e used his sobriety to plunge himself into the task of answering don Juan's questions. "The nagual Elfas explained that my difficulty in understanding the spirit was the same as his own," don Juan continued. "He thought there were two different issues. One, the need to understand indirectly what the spirit is, and the other, to understand the spirit directly. "You're having problems with the first. Once you understand what the spirit is, the second issue will be resolved automatically, and vice versa. If the spirit speaks to you, using its silent words, you will certainly know immediately what the spirit is." He said that the nagual Elfas believed that the difficulty was our reluctance to accept the idea that knowledge could exist without words to explain it. "But I have no difficulty accepting that," I said. "Accepting this proposition is not as easy as saying you accept it," don Juan said. "The nagual Elfas used to tell me that the whole of humanity has moved away from the abstract, although at one time we must have been close to it. It must have been our sustaining force. And then something happened and pulled us away from the abstract. Now we can't get back to it. He used to say that it takes years for an apprentice to be able to go back to the abstract, that is, to know that knowledge and language can exist independent of each other." Don Juan repeated that the crux of our difficulty in going back to the abstract was our refusal to accept that we could know without words or even without thoughts. I was going to argue that he was talking nonsense when I got the strong feeling I was missing something and that his point was of crucial importance to me. He was really trying to tell me something, something I either could not grasp or which could not be told completely. "Knowledge and language are separate," he repeated softly. And I was just about to say, "I know it," as if indeed I knew it, when I caught myself. "I told you there is no way to talk about the spirit," he continued, "because the spirit can only be experienced. Sorcerers try to explain this condition when they say that the spirit is nothing you can see or feel. But it's there looming over us always. Sometimes it comes to some of us. Most of the time it seems indifferent." I kept quiet. And he continued to explain. He said that the spirit in many ways was a sort of wild animal. It kept its distance from us until a moment when something enticed it forward. It was then that the spirit manifested itself. I raised the point that if the spirit wasn't an entity, or a presence, and had no essence, how could anyone entice it? "Your problem," he said, "is that you consider only your own idea of what's abstract. For instance, the inner essence of man, or the fundamental principle, are abstracts for you. Or perhaps something a bit less vague, such as character, volition, courage, dignity, honor. The spirit, of course, can be described in terms of all of these. And that's what's so confusing - that it's all these and none of them." He added that what I considered abstractions were either the opposites of all the practicalities I could think of or things I had decided did not have concrete existence. "Whereas for a sorcerer an abstract is something with no parallel in the human condition," he said. "But they're the same thing," I shouted. "Don't you see that we're both talking about the same thing?" "We are not," he insisted. "For a sorcerer, the spirit is an abstract simply because he knows it without words or even thoughts. It's an abstract because he can't conceive what the spirit is. Yet without the slightest chance or desire to understand it, a sorcerer handles the spirit. He recognizes it, beckons it, entices it, becomes familiar with it, and expresses it with his acts." I shook my head in despair. I could not see the difference. "The root of your misconception is that I have used the term 'abstract' to describe the spirit," he said. "For you, abstracts are words which describe states of intuition. An example is the word 'spirit,' which doesn't describe reason or pragmatic experience, and which, of course, is of no use to you other than to tickle your fancy." I was furious with don Juan. I called him obstinate and he laughed at me. He suggested that if I would think about the proposition that knowledge might be independent of language, without bothering to understand it, perhaps I could see the light. "Consider this," he said. "It was not the act of meeting me that mattered to you. The day I met you, you met the abstract. But since you couldn't talk about it, you didn't notice it. Sorcerers meet the abstract without thinking about it or seeing it or touching it or feeling its presence." I remained quiet because I did not enjoy arguing with him. At times I considered him to be quite willfully abstruse. But don Juan seemed to be enjoying himself immensely. The Last Seduction Of Nagual Julian It was as cool and quiet in the patio of don Juan's house as in the cloister of a convent. There were a number of large fruit trees planted extremely close together, which seemed to regulate the temperature and absorb all noises. When I first came to his house, I had made critical remarks about the illogical way the fruit trees had been planted. I would have given them more space. His answer was that those trees were not his property, they were free and independent warrior trees that had joined his party of warriors, and that my comments - which applied to regular trees - were not relevant. His