‘If you want her power, you must do it! There is no other way!’
‘Can you take care of her for me when I am not here, don Juan?’
‘No! Not I! I can’t do that! Each one must nourish his own shoot. I had my own. Now you must have yours. And not until she has seeded, as I told you, can you consider yourself ready for learning.’
‘Where do you think I should replant her?’
‘ That is for you alone to decide! And nobody must know the place, not even I! That is the way the replanting must be done. Nobody, but nobody, can know where your plant is. If a stranger follows you, or sees you, take the shoot and run away to another place. He could cause you unimaginable harm through manipulating the shoot. He could cripple or kill you. That’s why not even I must know where your plant is.’
He handed me the little jar with the shoot.
‘Take it now.’
I took it. Then he almost dragged me to my car.
‘Now you must leave. Go and pick the spot where you will replant the shoot. Dig a deep hole, in soft dirt, next to a watery place. Remember, she must be near water in order to grow. Dig the hole with your hands only, even if they bleed. Place the shoot in the centre of the hole and make a mound [pilon] around it. Then soak it with water. When the water sinks, fill the hole with soft dirt. Next, pick a spot two paces away from the shoot, in that direction [pointing to the southeast]. Dig another deep hole there, also with your hands, and dump into it what is in the pot. Then smash the pot and bury it deep in another place, far from the spot where your shoot is. When you have buried the pot go back to your shoot and water it once more. Then take out your image, hold it between the fingers where the flesh wound is, and, standing on the spot where you have buried the glue, touch the shoot lightly with the sharp needle. Circle the shoot four times, stopping each time in the same spot to touch it.’
‘ Do I have to follow a specific direction when I go around the root?’
‘Any direction will do. But you must always remember in what direction you buried the glue, and what direction you took when you circled the shoot. Touch the shoot lightly with the point every time except the last, when you must thrust it deep. But do it carefully; kneel for a more steady hand because you must not break the point inside the shoot. If you break it, you are finished. The root will be of no use to you.’
‘Do I have to say any words while I go around the shoot?’
‘No, I will do that for you.’
Saturday, 27 January 1962
As soon as I got to his house this morning don Juan told me he was going to show me how to prepare the smoke mixture. We walked to the hills and went quite a way into one of the canyons. He stopped next to a tall, slender bush whose colour contrasted markedly with that of the surrounding vegetation. The chaparral around the bush was yellowish, but the bush was bright green.
‘ From this little tree you must take the leaves and the flowers,’ he said. ‘The right time to pick them is All Souls’ Day [el dia de las animus].’
He took out his knife and chopped off the end of a thin branch. He chose another similar branch and also chopped off its tip. He repeated this operation until he had a handful of branch tips. Then he sat down on the ground.
‘Look here,’ he said. ‘I have cut all the branches above the fork made by two or more leaves and the stem. Do you see? They are all the same. I have used only the tip of each branch, where the leaves are fresh and tender. Now we must look for a shaded place.’
We walked until he seemed to have found what he was looking for. He took a long string from his pocket and tied it to the trunk and the lower branches of two bushes, making a kind of clothesline on which he hung the branch tips upside down. He arranged them along the string in a neat fashion; hooked by the fork between the leaves and the stem, they resembled a long row of green horsemen.
‘One must see that the leaves dry in the shade,’ he said. ‘The place must be secluded and difficult to get to. That way the leaves are protected. They must be left to dry in a place where it would be almost impossible to find them. After they have dried, they must be put in a bundle and sealed.’
He picked up the leaves from the string and threw them into the nearby shrubs. Apparently he had intended only to show me the procedure.
We continued walking and he picked three different flowers, saying they were part of the ingredients and were supposed to be gathered at the same time. But the flowers had to be put in separate clay pots and dried in darkness; a lid had to be placed on each pot so the flowers would turn mouldy inside the container. He said the function of the leaves and the flowers was to sweeten the smoke mixture.
We came out of the canyon and walked towards the riverbed. After a long detour we returned to his house. Late in the evening we sat in his own room, a thing he rarely allowed me to do, and he told me about the final ingredient of the mixture, the mushrooms.
‘The real secret of the mixture lies in the mushrooms,’ he said. ‘They are the most difficult ingredient to collect. The trip to the place where they grow is long and dangerous, and to select the right variety is even more perilous. There are other kinds of mushrooms growing alongside which are of no use; they would spoil the good ones if they were dried together. It takes time to know the mushrooms well in order not to make a mistake. Serious harm will result from using the wrong kind harm to the man and to the pipe. I know of men who have dropped dead from using the foul smoke.
‘As soon as the mushrooms are picked they are put inside a gourd, so there is no way to recheck them. You see, they have to be torn to shreds in order to make them go through the narrow neck of the gourd.’
‘How long do you keep the mushrooms inside the gourd?’ ‘For a year. All the other ingredients are also sealed for a year. Then equal parts of them are measured and ground separately into a very fine powder. The little mushrooms don’t have to be ground because they become a very fine dust by themselves; all one needs to do is to mash the chunks. Four parts of mushrooms are added to one part of all the other ingredients together. Then they are all mixed and put into a bag like mine.’ He pointed to the little sack hanging under his shirt.
‘Then all the ingredients are gathered again, and after they have been put to dry you are ready to smoke the mixture you have just prepared. In your own case, you will smoke next year. And the year after that, the mixture will be all yours because you will have gathered it by yourself. The first time you smoke I will light the pipe for you. You will smoke all the mixture in the bowl and wait. The smoke will come. You will feel it. It will set you free to see anything you want to see. Properly speaking, it is a matchless ally. But whoever seeks it must have an intent and a will beyond reproach. He needs them because he has to intend and will his return, or the smoke will not let him come back. Second, he must intend and will to remember whatever the smoke allowed him to see, otherwise it will be nothing more than a piece of fog in his mind.”
Saturday, 8 April 1962
In our conversations, don Juan consistently used or referred to the phrase ‘man of knowledge’, but never explained what he meant by it. I asked him about it.
‘A man of knowledge is one who has followed truthfully the hardships of learning,’ he said. ‘A man who has, without rushing or without faltering, gone as far as he can in unravelling the secrets of power and knowledge.’
‘ Can anyone be a man of knowledge ?’
‘No, not anyone.’
‘Then what must a man do to become a man of knowledge?’
‘He must challenge and defeat his four natural enemies.’