Encounters with 'la Gorda' by Agnese Sartori
Translation by Lorien Grant Parey, Introduction by Corey Donovan

The following translation was prepared for Sustained Action by Lorien Grant Parey, who has done a number of translations into Italian for the website. It is a chapter from a book published in Italy purporting to describe a lengthy encounter with la Gorda.

Lorien thinks that the writer really believes she met la Gorda, and I've heard that there are one or more women in Mexico City and elsewhere holding themselves out as being "la Gorda." Frankly, from my research, I don't believe there were any other women involved closely in Castaneda's affairs in the 60s and 70s other than the ones I've identified from the legal and other records going back to the 60s: i.e., Joanie, Taisha, Florinda, Carol and Nury. I believe that "la Gorda" was a conglomerate of different traits of these women. Gloria Garvin, one of Castaneda's longtime lovers (in the 70s), has also told me that she was asked by Castaneda, on trips with him to Mexico, to answer the telephone as "la Gorda" on at least a few occasions.

Lorien found it strange that the writer refers to la Gorda as don Juan’s granddaughter, because in the books la Gorda tells the story of being found by don Juan in Pablito’s carpenter’s shop. She wrote the author telling her this and other things, and asking more details. Sartori wrote back inviting Lorien to attend a workshop in Italy on ritual dances with an Indian dancer, Tlaltekiani, trained in pure Aztec tradition, whom she describes in another chapter of her book. In her letter, Ms. Sartori insisted those dances are more useful than Tensegrity, and claimed she had been practicing them for ten years.

About Castaneda, Sartori wrote, "There is a great difference between a shaman and a sorcerer, and after the early years, Castaneda had slipped toward the dark side, leading with him unaware people, and ‘fully aware’ people who made a lot of money" at people’s expense. About la Gorda, she confirmed she was not really don Juan’s granddaughter, and explained that when she was in Veracruz she "cured" people because she needed money for food and places to stay. Sartori claimed that Castaneda took advantage of "la Gorda," and didn’t share with her the "results" of his work. Sartori also claimed in the letter that Castaneda’s books are full of lies and that he made up a lot of things, that Tensegrity was a "bluff," a "modern" product, because, in her opinion, if it were a "real" thing he should have diffused it through "Indians of tradition" not through "young American girls."

From "Il segreto dell’Aquila – Magici incontri verso le terre dei Maya" (The Eagle’s Secret – Magical Encounters toward the Land of the Mayas) by Agnese Sartori – Edizioni Mediterranee:

-----
Chapter VII. La Gorda

During my first journey to Mexico, many years ago, I had felt very strong emotions in archaeological places and, later, reading the first books by Carlos Castaneda I developed a great emotion and a deep interest for this country. I was especially interested in a female character, la Gorda, grand-daughter of the master and shaman don Juan, a woman with spiritual knowledge inherited by pre-Columbian shaman tradition, and therefore a potential perfect master for the study of indigenous rituals. Actually that was what I wanted to know and live. [….]

That small light we saw in the distance became rapidly a big house’s window in the midst of the country. While we approached it, I could see the wall made of raw stone and a balcony with iron edges along the roof. A rural and grungy little house. Carlos [not Castaneda, but a friend of hers] signalled me to be silent; he knew where the entrance was, and I slid, light and curious, behind him. The main room was lit up by some candles placed in the middle; all around a circle of women seated on the floor; in an angle at the end of the room I perceived the presence of an old man, with spectacles. The women were singing a sing-song of sort, like a low mantra; our arrival was perceived but nobody moved. We attended the whole ceremony in silence (they were asking for the healing of an absent person who was ill) and when the group broke up and the women stood up, one of them came directly toward me, smiled, and shook hands with me: "I know you come from far away; I know you wanted to meet me; I am la Gorda".

