The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge

by Carlos Castaneda

  Annotation

  Carlos Castaneda was a graduate student in anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles, gathering information on various medicinal herbs used by the Indians in Sonora, Mexico, when he met the old Yaqui Indian, Don Juan. The Teachings of Don Juan, his first book, is the story of the first period the two men spent together as master and pupil. This was followed by the other volumes in the series, A Separate Reality, Journey to Ixtlan, Tales of Power, The Second Ring of Power and The Eagle's Gift, all of which are published in Arkana. He also wrote the Art of Dreaming (1993).

  Carlos Castaneda died in 1998. In its obituary for him the Guardian wrote 'It is hard to find a New Age celebrity who won't admit to having been influenced by Castaneda's powerful prose and paradigm-busting philosophy… Few critics would deny author Joyce Carol Oates's assessment of his books as «remarkable works of art»'

  * * *

  Foreword

  Acknowledgements

  Introduction

  Part One The Teachings1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  Part Two

  The Operative OrderThe First Unit

  The Second Unit

  The Third Unit

  The Fourth Unit

  The Conceptual OrderThe apprentice

  Summary

  Appendix А

  Appendix В

  THE CONCEPTUAL ORDER

  * * *

  For Don Juan and for the two persons who shared his sense of magical time with me

  Foreword

  This book is both ethnography and allegory.

  Carlos Castaneda, under the tutelage of Don Juan, takes us through that moment of twilight, through that crack in the universe between daylight and dark into a world not merely other than our own, but of an entirely different order of reality. To reach it he had the aid of mescalito, yerba del cliablo, and humito — peyote, datura, and mushrooms. But this is no mere recounting of hallucinatory experience, for Don Juan's subtle manipulations have guided the traveler while his interpretations give meaning to the events that we, through the sorcerer's apprentice, have the opportunity to experience.

  Anthropology has taught us that the world is differently defined in different places. It is not only that people have different customs; it is not only that people believe in different gods and expect different post-mortem fates. It is, rather, that the worlds of different peoples have different shapes. The very metaphysical presuppositions differ: space does not conform to Euclidean geometry, time does not form a continuous unidirectional flow, causation does not conform to Aristotelian logic, man is not differentiated from non-man or life from death, as in our world. We know something of the shape of these other worlds from the logic of native languages and from myths and ceremonies, as recorded by anthropologists. Don Juan has shown us glimpses of the world of Yaqui sorcerer, and because we see it under the influence of hallucinogenic substances, we apprehend it with a reality that is utterly different from those other sources. This is the special virtue of this work.

  Castaneda rightly asserts that this world, for all its differences of perception, has its own inner logic. He has tried to explain it from inside, as it were — from within his own rich and intensely personal experiences while under Don Juan's tutelage — rather then to examine it in terms of our logic. That he cannot entirely succeed in this is a limitation that our culture and our own language place on perception, rather than his personal limitation; yet in his efforts he bridges for us the world of a Yaqui sorcerer with our own, the world of non-ordinary reality with the world of ordinary reality.

  The central importance of entering into worlds other then our own — and hence of anthropology itself — lies in the fact that the experience leads us to understand that our own world is also a cultural construct. By experiencing other worlds, then, we see our own for what it is and are thereby enabled also to see fleet— ingly what the real world, the one between our own cultural construct and those other worlds, must in fact be like. Hence the allegory, as well as the ethnography. The wisdom and poetry of Don Juan, and the skill and poetry of his scribe, give us a vision both of ourselves and of reality. As in all proper allegory, what one sees lies with the beholder, and needs no exegesis here.

  Carlos Castaneda's interviews with Don Juan were initiated while he was a student of anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles. We are indebted to him for his patience, his courage, and his perspicacity in seeking out and facing the challenge of his dual apprenticeship, and in reporting to us the details of his experiences. In this work he demonstrates the essential skill of good ethnography — the capacity to enter into an alien world. I believe he has found a path with heart.

  Walter Goldschmidt

  Acknowledgements

  I wish to express profound gratitude to Professor Clement Meig— han, who started and set the course of my anthropological field— work; to Professor Harold Garfinkel, who gave me the model and spirit of exhaustive inquiry; to Professor Robert Edger— ton, who criticized my work from its beginning; to Professors William Bright and Pedro Carrasco for their criticism and encouragement; and to Professor Lawrence Watson for his invaluable help in the clarification of my analysis. Finally, I am grateful to Mrs. Grace Stimson and Mr. F. A. Guilford for their assistance in preparing the manuscript.

  Para mi solo recorrer los caminos que tienen corazon, cualquier camino que tenga corazon. Por ahi yo recorro, у la unica praeba que vale es atravesar todo su largo. Y por ahi yo recorro mirando, mirando, sin aliento.

  (For me there is only the travelling on paths that have heart, on any path that may have heart. There I travel, and the only worth-while challenge is to traverse its full length. And there I travel looking, looking, breathlessly.)

