Evon Davis

Don Juan said, “To seek the perfection of the warrior’s spirit is the only task worthy of our [humanity].”

Ever since I was introduced to Castaneda’s books in 2007, I’ve been searching for don Juan in the flesh.  Not that I expect to find the original don Juan.  Even Castaneda said he had left this world. 

I’m seeking someone who embodies don Juan’s philosophy.  I have a friend who comes pretty close – the one who told me to read the books – as close as I’ve come so far.  But I am in awe of don Juan’s total devotion to being a warrior-sorcerer.  I imagine I will walk that path some day. 

Even now I strive to practice the tenets of his philosophy, though I am a far cry from “the perfection of the warrior’s spirit.” 

I often think, “If only I had a don Juan in my life, I could perfect my warrior’s spirit,” but I know that’s just me being self-indulgent and irresponsible.  It’s no one else’s task to perfect my warrior’s spirit, only mine.  So I make due the best I can.

My only access to don Juan (that I know of) is through Castaneda’s books and my imagination.  I first read all of his books in 2007.  Then, when I went to England in the summer of 2008, I stuffed as many of his paperbacks into my backpack as I could carry, along with a journal, and I made a discipline of reading from them every morning and writing about the lesson I was learning each day. 

In the novels I write, a mentor always shows up who embodies the spirit of don Juan.  For me, this is one way I make him real in my life.  My main character always represents some aspect of myself, so if I have a fear or a problem, I might give that to my character (though it may take a very different form, in its essence, it’s the same), then the mentor helps the character find courage and strength or some other solution. 

I tell myself that either way, whether I were walking in the Sonoran desert chaparral with don Juan beside me, or hiking in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains with a paperback and my imagination to accompany me, either way, living this path is difficult… but well worth it.  Perhaps what I gain this way is that I must internalize the teachings.  I cannot keep them outside of me, running to don Juan when I don’t know how to make it work.  I have to strive harder to figure it out for myself.

As I mentioned, in the past, I have developed a discipline of reading from one of Castaneda’s books in the morning, then writing about the lesson I’m learning that day.  I have tried blogging about it daily as well, so I might try to pick up that practice again as a way of disciplining myself to focus on the lessons daily.

In mythic structure, the story begins with the Ordinary World. For example, in The Odyssey, the story begins with Odysseus tending to his land. In The Frog Prince, the story begins with the little girl playing with her golden ball. It isn’t necessary to follow this structure exactly. It’s more a way of getting started with ideas.

Let’s look at this stage in some popular novels and films like Harry Potter & the Order of the Phoenix (pages 1-15), The Alchemist, and Avatar.

In Harry Potter 5, the story begins with Harry sitting on a swing in a park in Little Whinging. Dudley and his friends start picking on him. Harry is at a point now where he’s not afraid to stand up for himself and he threatens Dudley back. That’s Harry’s ordinary world.

In The Alchemist, the young shepherd Santiago is tending his sheep. He sometimes camps out. One night he sleeps in an old abandoned church. The roof has long since caved in and a sycamore tree is growing up through the middle of it.

In Avatar, Jake Sully is waking up on a ship after being in hibernation. The ship has just reached the planet, Pandora. He disembarks onto the planet and listens to the officer’s warnings about the dangers on Pandora. Although this seems extraordinary to us, it’s Jake Sully’s ordinary world. He is a soldier in the future. For him it is perfectly ordinary to be shipped off to a “war zone.”

One of the best ways to begin writing a novel is to think about and describe your character’s ordinary world. Describe your character’s typical day. Take us right into the scene.

In the novel I’m currently writing, my character is unemployed. She’s searching for a job. Doesn’t know what to do with herself. Feels bored and depressed. Thinks obsessively about her most recent lover. She lives in London, but he lives in Washington DC. So even in her ordinary world she’s got conflicts.  Eventually she stumbles upon magic, a sorceress enters her life to mentor her, and she discovers her own latent powers (what they are shall remain a secret here; I will only say it has nothing to do with faeries, elves, witches, vampires, werewolves, trolls, or dragons).

When you describe your character’s ordinary world, it’s sort of like you give us a peek into the character’s daily life.  This is before the inciting incident occurs that sets her on her journey. Yet you will want to begin planting the seeds of your character’s troubles from the beginning.

For example, we wouldn’t want to see Jake Sully living a boring life on planet Earth. We want to start with him being deployed, and in this case James Cameron gives us his brother’s death as back story. He could have started us out at the funeral; that would have worked too. But these events are still considered ordinary. The inciting incident is when he’s placed in his avatar body and then gets separated from his group.

So remember:  ordinary, but not boring.

In the introduction to Journey to Ixtlan, Carlos Castaneda wrote, “For the purpose of presenting my argument I must first explain the basic premise of sorcery as don Juan presented it to me.  He said that for a sorcerer, the world of everyday life is not real, or out there, as we believe it is.  For a sorcerer, reality, or the world we all know, is only a description.”

It seems to me like writers would get this better than anyone else.  That’s why I think of myself as a warrior-sorcerer, like don Juan, because that’s the philosophy I live by, or sometimes as a writer-sorcerer, because I think when we write, we create reality.  That’s magic.

Writers create reality by describing it, even if they are just making it up in their minds.  They are shaping reality.  Science-fiction often describes what our reality will become in the future and then we watch it unfold.

But I need to remind myself of this when I am fearful.  Whatever I am afraid of is not real, or out there, as I believe it is.  It’s only a scary story.