In the next days I found out she, who among us used the name of Rocío (Author’s Note: According to what she said to me, her name was Maria Rocío Saenz S.), didn’t lived in Veracruz but was there only temporarily. During the next years I went back to Veracruz many times, but la Gorda had gone, and never came back. And what a joy for me when I asked her how long she would stay: "I don’t know", she said, "But certainly for some months". I never knew why she was in Veracruz just that year and in those months corresponding to my stay there. As a matter of fact this allowed us to live together, and she could teach me important things, we could exchange little presents, food and ideas, we could sleep and dream together, and travel, and discuss many things. She said that dreams and visions are the roads of the sacred, are access doors to superiors laws and worlds. And she claimed that especially regulating the breathing one could obtain great results. [….]

In the next days I often invited her to my little room, which she liked very much; in there, she, Carlos and I, in the evening, would speak at length far into the night. Oh, what wonderful times! Now we are all scattered in the world. In those days we were there, every night, all together.

Almost soon after I had met her, I asked her, anxious to know, what kind of human relationship she had with Castaneda, since she had taught him many things I had read in his books. She, watching in my eyes, told me: "We have precise agreements about everything. There are things one can say, and even average people can apprehend. Other things are really dangerous, are practices about trips with the soul, and if one goes away and doesn’t know the techniques, he may become insane, or never come back again…and his body dies…Can you imagine what kind of responsibility it is to divulge certain things?" I didn’t ask her anything more about Castaneda, for a period of time. Besides, she was don Juan’s grand-daughter, or Tata Matus, as she called him, and I didn’t need other intermediaries, because I had already arrived to the "source"; don Juan had died, but she still saw him now and then, or he would speak to her between sleep and vigil, the threshold, where one can leave for the other non-ordinary realities, which, as she explained to me, are not above or under or who knows where, but around us, and we don’t perceive them simply because they vibrate with a different frequency from ours.

We would speak for hours seated in Veracruz’s zocalo (the main square), because there was a particular bench, among the others, where it was easier to dream. When it was free we’d sit there: it was what a native calls a power place, that is, one of those special places where, because of the specific energy which characterizes it, one can concentrate better, can have peculiar perceptions, sometimes visions and premonitions too, like changing one’s own vibratory frequency; in any case, no doubt one relieves oneself of negativity and in a wonderful way recharges oneself of positive energy. I loved to listen to her, even if sometimes it seemed incredible to me to be seated just beside la Gorda, a character I had known in a book and had dreamed so much to meet. Her tales were always special; we often spent the nights remaining awake until dawn, doing rites with fire, visualizations with mirror, songs, prayers, ceremonies of curacíon with waters from magical herbs, eggs, crystals and incenses. At the arrival of the dawn she would fall asleep, as did I, but after very few hours, I had to awaken to go to work or to study, and we would say good-bye with a soft caress or a whispered sleepy ciao. In the evening, as though attracted by a magnet, I always went back there. Or she would come to my room No. 60. How many nights spent with her and the other persons of her group opened my thought and view! I felt privileged when, lying down with the others, on mats and pieces of foam rubber or newspapers, I spent entire nights listening to tales about the invisible world, about the magical life coincidences, about naguals who transformed themselves to frighten people…and I looked around: I was totally immersed in the indigenous world I had dreamed to know; I ate with them, slept with them, now I was part of this reality, and strangely forgetful of my beautiful home in Europe and of all its comforts, I nearly enjoyed that precariousness of life, but so intense and rich, which daily filled up and nurtured the soul with the Essence.[….]

My days passed quickly and with intensity: I read, studied, wrote, seated in the sun in my magical balcony. In the evening we often met again around la Gorda, all together, with burning candles, to talk about shamanism. […]

