Witchcraft, a term used to describe the exercise or invocation of supernatural powers to control people or events, is often seen as the work of crones, particularly in the West. New Religious Movements (NRMs) have gained attention in popular media and academic discourse, with a small number of people involved. Witchcraft beliefs are negatively associated with age, education, and material observers, creating a gap between local social actors and the international framework of norms.
Witchcraft and witchcraft are generally regarded as “countercultural” and embrace a back-to-nature ethic. Some NRMs are anti-scientific and embrace a back-to-nature ethic, such as Neo-Paganism, Wicca, and Gardnerian Wicca. Witch trials, killings, and witchcraft-related conflicts have also been studied quantitatively, both in the context of contemporary Sub-Saharan societies.
There are both historical accounts and modern incarnations of paganism, occult practices, and witchcraft (or Wicca) movements. They harken back to ancient times and believe in the immanence of the divine. This paper proposes an interdisciplinary explanation of the cross-cultural similarities and evolutionary patterns of witchcraft beliefs, arguing that human social norms play a significant role in shaping these beliefs. The paper also discusses the goals and research methods of cultural anthropologists, highlighting the complex definitions of “magic”, “witchcraft”, and “religion”.
📹 What Happened to the “Witches” of Carlos Castaneda?
In 1998, several women associated with “Tensegrity,” the belief system of 1970s New Age guru, cult leader and literary hoaxer …
What is the NRM religion?
The New Religious Movement (NRM) refers to various new faiths that have emerged worldwide over the past centuries, often referred to as “cults”. These religions offer innovative religious responses to the modern world, often rooted in ancient traditions. They are often considered “countercultural” and are perceived as alternatives to mainstream Western religions, particularly Christianity. NRMs are often highly eclectic, pluralistic, and syncretistic, combining doctrines and practices from diverse sources within their belief systems.
They are often founded by charismatic and sometimes authoritarian leaders with extraordinary powers or insights. Many NRMs are tightly organized, often demanding loyalty and commitment from followers. NRMs have emerged to address specific needs that traditional religious organizations or modern secularism cannot satisfy. They are also products of and responses to modernity, pluralism, and the scientific worldview.
Some NRM topics include Baha’i, Children of God, Cults, Freemasons and Freemasonry, Santeria, Transcendental Meditation, Wicca or Witchcraft, and fictional depictions like Harry Potter.
What religion is based on paganism?
The Pagan community is comprised of a diverse array of religious groups, including Wiccans, Druids, Shamans, Sacred Ecologists, Odinists, and Heathens.
Which of the following is common among NRMs?
NRMs are new religious movements that offer innovative responses to the modern world, often rooted in ancient traditions. They are often considered “countercultural” and are perceived as alternatives to mainstream Western religions, particularly Christianity. These movements are often eclectic, pluralistic, and syncretistic, combining doctrines and practices from diverse sources. They are often founded by charismatic and sometimes authoritarian leaders with extraordinary powers or insights.
Many NRMs are tightly organized, often demanding loyalty and commitment from followers. They have emerged to address specific needs that traditional religious organizations or modern secularism cannot satisfy. NRMs are products of modernity, pluralism, and the scientific worldview. Some NRM topics include Baha’i, Children of God, Cults, Freemasons and Freemasonry, Santeria, Transcendental Meditation, and Wicca or Witchcraft. These groups often establish themselves as substitutes for family and other conventional social groups.
What is an example of a NRMs?
Joseph Smith established the religion known as Mormonism in 1830. Mormonism is a religious tradition that incorporates traditional Christian beliefs and practices while also espousing a set of distinctive tenets and practices.
Do Wiccans believe in god?
Wicca and Druidry are two religious traditions with distinct beliefs. Wicca is primarily based on a horned male god and a moon goddess, with the Dianic Wicca focusing on only the goddess. Some wiccans believe in both gods and goddesses, while others prioritize the goddess. Druidry, originating from King Arthur’s legends, is connected to Arthuriana through the Loyal Arthurian Warband, a Druidic group that uses Arthurian symbolism in its environmental movement.
What is considered witchcraft?
Witchcraft is the practice of using alleged supernatural powers to inflict harm or misfortune on others, with the term “witchcraft” traditionally referring to the use of magic or supernatural powers to inflict harm. This stereotype has a long history and has been a viable explanation of evil in many cultures. The belief in witchcraft has been found in various societies worldwide, with anthropologists applying the English term to similar beliefs in occult practices.
In Europe, belief in witchcraft traces back to classical antiquity. In medieval and early modern Europe, accused witches were usually women who were believed to have used black magic or maleficium against their own community. These accusations were made by neighbors and followed from social tensions. Witches were sometimes said to have communed with evil beings or the Devil, but anthropologist Jean La Fontaine notes that such accusations were mainly made against “enemies of the Church”.
Witchcraft was thought to be thwarted by protective magic or counter-magic, which could be provided by the “cunning folk” or “wise people”. Suspected witches were often intimidated, banished, attacked, or killed, and were often formally prosecuted and punished. European belief in witchcraft gradually dwindled during and after the Age of Enlightenment.
Indigenous belief systems that include the concept of witchcraft also define witches as malevolent and seek healers and medicine people for protection against witchcraft. Some African and Melanesian peoples believe witches are driven by an evil spirit or substance, and modern witch-hunting takes place in parts of Africa and Asia.