  Don Juan

  … nothing more can be attempted than to establish the beginning and the direction of an infinitely long road. The pretension of any systematic and definitive completeness would be, at least, a self-illusion. Perfection can here be obtained by the individual student only in the subjective sense that he communicates everything he has been able to see.

  Georg Simmel

  Introduction

  In the summer of 1960, while I was an anthropology student at the University of California, Los Angeles, I made several trips to the Southwest to collect information on the medicinal plants used by the Indians of the area. The events I describe here began during one of my trips. I was waiting in a border town for a Greyhound bus talking with a friend who had been my guide and helper in the survey. Suddenly he leaned towards me and whispered that the man, a white-haired old Indian, who was sitting in front of the window was very learned about plants, especially peyote. I asked my friend to introduce me to this man.

  My friend greeting him, then went over and shook his hand. After they had talked for a while, my friend signaled me to join them, but immediately left me alone with the old man, not even bothering to introduce us. He was not in the least embarrassed. I told him my name and he said that he was called Juan and that he was at my service. He used the Spanish polite form of address. We shook hands at my initiative and then remained silent for some time. It was not a strained silence, but a quietness, natural and relaxed on both sides. Though his dark face and neck were wrinkled, showing his age, it struck me that his body was agile and muscular.

  I then told him that I was interested in obtaining information about medicinal plants. Although in truth I was almost totally ignorant about peyote, I found
myself pretending that I knew a great deal, and even suggesting that it might be to his advantage to talk with me. As I rattled on, he nodded slowly and looked at me, but said nothing. I avoided his eyes and we finished by standing, the two of us, in dead silence. Finally, after what seemed a very long time, Don Juan got up and looked out of the window. His bus had come. He said good-bye and left the station.

  I was annoyed at having talked nonsense to him, and at being seen through by those remarkable eyes. When my friend returned he tried to console me for my failure to learn anything from Don Juan. He explained that the old man was often silent or noncommittal, but the disturbing effect of this first encounter was not so easily dispelled.

  I made a point of finding out where Don Juan lived, and later visited him several times. On each visit I tried to lead him to discuss peyote, but without success. We became, nonetheless, very good friends, and my scientific investigation was forgotten or was at least redirected into channels that were worlds apart from my original intention.

  The friend who had introduced me to Don Juan explained later that the old man was not a native of Arizona, where we met, but was a Yaqui Indian from Sonora, Mexico.

  At first I saw Don Juan simply as a rather peculiar man who knew a great deal about peyote and who spoke Spanish remarkably well. But the people with whom he lived believed that he had some sort of 'secret knowledge', that he was a 'brujo'. The Spanish word brujo means, in English, medicine man, curer, witch, sorcerer. It connotes essentially a person who has extraordinary, and usually evil, powers.

  I had known Don Juan for a whole year before he took me into his confidence. One day he explained that he possessed a certain knowledge that he had learned from a teacher, a 'benefactor' as he called him, who had directed him in a kind of apprenticeship. Don Juan had, in turn, chosen me to serve as his apprentice, but he warned me that I would have to make a very deep commitment and that the training was long and arduous.

  In describing his teacher, Don Juan used the word 'diablero Later I learned that diablero is a term used only by the Sonoran Indians. It refers to an evil person who practises black sorcery and is capable of transforming himself into an animal — a bird, a dog, a coyote, or any other creature. On one of my visits to Sonora I had a peculiar experience that illustrated the Indians' feeling about diableros. I was driving at night in the company of two Indian friends when I saw an animal that seemed to be a dog crossing the highway. One of my companions said it was not a dog, but a huge coyote. I slowed down and pulled to the side of the road to get good look at the animal. It stayed within range of the headlights a few seconds longer and then ran into the chaparral. It was unmistakably a coyote, but it was twice the ordinary size. Talking excitedly, my friends agreed that it was a very unusual animal, and one of them suggested that it might be a diablero. I decided to use an account of the experience to question the Indians of that aria about their beliefs in the existence of diableros. I talked with many people, telling them the story asking them questions. The three conversations that follow indicate what they felt.

  'Do you think it was a coyote, Choy?' I asked a young man after he heard the story.

  'Who knows? A dog, no doubt. Too large for a coyote.'

  'Do you think it may have been a diablero?'

  'That's a lot of bull. There are no such things.'

  'Why do you say that, Choy?'

  'People imagine things. I bet if you had caught that animal you would have seen that it was a dog. Once I had some business in another town and got up before daybreak and saddled up a horse. As I was leaving I came upon a dark shadow on the road which looked as a huge animal. My horse reared, throwing me off the saddle. I was pretty scared too, but it turned out that the shadow was a women who was walking to town.'

  'Do you mean, Choy, that you don't believe there are diablero si'

  'Diableros! What's a diablero? Tell me what a diablero is!'

