Hello, I started listening to E-books of Castaneda about two months ago and I have finished his first two works in order to understand the Mexican concepts of Magic but I wanted to see if it is better to just read the Wheel of Time: Shamans of Ancient Mexico and get a very good idea of the basic concepts of Mexican magic without having to read the other previous books and save me some time.
What do you think?
36 Comments
Read them all! You want to "save time" on a journey for life?
I am studying magic of different cultures for a project and anything to save me some time will make the project come out sooner 😂
Then you're not interested in putting yourself to the test? Just some ivory tower stuff?
You're doing yourself a huge disservice.
There isn't any real magic other than this, for you to study.
It's all pretending.
If you believe otherwise, please tell us what you think is real out there.
We've had hundreds (if not thousands) of spies looking for 5 years now, and no one has come up with anything real.
Just closed eye meditation delusions which anyone gets if they hit the snooze button in the morning, and lay there half asleep.
Maybe you should look through the posts in here, and educate yourself before you write something which turns readers into victims of con artists and religious fanatics?
I just finished the 8th book... And, I like what you're saying here! :)
Currently, I may be stuck in meditation land. Haha... but it's been very nice most of the time.
Can we hang out?
I work under rules (blackmail from the Allies of Carlos).
Besides, "Hanging out" is what killed our community.
So that's at the top of the list of things not to do.
But I do hang out with Cholita! A gift from Carlos.
Last night she decided that our internet modem and the wifi are evil, and "squashed" them.
Today I have to figure out how to make them "squash proof". Or move them where she forgets about them.
Meanwhile she wanted a complete list of all of the tensegrity moves I do, to see if she approves.
That's what "hanging out" gets you.
Appreciate the reply. Oh, and I love all my downvotes for simply chatting like myself off the top of my head here. She the love, Keep ‘em coming folks. Haha.
I have to say that the Sorcery that Don Juan, Don Genaro and later Carlos practice is heavily similar to the Egyptian sorcery but we don't have accounts, not popular like Carlos' books at least, that these practices survive to this day. Also the word Jedi is the name of an Egyptian sorcerer associated with the famous Pharaoh Khufu and their opponents, the Sith, from the rival god of Horus, Seth.
Make no mistake I don't take Carlos' legacy lightly and I know that everything that he writes is beyond real.
Yes, but you worry me a bit.
I suspect that perhaps you're after human attention, and not magic.
So that you're learning to be an "expert" on magic, while ignoring that it actually has to work, in order to be worth pursuing.
Certainly no one interested in Egyptian magic has any reason to expect it to work.
If you pursue Magic as an intellectual exercise, you'll be even worse off than if you never had at all.
We get some in here like that.
They even blow up in anger when others don't go along with their magical pretending, get banned, come back when the ban is over, and then resume exactly what they were doing before.
Pretending their magic, by finding some "topic" they believe they can get away with pretending.
They assume the problem before which got them tossed out, was not picking the right "topic".
So totally clueless that they simply pick another, not realizing they're at it again.
Such as "losing self-importance".
Now how can you possibly do that, until you can move your assemblage point using silence, to remove it temporarily for a few minutes during darkroom? At the "place of no pity".
You can't.
But they don't care because all they want is human recognition for having "magical knowledge".
The entire world of magic has fallen into that trap. That magic is just knowledge of obscure esoterica.
Not something which actually works well.
It's the entrenched history of charlatans over the centuries that has generated the default view that "magic isn't real."
The "magician"/boy cried wolf way too many times for people to believe him, or anyone, anymore 😔.
When in fact, what keeps real magic away from us is believing in the reality we're stuck in!
That "river of filth".
Most people react badly on hearing that "river of shit" story, and will admit it sounds exaggerated and dark to them. That is, if they're confident you won't get angry at them for arguing about it. Something which is always a hazard in the river of shit...
They go Haley Mills on you ("Disney's Pollyanna") and say "Oh come on... things aren't that bad!".
No.
They aren't.
They're far worse.
I was literally playing hide and seek with Cholita in the very deep second attention last night, having decided she "owes" me for the last week.