Which is a common feature shared by NRMs?
NRMs are new religious movements that offer innovative responses to the modern world, often rooted in ancient traditions. They are considered “countercultural” and are perceived as alternatives to mainstream Western religions, particularly Christianity. These movements are often eclectic, pluralistic, and syncretistic, combining doctrines and practices from diverse sources. They are often founded by charismatic and sometimes authoritarian leaders with extraordinary powers or insights.
Many NRMs are tightly organized, demanding loyalty and commitment from followers. They have emerged to address specific needs that traditional religious organizations or modern secularism cannot satisfy. NRMs are also products of modernity, pluralism, and the scientific worldview.
The historical roots, doctrines, and practices of NRMs in the West are extremely diverse, with many being classified under multiple categories. Some NRMs are characterized by an apocalyptic or millenarian dimension, with Christian millenarianism being the backdrop for the development of many NRMs in the West. These groups often make great demands on followers’ loyalty and commitment, sometimes establishing themselves as substitutes for family and other conventional social groups.
What religions are similar to Wicca?
There is considerable disagreement on the precise definition and proper usage of modern paganism, even within the academic field of pagan studies. Most scholars describe modern paganism as a broad array of different religions, not a single one, comparing it to the categories of Abrahamic and Indian religions in structure. A second, less common definition, promoted by religious studies scholars Michael F.
Strmiska and Graham Harvey, characterizes modern paganism as a single religion, with groups like Wicca, Druidry, and Heathenry as denominations. This perspective has been critiqued due to the lack of core commonalities in issues such as theology, cosmology, ethics, afterlife, holy days, or ritual practices within the pagan movement.
Contemporary paganism has been defined as a collection of modern religious, spiritual, and magical traditions inspired by the pre-Judaic, pre-Christian, and pre-Islamic belief systems of Europe, North Africa, and the Near East. It has been described as a movement dedicated to reviving the polytheistic, nature-worshipping pagan religions of pre-Christian Europe and adapting them for the use of people in modern societies. Religious studies scholars Kaarina Aitamurto and Scott Simpson have written that they are “like siblings who have taken different paths in life but still retain many visible similarities”.
However, there has been much cross-fertilization between these different faiths, making clear-cut distinctions among them more difficult for scholars to make. The various pagan religions have been academically classified as new religious movements, with some academics, particularly in North America, considering modern paganism a form of nature religion.
What religion is associated with witchcraft?
Wicca, an alternative minority religion founded in the UK in the 1940s, is part of the contemporary pagan movement, which includes druids and heathens. Since its arrival in the US in the 1960s, Wicca has been growing, with an estimated 1. 5 million witches in the US. However, not all witches consider themselves Wiccans, with approximately 800, 000 Americans being Wiccans according to recent survey data. The increasing numbers in surveys and the growth of groups on platforms like TikTok suggest that the religion is continuing to grow.
What items are considered witchcraft?
In the neopagan religion of Wicca, a variety of magical tools are used in ritual practice, with each tool having different uses and associations. These tools are commonly used at an altar within a magic circle. In the traditional Gardnerian magic system, covens were groups of initiated members who conducted rituals involving magical tools and secret books, such as the Book of Shadows. These tools were kept within a specific coven and were considered sacred.
These tools were owned and used by individual Wiccans, but could also be used collectively. This practice may derive partly from Masonic traditions and partly from the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which used material from medieval grimoires like the Key of Solomon. The use of these tools in Wicca may be influenced by Masonic traditions and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn’s rituals.
Are Wicca and Witchcraft the same thing?
Wicca, also known as Witchcraft or “the Craft”, is a religion that encompasses various theological views, including theists, atheists, and agnostics. Some view the religion’s deities as literal entities, while others view them as Jungian archetypes or symbols. Even among theistic Wiccans, there are divergent beliefs, including pantheists, monotheists, duotheists, and polytheists.
Theological views within Wicca are diverse, with some viewing the deities as forms of ancient, pre-Christian divinities. Early Wiccan groups adhered to the duotheistic worship of a Horned God and a Mother Goddess, believed to have been ancient deities worshipped by hunter-gatherers of the Old Stone Age. This theology was derived from Egyptologist Margaret Murray’s claims about the witch-cult in her book The Witch-Cult in Western Europe.
The name of these deities was kept secret within the tradition, but in 1964, they were publicly revealed to be Cernunnos and Aradia. The term “Witches” has been used as a synonym for witchcraft more generally in popular culture, such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Charmed.
In popular culture, the term “Wicca” has been used as a synonym for witchcraft more generally, including in non-religious and non-Pagan forms. Theological views within Wicca are influenced by various perspectives, including pantheists, monotheists, duotheists, and polytheists.
📹 Is MAGICK FAKE and the Study of New Religions Useless?
