His meditation spots is in front of the fireplace. On Carlos Santana's property in San Rafael, California, about twenty minutes north of San Francisco, there are two buildings. The house closer to the water is where the family lives: Santana, his wife, Deborah, and their three children. The other house, a little higher up the hill, he calls the church. "Here's where I hang out with Jimi and Miles and whoever, and play and meditate," he explains. The rest of the family likes to be in bed by ten, but Santana is a night person, so he'll come up here until two or three in the morning. A card with the word Metatron spelled out in intricately painted picture letters lies on the floor next to the fireplace. Metatron is an angel. Santana has been in regular contact with him since 1994. Carlos will sit here facing the wall, the candles lit. He has a yellow legal pad at one side, ready for the communications that will come. "It's kind of like a fax machine," he says. The largest candle, whose half-molten remnants are placed centrally, is in a charred tin that bears the logo of its previous, less spiritual use: Mermaid Butter Cookies.

We take the armchairs in the middle of the room. On the table between us sit an empty Seven-Up can, a cigar and some peanuts. He pulls from his pocket a sheet of yellow paper on which he made notes last night, in preparation for this interview. "If you carry joy in your heart, you can heal any moment," he reads. "There is no person that love cannot heal; there is no soul that love cannot save." I can see that there are other things written on the paper, but he chooses not to say them aloud.

We talk of angels and the suchlike. There are few conversations with him that don't lead to a discussion of angels, or of the spiritual radio through which music comes. Santana has been increasingly engaged by angels since the day in 1988 when he picked up a book on the subject at the Milwaukee airport. "It's an enormous peace, the few times I have felt the presence in the room," he says. "I feel lit up. I'm not Carlos anymore, I'm not bound to DNA anymore. It's beyond sex, it's beyond anything that this world could give you a buzz. It makes me feet like Jesus embraced me and I'm bathed in light."