Carlos Castaneda’s extraordinary journey into the world of sorcery has captivated millions of Americans. In his eagerly awaited new book, he takes the reader into a sorceric experience so intense, so terrifying, and so profoundly disturb- ing that it can only be described as a brilliant assault on the reason, the dramatic and frighten- ing attack on every preconceived notion of life that is don Juan’s remarkable legacy to his ap- prentice. At the centre of the book is a new and formi- dable figure, doña Soledad, a woman whose powers are turned against Castaneda in a strug- gle that almost consumes him. Doña Soledad has been taught by don Juan, transformed by his teachings from a bent and grey-haired old woman into a sensual, lithe, deeply sexual figure of awesome and mysterious power, a sorceress whose mission is to test Castaneda by a series of terrifying tricks. In doña Soledad, Carlos Cas- taneda has recorded for the reader a personality as instantly recognisable as don Juan himself and has illuminated the strengths and the feelings of a remarkable woman who, despite her sorceric gifts, expresses some of the deepest and most basic feminine concerns and ambitions. For doña Soledad, drawn out of the shadows of a de- (continued on back flap) The Second Ring of Power By Carlos Castaneda THE SECOND RING OF POWER TALES OF POWER JOURNEY TO IXTLAN: The Lessons of don Juan A SEPARATE REALITY: Further Conversations with don Juan THE TEACHINGS OF DON JUAN: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge The Second Ring of Power BY CARLOS CASTANEDA HODDER AND STOUGHTON LONDON SYDNEY AUCKLAND TORONTO Copyright © 1977 by Carlos Castaneda. First printed in Great Britain 1978. ISBN 0 340 22835 Reproduced from the original setting by arrangement with Simon & Schuster, New York. All rights reserved. Contents PREFACE page 7 1 The Transformation of Doña Soledad page 9 2 The Little Sisters page 71 3 La Gorda page 112 4 The Genaros page 167 5 The Art of Dreaming page 217 6 The Second Attention page 272 Preface A flat, barren mountaintop on the western slopes of the Sierra Madre in central Mexico was the setting for my final meeting with don Juan and don Genaro and their other two appren- tices, Pablito and Nestor. The solemnity and the scope of what took place there left no doubt in my mind that our ap- prenticeships had come to their concluding moment, and that I was indeed seeing don Juan and don Genaro for the last time. Toward the end we all said good-bye to one another, and then Pablito and I jumped together from the top of the mountain into an abyss. Prior to that jump don Juan had presented a fundamental principle for all that was going to happen to me. According to him, upon jumping into the abyss I was going to become pure perception and move back and forth between the two inherent realms of all creation, the tonal and the nagual. In my jump my perception went through seventeen elastic bounces between the tonal and the nagual. In my moves into the nagual I perceived my body disintegrating. I could not think or feel in the coherent, unifying sense that I ordi- narily do, but I somehow thought and felt. In my moves into the tonal I burst into unity. I was whole. My perception had coherence. I had visions of order. Their compelling force was so intense, their vividness so real and their complex- ity so vast that I have not been capable of explaining them to 7 THE SECOND RING OF POWER my satisfaction. To say that they were visions, vivid dreams or even hallucinations docs not say anything to clarify their nature. After having examined and analyzed in a most thorough and careful manner my feelings, perceptions and interpretations of that jump into the abyss, I had come to the point where I could not rationally believe that it had actually happened. And yet another part of me held on steadfast to the feeling that it did happen, that I did jump. Don Juan and don Genaro are no longer available and their absence has created in me a most pressing need, the need to make headway in the midst of apparently insoluble contra- dictions. I went back to Mexico to see Pablito and Nestor to seek their help in resolving my conflicts. But what I encountered on my trip cannot be described in any other way except as a final assault on my reason, a concentrated attack designed by don Juan himself. His apprentices, under his absentee direc- tion, in a most methodical and precise fashion demolished in a few days the last bastion of my reason. In those few days they revealed to me one of the two practical aspects of their sorcery, the art of dreaming, which is the core of the present work. The art of stalking, the other practical aspect of their sor- cery and also the crowning stone of don Juan’s and don Ge- naro’s teachings, was presented to me during subsequent visits and was by far the most complex facet of their being in the world as sorcerers. 8 1 The Transformation of Doña Soledad I had a sudden premonition that Pablito and Nestor were not home. My certainty was so profound that I stopped my car. I was at the place where the asphalt came to an abrupt end, and I wanted to reconsider whether or not to continue that day the long and difficult drive on the steep, coarse gravel road to their hometown in the mountains of central Mexico. I rolled down the window of my car. It was rather windy and cold. I got out to stretch my legs. The tension of driving for hours had stiffened my back and neck. I walked to the edge of the paved road. The ground was wet from an early shower. Rain was still falling heavily on the slopes of the mountains to the south, a short distance from where I was. But right in front of me, toward the east and also toward the north, the sky was clear. At certain points on the winding road I had been able to see the bluish peaks of the sierras shining in the sunlight a great distance away. After a moment’s deliberation I decided to turn back and go to the city because I had had a most peculiar feeling that I was going to find don Juan in the market. After all, I had always done just that, found him in the marketplace, since the begin- 9