The institution of slavery has not ended yet. It has always been part of our civilization. The institution of slavery as it existed at a particular time here in America is not legal anymore, but that’s an instantiation. Slavery, the forceful use of people for labor, continues. It’s just changed from physical chains to psychological chains. It affects almost everyone. In order to participate in this society, you are forced to conform to certain things. By labor, I don’t just mean that you have to find a job and go to work. I mean that you have to produce, in your body, certain substances that are created by negative emotions and secreted from the pores and glands. In addition, your body is made to transmit signals to each other to create these substances. These signals are communicated through the masses by facial expressions, speech, and lately through memes and short thoughts and phrases. We are made to mass produce a limited number of reactions of anger, frustration, and mockery—all for the benefit, not of you, but of the Great Magician. I’m not just talking about socially negative emotions; what you would call “hope,” “love,” and anything else that is automatically produced in you—adrenaline, anxiety, fear—all these are called negative emotions.

If you begin to look at your education, and how we went from a moment from high anxiety before tests to the relief of anxiety after the test, only to come back to more anxiety, then you will notice that the higher you go up in your profession, the more you continue with that, fear–anxiety release–fear, over and over until your whole being is a machine to manufacture that state. What does the Great Magician get from that? Power, energy, control over the masses. At this point, the Great Magician is not interested in controlling the individual. If you set up a small shop selling vacuum cleaners, you will want to go door to door. But if you have a product like Coca Cola, you don’t sell to a person—you sell to demographics. “We have young, African American males.” “We have old second- and third-generation Latinos. How do we get new ones?” The Magician is thinking bigger than that, and not of countries anymore, but of corporations.

The fleece of the sheep the Great Magician is whatever makes up your identity, your emotions, and the output of your machines: the adrenaline, fear, and paranoia prevalent in society. A few can escape, because the Great Magician doesn’t even want to control small groups. He is not interested in the few black sheep. If you create a liberating movement with several million people trying to be free, he will crush it down. Either he will introduce something seemingly innocuous that will end up diluting the essence of the movement, or he will give you drugs or sex or something to weaken you; and if that doesn’t work, he will come down on you with strength.

What are the consequences of liberation? You are free from the support of the Great Magician as well, so when you free yourself, you find yourself in the jungle, and there are other dangers out there. Therefore, you have to become a warrior, and you have to become a hunter of power, and you have to know that death can come at any moment.

(Excerpt from Teachings of a Toltec Survivor)