The Power of Silence (4 page)

Don Juan
was lying unconscious in the road, bleeding to death, when the nagual Julian
came along. Using his healer's knowledge, he stopped the bleeding, took don
Juan, who was still unconscious, home and cured him.

The
indications the spirit gave the nagual Julian about don Juan were, first, a
small cyclone that lifted a cone of dust on the road a couple of yards from
where he lay. The second omen was the thought which had crossed the nagual Julian's
mind an instant before he had heard the report of the gun a few yards away:
that it was time to have an apprentice nagual. Moments later, the spirit gave
him the third omen, when he ran to take cover and instead collided with the
gunman, putting him to flight, perhaps preventing him from shooting don Juan a
second time. A collision with someone was the type of blunder which no
sorcerer, much less a nagual, should ever make.

The nagual
Julian immediately evaluated the opportunity. When he saw don Juan he
understood the reason for the spirit's manifestation: here was a double man, a
perfect candidate to be his apprentice nagual.

This
brought up a nagging rational concern for me. I wanted to know if sorcerers
could interpret an omen erroneously. Don Juan replied that although my question
sounded perfectly legitimate, it was inapplicable, like the majority of my
questions, because I asked them based on my experiences in the world of
everyday life. Thus they were always about tested procedures, steps to be
followed, and rules of meticulousness, but had nothing to do with the premises
of sorcery. He pointed out that the flaw in my reasoning was that I always
failed to include my experiences in the sorcerers' world.

I argued
that very few of my experiences in the sorcerers' world had continuity, and
therefore I could not make use of those experiences in my present day-to-day
life. Very few times, and only when I was in states of profound heightened
awareness, had I remembered everything. At the level of heightened awareness I
usually reached, the only experience that had continuity between past and
present was that of knowing him.

He
responded cuttingly that I was perfectly capable of engaging in sorcerers'
reasonings because I had experienced the sorcery premises in my normal state of
awareness. In a more mellow tone he added that heightened awareness did not
reveal everything until the whole edifice of sorcery knowledge was completed.

Then he
answered my question about whether or not sorcerers could misinterpret omens.
He explained that when a sorcerer interpreted an omen he knew its exact meaning
without having any notion of how he knew it. This was one of the bewildering
effects of the connecting link with intent. Sorcerers had a sense of knowing
things directly. How sure they were depended on the strength and clarity of
their connecting link.

He said
that the feeling everyone knows as "intuition" is the activation of
our link with intent. And since sorcerers deliberately pursue the understanding
and strengthening of that link, it could be said that they intuit everything
unerringly and accurately. Reading omens is commonplace for sorcerers -
mistakes happen only when personal feelings intervene and cloud the sorcerers'

connecting
link with intent. Otherwise their direct knowledge is totally accurate and
functional.

We remained
quiet for a while.

All of a
sudden he said, "I am going to tell you a story about the nagual Elias and
the manifestation of the spirit. The spirit manifests itself to a sorcerer,
especially to a nagual, at every turn. However, this is not the entire truth.
The entire truth is that the spirit reveals itself to everyone with the same
intensity and consistency, but only sorcerers, and naguals in particular, are
attuned to such revelations."

Don Juan
began his story. He said that the nagual Elias had been riding his horse to the
city one day, taking him through a shortcut by some cornfields when suddenly
his horse shied, frightened by the low, fast sweep of a falcon that missed the
nagual's straw hat by only a few inches. The nagual immediately dismounted and
began to look around. He saw a strange young man among the tall, dry
cornstalks. The man was dressed in an expensive dark suit and appeared alien
there. The nagual Elias was used to the sight of peasants or landowners in the
fields, but he had never seen an elegantly dressed city man moving through the
fields with apparent disregard for his expensive shoes and clothes.

The nagual
tethered his horse and walked toward the young man. He recognized the flight of
the falcon, as well as the man's apparel, as obvious manifestations of the
spirit which he could not disregard. He got very close to the young man and saw
what was going on. The man was chasing a peasant woman who was running a few
yards ahead of him, dodging and laughing with him.

The
contradiction was quite apparent to the nagual. The two people cavorting in the
cornfield did not belong together. The nagual thought that the man must be the
landowner's son and the woman a servant in the house. He felt embarrassed to be
observing them and was about to turn and leave when the falcon again swept over
the cornfield and this time brushed the young man's head. The falcon alarmed
the couple and they stopped and looked up, trying to anticipate another sweep.
The nagual noticed that the man was thin and handsome, and had haunting,
restless eyes.

Then the
couple became bored watching for the falcon, and returned to their play. The
man caught the woman, embraced her and gently laid her on the ground. But
instead of trying to make love to her, as the nagual assumed he would do next,
he removed his own clothes and paraded naked in front of the woman.

She did not
shyly close her eyes or scream with embarrassment or fright. She giggled,
mesmerized by the prancing naked man, who moved around her like a satyr, making
lewd gestures and laughing. Finally, apparently overpowered by the sight, she
uttered a wild cry, rose, and threw herself into the young man's arms.

Don Juan
said that the nagual Elias confessed to him that the indications of the spirit
on that occasion had been most baffling. It was clearly evident that the man
was insane. Otherwise, knowing how protective peasants were of their women, he
would not have considered seducing a young peasant woman in broad daylight a
few yards from the road and naked to boot.

Don Juan
broke into a laugh and told me that in those days to take off one's clothes and
engage in a sexual act in broad daylight in such a place meant one had to be
either insane or blessed by the spirit. He added that what the man had done
might not seem remarkable nowadays. But then, nearly a hundred years ago,
people were infinitely more inhibited.