reply sounded metaphorical to me. What I didn't know then was that don Juan meant everything he said literally. Don Juan and I were sitting in cane armchairs facing the fruit trees now. The trees were all bearing fruit. I commented that it was not only a beautiful sight but an extremely intriguing one, for it was not the fruit season. "There is an interesting story about it," he admitted. "As you know, these trees are warriors of my party. They are bearing now because all the members of my party have been talking and expressing feelings about our definitive journey, here in front of them. And the trees know now that when we embark on our definitive journey, they will accompany us." I looked at him, astonished. "I can't leave them behind," he explained. "They are warriors too. They have thrown their lot in with the nagual's party. And they know how I feel about them. The assemblage point of trees is located very low in their enormous luminous shell, and that permits them to know our feelings, for instance, the feelings we are having now as we discuss my definitive journey." I remained quiet, for I did not want to dwell on the subject. Don Juan spoke and dispelled my mood. "The second abstract core of the sorcery stories is called the Knock of the Spirit," he said. "The first core, the Manifestations of the Spirit, is the edifice that intent builds and places before a sorcerer, then invites him to enter. It is the edifice of intent seen by a sorcerer. The Knock of the Spirit is the same edifice seen by the beginner who is invited - or rather forced - to enter. "This second abstract core could be a story in itself. The story says that after the spirit had manifested itself to that man we have talked about and had gotten no response, the spirit laid a trap for the man. It was a final subterfuge, not because the man was special, but because the incomprehensible chain of events of the spirit made that man available at the very moment that the spirit knocked on the door. "It goes without saying that whatever the spirit revealed to that man made no sense to him. In fact, it went against everything the man knew, everything he was. The man, of course, refused on the spot, and in no uncertain terms, to have anything to do with the spirit. He wasn't going to fall for such preposterous nonsense. He knew better. The result was a total stalemate. "I can say that this is an idiotic story," he continued. "I can say that what I've given you is the pacifier for those who are uncomfortable with the silence of the abstract." He peered at me for a moment and then smiled. "You like words," he said accusingly. "The mere idea of silent knowledge scares you. But stories, no matter how stupid, delight you and make you feel secure." His smile was so mischievous that I couldn't help laughing. Then he reminded me that I had already heard his detailed account of the first time the spirit had knocked on his door. For a moment I could not figure out what he was talking about. "It was not just my benefactor who stumbled upon me as I was dying from the gunshot," he explained. "The spirit also found me and knocked on my door that day. My benefactor understood that he was there to be a conduit for the spirit. Without the spirit's intervention, meeting my benefactor would have meant nothing." He said that a nagual can be a conduit only after the spirit has manifested its willingness to be used - either almost imperceptibly or with outright commands. It was therefore not possible for a nagual to choose his apprentices according to his own volition, or his own calculations. But once the- willingness of the spirit was revealed through omens, the nagual spared no effort to satisfy it. "After a lifetime of practice," he continued, "sorcerers, naguals in particular, know if the spirit is inviting them to enter the edifice being flaunted before them. They have learned to discipline their connecting links to intent. So they are always forewarned, always know what the spirit has in store for them." Don Juan said that progress along the sorcerers' path was, in general, a drastic process the purpose of which was to bring this connecting link to order. The average man's connecting link with intent is practically dead, and sorcerers begin with a link that is useless, because it does not respond voluntarily. He stressed that in order to revive that link sorcerers needed a rigorous, fierce purpose - a special state of mind called unbending intent. Accepting that the nagual was the only being capable of supplying unbending intent was the most difficult part of the sorcerer's apprenticeship. I argued that I could not see the difficulty. "An apprentice is someone who is striving to clear and revive his connecting link with the spirit," he explained. "Once the link is revived, he is no longer an apprentice, but until that time, in order to keep going he needs a fierce purpose, which, of course, he doesn't have. So he allows the nagual to provide the purpose and to do that he has to relinquish his individuality. That's the difficult part." He reminded me of something he had told me often: that volunteers were not welcome in the sorcerers' world, because they already had a purpose of their own, which made it particularly hard for them to relinquish their individuality. If the sorcerers' world demanded ideas and actions contrary to the volunteers' purpose, the volunteers simply refused to change. "Reviving an apprentice's link is a nagual's most challenging and intriguing work," don Juan