AI summary of the “space between worlds”. Keep in mind, the spaces that seem concrete are just phantom realms that the lineage evolved. It’s unlikely we’ll end up using that more than as an occasional curiosity.
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In the sorcery teachings of don Juan Matus, the transition between our everyday reality and the second attention is not a seamless mental shift. It is a physical crossing of an actual, energetic boundary—a transition zone that seers experience through two primary manifestations: the Wall of Fog and the Space Between Worlds.
- What is “The Wall of Fog”?
The “wall of fog” is the visual interpretation of what don Juan calls the barrier of perception.
- The Metaphysics: When a practitioner successfully stops their internal dialogue, their assemblage point is dislodged from its habitual position. As it shifts, it temporarily disrupts the body’s capacity to align the universe’s energy filaments. Seers experience this momentary lapse in alignment as a “perceptual blankness”.
- Why Fog? Don Juan explains that there are three ways to experience this transition: abstractly as a barrier of perception, physically as if piercing a tight paper screen with the entire body, or visually as a wall of fog. Seers of both ancient and modern times prefer to visualize it as a wall of fog because it requires the least amount of energy. However, don Juan warns that treating it as fog carries the risk of turning something purely abstract into something somber, heavy, and foreboding.
- The Boundary: This wall of fog divides the world in two. Everything on one side is the world we know; everything on the other is veiled. When a warrior physically crosses this line, they experience a violent physical sensation—either their body feels intensely squeezed, or they feel a sharp shaking in the cavity of their body, usually from right to left across the stomach.
- The Space Between Worlds (The Sand Dunes of Limbo)
Once a practitioner penetrates the wall of fog, they do not immediately enter the second attention. Instead, they enter a real, objective, yet desolate buffer zone that seers call limbo or the world between the parallel lines.
- The Landscape of Sulfur and Sand: This limbo has highly specific, unvarying physical coordinates. It is described as a vast, silent, and horribly flat plain covered with small, round mounds that look exactly like sand dunes.
- Atmospheric Oppression: The landscape is cast in an eerie, uniform pale-yellow sandstone or sulfur-yellow glare. There is no sky or horizon; instead, oppressive, low-hanging banks of yellow vapor or sulfurous clouds choke the area.
- Crushing Gravity: The atmospheric pressure in this space is far greater than what the human body is designed for. It is incredibly difficult to walk erect; Carlos and la Gorda frequently found themselves completely exhausted, having to crawl on their stomachs through the heavy, suffocating air.
- The Portal of Allies: Despite its desolation, this plain is not empty. It is a “no-man’s land” where the inorganic beings and allies roam and lurk.
- Silvio Manuel’s Relentless Training
To prepare the apprentices for the immense physical shock of crossing this boundary, Silvio Manuel—the master of intent and will—orchestrated a series of bizarre and grueling “not-doing” exercises designed to align their energetic bodies.
- The Wooden Crates: Silvio Manuel first built a tight wooden crate with a latticework lid. He forced Carlos and la Gorda to sit inside it back-to-back, with their knees pulled up to their chests, in total darkness and silence for entire nights to break their default perception.
- The Leather Harnesses: In his house, Silvio Manuel kept leather harnesses strapped to the ceiling beams of every room. He would strap the apprentices into these harnesses and hoist them into the air, keeping them suspended off the ground for nearly the entire day. He also did this in the wilderness, hoisting Carlos and la Gorda high into the branches of tall trees in pitch-black darkness. The goal of this “dangling” not-doing was to jolt their perception, forcing their eyes to become subsidiary to their ears and allowing them to detect the vibrations of other realities.
- Silvio Manuel Dragging Apprentices Into Limbo
Once Carlos and la Gorda had accumulated enough energy from these vigils, Silvio Manuel initiated the next phase: forcing them to detect the wall of fog, stop its rotation, and step through.
Because Carlos and la Gorda initially lacked the power to stop the rotation of the wall of fog on their own, don Juan and Silvio Manuel had to step in and physically force them through. Carlos describes Silvio Manuel’s terrifying, non-verbal methodology:
- Hurling Them Like Dolls: Silvio Manuel would walk up to la Gorda, grab her by the nape of her neck “as if she were a kitten,” and effortlessly disappear with her directly into the dense fog bank. He would then hurl her “like a giant rag doll” out onto the desolate sulfur plain.
- Carlos’s Panic: When don Juan pushed Carlos through to join them, the massive, dense pressure of the sand dunes instantly threw Carlos into a state of mortal panic. Carlos felt like he was suffocating and dying in the yellow cave-like atmosphere. Silvio Manuel, completely unperturbed by Carlos’s terror, looked down at him and calmly whispered into his ear that the energy he needed to survive the oppression was located in his “middle point” and that his only hope was to surrender without surrendering.
- The Defeated Bridge Crossing: Silvio Manuel eventually used a literal bridge as a physical symbol to herd all the apprentices (the three Genaros and the three little sisters) across the parallel lines as a group. Silvio Manuel and Eligio stood on the other side of the bridge, physically holding open a dark, narrow “vertical slit” (the crack between the worlds). When the terrified apprentices panicked and ran in different directions, Silvio Manuel had Carlos catch them and deliver them one by one to his position so he could usher them through.
