Book "Magical Passes · 1/2

1INTRODUCTION

2Don Juan Matus, a master sorcerer, a nagual, as master sorcerers are called when they lead a group of other sorcerers, introduced me to the cognitive world of shamans who lived in Mexico in ancient times. Don Juan Matus was an Indian who was born in Yuma, Arizona. His father was a Yaqui Indian from Sonora, Mexico, and his mother was presum­ably a Yuma Indian from Arizona. Don Juan lived in Arizona until he was ten years old. He was then taken by his father to Sonora, Mexico, where they were caught in the endemic Yaqui wars against the Mexicans. His father was killed, and as a ten-year-old child don Juan ended up in Southern Mexico, where he grew up with relatives.

3At the age of twenty, he came in contact with a master sorcerer. His name was Julian Osorio. He introduced don Juan into a lineage of sor­cerers that was purported to be twenty-five generations long. He was not an Indian at all, but the son of European immigrants to Mexico. Don Juan related to me that the nagual Julian had been an actor, and that he was a dashing person—a raconteur, a mime, adored by every­body, influential, commanding. In one of his theatrical tours to the provinces, the actor Julian Osorio fell under the influence of another nagual, Elias Ulloa, who transmitted to him the knowledge of his lin­eage of sorcerers.

4Don Juan Matus, following the tradition of his lineage of shamans, taught some bodily movements which he called magical passes to his four disciples: Taisha Abelar, Florinda Donner-Grau, Carol Tiggs, and myself. He taught them to us in the same spirit in which they had been taught for generations, with one notable departure: he eliminated the excessive ritual which had surrounded the teaching and performance of those magical passes for generations. Don Juan's comments in this respect were that ritual had lost its impetus as new generations of practi­tioners became more interested in efficiency and functionalism. He rec­ommended to me, however, that under no circumstances should I talk about the magical passes with any of his disciples or with people in gen­eral. His reasons were that the magical passes pertained exclusively to each person, and that their effect was so shattering, it was better just to practice them without discussing them.

5Don Juan Matus taught me everything he knew about the sorcerers of his lineage. He stated, asserted, affirmed, explained to me every nuance of his knowledge. Therefore, everything I say about the magical passes is a direct result of his instruction. The magical passes were not invented. They were discovered by the shamans of don Juan's lineage who lived in Mexico in ancient times, while they were in shamanistic states of heightened awareness. The discovery of the magical passes was quite accidental. It began as very simple queries about the nature of an incredible sensation of well-being that those shamans experienced in those states of heightened awareness when they held certain bodily posi­tions, or when they moved their limbs in some specific manner. Their sensation of wellbeing had been so intense that their drive to repeat those movements in their normal awareness became the focus of all their endeavors.

6By all appearances, they succeeded in their task, and found them­selves the possessors of a very complex series of movements that, when practiced, yielded them tremendous results in terms of mental and phys­ical prowess. In fact, the results of performing these movements were so dramatic that they called them magical passes. They taught them for generations only to shaman initiates, on a personal basis, following elaborate rituals and secret ceremonies.

7Don Juan Matus, in teaching the magical passes, departed radically from tradition. Such a departure forced don Juan to reformulate the pragmatic goal of the magical passes. He presented this goal to me not so much as the enhancement of mental and physical balance, as it had been in the past, but as the practical possibility of redeploying energy. He explained that such a departure was due to the influence of the two naguals who had preceded him.

8It was the belief of the sorcerers of don Juan's lineage that there is an inherent amount of energy existing in each one of us, an amount which is not subject to the onslaughts of outside forces for augmenting it or for decreasing it. They believed that this quantity of energy was sufficient to accomplish something which those sorcerers deemed to be the obses­sion of every man on Earth: breaking the parameters of normal percep­tion. Don Juan Matus was convinced that our incapacity to break those parameters was induced by our culture and social milieu. He maintained that our culture and social milieu deployed every bit of our inherent energy in fulfilling established behavioral patterns which didn't allow us to break those parameters of normal perception.

9"Why in the world would I, or anyone else, want to break those para­meters?" I asked don Juan on one occasion.

10"Breaking those parameters is the unavoidable issue of mankind," he replied. "Breaking them means the entrance into unthinkable worlds of a pragmatic value in no way different from the value of our world of everyday life. Regardless of whether or not we accept this premise, we are obsessed with breaking those parameters, and we fail miserably at it, hence the profusion of drugs and stimulants and religious rituals and ceremonies among modern man."

11"Why do you think we have failed so miserably, don Juan?" I asked.

12"Our failure to fulfill our subliminal wish," he said, "is due to the fact that we tackle it in a helter-skelter way. our tools are too crude. They are equivalent to trying to bring down a wall by ramming it with the head. Man never considers this breakage in terms of energy. For sorcer­ers, success is determined only by the accessibility or the inaccessibility of energy.

13"Since it is impossible," he continued, "to augment our inherent energy, the only avenue open for the sorcerers of ancient Mexico was the redeployment of that energy. For them, this process of redeployment began with the magical passes, and the way they affected the physical body."

14Don Juan stressed in every way possible, while imparting his instruc­tion, the fact that the enormous emphasis the shamans of his lineage had put on physical prowess and mental well-being had lasted to the present day. I was able to corroborate the truth of his statements by observing him and his fifteen sorcerer-companions. Their superb physi­cal and mental balance was the most obvious feature about them.

15Don Juan's reply when I once asked him directly why sorcerers put so much stock in the physical side of man was a total surprise to me. I had always thought that he himself was a spiritual man.

16"Shamans are not spiritual at all," he said. "They are very practical beings. It is a well-known fact, however, that shamans are generally regarded as eccentric, or even insane. Perhaps that is what makes you think that they are spiritual. They seem insane because they are always trying to explain things that cannot be explained. In the course of such futile attempts to give complete explanations that cannot be completed under any circumstances, they lose all coherence and say inanities.

17"You need a pliable body, if you want physical prowess and levelhead­edness," he went on. "These are the two most important issues in the lives of shamans, because they bring forth sobriety and pragmatism: the only indispensable requisites for entering into other realms of percep­tion. To navigate, in a genuine way, in the unknown necessitates an attitude of daring, but not one of recklessness. In order to establish a balance between audacity and recklessness, a sorcerer has to be extremely sober, cautious, skillful, and in superb physical condition."

18"But why in superb physical condition, don Juan?" I asked. "Isn't the desire or the will to journey into the unknown enough?"

19"Not in your pissy life!" he replied rather brusquely. "Just to conceive facing the unknown—much less enter into it—requires guts of steel, and a body that would be Capable of holding those guts. What would be the point of being gutsy if you didn't have mental alertness, physical prowess, and adequate muscles?"

20The superb physical condition that don Juan had steadily advocated from the first day of our association, the product of the rigorous execu­tion of the magical passes, was, by all indications, the first step toward the redeployment of our inherent energy. This redeployment of energy was, in don Juan's view, the most crucial issue in the lives of shamans, as well as in the life of any individual. Redeployment of energy is a process which consists of transporting, from one place to another, energy which already exists within us. This energy has been displaced from centers of vitality in the body, which require that displaced energy in order to bring forth a balance between mental alertness and physical prowess.

21The shamans of don Juan's lineage were deeply engaged with the redeployment of their inherent energy. This involvement wasn't an intel­lectual endeavor, nor was it the product of induction or deduction, or logical conclusions. It was the result of their ability to perceive energy as it flowed in the universe.

22"Those sorcerers called this ability to perceive energy as it flowed in the universe seeing,” don Juan explained to me. "They described seeing as a state of heightened awareness in which the human body is capable of perceiving energy as a flow, a current, a windlike vibration. To see energy as it flows in the universe is the product of a momentary halt of the system of interpretation proper to human beings."

23"What is this system of interpretation, don Juan?" I asked.

24"The shamans of ancient Mexico found out," he replied, "that every part of the human body is engaged, in one way or another, in turning this vibratory flow, this current of vibration, into some form of sensory input. The sum total of this bombardment of sensory input is then, through usage, turned into the system of interpretation that makes human beings capable of perceiving the world the way they do.

25"To make this system of interpretation come to a halt," he went on, "was the result of tremendous discipline on the part of the sorcerers of ancient Mexico. They called this halt seeing, and made it the cornerstone of their knowledge. To see energy as it flowed in the universe was, for them, an essential tool that they employed in making their classifi­catory schemes. Because of this capacity, for instance, they conceived the total universe available to the perception of human beings as an onionlike affair, consisting of thousands of layers. The daily world of human beings, they believed, is but one such layer. Consequently, they also believed that other layers are not only accessible to human percep­tion, but are part of man's natural heritage."

26Another issue of tremendous value in the knowledge of those sorcer­ers, an issue which was also a consequence of their capacity to see energy as it flowed in the universe, was the discovery of the human energetic configuration. This human energetic configuration was, for them, a conglomerate of energy fields agglutinated together by a vibra­tory force that hound those energy fields into a luminous ball of energy. For the sorcerers of don Juan's lineage, a human being has an oblong shape like an egg, or a round shape like a ball. Thus, they called them luminous eggs or luminous balls. This sphere of luminosity was considered Key them to he our true self—true in the sense that it is irreducible in terms of energy. It is irreducible because the totality of human resources are engaged in the act of perceiving it directly as energy.

27Those shamans discovered that on the hack face of this luminous ball there is a point of greater brilliance. They figured out, through processes of observing energy directly, that this point is key in the act of turning energy into sensory data and then interpreting it. For this reason, they called it the assemblage point, and deemed that perception is indeed assembled there. They described the assemblage point as being located behind the shoulder blades, an arm's length away from them. They also found out that the assemblage point for the entire human race is located on the same spot, thus giving every human being an entirely similar view of the world.

28A finding of tremendous value for them, and for shamans of succeed­ing generations, was that the location of the assemblage point on that spot is the result of usage and socialization. For this reason, they consid­ered it to he an arbitrary position which gives merely the illusion of being final and irreducible. A product of this illusion is the seemingly unshakable conviction of human beings that the world they deal with daily is the only world that exists, and that its finality is undeniable.

29"Believe me," don Juan said to me once, "this sense of finality about the world is a mere illusion. Due to the fact that it has never been chal­lenged, it stands as the only possible view. To see energy as it flows in the universe is the tool for challenging it. Through the use of this tool, the sorcerers of my lineage arrived at the conclusion that there are indeed a staggering number of worlds available to man's perception. They described those worlds as being all-inclusive realms, realms where one can act and struggle. In other words, they are worlds where one can live and die, as in this world of everyday life."

30During the thirteen years of my association with him, don Juan taught me the basic steps toward accomplishing this feat of seeing. I have discussed those steps in all of my previous writings, but never have I touched on the key point in this process: the magical passes. He taught me a great number of them, but along with that wealth of knowledge, don Juan also left me with the certainty that I was the last link of his lineage. Accepting that I was the last link of his lineage implied auto­matically for me the task of finding new ways to disseminate the knowl­edge of his lineage, since its continuity was no longer an issue.

31I need to clarify a very important point in this regard: Don Juan Matus was not ever interested in teaching his knowledge; he was inter­ested in perpetuating his lineage. His three other disciples and I were the means—chosen, he said, by the spirit itself, for he had no active part in it—that were going to ensure that perpetuation. Therefore, he engaged himself in a titanic effort to teach me all he knew about sor­cery, or shamanism, and about the development of his lineage.

32In the course of training me, he realized that my energetic configura­tion was, according to him, so vastly different from his own that it couldn't mean anything else but the end of his line. I told him that I resented enormously his interpretation of whatever invisible difference existed between us. I didn't like the burden of being the last of his line, nor did I understand his reasoning.

33"The shamans of ancient Mexico," he said to me once, "believed that choice, as human beings understand it, is the precondition of the cogni­tive world of man, but that it is only a benevolent interpretation of something which is found when awareness ventures beyond the cushion of our world, a benevolent interpretation of acquiescence. Human beings are in the throes of forces that pull them every which way. The art of sorcerers is not really to choose, but to be subtle enough to acqui­esce.

34"Sorcerers, although they seem to make nothing else but decisions, make no decisions at all," he went on. "I didn't decide to choose you, and I didn't decide that you would be the way you are. Since I couldn't choose to whom I would impart my knowledge, I had to accept whomever the spirit was offering me. And that person was you, and you are energetically capable only of ending, not of continuing."

