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Magical Passes: The Practical Wisdom of the Shamans of Ancient Mexico

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Author: Carlos Castaneda
Publisher: HarperCollins
Category: Book

List Price: ~~$25.00~~
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Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1st
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 240
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.3 x 0.9

ISBN: 0060175842
Dewey Decimal Number: 299
EAN: 9780060175849
ASIN: 0060175842

Publication Date: February 11, 1998
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Condition: Dust jacket shows wear, but pages clean. (Books may or may not include additional materials such as CD's, cassettes, cards, dust jacket, etc. All our books are previously owned and may contain inscriptions, pen or pencil markings, underlineing or hightlighting. Please inquire prior to purchase for specific conditions.) All items ship out via USPS within 48 hours during normal business hours, excluding holidays. Please provide correct address for USPS delivery.

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Editorial Reviews:

Product Description
Tensegrity" is Carlos Castaneda's term for the specialized movements -- magical passes -- that were discovered and developed by Mexican shamans in ancient times. Shrouded in secrecy, they are the pathway to shamanistic dreaming and "seeing". In this unprecedented book, Castaneda unveils the highly specific positions and movements of the body necessary to spiritual navigation, exercises he learned from his master, Don Juan Matus. Mastering them, readers will experience an unequaled sense of physical vitality, youth, and mental power, and be able to journey on their own to other realms of perception. Offering the spirituality of his New Age favorites The Art of Dreaming and The Teachings of Don Juan in a self-help format, Magical Passes is a pragmatic and original approach to spiritual discovery.

Customer Reviews: Read 12 more reviews...

5 out of 5 stars

the cubic centimeter of luck September 10, 2007
1 out of 2 found this review helpful

This is really the question of your personal cubic centimeter of luck - if you will use it or you will hesitate and the moment is over.br /br /If you have read the other books of Carlos Castaneda then you know what it is about, but in the other books there were never mentioned the Magical Passes. This is something that is available thorough this book and dvd-s but mostly thorough the Cleargreen workshops.br /br /The Passes really works but there is no way to write what it means. This is something you should try and then decide whether you want to know about it or not:)br /br /The Passes works for everybody but may not suit to everybody.br /At least you can take this book and try at home before to go to seminar. What is also important that in the book is included explanatory materials which are not in the other books.br /br /Take your chance;)

