Victor Sanchez Articles

"Shamans in the Real World"

"The Surviving Toltecs",

SHAMANS IN THE REAL WORLD

By  Victor Sanchez

 Note: This article has been published with a different title in Magical Blend magazine, issue 69 (first quarter of 2000)

 During the last twenty years, shamanism has changed from being an important issue for anthropologists involved in cultural research, to becoming an attractive issue for non-specialists interested in healing and spiritual growth.

 Since the word “shamanism” has transcended its origin among indigenous people from Siberia and it is used so much by members of the modern urban societies nowadays, it is appropriate to briefly explain the way I understand that word and the way I use it.

 From a superficial perspective, shaman is that person who has the knowledge and power to deal with supernatural forces, most of the time in order to heal. Those supernatural forces could be spirits, gods, entities, energies, or God.

 Initially, our interest in shamanism had to do with the fantasy of meeting a “real shaman” to be healed or blessed by his or her supernatural powers. As the years went by, our focus on shamanism has changed: Now we want to be the shamans to heal others and heal the world. Books, workshops and seminars on shamanism for that purpose are being offered extensively around the world. Many people are reading those books and attending those workshops with the fantasy of becoming a shaman, getting power and solving the eternal need to stop being “nobody” and eventually becoming “somebody.” This pursuit is another example of the kind of things we are willing to do because of the lack of sense in our lives.

 It is interesting to notice that for the modern man, the idea of shamanism is related with the idea of power. Power to heal, power to change the events of life, power to bring the rain, good fortune, etc. My experience among indigenous people from Mexico, who I call “the surviving Toltecs,” has shown me a very different perspective. Shamanism is related with the idea of service, rather than the idea of power.

 The flesh and bone shamans I have known are recognized for their commitment to the service of their communities as their primary feature. What’s extraordinary about them is not so much how big their power is, but how extreme their vocation to serve others is without asking for rewards. They don’t charge for their work. Rather than having income as a result of their activities as shamans, they are the poorest among the poor ones, because besides working as hard as others to make their lives as peasants, they additionally expend a lot of time working hard in the service of their communities.

 Because of their extreme generosity and nobility of spirit, I have been always reluctant with the way the word shamanism is used in our modern world where oversimplification is the rule. Nowadays, anybody who has read a little bit about indigenous knowledge or participated in workshops on shamanism presents him or her self as a “shaman” in order to sell an image that can be admired by others.

 In my work, giving lectures and leading seminars around the world for so long, many people such as workshop organizers and media interviewers have tried to “dress me” with the title of “shaman.” I have never accepted that, because I know real shamans and their offering of an entire life of service to reflect spirit, without a trace of self-importance in what they do. Because of that, I would never dare to put myself at the same level of those men and women of bare feet. I know that my audiences will not be that big, because I don’t participate in the dance of masks, pretending to be a shaman or a “nagual.”

 In my opinion, most times what is behind the compulsive need to wear titles is self-importance. The need to present oneself like “the one” in front of others has made so much damage both for the “illuminated” ones and their followers. I know those titles are convenient for marketing and profits, but for me, freedom has a more precious value. At the end, we all die as we lived. Death is not impressed by our titles.

 Real shamans are not those getting rich by taking the money of their “apprentices”. On the contrary, they are usually poorer than the people of their community, because they have double the work: the one they have as peasants to make their living, and the work of the shaman-healer, which is not paid. Therefore, their own business takes a secondary place, in relation with their sacred task.

 Of course, shamans of the real life are not like the perfect indigenous masters of the books. Their bodies bleed, their hearts suffer, their children get sick, their souls cry and laugh. Indigenous shamans in the real world are facing the violence of a time when their whole world is being devoured by the boundless greed of the white man. And they are resisting. They are fighting to survive and keep the treasure of their spiritual tradition alive. Not just for them, not even just for their children, but for the entire world. You and me included.