35He maintained that the ending of his line had nothing to do with him or his efforts, or with his success or failure as a sorcerer seeking total freedom. He understood it as something that had to do with a choice exercised beyond the human level, not by beings or entities, but by the impersonal forces of the universe.

36Finally, I came to accept what don Juan called my fate. Accepting it put me face to face with another issue that he referred to as locking the door when you leave. That is to say, I assumed the responsibility of decid­ing exactly what to do with everything he had taught me and carrying out my decision impeccably. First of all, I asked myself the crucial ques­tion of what to do with the magical passes: the facet of don Juan's knowledge most imbued with pragmatism and function. I decided to use the magical passes and teach them to whoever wanted to learn them. My decision to end the secrecy that had surrounded them for an undetermined length of time was, naturally, the corollary of my total convic­tion that I am indeed the end of don Juan's lineage. It became inconceivable to me that I should carry secrets which were not even mine. To shroud the magical passes in secrecy was not my decision. It was my decision, however, to end such a condition.

37I endeavored from then on to come up with a more generic form of each magical pass, a form suitable to everyone. This resulted in a config­uration of slightly modified forms of each one of the magical passes. I have called this new configuration of movements Tensegrity, a term which belongs to architecture, where it means "the property of skeleton structures that employ continuous tension members and discontinuous compression members in such a way that each member operates with the maximum efficiency and economy."

38In order to explain what the magical passes of the sorcerers who lived in Mexico in ancient times are, I would like to make a clarification: "ancient times" meant, for don Juan, a time ten thousand years ago and beyond, a figure that seems incongruous if examined from the point of view of the classificatory schemes of modern scholars. When I con­fronted don Juan with the discrepancy between his estimate and what I considered to he a more realistic one, he remained adamant in his con­viction. He believed it to be a fact that people who lived in the New World ten thousand years ago were deeply concerned with matters of the universe and perception that modern man has not even begun to fathom.

39Regardless of our differing chronological interpretations, the effec­tiveness of the magical passes is undeniable to me, and I feel obligated to elucidate the subject strictly following the manner in which it was presented to me. The directness of their effect on me has had a deep influence on the way in which I deal with them. What I am presenting in this work is an intimate reflection of that influence.

40MAGICAL PASSES

41The first time don Juan talked to me at length about magical passes was when he made a derogatory comment about my weight.

42"You are way too chubby," he said, looking at me from head to toe and shaking his head in disapproval. "You are one step from being fat. Sear and tear is beginning to show in you. Like any other member of your race, you are developing a lump of fat on your neck, like a bull. It's time that you take seriously one of the sorcerers' greatest findings: the magical passes."

43"What magical passes are you talking about, don Juan?" I asked. "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."

44"Not only have I told you a great deal about magical passes," he said, you know a great number of them already. I have been teaching them to you all along."

45As far as I was concerned, it wasn't true that he had taught me any magical passes all along. I protested vehemently.

46"Don't he so passionate about defending your wonderful self," he joked, making a ridiculous gesture of apology with his eyebrows. "What I meant to say is that you imitate everything I do, so I have been cash­ing in on your 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 like the way you interpret them: cracking my joints! We are going to keep on referring to them in that manner.

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

48The magical passes don Juan was referring to, as he himself had said, were ways in which I thought he cracked his joints. He used to move his arms, legs, torso and hips in specific ways, I thought, in order to create a maximum stretch of his muscles, bones, and ligaments. The result of these stretching movements, from my point of view, was a succession of cracking sounds which I always 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 I could get my joints to make cracking noises, just like his.

49I had never succeeded in reproducing the sounds, yet I had definitely but unwittingly learned all the movements. I know now that not achieving that cracking sound was a blessing in disguise, because the muscles and tendons of the arms and back should never be stressed to that point. Don Juan was born with a facility to crack the joints of his arms and hack, just as some people have the facility to crack their knuckles.

50"How did the old sorcerers invent those magical passes, don Juan?" I asked.

51"Nobody invented them," he said sternly. "To think that they were invented implies instantly the intervention of the mind, and this 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 the extra­ordinary sensation of well-being that those shamans experienced when they were in shamanistic states of heightened awareness. They felt such tremendous, enthralling vigor that they struggled to repeat it in their hours of vigil.

52"At first," don Juan explained to me once, "those shamans believed that it was a mood of well-being that heightened awareness created in general. Soon, they found out that not all the states of shamanistic heightened awareness which they entered produced in them the same sensation of well-being. A more careful scrutiny revealed to them that whenever that sensation of well-being occurred, they had always been engaged in some Specific kind of bodily movement. They realized that while they were in states of heightened awareness, their bodies moved involuntarily in certain ways, and that those certain ways were indeed the cause of that unusual sensation of physical and mental plenitude."

53Don Juan speculated that it had always appeared to him that the movements that the bodies of those shamans executed automatically in heightened awareness were a sort 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 sorcerers as deep-sea divers, who without knowing it, reclaimed it.

54Don Juan said that those sorcerers arduously began to piece together some of the movements they remembered. Their efforts paid off. They were capable of re-creating movements that had seemed to them to be automatic reactions of the body in a state of heightened awareness. Encouraged by their success, they were capable of re-creating hundreds of movements, which they performed without ever attempting to classify them into an understandable scheme. Their idea was that in heightened awareness, the movements happened spontaneously, and that there was a force that guided their effect, without the intervention of their volition.

55Don Juan commented that the nature of their findings always led him to believe that the sorcerers of ancient times were extraordinary people, because the movements that they discovered were never revealed in the same fashion to modern shamans who also entered into heightened awareness. Perhaps this was because modern shamans had learned the movements beforehand, in some fashion or another, from their predecessors, or perhaps because the sorcerers of ancient times had more ener­getic mass.

56"What do you mean, don Juan, that they had more energetic mass?" I asked. "Were they bigger men?"

57"I don't think they were physically any bigger," he said, "but energet­ically, they appeared to the eye of a seer as an oblong shape. They called themselves luminous eggs. I have never seen a luminous egg in my life. All I have seen are luminous balls. It is presumable, then, that man has lost some energetic mass over the generations."

58Don Juan explained to me that to a seer, the universe is composed of an infinite number of energy fields. They appear to the eye of the seer as luminous filaments that shoot out every which way. Don Juan said that those filaments crisscross through the luminous balls that human beings are, and that it was reasonable to assume that if human beings were once oblong shapes, like eggs, they were much higher than a ball. Therefore, energy fields that touched human beings at the crown of the luminous egg are no longer touching them now that they are luminous balls. Don Juan felt that this meant to him a loss of energy mass, which seemed to have been crucial for the purpose of reclaiming that hidden treasure: the magical passes.

59"Why are the passes of the old shamans called magical passes, don Juan?" I asked him on one occasion

60"They are not just called magical passes," he said, "they are magical! They produce an effect that cannot be accounted for by means of ordi­nary explanations. These movements are not physical exercises or mere postures of the body; they are real attempts at reaching an optimal state of being.

61"The magic of the movements," he went on, "is a subtle change that the practitioners experience on executing them. It is an ephemeral quality that the movement brings to their physical and mental states, a kind of shine, a light in the eyes. This subtle change is a touch of the spirit. It is as if the practitioners, through the movements, reestablish an unused link with the life force that sustains them."

62He further explained that another reason that the movements are called magical passes is that by means of practicing them, shamans are transported, in terms of perception, to other states of being in which they can sense the world in an indescribable manner.

63"Because of this quality, because of this magic," don Juan said to me, "the passes must he practiced not as exercises, but as a way of beckoning power. "

64"But can they be taken as physical movements, they have never been taken as such?" I asked.

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

66"What is the mask of socialization?" I asked.

67"The veneer that all of us defend and die for," he said. "The veneer we acquire 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 of sorcerers permeates these movements. Executing them, even in a casual way, makes the mind come to a halt."

68"What do you mean that they make the mind come to a halt?" I asked.

69"Everything that we do in the world," he said, "we recognize and identify by converting it into lines of similarity, lines of things that are strung together by purpose. For example, if I say to you fork, this immediately brings to your mind the idea of spoon, knife, tablecloth, napkin, plate, cup and saucer, glass of wine, chili con carne, banquet, birthday, fiesta. You could certainly go on naming things strung together by pur­pose, nearly forever. Everything we do is strung like this. The strange 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's idea that things are unchangeable and forever, like the word of God."

70"I don't see, don Juan, why you bring the word of God into this eluci­dation. What does the word of God have to do with what you are trying to explain?"

71"Everything!" he replied. "It seems to be that in our minds, the entire universe is like the word of God: absolute and unchanging. This is the way we conduct ourselves. In the depths of our minds, there is a checking device that doesn't permit us to stop to examine that the word of God, as we accept it and believe it to be, pertains to a dead world. A live world, on the other hand, is in constant flux. It moves. It changes. It reverses itself.

72"The most abstract reason why the magical passes of the sorcerers of my lineage are magical," he went on, "is that in practicing them, the body of the practitioner realizes that everything, instead of being an unbroken chain of objects that have affinity for each other, is a current, a flux. And if everything in the universe is a flux, a current, that current can be stopped. A dam can be put on it, and in this manner, its flux can be halted or deviated."

73Don Juan explained to me on one occasion the overall effect that the practice of the magical passes had on the sorcerers of his lineage, and correlated this effect with what would happen to modern practitioners.

74"The sorcerers of my lineage," he said, "were shocked half to death upon realizing that practicing their magical passes brought about the halt of the otherwise uninterrupted flux of things. They Constructed a series 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. They began to enact the act of halting the flux of things. They believed that if certain ceremonies and rituals were focused on a definite aspect of their magical passes, the magical passes themselves would beckon a specific result. Very soon, the number and Complexity of their rituals and ceremonies became more encumbering than the number of their magical passes.

75"It is very important," he went on, "to focus the attention of the prac­titioner on some definite aspect of the magical passes. However, that fixation should he light, funny, void of morbidity and grimness. It should he done for the hell of it, without really expecting returns."

76He gave the example of one of his cohorts, a sorcerer by the name of Silvio Manuel, whose delight and predilection was to adapt the magical passes of the sorcerers of ancient times to the steps of his modern danc­ing. Don Juan described Silvio Manuel as a superb acrobat and dancer who actually danced the magical passes.

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

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

79Don Juan's explanation of redeployment was that human beings, per­ceived as conglomerates of energy fields, are sealed energetic units that have definite boundaries which don't permit the entrance or the exit of energy. Therefore, the energy existing within that conglomerate of energy fields is all that each human individual can count on.

80"The natural tendency of human beings," he said, "is to push energy away from the centers of vitality, which are located on the right side of the body, right at the edge of the rib cage on the area of the liver and gallbladder; on the left side of the body, again, at the edge of the rib cage, on the area of the pancreas and spleen; on the hack, right behind the other two centers, around the kidneys, and right above them, on the area of the adrenal glands; at the base of the neck on the V spot made by the ster­num and clavicle; and around the uterus and ovaries in women."

81"How do human beings push this energy away, don Juan?" I asked.

82"By worrying," he replied. "By succumbing to the stress of everyday life. The duress of daily actions takes its toll on the body."

83"And what happens to this energy, don Juan?" I asked.

84"It gathers on the periphery of the luminous ball," he said, "sometimes to the point of making a thick barklike deposit. The magical passes relate to the total human being as a physical body, and as a conglomer­ate of energy fields. They agitate the energy that has been accumulated in the luminous ball and return it to the physical body itself. The magical passes engage both the body itself as a physical entity that suffers the dispersion of energy, and the body as an energetic entity which is capa­ble of redeploying that dispersed energy.

85"Having energy on the periphery of the luminous ball," he continued, "energy that is not being redeployed, is as useless as not having any energy at all. It is truly a terrifying situation to have a surplus of energy stashed away, inaccessible for all practical purposes. It is like being in the desert, dying of dehydration, while you carry a tank of water that you cannot opens because you Won't have any tools. In that desert, you can't even find a rock to hang it with."

