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Carlos Castañeda
Carlos Castañeda 1962
Born	(1925-12-25)December 25, 1925 Cajamarca, Perú
Died	April 27, 1998(1998-04-27) (aged 72) Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Occupation	Author
Nationality	American
Period	20th-century
Subject	Shamanism

Carlos César Salvador Arana Castañeda (December 25, 1925 – April 27, 1998), was a Peruvian-American author with a Ph.D. in anthropology.

Starting with The Teachings of Don Juan in 1968, Castañeda wrote a series of books that describe his training in shamanism, particularly a group that he called the Toltecs. The books, narrated in the first person, relate his experiences under the tutelage of a Yaqui "Man of Knowledge" named Don Juan Matus. His 12 books have sold more than 28 million copies in 17 languages. Critics have suggested that they are works of fiction; supporters claim the books are either true or at least valuable works of philosophy and descriptions of practices which enable an increased awareness.

Castañeda withdrew from public view in 1973 to work further on his inner development, living in a large house with three women who he called "Fellow Travellers of Awareness", and who were ready to cut their ties to family and changed their names. He founded Cleargreen, an organization that promoted tensegrity, purportedly a traditional Toltec regimen of spiritually powerful exercises.

Early life

Immigration records for Carlos César Salvador Arana Castañeda indicate that he was born on 25 December 1925 in Cajamarca, Peru. His first family name, Arana, is the paternal one, inherited from his father's paternal family name, César Arana Burungaray; while the second family name, Castañeda, is the maternal one, inherited from his mother's paternal family name, Susana Castañeda Navoa. His maternal surname appears with the ñ in many Hispanic dictionaries, even though his published works display an anglicized version.

He moved to the United States in the early 1950s and became a naturalized citizen in 1957. Castañeda was educated at UCLA (B.A. 1962; Ph.D. 1973).

Career

Castañeda's first three books – The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge; A Separate Reality; and Journey to Ixtlan – were written while he was an anthropology student at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He wrote these books as his research log describing his apprenticeship with a traditional "Man of Knowledge" identified as don Juan Matus, a Yaqui Indian from northern Mexico. Castañeda was awarded his bachelor's and doctoral degrees based on the work described in these books.

In 1974 his fourth book, Tales of Power, was published and chronicled the end of his apprenticeship under the tutelage of Matus. Castañeda continued to be popular with the reading public with subsequent publications.

In his books, Castañeda narrates in first person the events leading to and following after his meeting Matus, a half-Yaqui "Man of Knowledge", in 1960. Castañeda's experiences with Matus inspired the works for which he is known. He also says the sorcerer bequeathed him the position of nagual, or leader of a party of seers. He also used the term "nagual" to signify that part of perception which is in the realm of the unknown yet still reachable by man, implying that, for his party of seers, Don Juan was a connection in some way to that unknown. Castañeda often referred to this unknown realm as nonordinary reality.

The term "nagual" has been used by anthropologists to mean a shaman or sorcerer who claims to be able to change into an animal form, or to metaphorically "shift" into another form through magic rituals, shamanism and experiences with psychoactive drugs (e.g., peyote and jimson weed – Datura stramonium).

In all,12 books by Castañeda were published, two posthumously.

Castañeda was the subject of a cover article in the March 5, 1973 issue of Time. The article described him as "an enigma wrapped in a mystery". When confronted by correspondent Sandra Burton about discrepancies in his personal history, Castañeda responded by saying:

"To ask me to verify my life by giving you my statistics... is like using science to validate sorcery. It robs the world of its magic and makes milestones out of us all."

The interviewer wrote:

"Castañeda makes the reader experience the pressure of mysterious winds and the shiver of leaves at twilight, the hunter's peculiar alertness to sound and smell, the rock-bottom scrubbiness of Indian life, the raw fragrance of tequila and the vile, fibrous taste of peyote, the dust in the car, and the loft of a crow's flight. It is a superbly concrete setting, dense with animistic meaning. This is just as well, in view of the utter weirdness of the events that happen in it."

Following that interview, Castañeda retired from public view.

In the 1990s, Castañeda once again began appearing in public to promote Tensegrity, a group of movements that he claimed had been passed down by 25 generations of Toltec shamans. On 16 June 1995, articles of incorporation executed by George Short were filed to create Cleargreen Incorporated. The Cleargreen statement of purpose says in part:

"Cleargreen is a corporation that has a twofold purpose. First, it sponsors and organizes seminars and workshops on Carlos Castañeda's Tensegrity, and second, it is a publishing house."

