Magical Passes (11 page)

The Fourth Group: Magical Passes That Belong to the Blue Scout

The magical passes of this group are the natural conclusion of the whole series. An impersonal mood is the driving force of this group of passes. The inhalations and exhalations are sharp, but not deep, and the movements are accompanied by an explosive hissing sound of air being expelled.

The value of the Blue Scout's magical passes resides in the capacity of each of them to give the womb the hardness that it requires in order to arrive at its secondary functions, which can be easily defined, in the case of the Blue Scout, as the ability to be alert without pause. The criticism of sorcerers about our normal state of being is that we seem to be perennially on automatic pilot; we say things that we don't mean to say, we ignore things that we shouldn't ignore. In other words, we are aware of what surrounds us only in very short spurts. Most of the time, we function on sheer momentum, habit, and that habit is, in essence, to be oblivious to everything. The idea of the sorcerers of ancient Mexico was that, in women, the womb is the organ that can resolve this impasse, and for that, it needs to acquire hardness.

8. Drawing Energy from the Front with Insect Antennas

The index and middle fingers are held by the sides of the chest in a letter V position, while the thumbs press the other two fingers against the palms; the palms are up (fig. 116). Next, the palms turn downward, and the two fingers strike out in front of the body, as a sharp exhalation is made, with clenched teeth and a hissing, whistlelike sound (fig. 117). A deep inhalation is taken as the hands are retrieved with the palms up to the sides of the chest. The same movement is repeated one more time, and the palms of the hands are brushed on the area of the ovaries, with the fingers separated between the middle and fourth fingers.

9. Drawing Energy from the Sides at an Angle

This magical pass begins by pivoting on the right foot and putting the left leg in front, at a forty-five-degree angle. The right foot is the horizontal bar of the letter T, and the left foot, the vertical. The body rocks back and forth. Then the left elbow is bent, and the hand is brought to The level of the chest with the palm up. The index and middle fingers are held in the shape of the letter V. The thumb holds the other two fingers against the palm (fig. 118). A strike is made, leaning the body forward sharply. The palm of the hand turns down as the fingers strike. The air is exhaled with a hiss (fig. 119). An inhalation is taken as the kind retrieves to the side of the chest with the palm up. The palm of the hand is then lightly brushed on the left ovary, with the fingers separated between the middle and fourth fingers.

A jump is taken to switch feet and face a new direction to the right, still at a forty-five degree angle. The same movements arc repeated with the right arm.

10. Drawing Energy Laterally with an Insect Cut

The hands are held on the sides of the chest, with the index and middle fingers of each hand in a V shape and the thumbs holding the other two fingers against the palms. The palms face up. Remaining at the level of the chest, the hands are pivoted on the heels of the palms and brought to face each other. Next, a hissing exhalation is made as both arms are fully extended laterally, with the palms facing the front. The index and middle fingers are moved with a cutting motion as if they were indeed scissors, as the exhalation ends in a whistlelike fashion (fig. 120).

An inhalation is taken as the arms are retrieved; the elbows are down, and the arms come to rest on the sides of the body by the chest hands pointing sideways (fig. 121). Next the hands are pivoted on the heel of the palm so the index and middle fingers point to the front The fingers are then separated at the middle and fourth fingers, and a hissing exhalation is made as the palms of the hands brush over the area of the ovaries.

11. Drilling Energy from Between the Feet with Each Hand

A deep inhalation is taken. A long hissing exhalation follows while the left hand descends with a rotating movement of the wrist, which makes the hand resemble a drill that seems to perforate a substance in front of the body between the legs. Then the index and middle fingers make a two-pronged claw and grab something from the area between the feet (fig. 122) and pull it upward, with a deep inhalation, to the level of the hips. The arm moves over the head to the back of the body and the palm is placed on the area of the left kidney and adrenal (fig. 123)

The left hand is held there while the right hand performs the same movements. Once the right hand is placed on the area of the right kidney and adrenal, an inhalation is taken. The left hand moves over the head to the front of the body, and brushes, with the fingers separated at the middle and fourth fingers, over the left ovary. This movement of the

arm from back to front is accompanied by the whistlelike sound of a sharp exhalation. Another deep inhalation is taken, and the right hand is brought to the right ovary in the same fashion.

