The Dance of Reality: A Psychomagical Autobiography (35 page)

“Everything I tell is true. I have not invented anything,” he replied with a bright smile.

“Reading your works I have the impression that, based on actual experiences in Mexico, you have developed and introduced concepts drawing on the universal esoteric tradition. In your books one can find Zen, the Upanishads, the Tarot, Hervey de Saint-Denys’s work on dreams, and so forth. However, I am sure of one thing: it’s evident that you have traveled all around this country to do your research. It seems likely that, bringing together all your findings, you have created the figure of Don Juan.”

“Absolutely not. I assure you, he exists . . .”

And as he continued he told me how the shaman (with whom he had been walking on the Paseo de la Reforma, the central artery of Mexico City) had, with a simple slap on the back, projected him several kilometers away because he had been distracted by a woman passing by. Then he talked about the sexual life of Don Juan, who was capable of ejaculating fifteen times in a row. I remember he also told me that his master despised those human beings who “manufactured” children, sacrificing their magical abilities. “Every child steals a piece of the soul.” He introduced the topic of Saturnine cannibalism. But, perhaps seeing my look of horror, he changed the subject:

“Why have circumstances brought us together? Could it be for us to make a film? Hollywood has offered me several million dollars to bring my first book to the screen, but I don’t want Don Juan to be played by Anthony Quinn.”

We were starting to agree on the possibilities of filming at the real sites, showing true miracles, real shamans, without using special effects and stunts that would turn all those teachings into banal fairy tales, when Castaneda began to have stomach pains, something that he said, between moans, never happened to him. In the mountains he drank water from streams without any ill effect, but in the city, where the water was ostensibly potable, he suffered from diarrhea. He began to squirm more and more. I called a taxi and accompanied him to his hotel, the Holiday Inn. Due to the usual traffic congestion, it took us almost an hour to get there. As soon as we had shaken hands, he ran off. I never saw him again. At the same time that he suffered those stomach cramps I had been struck by a violent pain in my liver that kept me in bed for three days. Once recovered, I called the hotel. He was gone and had left no address. When I stopped by there, the porter I questioned told me that the gentleman had been accompanied by an attractive woman, and his description matched the appearance of Troika. For a long time, Castaneda’s diarrhea caused me no suspicion. This malady, which the Mexicans call “Moctezuma’s revenge,” attacks a great many tourists, but little by little, recalling the details of our meeting, I began to have some doubts. Diarrhea requires speedy evacuation. Why hadn’t Castaneda used my bathroom? That would have brought him quick relief. If he needed to shit, how did he resist the urge in the taxi for over an hour? Moreover, this obnoxious illness tends to make people curl into a knot around the abdomen, rather than squirming, which can bring on an attack of nausea. Besides his stomach, intestines, and viscera hurting, he also seemed to be feeling pain in his muscles and bones. Perhaps some spirit sent by other sorcerers attacked both of us at the same time in order to prevent us from realizing the project, which would have meant revealing certain secrets to the entire world . . . or else his body, running out of its usual drug, needed a morphine injection, like Ichazo. I have never solved this mystery. Troika disappeared from the soap operas. Someone told me that she had signed a contract to work for five thousand years on L. Ron Hubbard’s ship.

Óscar Ichazo’s withdrawal had left me frustrated. I felt that I had lost the opportunity to have an essential experience. However, the dance of reality granted me that opportunity . . . Francisco Fierro, a painter and friend of mine, came back from Huautla, where he had gone to eat mushrooms with the famous Mazatec curandera María Sabina. He came looking for me at the house where I had already been holed up for a month with my group of “actors,” preparing to film
The Holy Mountain.
Ichazo had left us two instructors, Max and Lydia, who, certain that they possessed the supreme secrets, managed us like tyrants. She was an American of short stature, nearsighted and fat, and he a thin and gangly man, his face invaded by pimples. We were allowed to sleep only four hours a night, from midnight to four, and the rest of the time we had to spend on all manner of pseudo-Sufi, pseudo-Buddhist, pseudo-Egyptian, pseudo-Hindu, pseudoshamanic, pseudo-tantric, pseudo-yogic, and pseudo-Taoist exercises. These exercises ultimately were no use to us whatsoever. Francisco Fierro brought me a jar full of honey in which there were six pairs of fungi.