One night la Gorda spoke about the power of imitative magic; in that way the old time shamans, calling the Eagle’s Spirit, tried to reproduce its scream and its movements; and those who wanted the rain used waters in their rites, and in the same way too, the origin of that tool called palo de la lluvia (Author’s Note: A trunk which was emptied and filled with pebbles or dried beans, which, running through its length, reproduced the sound of the rain) was ritual. In terms of the principle of imitative magic, abusing a person’s image was like "energetically striking" the person themself. (For this reason many natives are afraid to let strangers take pictures of them.) She also said one must never do harm to anybody because it comes back, but with bad people it’s necessary to learn to defend oneself; for this reason she said that loving thought and prayer protect a person even if he (or she) is far away, just as negative thought can strike with the same force if one doesn’t have the indispensable protections. "What protections?" asked Soledad, who had been quiet in the shadow until that moment. "What! Don’t you know", answered Rocío. "And why do you think religions invented so many? The signs of balance, like the cross, which is not only Christian, because shamans already drew on the rocks and on their drums, more than 4.000 years ago, the Cosmogonic Cross… and then the holy water, which you can find wherever a spring of clear water gushes out, or on the shore of an unfrequented beach, too… The Elements are sacred, the fire that purifies, the incense, some plants that have peculiar powers, like garlic and basil…and for us shamans also parts of the bodies of some sacred animals: a nail, a claw, a tooth, a horn…and the circle that is the Universe, is the magical ring that protects you. If, with your soul lighted by faith, you draw a circle on the ground and enter into it, it’s a space that protects you…uh, but how many things there are!…" Then she said many people try to do rituals, to obtain money or "to tie" a loved one who runs away, but their efforts turn out to be useless, because the effect of the rituals depends on the spiritual journey the person has taken, and on the relative power he or she has obtained. "What kind of power," she asked, "can the person who has no power even over themself have on things, events, on thin energies? How do these people live? Slaves of food, of comfortable life, of sex: try and ask them if they are willing to change their lives. The answer is this is the life they live. It’s not the ritual’s fault. It’s their fault, they have neither will nor lucidity nor mental strength and don’t know how to change. What do they demand?" With regard to this she then insisted on saying that mind can emanate true strength waves, which affect the mental bodies of others too, and their effects depend above all on the original thought’s clarity and strength. And she said: "If you send in that way a protection thought-shape to someone, you are sure that it heads for and settles down there!" Moreover, peculiar protection procedures for some beings who maybe have a particular task to accomplish in their lives or for some other reasons unknown to us, she said, exist. Often they are strong-willed and brave people, useful as "tools" or "channels" on the earth. One can understand it since their childhood because of some peculiar experiences, and during their lives, because they develop gifts not common to the majority; you recognize these people by their deep look and by a sort of charisma and extra energy they have. They excite extreme feelings in the people they meet: unconditional love or deep aversion. Often they are bad-tempered, but they have a noble spirit and are incapable of meanness. And mean people really feel attacked in their weaknesses by the encounter with these exceptional Spirits, because they mirror their secret dissatisfactions and therefore try to damage them. Those who voluntarily try to harm them will regret it a lot because the Guardian Spirits will charge them hard for it, even if the offended person didn’t respond to the wrongs done to him.

One night we spoke instead of certain shamans’ lives, and of the fighting among them, that is, among "energetically powerful" beings on equal terms…one drowned in a river because a powerful enemy of his had thrown a picture of him in the river with hate … A shaman friend of hers who lived very far away, invoked by her during an illness, appeared to her in dreaming, telling how she could treat herself…and took away from her, in dreaming, a little coral necklace she wore. When she awakened, she began to treat herself with the herb mentioned by the Master, and she realized, after a while, not to wear the necklace anymore! In the meantime she recovered, and after many months the Master, after a long journey, came to her door, telling that he was glad she felt better, and he gave back to her the necklace he had kept to remain in energetic contact with her. Then she spoke of another shaman who loved coyotes a lot, and left for the desert in search of the "coyote stone", that only the head of the pack has. This stone, situated in the animal skull, was charged with its "power". In fact the head of the pack has a magical and special energy which is given to him by nature, and which is perceived by every other coyote, and this fact causes it to be recognized and accepted as "superior" and the undisputed head. Her friend came back, but he told nothing to anyone. He gave vague answers to those who asked if he had met the coyote. One day, during a village festival, with frenzied dances and fireworks and an abundance of beer and pulque (author’s note: Fermented drink from the maguey plant), a brawl broke up, and this shaman was stabbed. The doctor of the village examined him when he was already near his end, among relatives who watched over him. The culprit was never punished because he was very powerful in the village. Then the shaman died, his funeral took place too, and his son inherited his house and his cows, got married, had two sons… After five years, in the same festival, in the same day and in the same pulcheria where the shaman was stabbed to death, his enemies were again drinking and carousing, when he came in. Yes, he entered from the main door, with a look like fire. The light orchestra stopped, everyone looked at him, their eyes wide open, their faces white…he went through the room, arrived just in front of the person who had stabbed him, threw down his chair with a violent push and threw him down on the floor. Then, without a word, in the general silence and terror, he went out of the room and vanished in the crowd. That guy couldn’t stand up again, and after three days he died. Surely, as everyone said, that shaman had come into possession of the coyote’s stone! One of those present assured he had seen him later in Catemaco, one night of full moon, on the bank of a river…[…]