Cleargreen published three videos of Tensegrity movements while Castañeda was alive. Castañeda himself did not appear in these videos.

Death

Castañeda died on April 27, 1998 in Los Angeles due to complications from hepatocellular cancer. There was no public service; Castañeda was cremated and the ashes were sent to Mexico. It was unknown until nearly two months later, on 19 June 1998, when an obituary entitled "A Hushed Death for Mystic Author Carlos Castaneda" by staff writer J. R. Moehringer appeared in the Los Angeles Times.

Four months after Castañeda's death, C. J. Castañeda, also known as Adrian Vashon, whose birth certificate claims Carlos Castañeda as his father, challenged Castañeda's will in probate court. For many years Castañeda had referred to Vashon as his son. The will was signed two days before Castañeda's death and Vashon challenged its authenticity. The challenge was ultimately unsuccessful.

Companions

After Castañeda stepped away from public view in 1973, he bought a large house in Los Angeles which he shared with three of his female companions. The women broke off relationships with friends and family when they joined Castañeda's group. They also refused to be photographed and took new names: Regina Thal became Florinda Donner-Grau, Maryann Simko became Taisha Abelar and Kathleen Pohlman became Carol Tiggs.

In the early 1990s, Florinda Donner-Grau and Taisha Abelar published two books purporting to describe their experiences with Don Juan and his party. Together with Carol Tiggs, they appeared and sometimes lectured at many of the Tensegrity workshops that began in July 1993, and Donner-Grau and Abelar appeared at book signings and gave occasional lectures and radio interviews as well.

Shortly after Castañeda died, Donner-Grau and Abelar disappeared, along with Patricia Partin. Amalia Marquez (also known as Talia Bey) and Tensegrity instructor Kylie Lundahl had their phones disconnected and also disappeared. On August 2, 1998, Carol spoke at a workshop in Ontario. The remains of Partin, also referred to by Castañeda as Nury Alexander and/or Claude, were found in 2003 near where her abandoned car had been discovered a few weeks after Castañeda's death in 1998, on the edge of Death Valley. Her remains were in a condition requiring DNA identification, which was made in 2006.

Because the women had cut all ties with family and friends, it was some time before people noticed they were missing. There has been no official investigation into the disappearances of Donner-Grau, Simko and Lundahl. Luis Marquez, the brother of Talia Bey, went to police in 1999 over his sister's disappearance, but was unable to convince them that her disappearance merited investigation. Their opinion changed in 2006 after the remains of Patricia Partin were identified, and the LAPD finally added Bey to their missing person database.

Reception

Despite the widespread popularity of his works, some critics questioned the validity of Castañeda's books as early as 1969. In a series of articles, international banker and amateur mycologist R. Gordon Wasson, who had originally praised Castañeda's work, questioned the accuracies of Castañeda's botanical claims.

In 1976, author and Scientologist Richard de Mille published Castaneda's Journey: The Power and the Allegory, in which he argued, "Logical or chronological errors in the narrative constitute the best evidence that Castañeda's books are works of fiction. If no one has discovered these errors before, the reason must be that no one has listed the events of the first three books in sequence. Once that has been done, the errors are unmistakable." On these showings de Mille asserts, The Teachings of Don Juan and Journey to Ixtlan (his third book) cannot both be factual reports.

For his part, Castañeda in the introduction to A Separate Reality, his second book, addressed the incomprehensible nature of his experiences as only being able to be understood in the context of the alien system of perception from which they arose, suggesting that his books are by their very nature contradictory and incomprehensible (as to time and place especially) to academic and critical inquiry.

In a 1968 radio interview with Theodore Roszak, Castañeda, while confirming that his mystical experiences were absolutely true to life, did explain that he took some chronological license in his writing about actual events: "The way the books present it seems to heighten some dramatic sequences, which is, I'm afraid, not true to real life. There are enormous gaps in between in which ordinary things took place, that are not included. I didn't include in the book because they did not pertain to the system I wanted to portray, so I just simply took them away, you see. And that means that the gaps between those very heightened states, you know, whatever, says that I remove things that are continuous crescendos, in kind of sequence leading to a very dramatic solution. But in real life it was a very simple matter because it took years between, months pass in between them, and in the meantime we did all kinds of things. We even went hunting. He (Don Juan) told me how to trap things, set traps, very old, old ways of setting a trap, and how to catch rattlesnakes. He told me how to prepare rattlesnakes, in fact. And so that eases up, you see, the distrust or the fear."