Is magic real? Is Magick real? Why do I study something “not real” like Magical practices and “made-up” religions, such as Wicca …
As someone native from South America, descendant from (Quechua/aymara), when i read Castaneda’s books i saw many things that i previously experienced, specially around the amazonas. Many of the things he speaks about, entities and the power of the night and open areas, i can say that he speaks factually. Many natives who never went out to civilazation and stood in their villages have knowledge that he speaks about very clearly, even body techniques. To me, his work is a door to the occult that not many can reach, and he shares it. People waste a lot of time arguing about whether everything was a farse or about females he had relationships with. It’s more a reflection of who you are and why it pisses you off, or makes you invest so much time discrediting. (Not meaning your article, i mean in general). People need to go out and find for themselves. Btw south america experimented through thousands of years with Ayahuasca. Yet the component of that plant and Peyote, as well as other cultures (Africa specially) who are believed to have aquired consciousness through the usage of such plants, with help of “beings”. Our reality today is basically cement.
In the early 70s I was a university student interested in eastern philosophy and psychedelics. I had two experiences that were powerful but baffling to me. Two or three years later I encountered the Don Juan books and was startled to find my experiences described as losing the human form and hearing the voice of seeing. I was hooked on reading all the works. Not being a joiner I never became involved with the movement. After reading Castaneda I did have other experiences similar to those from the Books but the pre exposure experiences seem the most uncanny. The later books were mostly about Stalking which involves intentional creation of a false crisis to move the students assemblage point for magical experiences. At 73 I remain puzzled but unable to completely dismiss Castaneda.
Are you familiar with Merilyn Tunneshende? She wrote two books 📚 Medicine Dream-A Woman’ Encounter with the Healing Realms of Don Juan and Don Juan and the Art of Sexual Energy. In the second book on pg 219 she describes Don Juan’s death 💀. On pg 124 she describes diagnosing CC liver cancer. On pg 221 she talks about CC death 💀 in April 1998. No one mentioned her name in the comments so I 🤔 thought I would.😉
My teacher in Tecate, the medicine man of the Yaquis, knew Carlos and helped him write the books. He told Carlos “if you make any money from these books bring some back to the tribe”. He never did. My teacher always referred to him as Pinche Carlos. Carlos took the spiritual practices of the Yaquis and twisted it for his own power. It is sad to see so many still follow Carlos
I am an old Hippie, coming along as Hippiedom was just coalescing. A product of the psychedelic experience was the ever broadening of what Reality encompassed. A friend had written a book, THE PSYCHEDELIC GUIDE TO THE PREPARATION OF THE EUCHARIST, which very clearly describes how to create many psychedelics. Soon we were roaming the South Texas desert searching for peyote from which we chemically extracted mescaline. In the desert area were local peyote pickers, licensed to provide the plant to Native Americans. Later, as I became aware of the Don Juan series I realized that the story was likely a work of imagination. It bore too much of the experiences that the “psychedelic experience” had already proven to be imaginary. The REAL MAGIC that took place was how real Love is and how close to the psychological surface it truly lays.
I have always been enamored with Castanedas writings. The concepts seemed incongruous but they always had an element of truth. No self importance, no feelings of In superiority, or feelings of failure. Cutting off the internal dialogue is very important to developing the magic of Don Juan. This is all rather disconcerting and I would love to do further research on this whole subject.
It’s been interesting to reread the Castenada’s first books recently and come across this critique. I feel (I don’t know) his first book had some information that did come from Native Americans. Carlo’s first experience with Mescalito is very different from the laid back high I observed in friends back in the 1970s when many thought doing drugs was cool. Now we have a resurgence of interest in Shamanism with the Ayahuasca drug who’s point is to meet entities in another dimension. Rereading the first book it seems to me he is warning people of the dangers of hallucinogens and shamans by his awful experiences. Having seen people damaged by drugs back in the 1970s, especially jimsom weed and morning glories, it’s amazes me why so many of my generation tried the drugs described in his books. Having met shaman, as designated by their tribe, they scare the hell out of me. Castaneda did plagiarize from a lot of sources that I find entertaining and some quotes valuable to me. After his third book I became convinced even in my teenage years he went into writing fantasy that I still found entertaining. I’m just hoping the first book isn’t made into a movie, I’d hate to see young people pursue shamanism through drugs that can do permanent damage to their brains and nervous system. Please don’t attempt to find knowledge from the drugs Carlos describes. As for the cult that Carlos surrounded himself with should be described as a horrible failure. Sorry for the women who thought they had found a path to spiritual powers, but ended up succumbing to one man’s fantasy.
The eternal question: Can one separate the art from the artist? Carlos Castaneda was a captivating and gifted writer. Unfortunately, later on he became an abusive cult leader and egomaniac. On which basis do we judge him — by his art, or his personal life? I read his books as a teenager and young adult. I was hooked by his first three books which caught my imagination — so much so, that I once had a powerful acid trip that was inspired subconsciously by his writings. By the fourth book, however, I realized Castaneda was a huckster. Fraud or not, he was a fine storyteller. There was even a little wisdom in his books, sprinkled among the bullshit. Fertilizer does help the flowers grow, after all. It’s a shame he didn’t heed his own writings and grow wise as he aged. He did the opposite; he became a monster. At least he left three wonderful books for the world to read. Thanks for this wonderful article, and your two subsequent ones on this topic. I am currently reading “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” by Amy Wallace. I highly recommend it.