continued, "and one of his biggest headaches too. Depending, of course, on the apprentice's personality, the designs of the spirit are either sublimely simple or the most complex labyrinths." Don Juan assured me that, although I might have had notions to the contrary, my apprenticeship had not been as onerous to him as his must have been to his benefactor. He admitted that I had a modicum of self-discipline that came in very handy, while he had had none whatever. And his benefactor, in turn, had had even less. "The difference is discernible in the manifestations of the spirit," he continued. "In some cases, they are barely noticeable; in my case, they were commands. I had been shot. Blood was pouring out of a hole in my chest. My benefactor had to act with speed and sureness, just as his own benefactor had for him. Sorcerers know that the more difficult the command is, the more difficult the disciple turns out to be." Don Juan explained that one of the most advantageous aspects of his association with two naguals was that he could hear the same stories from two opposite points of view. For instance, the story about the nagual Elias and the manifestations of the spirit, from the apprentice's perspective, was the story of the spirit's difficult knock on his benefactor's door. "Everything connected with my benefactor was very difficult," he said and began to laugh. "When he was twenty-four years old, the spirit didn't just knock on his door, it nearly banged it down." He said that the story had really begun years earlier, when his benefactor had been a handsome adolescent from a good family in Mexico City. He was wealthy, educated, charming, and had a charismatic personality. Women fell in love-with him at first sight. But he was already self-indulgent and undisciplined, lazy about anything that did not give him immediate gratification. Don Juan said that with that personality and his type of upbringing - he was the only son of a wealthy widow who, together with his four adoring sisters, doted on him - he could only behave one way. He indulged in every impropriety he could think of. Even among his equally self-indulgent friends, he was seen as a moral delinquent who lived to do anything that the world considered morally wrong. In the long run, his excesses weakened him physically and he fell mortally ill with tuberculosis - the dreaded disease of the time. But his illness, instead of restraining him, 'created a physical condition in which he felt more sensual than ever. Since he did not have one iota of self-control, he gave himself over fully to debauchery, and his health deteriorated until there was no hope. The saying that it never rains but it pours was certainly true for don Juan's benefactor then. As his health declined, his mother, who was his only source of support and the only restraint on him, died. She left him a sizable inheritance, which should have supported him adequately for life, but undisciplined as he was, in a few months he had spent every cent. With no profession or trade to fall back on, he was left to scrounge for a living. Without money he no longer had friends; and even the women who once loved him turned their backs. For the first time in his life, he found himself confronting a harsh reality. Considering the state of his health, it should have been the end. But he was resilient. He decided to work for a living. His sensual habits, however, could not be changed, and they forced him to seek work in the only place he felt comfortable: the theater. His qualifications were that he was a born ham and had spent most of his adult life in the company of actresses. He joined a theatrical troupe in the provinces, away from his familiar circle of friends and acquaintances, and became a very intense actor, the consumptive hero in religious and morality plays. Don Juan commented on the strange irony that had always marked his benefactor's life. There he was, a perfect reprobate, dying as a result of his dissolute ways and playing the roles of saints and mystics. He even played Jesus in the Passion Play during Holy Week. His health lasted through one theatrical tour of the northern states. Then two things happened in the city of Durango: his life came to an end and the spirit knocked on his door. Both his death and the spirit's knock came at the same time - in broad daylight in the bushes. His death caught him in the act of seducing a young woman. He was already extremely weak, and that day he overexerted himself. The young woman, who was vivacious and strong and madly infatuated, had by promising to make love induced him to walk to a secluded spot miles from nowhere. And there she had fought him off for hours. When she finally submitted, he was completely worn out, and coughing so badly that he could hardly breathe. During his last passionate outburst he felt a searing pain in his shoulder. His chest felt as if it were being ripped apart and a coughing spell made him retch uncontrollably. Hut his compulsion to seek pleasure kept him going until his death came in the form of a hemorrhage. It was then that the spirit made its entry, borne by an Indian who came to his aid. Earlier he had noticed the Indian following them around, but had not given him a second thought, absorbed as he was in the seduction. He saw, as in a dream, the girl. She was not scared nor did she lose her composure. Quietly and efficiently she put her clothes back on and took off as fast as a rabbit chased by hounds. He also saw the Indian rushing to him trying