"Magical Passes that were taught to Carlos Castaneda, Florinda-Donner-Grau, Taisha Abelar and Carol Tiggs by their teacher, don Juan Matus, a Yaqui Indian from Mexico and the heir to a lineage of seers that originates in Mexico of ancient times."

"Because of this quality, because of this magic," don Juan said to me, "the passes must be practiced not as exercises, but as a way of beckoning power."

Carlos Castaneda

She brought her left palm to her forehead and stroked it in a circular fashion. Then she moved her hand over the top of her head and down the back of her neck, after which she flicked her wrists and fingers in the air. She repeated this stroking and flicking sequence several more times.

"This circular stroking prevents wrinkles from forming on your forehead," she said. "It may appear like a facial massage to you, but it isn't. These are sorcery passes, movements of the hand that are designed to gather energy for a specific purpose." "The purpose of these sorcery passes is to keep one looking youthful by preventing wrinkles from forming," she said. "The purpose has been decided beforehand, not by me or by you, but by power itself." "Power is where energy gathers."

Then she vigorously rubbed each thumb on the palm of the opposite hand and placed them on the bridge of her nose. She moved them outward with light, even strokes over her eyebrows to the temples.

"This pass will keep furrows from developing between your eyebrows," she explained.

After quickly rubbing together her index fingers, like two sticks starting a fire, she brought them vertically to each side of her nose and gently moved them sideways over her cheeks several times.

"That's to clear the sinus cavities," she said.

She briskly rubbed her palms together, and with long, firm strokes, she slid them up each cheek to her temples. She repeated this movement six or seven times, always using slow, even, upward strokes.

"That's to keep the cheeks from sagging," she said.

She placed the inner edge of her hand, with her thumb folded over her palm, above her upper lip and rubbed back and forth with a vigorous sawlike motion.

She explained that the spot where the nose and upper lip join, when briskly rubbed, stimulated energy to flow in mild, even bursts. But if greater bursts of energy were needed, they could be obtained by pricking the point at the center of the upper gum, underneath the upper lip and below the nose septum. "If you get drowsy rub this point briskly and it will temporarily revive you," she said.

Lastly, she moved her index fingers sideways under her chin, again using a quick back-and-forth sawlike motion.

She explained that stimulating the point under the chin produces a clam alertness. She added that we can also activate this point by resting the chin on a low table while sitting on the floor or by lying on the stomach with the hands in fists, one on top of the other, under the chin.

"This group of sorcery passes I've shown you, "Clara continued, "must be practiced daily until they cease to be massagelike movements and become what they really are: sorcery passes. Watch me!" she ordered.

I saw her repeat the movements she had shown me, except that this time she was making her fingers and hands dance. Her hands seemed to penetrate deeply into the skin on her face; at other times, they passed over it lightly as if gliding on the skin's surface, moving so rapidly that they seemed to disappear. Watching her exquisite movements kept me mesmerized.

"This way of stroking was never in your inventory," she laughed when she had finished. "This is sorcery. It requires an intent different from the intent of the daily world. With all the tension that rises in the face, we certainly need a different intent if we are going to relax the muscles and tone the centers located there."

Clara said that all our emotions leave traces on our face, more than any other part of our body. Therefore we have to release accumulated stress using the sorcery passes and their accompanying intent.

*Excerpt from The Sorcerer's Crossing by Taisha Abelar

"How did the old sorcerers invent those magical passes, don Juan?" I asked.

"Nobody invented them," he said sternly. "To think that they were invented implies instantly the intervention of the mind, and this is not the case when it comes to those magical passes. They were, rather, discovered by the old shamans. I was told that it all began with the extraordinary sensation of well-being that those shamans experienced when they were in shamanistic states of heightened awareness. They felt such tremendous, enthralling vigor that they struggled to repeat it in their hours of vigil.

***

"Because of this quality, because of this magic," don Juan said to me, "the passes must be practiced not as exercises, but as a way of beckoning power.

***

"It is very important," he went on, "to focus the attention of the practitioner on some definite aspect of the magical passes. However, that fixation should be light, funny, void of morbidity and grimness. It should be done for the hell of it, without really expecting returns."

