religious studies

According to the Sorcerers of ancient Mexico, antagonistic forces intentionally bombard human beings from the moment of their birth. The result of this ceaseless bombardment is the dispersal of energy, which should be located in the vital energy centers, to the periphry of the luminous cocoon. After many years this energy becomes stuck to the periphery, stiff and hard, like bark, and unavailable. Thus we become stiff and lacking in energy, or old in the colloquial sense. The magical passes purport to jolt and unstick this energy, making it available to us again! However, it would appear unrealistic to expect the damage accrued over many years of "harassment" to be undone overnight! A ceaseless bombardment caused the problem, and a ceaseless process is needed to correct it. This process might be likened to the removal of calcium deposits from an old bathtub using a mild scouring cleanser; though it might take days or months, it could eventually be accomplished. Based on the above premise, the Magical Passes book, the Tensegrity videos, and/or the attendance of Tensegrity seminars are recommended.

Magical Passes the book is out, 486 photos with a woman calledKylie - she appears on the tensegrity tapes, and a man called Miles,both showing throughout the book how to execute a series of novel movements to promote energy and well-being. The black and white photos are of the highest quality in all respects. The only critique to the entire book is that the publishers should had given copies of the book beforehand to several selected people who had never seen these movements in their lives, write down and add their suggestions on how to make the descriptions of the movements more clear. Therefore I give the book a nine. The other critique is to the usage of the word tensegrity itself. Tensegrity is a term borrowed from architecture. It is a vast discipline today involving civil, structural and mechanical engineering, mathematics, calculus, algebra and geometry, applied to the design and engineering of primarily space structures, eg, bridges. First concocted by Buckminster Fuller back in the forties at the prompt of one of his cohorts Ken Snelson's sculpture, which he very convinientely ignored, it is two words glued together, tension and integrity, to form tensegrity....The series for preparing intent, womb, westwood, heat, left and right body and masculinity series, and at the very end the devices, balls and paper-weight, used in conjunction with specific magical passes are covered. Nothing on not-doings or the sorcerer's code. None of the passes shown on the tapes are mentioned. Lots of info on what each pass is for and detailed descriptions on how to do them which, as mentioned before the publishers could have learned enourmously by providing copies beforehand to physical instructors, gymnasts, tai-chi, anatomy folks, etc., for syntax, movement and taxonomy review in order to make the descriptions easier and clearer to understand. Often with more than one photo for each pass, the book's short intro is great, packed with Don Juan's unequaled prose and incredible sense of timing. This is exciting. If this works humans can for the first time from this point on in history easily do away with all leaders, bosses, tutors, instructors, gurus, presidents, popes, over the shoulder nerds and other self-appointed cooks, you name it, any ape with a stick, to freely and willingly plot their way into their own evolution, and into infinity. Keep all your fingers tensely crossed, and good luck to y'll. Mandatorily recommended. Yes, this is a dictartorship.

It's amusing to see that the other reviewers did not recognize that "magical passes" are actually an obvious (and quite cheesy) ripoff of TAI CHI. Castaneda actually had to pay a huge settlement to the Tai Chi master he stole his ideas from.

Even more telling about Castaneda's followers is their utter ignorance of the history of Native peoples of Mexico. There is nothing even remotely similar to "magical passes) among Mexico's Indians, and never has been. Thinking there is only reveals the depth of their wishful thinking, how desperate they are to give up on rational thought and follow blindly a man who was debunked over thirty years ago.

Castaneda by this point in his life had long since quit pretending he had ever been truthful. In fact since the late 1970s he openly admitting to being a fraud and a liar. He laughed at his own followers and took perverse pleasure in exploiting them and seeing just how much nonsense they would swallow. This books was just the last sad chapter in a lifetime of hustling posing as spirituality seeking.