The Rule of Three - Pronged Nagual - Part 1

INTRODUCTION

 From an early age, the reflective bent of my character made me seek  an explanation of who I am and what my purpose in life might be. Knowing about my search, a fellow student came to me once and told me that Carlos Castaneda was giving a private talk in his house, and that I could come if I wanted. I had waited for an opportunity like that for a long time, and was enchanted with the invitation.

 

Castaneda was a famous anthropologist, the author of several books on the culture of the Mexican sorcerers of the ancient past. In his books, he describes how, while still a student at the University of California, he did some work among the Yaqui Indians in northern Mexico, in order to learn about the medicinal plants they used.  

 On one of these trips, he met an old herbalist, famous as a sorcerer, who called himself Juan Matus. In time, the old man took him on as an apprentice, and introduced him to a completely unknown dimension for modern man: The traditional wisdom of the old Toltec seers, commonly known as ‘sorcery’ or ‘nagualism’.   

In a dozen books, Carlos describes a teacher/apprentice relationship which lasted for thirteen years. In the course of that time, he underwent an arduous training which led him to personally corroborate the foundations of that strange culture. The experiences he aquired during his apprenticeship ended up making the young anthropologist succumb to his fascination with the knowledge, and he was absorbed by the system of beliefs he was studying. This outcome removed him a great distance away from his original goals. 

  ‘Nagualism’ was the name sorcerers from prehispanic Mexico gave to their system of belief. According to history, those men were profoundly concerned with their relationship to the universe, to such a degree that they dedicated themselves to the task of investigating the limits of perception through the use of hallucinogenic plants which allowed them to change levels of awareness. After practicing for generations, some of them learned how to see, in other words, to perceive the world, not as an interpretation, but as a constant flow of energy. 

 

Nagualism consists of a group of techniques designed to alter our everyday perception, producing psychic and physical phenomena of extraordinary interest. For example, the Mexican tradition claims that a nagual is able to transform himself into an animal, because he has learned how to dream himself in a different form than that of a human being. Behind this popular belief is the fact that sorcerers explore their subconscious with the purpose of throwing light on unknown aspects of our being. 

 

Nagualism was a socially accepted practice for thousands of years, comparable to our religion or science. In time, its postulates gained in abstraction and synthesis, becoming a kind of philosophical proposal whose practitioners took the name of Toltecs.  

The Toltecs were not what we ordinarily think of as ‘sorcerers’, that is, individuals who use supernatural forces to damage others, but rather extremely disciplined men and women who were interested in complex aspects of consciousness. 

In his books, Carlos made a talented effort to adapt the knowledge of naguals to our time, lifting it out of its rural atmosphere and making it accessible to people with a Western background. Starting from Don Juan's teachings, he defined the premises of the path of the warrior, or the path of impeccable behavior, consistent in control, discipline, and sustained effort. Once internalized, these principles carry the practitioner to other more complex techniques whose object is to perceive the world in a new way.  

 

Having achieved this, the student is in a position to move in a voluntary and conscious way in the environment of dreams, in just the same way as he moves in his daily life. This technique is supplemented with what Don Juan called ‘the art of stalking’, or the art of knowing oneself, and with a daily exercise called ‘recapitulation’ because it consists of reviewing events of our personal history to find their hidden plot.  

Dreaming and recapitulation together make it possible to create what is called ‘the energetic double’, a practically indestructible entity, able to act on its own accord. 

 One of the most significant discoveries of the Toltec seers was that human beings possess a luminous configuration, or energy field, around the physical body. They also saw that some were equipped with a special configuration, divided into two parts. These were called naguals, that is, ‘duplicated people’. Because of their particular configuration, a nagual has greater resources that most people. They also saw that, because of their doubled and exceptional energy, they are natural leaders. 

 Starting from these discoveries, it was inevitable that seers would settle down according to the commands of energy, organizing harmonic groups whose participants complemented each other. Warriors of these groups were committed to the search for new levels of awareness. In time, they began to realize that behind their practices and organizational forms, there was an impersonal Rule. 

  In their sense of the word, the Rule is the description of the design and the means by which various luminous configurations of the human species can become united, eventually to integrate into a single organism called ‘the party of the nagual’. The goal of these groups is total freedom; the evolution of awareness to the point of enabling them to travel through the ocean of cosmic energy, perceiving all that is  accessible to us.  

There is a special section of the Rule which describes how the generations of warriors are intertwined, forming lineages, and how lineages are renewed every so often. 

The fate of Carlos was to live through one of those stages of renewal. However, he did not understand what that meant before he received a message which guided him towards the popularization of the teachings. 

 When I met him, he still had great reservations about the public domain and tried to keep his distance from people. Our relationship was mainly through talks he gave to small groups, and private conversations.  

 

He demanded that I should pass unnoticed among the others, so that I would keep my personal history under a measure of control. Later, he admitted that this request also had a deeper motive: I had a commitment to the spirit, and should execute my task four years after Carlos’ departure.  

When I asked him why, he told me that he knew that his work will be obstructed by detractors who will try to frustrate the plan designed by Don Juan for a revolution of awareness. My function would be to give testimony of the message I would receive.