modern-day sorcerers to steer sorcery away from concreteness toward the abstract. "What do you call concreteness, don Juan?" I asked. "The practical part of sorcery," he said. "The obsessive fixation of the mind on practices and techniques, and the unwarranted influence over people. All of these were in the realm of the sorcerers of the past." "And what do you call the abstract?" "The search for freedom; freedom to perceive, without obsessions, all that's humanly possible. I say that present-day sorcerers seek the abstract because they seek freedom. They have no interest in concrete gains. There are no social functions for them as there were for the sorcerers of the past. So you'll never catch them being the official seers, or the sorcerers in residence." .. Don Juan explained that sorcerers of antiquity's most important attainment was to perceive the energetic essence of things. This insight was of such importance that it was turned into the basic premise of sorcery. Nowadays, after lifelong discipline and training, sorcerers do acquire the capacity to perceive the essence of things; a capacity they call seeing. "What would it mean to me to perceive the energetic essence of things?" I once asked don Juan. "It would mean that you perceive energy directly," he replied. "By separating the social part of perception, you'll perceive the essence of everything. Whatever we are perceiving is energy, but since we can't directly perceive energy, we process our perception to fit a mold. This mold is the social part