At first, and with the backing of academic qualifications and the UCLA anthropological department, Castañeda's work was critically acclaimed. Notable anthropologists like Edward Spicer (1969) and Edmund Leach (1969) praised Castañeda, alongside more alternative and young anthropologists such as Peter Furst, Barbara Myerhoff and Michael Harner.

The authenticity of Don Juan was accepted for six years, until Richard de Mille and Daniel Noel both published their critical exposés of the Don Juan books in 1976. Most anthropologists had been convinced of Castañeda's authenticity until then – indeed, they had had little reason to question it – but some averred that de Mille's analysis disproved the veracity of Castañeda's work. Later anthropologists specializing in Yaqui Indian culture (William Curry Holden, Jane Holden Kelley and Edward H. Spicer), who originally supported Castañeda's account as true, questioned the accuracies of Castañeda's work.

Others (including Dr. Clement Meighan) point out that the books largely, and for the most part, do not pretend to describe Yaqui culture at all with its emphasis on Catholic upbringing and conflict with the Federal State of Mexico, but rather focus on the international movements and life of Don Juan who was described in the books as traveling and having many connections, and abodes, in the Southwestern United States (Arizona), Northern Mexico, and Oaxaca. Don Juan was described in the books as a shaman steeped in a mostly lost Toltec philosophy and decidedly anti-Catholic. Dr. Clement Meighan, one of Castañeda's professors at UCLA, and an acknowledged expert on Indian culture in the U.S., Mexico, and other areas in North America, up to his death, never doubted that Castañeda's work was based upon authentic contact with and observations of Indians. Later, Miguel Ruiz also verified the existence of Indian "Brujos" in Mexico with native teachings much like Don Juan's.

A March 5, 1973 Time article by Sandra Burton, looking at both sides of the controversy, stated:

...the more worldly claim to importance of Castañeda's books: to wit, that they are anthropology, a specific and truthful account of an aspect of Mexican Indian culture as shown by the speech and actions of one person, a shaman named Juan Matus. That proof hinges on the credibility of Don Juan as a being and Carlos Castañeda as a witness. Yet there is no corroboration beyond Castañeda's writings that Don Juan did what he is said to have done, and very little that he exists at all. A strong case can be made that the Don Juan books are of a different order of truthfulness from Castañeda's pre-Don Juan past. Where, for example, was the motive for an elaborate scholarly put-on? The Teachings were submitted to a university press, an unlikely prospect for best-sellerdom. Besides, getting an anthropology degree from U.C.L.A. is not so difficult that a candidate would employ so vast a confabulation just to avoid research. A little fudging perhaps, but not a whole system in the manner of The Teachings, written by an unknown student with, at the outset, no hope of commercial success.

David Silverman sees value in the work even while considering it fictional. In Reading Castañeda he describes the apparent deception as a critique of anthropology field work in general – a field that relies heavily on personal experience, and necessarily views other cultures through a lens. According to Silverman, not only the descriptions of peyote trips but also the fictional nature of the work are meant to place doubt on other works of anthropology.

Donald Wieve cites Castañeda to explain the insider/outsider problem as it relates to mystical experiences, while acknowledging the fictional nature of his work.

Related authors

Two other authors, Taisha Abelar and Florinda Donner-Grau, wrote books in which they claimed to be from Matus' party of Toltec warriors. Both Abelar and Donner-Grau were endorsed by Castañeda as being legitimate students of Matus, whereas he dismissed all other writers as pretenders. The two women were part of Castañeda's inner circle, which he referred to as "The Brujas," and both assumed different names as part of their dedication to their new beliefs. They were originally both graduate students in anthropology at UCLA.

Felix Wolf, one of Carlos Castañeda's apprentices and translators, wrote The Art of Navigation: Travels with Carlos Castañeda and Beyond. In his book Wolf details how his life had been transformed by his association with Castañeda. While touching on all aspects of the teachings, Wolf highlights what he perceives to be the overriding and essential transmission that came through Castañeda's work: The Art of Navigation.

Amy Wallace wrote Sorcerer's Apprentice: My Life with Carlos Castañeda, an account of her personal experiences with Castañeda and his followers.

In Carlos Castañeda e a Fenda entre os Mundos – Vislumbres da Filosofia Ānahuacah no Século XXI Brazilian writer Luis Carlos de Morais analyzes the work of Carlos Castañeda, its cultural implications, and its continuation in other authors.