12. Drilling Energy from Between the Feet with Both Hands

This magical pass is similar to the preceding one, except that instead of performing the movements separately, the hands execute the drilling movements in unison. Then the index and middle fingers of both hands make two-pronged claws, and grab something from the area between the feet at the same time.

They return to the level of the hips, and then circle around the sides of the body to the area of the kidneys and adrenals; a deep breath is taken as the palms rub those areas (fig. 124). Then an exhalation is made as the arms draw another circle around the sides of the body to the front to brush the area over the left and right ovaries with the fingers of each hand separated at the middle. Again, this movement of the arms

from back to front is accompanied by a whistlelike exhalation.

THE   THIRD    SERIES

The Series of the Five Concerns: The Westwood Series

One of the most important series for the practitioners of Tensegrity is called The Series of the Five Concerns. A nickname for this series is The Westwood Series, given to it because it was taught publicly for the first rime in the Pauley Pavilion at the University of California at Los Angeles, which is located in an area called Westwood. This series was conceived as an attempt to integrate what don Juan Matus called the five concerns of the shamans of ancient Mexico. Everything those sorcerers did rotated around five concerns: one, the magical passes; two, the energetic center in the human body called the center for decisions; three, recapitulation, the means for enhancing the scope of human awareness; tour, dreaming, the bona fide art of breaking the parameters of normal perception; five, inner silence, the stage of human perception from which those sorcerers launched every one of their perceptual attainments. This sequence of five concerns was an arrangement patterned on The understanding that those sorcerers had of the world around them.

One of the astounding findings of those shamans, according to what don Juan taught, was the existence in the universe of an agglutinating force that binds energy fields together into concrete, functional units. The sorcerers who discovered the existence of this force described it as a vibration, or a vibratory condition, that permeates groups of energy fields and glues them together.

In terms of this arrangement of the five concerns of the shamans of ancient Mexico, the magical passes fulfill the function of the vibratory condition those shamans talked about. When those sorcerers put together this shamanistic sequence of five concerns, they copied the patterning of energy that was revealed to them when they were capable of seeing energy as it flows in the universe. The binding force was the magical passes. The magical passes were the unit that permeated through the four remaining units and grouped them together into one functional whole.

The Westwood Series, following the patterning of the shamans of ancient Mexico, has consequently been divided into four groups, arranged in terms of their importance as envisioned by the sorcerers who formulated them: one, the center for decisions; two, recapitulation; three, dreaming; four, inner silence.

The First Group: The Center for Decisions

The most important topic for the shamans who lived in Mexico in ancient times, and for all the shamans of don Juan's lineage, was the center for decisions. Shamans are convinced, by the practical results of their endeavors, that there is a spot on the human body which accounts for decision making, the V spot - the area on the crest of the sternum at the base of the neck, where the clavicles meet to form a letter V. It is a center where energy is rarefied to the point of being tremendously subtle, and it stores a specific type of energy which shamans are incapable of defining. They are utterly certain, however, that they can feel the presence of that energy, and its effects. It is the belief of shamans that this special energy is always pushed out of that center very early in the lives of human beings, and it never returns to it, thus depriving human beings of something perhaps more important than all the energy of the other centers combined: the capacity to make decisions.

In relation to the issue of making decisions, don Juan expressed the hard opinion of the sorcerers of his lineage. Their observations, over the centuries, had led them to conclude that human beings are incapable of making decisions, and that for this reason, they have created the social order: gigantic institutions that assume responsibility for decision making. They let those gigantic institutions decide for them, and they merely fulfill the decisions already made on their behalf.

