Version 2007.11.08

## "Encounters With The Nagual" - ©2004 by Armando Torres
Part II. Warriors' Dialogue

### A New Stage of Knowledge

When the presentation of his new book ended, we left and walked along Insurgentes Avenue. It was night, a little cold, and surprisingly clear. The air smelled clean.

While we walked, Carlos commented that what he didn't like about that kind of activity was meeting so many sycophants, [* sycophant- a person who tries to please someone in order to gain a personal advantage] and the fact that they forced him to toast with champagne. His technique was to keep one full glass during the whole event, without having even one sip: That way, they stopped inviting him.

He added that his literary career began with a challenge. One time, Don Juan put forward the proposal that in order to utilize the heaps of notes he had taken during his apprenticeship, he should write a book. "In the beginning I considered it a joke, since I was not a writer. However, Don Juan outlined it to me as a sorcery exercise."

Once Carlos had started, he began to take pleasure in the work, and ended up understanding that, for him, books were an avenue to his real mission as a nagual.

I asked him if he didn't fear that divulging the knowledge to all kinds of people would end up corrupting it.

"No!" he answered. "What degenerates knowledge is secrecy. Putting it within reach of people renews it. Nothing is more healthy for energy than fluency, and that concerns the knowledge of sorcerers most of all. We are temporary recipients of power: We are not entitled to retain it. Also, this knowledge only makes sense for those who practice it and achieve the necessary energy to corroborate it. The rest do not matter.

"I entered the world of the nagual at the precise moment when a rupture was necessary. That forced me to face the most dramatic decision of my life: To publish the teachings. It has been very hard for me to be the representative of such a watershed, and for years I lived with the trauma of not understanding what I was doing. There were people who even wrote me threatening letters in the name of tradition: The sorcerers of the old guard did not want to lose their prerogatives."

I told him how extraordinary I thought it was that he should choose to break so drastically with the millennial tradition of secrecy.

"I didn't break anything!" he replied. "The command of the spirit was clear. All I did was comply with it.

"In the beginning of my apprenticeship, I was prepared to take the reins of the lineage. One day everything changed. Warriors of the party saw that my energy structure was different than the nagual Juan Matus' energy, and they interpreted it as a command with no possibility of appeal. As the Rule dictates, they put in my hands the heavy responsibility of closing the lineage.

"For centuries, parties of warriors had acted as a sponge, absorbing experience to corroborate the sophisticated principles of the way of knowledge. The only exit left for me was to return that knowledge to the people.

"The cycle of my books is a beginning; a humble intent to put within reach of modern man fragments of a knowledge which was hidden for generations. The moment for corroborations will come later, and other cycles will follow; because once the teachings of sorcerers come into the hands of the public, it is inevitable that some begin to question and experiment with perception, and in that way discover the entire potential of which we are capable."

I asked him how Don Juan and his cohorts had reacted when they realized that the secrets of the group were being disclosed. He answered:

"I have already described how on one occasion when I brought a copy of one of my books to Don Juan, he returned it to me with a scornful comment. That is only half of the truth. The fact is that he was the author of those texts. He didn't write them letter by letter, but he was in charge of the whole matter and he supervised every one of my statements. In time, I discovered that Don Juan's strategy had been carefully calculated.

"The plan of the nagual has supreme audacity and a brilliant simplicity. He introduced the knowledge of seers to the public, not to contribute to the grandeur of academia, but to elevate the level of awareness in the masses; and he presented it through the very institutions that might refute him. He knew that exposing the teachings through a mystic or religious format would not penetrate as deeply as a presentation with the support of a scientific guarantee. For that reason he demanded that I shape my first book as a thesis for my degree.

"The operation of the nagual Juan Matus initiates a new stage in the transmission of knowledge; an unprecedented stage. The secrets of the movement of the assemblage point have never been put within reach of the public before."