All of this
convinced the nagual Elias from the moment he laid eyes on the man that he was
both insane and blessed by the spirit. He worried that peasants might happen
by, become enraged
and lynch the man on the spot. But no one did. It felt to the nagual as if time
had been suspended.

When the
man finished making love, he put on his clothes, took out a handkerchief,
meticulously dusted his shoes and, all the while making wild promises to the
girl, went on his way. The nagual Elias followed him. In fact, he followed him
for several days and found out that his name was Julian and that he was an actor.

Subsequently
the nagual saw him on the stage often enough to realize that the actor had a
great deal of charisma. The audience, especially the women, loved him. And he
had no scruples about making use of his charismatic gifts to seduce female
admirers. As the nagual followed the actor, he was able to witness his
seduction technique more than once. It entailed showing himself naked to his
adoring fans as soon as he got them alone, then waiting until the women,
stunned by his display, surrendered. The technique seemed extremely effective
for him. The nagual had to admit that the actor was a great success, except on
one count. He was mortally ill. The nagual had
seen
the black shadow of
death that followed him everywhere.

Don Juan
explained again something he had told me years before - that our death was a
black spot right behind the left shoulder. He said that sorcerers knew when a
person was close to dying because they could
see
the dark spot, which
became a moving shadow the exact size and shape of the person to whom it
belonged.

As he
recognized the imminent presence of death the nagual was plunged into a numbing
perplexity. He wondered why the spirit was singling out such a sick person. He
had been taught that in a natural state replacement, not repair, prevailed. And
the nagual doubted that he had the ability or the strength to heal this young
man, or resist the black shadow of his death. He even doubted if he would be
able to discover why the spirit had involved him in a display of such obvious
waste.

The nagual
could do nothing but stay with the actor, follow him around, and wait for the
opportunity to see in greater depth. Don Juan explained that a nagual's first
reaction, upon being faced with the manifestations of the spirit, is to see the
persons involved. The nagual Elias had been meticulous about
seeing
the
man the moment he laid eyes on him. He had also
seen
the peasant woman
who was part of the spirit's manifestation, but he had seen nothing that, in
his judgment, could have warranted the spirit's display.

In the
course of witnessing another seduction, however, the nagual's ability to
see
took on a new depth. This time the actor's adoring fan was the daughter of
a rich landowner. And from the start she was in complete control. The nagual
found out about their rendezvous because he overheard her daring the actor to
meet her the next day. The nagual was hiding across the street at dawn when the
young woman left her house, and instead of going to early mass she went to join
the actor. The actor was waiting for her and she coaxed him into following her
to the open fields. He appeared to hesitate, but she taunted him and would not
allow him to withdraw.

As the
nagual watched them sneaking away, he had an absolute conviction that something
was going to happen on that day which neither of the players was anticipating.
He
saw
that the actor's black shadow had grown to almost twice his
height. The nagual deduced from the mysterious hard look in the young woman's
eyes that she too had felt the black shadow of death at an intuitive level. The
actor seemed preoccupied. He did not laugh as he had on other occasions.

They walked
quite a distance. At one point, they spotted the nagual following them, but he
instantly pretended to be working the land, a peasant who belonged there. That
made the couple relax and allowed the nagual to come closer.

Then the
moment came when the actor tossed off his clothes and showed himself to the
girl. But instead of swooning and falling into his arms as his other conquests
had, this girl began to hit him. She kicked and punched him mercilessly and
stepped on his bare toes, making him cry out with pain.

The nagual
knew the man had not threatened or harmed the young woman. He had not laid a
finger on her. She was the only one fighting. He was merely trying to parry the
blows, and persistently, but without enthusiasm, trying to entice her by
showing her his genitals.

The nagual
was filled with both revulsion and admiration. He could perceive that the actor
was an irredeemable libertine, but he could also perceive equally easily that
there was something unique, although revolting, about him. It baffled the
nagual to
see
that the man's connecting link with the spirit was
extraordinarily clear.

Finally the
attack ended. The woman stopped beating the actor. But then, instead of running
away, she surrendered, lay down and told the actor he could now have his way
with her.

The nagual
observed that the man was so exhausted he was practically unconscious. Yet
despite his fatigue he went right ahead and consummated his seduction.

The nagual
was laughing and pondering that useless man's great stamina and determination
when the woman screamed and the actor began to gasp. The nagual
saw
how
the black shadow struck the actor. It went like a dagger, with pinpoint
accuracy into his gap.

Don Juan
made a digression at this point to elaborate on something he had explained
before: he had described the gap, an opening in our luminous shell at the
height of the navel, where the force of death ceaselessly struck. What don Juan
now explained was that when death hit healthy beings it was with a ball-like
blow - like the punch of a fist. But when beings were dying, death struck them
with a dagger-like thrust.

Thus the
nagual Elias knew without any question that the actor was as good as dead, and
his death automatically finished his own interest in the spirit's designs.
There were no designs left; death had leveled everything.

He rose
from his hiding place and started to leave when something made him hesitate. It
was the young woman's calmness. She was nonchalantly putting on the few pieces
of clothing she had taken off and was whistling tunelessly as if nothing had
happened.

And then
the nagual
saw
that in relaxing to accept the presence of death, the
man's body had released a protecting veil and revealed his true nature. He was
a double man of tremendous resources, capable of creating a screen for
protection or disguise - a natural sorcerer and a perfect candidate for a
nagual apprentice, had it not been for the black shadow of death.