In those hot summer nights, ceremonies of blessing and protections alternated with the tales. La Gorda didn’t spare herself, she was always willing to listen to everyone, to treat them, to narrate. On her altar there were always eagle feathers, natural stones and shells, stones with drawings or significant shapes, quartz crystals, bundles of herbs, iridescent obsidian stones, salt, water, seeds, fruits and flowers as offerings. And Jesus and the Virgin Mary, too. One night a child who suffered from espanto was brought to her. She had gone to the river to bathe with her sisters, had slipped and was about to drown. Under the water she had seen a beautiful green lady who had taken her hand and didn’t want to let it go away. Then the child felt a big jerk (it was her sister who was bringing her out) and began to breathe again. They brought her home, but she didn’t stop crying. She told she always felt that green lady’s cold hand… La Gorda examined the very pale child, and said her soul had been kidnapped by the Lady of the River and it needed to be caught again. "The Spirits of the Water are very dangerous", she said, "they attract you and you can’t come back…it’s difficult to resist…" She asked every one of us to concentrate in silence, she set us in a circle around the child. She put her on her knees, sat on the floor, and began to lull her with words of an old and incomprehensible chant. She made her drink a mixture of water, herbs and alcohol that she herself drank filling her mouth until she had her cheeks full of it and so spattering it with her mouth, blowing it on her face. Then she wrapped her up in a thick blanket, all closed into it, and began to gently shake the bundle, calling out loud the child’s name and invoking the Lady of the Water’s Spirits to let her go. This lasted, with short pauses, almost all night.

In the meantime two women played the piano and some rattles rhythmically, without interruption, as Rocío had recommended; then the silence fell, at her signal. The candles remained lighted, and she told us to lay down on the mats and fall asleep peacefully, because the child’s soul had come back. Actually the next morning the child went out of the bundle smiling and began to live normally again. Rocío told us she had always had allies among the Water’s Spirits. Especially the Spirit which inhabited the stream (which is water anyway) where she grew up (thousands of kilometres from Veracruz!) helped her in circumstances like this, and it was sufficient that she went with her thoughts to the stream, and the Spirit would listen and advise her. So it showed her, in the vision, the exact point where the child had slipped so she could act mentally and spiritually in the right spot to ransom her spirit.

This woman in a few months taught me quite a lot, above all the importance of dreaming as a true activity, to know, see, travel, as every true shaman can do. She told me to try first to visit in dreaming known places and find the events of those same places during my vision. Setting a certain technique I could travel in the cosmos too, in search of other worlds, like those vibrating around us, with different frequency, where the disembodied live, the Spirits of the elders and of the Masters, but in the past and in the future too! Some experiments were successful, and they made me absolutely euphoric, but many failures didn’t remove my will to keep on learning. I was also very interested in a travel technique through "reflected image", surely allied with magical vision practices in crystal spheres of European medieval tradition. The old Mexican shamans used instead a mirror made of obsidian, a mineral with changing hues, including gold or silver iridescence, sometimes green or purple too. Not coincidentally that stone was considered sacred to vision, and adorned the feathered headgears of Aztecs and Mayas. Rocío explained how the stone, gazed at for a long time with the mind "still" and free from thoughts, can reveal to us many things about the distant past as well as the future. And it functions that way, she said, for the mirror too, which has magical valence in itself (how can we not remember our fairy tales with curses and witchcraft connected with mirrors?) but it is better to use an old mirror, which doesn’t reflect images too clearly; by night, with a rigorously white candle, lighted on the left side, one had to gaze for long time on one’s own reflected image, until one entered in a meditative state. Then the vision experience could begin. But she said: "Remember, the rite can be made by everyone. But the result depends only on your personal level of awareness".

