Figures in front of a mirror

How Carlos Castaneda’s story about a dancing whore reveals the desperation of the human experience.

Photo by Carrie Borden on Unsplash

What is “figures in front of a mirror” you ask? It sounds intriguing, doesn’t it? If you’ve read Carlo Castaneda’s “The Active Side of Infinity”, you might be familiar with this expression.

In his book, Castaneda tells his sorcerer mentor don Juan about an incident that happened when he was an art student in Italy. A pompous Scottish classmate named Eddie was marveling over something called “figures in a mirror” which had been shown to him by an aging prostitute named Madame Ludmilla.

Castaneda relays how Eddie “had been in a bordello, where he had found an unbelievable woman who did an incredible thing she called “figures in front of a mirror”. Eddie assured Castaneda repeatedly that Castaneda “owed it to [himself] to experience this unbelievable event personally.” Castaneda’s narration of his tale was like a slow and scintillating build-up, which created an ever-increasing sense of expectation within me. As I entered the bordello that Castaneda described and met the peculiar Madame Ludmilla, I found myself getting exciting, anticipating a riveting show. After inviting him into her antisala, and getting him to sit down, the Madame opened her armoire which had full-length mirrors on the inside of each door. She cranked her Victrola which played a circus march-like melody, then disrobed and said to Castanda, “I give you good show…figures in front of a mirror is only foreplay. When you are hot and ready, tell me to stop.”

Castaneda’s skillful built-up of the prostitute’s supposedly spellbinding act made me believe I was going to be privy to some sort of otherworldly conjuring, some mystical, magical, mind-blowing spectacle that would leave me enthralled and awestruck. But then, Castaneda described the nature of the show and it was a strangely maudlin and banal anticlimax.

Figures in front of a mirror was simply this – an aging, naked whore with a sagging belly and jowls and “heavily painted red lips” twirling, twerking, spinning, and kicking her legs with the unrestraint enthusiasm of an innocent, trusting child. An old sex worker blissfully unaware of her lack of allure, whose perception of herself was so completely incongruent with the reality of her circumstances.

Castaneda was horrified by what he saw and told don Juan that his assessment of this incident was that it was a “sad story”.

Don Juan replied, “It’s indeed a sad story. But what makes it different and memorable to me is that it touches every one of us human beings…you see, like Madame Ludmilla, every one of us, young and old alike, is making figures in front of a mirror in one way or another. Tally what you know about people. Think of any human being on this earth, and you will know, without the shadow of a doubt, that no matter who they are, or what they think of themselves, or what they do, the result of their actions is always the same: senseless figures in front of a mirror.”

Perhaps this tale mirrors Castaneda’s own life. His written works – which garnered him great fame and fortune in the 1960s and 70s, the epitaph of “godfather of the New Age movement”, and the reputation of a guru or sorcerer – were like Madame Ludmilla’s foreplay that got his fans hot and ready for shamanism. He whipped up a storm of mystique and power by creating a certain image of himself through his stories and radical ideas. But at the end of his life, it came to light that Castaneda was a polygamist, and according to some, an academic fraud.

To a lesser degree than Castaneda and Madame Ludmilla, we are all of us are engaging in fraudulent sorcery, creating illusions of who we think we are or should be with what we wear, with branding, writing, cooking, photoshopping, interior designing, pumping up resumes and bios, raising families, financial wizardry, creating cool IG and TikTok choreographed dance reels. We use whatever skills and possessions we have to present a favorable image of ourselves. We’re blissfully performing to entice others into paying attention to us, approving of us, desiring us, hiring us, feeding us, loving us. What’s sad is that most of us actually think we are doing something important or meaningful (“Look at what a good parent, spouse, provider, teacher, boss, employee, son, daughter, lover, musician, doctor, therapist, yogi, pastor, pest controller, cook, cleaner, dogwalker, driver, janitor, student etcetera, I am” or “What I do is necessary, valuable, special because I feed the poor, cure cancer, catch criminals, make art, discover planets, plant trees, save whales, pick up garbage”).

I am doing “figures in front of a mirror” now. I am doing it right now as I type these words. I am saying “Look at my deep and clever mind. Do you like what it can do? There’s more where this comes from!” In your own way, you’re doing it too. We are all trying to sell ourselves, to impress ourselves upon others. But we do not necessarily do it with arrogance. We do it like aging whores who, somewhere on the inside, are really just earnest children believing that someone might actually appreciate the efforts of our inconsequential little lives.

“‘Leg, leg, leg!’ [Madame Ludmilla] said, kicking one leg up in the air, and then the other, in time with the music. She had her right hand on top of her head, like a little girl who is not sure that she can perform the movements. ‘Turn, turn, turn!” she said, turning like a top. ‘Butt, butt, butt!’ she said then, showing me her bare behind like a cancan dancer. She repeated the sequence over and over until the music began to fade when the Victrola’s spring wound down. I had the feeling that Madame Ludmilla was twirling away into the distance, becoming smaller and smaller as the music faded. Some despair and loneliness that I didn’t know existed in me came to the surface, from the depths of my very being, and made me get up and run out of the room, down the stairs like a madman, out of the building, into the street”.

Thankfully, we’ll still have some patrons, who, like Castaneda’s Scottish friend Eddie, will be willing to play along, encouraging the mirage, though we’ll always have to wonder what their true motives may be.

“Eddie was standing outside the door talking to the two men in light-blue shiny suits. Seeing me running like that, he began to laugh uproariously. ‘Wasn’t it a blast?’ he said… ‘Figures in front of a mirror’ is only the foreplay. What a thing! What a thing!”

If this essay as enticed you, you can read the full story here: https://toltecschool.com/toltec-indexes/index-page-5/index-page-5-a