Blog #6

After Monday’s discussion about the axis mundi the first thing I noticed when I started reading the book was all the cacti on the cover. I wonder if the cacti, with their quality of pointing up into the sky, were purposely put on the cover to symbolize the axis mundi? At any rate, this idea of spirituality was one which followed me through the whole reading. What I was most impressed by was the way don Juan used peyote. Normally when I think of hallucinogen use I think of hippies. I guess I can’t say it with much authority because I wasn’t there, but it seems to me that most hippies tripped simply to be rebellious or just for the fun of it. Don Juan, on the other hand, was much more serious about his use of peyote. To him it was a very serious, spiritual occasion.

This seriousness is evidenced by the way he is annoyed at Castaneda for not letting the peyote “come to them.” It also very obvious how serious don Juan is when he says, “Not everybody likes Mescalito; yet they all seek him with the idea of profiting without doing any work. Naturally their encounter with him is always horrifying” (80). Clearly don Juan would disapprove of leisure drug-users. He does not see tripping as a “fun” event, but sees it as a spiritual one which must be approached through hard work and caution.

Another place that interested me during our reading was the way in which Castaneda’s trips reminded me of dreams. During his first trip he describes the dog drinking water. He says that “the water was a shiny, vicious liquid. I saw it going down the dog’s throat into his body. I saw it flowing evenly though his entire length and then shooting out through each one of his hairs” (27). This seemed to me like something one might see while dreaming. This makes sense, too, since we’ve talked about how both drug-use and sleep bring on ASC. It would only be natural to expect some of these altered states to have similarities.

To wrap up I’ll end by sharing one of the questions I had. Don Juan talks about the knowledge gained through peyote (and Castaneda agrees that he gains knowledge too), but they never specify what this knowledge is. I wondered what specifically they had learned through their experiences. I didn’t look this up because I imagine it will be addressed later in the book, but it’s something to keep in mind as I keep reading.