to make him sit up. He heard him saying idiotic things. He heard him pledging himself to the spirit and mumbling incomprehensible words in a foreign language. Then the Indian acted very quickly. Standing behind him, he gave him a smacking blow on the back. Very rationally, the dying man deduced that the Indian was trying either to dislodge the blood clot or to kill him. As the Indian struck him repeatedly on the back, the dying man became convinced that the Indian was the woman's lover or husband and was murdering him. But seeing the intensely brilliant eyes of that Indian, he changed his mind. He knew that the Indian was simply crazy and was not connected with the woman. With his last bit of consciousness, he focused his attention on the man's mumblings. What he was saying was that the power of man was incalculable, that death existed only because we had intended it since the moment of our birth, that the intent of death could be suspended by making the assemblage point change positions. He then knew that the Indian was totally insane. His situation was so theatrical - dying at the hands of a crazy Indian mumbling gibberish - that he vowed he would be a ham actor to the bitter end, and he promised himself not to die of either the hemorrhaging or the blows, but to die of laughter. And he laughed until he was dead. Don Juan remarked that naturally his benefactor could not possibly have taken the Indian seriously. No one could take such a person seriously, especially not a prospective apprentice who was not supposed to be volunteering for the sorcery task. Don Juan then said that he had given me different versions of what that sorcery task consisted. He said it would not be presumptuous of him to disclose that, from the spirit's point of view, the task consisted of clearing our connecting link with it. The edifice that intent flaunts before us is, then, a clearinghouse, within which we find not so much the procedures to clear our connecting link as the silent knowledge that allows the clearing process to take place. Without that silent knowledge no process could work, and all we would have would be an indefinite sense of needing something. He explained that the events unleashed by sorcerers as a result of silent knowledge were so simple and yet so abstract that sorcerers had decided long ago to speak of those events only in symbolic terms. The manifestations and the knock of the spirit were examples. Don Juan said that, for instance, a description of what took place during the initial meeting between a nagual and a prospective apprentice from the sorcerers' point of view, would be absolutely incomprehensible. It would be nonsense to explain that the nagual, by virtue of his lifelong experience, was focusing something we couldn't imagine, his second attention - the increased awareness gained through sorcery training - on his invisible connection with some indefinable abstract. He was doing this to emphasize and clarify someone else's invisible connection with that indefinable abstract. He remarked that each of us was barred from silent knowledge by natural barriers, specific to each individual; and that the most impregnable of my barriers was the drive to disguise my complacency as independence. I challenged him to give me a concrete example. I reminded .him that he had once warned me that a favorite debating ploy was to raise general criticisms that could not be supported by concrete examples. Don Juan looked at me and beamed. "In the past, I used to give you power plants," he said. "At first, you went to extremes to convince yourself that what you were experiencing were hallucinations. Then you wanted them to be special hallucinations. I remember I made fun of your insistence on calling them didactic hallucinatory experiences." He said that my need to prove my illusory independence forced me into a position where I could not accept what he had told me was happening, although it was what I silently knew for myself. I knew he was employing power plants, as the very limited tools they were, to make me enter partial or temporary states of heightened awareness by moving my assemblage point away from its habitual location. "You used your barrier of independence to get you over that obstruction," he went on. "The same barrier has continued to work to this day, so you still retain that sense of indefinite anguish, perhaps not so pronounced. Now the question is, how are you arranging your conclusions so that your current experiences fit into your scheme of complacency?" I confessed that the only way I could maintain my independence was not to think about my experiences at all. Don Juan's hearty laugh nearly made him fall out of his cane chair. He stood and walked around to catch his breath. He sat down again and composed himself. He pushed his chair back and crossed his legs. He said that we, as average men did not know, nor would we ever know, that it was something utterly real and functional - our connecting link with intent - which gave us our hereditary preoccupation with fate. He asserted that during our active lives we never have the chance to go beyond the level of mere preoccupation, because since time immemorial the lull of daily affairs has made us drowsy. It is only when our lives are nearly over that our hereditary preoccupation with fate begins to take on a different character. It begins to make us see through the fog of daily affairs. Unfortunately, this awakening always comes hand in hand with loss of energy caused by aging, when