***

"The natural tendency of human beings," he said, "is to push energy away from the centers of vitality, which are located on the right side of the body, right at the edge of the rib cage on the area of the liver and gallbladder; on the left side of the body, again, at the edge of the rib cage, on the area of the pancreas and spleen; on the back, right behind the other two centers, around the kidneys, and right above them, on the area of the adrenal glands; at the base of the neck on the V spot made by the sternum and clavicle; and around the uterus and ovaries in women."

"How do human beings push this energy away, don Juan?" I asked.

"By worrying," he replied. "By succumbing to the stress of everyday life. The duress of daily actions takes its toll on the body."

"And what happens to this energy, don Juan?" I asked.

"It gathers on the periphery of the luminous ball," he said, "sometimes to the point of making a thick barklike deposit. The magical passes relate to the total human being as a physical body, and as a conglomerate of energy fields. They agitate the energy that has been accumulated in the luminous ball and return it to the physical body itself. The magical passes engage both the body itself as a physical entity that suffers the dispersion of energy, and the body as an energetic entity which is capable of redeploying that dispersed energy.

"Having energy on the periphery of the luminous ball," he continued, it energy that is not being redeployed, is as useless as not having any energy at all. It is truly a terrifying situation to have a surplus of energy stashed away, inaccessible for all practical purposes. It is like being in the desert, dying of dehydration, while you carry a tank of water that you cannot open, because you don't have any tools. In that desert, you can't even find a rock to bang it with."

The true magic of the magical passes is the fact that they cause crusted-down energy to enter again into the centers of vitality, hence the feeling of well-being and prowess which is the practitioner's experience. The sorcerers of don Juan's lineage, before they entered into their excessive ritualism and ceremony, had formulated the basis for this redeployment. They called it saturation, meaning that they inundated their bodies with a profusion of magical passes, in order to allow the force that binds us together to guide those magical passes to cause the maximum redeployment of energy.

"But don Juan, are you telling me that every time you crack your joints, or every time I try to imitate you, we are really redeploying energy?" I asked him once, without really meaning to be sarcastic.

"Every time we execute a magical pass," he replied, "we are indeed altering the basic structures of our beings. Energy which is ordinarily crusted down is released and begins to enter into the vortexes of vitality of the body. Only by means of that reclaimed energy can we put up a dike, a barrier to contain an otherwise uncontainable and always deleterious flow."
I asked don Juan to give me an example of putting a dam on what he was calling a deleterious flow. I told him that I wanted to visualize it in my mind.

"I'll give you an example," he said. "For instance, at my age, I should be prey to high blood pressure. If I went to see a doctor, the doctor, upon seeing me, would assume that I must be an old Indian, plagued with uncertainties, frustrations, and bad diet; all of this, naturally, resulting in a most expected and predictable condition of high blood pressure: an acceptable corollary of my age.

"I don't have any problems with high blood pressure," he went on, "not because I am stronger than the average man or because of my genetic frame, but because my magical passes have made my body break through any patterns of behaviour that result in high blood pressure. I can truthfully say that every time I crack my joints, following the execution of a magical pass, I am blocking off the flow of expectations and behaviour that ordinarily result in high blood pressure at my age.

"Another example I can give you is the agility of my knees," he continued. "Haven't you noticed how much more agile I am than you? When it comes to moving my knees, I'm a kid! With my magical passes, I put a dam on the current of behaviour and physicality that makes the knees of people, both men and women, stiff with age."

One of the most annoying feelings I had ever experienced was caused by the fact that don Juan Matus, although he could have been my grandfather, was infinitely younger than I. In comparison, I was stiff, opinionated, repetitious. I was senile. He, on the other hand, was fresh, inventive, agile, resourceful. In short, he possessed something which, although I was young, I did not: youth. He delighted in telling me repeatedly that young age was not youth, and that young age was in no way a deterrent to senility. He pointed out that if I watched my fellowmen carefully and dispassionately, I would be able to corroborate that by the time they reached twenty years of age, they were already senile, repeating themselves inanely.

"How is it possible, don Juan," I said, "that you could be younger than l?"

"I have vanquished my mind," he said, opening his eyes wide to denote bewilderment. "I don't have a mind to tell me that it is time to be old. I don't honor agreements in which I didn't participate. Remember this: It is not just a slogan for sorcerers to say that they do not honor agreements in which they did not participate. To be plagued by old age is one such agreement."

Excerpts taken from this Website