2 out of 5 stars

To Carlos, with gratitude June 21, 2007
2 out of 6 found this review helpful

Carlos Castaneda was one of the most controversial writers of the twentieth century. Some in academia branded him a fraud for claiming his stories were biographical rather than fiction, while lauding him as a great novelist for exposing a mass audience to otherwise inaccessible philosophical abstractions they claimed were largely plagiarized. Each of his works is a piece of a larger puzzle, which makes it impossible to critique any one book without addressing the larger context into which it fits. br /br /His first two books, "Teachings of Don Juan" and "A Separate Reality" describe experiences induced by ingesting psychotropic hallucinogenics prepared by a Yaqui Indian shaman from Sonora, Mexico he called don Juan Matus, and accounted for his becoming a guru to a generation seeking short cuts to spiritual enlightenment, as well as his lifelong interest in the relationship between perception and reality, a theme now explored in many popular books on consciousness and quantum physics. Unfortunately, these books remain his best selling works, in spite of Castaneda refuting their importance in his later works. Readers would be best served to skip these and avoid the risk of being turned off to Castaneda and missing the more stimulating works that followed.br /br /These included Journey to Ixtlan, Tales of Power, Second Ring of Power, Eagles Gift, Fire From Within, Power of Silence, Art of Dreaming and Active Side of Infinity. In Ixtlan Castaneda admits to grossly over-estimating the value of his early drug experiences, causing him to overlook the more profound teachings of don Juan which became the focus of his future writings. What emerges through the books that followed is a spellbinding exploration of a spiritual path and discipline reputed to date back to the Pre-Colombian Toltec sorcerers of Latin America.br /br /By the 1990's Castaneda's writings were becoming fewer and farther between. It seemed he was finally running out of tales to share with us. As we learn in "Sorcerer's Apprentice," Amy Wallace's scathing expose of her intimate relationship with Castaneda from 1991 until his death in 1998, this was the period when Castaneda opted to exploit his literary fame by launching training seminars called Tensegrity, an architectural term borrowed from Bucky Fuller. Castaneda's rendition of Tensegrity turned out to be a set of ritualistic physical exercises, allegedly called Magical Passes by don Juan, whose purpose was to enable practitioners to collect and store the energy necessary to shift their awareness into the altered states sought by sorcerers. Somewhat suspiciously, the term Magical Passes had never appeared in any of Castaneda's earlier works. Still, Castaneda's final book, an illustrated Tensegrity manual entitled "Magical Passes" was released in 1998, presumably for all of us who couldn't afford to attend his high priced seminars.br /br /Many have asked why I put any stock whatsoever in Castaneda. A story from my autobiography, "The Vortex" may shed some light. A year before Castaneda published his first book I had an experience that would remain a mystery until Castaneda published "Power of Silence" twenty years later. br /br /For a brief time, in my youth, I became a practicing Muslim, meticulously performing the complex prayer ritual five times a day. Then one night, sitting in my car, frustrated and complaining at not being able to find the address of my next sales appointment, something inside me snapped. It was as if some part of me had disconnected from my body and assumed control, lecturing me about my lack of discipline. A profound calm settled over me, rendering me simultaneously detached and engaged. For two days my sales figures soared. It was as if no one could say no to me. On the evening of the second day I decided to put my new state of being to the acid test by visiting my parents. Their behavior was so uncharacteristically supportive I hardly recognized them. It was enough to convince me that I was now living in an altered reality. But by the following morning I had returned to "normal." So distracting had this event been that I completely forgot to perform my Muslim prayers, and in fact, never did so again.br /br /Twenty years later, in a chapter of "Power of Silence" entitled "Place of No Pity" Castaneda describes a very similar experience. In the aftermath of the event don Juan explains that humans are like televisions stuck on a channel called "self-preoccupation," lacking the energy to tune into any of the vast array of other channels available to us. To change channels, he explains, we first need to accumulate energy, by practicing rituals that are deliberate, precise and repetitious. Do this long enough and eventually our stored energy precipitates a shift to a channel where self-importance and self pity become impossible. Once this happens we connect with the force that controls the entire universe, a force don Juan called "intent," and everything can be bent to our will and even more channels can be opened, assuming we remember to keep practicing the rituals that save our energy.br /br /Needless to say, with such a dramatic experience behind me using a ritual of my own choosing I couldn't wait to try out the exercises found in "Magical Passes" as soon as it was released. Within a matter of weeks, however, I concluded that the Passes produced nothing even vaguely similar to what I had experienced decades earlier. Maybe it was just me. Then again, maybe Castaneda knew enough to lay out the general theory as he had done so well in "Power of Silence" but was only grasping at straws when it came to prescribing actual procedures. We'll never know.br / br /And although I cannot in good faith recommend "Magical Passes," the countless clues I managed to uncover in his writings were more than enough to inspire me to dedicate my own autobiography "To Carlos, with gratitude." br /br /Maxwell Austin van Lack, Author of The Vortex: A True Story of Passion and Karmabr /

5 out of 5 stars

The Path Impossible to Follow without Magical Passes May 1, 2006
8 out of 9 found this review helpful

Very simple. The path of the warrior-seer is impossible to follow without Magical Passes. Now, must these passes come from this book? Not necessarily. Those called to the path, there to acquiesce to the spirit, are often given passes in dreams. However, this book details the basic passes; and once they are begun in a routine of practice, very often more dreams follow detailing extra moves and even new passes not mentioned in the book.

4 out of 5 stars

The Practical Wisdom of the Shamans of Ancient Mexico March 16, 2006
2 out of 4 found this review helpful

br /br /Being a great fan of Carlos Castaneda and the teachings of don Juan, I obviously enjoyed this book. I was intrigued to note the similarities between the physical exercises recommended by the Shamans of Ancient Mexico and those recommended by proponents of Yoga and the Martial Arts; people from widely disparate lineages, and yet all have discovered the power and benefit that can be derived from a very similar style of physical exercise and breathing technique.br /br /For me though, I would suggest that one should have read some of the other works of Carlos Castaneda before the power of this book can be fully appreciated.

3 out of 5 stars

Castaneda is a tricky subject December 17, 2004
11 out of 21 found this review helpful

This book is basically another approach to the same things Tai Chi and Yoga have already been doing, and in fact the movements are essentially the same most of the time.br /Well, by now, we should all be aware that Carlos Castaneda is a creative individual who created his world of Don Juan and the Mexican Shamans himself, and not the esoteric initiate of any super sacred line. This doesnt make the practices he describes less valid. If his words speak to you in a way the other materials did not, then he has succeeded as an author. If he has opened your eyes to a wider world, he has done his job. His language is a fair amount more engaging and open than the more "serious" materials can be, so it is an excellent book for your spiritually minded High Schooler, or new age beginner.

Copyright 2007 White Hat Communications.
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