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A couple months back I flirted with the idea of doing a series of posts about Mexican shamanism, mysticism and traditional medicine following the works of researcher Dr. Jacobo Grinberg-Zylberbaum and do a commentary from the perspective of traditional Western occult philosophy and the Mesoamerican mystery tradition. I got a fair response to that initial post so I got in contact with her daughter while I was in Mexico last year and we were in talks about translating this sprawling series (and perhaps some others) into English and find a publisher given the ripe grounds for strange lore here in the United States.

I have now committed that every month I'll post at least one new essay about the subject and for as long as Jacobo, other authors, the commentariat or myself have something to say about it we will be exploring and discussing about Mexican shamans and the Mesoamerican Mysteries in general. In that spirit here are the acknowledgements and the introduction to the first volume translated, with some quotes and stories from the documentary --which I am told by his daughter isn't really that good, there is a new and better one coming up-- but the introduction of that one was great despite its tendency to a kind sensationalism worthy of a binge watching night on History Channel, so I've used it here.

"Talk to me, Muse, of the contrivanced path of the man who for long remained wandering. Even, with the passing of years, a time arrived when the gods had fixed that he returned home, still then he wasn't safe from danger even in the company of his own."

--The Odyssey, First Song - Homer

"I write in exile from a remote and obscure planet called Earth. My story starts in Andromeda, a galaxy where we practiced meditation, telepathic communication and the knowledge and handling of energy. Andromeda was part of the Hierarchy, a group of very advanced civilizations; constituted of countless galaxies whose purpose was the evolution of Spirit. It was allowed to travel anywhere in the Hierarchy, but there was a forbidden part of the universe formed by young and unstable planets.

My partner and I endeavoured on a journey to know other places and thus develop our understanding. We were invaded by a supernatural love and decided we had become Gods.

So we crossed the frontier of the forbidden part of the universe to help the young planets with our presence. An atmosphere of fear irradiated. Suddenly, the ship lost stability and we knew the end had come. We were transferred to the interior of a dome and there separated. The Hierarchy chose planet Earth for my exile and the Council considered that eleven reincarnations would be enough to learn. My father and master accompanied me while the preparations where done for my departure. Before being connected to the dematerialization mechanism he promised he'd help me. His last words were I love you and I will make myself present before you when you are ready to return to the end of your eleventh life."

-- The Vital Force of Heavens Past, a novel - Jacobo Grinberg

Jacobo Grinberg and everything surrounding him is utterly fascinating in more than one sense. Through this lush mystery let's keep in mind the time in which he was writing, which was the peak of the psychological and parapsychological sciences as accepted means to understand the cosmos and its relationship with human nature. He didn't write as far back as the Renaissance as occult books like The Picatrix, contrasting with the modern world, but today his views, in and increasingly materially dogmatic society, can be as shocking as the notion of planets being sentient Gods who watch over human destiny and a living world full of spirits. With that said, here is my translation.

The Shamans of Mexico Volume I: Indigenous Mexican Psychology

Presentation and Acknowledgements

The book that I now present is only but a first draft about indigenous mexican psychology, which to be revealed, will need not one but hundreds of volumes much wiser and better developed than this one.

The conceptual complexity and the wisdom of the mexican spirit, that exists with the subject, can be seen reflected in the growing number of its representatives, the shamans and the indigenous psycholigsts, "the men of knowledge", who make thousands, dispersed all over in each of the pueblos and cities of our country.

This book though modest and anecdotal, represents but one attempt at opening the eyes to a hidden reality, but alive, safeguarded, but thrusting within the essence and the heart of our country.

Originally thought as a series of articles, this piece attempts to be the beginning of a rescue operation for the wisdom original to Mexico, wisdom so devalued and stomped by the Conquest and modernism, but wisdom still, and as such, millenary survivor.

Hopefully this first try makes all of us inhabitants of Mexico see, that behind the crisis of materialism that we live in, the Spirit can be reborn, and that our duty is to give birth to it.

I would like to thank all the people that made this research possible, in particular Lic. Miguel González Avelar, Secretary of Public Education, who has supported and kindled my interest for the indigenous knowledge of Mexico.
To Teresa Vale, for her unconditional support.
To Jenny Lewis for her magnificent editing job.
To Mónica Virchez and Ixtaccihuatl Carrasco, who realized the arduous task of transcribing the studies and the interviews from the magnetophonic (tape) recordings.
To Emilia Flores Melo, who computed, sorted and analyzed the data.
To Guadalupe Ruiz Ávila for his collaboration.
To Francisco San Román and Henri Bergonzi for their enthusiasm and responsibility of having accepted publishing the results of the research within the volumes of this series.

Lastly, to the Indigenous Mexican Psychologists and the Shamans of México.