“It’s a gift from María Sabina. She saw you in her dreams. It seems that you are going to accomplish something that will help our country. When? What? She didn’t say. What she did say was that she, and others like her, want to help you. Eat them all. They are males and females. Those that aren’t of use to you, your body will reject and vomit up. She said to eat them at night, so that you will advance toward the light and see the dawn for the first time.”

While my actors went to sleep, awaiting the gong that would sound four hours later to invite them to take their cold shower, I lay on the roof, naked in a sleeping bag, and ingested the mushrooms. The hallucinations were not just visual this time. The ensemble of all my senses acquired fantastic characteristics. I began to realize that what I considered to be “myself ” was merely a mental construct obtained on the basis of sensations. “I only feel how I think I am.” The toxins in the mushrooms then began to show me other possibilities. I understood that I constructed myself from the intellect: “this is a hand,” “this is my face,” “I am a man,” “here are my limits.” Now something was telling me, “When you speak of limits, you actually mean unknown infinities. You can be something more than a human.”

I squatted, and little by little I became a lion. “This is not a hand; it is a paw.” “This is not my face; it is the savage countenance of a feline.” “I am not a man; I am a powerful beast.” My animal strength had awakened. It was a bodily sensation; every muscle acquired the strength of steel and an intoxicating elasticity. Like a folded fan that quietly opens, my senses extended themselves. I could distinguish the different scents carried by the air, listen to a countless array of noises, see unsuspected details, feel the power of my jaws. Before this, I had been almost blind, deaf, and mute with no sense of smell. The
Kath
seemed to boil in my belly: I was a predator, a thousand prey were calling to me to offer me their vital energy, but something stopped me. The pure mental strength, which I perceived as penetrating, subtle, delicate like a woman, was confronting the beast with intense love. I now understood the deeper meaning of card XI of the Tarot, Strength, which shows a woman with a hat in the form of a figure eight lying sideways—an infinity symbol—opening or closing the muzzle of a lion. Until this moment I had lived repressing my animal nature with contempt and fear, while at the same time my rationality limited the infinite extent of my mind, making it into a logical island. In the
Oth,
the heart, I was a human; in the
Path,
the spirit, I was an angel; and in the
Kath,
the body and sex, I was a beast. I stayed there, lying in wait, not for some small prey but for all of life. The stars shone brighter than ever, bestowing inexhaustible energy on me, and the Earth was manifested first in the form of a limited territory, the rooftop I was on, and then spread out like a woman giving herself, over the city, the country, the continent, the entire planet. I squatted down, clinging with my claws to the terrestrial globe, traveling through the cosmos. Dawn began to break. I felt the movement of the planet, turning to offer its surface, little by little, to the caress of the sun. I felt the Earth’s pleasure at receiving this light and vital warmth, the sun’s euphoria at giving its unceasing and engendering gift, and all around, the joy of the other planets and stars, crossing the firmament like iridescent ships. Everything was alive, everything was aware, everything from explosions to births to catastrophes was dancing, enthralled by the marvel of this moment. These were the mysterious alchemical weddings: the union of heaven and Earth, the fusion of the animal-vegetable-mineral with the intangible spirit in the human heart, the spring from which divine love flows forth in torrents.

These two experiences of LSD and mushrooms changed my perception of myself, and reality, forever. I felt that my mind had opened up like a flower bud. These events coincided with a gift that Ejo Takata’s teacher Yamada Mumon, who had come to visit from Japan after Takata left Fromm’s disciples, sent me via one of his students in gratitude for my having offered Takata my house for founding his new zendo. The student, of typical Mexican appearance, dressed like a Japanese monk, his forehead and cheeks invaded by the pimples common to all aspiring students of the Buddha, handed me a folded handkerchief. “Sit down and open it,” he exclaimed, standing beside my chair with his back bent, the palms of his hands together at chest height, and his eyes narrowed as if trying to look oriental. I opened the handkerchief. It was folded in such a way as to reject symmetry. There were multiple folds, all beautiful, large and small, diagonal, horizontal, vertical, each one ironed with devotion. It had clearly taken the teacher a long time to achieve this effect. Opening this true work of art, which required me to use my fingers respectfully, brought me deep aesthetic enjoyment. Once the handkerchief was spread open, I saw that in the center, in black ink, a sentence was written in Japanese. The student, in the manner of a samurai, solemnly read what he seemed to know by heart: “When a flower opens, it is spring in the whole world.” He turned and left without saying goodbye. I tried unsuccessfully to refold the scarf, but I could not. The experience of life is irreversible.