Sanchez's first book, The Teachings of Don Carlos: Practical Applications of the Works of Carlos Castaneda (1995), provides in-depth techniques and commentary on a path of "self-growth" based on the wisdom of the Toltec descendants. His approach in this book is bringing the proposals of Castaneda down to the earth focusing on those parts of Castaneda's book that can be applied in everyday life and used for personal development. Sanchez has published three further books: Toltecs of the New Millennium (1996), providing an overview of and background on the author's experiences with the Wirrarika; The Toltec Path of Recapitulation: Healing Your Past to Free Your Soul (2001); and The Toltec Oracle (2004). Sanchez's recapitulation technique bears some resemblance to Sandra Ingerman's soul retrieval technique, but is probably the most comprehensive approach to the subject that has been published so far. Other shamanic teachers using similar techniques include Michael Harner, PhD founder of "core shamanism", and Ken Page, founder of Heart and Soul Healing. Some have associated Sanchez's work with Toltec author Don Miguel Ángel Ruiz, author of The Four Agreements.

Bibliography

• The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, 1968. ISBN 0-520-21757-8. (Summer 1960 to October 1965.)
• A Separate Reality: Further Conversations with Don Juan, 1971. ISBN 0-671-73249-8. (April 1968 to October 1970.)
• Journey to Ixtlan: The Lessons of Don Juan, 1972. ISBN 0-671-73246-3. (Summer 1960 to May 1971.)
• Tales of Power, 1974. ISBN 0-671-73252-8. (Autumn 1971 to the 'Final Meeting' with don Juan Matus in 1973.)
• The Second Ring of Power, 1977. ISBN 0-671-73247-1. (Meeting his fellow apprentices after the 'Final Meeting'.)
• The Eagle's Gift, 1981. ISBN 0-671-73251-X. (Continuing with his fellow apprentices; and then alone with La Gorda.)
• The Fire From Within, 1984. ISBN 0-671-73250-1. (Don Juan's 'Second Attention' teachings through to the 'Final Meeting' in 1973.)
• The Power of Silence: Further Lessons of Don Juan, 1987. ISBN 0-671-73248-X. (The 'Abstract Cores' of don Juan's lessons.)
• The Art of Dreaming, 1993. ISBN 0-06-092554-X. (Review of don Juan's lessons in dreaming.)
• Magical Passes: The Practical Wisdom of the Shamans of Ancient Mexico, 1998. ISBN 0-06-017584-2. (Body movements for breaking the barriers of normal perception.)
• The Wheel of Time: Shamans of Ancient Mexico, Their Thoughts About Life, Death and the Universe, 1998. ISBN 0-9664116-0-9. (Selected quotations from the first eight books.)
• The Active Side of Infinity, 1999. ISBN 0-06-019220-8. (Memorable events of his life.)

See also

• Lucid dream
• Neoshamanism
• New Age
• Toltec (Castaneda)
• William Patrick Patterson
• Marlo Morgan

Footnotes

1. The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives, Volume 5: 1997–1999. Charles Scribner's Sons, 2002.
2. De Mille (1976)
3. Castañeda, C: The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, pp. 88–120, Washington Square Press Publication, 1968 paperback ISBN 0-671-60041-9
4. ^ Burton, Sandra; et al. (March 5, 1973). "Don Juan and the Sorcerer's Apprentice". Time. 101 (10). Retrieved 2011-12-23. {{cite journal}}: Explicit use of et al. in: |author= (help)
5. Castañeda Obituary All Things Considered, June 19, 1998
6. "Mystery Man's Death Can't End the Mystery; Fighting Over Carlos Castaneda's Legacy" by Peter Applebome, NY Times, August 19, 1998, retrieved September 3, 2008
7. Castañeda house SOLD, This Multi-Family Home located at 10429 Eastborne Avenue, Los Angeles CA sold for $1,200,000 on Apr 30, 2009
8. 10429 Eastborne Avenue, Los Angeles, CA - Google Maps
9. The Charley Project
10. Wasson, R. Gordon. 1969. (Bk. Rev.). Economic Botany vol. 23(2):197. A review of Carlos Castañeda's "The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge.", Wasson, R. Gordon. 1972a. (Bk. Rev.). Economic Botany vol. 26(1):98–99. A review of Carlos Castañeda's "A Separate Reality: Further Conversations with Don Juan."; Wasson, R. Gordon. 1973a. (Bk. Rev.). Economic Botany vol. 27(1):151–152. A review of Carlos Castañeda's "Journey to Ixtlan: The Lessons of Don Juan."; Wasson, R. Gordon. . 1974. (Bk. Rev.). Economic Botany vol. 28(3):245–246. A review of Carlos Castañeda's "Tales of Power".; Wasson, R. Gordon. . 1977a. (Mag., Bk. Rev). Head vol. 2(4):52–53, 88–94. November.
11. De Mille (1976), p. 166
12. De Mille (1976), pp. 170–171
13. Roszak, Theodore (30 January 1969). "DON JUAN THE SORCERER - Carlos Castaneda interview". KPFA, Pacifica Radio Archive,. Retrieved 23 January 2013.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link)
14. Leach, Edmund (1969-06-05). "High School". The New York Review of Books. New York. ISSN 0028-7504. Retrieved 2010-10-13.
15. Kelley, Jane Holden (1978). Yaqui Women: Contemporary Life Histories. University of Nebraska Press. pp. 24–25. ISBN 978-0-8032-0912-1.
16. David Silverman. Reading Castañeda: A Prologue to the Social Sciences. ISBN 978-0-7100-8146-9
17. Donald Wieve. "Does Understanding Religion Require Religious Understanding?" In Russel T. McCutcheon (ed.), The Insider/Outsider Problem in the Study of Religion. New York: Bath Press, 1999. p. 263.
18. Amy Wallace (2007). Sorcerer's Apprentice: My Life with Carlos Castaneda. North Atlantic Books. ISBN 978-1-58394-206-2.