The V spot at the base of the neck was, for those shamans, a place of such importance that they rarely touched it with their hands; if it was touched, the touch was ritualistic and always performed by someone else with the aid of an object. They used highly polished pieces of hardwood or polished bones of animals, utilizing the round head of the bone so as to have an object of the perfect contour, the size of the hollow spot on the neck. They would press with those bones or pieces of wood to create pressure on the borders of that hollow spot. Those objects were also used, although rarely, for self-massage, or for what we understand nowadays as accupressure.

"How did they come to find out that that hollow spot is the center for decisions!" I asked don Juan once.

"Every center of energy in the body," he replied, "shows a concentration of energy; a sort of vortex of energy, like a funnel that actually seems to rotate counterclockwise from the perspective of the seer who gazes into it. The strength of a particular center depends on the force of that movement. If it barely moves, the center is exhausted, depleted of energy.

"When the sorcerers of ancient times," don Juan continued, "were scanning the body with their seeing eye, they noticed the presence of those vortexes. They became very curious about them, and made a map of them."

"Are there many such centers in the body, don Juan?" I asked.

"There are hundreds of them," he replied, "if not thousands! One can say that a human being is nothing else but a conglomerate of thousands of twirling vortexes, some of them so very small that they are, let's say, like pinholes, but very important pinholes. Most of the vortexes are vortexes of energy. Energy flows freely through them, or is stuck in them. There are, however, six which are so enormous that they deserve special treatment. They are centers of life and vitality. Energy there is never stuck, but sometimes the supply of energy is so scarce that the center barely rotates."

Don Juan explained that those enormous centers of vitality were located on six areas of the body. He enumerated them in terms of the importance that shamans accorded them. The first was on the area of the liver and gallbladder; the second on the area of the pancreas and spleen; the third on the area of the kidneys and adrenals; and the fourth on the hollow spot at the base of the neck on the frontal part of the body. The fifth was around the womb, and the sixth was on the top of the head.

The fifth center, pertinent only to women, had, according to what don Juan said, a special kind of energy that gave sorcerers the impression of liquidness. It was a feature that only some women had. It seemed to serve as a natural filter that screened out superfluous influences.

The sixth center, located on top of the head, don Juan described as something more than an anomaly, and refrained absolutely from having anything to do with it. He portrayed it as possessing not a circular vortex of energy, like the others, but a pendulumlike, back-and-forth movement somehow reminiscent of the beating of a heart.

"Why is the energy of that center so different, don Juan?" I asked him.

"That sixth center of energy," he said, "doesn't quite belong to man. You see, we human beings are under siege, so to speak. That center has been taken over by an invader, an unseen predator. And the only way to overcome this predator is by fortifying all the other centers."

"Isn't it a bit paranoiac to feel that we are under siege, don Juan?" I asked.

"Well, maybe for you, but certainly not for me," he replied. "I see energy, and I see that the energy over the center on the top of the head doesn't fluctuate like the energy of the other centers. It has a back-and-forth movement, quite disgusting, and quite foreign. I also see that in a sorcerer who has been capable of vanquishing the mind, which sorcerers call a foreign installation, the fluctuation of that center has become exactly like the fluctuation of all the others."

Don Juan, throughout the years of my apprenticeship, systematically refused to talk about that sixth center. On this occasion when he was telling me about the centers of vitality, he dismissed my frantic probes, rather rudely, and began to talk about the fourth center, the center for decisions.

"This fourth center," he said, "has a special type of energy, which appears to the eye of the seer as possessing a unique transparency, something that could be described as resembling water: energy so fluid that it seems liquid. The liquid appearance of this special energy is the mark of a filterlike quality of the center for decisions itself, which screens any energy coming to it, and draws from it only the aspect of it that is liquidlike. Such a quality of liquidness is a uniform and consistent feature of this center. Sorcerers also call it the watery center.