86The true magic of the magical passes is the fact that they cause crusted-down energy to enter again into the centers of vitality, hence the feeling of wellbeing and prowess which is the practitioner's experi­ence. The sorcerers of don Juan's lineage, before they entered into their excessive ritualism and ceremony, had formulated the basis for this rede­ployment. They called it saturation, meaning that they inundated their bodies with a profusion of magical passes, in order to allow the force that hinds us together to guide those magical passes to cause the maximum redeployment of energy.

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

88"Every time we execute a magical pass," he replied, "we are indeed altering the basic structures of our beings. Energy which is ordinarily crusted down is released and begins to enter into the vortexes of vitality of the body. Only by means of that reclaimed energy can we put up a dike, a harrier to contain an otherwise uncontainable and always delete­rious flow."

89I asked don Juan to give me an example of putting a dam on what he was calling a deleterious flow. I told him that I wanted to visualize it in my mind.

90"I'll give you an example," he said. "For instance, at my age, I should he 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, plagued with uncertainties, frustrations, and had diet; all of this, naturally, resulting in a most expected and predictable condition of high blood pressure: an acceptable corollary of my age.

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

92"Another example 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 to moving my knees, I'm a kid! With my magical passes, I put a dam on the current of behavior and physicality that makes the knees of people, both men and women, stiff with age."

93One of the most annoying feelings I had ever experienced was caused by the fact that don Juan Matus, although he could have been my grandfather, was infinitely younger than I. In comparison, I was stiff, opinionated, repetitious. I was senile. He, on the other hand, was fresh, inventive, agile, resourceful. In short, he possessed something which, although I was young, I did not: youth. He delighted in telling me repeatedly that young age was not youth, and that young age was in no way a deterrent to senility. He pointed out that if I watched my fellow men carefully and dispassionately, I would be able to corroborate that by the time they reached twenty years of age, they were already senile, repeating themselves inanely.

94"How is it possible, don Juan," I said, "that you could be younger than I?"

95"I have vanquished my mind," he said, opening his eyes wide to denote bewilderment. "I don't have a mind to tell me that it is time 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 not honor agreements in which they did not participate. To be plagued by old age is one such agreement."

96We were silent for a long time. Don Juan seemed to be waiting, I thought, for the effect that his words might cause in me. What I thought to be my psychological unity was further ripped apart by a clearly dual response on my part. On one level, I repudiated with all my might the nonsense that don Juan was verbalizing; on another level, however, I couldn't fail to notice how accurate his remarks were. Don Juan was old, and yet he wasn't old at all. He was ages younger than I. He was free from encumbering thoughts and habit patterns. He was roaming around in incredible worlds. He was free, while I was impris­oned by heavy thought patterns and habits, by petty and futile consider­ations about myself; which I felt, on that occasion, for the first time ever, weren't even mine.

97I asked don Juan on another occasion something that had been both­ering me for a long time. He had stated that the sorcerers of ancient Mexico discovered the magical passes, which were some sort of hidden treasure, placed in storage for man to find. I wanted to know who would put something like that in storage for man. The only idea that I could come up with was derived from Catholicism. I thought of God doing it, or a guardian angel, or the Holy Spirit.

98"It is not the Holy Spirit," he said, "which is only holy to you, because you're secretly a Catholic. And certainly it is not God, a benev­olent father as you understand God. Nor is it a goddess, a nurturing mother, watching over the affairs of men, as many people believe to be the case. It is rather an impersonal force that has endless things in stor­age for those who dare to seek them. It is a force in the universe, like light or gravity. It is an agglutinating factor, a vibratory force that joins the conglomerate of energy fields that human beings are into one con­cise, cohesive unit. This vibratory force is the factor that doesn't allow the entrance or the exit of energy from the luminous ball.

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

100From don Juan's explanations, I derived the conclusion that the vibratory force he spoke about, which agglutinates our fields of energy, is apparently similar to what modern-day astronomers believe must hap­pen at the core of all the galaxies that exist in the cosmos. They believe that there, at their cores, a force of incalculable strength holds the stars of galaxies in place. This force, called a "black hole," is a theoretical construct which seems to be the most reasonable explanation as to why stars do not fly away, driven by their own rotational speeds.

101Don Juan said that the old sorcerers knew that human beings, taken as conglomerates of energy fields, are held together not by energetic wrappings or energetic ligaments, but by some sort of vibration that renders everything at once alive and in place. Don Juan explained that those sorcerers, by means of their practices and their discipline, became capable of handling that vibratory force once they were fully conscious of it. Their expertise in dealing with it became so extraordinary that their actions were transformed into legends, mythological events that existed only as fables. For instance, one of the stories that don Juan told about the ancient sorcerers was that they were capable of dissolving their physical mass by merely placing their full consciousness and intent on that force.

102Don Juan stated that, although they were capable of actually going through a pinhole if they deemed it necessary, they were never quite satis­fied with the result of this maneuver of dissolving their mass. The reason for their discontent was that once their mass was dissolved, their capacity to act vanished. They were left with the alternative of only witnessing events in which they were incapable of participating. Their ensuing frustration, the result of being incapacitated to act, turned, according to don Juan, into their damning flaw: their obsession with uncovering the nature of that vibratory force, an obsession driven by their concreteness, which made them want to hold and control that force. Their fervent desire was to strike from the ghostlike condition of masslessness, something which don Juan said could not ever be accomplished.

103Modern-day practitioners, cultural heirs of those sorcerers of antiq­uity, having found out that it is not possible to be concrete and utilitar­ian about that vibratory force, have opted for the only rational alterna­tive: to become conscious of that force with no other purpose in sight except the elegance and well-being brought about by knowledge.

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

105TENSEGRITY

106Tensegrity is the modern version of the magical passes of the shamans of ancient Mexico. The word Tensegrity is a most appropriate definition, because it is a mixture of two terms, tension and integrity: terms which con­note the two driving forces of the magical passes. The activity created by contracting and relaxing the tendons and muscles of the body is tension. Integrity is the act of regarding the body as a sound, complete, perfect unit.

107Tensegrity is taught as a system of movements, because that is the only manner in which the mysterious and vast subject of the magical passes could he faced in a modern setting. The people who now practice Tensegrity are not shaman practitioners in search of shamanistic alterna­tives that involve rigorous discipline, exertion, and hardships. Therefore, the emphasis of the magical passes has to be on their value as movements, and all the consequences that such movements bring forth.

108Don Juan Matus had explained that the first drive of the sorcerers of his lineage who lived in Mexico in ancient times, in relation to the magical passes, was to saturate themselves with movement. They arranged every postures every movement of the body that they could remember, into groups. They believed that the longer the group, the greater its effect of saturation, and the greater the need for the practi­tioners to use their memory to recall it.

109The shamans of don Juan's lineage, after arranging the magical passes into long groups and practicing them as sequences, deemed that this criterion of saturation had fulfilled its purposes, and they dropped it. From then on, what was sought was the opposite: the fragmentation of the long groups into single segments, which were practiced as individual, independent units. The manner in which don Juan Matus taught the magical passes to his four disciples—Taisha Abelar, Florinda Donner-Grau, Carol Tiggs, and myself—was the product of this drive for fragmentation.

110Don Juan's personal opinion was that the benefit of practicing the long groups was patently obvious; such practice forced the shaman initi­ates to use their kinesthetic memory. He considered the use of kines­thetic memory to be a real bonus, which those shamans had stumbled upon accidentally, and which had the marvelous effect of shutting off the noise of the mind: the internal dialogue.

111Don Juan had explained to me that the way in which we reinforce our perception of the world and keep it fixed at a certain level of effi­ciency and function is by talking to ourselves.

112"The entire human race," he said to me on one occasion, "keeps a determined level of function and efficiency by means of the internal dialogue. The internal dialogue is the key to maintaining the assemblage point stationary at the position shared by the entire human race: at the height of the shoulder blades, an arm's length away from them.

113"By accomplishing the opposite of the internal dialogue," he went on, "that is to say inner silence, practitioners can break the fixation of their assemblage points, thus acquiring an extraordinary fluidity of percep­tion."

114The practice of Tensegrity has been arranged around the performance of the long groups, which in Tensegrity have been renamed series to avoid the generic implication of calling them just groups, as don Juan called them. In order to accomplish this arrangement, it was necessary to reestablish the criteria of saturation which had prompted the creation of the long groups. It took the practitioners of Tensegrity years of meticulous and concentrated work to reassemble a great number of the dis­membered groups.

115Reestablishing the criteria of saturation by performing the long series gave, as a result, something which don Juan had already defined as the modern goal of the magical passes: the redeployment of energy. Don Juan was convinced that this had always been the unspoken goal of the mag­ical passes, even at the time of the old sorcerers. The old sorcerers didn't seem to have known this, but even if they did, they never conceptual­ized it in those terms. By all indications, what the old sorcerers sought avidly and experienced as a sensation of well-being and plenitude when they performed the magical passes was, in essence, the effect of unused energy being reclaimed by the centers of vitality in the body.

116In Tensegrity, the long groups have been reassembled, and a great number of the fragments have been kept as single, functioning units. These units have been strung together by purpose—for instance, the purpose of intending, or the purpose of recapitulation, or the purpose of inner silence, and so on—creating in this fashion the Tensegrity series. In this manner, a system has been achieved in which the best results are obtained by performing long sequences of movements that definitely tax the kinesthetic memory of the practitioners.

117In every other respect, the way Tensegrity is taught is a faithful repro­duction of the way in which don Juan taught the magical passes to his disciples. He inundated them with a profusion of detail and let their minds be bewildered by the number and variety of magical passes taught to them, and by the implication that each of them individually was a pathway to infinity.

118His disciples spent years overwhelmed, confused, and above all despondent because they felt that being inundated in such a manner was an unfair onslaught on them.

119"When I teach you the magical passes," he explained to me once when I questioned him about the subject, "I am following the tradi­tional sorcerers' device of clouding your linear view. By saturating your kinesthetic memory, I am creating a pathway for you to inner silence.

120"Since all of us," he continued, "are filled to the brim with the doings and undoings of the world of everyday life, we have very little room for kinesthetic memory. You may have noticed that you have none. When you want to imitate my movements, you cannot remain facing me. you have to stand side by side with me in order to establish in your own body what's right and what's left. Now, if a long sequence of movements were presented to you, it would take you weeks of repetition to remember all the movements. While you're trying to memorize the movements, you have to make room for them in your memory by pushing other things out of the way. That was the effect that the old sorcerers sought."

121Don Juan's contention was that if his disciples kept on doggedly prac­ticing the magical passes, in spite of their confusion, they would arrive at a threshold when their redeployed energy would tip the scales, and they would be able to handle the magical passes with absolute clarity.

122When don Juan made those statements, I could hardly believe them. Nevertheless, at one moment, just as he had said, I ceased to be con­fused and despondent. In a most mysterious way, the magical passes, since they are magical, arranged themselves into extraordinary sequences that cleared up everything. Don Juan explained that the clar­ity I was experiencing was the result of the redeployment of my energy.

123The concern of people practicing Tensegrity nowadays matches exactly my concern and the concern of don Juan's other disciples when we first began to perform the magical passes. They feel bewildered by the number of movements. I reiterate to them what don Juan reiterated to me over and over: that what is of supreme importance is to practice whatever Tensegrity sequence is remembered. The saturation that has been carried on will give, in the end, the results sought by the shamans of ancient Mexico: the redeployment of energy, and its three concomi­tants—the shutting off of the internal dialogue, the possibility for inner silence, and the fluidity of the assemblage point.

124As a personal assessment, I can say that by saturating me with the magical passes, don Juan accomplished two formidable feats: One, he brought to the surface a flock of hidden resources that I had but didn't know existed, such as the ability to concentrate and the ability to remember detail; and two, he gently broke my obsession with my linear mode of interpretation.

125"What is happening to you," don Juan explained to me when I ques­tioned him about what I was experiencing in this respect, "is that you are feeling the advent of inner silence, once your internal dialogue has been minimally offset. A new flux of things has begun to enter into your field of perception. These things were always there, on the periphery of your general awareness, but you never had enough energy to be deliber­ately conscious of them. As you chase away your internal dialogue, other items of awareness begin to fill in the empty space, so to speak.