we have no more strength left to turn our preoccupation into a pragmatic and positive discovery. At this point, all there is left is an amorphous, piercing anguish, a longing for something indescribable, and simple anger at having missed out. "I like poems for many reasons," he said. "One reason is that they catch the mood of warriors and explain what can hardly be explained." He conceded that poets were keenly aware of our connecting link with the spirit, but that they were aware of it intuitively, not in the deliberate, pragmatic way of sorcerers. "Poets have no firsthand knowledge of the spirit," he went on. "That is why their poems cannot really hit the center of true gestures for the spirit. They hit pretty close to it, though." He picked up one of my poetry books from a chair next to him, a collection by Juan Ramon Jimenez. He opened it to where he had placed a marker, handed it to me and signaled me to read. Is it I who walks tonight in my room or is it the beggar who was prowling in my garden at nightfall? I look around and find that everything is the same and it is not the same Was the window open? Had I not already fallen asleep? Was not the garden pale green? . . . The sly was clear and blue . . . And there are clouds and it is windy and the garden is dark and gloomy. I think that my hair was black . . . I was dressed in grey . . . And my hair is grey and I am wearing black . . . Is this my gait? Does this voice, which now resounds in me, have the rhythms of the voice I used to have? Am I myself or am I the beggar who was prowling in my garden at nightfall? I look around . . . There are clouds and it is windy . . . The garden is dark and gloomy . . . I come and go . . . Is it not true that I had already fallen asleep? My hair is grey . . . And everything is the same and it is not the same . . . I reread the poem to myself and I caught the poet's mood of impotence and bewilderment. I asked don Juan if he felt the same. "I think the poet senses the pressure of aging and the anxiety that that realization produces," don Juan said. "But that is only one part of it. The other part, which interests me, is that the poet, although he never moves his assemblage point, intuits that something extraordinary is at stake. He intuits with great certainty that there is some unnamed factor, awesome because of its simplicity, that is determining our fate." THE TRICKERY OF THE SPIRIT Dusting The Link With The Spirit The sun had not yet risen from behind the eastern peaks, but the day was already hot. As we reached the first steep slope, a couple of miles along the road from the outskirts of town, don Juan stopped walking and moved to the side of the paved highway. He sat down by some huge boulders that had been dynamited from the face of the mountain when they cut the road and signaled me to join him. We usually stopped there to talk or rest on our way to the nearby mountains. Don Juan announced that this trip was going to be long and that we might be in the mountains for days. "We are going to talk now about the third abstract core," don Juan said. "It is called the trickery of the spirit, or the trickery of the abstract, or stalking oneself, or dusting the link." I was surprised at the variety of names, but said nothing. I waited for him to continue his explanation. "And again, as with the first and second core," he went on, "it could be a story in itself. The story says that after knocking on the door of that man we've been talking about, and having no success with him, the spirit used the only means available: trickery. After all, the spirit had resolved previous impasses with trickery. It was obvious that if it wanted to make an impact on this man it had to cajole him. So the spirit began to instruct the man on the mysteries of Sorcery. And the sorcery apprenticeship became what it is: a route of artifice and subterfuge. "The story says that the spirit cajoled the man by making him shift back and forth between levels of awareness to show him how to save energy needed to strengthen his connecting link." Don Juan told me that if we apply his story to a modern netting we had the case of the nagual, the living conduit of the spirit, repeating the structure of this abstract core and resorting to artifice and subterfuge in order to teach. Suddenly he stood and started to walk toward the mountain range. I followed him and we started our climb, side by side. In the very late afternoon we reached the top of the high mountains. Even at that altitude it was still very warm. All day we had followed a nearly invisible trail. Finally we reached a small clearing, an ancient lookout post commanding the north and west. We sat there and don Juan returned our conversation to the sorcery stories. He said that now I knew the story of intent manifesting itself to the nagual Elias and the story of the spirit knocking on the nagual Julian's door. And I knew how he had met the spirit, and I certainly could not forget how I had met it. All these stories, he declared, had the same structure; only the characters differed. Each story was an abstract tragicomedy with one abstract player, intent, and two human actors, the nagual and his apprentice. The script was the abstract core. I thought I had finally understood what he meant, but I could not quite explain even to myself what it was I understood, nor could I explain it to don Juan. When I tried to put my thoughts into words I found myself babbling. Don Juan seemed to recognize my state of mind. He suggested that