I was drawn to the castaneda books in 71 after returning from viet nam. LSD, pot, left me with life altering experiences and also a good deal of confusion. Casataneda capitalized on that moment in time where conciousness expansion was only a toke or pill away. I recall that about the third book i began to see this was a scam, no doubt making castaneda wealthy, famous, and sexually satisfied. He was a gifted story teller but also an ass, preying on other peoples earnest desire to reach some deeper understanding of life. Turns out we’re our own best teacher when we learn to listen to the spirit within. No mediator required though honest others are helpful.
I was in a position to interact with Carlos Castaneda on two occasions at UCLA in the early seventies because I knew two young women, roommates, who had both dated him. He readily admitted his primary motivation in writing the books and getting his PhD. stemmed from deep feelings of personal insecurity based on his ethnicity and background. He said (something along the lines of) ‘I’m a short, brown Hispanic man from Peru who very much wanted to get dates with tall blonde girls, and obtaining my PhD was my goal so I could ‘score.’ The two girls I knew who introduced me to him basically supported that premise. Their friendship with him bore this out. He wrote his books in the library at UCLA and gleaned the hodgepodge of philosophical BS they contained from other philosophical and spiritual books he read. He mixed in colorful stories from his own trips in and around Latin America and the American southwest. And he exploited the interests of the era in altered states of consciousness. He created a fictional narrative that he exploited meet girls who otherwise would have never even noticed him. It was all a ‘schtick.’ Even he admitted it.
I ve been practising tensegrity before and it really worked. I never been into groups or leaders so i did it on my own. I started doing it again few days ago and it brings me energy and peace and the rest of drama I don’t care about.. not trying to jump from the cliff either ..but i always wondered what happened to Kylie L.
*Funny that for the one of them witches you couldn’t find any photo is Kylie Lundahl. Because here, on youtube, there’s long interview with her and two more, explaining the lineage of Castaneda’s mystic path and so on. Also, wherever you see a pictures of a woman in black jump suit, showing the ‘Tensegrity’ movements – that’s Kylie. Blond, shorthaired, looking exactly like Nuri, Florinda and who know who else more of their magic convent.
Nice piece. It is probably difficult now at this later date to understand why these books were so important within the context of the time in which they were written. It was necessary THEN for me to hear what he had to say,(both Castenada and Don Juan ) and to incorporate, or square that into/with my understanding of the world. To have a more vital and comprehensible connection with the mystical and unseen forces I felt/sensed were otherwise all around us, but just beyond my knowing. I made some of my own investigations (as did my friends) into the metaphysical and altered states of consciousness spoken about. because I was a curious/seeking young man of that era. This articles information is interesting, but really does nothing to diminish the first books as they concerned or influenced myself or others I knew then (1970’s). Certainly one of those, “you had to have been there” points in time in order to fully appreciate the cultural context. Likewise with Hesse’s ‘Siddartha’ or McKenna’s books, or even in some ways Richard Brautigan’s poetry and verse. All still relevant, but also very era specific too. Thanks
Cleargreen had to drop the term “Tensegrity” to “magical passes” because Buckminster Fuller’s estate threatened a lawsuit…. Tensegrity is the foundation of geodesic domes as related by Buckminster Fuller. It combines the words tension and integrity. The very thing that makes structures impervious to outside influence. The book is “Critical Path”. It is a cracking good read and then some… The point of Castaneda’s teachings is internal silence It’s all about challenging perception❤❤
The historical moment you describe is not over at all. Meditation is more popular than ever but “gurus” or cult leaders are no longer very noticeable. The MSM however has lost interest decades ago. I read and loved his books in the ’60’s and I am still at it in terms of enquiring into consciousness. I have never become disillusioned even though some teachers were less than they claimed, because our consciousness itself is endlessly fascinating. From where does it arise?
I read Travels to Ixylan years ago and loved the way it challenged my concepts of reality. I never took it as a literal account of events but rather an imaginary and mythical dive into spirituality. I enjoyed it from that perspective. Erasing personal history goes back to early Christianity when one is born again. Nothing new here. Historically cults arise during times of conflict, change and or cataclysmic events. There is a good book that addresses this phenomena called “The First Messiah.”
Around 1976 I visited Carlos Castaneda’s house in the farming country north of Los Angeles, near Carpinteria. I went and knocked on his front door and the door was answered by an Hispanic woman whom I took to be his housekeeper. She said that he wasn’t home and wouldn’t be back for some days so I gave up and continued my motorcycle trip. I wonder if the woman I talked to was one of his “witches”?
