Quote

Typical of the borderline personality who crave real human engagement and sharing, Castaneda confronted his devotees with a bluff: as "the nagual of freedom," he claimed mastery of secret powers.

Hungry, insecure human egos read this bluff as an invitation to acquire those same powers, which, so they imagine, involves going through a gruelling ordeal orchestrated by the master. Wrong on all counts. The devotee egos are deluded. The borderliner is bluffing to get a response from the heart, not the ego.

The borderliner is inviting just one courageous person to call the bluff and expose the sorcerer's new clothes. The naked honesty required here was lacking among the people who tended to flock round Castaneda, many of whom would have been aspiring mythomaniacs themselves, but far less talented. No doubt Castaneda filtered such opportunities out to some degree:

the borderline personality who invites someone to challenge their bluff will also avoid those who look up to the challenge.

Quote

Castaneda's writing exemplifies magical realism in its most expansive effects, such that many millions of people have come to experience in reality what he described and prescribed in fiction: death as one's ally, seeing, controlled folly, erasing personal history, stopping internal talk, wrestling with the ally, the second attention, the path with heart, non-ordinary reality, stalking and dreaming, shifting the assemblage point, bands of emanations, and dozens of other themes.

The Genre Issue

Following the distinction proposed by religious scholar Henri Corbin in his studies of Sufism, magical realism proposes and generates imaginal worlds, i.e., virtually existing, rather than imagined worlds, i.e., merely fantasized. Magical realism has been developed globally from Russia to Europe to the USA, but it has been primarily identified with South America where Castaneda was born (in Peru) and culturally and sexually imprinted. The premier masterpiece of magical realism, One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, was published in Spanish in 1967 (in English, 1970), less than a year before The Teachings of Don Juan. The proximity of these two books involves far more than a coincidence in timing.

The main difference in these works is that Marquez did not present himself as a character in his fiction, but Castaneda does. The inclusion of the author in the invention of the anthropological novel proved to be a tremendously successful narrative device—but equally so, a huge liability for the author. I reckon that for Castaneda it was a liability he simply could not handle.

Magical realism from South American writers flourished from the mid-1950s onward, a decade before Castaneda developed his unique approach to imaginal writing. Was he reading these works and getting ideas from them? No one knows how and when his creative breakthrough came about... It appears to have occured around June 1961 when he claimed to have met Don Juan Matus for the first time at a bus station in Yuma, Arizona. Amy Wallace does not speculate on this event, which turned Castaneda toward what he would become: the Quixotic exemplar of his own invention. The chronology on sustainedaction.org indicates that Margaret Runyon, who Castaneda met in 1956 and married in 1960, may have suggested the device of subjective creative invention to him:

"If I came to you and I told you that I’d found the ultimate way of life and that I could tell you exactly how to do it, it would be very hard for you to accept. But if I said to you that I’ve got a mysterious teacher who has let me in on some great mysteries, then it’s more interesting . . . It’s much easier to accept." (A Magical Journey pp. 58-59.)

The suggestion to invent a teacher to convey a teaching on ultimate matters seems to have struck a note with Castaneda, but then he had to invent a pupil as well, didn't he? Representing himself as that pupil, he added a wild spin to the narrative form of magical realism, by then a well-established genre. In Moby Dick, Melville does not place himself as a character in his novel, but his alter ego announces itself in the first line: "Call me Ishmael." Melville boldly proposes to the reader, call me (the author) by the name of the fictional narrator, Ishmael (the character). At the end of the novel the narrator says, "I alone survived." This is doubly true, because in the story Ishmael survived the wreck of the Pequod by floating on a coffin, and equally so because the author survived the act of writing the book. The author continues to live on, outside the fiction he invented, but his characters live within that fiction.

This is one way magical realism can work, but not the only way. I regard Castaneda as a daring innovator of the genre. Few of the well-known masterworks of magical realism feature the author in the story, either as an Ishmael-like alter ego, or in person. The latter case is extremely rare, and Castanada is the outstanding example. By including himself as a first-person character in his own fiction, he threw a radical spin on the genre. Magical realism in Castaneda's treatment has an extraordinary pull for the reader for two reasons (and others as well). First, because it engages the reader empathetically or antipathetically in Castaneda's mixed and often balking reactions of what he undergoes on the path of sorcery. Second, because it involves the reader in an intimate way with the other fictional characters in the story. By first-person inclusion, Castaneda was able to liberate his fictional characters from the story and give them the freedom to inhabit an external magical world. Readers who felt compelled by this world then entered it by a vicarious act of participation, and don Juan, don Genaro, and the other characters in the serial novel became totally real and autonomous people within that participation.