I relax and listen. He told me his next story was about the process of bringing an apprentice into the realm of the spirit, a process sorcerers called the trickery of the spirit, or dusting the connecting link to intent. "I've already told you the story of how the nagual Julian took me to his house after I was shot and tended my wound until I recovered," don Juan continued. "But I didn't tell you how he dusted my link, how he taught me to stalk myself. "The first thing a nagual does with his prospective apprentice is to trick him. That is, he gives him a jolt on his connecting link to the spirit. There are two ways of doing this. One is through seminormal channels, which I used with you, and the other is by means of outright sorcery, which my benefactor used on me." Don Juan again told me the story of how his benefactor had convinced the people who had gathered at the road that the wounded man was his son. Then he had paid some men to carry don Juan, unconscious from shock and loss of blood, to his own house. Don Juan woke there, days later, and found a kind old man and his fat wife tending his wound. The old man said his name was Belisario and that his wife was a famous healer and that both of them were healing his wound. Don Juan told them he had no money, and Belisario suggested that when he recovered, payment of some sort could be arranged. Don Juan said that he was thoroughly confused, which was nothing new to him. He was just a muscular, reckless twenty-year-old Indian, with no brains, no formal education, and a terrible temper. He had no conception of gratitude. He thought it was very kind of the old man and his wife to have helped him, but his intention was to wait for his wound to heal and then simply vanish in the middle of the night. When he had recovered enough and was ready to flee, old Belisario took him into a room and in trembling whispers disclosed that the house where they were staying belonged to a monstrous man who was holding him and his wife prisoner. He asked don Juan to help them to regain their freedom, to escape from their captor and tormentor. Before don Juan could reply, a monstrous fish-faced man right out of a horror tale burst into the room, as if he had been listening behind the door. He was greenish-gray, had only one unblinking eye in the middle of his forehead, and was as big as a door. He lurched at don Juan, hissing like a serpent, ready to tear him apart, and frightened him so greatly that he fainted. "His way of giving me a jolt on my connecting link with the spirit was masterful." Don Juan laughed. "My benefactor, of course, had shifted me into heightened awareness prior to the monster's entrance, so that what I actually saw as a monstrous man was what sorcerers call an inorganic being, a formless energy field." Don Juan said that he knew countless cases in which his benefactor's devilishness created hilariously embarrassing situations for all his apprentices, especially for don Juan himself, whose seriousness and stiffness made him the perfect subject for his benefactor's didactic jokes. He added as an afterthought that it went without saying that these jokes entertained his benefactor immensely. "If you think I laugh at you - which I do - it's nothing compared with how he laughed at me," don Juan continued. "My devilish benefactor had learned to weep to hide his laughter. You just can't imagine how he used to cry when I first began my apprenticeship." Continuing with his story, don Juan stated that his life was never the same after the shock of seeing that monstrous man. His benefactor made sure of it. Don Juan explained that once a nagual has introduced his prospective disciple, especially his nagual disciple, to trickery he must struggle to assure his compliance. This compliance could be of two different kinds. Either the prospective disciple is so disciplined and tuned that only his decision to join the nagual is needed, as had been the case with young Talfa. Or the prospective disciple is someone with little or no discipline, in which case a nagual has to expend time and a great deal of labor to convince his disciple. In don Juan's case, because he was a wild young peasant without a thought in his head, the process of reeling him in took bizarre turns. Soon after the first jolt, his benefactor gave him a second one by showing don Juan his ability to transform himself. One day his benefactor became a young man. Don Juan was incapable of conceiving of this transformation as anything but an example of a consummate actor's art. "How did he accomplish those changes?" I asked. "He was both a magician and an artist," don Juan replied. "His magic was that he transformed himself by moving his assemblage point into the position that would bring on whatever particular change he desired. And his art was the perfection of his transformations." "I don't quite understand what you're telling me," I said. Don Juan said that perception is the hinge for everything man is or does, and that perception is ruled by the location of the assemblage point. Therefore, if that point changes positions, man's perception of the world changes accordingly. The sorcerer who knew exactly where to place his assemblage point could become anything he wanted. "The nagual Julian's proficiency in moving his assemblage point was so magnificent that he could elicit the subtlest transformations," don Juan continued. "When a sorcerer becomes a crow, for instance, it is definitely a great accomplishment. But it entails a vast and