126"The new flux of energy," he went on, "which the magical passes have brought to your centers of vitality is making your assemblage point more fluid. It's no longer rigidly palisaded. You're no longer driven by our ancestral fears, which make us incapable of taking a step in any direction. Sorcerers say that energy makes us free, and that is the absolute truth."

127The ideal state of Tensegrity practitioners, in relation to the Tensegrity movements. is the same as the ideal state of a practitioner of shamanism in relation to the execution of the magical passes. Both are being led by the movements themselves into an unprecedented culmination. From there, the practitioners of Tensegrity will be able to execute, by them­selves, for whatever effect they see fit, without any coaching from outside sources, any movement from the hulk of movements with which they have been saturated; they will be able to execute them with precision and speed, as they walk, or eat, or rest, or do anything, because they will have the energy to do so.

128The execution of the magical passes, as shown in Tensegrity, doesn't necessarily require a particular space or prearranged time. However, the movements should he done away from sharp currents of air. Don Juan dreaded currents of air on a perspiring body. He firmly believed that not every current of air was caused by the rising or lowering of temperature in the atmosphere, and that some currents of air were actually caused by conglomerates of consolidated energy fields moving purposefully through space.

129Don Juan was convinced that such conglomerates of energy fields possessed a specific type of awareness, particularly deleterious because human beings cannot ordinarily detect them, and become exposed to them indiscriminately. The deleterious effect of such conglomerates of energy fields is especially prevalent in a large metropolis, where they could be easily disguised as, if nothing else, the momentum created by the speed of passing automobiles.

130Something else to hear in mind when practicing Tensegrity is that since the goal of the magical passes is something foreign to Western man, an effort should be made to keep the practice of Tensegrity detached from the concerns of our daily world. The practice of Tensegrity should not he mixed with elements with which we are already thoroughly familiar, such as conversation, music, or the sound of a radio or TV newsman reporting the news, no matter how muffled the sound might he.

131The setting of modern urban life facilitates the formation of groups, and under these circumstances, the only manner in which Tensegrity can be taught and practiced in the seminars and workshops is in groups of practitioners. Practicing in groups is beneficial in many aspects and deleterious in others. It is beneficial because it allows the creation of a consensus of movement and the opportunity to learn by examination and comparison. It is deleterious because it fosters the reliance on oth­ers, and the emergence of syntactic commands and solicitations dealing with hierarchy.

132Don Juan conceived that since the totality of human behavior was ruled by language, human beings have learned to respond to what he called syntactic commands, praising or deprecatory formulas built into language—for example, the responses that each individual makes, or elicits in others, with slogans such as No problem, Piece of cake, It's time to worry, You could do better, I can't do it, My butt is too big, I'm the best, I'm the worst in the world, I could live with that, I'm coping, Everything's going to be okay, etc., etc. Don Juan maintained that what sorcerers have always wanted, as a basic rule of thumb, is to run away from activities derived from syntactic commands.

133Originally, as don Juan described it, the magical passes were per­formed by the shamans of ancient Mexico individually and in solitari­ness, on the spur of the moment or as the necessity arose. He taught them to his disciples in the same fashion. Don Juan stated that for the shaman practitioners, the challenge of performing the magical passes has always been to execute them perfectly, holding in mind only the abstract view of their perfect execution. Ideally, Tensegrity should be taught and practiced in the same fashion. However, the conditions of modern life and the fact that the goal of the magical passes has been for­mulated to apply to a great number of people make it imperative that a new approach be taken. Tensegrity should be practiced in whatever form is easiest: either in groups, or alone, or both.

134In my particular case, the practice of Tensegrity in very large groups has been more than ideal, because it has given me the unique opportu­nity of witnessing something which don Juan Matus and all the sorcer­ers of his lineage never did: the effects of human mass. Don Juan and all the shamans of his lineage, which he considered to be twenty-seven generations long, never were capable of witnessing the effects of human mass. They practiced the magical passes alone, or in groups of up to five practitioners. For them, the magical passes were highly individualistic.

135If the number of Tensegrity practitioners is in the hundreds, an ener­getic current is nearly instantaneously formed among them. This energetic current, which a shaman could easily see, creates in the practition­ers a sense of urgency. It is like a vibratory wind that sweeps through them, and gives them the primary elements of purpose. I have been privileged to see something I considered to be a portentous sight: the awakening of purpose, the energetic basis of man. Don Juan Matus used to call this unbending intent. He taught me that unbending intent is the essential tool of those who journeyed into the unknown.

136A very important issue to consider when practicing Tensegrity is that the movements must be executed with the idea that the benefit of the magical passes comes by itself. This idea must be stressed at any cost. At the beginning, it is very difficult to discern the fact that Tensegrity is not a standard system of movements for developing the body. It indeed develops the body, but only as a by-product of a more transcendental effect. By redeploying unused energy, the magical passes can conduce the practitioner to a level of awareness in which the parameters of normal, traditional per­ception are canceled out by the fact that they are expanded. The practi­tioner can thus be allowed even to enter into unimaginable worlds.

137"But why would I want to enter into those worlds?" I asked don Juan when he described this post-effect of the magical passes.

138"Because you are a creature of awareness, a perceived like the rest of us," he said. "Human beings are on a journey of awareness, which has been momentarily interrupted by extraneous forces. Believe me, we are magical creatures of awareness. If we don't have this conviction, we have nothing."

139He further explained that human beings, from the moment their journey of awareness was interrupted, have been caught in an eddy, so to speak, and are spinning around, having the impression of moving with the current, and yet remaining stationary.

140"Take my word," don Juan went on, "because mine are not arbitrary statements. My word is the result of corroborating, for myself, what the shamans of ancient Mexico found out: that we human beings are magical beings."

141It has taken me thirty years of hard discipline to come to a cognitive plateau in which don Juan's statements are recognizable and their validity is established beyond the shadow of a doubt. I know now that human beings are creatures of awareness, involved in an evolutionary journey of awareness, beings indeed unknown to themselves, filled to the brim with incredible resources that are never used.

142SIX SERIES OF TENSEGRITY

143The six series which are going to be discussed are the following:

1441. The Series for Preparing Intent

1452. The Series for the Womb

1463. The Series of the Five Concerns: The Westwood Series

1474. The Separation of the Left Body and the Right Body: The Heat Series

1485. The Masculinity Series

1496. The Series for Devices Used in Conjunction with Specific Magical Passes

150The particular magical passes of Tensegrity that comprise each of the six conform with a criterion of maximum efficiency. In other words, each magical pass is a precise ingredient of a formula. This is a replica of the way in which the long series of magical passes were origi­nally used; each series was sufficient in itself to produce the maximum release of redeployable energy.

151In executing the magical passes, there are certain things that must be taken into consideration in order to perform the movements with maximum efficiency:

1521. All the magical passes of the six series can be repeated as many times as desired, unless otherwise specified. If they are first done with the left side of the body, they must be repeated an equal number of times with the right side. As a rule, every magical pass of the six series begins with the left side.

1532. The feet are kept separate by a distance equivalent to the shoul­ders' width. This is a balanced way to distribute the weight of the body. If the legs are spread too far apart, the balance of the body is impaired. The same thing happens if they are too close together. The best way to arrive at this distance is to begin from a position where the two feet are close together (fig. 1). The tips of the feet are then pivoted on the fixed heels and opened in a letter V shape (fig. 2). Shifting the weight to the tips of the feet, the heels are pivoted out to the sides an equal distance (fig. 3). The tips of the feet are brought into parallel alignment, and the distance between the feet is roughly the width of the shoulders. Further adjustment may be necessary here in order to reach that desired width and to get the optimal balance of the body.

1543. During the execution of all the magical passes of Tensegrity, the knees are kept slightly bent, so that when one is looking down, the kneecaps block the view of the tips of the feet (figs. 4, 5), except in the case of spe­cific magical passes in which the knees have to be locked. Such cases are indicated in the description of those passes. To have the knees locked doesn't mean that the hamstrings are injuriously tense, but rather that they are locked in a gentle way, without unnecessary force.

155This position of bending the knees is a modern addition to the execu­tion of the magical passes, one that stems from influences of recent times. One of the leaders of don Juan Matus's lineage was the nagual Lujan, a sailor from China whose original name was something like Lo-Ban. He came to Mexico around the turn of the nineteenth century, and stayed there for the rest of his life. one of the women sorcerers in don Juan Matus's own party went to the Orient and studied martial arts. Don Juan Matus himself recommended that his disciples learn to move in a disciplined fashion by taking up some form of martial arts training.

156Another issue to consider in reference to the slightly bent knees is that when the legs are moved forward in a kicking motion, the knees are never whipped. Rather, the whole leg should be moved by the tension of the muscles of the thighs. Moving in this fashion, the tendons of the knees are never injured.

1574. The back muscles of the legs must be tensed (fig. 6). This is a very difficult accomplishment. Most people can learn quite easily to tense the front muscles of the legs, but the back muscles of the legs still remain flaccid. Don Juan said that the back muscles of the thighs are where personal history is always stored in the body. According to him, feel­ings find their home there and get stagnant. He maintained that difficulty in changing behavior patterns could be easily attributed to the flaccidity of the back muscles of the thighs.

1585. While performing all these magical passes, the arms are always kept slightly bent at the elbows—never fully extended—when they are moved to strike, preventing, in this manner, the tendons of the elbows from becoming irritated (fig. 7).

1596. The thumb must always be kept in a locked position, meaning that it is folded over the edge of the hand. It should never stick out (fig. 8). The sorcerers of don Juan's lineage considered the thumb to be a crucial element in terms of energy and function. They believed that at the base of the thumb exist points where energy can become stagnant, and points that can regulate the flow of energy in the body. In order to avoid unnecessary stress on the thumb or injury resulting from jolting the hand forcefully, they adopted the measure of pressing the thumbs against the inside edges of the hands.

1607. When the hand is made into a fist, the little finger is raised to avoid an angular fist (fig. 9) in which the middle, fourth, and fifth fin­gers droop. The idea is that in making a square fist (fig. 10), the fourth and fifth fingers have to be raised, thus creating a peculiar tension in the axilla, a tension which is most desirable for general well-being.

1618. The hands, when they have to be opened, are fully extended. The tendons of the back of the hand are at work, presenting the palm as an even, flat surface (fig. 11). Don Juan preferred a flat palm to counteract the tendency (established, he felt, through socialization) to present the hand as a hollow palm (fig. 12). He said that a hollow palm was the palm of a beggar, and that whoever practices the magical passes is a war­rior, not a beggar in the least.

1629. When the fingers have to be contracted at the second knuckle and bent tightly over the palm, the tendons on the back of the hand are tensed to the maximum, especially the tendons of the thumb (fig. 13). This tension of the tendons creates a pressure on the wrists and forearms, areas which sorcerers of ancient Mexico believed were key in promoting health and Wellbeing.

16310. In many Tensegrity movements, the wrists have to be bent forward or backward to an approximately ninety-degree angle by contracting the tendons of the forearm (fig. 14). This bending must be accomplished slowly, because most of the time the wrist is quite inflexible, and it is important that the wrist acquire the flexibility to turn the back of the hand to make a maximum angle with the forearm.

16411. Another important issue in the practice of Tensegrity is an act which has been termed turning the body on. This is a unique act in which all the muscles of the body, and specifically the diaphragm, are con­tracted in one instant. The muscles of the stomach and abdomen are jolted, as are the muscles around the shoulders and shoulder blades. The arms and legs are tensed in unison with equal force, but only for an instant (figs. 15, 16). As practitioners of Tensegrity progress in their practice, they can learn to sustain this tension for a while longer.

165Turning the body on has nothing to do with the state of perennial bodily tension that seems to be the mark of our times. When the body is tense with preoccupation or overwork, and the muscles of the neck are as hard as they can be, the body is not in any way turned on. Relaxing the muscles or arriving at a state of tranquillity is not turning the body off, either. The idea of the sorcerers of ancient Mexico was that with their magical passes, the body was alerted; it was made to be ready for action. Don Juan Matus termed this condition turning the body on. He said that when the muscular tension of turning the body on ceases, the body is turned off naturally.

16612. Breath and breathing were, according to don Juan, of supreme importance for the sorcerers of ancient Mexico. They divided breath into breathing with the tops of the lungs, breathing with the midsection of the lungs, and breathing with the abdomen (figs. 17, 18, 19). Breathing by expanding the diaphragm they called the animal breath, and they practiced it assiduously, don Juan said, for longevity and health.