When I went to the car rental agency 6 times, trying to get her the right car so she could "go west".
Unable to match her specifications.
Or when she disabled our internet because the blinking LEDs were bothering her.
I figured, I could do as I liked and she can't murder me for breaking our rule about not snatching her while she's in her double.
Silvio and Josefina used to snatch people from dreaming.
Turns out, you can indeed do that!
I even got a silent knowledge lecture on who and when, this kind of boiled down to, you can snatch anyone's double as long as you can "specify it" with enough precision for the emanations to find that stream.
Since Cholita lives just 50 feet away from my darkroom, that was good enough.
I just want my works to feel as real as possible, that's why I study Castaneda. Obviously the optimal would be for me to have someone like Don Juan in real life showing me the ropes of a Sorcerer but Carlos' books is all I have regarding these practices.
And speaking of worrying, I am worried because I just made a question as an outsider, non-American, who just wants to write fiction studying sorcery of different cultures and have been scrutinized for asking if I can cut a shortcut and get what I want faster. I was expecting a more welcoming community to new members who want to get to know more about Sorcery.
But my question is answered, I will continue reading the books chronologically and if this comment gets me out of this sub, so be it.
You're thinking about "magic for money" communities where naturally people are welcoming.
Because they're con artists.
And you're not realizing that even Carlos couldn't teach in public for free.
He tried in the 1980s in public parks.
He had to give up and go for armed guards and paid workshops because he got endless hecklers. Some of whom would have killed him if they could.
So in truth, you're 100% involved in pretending and don't seem to be patient enough to learn.
Haven't looked around in here enough to realize what's going on.
You also have too poor of an understanding of the books, to even realize how confused you are about how people learn sorcery.
It's not worth my time to explain, because you won't stick around.
Try one of the women. We have some skilled witches floating around in here.
But everyone has seen this tedious situation over and over before so like I said, it's not worth bringing you up to speed since you don't actually care about learning anyway.
Why do you always put texts marking a thousand different things? and then talk about personal importance to others? Don't you think this reddit is becoming a center of second attention?
I'm not following that.
Seems like schizophrenia to me, but then I live with Cholita. So don't take it personally.
Cholita stood outside my darkroom door last night, saying "Hello" over and over again.
In past weeks, I took to tracking her down daily when I got home. To say hi. From behind a door usually.
And she must have gotten used to it, because I skipped saying it last night after doing something I was worried she would react to badly. Protecting the WiFi equipment from her attacks.
But in the morning I was pleased to learn she didn't "squash" the internet connection this time.
Yesterday she did that.
The difference this time is that I'd covered it over in grey artificial fur cloth I went out to buy during the day. Doesn't interfere with wifi signals.
But it's hard to pick out the right color for fake fur to give to Cholita.
Red, absolutely not!
Green? A bit cheery, and might clash with her decorations.
So I just got a light grey. 1 yard of it.
Which made a nice little "blanket" to cover the electronics.
I don't know if she needed that fur in order to block out the blinking leds which distract her while doing tensegrity (they plague us all during darkroom) or if the truth is she was worried that the wifi equipment had built in cameras, and people were watching her do her tensegrity.
So that they could evaluate if she was ready to be the virgin sacrifice for this very subreddit.
So that we could drink her blood according to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. To please our Freemason leaders for the Lizard people. Who actually work for the Chinese and Trump.
But I did get revenge on Cholita for the equipment "malfunction".
I took that as "permission" to snatch her double from its dreaming realms.
She previously forbid me to do that but I suppose I've taken a lesson from the Allies, and a "crime" can qualify as permission.
It's a debt. And it's ok for sorcerers to collect debts.
I "summoned" a woman who looked enough like Cholita to be possibly actually be her, getting her to materialize using Silent Knowledge.
Shouldn't be much of a surprise you can do that, since Sorcerers even try to change past events using their sorcery storytelling, a circle of other sorcerers, and a hat.
Most likely a sombrero, but that kind of spoils the image of a serious magical ceremony. Makes me want guac with those chips.