  'I don't know, Choy. Manuel, who was riding with me that night, said the coyote could have been a diablero. Maybe you could tell me what a diablero is?'

  'A diablero, they say, is a brujo who changes into any form he wants to adopt. But everybody knows that is pure bull. The old people here are lull of stories about diableros. You won't find that among us younger people.'

  'What kind of animal do you think it was, donna Luz?' I asked a middle-aged woman.

  'Only God knows that for sure, but I think it was not a coyote. There are things that appear to be coyotes, but are not. Was the coyote running, or was it eating?'

  'It was standing most of the time, but when I first saw it, I think it was eating something.'

  'Are you sure it was not carrying something in its mouth?'

  'Perhaps it was. But tell me, would that make any difference?'

  'Yes it would. If it was carrying something in its mouth it was not a coyote.'

  'What was it then?'

  'It was a man or a woman.'

  'What do you call such people, donna Luz?'

  She did not answer. I questioned her a while longer, but without success. Finally she said she did not know. I asked her if such people were called diableros, and she answered that 'diableros ' was one of the names given to them.

  'Do you know any diableros?' I asked.

  'I knew one woman,' she replied. 'She was killed. It happened when I was a little girl. The woman, they said, used to turn into a female dog. And one night a dog went into the house of a white man to steal cheese. The white man kill the dog with a shotgun, and at very moment the dog died in the house of the white man the woman died in her own hut. Her kin got together and went to the white man and demanded payment. The white man paid good money for having killed her.'

  'How could they demand payment if it was only a dog he killed?'

  'They said that the white man knew it was not a dog, because other people were with him, and they all saw that the dog stood up on its legs like a man and reached for the cheese, which was on a tray hanging from the roof. The men were waiting for the thief because the white man's cheese was being stolen every night. So the man killed the thief knowing it was not a dog.'

  'Are there any diableros, nowadays, donna Luz?'

  'Such things are very secret. They say there are no more diableros, but I doubt it, because one member of a diablero's family has to learn what the diablero knows. Diableros have their own laws, and one of them is that a diablero has to teach his secrets to one of his kin.'

  'What do you think the animal was, Genaro?' I asked a very old man.

  'A dog from one of the ranchos of that area. What else?'

  'It could have been a diableroV

  'A diablero? You are crazy! There are no diableros.'

  'Do you mean that there are none today, or that there never were any?'

  'At one time there were, yes. It is common knowledge. Everybody knows that. But the people were very afraid of them and had them all killed.'

  'Who killed them, Genaro?'

  'All the people of the tribe. The last diablero I knew about was S-. He killed dozens, maybe even hundreds, of people with his sorcery. We couldn't put up with that and the people got together and took him by surprise one night and burned him alive.'

  'How long ago was that, Genaro?'

  'It nineteen forty-two.'

  'Did you see it yourself?'

  'No, but people still talk about it. They say that there were no ashes left, even though the stake was made of fresh wood. All that was left at the end was a huge pool of grease.'

  Although Don Juan categorized his benefactor as a diablero, he never mentioned the place where he had acquired his knowledge, nor did he identify his teacher. In fact, Don Juan disclosed very little about his personal life. All he said was that he had been born in the Southwest on 1891; that he spent nearly all his life in Mexico; that in 1900 his family was exiled by the Mexican government to central Mexico along with thousands of other Sonoran Indians; and that he lived in central and southern Mexico until 1940. Thus, as Don Juan ha
d travelled a great deal, his knowledge may have been the product of many influences. And although he regarded himself as an Indian from Sonora, I was not sure whether to place the context of his knowledge totally in the culture of the Sonoran Indians. But it is not my intention here to determine his precise cultural milieu.

  I began to serve my apprenticeship to Don Juan in June 1961. Prior to that time I had seen him on various occasions, but always in the capacity of an anthropological observer. During these early conversations I took notes in a covert manner. Later, relying on my memory, I reconstructed the entire conversation. When I began to participate as an apprentice, however, that method of taking notes became very difficult, because our conversations touched on many different topics. Then Don Juan allowed me — under strong protest, however — to record openly anything that was said. I would also have liked to take photographs and make tape recordings, but he would not permit me to do so.

  I carried out the apprenticeship first in Arizona and then in Sonora, because Don Juan moved to Mexico during the course of my training. The procedure I employed was to see him for a few days every so often. My visits became more frequent and lasted longer during the summer months of 1961, 1962, 1963, and 1964. In retrospect, I believe this method of conducting the apprenticeship prevented the training from being successful, because it retarded the advent of the full commitment I needed to become a sorcerer. Yet the method was beneficial from my personal standpoint in that it allowed me a modicum of detachment, and that in turn fostered a sense of critical examination which would have been impossible to attain had I participate continuously, without interrupt. In September 1965, I voluntarily discontinued the apprenticeship.