167It was don Juan Matus's belief that many of the health problems of modern man could be easily corrected by deep breathing. He main­tained that the tendency of human beings nowadays is to take shallow breaths. One of the aims of the sorcerers of ancient Mexico was to train their bodies, by means of the magical passes, to inhale and exhale deeply.

168It is highly recommended, therefore, in the movements of Tensegrity that call for deep inhalations and exhalations, that these be accom­plished by slowing down the inflow or outflow of air, in order to make the inhalations and exhalations longer and more profound.

169Another important issue concerning the breathing in Tensegrity is that breathing is normal while executing the Tensegrity movements, unless otherwise specified in the description of any given magical pass.

17013. Another consideration in performing the Tensegrity movements is the realization that has to come to practitioners that Tensegrity is in essence the interplay between relaxing and tensing the muscles of choice parts of the body in order to arrive at a most coveted physical explosion, which the sorcerers of ancient Mexico knew only as the energy of the tendons. This is a veritable explosion of the nerves and ten­dons below or at the core of the muscles.

171Given that Tensegrity is the tension and relaxation of muscles, the intensity of the muscle tension and the length of time that the muscles are kept in that state, in any given magical pass, depends on the strength of the participant. It is recommended that at the beginning of the practice, the tension be minimal and the length of time as brief as possible. As the body gets warmer, the tension should become greater and the length of time extended, but always in a moderate fashion.

172THE FIRST SERIES

173The Series for Preparing Intent

174Don Juan Matus stated that human beings as organisms perform a stu­pendous maneuver of perception which, unfortunately, creates a mis­conception, a false front; they take the influx of sheer energy in the universe at large and turn it into sensory data, which they interpret according to a strict system of interpretation that sorcerers call the human form. This magical act of interpreting pure energy gives rise to the misconception, the peculiar conviction of human beings that their interpretation system is all that exists.

175Don Juan elucidated this phenomenon with an example. He said that tree, as tree is known to human beings, is more interpretation than per­ception. He pointed out that for human beings to establish the presence of tree, all they need is a cursory glance that tells them hardly anything. The rest is a phenomenon which he described as the calling of intent, the intent of tree; that is to say, the interpretation of sensory data pertaining to the specific phenomenon that human beings call tree. He declared that the entire world of human beings, just as in this example, is com­posed of an endless repertoire of interpretations where human senses play a minimal role. In other words, only the visual sense touches the energy influx which comes from the universe at large, and it does so only in a cursory fashion.

176He maintained that the majority of the perceptual activity of human beings is interpretation, and that human beings are the kind of organ­isms that need only a minimal input of pure perception in order to cre­ate their world; or, that they perceive only enough to trigger their inter­pretation system. The example that don Juan liked the best was the way in which he said we construct, by intending, something as overwhelming and as crucial as the White House. He called the White House the site of power of today's world, the center of all our endeavors, hopes, fears, and so on, as a global conglomerate of human beings—for all practical purposes, the capital of the civilized world. He said that all this wasn't in the realm of the abstract, or even in the realm of our minds, but in the realm of intending, because from the point of view of our sensory input, the White House was a building that in no way had the richness, the scope, the depth of the concept of the White House. He added that from the point of view of the input of sensory data, the White House, like everything else in our world, was cursorily apprehended with our visual senses only; our tactile, olfactory, auditory, and taste senses were not engaged in any way. The interpretation that those senses could make of sensory data in relation to the building where the White House is would have no meaning whatsoever.

177The question that don Juan asked as a sorcerer was where the White House was. He said, answering his own question, that it was certainly not in our perception, not even in our thoughts, but in a special realm of intending, where it was nurtured with everything pertinent to it. Don Juan's assertion was that to create a total universe of intending in such a manner was our magic.

178Since the theme of the first series of Tensegrity is preparing the prac­titioners for intending, it's important to review the sorcerers' definition of intending. For don Juan, intending was the tacit act of filling out the empty spaces left by direct sensory perception, or the act of enriching the observable phenomena by means of intending a completeness that doesn't exist from the point of view of pure perception.

179The act of intending this completeness was referred to by don Juan as calling intent. Everything he explained about intent pointed to the fact that the act of intending is not in the realm of the physical. In other words, it is not part of the physicality of the brain or any other organ. Intent, for don Juan, transcended the world we know. It is something like an energetic wave, a beam of energy which attaches itself to us.

180Because of the extrinsic nature of intent, don Juan made a distinction between the body as part of the cognition of everyday life and the body as an energetic unit which was not part of that cognition. This energetic unit included the unseen parts of the body, such as the internal organs, and the energy that flowed through them. Don Juan asserted that it was with this part that energy could be directly perceived.

181He pointed out that because of the predominance of sight in our habitual way of perceiving the world, the shamans of ancient Mexico described the act of directly apprehending energy as seeing. For them to perceive energy as it flowed in the universe meant that energy adopted nonidiosyncratic, specific configurations that repeated themselves consistently, and that those configurations could be perceived in the same terms by anyone who saw.

182The most important example don Juan Matus could give of this con­sistency of energy in adopting specific configurations was the perception of the human body when it was seen directly as energy. As it was already said, shamans like don Juan perceive a human being as a conglomerate of energy fields that gives the total impression of a clear-cut sphere of luminosity. Taken in this sense, energy is described by shamans as a vibration that agglutinates itself into cohesive units. Shamans describe the entire universe as being composed of energy configurations that appear to the seeing eye as filaments, or luminous fibers that are strung in every which way without ever being entangled. This is an incompre­hensible proposition for the linear mind. It has a built-in contradiction that can't he resolved: How could those fibers extend themselves every which way and yet not be entangled?

183Don Juan emphasized the point that shamans were able only to describe events, and that if their terms of description seemed inade­quate and contradictory, it was because of the limitations of syntax. Yet their descriptions were as strict as anything could be.

184The shamans of ancient Mexico, according to don Juan, described intent as a perennial force that permeates the entire universe—a force that is aware of itself to the point of responding to the beckoning or to the command of shamans. By means of intent, those shamans were capa­ble of unleashing not only all the human possibilities of perceiving, but all the human possibilities of action. Through intent, they realized the most far-fetched formulations.

185Don Juan taught me that the limit of man's capability of perceiving is called the band of man, meaning that there is a boundary that marks human capabilities as dictated by the human organism. These bound­aries are not merely the traditional boundaries of orderly thought, but the boundaries of the totality of resources locked within the human organism. Don Juan believed that these resources are never used, but are kept in situ by preconceived ideas about human limitations, limitations that have nothing to do with actual human potential.

186Don Juan stated, as categorically as he was able to, that since perceiv­ing energy as it flows in the universe is not arbitrary or idiosyncratic, seers witness formulations of energy that happen by themselves and are not molded by human interference. Thus, the perception of such formu­lations is, in itself and by itself, the key that releases the locked-in human potential that ordinarily has never entered into play. In order to elicit the perception of those energetic formulations, the totality of human capabilities to perceive has to be engaged.

187The Series for Preparing Intent is divided into four groups. The first is called Mashing Energy for Intent. The second is called Stirring up Energy for Intent. The third group is called Gathering Energy for Intent, and the fourth group is called Breathing In the Energy of Intent.

188The First Group:

189Mashing Energy for Intent

190Don Juan gave me explanations which covered all the nuances of every group of magical passes, which are the core of the long Tensegrity Series.

191"Energy which is essential for handling intent," he said when he was explaining to me the energetic implications of this group, "is continu­ously dispelled from the vital centers located around the liver, pancreas, and kidneys, and settles down at the bottom of the luminous sphere that we are. This energy needs to be constantly stirred and rerouted. The sor­cerers of my lineage were very emphatic in recommending a systematic and controlled stirring of energy with the legs and feet. For them, long walks, which were an unavoidable feature of their lives, resulted in an excessive stirring of energy which did not serve any purpose. Long walks were their nemesis for this reason, and the inflow of excessive energy had to be balanced by the execution of specific magical passes per­formed while they were walking."

192Don Juan Matus told me that this set, which consists of fifteen magical passes whose function is to stir energy with the feet and legs, was considered by the shamans of his lineage to be the most effective way of doing what they called mashing energy. He stated that each of the steps is a magical pass which has a built-in control for the mashing of energy, and that practitioners can repeat these magical passes hundreds of times, if they so desire, without worrying about an exces­sive stirring of energy. In don Juan's view, energy for intending that was stirred up excessively ended up further depleting the centers of vitality.

1931. Grinding Energy with the Feet

194The body pivots on the balls of the feet from left to right and right to left in unison for a moment in order to gain balance. Then the weight of the body is shifted to the heels, and the pivoting is done on them from then on, with the toes slightly off the ground while swiveling, and touching the ground when the feet reach the maximum slant.

195The arms are kept bent at the elbows with the hands pointing out, palms facing each other. The arms move with an impulse from the shoulders and the shoulder blades. This movement of the arms in uni­son with the legs, as in walking (the right arm moves when the left leg moves, and vice versa), accounts for a total engagement of the limbs and the internal organs (figs. 20, 21).

196A physical by-product of grinding energy in this fashion is an increase in circulation in the feet, calves, and thighs up to the groin area. Shamans throughout the centuries have also used it to restore flex­ibility to limbs that were injured in daily use.

1972. Grinding Energy with Three Slides of the Feet

198The feet are swiveled on the heels, in the same manner as in the previ­ous magical pass, three times. There is a pause that lasts an instant and then they are swiveled three times again. It is important to notice that in all the first three magical passes of this series, the key issue is the engagement of the arms, which move back and forth briskly.

199Making the grinding of energy a discontinuous affair increases its effect. A physical by-product of this magical pass is a quick surge of energy for instances of running or fleeing danger, or for anything that requires a quick intervention.

2003. Grinding Energy by a Sideways Slide of the Feet

201Both feet, pivoting on the heels, move to the left; they pivot on the balls of the feet to the left again. Next, they pivot a third time, still to the left, but on the heels again (figs. 22, 23, 24). The sequence is reversed by pivoting on the heels to the right; next, on the balls of the feet to the right; and then on the heels again, to the right.

202A physical consequence of these three magical passes is the spurring of the circulation in the total body.

2034. Mixing Energy by Striking the Floor with the Heels

204This magical pass resembles walking in place. The knee moves up briskly while the tip of the foot rests on the ground. The weight of the body is carried by the other leg. The body weight shifts back and forth, resting on whichever leg stays put, while the other one performs the movement. The arms are moved in the same fashion as in the previous magical pass (fig. 25).

205A physical consequence of this magical pass and the following one is very much like that of the three preceding magical passes: a sensation of well-being that permeates the pelvic region after performing the movements.

2065. Mixing Energy by Striking the Ground with the Heels Three Times

207This magical pass is exactly like the preceding one, with the exception that the movement of the knees and feet is not continuous. It is interrupted after the heels are brought to the ground three times, in an alternating fashion. The sequence is left, right, left—pause—right, left, right, and so on.

208The first five magical passes of this group allow practitioners a quick surge of energy, in cases when energy is needed in the midsection or the groin, or, for instance, when they need to perform a long-distance run or a quick climbing of rocks or trees.

2096. Gathering Energy with the Soles of the Feet and Moving It up the Inner Legs

210The soles of the left and the right foot move alter­nately up the inner part of the opposite leg, almost brushing it. It is important to arch the legs a little bit by standing with the knees bent (fig. 26).

211In this magical pass, energy for intending is forced up the inner side of the legs, which shamans con­sider to be the storage place of kinesthetic memory. This magical pass is used as an aid to release the memory of movements, or to facilitate retaining the memory of new ones.

2127. Stirring Energy with the Knees

213The knee of the left leg is bent and swung to the right as far as it can reach, as if to give a sideways kick with the knee, while the trunk and the arms are gently twisted as far as possible in the ­opposite direction (fig. 27). The left leg is then brought back to a standing position. The same movement is performed with the right knee, alternating then back and forth.

2148. Pushing the Energy Stirred with the Knees into the Trunk

215This magical pass is the energetic continuation of the preceding one. The left knee, bent to the maximum, is pushed up as far as possible into the trunk. The trunk is bent slightly forward. At the moment the knee is pushed up, the tip of the foot points to the ground (fig. 28). The same movement is performed with the right leg, alternating then between the two legs.