Quote

Unfortunately for Castaneda, Amy Wallace was not a writer inclined to the kind of writing to which he had committed himself. Ultimately, their amative problems may have hinged on the genre issue. *Wallace's first book was a biography, the literal and straightforward story of a child prodigy. Later she became a bestselling celebrity for co-authoring literal-minded books of lists. She also wrote some novels, which I have not read or seen, so I cannot comment on their imaginal features, if any. However, I would guess that, had Wallace engaged in imaginal writing spun as a first person narrative, or anything close to that, she might have been able to recognize and empathize with Castaneda's situation. Apparently, she did not.

Quote

Many adepts of imaginal creativity on the level of Nerval and Castaneda do not look for normal human contact of any kind, and expect nothing from those who do not and cannot share directly in the magic spell of their art. At the very least, they expect a glimmer of genuine inventiveness in those who might wish to befriend them—to say nothing of what they expect of true, deep, heartfelt collaborators. What they most fear, and viscerally reject, is that their fictions should be reduced to make-believe by the judgement of those who cannot match them.

Quote

Diana also opined:>>>>I'll bet if Castaneda had put out his work as fiction, we'd have more then one "major motion picture" by now, and Carlos would have had even more money from them then he made from some "tensegrity" videos. <<<<

Well, according to Castaneda himself, no less than Fellini and Dino de Laurentis beat a path to his door seeking the movie rights. The writer/director Sterling Silliphant also apparently had a don Juan project in the works for awhile, when his brother Mark was marrying Nury and hanging out with Castaneda's clan (which then included a few other women and men who have long since fallen by the wayside). Castaneda, ever the control freak, apparently put too many obstacles in the way of such projects, and ultimately never made a deal to sell the movie rights. And in the last several years of his life, he constantly dangled these rights as a big juicy carrot over the heads of Bruce Wagner and Tracy Kramer.

Quote

De Mille also uncovered numerous instances of plagiarism. "When don Juan opens his mouth," he wrote, "the words of particular writers come out." His 1980 compilation, "The Don Juan Papers," includes a 47-page glossary of quotations from don Juan and their sources, ranging from Wittgenstein and C.S. Lewis to papers in obscure anthropology journals.

In one example, de Mille first quotes a passage by a mystic, Yogi Ramacharaka: "The Human Aura is seen by the psychic observer as a luminous cloud, egg-shaped, streaked by fine lines like stiff bristles standing out in all directions." In "A Separate Reality," a "man looks like a human egg of circulating fibers. And his arms and legs are like luminous bristles bursting out in all directions." The accumulation of such instances leads de Mille to conclude that "Carlos's adventures originated not in the Sonoran desert but in the library at UCLA."

Quote

Among anthropologists, there's no longer a debate. Professor William W. Kelly, chairman of Yale's anthropology department, told me, "I doubt you'll find an anthropologist of my generation who regards Castaneda as anything but a clever con man. It was a hoax, and surely don Juan never existed as anything like the figure of his books. Perhaps to many it is an amusing footnote to the gullibility of naive scholars, although to me it remains a disturbing and unforgivable breach of ethics."

Quote

Aspiring warriors, say Jennings, Wallace and Ward, were urged to cut off all contact with their past lives, as don Juan had instructed Carlos to do, and as Castaneda had done by cutting off his wife and adopted son. "He was telling us how to get out of family obligations," Jennings told me. "Being in one-on-one relationships would hold you back from the path. Castaneda was telling us how to get out of commitments with family, down to small points like how to avoid hugging your parents directly." Jennings estimates that during his four years with the group, between 75 and 100 people were told to cut off their families. He doesn't know how many did.

Quote
Amazon review
In this excellently written, occasionally very funny book, DeMille exposes what he calls "the greatest anthropological hoax since the Piltdown Man." While reading Castaneda's early books, I sometimes wondered why his Yaqui sorcerer sounded at times like a Taoist and at others like Martin Heidegger. Now I understand.