My unforgotten Master, whom I never met again not even traveling all over Mexico, travelled with few things. She had practically no home, her enormous suitcase contained some dresses, some ritual objects and an old blond doll which, when I saw it half ragged and uncombed, took my breath away. Dramatic events in her life had impressed deep furrows, overcome only with wisdom and the teachings received from don Juan and his Masters. That doll caused me an endless sadness, suddenly allowing me to understand an intimate, sweet and secret little female fragility in her. Among her things there were also bundles of loose sheets, some handwritten, others typed. She guarded them jealously. A night when we were alone-- her, Alicia and myself--she decided to speak about them. She showed me about twenty sheets in particular, telling me they dealt with the "warrior’s path". I was very interested. She told me it was a work she was doing with a famous writer. I read some lines, skipped some others, and keep on reading. She was telling me they had to finish it together yet, but she had not seen him anymore. She also told me they had a precise agreement about the things he would publish with her help and advice; it’s a good thing – I thought – since she had always no money… reading further the typescript, my heart skipped a beat. Maybe I had already read that sentence somewhere… and going on, my doubt increased. Were those things already published? I had bought a book in Madrid some months before and it seemed to have the same contents… Honestly I voiced my doubts. She first lost her temper, then it made her cry… and finally told me in tears: "It’s not the first time this writer betrays me…unfortunately almost all you foreigners are that way…we are used to this…it’s the price we pay for having thought that the modern world was ready to know our teachings. Here they say that there in Europe too, as in the United States, our secret tradition is of great interest for many…but see, just because it’s secret, it is often spread abroad in a wrong way, and many foreigners don’t understand this…and then, as you know, with those things one can make a lot of money… have you ever seen an Indian of tradition making a lot of money?…it’s unlikely we would make them, we are jealous of our images, because they have power: it’s for this reason I don’t want you take pictures of me while we perform our rites, because we work for the Spirit…it’s not common that a shaman voluntarily lets people take pictures of him, because he works for the Spirit…. The Spirit is strong and gives you its powers; but if you aren’t impeccable he also takes away them from you…do you understand? You lose everything! And, above all, remember, some practices are dangerous, like certain breathing exercises, certain magical passes….they cannot be divulged, you can go away without wanting it, isn’t that so, Alicia?" Alicia was coming in with a cup of coffee for us. Alicia knew everything about those exercises, as well as about Rocío’s manuscripts and papers, silent and wise, she listened and participated with her quiet devotion. "Surely it’s dangerous. One needs to be prepared. And who makes a mistake, sooner or later, will have to pay. It’s the Spirit which manifests itself, it rewards or punishes". And she added: "Besides you recognize the man who has learned, the true master, at his death. He takes away his body…nobody finds it…by the way, do you remember that in Jewish tradition they write about Enoch, who transformed himself with the fire within and died without leaving his body? You know…many of us think he could have been the founder of Aztec civilization, because the capital Tenochtitlan’s name includes his name…". That was one of the last times I met la Gorda. I gave her my coral necklace: who knows, energetically we are still connected. She said that her grandfather Tata Matus (don Juan) knew the secret of the transmutation. She said the protector of the naguals was San Cipriano, who had a temple in Campeche where one day we would go. I know it will be this way. At the right moment I’ll meet her again. (pages 71-83)