216Pointing the foot to the ground ensures that the tendons of the ankles are tense, in order to jolt minute centers there where energy accumulates. Shamans consider those centers to be perhaps the most important in the lower limbs, so important that they could awaken the rest of the minute energy centers in the body through the performance of this magical pass. This magical pass and the preceding one are exe­cuted together for the purpose of projecting the energy for intending gathered with the knees up into the two centers of vitality around the liver and the pancreas.

2179. Kicking Energy in Front and in Back of the Body

218A front kick of the left leg is followed by a hook kick to the back with the right leg (figs. 29, 30). Then the order is reversed and a front kick is made with the right leg, followed by a hook kick to the back with the left leg.

219The arms are kept to the sides, because this magical pass engages only the lower limbs, giving them flexibility. The aim is to lift the leg that kicks to the front as high as possible, and the leg that kicks to the back also as high as possible. When executing the back kick, the trunk should bend slightly forward to facilitate the movement. This slight bending forward of the trunk is used as a natural means of absorbing the energy stirred with the limbs. This magical pass is performed to aid the body when problems of digestion arise, due to a change in diet, or when there is a need to travel over great distances.

22010. Lifting Energy from the Soles of the Feet

221The left knee is bent acutely as it is lifted toward the trunk, as far up as possible. The trunk is bent slightly forward, almost touching the knee. The arms jut down, making a vise that grabs the sole of the foot (fig. 31). The ideal would be to grab the sole of the foot in a very light fash­ion, releasing it immediately The foot comes down to the ground as the arms and hands, with a powerful jolt that engages the shoulders and pectoral muscles, lift up along the sides of the legs to the level of the pancreas and spleen (fig. 32). The same movements are performed with the right foot and arm, lifting the hands from the feet to the level of the liver and gallbladder. The movements are performed alternating between the two legs.

222As in the case of the previous magical pass, bending the trunk for­ward allows the energy from the soles of the feet to be transferred to the two vital centers of energy around the liver and the pancreas. This magical pass is used to aid the attainment of flexibility, and to relieve prob­lems of digestion.

22311. Pushing Down a Wall of Energy

224The left foot, with the knee acutely bent, is lifted to the height of the hips; then it pushes forward with the tip of the foot arched upward, as if pushing away a solid object (fig. 33). As soon as the foot is brought down, the right foot is lifted in the same fashion and the movement is repeated, alternating the feet.

22512. Stepping Over a Barrier of Energy

226The left leg is nimbly lifted as if going over a hurdle which is located edgewise in front of the body. The leg makes a circle from left to right (fig. 34), and once the foot lands, the other leg is lifted to perform the same movement.

22713. Kicking a Lateral Gate

228This is a kick-push with the soles of the feet. The left leg is lifted to midcalf and the foot pushes to the right of the body as if to hit a solid object, using the total sole of the foot as a striking surface (fig. 35). The foot is retrieved then to the left side, and the same movement is repeated with the right leg and foot.

22914. Cracking a Nugget of Energy

230The left foot is lifted with the tip pointing acutely to the ground. The knee protrudes straight forward, deeply bent. Then the foot descends with a controlled motion, striking toward the ground as if it were crack­ing a nugget (fig. 36). Once the tip of the foot strikes, the foot is returned to its original standing position and the same movement is repeated with the other leg and foot.

23115. Scraping Off the Mud of Energy

232The left foot is lifted a few inches above the ground; the entire leg is brought forward and then pushed backward sharply, with the foot lightly brushing the ground as if it were scraping something off the sole of the foot (fig. 37). The weight of the body is carried by the opposite leg, and the trunk leans a bit forward in order to engage the muscles of the stom­ach as this magical pass is executed. Once the left foot returns to its nor­mal position, the same movement is repeated with the right foot and leg.

233Shamans call the last five magical passes of this group Steps in Nature. They are magical passes that practitioners can perform as they walk, or conduct business, or even as they are sitting, talking to people. Their func­tion is gathering; energy with the feet and using it with the legs for situa­tions in which concentration and the quick use of memory are required.

234The Second Group :

235Stirring up Energy for Intent

236The ten magical passes of the second group have to do with stirring up energy for intending from areas just below the knees, above the head, around the kidneys, the liver and pancreas, the solar plexus, and the neck. Each of these magical passes is a tool that stirs up exclusively the energy pertinent to intending, which is accumulated on those areas. Shamans consider these magical passes to be essential for daily living, because for them, life is ruled by intent. This set of magical passes is per­haps for shamans what a cup of coffee is for modern man. The slogan of our day, "I'm not myself until I drink my cappuccino," or the slogan of a past generation, "I'm not awake until I drink my cup of java," is ren­dered for them as "I am not ready for anything until I have performed these magical passes." The second group of this series begins by the act that has been termed turning the body on. (See page 34, figs. 15, 16.)

23716. Stirring up Energy with the Feet and the Arms

238After the body has been turned on, it is held in a slightly stooped-over position (fig. 38). The weight is placed on the right leg while the left leg makes a complete circle, brushing the ground with the tips of the toes, and landing on the ball of the foot, in front of the body. The left arm, in synchronization with the leg, makes a circle, the top of which goes above the level of the head (fig. 39). There is a slight pause of the leg and arm and they draw two more circles in succession, making a total of three (fig. 40). The rhythm of this magical pass is given by counting one, slight pause, one-one, then a very slight pause, two, pause, two-two, then a very slight pause, and so on. The same movement is per­formed with the right leg and arm.

239This magical pass stirs energy at the bottom of the luminous ball with the feet, and projects it with the arms to the area just above the head.

24017. Rolling Energy on the Adrenals

241The forearms are placed behind the body, over the area of the kidneys and adrenals. The elbows are bent at a ninety-degree angle and the hands are held in fists, a few inches away from the body, without touch­ing it. The fists move downward in a rotational fashion, one on top of the other, beginning with the left fist moving downward; the right fist follows, moving downward as the left fist moves back up. The trunk leans slightly forward (fig. 41). Then the movement is reversed, and the fists roll in the opposite direction as the trunk leans slightly backward (fig. 42). Leaning the body forward and backward in this fashion engages the muscles of the upper arms and the shoulders.

242This magical pass is used to supply the energy of intending to the adrenals and kidneys.

24318. Stirring up Energy for the Adrenals

244The trunk is bent forward, with the knees protruding beyond the line of the toes. The hands rest above the kneecaps, the fingers draping over them. The left hand then rotates to the right over the kneecap, making the elbow protrude as far forward as possible in alignment with the left knee (fig. 43). At the same time, the right fore­arm, with the hand still above the kneecap, rests its full length over the right thigh, while the right knee is straightened out, engaging the ham­string. It is important to move only the knees, and not to swing the rear end from side to side.

245The same movements are performed with the right arm and leg (fig. 44).

246This magical pass is employed for stirring up the energy of intending around the kidneys and adrenals. It brings the practitioner long-range endurance and a sensation of daring and self-confidence.

24719. Fusing Left and Right Energy

248A deep inhalation is taken. A very slow exhalation begins as the left forearm is brought in front of the shoulders, with the elbow bent at a ninety-degree angle. The wrist is bent backward as acutely as possible, with the fingers pointing forward, and the palm of the hand facing to the right (fig. 45).

249While the arm maintains this position, the trunk is bent forward sharply until the protruding left arm reaches the level of the knees. The left elbow must be kept from sagging toward the floor, and must be main­tained away from the knees, and as far forward as possible. The slow exhalation continues, as the right arm makes a full circle over the head and the right hand comes to rest an inch or two away from the fingers of the left hand. The palm of the right hand faces the body and the fingers point toward the floor. The head is facing downward, with the neck held straight. The exhalation ends, and a deep breath is taken in that posi­tion. All the muscles of the back and the arms and legs are contracted as the air is slowly and deeply inhaled (fig. 46).

250The body straightens up as an exhalation is made, and the complete magical pass is started again with the right arm.

251The maximum stretch of the arms forward permits the creation of an opening in the energetic vortex of the center of the kidneys and adrenals; such an opening allows the optimal utilization of redeployed energy. This magical pass is essential for the redeployment of energy to that center, which accounts, in general terms, for an overall vitality and youth of the body.

25220. Piercing the Body with a Beam of Energy

253The left arm is placed against the body in front of the navel, and the right arm just behind the body at the same level. The wrists are bent sharply, and the fingers point to the floor. The palm of the left hand faces right, and the palm of the right hand faces left (fig. 47). The fin­gertips of both hands are raised briskly to point in a straight line forward and backward. The whole body is tensed and the knees are bent at the instant that the fingers point forward and backward (fig. 48). The hands are kept in that position for a moment. Then the muscles are relaxed, the legs are straightened, and the arms are swiveled around until the right arm is in front and the left behind. As at the beginning of this magical pass, the fingertips point to the floor, and are raised again briskly to point in a straight line forward and backward, again with a slight exhalation; the knees are bent.

254By means of this magical pass, a dividing line is established in the middle of the body, which separates left energy and right energy.

25521. Twisting Energy Over Two Centers of Vitality

256It's a good idea to begin by placing the hands facing each other, as a device to keep the hands in line. The fingers are kept open and clawed, as if to grab the lid of a jar the size of the hand. Then the right hand is placed over the area of the pancreas and spleen, facing the body. The left hand is placed behind the body, over the area of the left kidney and adrenal, also with the palm facing the body. Both wrists are then bent backward sharply, as the trunk turns as far to the left as possible, keeping the knees in place. Next, both hands pivot at the wrists in unison, in a side-to-side movement, as if to unscrew the lids of two jars, one on the pancreas and spleen, and the other on the left kidney (fig. 49).

257The same movement is executed by reversing the order, putting the left hand in the front, at the level of the liver and gallbladder and the right arm in the back at the level of the right kidney.

258With the aid of this magical pass, energy is stirred on the three main centers of vitality: the liver and gallbladder, the pancreas and spleen, and the kid­neys and adrenals. It is an indispensable magical pass for those who have to he on the lookout. It facilitates an all-around awareness and it increases the practitioners' sensibility to their surroundings.

25922. The Half-Circle of Energy

260A half-circle is drawn with the left hand, commencing in front of the face. The hand moves slightly to the right until it reaches the level of the right shoulder (fig. 50). There the hand turns and draws the inner edge of a half-circle close to the left side of the body (fig. 51). The hand turns again in the back (fig. 52) and draws the outer edge of the half-circle, then returns to its initial position (fig. 53). The complete half-circle is slanted from the level of the eyes, in front, to a level below the rear end, in the back. It is important to follow the movement of the hand with the eyes.

261Once the half-circle drawn with the left arm is completed, another one is drawn with the right arm, surrounding the body in this fashion with two half-circles. These two half-circles are drawn to stir energy and to facilitate the sliding of energy from above the head to the region of the adrenals. This magical pass is a vehicle for acquiring intense, sustained sobriety.

26223. Stirring Energy Around the Neck

263The left hand, with the palm facing upward, and the right hand, with the palm facing downward, are placed in front of the body, at the level of the solar plexus. The right hand is on top of the left, nearly touching it. The elbows are bent sharply. A deep breath is taken; the arms are raised slightly as the trunk is made to rotate as far to the left as possible without moving the legs, especially the knees, which are slightly bent in order to avoid any unnecessary stress on the tendons. The head is kept in alignment with the trunk and shoulders. An exhalation begins as the elbows are then gently pulled away from each other to a maximum stretch, keeping the wrists straight (fig. 54). An inhalation is taken. An exhalation begins when the head is turned very gently to the back to face the left elbow, and then to the front to face the right elbow; the rotation of the head back and forth is repeated two more times as the exhalation ends.

264The trunk is turned to the front, and the hands reverse position there. The right hand is made to face upward while the left hand is made to face downward, on top of the right one. An inhalation is taken again. The trunk is then turned to the right, and the same movements are repeated on the right.

265Shamans believe that a special type of energy for intending is dispersed from the center for decisions, located in the hollow V spot at the base of the neck, and that this energy is exclusively gathered with this magical pass.