 What makes them so precious to humanity is that they are making a miracle through raising themselves and their people from the existential misery and solitude in which we live, to reach and become one with the most extraordinary force in this universe: the unspeakable, the Great Spirit. And the most extraordinary is that they are making this miracle of recovering the lost unit, at the same time they are struggling with extreme poverty. They are human beings, just like you and me, dealing and fighting with the material world, just like you and me. But they are able to raise themselves from the pain and confusion of the material world, to reach the Spirit, and become one with God. And the big news is that what they do, we can do. They are showing us the way, but it is our responsibility to do the miracle by ourselves in our own life.

 My experience with shamanism has shown me that the task of the shaman has little to do with achieving individual goals. Shamans are not doing what they do as a personal issue. They are participating, together with their community, in the task of remembering and keeping alive the means to return to Spirit and live in harmony with it. Those sets of procedures are called “Tradition,” which is not a body of beliefs but a body of practices.

 Those practices are so effective to bring the people to the other side of their own awareness, that I call them “Shamanic Technology for Health and Freedom”.

 Now, let’s change the focus from the shaman as an individual to the shamanic experience as a possibility for everyone. While the shaman is a specific person, playing a specific role in the magical time of the rituals and ceremonies, the shamanic experience is lived and shared by all the individuals involved in the event. In this sense the shamanic experience is both individual and collective, therefore is open to all the members of the group as long as they follow the proper procedures.

 The goal of the shamanic experience is to bring the participants back to the lost unity with the unspeakable force moving everything in the universe. The separate poles: sacred and mundane, spirit and matter, the self and “what’s out there” all become one during the shamanic experience. Our two internal sides, tonal and nagual, get reintegrated and we experience the unity of our double nature.

 The goal of the shamanic experience, the recovering of the unity or our two sides, tonal and nagual, is the secret promise in the Toltec symbol of the feathered serpent Quetzalcoatl. The serpent represents what crawls, the tonal, the material world. The eagle represents what flies, the nagual, the Spirit. But unlike the Aztec symbol where the eagle is killing the serpent[1], in the Toltec symbol Quetzalcoatl, the eagle is not killing the serpent, but they become one: the feathered serpent, the unity of spirit and matter, the equilibrium between tonal and nagual.

 The shamanic experience is important for us, members of the modern urban societies, not just because it could be exciting or fun to become a shaman. The shamanic experience is deadly important because our lack of appropriate means to re-connect our selves with Spirit is causing the continual self-destruction process, both as individuals and as a species. 

 We need shamanic practices that happen to be appropriate for our time and our society. It would not be enough just to try to imitate the rituals and procedures of indigenous people. Shamanism and Tradition are a series of practices and techniques to manipulate and heighten awareness. But the specific expression of these technologies are, and should always be, in accordance with the specific features of the people who are going to use them. This means that while the shamanic practices of the indigenous people should be related to the features of their way of life as peasants who live in close contact with nature, our practices should be related to the kind of world and life we have in modern cities.

 Our effort in AVP, “The New Toltequity,” has been to develop methods and procedures for the people of the modern world, so they can do by themselves the “shamanic jump” to the other side of themselves and to the other side of reality. The reason for this journey through the shamanic experience is because there is no health without completion. Only by recovering and integrating the experiences corresponding to our double nature, we could reach what constitutes our natural rights: power, health and freedom.

 Because of this, my work of all these years has been to try to create a bridge between the shamanic experiences kept alive among indigenous peoples and our modern societies. I am convinced that the big disease of our time is the lack of experiences where we may remember and live again our hidden awareness, the other self, and the sacred connection we have with everything surrounding us.

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"The Surviving Toltecs"

by Victor Sanchez

A Little of History

Let's begin from the beginning. For ethnologists and historians, the Toltecs were the pre-Columbian Indian people that lived in central Mexico - mainly from 8th century to 12th century. Their capital city was Tula in the Mexican State of Hidalgo. After the 12th century, the Toltecs abandoned Tula; codices and registers from 16th century talk about the Toltec dispersion, supposedly related with the departure of their leader, Quetzalcoatl. One of the most interesting, found in the codices is the one that talks about Quetzalcoatl going to a cave under the Chapultepec Hill (in Mexico City), where he would enter into another dimension (Mictlan, Nahual or Omeyocan) and disappear forever (include a footnote: see "Historia del Nombre y fundacion de la Ciudad de Mexico, by Gutierre Tibon, Fondo de Cultura Economica). Anyway, what it clear, is that Toltecs did spread themselves in ancient Mexico influencing with their knowledge many other indigenous cultures, such as the Mayas. That is history.