Quote

"The Don Juan Papers" is Richard Demille's scholarly and fascinating debunking of Carlos Castaneda's popular series of cult bestsellers about his apprenticeship to Yaqui sorcerer, Don Juan Matus. Demille makes convincing argument that these books are in fact "fiction", rather than anthropological "non-fiction".

Quote
Amazon review
Yes, Castaneda's mystical system works for many people. However, I think it is important for people to realize the inconsistencies in his system and what actual Native American shamanic systems are. I do not believe this book was meant to denounce people who follow Castenada's mystical system, instead it was meant to denounce his unprofessional academic behaviour. It is important for scientists to report the truth about their research, and this book goes into how Castaneda was dishonest with the academic community. The people giving this book one star remind me of the fundamentalist types who denounce anyone who says that the history in the bible isn't 100% accurate.

Quote
Amazon review
A lot of con artists are brilliant. A lot of professional Magicians are gifted con artists. After all, a con artist is striving to persuade you to suspend your disbelief, so that they may profit by it. But what do YOU get out of it? A con artist like Carlos Castaneda is the lowest of the low. He harnasses the energy of real spiritual curiosity and sends it down a worthless, blind, dead end road. If you buy into a fraction of his nonsense, you will have ever so much more difficulty climbing your way back out and regaining your discriminitive perception. Castaneda was a dangerous liar and fraud. Read his works as cautionary tales - but they offer no spiritual insights of any validity. There are other true, real, and authentic spiritual traditions that you may study if you are a serious student of Wisdom. Of course, there is simply no denying anything to people who want to believe. For your own sake - become sceptical. Don't be a victim. Why would you seek POWER in the first place.

Most spiritual traditions teach self knowledge, divine reality, compassion, wisdom, personal transformation and spiritual fulfillment. Are those goals not infinitley more worthy than POWER? Power to do: what, exactly? Fly? Move between dimensions? Turn into an animal. Amaze your family and fool your friends? These things are more meaningful than loving, caring relationships with other people - and peace with yourself? Was Castenada a loving, caring person? Ask those associates that were closest to him. I am trying to be a good shepherd here, for all you little lambs that have wandered into the valley of the shadow of Death. Believe me when I tell you: there are wolves who want to devour you.

Quote
Amazon review
Anthropologist Jay Fikes adds his voice to those exposing the deceptions of Carlos Castaneda, such as Richard deMille. Castaneda has played a big role in the packaging of the shaman and selling him to those New Agers who seek exotic experience. Any real insights of "Don Juan" have been taken from esoteric and occult tradition. Only the neophyte would find Don Juan to be original or profound. Castaneda, among others, is in the business of turning shamanic experience into a consumer product to be sold in the market place.

The true shaman works for the benefit of his people. He does not seek kicks or strange experiences for their own sake, as do would-be Anglo "shamans". Fikes is concerned that people like Castaneda who distort Native cultures cause harm to those cultures. In their misguided attempts to experience Native ways, some New Agers have disrupted Native people and put in jeopardy their traditional values and way of life. Fikes calls for New Agers to respect Native people. Unlike Castaneda, Fikes has done genuine fieldwork among the Huichol people in Mexico, and he presents some of his findings, particularly in relation to the peyote hunt. The lesson of Castaneda is that you can't base truth on half truths and deception, no matter how appealing it is on a superficial level.

Quote
Carolyn See, author of [i]Making a Literary Life[/i]
Amy Wallace expertly maps the territory where mysticism merges into insanity, or perhaps the unmarked land between screwball comedy and terrifying tragedy. I can’t recall a stranger, sadder narrative than this.

Quote
George R.R. Martin, author of [i]A Game of Thrones[/i]
Truth hurts … and so does Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Amy Wallace’s harrowing account of her years as Carlos Castaneda’s lover and disciple is a cautionary tale for our times, the story of a woman whose search for meaning took her to the brink, and damned near cost her everything. In this painfully honest memoir, she takes us deep inside the Castaneda cult and shows us the mind games, ego trips, and petty cruelties that wore the guise of wisdom. ‘Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!’ the Wizard once tried to tell Dorothy. Amy Wallace has ripped the curtain down, and laid the wizard bare for all to see.