26624. Kneading Energy with a Push of the Shoulder Blades

267Both arms are placed in front of the face, at the level of the eyes, with the elbows bent enough to give the arms a bowlike appearance (fig. 55). The trunk is bent forward slightly, in order to allow the shoulder blades to expand laterally. The movement begins by pushing the left arm forward while it is kept arched and tense (fig. 56). The right arm follows; and the arms move in an alternating fashion. It is important to note that the arms are kept extremely tense. The palms of the hands face forward and the fingertips face each other. The driving force of the arms is created by the deep movement of the shoulder blades and the tenseness of the stomach muscles.

268Shamans believe that energy on the ganglia around the shoulder blades gets easily stuck and becomes stagnant, bringing about the decay of the center for decisions, located on the V spot at the base of the neck. This magical pass is employed to stir that energy.

26925. Stirring Energy Above the Head and Cracking It

270The left arm moves in a relaxed fashion, making two and a half circles above and around the head (fig. 57). Those circles are then cracked with the outer edge of the forearm and the hand, which comes down forcefully, but very slowly (fig. 58). The impact is absorbed by the stom­ach muscles, which are tensed at that moment. The muscles of the arm are kept tight, in order to avoid injuries to the tendons which could occur if the muscles of the arm were loose, or if the arm were whipped. Air is exhaled lightly as the arm strikes downward. The same movement is repeated with the right arm.

271The energy stirred and cracked in this fashion is allowed to seep downward over the entire body. When practitioners are overtired, and can't afford to go to sleep, executing this magical pass dispels sleepiness and brings forth a sensation of temporary alertness.

272The Third Group :

273Gathering Energy for Intent

274The nine magical passes of the third group are employed to bring to the three centers of vitality around the liver, the pancreas, and the kidneys the specialized energy which has been stirred up by the magical passes of the previous group. The magical passes of this group must be performed slowly and with ultimate deliberation. Shamans recommend that the state of mind on executing these passes be one of total silence and the unwavering intent to gather the energy necessary for intending.

275All of the magical passes of the third group begin with a fast shake of the hands, which are held at the sides of the body, with the arms hang­ing at a normal position. The hands shake as if the fingers were vibrat­ing downward, taken by a tremor. A vibration of this nature was thought to be the means to stir energy around the hips and also the means to stimulate minute centers of energy where energy could get stagnant on the backs of the hands and the wrists.

276The overall effect of the first three magical passes of this group is one of general vitality and well-being, since energy is carried to the three main vital centers in the lower part of the body.

27726. Reaching for Energy Stirred Below the Knees

278A small jump forward is made with the left leg, which is propelled by the right one. The trunk is bent markedly forward, and the left arm is stretched out to grab something that is almost at the floor level (fig. 59). The left leg is then retrieved to a standing position, and the left palm brushes immediately over the vital center of energy on the right: the liver and gallbladder.

279The same movement is repeated with the right leg and arm, brushing the palm over the vital center on the left: the pancreas and spleen.

28027. Transporting Front Energy to the Adrenals

281A deep inhalation is taken while the hands shake. Then the left arm shoots straight in front of the body at the level of the shoulders with the palm of the hated turned toward the left, as all the air is sharply exhaled (fig. 60). Next, a very slow inhalation begins while the wrist rotates from left to right, making a complete circle, as if scooping a ball of solid matter (fig. 61). Then the inhalation continues while the wrist rotates back again to its initial position with the palm facing to the left. Next, as if carrying the ball, the left arm makes a semi-circle, keeping the same shoulder level; this movement ends when the back of the bent wrist is placed over the left kidney. It is important that the continuous inhalation he made to last for the duration of the swinging of the arm from front to hack. As this swinging movement is executed, the right arm makes a circular movement to the front of the body, ending when the hack of the bent wrist is brought to touch the area just above the pubis. The head is turned to the left to face the back (fig. 62). Next, the left hand, which is holding the ball, turns to face the body and smashes the ball against the left kidney and adrenal. The palm is then gently rubbed over that area as an exhalation is made.

282The same movement is executed by reversing the arms and turning the head to the right.

28328. Scooping Energy from the Left and the Right

284The arms are moved to the sides of the body and then raised with the hands curled inward toward the body, brushing upward against the torso to reach the armpits, as a deep inhalation is taken (fig. 63). Next, the arms are extended laterally, with the palms down, as the air is exhaled forcefully. A deep inhalation is taken then as the hands are cupped and made to rotate on the wrists until the palms face up, as if scooping something solid (fig. 64). Next, the hands are brought back to the shoulder level by bending the elbows sharply as the inhalation continues (fig. 65). This movement engages the shoulder blades and the muscles of the neck. After holding this position for a moment, the arms arc extended laterally again, with a sharp exhalation. The palms face front. The palms of the hands are cupped and made to rotate backward, again as if scooping a solid substance. The slightly cupped hands are brought back to the shoulder level as before. These movements are repeated one more time, for a total of three. The palms then rub gently over the two vital centers around the liver and around the pancreas as the air is exhaled.

28529. Cracking the Circle of Energy

286A circle is made by moving the left arm to the right shoulder (fig. 66), then close around the front of the body to the back (fig. 67) and out again to in front of the face (fig. 68). This movement of the left arm is coordinated with the same movement done with the right arm. Both arms move in an alternate fashion, creating a slanted circle around the total body. Then a backward step to the left is taken with the right foot, followed by a step to the right taken with the left foot, so as to turn around to face the opposite direction.

287The left arm is arched then around the left side of the circle, as if the circle were a solid object which the left arm presses against the armpit and chest area. The right arm then performs the same movement on the right side, treating the cir­cle as if it werc a solid object (fig. 69). A deep breath is taken, and the circle is cracked from both sides by tensing the whole body, especially the arms, which are brought together to the chest. The palms then rub gently on the respective centers of vitality on the front of the body as the air is exhaled.

288The uses of this pass are quite esoteric, because they have to do with the clarity of intent needed for decision making This magical pass is used for spreading the energy of decisions accumulated around the neck.

28930. Gathering Energy from the Front of the Body, Right Above the Head

290A deep inhalation is taken as the hands shake. Both arms are brought to the level of the face with clenched fists, crossed in an X, with the left arm closer to the face, and the inside of the fisted palms toward the face. The arms are then extended a few inches to the front as the wrists are made to rotate on each other until the fisted palms are facing down (fig. 70). From this position, the left shoulder and shoulder blade are extended forward, an exhalation begins. The left shoulder is pulled back as the right one comes forward. Next, the crossed arms are lifted above the head and the exhalation ends.

291A slow, deep inhalation is taken as the crossed arms make a complete circle, moving to the right around the front of the body, almost to the level of the knees, then to the left, and back to their initial position, right above the head (fig. 71). Then the amps are forcefully separated as a long exhalation begins (fig. 72). From there, the arms move as far back as possible, as the exhalation continues, drawing a circle which is Completed when the fists are brought to the front to the level of the eyes, with the inside of the fisted palms toward the face (fig. 73). Then the arms are crossed again. The wrists pivot on each other as the hands are opened and are placed against the body, the right hand on the area of the pancreas and spleen, and the left hand on the area of the liver and gallbladder. The body bends forward at the waist, at a ninety-degree angle, as the exhalation ends (fig. 74).

292The use of this magical pass is twofold: First, it stirs energy around the shoulder blades and transports it to a place above the head. From there, it makes the energy circulate in a broad circle that touches the edges of the luminous sphere. Second, it mixes the energy of the left and the right by placing it on the two centers of vitality around the pancreas and the liver, with each hand on the opposite center.

293Mixing energy in such a fashion provides a jolt of great magnitude to the respective centers of vitality. As the practitioners became more proficient in their practice, the jolt becomes more acute, and acquires the quality of a filter of energy, which is an incomprehensible statement until this pass is practiced. The sensation that accompanies it could be described as breathing mentholated air.

29431. Stirring and Grabbing Energy from Below the Knees and Above the Head

295An inhalation is taken as the hands shake. Both hands are brought up by the sides of the body to the level of the waist, and held relaxed. The knees are bent as the left hand is pushed downward with the wrist turned so that the palm faces outward, away from the body, as if it were reaching into a bucket full of liquid substance. This movement is performed at the same time that the right hand shoots up above the head with equal force; the right wrist is also turned so that the palm faces outward, away from the body (fig 75) A slow exhalation begins when both arms reach their maximum extension. The wrists are returned with great force to a straight position at the same time that the hands clasp into fists, as if grabbing something solid. Keeping the fists clenched, the exhalation continues while the right arm is brought down and the left arm is brought up to the level of the waist, slowly and with great strength, as if wading through a heavy liquid (fig. 76). Then the palms rub gently on the areas of the liver and gallbladder and the pancreas and spleen. The knees are straightened and the exhalation ends at this point (fig. 77).

296The same movement is executed by shifting the arms; the right arm plunges downward while the left arm pushes upward.

297The energy for intending that is extracted from below the knees and above the head in this magical pass can also be rubbed on the areas of the left and right kidneys.

29832. Mixing Energy of the Left and the Right

299An inhalation is taken as the hands shake. The left arm reaches diagonally to the extreme right above the head and in line with the right shoulder as an exhalation begins (fig. 78). The hand grabs as if clasping a handful of matter, yanks it out, and brings it to a position above the head and in line with the left shoulder, where the exhalation ends. The left hand remains clasped, and a sharp inhalation is taken as the left arm circles backward (fig. 79), ending in a fisted position at the level of the eyes. The fist is then brought down with an exhalation to the vital center around the pancreas, slowly, hut with great force, and the palm rubs softly on that area (fig. 80).

300The same movement is repeated with the right arm, but instead of moving in a backward circle, the right arm moves in a frontward circle.

301In the belief of shamans, the energy of the two sides of the body is different. The energy of the left is portrayed as being undular, and the energy of the right as being circular. This magical pass is used to apply circular energy to the left and undular energy to the right in order to strengthen the centers of vitality around the liver and pancreas by the inflow of slightly different energy.

30233. Grabbing Energy from Above the Head for the Two Vital Centers

303Starting at the level of the ear, the left arm circles forward twice (fig. 81) and is then extended over the head, as if to grab something (fig. 82). As this movement is executed, a deep breath is taken, which ends at the moment that the hand grabs upward as if to fetch something above the head. Don Juan recommended that the eyes select, with a quick glance upward, the target for the hand to grab. Whatever is selected and grabbed is then yanked forcefully downward and placed over the vital center around the pancreas and spleen. The air is exhaled at this point. The same movement is performed with the right arm, and the energy is placed over the center around the liver and gallbladder.

304According to shamans, the energy of intent tends to gravitate down­ward, and a more rarefied aspect of the same energy remains in the area above the head. This energy is gathered with this magical pass.

30534. Reaching for Energy Above the Head

306The left arm is extended upward as far as pos­sible, with the hand open as if to grab some­thing. At the same time, the body is pro­pelled upward with the right leg. When the jump reaches its maximum height, the hand turns inward at the wrist, making a hook with the forearm (fig. 83), which then slowly and forcefully scoops downward. The left hand rubs immediately around the vital cen­ter of the pancreas and spleen.

307This movement is performed with the right arm in exactly the same fashion as it was done with the left. The right hand immediately brushes across the vital center around the liver and gallbladder.

308Shamans believe that the energy stored around the periphery of the luminous sphere that human beings are can be stirred and gathered by jumping forcefully upward. This magical pass is used as a help to dispel problems brought about by concentrating on a given task for long peri­ods of time.

309The Fourth Group :

310Breathing In the Energy of Intent

311The three magical passes of this group are for stirring, gathering, and transporting energy for intent from three centers—around the feet, on the ankles, and right below the kneecaps—and placing it on the centers of vitality around the kidneys, the liver, the pancreas, the womb, and the genitals. The recommendation to practitioners on the execution of these magical passes is that since they are accompanied by breaths, the inhalations and exhalations should be slow and profound; and that there should be a crystal clear intent on the part of the practitioners that the adrenals receive an instantaneous boost while the deep breaths are taken.

