I decided to attend the operations every Friday. The healer’s work had gained my deep admiration. She was not getting rich with this activity. Upon leaving, the patients deposited however much money they wanted to give in a saucepan. Most left only coins, and the richest ones, those who had come from other countries, showed a strange stinginess. One man, whom she had supposedly cured of paralysis, said, “I have no money to pay you.” She replied, “Very well, pay me nothing now. When you are healed, you will return to work. Then you will pay me what you want to.” Lauder told me that Pachita lived in a modest house on the outskirts of the city surrounded by dogs, parrots, monkeys, and an eagle. Apart from supporting her children, the little money she could save went to a small school in her neighborhood. “In the poor settlements of Mexico people see nothing but nastiness. It’s almost impossible to straighten up a jerk once he’s grown big. They have to be taught good things while they’re still little.” Obviously, healing was Pachita’s vocation. If she was performing trickery, it was sacred trickery. Deception with a charitable purpose is accepted in all religions. The mystic Jacob deceived his brother and his father. In Islamic tradition, lying is forbidden, but clever solutions are accepted. A fugitive passes along a road where a sage is sitting on a stream bank. “Please,” he says, “do not tell my pursuers that I went this way.” The sage waits until the fugitive disappears from his sight, then goes and sits on the opposite bank. When the persecutors come and ask him if he saw anyone pass, he responds, “I haven’t seen anyone pass the whole time I’ve been sitting here.” For a miracle to occur, faith is necessary. Shamans know this. They perform false miracles in their ceremonies with neophytes so that the students’ rational vision will rupture and thus, convinced that there are other dimensions beside their rigid reality, they will begin to have faith. Thanks to this new vision, exceptional events can occur. Was Pachita a great creator of sacred tricks?
I attended countless surgeries over the course of three years. Many were healed. Others died. For example, two people suffering from incurable diseases came from Paris. One, a prominent journalist, had cancer of the hip. The other, who had serious heart disease, was the public relations manager of a film company. Both of them were accompanied by a Dominican priest, Maurice Cocagnac (who later wrote a book about these experiences), and were operated on by Brother. One had his heart changed; the other had a new bone inserted into his hip. Before they returned to France, Pachita said, “Dear children, you are healed. Stop taking medicines, and whatever you do, do not consult a physician before six months have passed.” As soon as he returned to Paris, the journalist assembled a meeting of doctors. The results were clear: the cancer was still there. He died a month later. The other man, however, stopped taking his pills and saw no doctors for six months. Then, when they examined him, they were speechless: the heart was healthy, working like that of a young man. I realized that in the magical world, not only faith but also obedience played a vital role. Even if one did not believe in the witch’s power, it was desirable to give that power every chance to act by following her instructions to the letter.
I later applied this idea in psychomagic. A psychomagical act must be performed to the letter, as a contract. The client must promise to obey. If he does not, or if he deviates from the instructions, out of prejudice, fear, or desire for comfort, then the subconscious realizes it can disobey, and the healing will not be achieved. When I was shooting Tusk near Bangalore, India, one of the acting elephants, perhaps unnerved by the heat, destroyed a set. Its mahout*7 (or cornac) began to punish it with an iron bar. It was impressive to see this elephant, trembling like a child, urinating on itself with fear of its vulnerable master. The man beat it until it bled. I protested. It seemed inconceivable to me that one should punish an animal with such intense cruelty. The official who was in charge of the elephant colony said, “Please do not intervene. The trainer knows what he is doing. If you let your elephant disobey, even in something small, it will feel free to do what it wants, and later will end up killing humans.” The subconscious behaves in the same way. The trainer has to teach it to obey. This is difficult; in fact, people fall ill because they have a painful problem that they cannot solve or become conscious of. They want to be treated — that is, they want their symptoms eliminated — but not cured. Although they ask for help, they then struggle to stop that help from being effective.
Brother required unconditional collaboration between the patient and all the assistants for these operations. Sometimes the work seemed to become complicated; at those times, the surgeon and the patient himself would request the help of all those present. I remember operations during which Cuauhtémoc suddenly exclaimed through Pachita’s mouth, “The child is getting cold; warm the air quickly or we will lose him!” We all ran around hysterically in search of an electric heater. Upon plugging it in, we discovered that the electricity had been cut off. “Do something, you wretches, or the child will go into agony,” growled Brother, while the sick man, frozen with terror and on the verge of cardiac arrest, no doubt from seeing his belly opened up and his guts in the air, moaned, “Brothers, I beg you, help me.” We all brought our mouths close to his body and anxiously breathed on him, forgetting ourselves, trying desperately to warm him with our breath. “Well done, dear children,” said Brother suddenly. “The temperature is rising, the danger is over, I can continue now.” I realized that all healing is collective, tribal. The shaman does not act alone — he or she is always surrounded by invisible allies — and the sick person is not alone either. When I had the opportunity to interview the principal machi at a machitún*8 in Temuco, Chile, I asked what methods he used to heal the sick. He replied, “The first thing I do is to ask them who is their owner.”
“Their owner?”
“That’s right, all sick people belong to someone: their spouse, their family, their employer. Those who have no owner cannot be cured. Once that is known, I discuss the price. To cure, one must organize a meal and invite friends who will help to drive away the devils with noises, drumbeats, or gunshots. Once the place is clean, I can operate accompanied by beneficent spirits. We work for the sick person here on Earth while they do the same in heaven.”
Since my meeting with Castaneda I had continued to feel a sharp pain in my liver. So, armed with an egg, I went to see Pachita. She rubbed the painful region and said, “Dear child of the soul, you have a tumor there. I will operate on you to remove it.” Seeing the pallor on my face, she laughed. “Fear not, little boy, I have been operating for over seventy years, thousands of people have been opened by the knife of Brother. If an accident had happened to any one of his patients, I would have been put in prison long ago. Listen: when I was ten years old, I saw a commotion near the tent at a circus because the pregnant elephant could not bear her baby, which was positioned sideways. There she was, in agony, lying on a carpet of sawdust. The poor performers were weeping. That elephant was the star of their show, and if she died, they too would die, from hunger. The elephant suddenly began to scream deafeningly. I do not know what happened to me then. I fell asleep, and when I woke up I was covered with blood. They told me that I had taken one of the knife thrower’s knives, opened the animal’s belly, removed her child, and then closed the wound, laying on my hands, without leaving a scar. Since then, I have never ceased to operate on both humans and animals.”