The Olmecs weren't the people don Juan was referring to when he said that the old seers learned to see, after hundreds of years of power plant usage.
They're merely the oldest civilization, besides the Mokaya, that anthropologists have uncovered in that "Olmen" area of Mexico.
And they only go back 6000 years at the VERY MOST. Some would even complain about that age and say it was closer to 4500 years.
Not enough.
The death defier was given to the inorganic beings 7000 years ago (as I recall), and is part of why don Juan estimates the origins of our sorcery, as being 8-10,000 years ago.
But I'd like to know more.
So I put the AIs to the task, u sign the theory that power plant usage tends to leave better signs in the anthropological record, due to the use of caves, ritual fires, and hard seeds.
I asked ChatGPT and Gemini to find all references to power plants in the archaic and pre-archaic periods in Mexico. And map them for me.
I got:
*** Gemini ***
The archaeological record for entheogen use in the Archaic (approx. 8000–2000 BCE) and Pre-Archaic/Paleoindian periods relies heavily on the arid, dry caves of the Chihuahuan Desert, which spans Northern Mexico and the Texas borderlands. In wetter regions of Mesoamerica, organic plant matter from this deep in antiquity simply rotted away.
Because of this, the most definitive evidence of early ritual consumption comes from desert rock shelters where hunter-gatherer cultures deliberately manufactured, cached, and buried highly psychoactive plants.
Here are the most significant anthropological finds from these early periods.
Frightful Cave (Cueva Espantosa), Coahuila, Mexico
Excavated by archaeologist Walter W. Taylor in the 1950s and 1960s, Frightful Cave is one of the most important Archaic sites in Northern Mexico. The cave was repeatedly occupied by nomadic hunter-gatherer groups between approximately 7500 BCE and 185 CE.
Among the thousands of preserved organic artifacts, archaeologists discovered carefully concealed caches containing mescal beans (Sophora secundiflora) and Texas buckeye seeds.
- The Findings: The beans were found purposefully stored in plaited-matting bags, often placed alongside tools, sinew, and red ochre in what anthropologists refer to as "healer's kits" or "shaman's bundles."
- The Ritual Context: Mescal beans are highly toxic and produce a severe, dangerous physiological reaction. Anthropologists conclude that long before peyote became the dominant sacrament of the plains and desert, indigenous shamans used mescal beans in grueling vision quests to gain animal spirits as protectors. Because of their toxicity, they were carefully handled by initiated medicine society members rather than consumed by the general population.
Shumla Caves, Chihuahuan Desert Borderlands
While technically located just across the Rio Grande in the Lower Pecos region of southwest Texas, the Shumla Caves are culturally and ecologically contiguous with Northern Mexico. The nomadic groups who inhabited this region moved fluidly across what is now the modern border, making this site central to the history of Mexican entheogens.
- The Findings: In the 1930s, excavators found what looked like dried peyote buttons (Lophophora williamsii) in a burial cave. Modern radiocarbon dating places these specimens firmly in the Middle Archaic period, at roughly 4045–3960 BCE (over 5,000 years ago).
- The Ritual Context: Recent chemical and microscopic analysis revealed a fascinating detail: these were not just harvested cactus buttons. They were manufactured effigies made of crushed peyote mixed with other plant materials and shaped to look like intact buttons. The fact that they still contained a 2% concentration of mescaline after five millennia—and were deliberately crafted and placed in a burial—proved to anthropologists that the Archaic people possessed a deep, sophisticated understanding of the plant's psychotropic properties and used it as a religious sacrament.
Pre-Archaic (Paleoindian) Evidence
Finding definitive proof of entheogen use prior to 8000 BCE is exceedingly difficult.
While some researchers and radiocarbon extrapolations suggest that the use of mescal beans and early vision-quest rituals in the Trans-Pecos and Northeast Mexico region may trace back as far as 8500 BCE (the late Paleoindian transition), hard physical evidence of drug preparation from this era is scarce.
We know that by the time we reach the Formative/Preclassic periods (after 2000 BCE), the use of hallucinogens exploded across Mesoamerica. The Olmec and early Maya heavily utilized psilocybin mushrooms (teonanácatl), Morning Glory seeds (ololiuqui), and the psychoactive venom of the Bufo toad—evidenced by "mushroom stones" dating to 3000 BCE and toad remains in high-status burials. However, the Archaic desert caches of Coahuila and the Lower Pecos remain the oldest direct, chemically verified proof of ritual entheogen consumption in the Americas.
*** ChatGPT ***
7 Comments
Are questions like this (history, genealogy, anthropology) able to be answered through silent knowledge?
ABSOLUTELY!!!
I've time traveled back to the Olmecs to witness things firsthand.
Don Juan commented on this saying, "Naturally we know all that the old seers did..."
Or something like that.
If you wanted to know what Jesus was really all about, you could even go back and witness him first hand!
I'll leave that to Cholita, who is a fan of the catholic bleeding on the cross version.
Myself, I was surprised to find that the Olmec buildings and statues were highly painted and decorated. It was dazzling back then.
So even those big heads were likely painted up rather gaudy.
HOWEVER, don't fall prey to the "Superman effect" of assuming that just because you can do something once or twice, proving what Carlos taught us is true, that this means you can repeat it.
We get help from infinity in the form of "gifts" that are amazing, but which don't repeat. They're intended to motivate you, but you still have to do the work to repeat it. And good that they don't repeat, because there's 1000 things you need to see, and if you could repeat something you might stop there and not work as hard.
