"Could you tell me what task the nagual Juan Matus gave to you?"
He looked at me with a surprised expression.
Usually, Carlos would hide his answers in between his words, or give them out little by little throughout his conversations. But this time he changed tactics.
He told me my question was so extraordinary that the only thing he could do was to take it as an omen. But the answer was such a personal thing that he could only tell me about it in an appropriate place. Therefore, he suggested that we meet the next day in the Tacuba café one of Don Juan's favorite restaurants.
After breakfast, he told me in a solemn tone that I should silence my internal dialogue, because we were about to visit a sacred place where a famous warrior of antiquity was buried. He added that the day was perfect for it, because since dawn a dark fog had hung over the city.
"And since everything has became sinister, our omens today will come from the left."
At first, his suggestive efforts made me feel privileged. But as we came closer to the main square, I became more and more apprehensive.
We entered through the small door set in the beautiful side door of the Cathedral of Mexico, and came into the gigantic main part of the church. Immediately, Carlos walked up to the fount of holy water, wet his fingers, and crossed himself. I was struck by the familiarity of his movements, it seemed like he was used to going to church.
Seeing my curiosity, he explained that a warrior should respect all conventions, particularly those of an institution like the Catholic Church, which has served as a sanctuary for sorcerers for centuries.
We sat down on the pews of the central nave of the church and remained silent for a while. There were very few people there, and the atmosphere was very calm. I noticed that he was sitting up straight and his eyes, neither open nor closed, were lost in the busy mass of decorations of the main altar. The light scent of candles drifted down to our pew, and also the murmur of children's voices that were rehearsing a chorus; or maybe it was a recorded tape.
Little by little I became engrossed in my own thoughts, until I lost track of where I was. His voice startled me:
"The task which my teacher gave me, and my mission as a nagual for the era which is commencing, is to move the assemblage point of the Earth."
1 was expecting anything but that. For a few seconds, my mind didn't react; I simply didn't have a clue what Carlos was saying. But suddenly, the monstrosity of his task hit me in the center of my reason, and I found myself thinking that Carlos had either gone crazy, or he was talking about something I didn't have the faintest idea about.
Disconcerting me even further, he seemed to read my thoughts, because he made a little nod of agreement and murmured:
"That's it. You have to be crazy to let yourself commit to something like that, and even crazier to believe that it is possible to do."
I asked him how a man could possibly even think about a feat like that.
He answered:
"Just like the other world has its mobile unit-- the inorganic beings-- Earth also has one, and it's us. We are children of the Earth. The movement of the assemblage point of a sufficient number of warriors can change the modality of the time, and that is what I am working towards."
He explained that the assemblage point of Earth has changed many times in the past, and will do so in the future. In recent times it has been moving steadily towards the area of reason.
"That is magnificent, because, once it is fixated there, humanity will have an opportunity to move to the other side, and many men and women will become aware. The challenge for the seers of the future will be to maintain that focus for the necessary length of time until it becomes fixated there, becoming a permanent position for the planet, a new center, which we will be able to turn to anytime in a perfectly natural way.
"The refocusing of the Earth's attention is the product of the combined action of many generations of naguals. The new seers conceived of it as a possibility, and discovered that it was part of the Rule. They incubated it with their intent, and determined that now is the time to begin it."
"What is the effect of that movement?"
"To move the fixation of the planet is the only way out from the dramatic state of slavery to which we have been reduced. The course of our civilization has no exit, because we are isolated in a remote location of the cosmos. If we don't learn how to travel along the avenues of awareness, we will come to such a state of frustration and despair that humanity will end up destroying itself. Our options are the way of the warrior, or extinction.
"However, I cannot know what the total effects of my task wilt be. The Earth's assemblage point is very big; it has an enormous inertia. My mission is to start the fire, but it will take time to get the blaze going. In fact, that task is not mine only, but belongs to all the seers who must come.
"Knowledge of the assemblage point is an unprecedented gift from the spirit to modern man, and it is the catalyst for changing the modality of this era. It is not a Utopia, but a real possibility that is waiting there, just around the corner.
"I don't want to speculate on my chances of being successful with this task; I just persist, because it is all that's left for me to do. Personally, I have no doubts. In my view, the future is luminous, because it belongs to awareness, which for sorcerers means that it belongs to nagualism."