31235. Dragging Energy from the Kneecaps Along the Front of the Thighs

313A deep inhalation is taken as the arms hang by the sides and the hands waver in a continuous tremor, as if stirring a gaseous matter. An exhala­tion begins as the hands are lifted to the waist, and the palms of the hands strike down in unison, on each side of the body, with great force (fig. 84). The arms are only slightly bent, so that the palms of the hands are a few inches below the stomach. The hands are three or four inches apart, held at ninety-degree angles with the forearms, the fingers point­ing forward. Slowly and without touching, the hands make one circle inward toward the front of the body; the muscles of the arms, stomach, and legs are fully contracted (fig. 85). A second circle is drawn in the same fashion as the air is totally expelled through clenched teeth.

314Another deep inhalation is taken, and the air is slowly exhaled as three more inward circles are drawn in front of the body. The hands are then retrieved to the front of the hips, and they slide down the front of the thighs with the heels of the palms, fingers slightly turned up, all the way to the kneecaps. The air is fully exhaled then. A third deep inhala­tion is taken while the tips of the fingers press the bottom of the kneecaps. The head is held facing downward, in line with the spine (fig. 86). Then, as the bent knees are straightened, the hands, with the fin­gers clawed, are dragged up the thighs to the hips, as the air is slowly exhaled. With the last portion of the exhalation, the hands are then brushed on the respective centers of vitality around the pancreas and the liver.

31536. Dragging Energy from the Sides of the Legs

316A deep inhalation is taken as the hands, held by the sides of the body, shake with a continuous tremor. The hands strike down exactly as in the previous magical pass. An exhalation begins there, while the hands draw, in a similar fashion, two small outward circles by the sides of the holly. The muscles of the arms, stomach, and legs are tensed to the max­imum. The elbows are held tight but slightly bent (fig. 87).

317After the two circles have been drawn, all the air is expelled, and a deep inhalation is taken. Three more outward circles are drawn as the air is slowly exhaled. The hands are then brought to the sides of the hips. The fingers are slightly raised as the heels of the hands rub all the way down the sides of the legs until the fingers reach the outside knobs of the ankles. The head is facing downward, in line with the body (fig. 88). The exhalation ends there, and a deep inhalation is taken with the index and middle fingers pressing the bottom of the knobs (fig. 89). A slow exhalation begins as the hands, with the fingers clawed, are dragged up the sides of the legs to the hips. The exhalation is completed while the palms are brushed on the two respective centers of vitality.

31837. Dragging Energy from the Front of the Legs

319Again, a deep inhalation is taken as the hands, held by the sides of the body, are shaken. Both arms make a circle by the sides of the body, beginning toward the back, and going over the head (fig. 90) to strike forcefully in front of the body with the palms down and the fingers pointing forward. A slow exhalation begins there, while the hands, starting with the left, move forward and backward three times in alter­nating succession, as if sliding over a smooth surface. The exhalation ends when the heels of both hands are touching the rib cage (fig. 91). A deep inhalation is taken then. The left hand moves in a sliding motion to the left followed by the right hand sliding to the right; this sequence is executed a total of three times in alternating succession. They end with the heels of the palms against the rib cage, the thumbs nearly touching each other (fig. 92). Next, both hands are made to slide down the front of the legs until they reach the tendons on the front of the ankles (fig. 93). The exhalation ends there. A deep inhalation is taken as the tendon is tensed by lifting the big toe until the tendon seems to pop up; the index and middle fingers of each hand vibrate the tendons by pressing on them (fig. 94). With the fingers clawed, the hands are dragged up the front of the legs to the hips as a slow exhalation begins. The palms are gently rubbed on the centers of vitality as the exhalation ends.

320THE SECOND SERIES

321The Series for the Womb

322According to don Juan Matus, one of the most specific interests of the shamans who lived in Mexico in ancient times was what they called the liberation of the womb. He explained that the liberation of the womb entailed the awakening of its secondary functions, and that since the primary function of the womb, under normal circumstances, was reproduction, those sorcerers were solely concerned with what they consid­ered to be its secondary function: evolution. Evolution, in the case of the womb, was, for them, the awakening and full exploitation of the womb’s capacity to process direct knowledge—that is to say, the possi­bility of apprehending sensory data and interpreting it directly, without the aid of the processes of interpretation with which we are familiar.

323For shamans, the moment in which practitioners are transformed from beings that are socialized to reproduce into beings capable of evolving is the moment when they become conscious of seeing energy as it flows in the universe. In the opinion of shamans, females can see energy directly more readily than males because of the effect of their wombs. It is also their opinion that under normal conditions, regardless of the facility that women have, it is nearly impossible for women or for men to become deliberately conscious that they can see energy directly. The reason for this incapacity is something which shamans consider to be a travesty: the fact that there is no one to point out to human beings that it is natural for them to see energy directly.

324Shamans maintain that women, because they have a womb, are so versatile, so individualistic in their ability to see energy directly that this accomplishment, which should be a triumph of the human spirit, is taken for granted. Women are never conscious of their ability. In this respect males are more proficient. Since it is more difficult for them to see energy directly, when they do accomplish this feat, they don't take it for granted. Therefore male sorcerers were the ones who set up the para­meters of perceiving energy directly and the ones who tried to describe the phenomenon.

325"The basic premise of sorcery," don Juan said to me one day, "discov­ered by the shamans of my lineage who lived in Mexico in ancient times is that we are perceivers. The totality of the human body is an instrument of perception. However, the predominance of the visual in us gives to perception the overall mood of the eyes. This mood, according to the old sorcerers, is merely the heritage of a purely predatorial state.

326"The effort of the old sorcerers, which has lasted to our days," don Juan continued, "was geared toward placing themselves beyond the realm of the predator's eye. They conceived the predator's eye to be visual par excellence, and that the realm beyond the predator's eye is the realm of inure perception, which is not visually oriented."

327On another occasion, he said that it was a bone of contention for the sorcerers of ancient Mexico that women, who have the organic frame, the womb, that could facilitate their entrance into the realm of pure perception, have no interest in using it. Those shamans viewed it as a woman's paradox to have endless power at her disposal and no interest whatsoever in gaining access to it. However, don Juan had no doubt that this lack of desire to do anything wasn't natural; it was learned.

328The aim of the magical passes for the womb is to give the female practi­tioners of Tensegrity an inkling, which has to be more than an intellectual titillation, of the possibility of canceling out the effect of this noxious socialization that renders women indifferent. Nevertheless, a warning is in order; don Juan Matus advised his female disciples to proceed with great caution when practicing these magical passes. The magical passes for the womb are passes that foster the awakening of the secondary functions of the uterus and ovaries, and those secondary functions are the apprehen­sion of sensory data and the interpretation of them.

329Don Juan called the womb the perceiving box. He was as convinced as the other sorcerers of his lineage that the uterus and ovaries, if they are pulled out of the reproductive cycle, can become tools of perception, and become indeed the epicenter of evolution. He considered that the first step of evolution is the acceptance of the premise that human beings are perceivers. It was not redundancy on his part to insist cease­lessly that this has to be done before anything else.

330"We already know that we are perceivers. What else can we be?" I would say in protest every time he insisted.

331"Think about it!" he would reply every time I protested. "Perception plays only a minute role in our lives, and yet, the only thing we are for a fact is perceivers. Human beings apprehend energy at large and turn it into sensory data. Then they interpret these sensory data into the world of everyday life. This interpretation is what we call perception.

332"The shamans of ancient Mexico, as you already know," don Juan went on, "were convinced that interpretation took place on a point of intense brilliance, the assemblage point, which they found when they saw the human body as a conglomerate of energy fields that resembled a sphere of luminosity. The advantage of women is their capacity to trans­fer the interpretation function of the assemblage point to the womb. The result of this transfer function is something that cannot be talked about, not because it is something forbidden, but because it is something inde­scribable.

333"The womb," don Juan continued, "is veritably in a chaotic state of turmoil, because of this veiled capacity that exists in remission from the moment of birth until death but which is never utilized. This function of interpretation never ceases to act and yet it has never been raised to the level of full consciousness."

334Don Juan's assurance was that the shamans of ancient Mexico, by means of their magical grasses, had raised among their female practition­ers the interpretive capacity of the womb to the level of consciousness, and by doing this, they had instituted an evolutionary change among them; that is to say, they had turned the womb from an organ of repro­duction into the tool of evolution.

335Evolution is defined in the world of modern man as the capacity of different species to modify themselves through the processes of natural selection or the transmission of traits, until they can successfully repro­duce in their offspring the changes brought about in themselves.

336The evolutionary theory that has lasted to our day, from the time it was formulated over a hundred years ago, says that the origin and the perpetuation of a new species of animal or plant is brought about by the process of natural selection, which favors the survival of individuals whose characteristics render them best adapted to their environment, and that evolution is brought about by the interplay of three principles: first, heredity, the conservative force that transmits similar organic forms from one generation to another; second, variation, the differences present in all forms of life; and third, the struggle for existence, which determines which variations confer advantages in a given environment. This last principle gave rise to the phrase still in current use: "the sur­vival of the fittest."

337Evolution, as a theory, has enormous loopholes; it leaves tremendous room for doubt. It is at best an open-ended process for which scientists have created classificatory schemes; they have created taxonomies to their hearts' content. But the fact remains that it is a theory full of holes. What we know about evolution doesn't tell us what evolution is.

338Don Juan Matus believed that evolution was the product of intending at a very profound level. In the case of sorcerers, that profound level was marked by what he had called inner silence.

339"For instance," he said, when he was explaining this phenomenon, "sorcerers are sure that dinosaurs flew because they intended flying. But what is very difficult to understand, much less accept, is that wings are only one solution to flying, in this case, the dinosaurs' solution.

340Nevertheless, this solution is not the only one that is possible. It's the only one available to us by imitation. Our airplanes are flying with wings imitating the dinosaurs, perhaps because flying has never been intended again since the dinosaurs' time. Perhaps wings were adopted because they were the easiest solution."

341Don Juan was of the opinion that if we were to intend it now, there is no way of knowing what other options for flying would be available besides wings. He insisted that because intent is infinite, there was no log­ical way in which the mind, following processes of deduction or induc­tion, could calculate or determine what these options for flying might be.

342The magical passes of the Series for the Womb are extremely potent, and should he practiced sparingly. In ancient times, men were barred from executing them. In more recent times, there has been a tendency among sorcerers to render these magical passes more generic, and thus the possibility arose that they could also be of service to men. This pos­sibility, however, is very delicate and requires careful handling, great concentration and determination.

343The male practitioners of Tensegrity who teach the magical passes have opted, because of their potent effect, to practice them by brushing the energy that they generate only lightly on the area of the genitals themselves. This measure has proven to be enough to provide a benefi­cial jolt without any profound or deleterious effects.

344Don Juan explained that the sorcerers of his lineage, at a given moment, allowed males to practice these magical passes because of the possibility that the energy engendered by them would awaken the sec­ondary function of the male sexual organs. He said that those sorcerers considered that the secondary function of the male sexual organs is not at all similar to that of the womb; no interpretation of sensory data can take place because the male sexual organs hang outside of the cavity of the body. Because of these particular circumstances, their conclusion was that the secondary function of the male organs is something which they termed evolutionary support: a sort of springboard that catapults men to perform extraordinary feats of what sor­cerers of ancient Mexico called unbending intent, or clearheaded pur­pose and concentration.

345The Series for the Womb is divided into four sections which corre­spond to the three female disciples of don Juan Matus: Taisha Abelar, Florinda Donner-Grau, and Carol Tiggs; and to the Blue Scout, who was born into don Juan's world. The first is composed of three magical passes belonging to Taisha Abelar; the second is composed of one magi­cal pass directly related to Florinda Donner-Grau; the third, of three magical passes that have to do exclusively with Carol Tiggs; and the fourth, of five magical passes that belong to the Blue Scout. The magi­cal passes of each section are pertinent to a specific type of individual. Tensegrity has rendered them capable of being utilized by anybody, although they are still slanted in the direction of the type of person that each of those four women is.

346The First Group:

347Magical Passes Belonging to Taisha Abelar

348The three magical passes of this group are geared to gathering energy for the womb from six specific areas: the left and right front of the body, the left and right sides of the body at the height of the hips, and from behind the shoulder blades and above the head. The explanation that the shamans of ancient Mexico gave was that energy especially suited for the womb accumulates on those areas, and that the movements of these magical passes are the appropriate antennas that gather that energy exclusively.