That belief that it's easy to repeat magic you witnessed, comes from fake magical systems which are "binary" in nature, such that once you can do it, you control it like Superman discovering his X-Ray vision for the first time.
Real magic isn't even a tiny bit like that.
It's only the pretend kind that you seem to "master".
And a lot of that (for Asian magic) is simply Confucianism in action, preserving the seniority social system. Buddhism itself was merged with Daoism and Confucianism when the Chinese stole it from India, and changed it to be more appealing (profitable) than the disappointing original actually was.
And of course, the truth is that systems that give that impression magic is repeatable once you learn it, are entirely pretending and money seeking.
You can't find any real evidence any of those can actually do what they claim, anywhere on the internet.
This subreddit is about it for proving magic is possible, but you have to be willing to study the posts until you see that people really are learning the impossible.
And you need to read the books, so that you notice how consistent it all is with what we were taught.
Odd that people still think the 50 or so other subreddits which pretend to have magic, don't contain anything even close to what's in here.
I always believe if they just come here they'll see the difference.
But usually they get angry.
How do you explain the rather peculiar consistency of some of don juan’s teachings and daoist exercises? Let’s name one just for an example - doing without expecting rewards.
One more thing, why would you use AI if you can go check it out for yourself?
maybe because if something tastes good or is a good ingredient, we will find it in the kitchens of different cultures... sorry im hungry 😋. about doing and not doing im finding invaluable lessons from Nelida too: "It comes down to this, regard the self as unimportant; so unimportant, in fact, that you forget about it altogether. Then, per force, you Will begin to forge your energy body" I had never understood why this was so important. Moving consciousness away from the self allows us to perceive with our energetic body, which is why acting without expecting a reward is requested so much as part of not doing
Does that mean that we should be completely indifferent about the happenings in our lives?
yeah i think so, this is detachment, But that doesn't mean becoming foolish or never thinking. When you move your awareness away from the self, you are free to focus it on the energy body, and through it you can perceive directly.
The problem with thinking and reason is that they offer only a very limited version of knowledge and of how reality can be perceived. If we free ourselves from self-reflection, however, we can perceive much more and attain pure awareness.
Yesterday I was looking for a place to express exactly what I've just said, and I'm glad it happened here. Personally, I think it's somewhat of a waste of time to keep analyzing what the ancient Olmecs did or did not do. I see many people with very rigid ideas, strongly attached to their personal sense of self and to their certainty about how things are, and I believe that is a mistake.
Any explanation is ultimately just another dogma, and dogma moves us away from perceiving freely and from reaching genuine freedom. That freedom can only be attained through the energy body, and the energy body can only be developed once we leave behind the self—the constant self-reflection, the ego.
This is why sorcerers practice stalking in their dealings with other people. They know that the only sane way to behave in this world is through controlled folly, because they understand that every system of thought is, in the end, a form of madness. Controlled folly allows them to participate fully in life without becoming trapped by the illusions created by the mind.
You really need to study Daoism for real if you believe that, instead of just going by the ego driven misrepresentations of Alan Watts and other foreign religion "importers". Those misunderstandings of Daoism float around in popular culture, and are pretty much completely wrong.
Also maybe go look around to see what Daoists can actually do.
Absolutely nothing... I spent a lot of time looking for real magic in Asia.
Daoists are commonly considered to be gay pedofile alcoholics in Chinese countries. Or the guy who runs the exploitive church that's taken over an entire neighborhood, leaving old women homeless because he convinced them to mortgage their home, and give him the money.
Even in Chinese fantasy movies, Daoists are usually the bad guy.
And are certainly not known for real magic.
If that's not true, point me to something real on the internet.
And as far as going to check out Olmec history for myself, I'd rather witness don Juan's lineage. Which I've done enough to verify it's accessible.
Unfortunately there's usually 100 "important" things you want to do during darkroom, but if you do anything other than to concentrate on the instructions Carlos gave us, to learn to be "Readers of Infinity", it's a big mistake.
I suppose I get someone asking "why don't you..." at least every 6 months, with a different thing they consider important and worth doing.
Vicarious magic...
How about a real flying carpet? I made one several days in a row when I was solidly in the red zone each night and had an Ally around to help.
You could use that as a time machine! What you see here is absolutely possible (although pointless).
But the amount of work would be huge and it would consume all of your practice time.
That's kind of what the old seers were up to. Show off style practical magic. Such as that technique where they lowered themselves into an abyss, using a rope stuck to their navel with wax.
My guess: The abyss was a cenote with a platform on top, and the wax was actually fresh rubber.
But why not go back and see with your own eyes?
Because we remember what happened to Julian and La Catalina!
Got too interested in practical magic and had to go live in the IOB realm, or die forever.
Besides, if I wanted to focus on flashy attention seeking magic I'd convince Cholita to revive that flying technique La Gorda and don Juan used.
She already agreed she doesn't mind peeing in her hand. So that's a bonus.
Meanwhile, here's YouTube videos on the Olmec. Two by this guy are good, and the second will likely automatically come up.
And one on how silly it is to think Daoism is true.
Man, you really need to get out more... If you want to understand foreign religions, you need to go to where they originated and find a decent guide who's willing to admit the bad things going on in their country.
Hard in Asian countries. They cover up flaws when westerners are around.
Just FYI: "Yoga" is every bit as bad.
First of ally, Yoga is just one branch of Buddhism. It's not what people believe it is.
It's a religion. And a general way of practicing it, much like the "Shakers" (See Beetlejuice) in Christianity pretend they have supernatural things going on.