You can "summon" things using Silent Knowledge, once you are silent enough not to get the "book deal mind" from your "godlike" powers.
(Just a minor god, but any is good enough to be super fun).
I spoke to her, or whatever it was that materialized.
But it didn't speak back.
So I'm not sure who that was, but it was darned cool anyway.
Naturally being male, I started to wonder if clothing was optional. So I gazed to my left, where Fairy had once passed out 5 years ago.
I wanted to see if I could still perceive her laying there in a see-through Sailor Moon outfit.
So if you are schizophrenic, no need to take offense at me suggesting that...
It can actually be a "gift" from time to time.
Like Josefina exploring further into the unknown with Zuleica, because Carlos and La Gorda were too rational to follow her that far.
I think I'm crazier than Josefina.
As long as you work hard anyway, it'll be an advantage.
It's when it makes your life such a mess that you can't find the time to practice regularly, that it's a problem.
Consider Miles and Aerin, versus Cholita and Me.
Miles couldn't get along with Aerin, who got kicked out of Cleargreen for having a baby.
They split up, and now Miles is cozying up to Yoga people. Maybe yoga women.
And Aerin is making up new magical passes, never taking the time to actually put in the work to realize how completely wrong it is, to do that.
They're both very "sane".
But as it's going now, they'll never learn even the tiniest bit of real sorcery.
All that matters on this path, is to work regularly and hard.
That has nothing to do with how you find a place to live, but if you get rid of that internal dialogue, you'll be able to get along with anyone.
I love having Cholita around me, but she's got to be the very worst companion any man could have.
You wouldn't believe the scheme I've concocted to save Cholita from one of her very bad tendencies, without her stopping me from doing it.
It's hours and hours of effort on my part, which includes having to walk long distances to get back from doing each part of it.
But still, she can do real magic. And next to no one else in the world can.
So what can I do, but help her out?
no internal dialogue = the tyrants disappear, the actions of your peers do not affect you, giving blank checks (as a recapitulation) to those tyrants destroys "personal importance - the image of ourselves - the attempt at first attention - the internal dialogue ´´
I always remember Vicente's phrase: be a perfect warrior in a perfect place is to be a paper warrior.
That's not quite right.
No internal dialogue at fairly good levels means you will move towards sleepwalking.
Be like Genaro snoring with his eyes open.
Which really happens by the way!
No internal dialogue at PERFECT levels means all of reality no longer makes any sense.
Not shapes, not space, not time.
And yet, you still perceive activity and can be involved in it.
Naturally there's all sorts of levels between having an internal dialogue, and not having one.
Lucky for all of us, even 30 seconds of no internal dialogue is enough if you are using darkroom techniques.
The witches used to imply 2 minutes were needed to see anything concrete.
Not so with darkroom.
I don't use the darkroom yet, since what would be the point of accessing the second attention if as soon as you see something unknown in front of you the thoughts come back instantly, the first attention comes in again and this can lead to using the second attention for things like this world, the weak side of the second attention is called in books.
I don't know if I need to lose the human form to silence the internal dialogue (attempt of the first intention) when the unknown appears and use the second attention as you use it and jump between worlds and learn at least I have to erase everything with tyrants and recapitulation luminous edge that I threw or that was thrown at me, I think that will help to only feel amazement at the unknown and not thoughts
Actually sights from the second attention are the only way to pull your assemblage point along the J curve.
No second attention sights, no reason for your assemblage point to move.
At least, at beginner's levels of silence.
Which aren't actually silence at all yet, but close enough to make bits of your energy body visible, because that's a real thing and not actually limited to being visible in the second attention.
I guess you could think of it as a trick.
There's a magical forest just outside your back door.
But to open the back door, you have to get silent.
And you can't really get silent enough to open it wide enough for you to leave.
BUT, your energy body is the second copy of you, and it's outside the back door playing in the forest.
So if you can get silent enough to get the door to open even a crack, your energy body (your double) can break off a small piece of itself, and stuff it through the narrow opening.
So that it becomes visible in the room if it's dark.