J.G.Z
February, 1987

Introduction

One of the saddest and haunting attitudes of the contemporary Mexican is her or his tendency towards self-devaluation, possibly as a result of a brutal conquest, characterized by a lack of respect towards indigenous values, who conditioned him to think of what is one's own as something without value and of the external as something omnipotent.

Its enough to observe the gigantic queues that form about the recently inaugurated "McDonalds", or the predominant preference for saving dollars in North American banks to note that Mexicans do not trust their own nation and continues letting itself be conquered by the foreign.

And the most extraordinary of all is that such attitude of submission exists in a country like this, where there live some of the most developed people on the planet, I am referring to the man of knowledge of Mexico, the shamans and the indigenous psychologists. Since time immemorial, each tribe of the ancient inhabitants of Mexico was commanded, in the spiritual, by one or several men who stood out for their intelligence, intuition and capacity for seership. At least since the Toltecs, these men of knowledge started to found lineages, by which, through a chain of successors, transmitted, from generation to generation, their particular way of creating reality. The number of lineages that exist presently in Mexico is undetermined, even though it is known that is abundant. Many of them, survived the Conquest; others were created after it. You can find them almost in every town, shire or city, and form a subculture of unsuspected richness and complexity. They dedicate themselves to the healing of sickness, to predict the future, to give counsel and alleviate anguish. They are consulted by entire towns, given that in them guide and counsel they find. Their intuitive capacity is generous and their initiatory vocation is even more. They are the spokesmen of millenary traditions and represent the most true and mysterious of mexicana. Some realize miraculous feats of intuition and knowledge and most are endowed with a will power and optimism worthy of jealousy. They fight against witchcraft and they consider themselves the protectors of the weary and the weak.

And its precisely in the spirit of rescuing the knowledge of these men that we have started a national investigation, with the conviction that a people that posses a richness so extraordinary as Mexico has no reason at all to feel devalued and that what happens, perhaps, is that we don't know and ignore what we are. We expect this research helps us evaluate and be confident in ourselves.

With this intention we commit, well, to divulge the findings of this research.

With respect to the methodology used in this project, it was considered that the most appropriate was participative research; the researchers lived together with the shamans, they subjected themselves to their teachings and in some cases they became their disciples. In this manner, first hand, precise information was obtained about their practices and teachings. This methodology also allowed to test some of the therapeutic procedures used by shamans. In some cases interviews with the patients and disciples of the shamans were held and exhaustive followup of the effects of their teachings and therapies, for which audio-visual equipment was used.

This work required constant traveling and long stays in the communities the shamans live in.

Lastly, I would like to mention that the results obtained till this day support the postulates of Synthergic Theory. This holds that perceptual reality is the product of the interactions between an energetic field activated by the human brain (the neural field) and the structure of space-time (the quantum field). The interaction between fields creates a pattern of interference that showers all space. Conscious experience rises when the Observer focuses an hypothetical mechanism called the directionality factor of some portion of this interference pattern.

Shamans seem to posses a great mastery in the focusing of their directionality factor, being capable of activating different experiences in different locations of space and levels of reality.

That's the introduction to the first volume. As we can see, Jacobo was a wise and relentlessly curious scientist of a kind which is rare these days. For the shamans he was a scientist, for the scientists he was a shaman. His work, in a very short amount of time, got a solid grip on the subjects that occultists, mystics, yogis and shamans have studied and controlled for ages and for ages to come. He discovered the astral plane which he called "pre spatial informational matrix" and its binding energetic link with material and perceptual existence occultists call Malkuth or the Circle of Abred that exist as consciousness, experimenting with them producing solid conclusions. He studied how these remarkable people bend these pouring fields to produce the most magical happenings that have blessed this world and until his disappearance --as an uncomfortable amount of scientists that get too close to these subjects do disappear-- he remained enthusiastic in sharing his research with the world. This translation is a further step down that path done with admiration and gratitude, passed along with the trust that Spirit will make the best out of it and take it to the ones that will put it to good use.

To close this, it seems mysterious in a way, though I don't know if this is effect of the documentary but in his other writings he seemed to be oddly prophetic about his enigmatic future. Just before, or after, we'll never know, he might have discovered that his transferred potential was one of the magical keys that earlier French occultist Eliphas Levi called sanctum regnum of which he said: "the holly kingdom, or kingdom of God, regnum dei, is only appropriate for kings and for priests: are you a priests? are you a kings? The calling of magic is not a vulgar calling, and its royalty has nothing to do with the princes of this world. The kings of science are the priests of truth, and their reign is hidden from the multitude, as are their sacrifices and their prayers. The kings of science are those who know the truth, and the truth has set them free according the formal promise of the most powerful of initiators." (Levi, Mikituk, Greer, Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic, Introduction, New York, 2017)

After twenty years he disappeared. Perhaps he considered that his work was done? Possibly felt that his universe was another? Nobody knows.

The Expansion of The Present - Jacobo Grinberg 1988

Thanks for reading! If you find any English errors, I would be grateful to note them down and correct them.