my inventory of past experiences. La Gorda’s explanation
somehow had simplified everything.
She said that the Nagual next made them gaze at moving,
living creatures. He told them that small insects were by far
the best subject. Their mobility made them innocuous to the
gazer, the opposite of plants which drew their light directly
from the earth.
The next step was to gaze at rocks. She said that rocks were
very old and powerful and had a specific light which was
rather greenish in contrast with the white light of plants and
the yellowish light of mobile, living beings. Rocks did not
open up easily to gazers, but it was worthwhile for gazers to
persist because rocks had special secrets concealed in their
core, secrets that could aid sorcerers in their dreaming.
What are the things that rocks reveal to you? I asked.
When I gaze into the very core of a rock, she said, I al-
ways catch a whiff of a special scent proper to that rock.
When I roam around in my dreaming, I know where I am be-
cause I’m guided by those scents.
She said that the time of the day was an important factor in
tree and rock gazing. In the early morning trees and rocks
were stiff and their light was faint. Around noon was when
they were at their best, and gazing at that time was done for
borrowing their light and power. In the late afternoon and
early evening trees and rocks were quiet and sad, especially
trees. La Gorda said that at that hour trees gave the feeling
that they were gazing back at the gazer.
A second series in the order of gazing was to gaze at cyclic
phenomena: rain and fog. She said that gazers can focus their
second attention on the rain itself and move with it, or focus it
on the background and use the rain as a magnifying glass of
sorts to reveal hidden features. Places of power or places to be
avoided are found by gazing through rain. Places of power
are yellowish and places to be avoided are intensely green.
La Gorda said that fog was unquestionably the most mys-
terious thing on earth for a gazer and that it could be used in
the same two ways that rain was used. But it did not easily
yield to women, and even after she had lost her human form,
it remained unattainable to her. She said that the Nagual once
made her see a green mist at the head of a fog bank and told
her that was the second attention of a fog gazer who lived in
the mountains where she and the Nagual were, and that he
was moving with the fog. She added that fog was used to un-
cover the ghosts of things that were no longer there and that
the true feat of fog gazers was to let their second attention go
into whatever their gazing was revealing to them.
I told her that once while I was with don Juan I had seen a
bridge formed out of a fog bank. I was aghast at the clarity
and precise detail of that bridge. To me it was more than real.
The scene was so intense and vivid that I had been incapable
of forgetting it. Don Juan’s comments had been that I would
have to cross that bridge someday.
I know about it, she said. The Nagual told me that some-
day when you have mastery over your second attention you’ll
cross that bridge with that attention, the same way you flew
like a crow with that attention. He said that if you become a
sorcerer, a bridge will form for you out of the fog and you
will cross it and disappear from this world forever. Just like he
himself has done.
Did he disappear like that, over a bridge?
Not over a bridge. But you witnessed how he and Genaro
stepped into the crack between the worlds in front of your
very eyes. Nestor said that only Genaro waved his hand to
say good-bye the last time you saw them; the Nagual did not
wave because he was opening the crack. The Nagual told me
that when the second attention has to be called upon to as-
semble itself, all that is needed is the motion of opening that
door. That’s the secret of the Toltec dreamers once they are
formless.
I wanted to ask her about don Juan and don Genaro step-
ping through that crack. She made me stop with a light touch
of her hand on my mouth.
She said that another series was distance and cloud gazing.
In both, the effort of gazers was to let their second attention
go to the place they were gazing at. Thus, they covered great
distances or rode on clouds. In the case of cloud gazing, the
Nagual never permitted them to gaze at thunderheads. He
told them that they had to be formless before they could at-
tempt that feat, and that they could not only ride on a
thunderhead but on a thunderbolt itself.
La Gorda laughed and asked me to guess who would be
daring and crazy enough actually to try gazing at thunder-
heads. I could think of no one else but Josefina. La Gorda said
that Josefina tried gazing at thunderheads every time she could
when the Nagual was away, until one day a thunderbolt
nearly killed her.
Genaro was a thunderbolt sorcerer, she went on. His
first two apprentices, Benigno and Nestor, were singled out
for him by his friend the thunder. He said that he was looking
for plants in a very remote area where the Indians are very
private and don’t like visitors of any kind. They had given
Genaro permission to be on their land since he spoke their
language. Genaro was picking some plants when it began to
rain. There were some houses around but the people were un-
friendly and he didn’t want to bother them; he was about to
crawl into a hole when he saw a young man coming down the
road riding a bicycle heavily laden with goods. It was Benigno,
the man from the town, who dealt with those Indians. His
bicycle got stuck in the mud and right there a thunderbolt
struck him. Genaro thought that he had been killed. People in
the houses had seen what happened and came out. Benigno
was more scared than hurt, but his bicycle and all his mer-
chandise were ruined. Genaro stayed with him for a week and
cured him.
Almost the same thing happened to Nestor. He used to
buy medicinal plants from Genaro, and one day he followed
him into the mountains to see where he picked his plants, so he
wouldn’t have to pay for them anymore. Genaro went very
far into the mountains on purpose; he intended to make
Nestor get lost. It wasn’t raining but there were thunderbolts,
and suddenly a thunderbolt struck the ground and ran over
the dry ground like a snake. It ran right between Nestor’s legs
and hit a rock ten yards away.
Genaro said that the bolt had charred the inside of Nestor’s
legs. His testicles were swollen and he got very ill. Genaro had
to cure him for a week right in those mountains.
By the time Benigno and Nestor were cured, they were
also hooked. Men have to be hooked. Women don’t need that.
Women go freely into anything. That’s their power and at the
same time their drawback. Men have to be led and women
have to be contained.
She giggled and said that no doubt she had a lot of maleness
in her, for she needed to be led, and that I must have a lot of
femaleness in me, for I needed to be contained.
The last series was fire, smoke and shadow gazing. She said
that for a gazer, fire is not bright but black, and so is smoke.
Shadows, on the other hand, are brilliant and have color and
movement in them.
There were two more things that were kept separate, star
and water gazing. Stargazing was done by sorcerers who have
lost their human form. She said that she had fared very well at
stargazing, but could not handle gazing at water, especially
running water, which was used by formless sorcerers to gather
their second attention and transport it to anyplace they
needed to go.
All of us are terrified of water, she went on. A river
gathers the second attention and takes it away and there is no
way of stopping. The Nagual told me about your feats of
water gazing. But he also told me that one time you nearly
disintegrated in the water of a shallow river and that you can’t
even take a bath now.
Don Juan had made me stare at the water of an irrigation
ditch behind his house various times while he had me under