I met Castaneda around 1994 up north México City, during a three day seminar about Transegrity, attended by hundreds of people, many of them younger than me, with lots of loyal women recieving and headed the “lessons” to visitors like me and “pupils” who payed a fee, the last day Castaneda himself held a talking and talked to a small group of press reporters –me among them. So, that is why I liked your article, Sean, since I somehow understand what you talk about in general, but those women dissapearing was something I didn’t know, the theme here is treated very seriously here by you, congratulations 😮
Thank you. Fantastic journalism. I always thought CC had genuine spiritual knowledge, but that he was also reinventing himself in pursuit of his personal objectives. Sounds like a combination of talent, drive, genuine knowledge & personal objectives. Sounds fairly rational, intelligent and human. He doesn’t offend me. Disillusioned former true believers do not alter my mixed assessment. Take what you can use and leave the rest. -Dan
Nicely done. I was hooked by Carlos Castaneda’s adventures back in ‘73 and continued to read him right up to the bitter end, more out of lurid fascination at the whole saga than credulous adherence to his fantastic claims, which, if taken as psychotropic Vaseline dreams, might have loosely passed as phenomenological reports. They never were convincing enough that I would follow him over a cliff. Delving into his sources, digging out the truth of the matter occupied me for years. I think the philosophic seeds strewn throughout his far flung yarns owe more to Gurdjieff, Karlfried Von Durkheim, Alan Watts and others than to a Yaqui Indian named Don Juan Matus. According to his ex-wife “Matus” was Castaneda’s favorite brand of port. Cheers! Tensegrity’s “magical passes” are clearly no more than rehashed Qi Gong—in fact his book “The Fire From Within” bears a dedication to his martial arts instructor. And having read, God help me, the “witches’” books as well, I believe those manuscripts were quite likely written by Castaneda himself in his tireless campaign to shore up the credibility of his mythos. The writing style reads exactly like his. Recently I went back and had a look at his writings from “Tales of Power” on (I have a whole file box stowed away in the garage) and found his schtick completely unreadable—just plain bad writing. Oh well, live and learn.
One important aspect of this story is that the ritualistic use of peyote, datura and other halucinogenic plants that was a part of Castaneda’s ‘cult’ could lead to mental derangement and insanity. Especially when used over an extended period of time, these drugs can be very damaging to one’s mental health. These poor women may well have been completely out of their minds by the time Castaneda died.
…I was given the Carlos Castaneda book I mentioned in reaction to another post mid-eighties for a birthday… That means that all this happened AFTER I’d read the book. Because I was a small child in the seventies and wasn’t even alive during the sixties, I sort of assumed this was like ancient history. Wow! Thanks for that contextualization!
I’m of the generation that first read Castaneda, and read his first in 1969 when I was 18. Sean is correct when he says we were fascinated with altered states of consciousness, but I and everyone I knew understood that Castaneda was fiction, but that he had some acquired some knowledge of shamanistic practices including the peyote rituals, and found it a very interesting understanding of the universe. I still do. It’s a lot more fun than christianity, et al.
I read Castaneada’s books as a teenager in the mid 80’s. They blew my mind and changed the direction of my life. I became an acupuncturist and functional medicine practitioner. I explored his tensegrity system in the late-90’s, and came to the conclusion that it was a rip off of simplistic Chinese Qi Gong and Taoist energy cultivation practices. I also realized back in the mid 90’s that Castaneada fabricated the entire story.
My advice is don’t actually ascribe to Castanedas practices. If you use mushroom, peyote, etc., just let your own ways be found. Many of the indigenous people used the Virgin Mary with mushroom use. The Yaqui’s where a hard Indian tribe that used large doses of the hallucinagenic plants and where proably more indoctrinated than other people. Dosage is really the difference between good and evil sometimes when it comes to medicine.
Carlos was a fiction writer who used the growing popularity of psychedelic drugs to create fantastic stories of alternative realities. The lesson I learned from his writing is that THE BRAIN is the creator of all experiences high or low. When you introduce certain substances it alters brain activity and produces unusual changes in perception. Once I realized that I stopped trying to alter my consciousness and accepted ordinary awareness.
I first read The Teaching Of Don Juan as a teenager. I was a deeply seeking person at that time. My older brother had a copy on his bookshelf. This was before Castaneda was exposed as a fraud (or at least long before I became aware of his exposure). I got about 1/4 of the way through the book and said to myself “This sounds like bullshit,” and stopped reading. I guess my “detector” has always been in good working order.
I think it’s evident from reading his books that they are an amalgamation of indigenous folk lore, psychedelic trips, and some new age philosophy. He was a good storyteller, a good writer, and knew how to put it all together. Of course, even though it is all fiction there is some truth in there – as there is in many stories, especially existential or spiritual ones. No doubt he had some charisma too and the power and attention went to his head which he capitalised on by charming a handful of gullible woman.
Theres a book called (I believe) Don Coyote. Was a book that fully DISPROVES the whole Do Juan series. Timelines dont add up. Basically fully proves that it all was a fabricated LIE. Iwas very much a big fan and it crushed me to find out it was all a big lie. Possibly these “,witches” dont exist as well. Some of the knowledge … perpetated had a lot of real knowledge and I experienced some world changing events as my personal life experience. I cant explain it. I had a moth speak to me. I witnessed the “crack'” between the worlds. Saw what I believed was an “Ally” etc. So the books I believed did contain some real knowledge. Thanks for this article. Very well done. 🤠
There is some profound knowledge in that fiction, yet the crux of it is very depressing. I took copious notes on the books. LOL. Tried to piece together something practical. One problem is spending 5 years in a small crate to recapitulate. Another is erasing personal history. There are other branches of Toltecs, and they have their problems as well. However, I would say glean what one can from it all and move on. In recognition of Don Juan’s advice, self-importance makes one vulnerable to many bad things, including, I would say, scams.
When I read Castenada’s books in the late 70’s I was fascinated by the style of his writing like a child stunned by the wild ride he was on. I found them most entertaining. Later in the 90’s I then caught wind of his Tensegrity movement and the drift towards a cult. When I first heard of his death an later about his “Witches” gone missing my imagination once again went wild for a while. Sean with your article you helped me to put this into a context. Thanks for that!