Reality, in its constant dance, now decided that I was ready to enter the world of operational magic. My neighbor Guillermo Lauder, an agent for popular artists, lived in an apartment building fifty meters away on my same street and invited me to attend a session with the healer Pachita. The lady went there every Friday to “operate” on the sick. I had heard of her. It was said that she opened up bodies with a rusty knife, that she replaced diseased organs with healthy ones, that she could materialize objects, and many other things. All this made me apprehensive, for it sounded like naive inventions, a crude imitation of real surgery. My first contact with folk magic had been at the home of F. S., an Education Ministry official, who hosted a cocktail party in my honor to celebrate my arrival in Mexico to teach pantomime courses. He lived in a luxurious mansion, the walls covered in modern Mexican paintings. These artists were impressively powerful—their works blended muralist expressionism, surrealism, and the abstract schools—but I felt that something was missing. F. S., a very intuitive homosexual who never took his eyes off my face and body for an instant, said, without my having voiced this sentiment, “What our painters lack is the magical root. Searching for the chimera of international acclaim, they have forgotten that the sacred basis of Mexican life is witchcraft. Come with me, I’ll show you a real creation.”

I followed him down a long corridor lined with cabinets lit by greenish lights, full of pre-Columbian pottery and sculptures. We came to his bedroom. Next to the metal bed (the headboard depicted the tree of good and evil, and the ceiling was covered by a large painting by Juan Soriano that showed a gigantic hand stroking the penis of a headless naked Adonis), there was a chest inlaid with black ivory. When he opened it, the inside of the box lit up. I felt a lump form in my throat. He told me to look inside if I dared. There, on velvet-covered trays, lay all kinds of wax figurines. I immediately felt a sharp pain in my head. Those figurines, the color of rotting flesh, were impaled by multiple needles in their eyes, sex organs, anuses, breasts, and all extremities; the expressions on their putrid faces showed unspeakable suffering. Their open mouths, with some of the teeth pierced by pins, gave forth mute howls. These objects, so full of evil energy, affected my body. I wanted to cry. How could there be beings in the world capable of expressing such evil? F. S. closed the lid, offered me a drink of tequila, and laughed, seeing my astonishment.

“Welcome to Mexico, mime. If this is the land of light, then it is also the land of shadow. Do you understand? All the paintings in my rooms together do not have the power of a single one of those wax figures. They are authentic objects of witchcraft, intended to harm someone. I obtained them thanks to certain dangerous contacts I have. I hope that one day the government authorities will allow me to organize an exhibition of this great art.”

A couple of years later, F. S. was found murdered in his bed. After castrating him, the killer had stuffed his bleeding penis into his mouth.

This was why, until this moment, I had avoided all contact with folk magic. However, the temptation to see Pachita operate made me decide to face the danger. Urban legends told that black magicians could surreptitiously introduce themselves into the subconscious of a visitor and put a curse on him or her with a delayed effect that, after three to six months, would consume the victim to the point of death. For this reason, before visiting the old woman I protected myself as best I could. In a certain way, without my realizing it, this was my first act of psycho-magic. I felt that I had to hide my identity so that her curses would be misdirected by my anonymity. So I dressed in new clothes and shoes. In order that I might not be judged by my tastes, it was important for these clothes not to be chosen by me. I gave my measurements to a friend and asked him to buy all the clothes. I also created a document of identification under a false name (in this case, Martin Arenas) with a different place and date of birth and a photograph of someone else (the face of a dead actor). I bought a pork chop, wrapped it in foil, and put it in my pocket. Every time I put my hand there, the unaccustomed contact with the meat would remind me that I was in a special situation and at all costs must not let myself become captivated. Before heading out the door, I took a shower and rubbed lemon juice all over my body in order to remove as much of my personal scent as possible. Trembling, I walked the fifty meters between my residence and Guillermo Lauder’s apartment.