The fact is: The Toltecs are considered the greatest civilizators of the past, not only nowadays but since the 16th century when the Aztec people were used to call "Toltec", a man of knowledge, as a resemblance of the great wisdom of the Ancient Toltecs, and the Toltequity to be the highest level of knowledge a human being can achieve.

For average people, the Toltecs were some kind of wise Indian people that disappeared many centuries ago. Since the Toltecs left so long ago, anyone can state whatever he or she wants about them... anyway, the Toltecs are not here to defend themselves, or at least it seems so...

Are they still here?

Maybe because Toltec Indians have no voice in the topics about Toltec Indian knowledge there is so much controversy among non-indian teachers of Toltec knowledge. But, there is one point that almost nobody is taking into account: there are indian communities in the present Mexico, preserving and keeping alive the practices of ancient Toltequity. That's what I have discovered, and that is the body of practices I am involved with, and from where I have taken the clues for making a practical and wise use of the proposals contained in the books of Carlos Castaneda (See The Teachings of Don Carlos, Practical Applications of the Works of Carlos Castaneda" , by Victor Sanchez, Bear and Company). The way and techniques I have developed inspired by the writings of Castaneda, do not pretend to reflect the unworldly goals of Castaneda's tales, but those which are congruent with the Toltequity I have learned among the living Indian Toltecs in the Mexican mountains where they do live.

I have written the testimony of my experience among the surviving Toltecs in the book "Toltecs of the New Millenium" (Bear and Company). In that book, I have included many references, photos, official witnesses, etc., in order to let people know that what I am talking about is really happening in the same world in which they are living, because I think it is important for the reader to be sure that what he or she is reading, it is real... especially when this reader is looking for something to apply in his or her life, in the everyday world. It isn't my interest to criticize anybody, but this is my point of view and I just want to be clear about it.

Additional Information About the Surviving Toltecs

• The inheritors of the ancient Toltequity call themselves Wirrarika. Most of them speak only the Wirrarika language but some speak Spanish also. Even though they are more than 50,000, not all the members of the community share the same amount of knowledge related with their spiritual tradition.
• Among the Wirrarika, there are special groups of people called Jicareros, which are the keepers of the ancient magical practices. They live levels of experience in the world of perception that the other members of the community can't even imagine.
• The spanish word "Tradicion" (tradition, custom, etc.) doesn't mean for the Wirrarika people a body of beliefs, but a body of very efficient practices, oriented for the practitioner to achieve highest levels of awareness and perception.
• Among the surviving Toltecs, the figure of the master, as we are used to think of in western and some non-western societies, doesn't exist. They are used to learning directly from "Spirit". The man of knowledge, the shaman is a mere vehicle that pushes the practitioner to look for the Spirit at the sacred places. There aren't books, there aren't formal teachings and there aren't human teachers. There are just sets of specific actions, which are the way to knock on the door of Spirit. If Spirit opens the door, the learning begins. You cannot just hear about "Usi" (Wirrarika word for Great Spirit), you must see it and hear it for yourself, without intermediaries. That's the way of the Toltec.
• The surviving Toltecs are indians which are involved in their own world and they do not seem to be interested in the non-indian world. They are not interested in teaching or selling anything to us. They are only interested in surviving and keeping the Tradition alive, because it is their way to assume their own role as fields of energy, as real sons and daughters of the Sun, with the same nature as Great Father Sun and with the same love as Great Mother Earth.

This is the message of the surviving Toltecs Indians:

We are children of the Sun and our nature is to shine!

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