“Erasing personal history’ is a basic method of all manipulators, even jealous husbands and wifes. It’s easy to control someone with no familly and friend-ties. That is why cult-leaders using this method. No one need a ‘saviour’. We are our own saviour and guru. Do not give away your power to anyone, by thinking, that they are better than you. As they say: “we are one”, so why would anyone would search for a guru, or an authority figure to undermine his/her divinity? I enjoyed your story.
Carlos Casteneda clicked all the righrt boxes for that era of the 70s. He had lived the life that restless middle class adolescents could only dream of. Everyone who was into self transformation, Eastern religions, Native American shamanism, antediluvian lost history, etc. thought he was the ultimate seeker of truth and a bonafide mystic who went out into the desert wilderness to encounter his spiritual Guide. It didn’t even occur to any of us that he had made it all up.
I read Castaneda‘s books in college and found them compelling stories. I just saw them as part of that counter culture drug influenced indigenous kind of appropriation that was relatively common at the time. I remember the controversy when they were debunked but I wasn’t terribly surprised. It’s unfortunate that Castaneda felt compelled to fabricate his research because North American indigenous spirituality strikes me as a fascinating field of study.
One question that you don’t seem to have addressed is: Who got the money from CC’s estate? He was a best-selling author and I’m sure royalties are still flowing (or trickling by now) into the coffers of someone. Did these women have access to a couple of million dollars and just go set themselves up in a compound somewhere else? As to the frustration with the police investigations, in the absence of any indications of foul play, the police are (quite rightly) inclined to presume that someone who doesn’t want to be found is really not their business.
I love this article. Castaneda was a incredibly great writer, and it made his stories seem very real. He also knew that Americans were very hungry for what he wrote about. He wrote what everyone wanted to hear and believe at that time in history. Americans are still hungry for mythology and spirituality. Look at all the Big Foot, UFO, DogMan, and inter dimensional stories and articles on YouTube. They all dabble in the paranormal world that goes beyond science and common reasoning. Castaneda was a genius to have written such elaborate and fantastical stories, about his adventures with someone that didn’t even exist. But he also screwed up some people’s lives along the way. How many people he left “emotionally gutted” is hard to say. Castaneda talked about certain plants and how to use them according to the Don Juan’s instructions. I knew of a guy that ingested the seeds of one of those plants and he went a little crazy after that. Castaneda in his writings said not to ingest the seeds, but for some people that is not a deterrent. It was very sad that some people took Castaneda’s BS stories for real. I won’t mention the plant and its seeds, so as not to get someone curious about ingesting the seeds themselves. Through his phony teachings, Castaneda hurt people both physically and emotionally. I remember hearing about his death. I felt a bit vindicated that he died. He hadn’t disappeared as he suggested he would in all his books. He had died a physical death just like anyone else. Unlike he said Shaman were supposed to do upon knowing they were going to die, Castaneda didn’t go out and die in the desert.
I am a big fan of Castaneda, I read all his books up to Eagles Gift, I was always skeptic of his “adventures” with Don Juan, but there was a lot to learn from his life lessons, I am pretty sure they were borrowed from oriental religion, but they are still valid. After Eagles Gift it became too much slush. I always thought it was fiction/new-age, but it was still lots of things to reflect on one’s own life. I value his work and don’t judge him for who he may be.
I started reading Castenada’s books in the ’80s, beginning with a summer class in college entitled Philosophy and Fantasy. My professor, who claimed to have known Castaneda somewhat, essentially presented the reality of the story as an open question for us to ponder and debate. What I can say after reading all or most of the books is that lucid dreaming, which I had spontaneously experienced a couple of times before, can be enhanced or focused through some of Castaneda’s techniques; I actually reproduced the experiences of looking at my hand and flying in dreams, among others. I would agree though that the women probably committed suicide and this is very unfortunate. “Don Juan’s” death was depicted as an intentional and spiritual act, described without any physical details, more of a “becoming one with the Eagle” or something along those lines. Perhaps this is what the “witches” were aiming for. I think it’s fine to experiment with altered states of consciousness that do not involve psychoactive drugs, which Don Juan/Castaneda more or less renounced in a later book. But I do fear that following such experiments into the realms of death is a symptom of cultism and a rather huge mistake, perhaps the largest mistake most people could ever make.
I read Casteneda 45 years ago. I remember the end of one book where he with Don Juan and Don Juan Genaro solemly lead a group Nagual/Yaquai’s up to the top of a high steep mesa and the rested at the edge of a cliff. The group seemed bemuddled with depressed issues and some of the group had actually made the climb to hurl themselves from it. It was actually the warriors last stand, but maybe it was really suicide as their complex problems of witchcraft (sorcery) had made them ill. Through death they would move on. Rise to a star.
Superb article mate. Much obliged🤗🤗 His books are far above his own life…interesting to see how he, himself perceived them. Indeed…even if he was a master scammer….the ultimate Irony of Ironies. That said, various themes and concepts in Castanedas books can be found in various other esoteric traditions. Buddhism and various other practices from India. Indeed…..meditation and silence are KEY aspects of all altered states of awhereness.