therefore a gross shift of the assemblage point. However, moving it to the position of a fat man, or an old man, requires the minutest shift and the keenest knowledge of human nature." "I'd rather avoid thinking or talking about those things as facts," I said. Don Juan laughed as if I had said the funniest thing imaginable. "Was there a reason for your benefactor's transformations?" I asked. "Or was he just amusing himself?" "Don't be stupid. Warriors don't do anything just to amuse themselves," he replied. "His transformations were strategical. They were dictated by need, like his transformation from old to young. Now and then there were funny consequences, but that's another matter." I reminded him that I had asked before how his benefactor learned those transformations. He had told me then that his benefactor had a teacher, but would not tell me who. "That very mysterious sorcerer who is our ward taught him," don Juan replied curtly. "What mysterious sorcerer is that?" I asked. "The death defier," he said and looked at me questioningly. For all the sorcerers of don Juan's party the death defier was a most vivid character. According to them, the death defier was a sorcerer of ancient times. He had succeeded in surviving to the present day by manipulating his assemblage point, making it move in specific ways to specific locations within his total energy field. Such maneuvers had permitted his awareness and life force to persist. Don Juan had told me about the agreement that the seers of his lineage had entered into with the death defier centuries before. He made gifts to them in exchange for vital energy. Because of this agreement, they considered him their ward and called him "the tenant." Don Juan had explained that sorcerers of ancient times were expert at making the assemblage point move. In doing so they had discovered extraordinary things about perception, but they had also discovered how easy it was to get lost in aberration. The death defier's situation was for don Juan a classic example of an aberration. Don Juan used to repeat every chance he could that if the assemblage point was pushed by someone who not only saw it but also had enough energy to move it, it slid, within the luminous ball, to whatever location the pusher directed. Its brilliance was enough to light up the threadlike energy fields it touched. The resulting perception of the world was as complete as, but not the same as, our normal perception of everyday life, therefore, sobriety was crucial to dealing with the moving of the assemblage point. Continuing his story, don Juan said that he quickly became accustomed to thinking of the old man who had saved his life as really a young man masquerading as old. But one day the young man was again the old Belisario don Juan had first met. He and the woman don Juan thought was his wife packed their bags, and two smiling men with a team of mules appeared out of nowhere. Don Juan laughed, savoring his story. He said that while the muleteers packed the mules, Belisario pulled him aside and pointed out that he and his wife were again disguised. He was again an old man, and his beautiful wife was a fat irascible Indian. "I was so young and stupid that only the obvious had value for me," don Juan continued. "Just a couple of days before, I had seen his incredible transformation from a feeble man in his seventies to a vigorous young man in his mid-twenties, and I took his word that old age was just a disguise. His wife had also changed from a sour, fat Indian to a beautiful slender young woman. The woman, of course, hadn't transformed herself the way my benefactor had. He had simply changed the woman. Of course, I could have seen everything at that time, but wisdom always comes to us painfully and in driblets." Don Juan said that the old man assured him that his wound was healed although he did not feel quite well yet. He then embraced don Juan and in a truly sad voice whispered, "the monster has liked you so much that he has released me and my wife from bondage and taken you as his sole servant." "I would have laughed at him," don Juan went on, "had it not been for a deep animal growling and a frightening rattle that came from the monster's rooms." Don Juan's eyes were shining with inner delight. I wanted to remain serious, but could not help laughing. Belisario, aware of don Juan's fright, apologized profusely for the twist of fate that had liberated him and imprisoned don Juan. He clicked his tongue in disgust and cursed the monster. He had tears in his eyes when he listed all the chores the monster wanted done daily. And when don Juan protested, he confided, in low tones, that there was no way to escape, because the monster's knowledge of witchcraft was unequaled. Don Juan asked Belisario to recommend some line of action. And Belisario went into a long explanation about plans of action being appropriate only if one were dealing with average human beings. In the human context, we can plan and plot and, depending on luck, plus our cunning and dedication, can succeed. But in the face of the unknown, specifically don Juan's situation, the only hope of survival was to acquiesce and understand. Belisario confessed to don Juan in a barely audible murmur that to make sure the monster never came after him, he was going to the state of Durango to learn sorcery. He asked don Juan if he, too, would consider learning sorcery. And don Juan, horrified at the thought, said that he would have nothing to do with witches. Don Juan held his sides