References

• De Mille, Richard (1976). Castaneda's Journey: The Power and the Allegory. Capra Press. ISBN 978-0-88496-067-6.

Further reading

• Morais Junior, Luis Carlos de. Carlos Castaneda e a Fresta entre os Mundos: Vislumbres da Filosofia Ānahuacah no Século XXI (Carlos Castaneda and the Crack Between the Worlds: Glimpses of Ānahuacah Philosophy in the 21st Century). Rio de Janeiro: Litteris Editora, 2012.
• Sanchez, Victor. The Teachings of Don Carlos: Practical Applications of the Works of Carlos Castaneda. Bear & Company, 1995. ISBN 1-879181-23-1
• Williams, Donald. Border Crossings: A Psychological Perspective on Carlos Castaneda's Path of Knowledge Inner City Books, 1981.
• Collier, Richard "The River That God Forgot" (Background on Julio Cesar Arana, despotic rubber baron, Carlos Castaneda's paternal grandfather) E.P. Dutton & Co., N.Y., 1968. Library of Congress CATALOG CARD NUMBER:68-12451
• Torres, Armando "Encounters with the Nagual: Conversations with Carlos Castaneda" First Light Press, 2004.
• Torres, Armando "The Secret of the Plumed Serpent: Further Conversations with Carlos Castaneda" Hade Publishing, 2014 (First published in Spanish as "El Secreto de la Serpiente Emplumada" by Editora Alba, 2010)

External links

• An Original: Richard de Mille, Carlos Castaneda, Literary Quackery « Science-Based Medicine - Wallace Sampson
• "BBC Four - Tales from the Jungle, Series 1, Carlos Castaneda, What happens when anthropology goes bad?". bbc.co.uk. 29 November 2007. Retrieved 23 January 2013. mp4
• "Carlos Castaneda, Mystical and Mysterious Writer, Dies By PETER APPLEBOME". nytimes.com. 20 June 1998. Retrieved 23 January 2013.
• "Mystery Man's Death Can't End the Mystery; Fighting Over Carlos Castaneda's Legacy By PETER APPLEBOME". nytimes.com. 19 August 1998. Retrieved 23 January 2013.
• "To Carlos Castaneda, Wherever You Are By Keith Thompson". bbc.co.uk. 27 June 1998. Retrieved 23 January 2013.
• transcript: Carlos Castañeda Interviewed by Jane Hellisoe of the University of California Press, 1968, UCLA
• youtube audio: Carlos Castañeda Interviewed by Jane Hellisoe of the University of California Press, 1968, UCLA

• "Carlos Castaneda Interviews and Articles Archive - 1968 to 1998". federaljack.com. 5 October 2007. Retrieved 23 January 2013.
• "Total Freedom - Toltec - Articles and Interviews Archive - Text (or Audio when specified)". great-grandma.com. 24 July 2012. Retrieved 23 January 2013.

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• Carlos Castaneda
• 1925 births
• 1998 deaths
• American anthropologists
• American spiritual writers
• Cancer deaths in California
• Deaths from liver cancer
• Peruvian emigrants to the United States
• Shamanism of the Americas
• University of California, Los Angeles alumni