I read many of Castaneda’s books — “Journey to Ixtlan” being my favorite — but when in his later books the Toltec’s were flying around in warlike fashion and Castaneda’s protégés were climbing the walls in his studio I decided this was all too bizarre and frightening for me to continue because I had no intention of following those paths. Castaneda’s descriptions were so believable that I give credibility to their being authentic: I had a friend — the head of a sculpture foundry in N. Mexico who claimed drug-riddled trips into isolated locales in Mexico which sounded very much like those Castaneda described.
His wife (Margaret) has suggested that Matus was a composite character, like Plato made a fictionalized Socrates a character in his work, in order to personify certain themes or ideas. She also hypothesized that Matus’ name was inspired by Castaneda’s fondness for Mateus wine. Under these circumstances I can’t see him, the writer, as a fraud and liar; just that he was too “clever” and people misunderstood his writing style. I read him as a teenager, and I didn’t get a lot of what he wrote, but I did understand that it was fiction, even if I didn’t understand that it was meant to be symbolic. I found an article by Daniel Miller that I tend to agree with. I think he started writing the books to describe something he aspired to, thinking that if he wrote long enough, the answers would come to him. And when they didn’t, he fell into a cynical con game he practiced because he was tired of trying; and because he liked adulation, which might have kept him in a condition too material to get free of the world. Ironically. I would have liked to fly, but there was no way I was ever going to pee on my fingers to make it happen. Castaneda was not a very good writer. As a result, I haven’t thought about him in about 50 years.
Panamint Dunes are remote but not necessarily dangerous. They are a beautiful and constantly shifting landform beyond the end of a rocky road in the Panamint Valley, California. All of this is within Death Valley National Park, so caution is required if hiking alone, especially during the unforgiving summer months.
After four years in the Navy, which included 25 months in Vietnam as a combat medic I attended the university of the Americas in Mexico. That was in 1969. At some point Castaneda became very popular on campus. I read a couple of his books and found them to be fantastical, naïve and more along the lines of psychological fiction. However, there were many fellow students who thought all of Castañeda‘s writings were based on reality.
Thank you for filling in so many blanks; I was in my early 20s when his book came out, it was on so many bookshelves of my contemporaries, I just never fell into the supposed offerings. It was nonetheless a cultural icon of those times, and has importance as a milestone in my own life. A good and appreciated story you have produced here.
Nobody has mentioned that there was contact at UCLA between Castañeda and an individual of Yaquí parentage who likely was the source for much of the indigenous informtion. I can’t mention names. But I knew that individual, one of whose parents was Yaquí and the other of another indigenous people of the SW, and I joked to him once that, “You’re don Juan!” he just laughed. Sadly the communal attempts of the 60s largely failed, the exceptions being when there was a strong cultish leader, e.g., Steven Gaskin, or of course Carlos Castañeda.
Thank you for this… its been 10+ years of wondering about Carlos Castaneda. Psychedelic experiences almost seemed to be alluding to things they mentioned, so I wondered if more was true… but I always had an investigative reservation on accepting things as fact… just taking experiences as I found them There are definitely mechanisms and dynamics of reality that are hard to explain… like the non-linearity of time… but these recent conclusions based on the cult-like events really paint it all differently than I expected. I know after research that Freemasonry and Mystery Schools run the world, and evil and cults are everywhere… some much more quiet than this… but these ideas/concepts really affected many to rely on themselves for salvation! Trusting in oneself is foolish when it comes to this large realm of spirit/consciousness after death… Could this have all been an agenda for the world disseminated through Carlos given to him from other groups of New Age/Cult like Mystery Schools?
My understanding is that Carlos shacked up with an heiress who died relatively recently at the age of 90-plus. She is alleged to have said that among other things he liked to drink a Spanish wine called Matus. It’s also interesting that his probably most incisive critic, Richard DeMille, wrote that even though he didn’t believe Carlos went to the Sanoran Desert to meet “Don Juan” or that he necessarily experienced any of the effects he described, nevertheless not everything he said was contrived. His theory was that CC’s “journey” was not to any Mexican desert but simply across the campus to UC Irvine’s library where he dug up weird information from the cultural anthropology section.
And this book was suggested to me about 10 years ago, I never heard of it before. It was well written, but since I was in my early 30s, I thought it was kind of dumb. I don’t really understand the appeal of someone having visions from Hallucinogenics, as some great revealed wisdom. In any case, whether he met some old guy named Don Juan, or not really doesn’t make a difference to me just some hippie stuff that I was too old for.
I read the first three of Castenada’s books when they came out. They are very well written and very compelling. His degrees from UCLA gave him great credence at the time and many people were fascinated by psychedelic drugs The later books became more and more unbelievable, although they continued to sell extremely well even after his basic story was debunked. It is possible that he did have some experiences with native teachers in Mexico, enough to convince UCLA to give him degrees.
I never made it through “The Teachings of Don Juan,” concluding it was fictional before ever learning it had already been debunked, to no great surprise on my part. I didn’t think there was anything very interesting about him, so I stopped paying him any attention. I have to admit there’s an interesting mystery here. Until this came up on my YouTube feed, I hadn’t thought about Castaneda since the early eighties. Being something of a one time psychonaut, I can tell you that he is the last person you would want to rely on for information about psychoactive substances. In particular, daturas are a really bad idea that in no way will ever help you actually fly.