By gazing at THAT, you can turn your crummy silence levels, into silence deep enough to fling the door wide open.
Far enough for your full energy body to step in, take your hand, and lead you out into that magical forest.
The other stuff you mentioned is too much thinking and analyzing to allow you to move your assemblage point.
That kind of analysis is only useful later, after you already succeeded, in order to "understand" what happened.
But it can't cause anything to happen by itself.
New people can get obsessed with the analysis side of it, and never put in any actual work to get that back door open enough to see a puff of your energy body.
Check out this guy! After using up my time, he decided he needs "proof" before he'll make any effort.
He's all tied up in thinking and talking.
He'll never learn.
I don't know how to link to his comment, so I copied it.
See how stuck he is?
***
Conscious-surfer
Thanks for all the info. The diagrams/cartoons etc. aren't real proof though. Anyone can make anything and post it on the internet. This is what all the other philosophies and beliefs do as well. There are many frauds and fakes.
So it seems we are in circular reasoning.
Intent of this sub is to teach and spread knowledge -> best way to get someone interested and excited to learn is demonstratable and repeatable proof -> you can't show the proof because of fear?
Isn't one of the key ideas of this path to eliminate all fear? If you are afraid of death or people doing bad things to you, don't you have an ego?
No disrespect, I am just seeking, and I'm a novice in a lot of this so it's possible I may not understand much - but I don't know if there is any point to the seeking!
If that's all you're interested in, you should probably read The Witch's Dream by Florinda Donner.
And Being-In-Dreaming, by the same author.
The first four books of Castaneda's deal with the traditional/cultural "men of knowledge" years.
You don't know my current mindset. I very much appreciate Don Juan's and Don Genaro's teachings and the trouble they put Carlos through to teach him. I respect their culture and their practices of Sorcery.
They aren't "the Mexican" concepts of magic. It's Beringian sorcery as practiced by the Olmecs and passed down through lineages comprised of members from a variety of backgrounds.
Is it possible to prove that? My master says it isn't
"The Intent of the Sorcerer's of Ancient Mexico" is exactly how Castaneda phrases it.
Not "The Intent of the Ancient Mexican Sorcerers."
Take that as a hint that they lived in Mexico, or that their skill developed in Mexico...but they weren't 'Mexican,' culturally speaking. Their origin was indeed a subset, that originated in a deeper and more distant past.
But it is colored/flavored by Mexican culture, having flourished and endured for so long in that region.
The "men of knowledge" rituals don Juan showed Carlos in the early books was what was ethnographically relevant, and Yaqui, since that was what Carlos was ostensibly after when he met don Juan.
I think you're confused, if someone is of a place then you can refer to them with that place. I live and was born in Ethiopia, so I am Ethiopian. Don Juan was Mexican. I fail to see any point being made. Perhaps the word you are imagining is "living in" but it says "of". By your logic an English speaker is from England because they have carried some set of ideas from somewhere else. Further, pinning a set of ideas to a geographic is idiotic.
What's the opinion of this "master" of your's?
There are distinctions like "the Yaquis and the Mexicans" even though there is still the term "Mexican Indians".
And Techno didn't say anything analogous to Anglophones being of England.
Don Juan was born in Yuma Arizona, to a Yaqui (not Mexican) father and a Yuma mother; that makes the American citizens, not mexican. It was during Don Juan’s early age that the family moved to the Yaqui ancestral lands, where the mexican army killed both of Don Juan’s parents, when he was about 6 years old.
This is written in the early books.
Thank you to everyone for the feedback, I shouldn't get the easy way out so I will indeed read all of Castaneda's books as I am already well into the first hour of Journey to Ixtlan.
I sincerely believe a lot in Carlos, without knowing why and especially in Don Juan, I appreciate his teachings but in this forum he only selects carefully, as I said in another comment this is becoming a center of second attention (they explain in the gift of the eagle what it is) I see why it is not a good idea, some drain others
I don't think this place is becoming a fixation of the second attention.
Maybe this fits? "No. They're just tired of talking," la Gorda said. "They expect some action from you."
Less talking, more action?
I think I get what you mean.