Don Juan, Mescalito and modern magic. PDF
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DON JUAN, MESCALITO AND MODERN MAGIC The Mythology of Inner Space Don Juan, Mescalito and Modern Magic Don Juan, Mescalito and Modern Magic The mythology of inner space Nevill Drury ROUTLEDGE & KEGAN PAUL London, Henley and Boston First published in 1978 by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd 39 Store Street, London WC1E 7DD, Reading Road, Henley-on-Thames, Oxon RG9 1EN and 9 Park Street, Boston, Mass. 02108, USA Printed in Great Britain by Lowe & Brydone Printers Ltd Thetford, Norfolk © Nevill Drury, 1978 No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except for the quotation of brief passages in criticism British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Drury, Neville Don Juan, Mescalito and modern magic 1. Shamanism I. Title 291.6'2 BL2370.S5 77-30326 ISBN 0-7100-8582-6 for Serge Contents NOTE TO READERS ix ACKNOWLEDGMENTS x INTRODUCTION 1 Part one: THE INNER MYTHOLOGY 1 THE SHAMAN AND HIS UNIVERSE 9 2 ASTRAL PROJECTION The pioneers 19 3 FURTHER CONSIDERATIONS 35 4 COMPARISONS Two systems of magic 45 5 TOWARDS A FRAMEWORK FOR INNER SPACE 62 Part two: THE QABALAH REVISITED 6 CHRISTIANITY, MAGIC AND SCIENCE 87 7 THE HERMETIC ORDER OF THE GOLDEN DAWN Ceremonial for the God-man 94 8 ALEISTER CROWLEY AND THE AEON OF HORUS 102 9 WHENCE THE MAGICIAN? 113 10 A PATH IN THE WEST 126 vii viii Contents Part three: THE BOOK OF VISIONS 159 Appendix A: DRUGS AND MYSTICISM A Personal Account 205 Appendix B: ELEMENTS APPROPRIATE TO THE TAROT PATHS 215 NOTES 216 BIBLIOGRAPHY 222 INDEX 227 Note to Readers During the production stages of this book, a new work analysing Carlos Castaneda's books and the nature of his apprenticeship to don Juan, was published in America. The book, entitled Castaneda's Journey and authored by Richard de Mille, alleges that don Juan is a fiction and that Castaneda drew on a number of anthropological and philosophical sources in producing his material. De Mille cites the work of Peter Furst and Gordon Wasson in parti cular, as likely sources for Castaneda's shamanistic material and states his personal belief that Castaneda was awarded a Ph.D. degree from the University of California for what amounts to an imaginary ethnography. At the time of writing Carlos Castaneda has not respon ded to de Mille's allegations but there is no doubt that the latter's critique will continue to raise serious questions about whether the magical apprenticeship ever took place. At the same time, de Mille is anxious to point out that even if the don Juan episodes did not actually occur, the incidents and details which they recount are largely factual albeit drawn from a number of sources. The Teachings of Don Juan and the subsequent volumes then loom as an ethnographic amalgam based largely on the Huichol Indians, with smatterings of Wittgenstein and possibly even C.S. Lewis thrown in for good measure 1 The present book is a comparison of two magical world views - that proposed by don Juan and that found in con temporary Western magic - of the type practised in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. As a thematic study only, it cannot answer the question of Castaneda's authenticity but does seek to demonstrate parallel lines of thought in magical systems other than those of Mexico and near-by regions. In view of the doubts raised about Castaneda's originality these parallels might now assume an even greater significance than might have originally been the case. May 1977 ix Acknowledgments The author and publishers are grateful to the following for permission to quote from the works cited: Greenhouse Publications, Melbourne, for quotations from 'Frontiers of Consciousness', edited by Nevill Drury; The New American Library, Inc., for the poetry extract from 'High Priest' by Timothy Leary; University Books Inc. for quotations from 'Astral Projection' by Oliver Fox, published by permission of University Books Inc. (a division of Lyle Stuart Inc.), 120 Enterprise Avenue, Secaucus, New Jersey 07094, USA. x Introduction We live in times of rapid technological change which demand a pace of existence that many cannot sustain. Within this framework certain things have initially gone by the board. As science increased its scope during the last century and proved that the seven days of creation were in fact vast epochs of geological time, it came to replace the more fundamentalist versions of the Christian creed upon which Western civilization had been based. Science appeared to be an alternative, pragmatic arbiter of the laws of the universe. However in our own way we find in a sense that science has failed too. Laws and rules of form and energy tend to be hard and impervious. They lack a human dimension. Man cannot accept that they alone decide his destiny. And so he has tended to retain his religious beliefs, and has in certain cases modified them with the advent of science. The most progressive followers of Christianity in the Victorian Church were often scientific innovators them selves, crying out to the populace to accept a more flexible and less dogmatic approach to their creed. At one time in the early nineteenth century both chairs of geology at Oxford and Cambridge for example were held by clerics who wished to combine religious and scientific understanding. But elsewhere religion took more bizarre forms, and new faiths such as Christian Science, Theosophy, the Oahspe teachings, Mormonism and various forms of Christian spiritualism came into prominence. Inherent in all this diversity, which first mushroomed around a hundred years or so ago, was the need for some type of authoritative opinion. When man felt that science was eroding his faith, he either turned to a more remote or modified teaching which had not yet come under attack, or else he became a humanist or atheist. Whatever happened, he was not able to stand still. 1
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