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What About Carlos?
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Messages: 45 - 48 (49 total)
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MustngSal
2/23/2005 9:25 PM
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45 out of 49 |
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Dennis,
I misposted this in the I Love Trees thread. An indication of my winter and the confusion I've had to deal with. I hope everyone will excuse my goof.
MustngSal
2/23/2005 9:05 PM 12 out of 12
Dennis,
Thank you for the warm welcome back. Yes, Gramps was more wise than he realized. I'm working with my friend Deborah in seeing and accepting the wisdom that comes through me.
Its good to see you again. Your welcome feels warm and comforting after a difficult winter.
Sally
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Tzamassan
3/16/2005 1:52 PM
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46 out of 49 |
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Carlos... yeah. What a trickster he was! I must confess that he’s had immense impact on my life, and I owe him and his books a great debt.
When I was a teenager, I stumbled upon “The Teachings of Don Juan”. It struck a chord with me, and I picked up the other books in the series (I think he’d published 5 by that point). They presented an internally consistent model of reality, a transcendent one where sorcery and shamanism were explained as part of an ethical path for a modern warrior. I loved the books, and started to emulate Carlos’ practices. That lasted for several years, after which time I found that path wasn’t true to my heart. I moved on to other authors and other practices, and never went back.
What can I say about Carlos’ works? They’re full of practices that can work, but at the same time it seems clear that some of what he wrote was not “true” in that it doesn’t represent the views of other Yaqui shamans. At the same time, I am unsure whether being “true” is an essential requirement of a valid practice; one of the core lessons in Shamanism seems to be, “don’t believe what you’re told; test it and find out for yourself”. Well, from that point of view, it’s a valid system, albeit not one I care to follow anymore. To pull an analogous concept from Harner’s books... the Jivaro healers hid tsentsak (spirit darts) in their cheeks, and sucked the illnesses out of their patients into the tsentsak. When they showed the patients the physical darts, the patients often thought this was what was sucked out of them... meaning that, while there existed a level of deception in the practice, the core truth remained.
Are Don Juan’s teachings shamanic? Surely many of them are. Much of what Carlos learned has to do with journeys of consciousness, initially catalyzed by drugs but later largely free of such. Don Juan taught Carlos to travel to various alternate realities, to find teachers through such travels, and to bring back knowledge that would allow him to change his life (and that of others). At the same time though, much of Don Juan’s teaching was more sorcerous than shamanic, in that it deals with directly extending one’s will to enable one to do “impossible” things (what most call magic). E.g. Don Genaro extended his will from a point just below his navel, and used this strand of power to move himself around, even to fly.
Are allies power animals? Allies are a class of creatures that can include power animals, but can also include a lot of unexplained and even hostile forces; still, the basic concept is very similar. I think a lot of how we interact with these beings depends on how we view them, and the preconceptions we bring to the relationship.
Do I recommend Carlos’ books? Surely. They’re a good read and can open people to new possibilities. What about Don Juan’s teachings? Erm. Not enthusiastically. While, as I noted before, it is an internally consistent model of reality, and while many of the practices do work (from my own experience), the worldview is practically one of gothic horror, and I can do without that in my life. Some of that fear surely came from Carlos’ own perspectives on things, but that’s all the reader has to base their views on.
Well, there you go. Too much information! :)
Blessings,
- Tzamassan
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Tzamassan
3/16/2005 2:26 PM
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47 out of 49 |
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Incidentally, I was lucky enough to be a student in the last class taught by Clement Meighan, who was the Chairman of the UCLA Anthropology Department, and had been Carlos' academic advisor, the one who introduced Carlos to shamanism, and the one who sent Carlos to Mexico for field research. "Teachings of Don Juan" was dedicated to Clement, who was an amazing man and great teacher. He had a heart attack midway through the class and retired, so I never had a chance to talk to him about Carlos in any detail. While he never went on record that I am aware, either supporting or denying Carlos' research, he did corroborate many individual details of Carlos' books, noting similarities to customs both extant and presumed lost.
Blessings,
- Tzamassan
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Bearsky
3/16/2005 3:02 PM
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48 out of 49 |
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Tzamassan: Hi! Nice analyis! My major professor, Robert Fernia, in grad school in clutural anthro at the Univ. of Texaas, Austin knew Clement Meighan and they talked about Carlos but I never really got a second had sense from Fernia as to what Meighan thought about him. I know we were all require to read Carlos' firts book during our sirst semester. Walk in Beauty, Dennis
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