not-doing," he said.

I did not understand what he had said. My mind was locked in quite a prosaic concern. All I wanted to know was whether or not he had put on a pirate's outfit.

Don Juan did not answer but laughed uproariously. I begged him to explain.

"But I've just explained it to you," he retorted.

"You mean, that you didn't put on any disguise?" I asked.

"All I did was to hook my ring of power to your own doing," he said. "You yourself did the rest and so did the others."

"That's incredible!" I exclaimed.

"We all have been taught to agree about doing," he said softly. "You don't have any idea of the power that that agreement brings with it. But, fortunately, not-doing is equally miraculous, and powerful."

I felt an uncontrollable ripple in my stomach. There was an unbridgeable abysm between my first-hand experience and his explanation. As an ultimate defense I ended up, as I had always done, with a tinge of doubt and distrust and with the question, "What if don Juan was really in cahoots with the young men and he himself had set it all up?"

I changed the subject and asked him about the four apprentices.

"Did you tell me that they were shadows?" I asked.

"That's right."

"Were they allies?"

"No. They were apprentices of a man I know."

"Why did you call them shadows?"

"Because at that moment they had been touched by the power of not-doing, and since they are not as stupid as you are they shifted into something quite different from what you know. I didn't want you to look at them for that reason. It would have only injured you."

I did not have any more questions. I was not hungry either. Don Juan ate heartily and seemed to be in an excellent mood. But I felt dejected. Suddenly a consuming fatigue possessed me. I realized that don Juan's path was too arduous for me. I commented that I did not have the qualifications to become a sorcerer.

"Perhaps another meeting with Mescalito will help you," he said.

I assured him that that was the farthest thing from my mind, and that I would not even consider the possibility.

"Very drastic things have to happen to you in order for you to allow your body to profit from all you have learned," he said.

I ventured the opinion that since I was not an Indian I was not really qualified to live the unusual life of a sorcerer.

"Perhaps if I could disentangle myself from all my commitments I could fare in your world a little better," I said. "Or if I would go into the wilderness with you and live there. As it is now, the fact I have a foot in both worlds makes me useless in either."

He stared at me for a long moment.

"This is your world," he said, pointing to the busy street outside the window. "You are a man of that world. And out there, in that world, is your hunting ground. There is no way to escape the doing of our world, so what a warrior does is to turn his world into his hunting  ground. As a hunter, a warrior knows that the world is made to be used. So he uses every bit of it. A warrior is like a pirate that has no qualms in taking and using anything he wants, except that the warrior doesn't mind or he doesn't feel insulted when he is used and taken himself."

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