The comments on here are at least as interesting as the actual article! I myself read several of Castaneda’s books in my 20s. They excited my imagination and allowed me to understand how limited our consensual reality is especially in modernized, urban, Western civilization. Mainstream modern society has never been enough for me. I still remember ideas, at least once a week, such as being stalked, by our own desth, the threads/strings of the world, humans as luminous eggs, parents having holes in their luminousity caused by their children… and the reverent enchanting descriptions of the magnificent desert. I’m very grateful to have encountered these works.I’m now nearly 60 and still wonder if that “wind” moving the bushes is just moving air… or an Ally… 😂
Thanks for this article. First time seeing your work. I will check out others. I am revisiting Carlos Castaneda this week, after having read 4 of his books in the 1970s. I never really knew his story or the story of his cult after his fame in the 1970s. I revisited this because of several events in my own life related to one thing that “Don Juan Matus” said to Carlos and it happening in my own life. There have been other articles on this, including one in Salon in 2007 by Robert Marshall who also wrote a novel based on this, “A Separate Reality”, which I have not read.
This is an excellent article. Unlike so many YouTube articles of white guys talking about something they find interesting or cool, yours is actually informative and well written! Also you edited out any excess stuff, so it’s all pertinent and tightly presented. Thank you! If only others learned from articles like yours about how to present material.
As a neohippy kid, I loved Carlos and his books (along with Huxley’s Doors of Perception). It was clearly medicinal facts and experiences intermixed with fiction. His writings were brilliant and numinous. Sadly, any theology that makes man God (Genesis 3) collapses into darkness, and I am saddened to see how Carlos and some of his disciples ended up.
I think he made it up. A rational person wouldnt believe the extremely subtle detail. The entire story is about a person whos thinking was a step beyond what a normal person thinks…who somehow saw beyond the frailties typical of people. While extremely creative…the story itself gives the impression of walking on a borderline of an alternate reality. It didnt take much for me to think it was made up but your analysis verifies that for me.
Yeah the fact is that Carlos had some spiritual powers awakened. Hindus call those siddhis. With this he created the power and influence the people to follow him and also created enormous wealth. At the same time he was advanced spiritually no doubt about it. But many yogis who awake such powers then misuses them and fall into the wealth, fame and name, and never reach full enlightenment. Carlose could have been enlightened but he failed and abuse the power. Of course people wanted to be with him and serve him cause such people have unlimited energy and we like to feed from their energy. But actually one should connect with themselves and in this way with cosmic powers and not be dependent on outside GURUS ! This only increased weakness and immaturity and those witches are example of misuse.. were used in this way and got blinded and mad. Probably they and many others commited suicide or end up mentally and emotionally damaged as their guru did not fulfil his promises to them. AUWCH !!
Well this is a blast from the past.I read most of castaneda’s books in the early seventies, and most people i knew read them. Like almost everything else from that era he went out of fashion, no-one wanted to be cosmic anymore. The phrase “the path with heart” continued to be used for awhile but basically I stopped thinking about him and nobody i knew talked about him anymore. Had no idea he died in 1998. Then mayday 2024 he’s all over youtube. Bit disappointing that he became a kind of cult leader with a lot of female followers, such a cliche, and an echo of charlie manson, though without the murders as far as we know.
Like a lot of young people in the 70s, I read The Teachings of Don Juan (as did friends and siblings) and eagerly awaited the next book, much like you might await the next record from a favorite band. I remember reading a review of one of the later books (after Tales of Power) in Playboy magazine that (IIRC) described a witch telling Carlos to “pee in his hands” for some reason, to which the Playboy reviewer’s response was something like, “Seriously, Carlos?” That was when I experienced my first twinge of doubt. Now, 50 year later, I see that CC seems to have be a liar, plagiarist, cult leader, and con man. I guess you could say that at one point I was kind of a member of his cult, if only at a distance. The 70s, just downstream from the 60s, were strange times. I think naivete, spiritual asperations, and most importantly powerful psychoactive drugs were all a big part of this.
The main thing that turned me off to Carlos Castaneda after reading his books in my twenties, was the strong sense that no true wise man or shaman would take on a student as clueless and self-involved as Castaneda. Not to teach advanced metaphysical lessons, anyway. Life since then has only strengthened that belief. You need to be a serious student to get those teachings, and Castaneda wasn’t that.
Just a note; ANGER damages the liver (of course, along with alcohol & numerous other things along with other internal organ disfunction, as everything is meant to work ‘together’). I don’t know much about the guy, aside from whatever one might have been able to gather frim that first book, which somehow came into my possession in my early teens, for some reason. However, I do know anger can be a spiritual block & incredibly detrimental to your health & I know this all to well to be true. Aside from all that, the article was very well done & interesting. I thought from the beginning of this vid that these women may have very well found themselves lost without their ‘spiritual leader’ & sought to follow him into the afterlife after having built & changed so much of their previous & current (@ that time) lives around him.
This is all very revealing! As a 20 something in B.C. Canada Casteneda was all the rage, especially with french canadians. I read a bit of AYWO Knowledge but wasn’t impressed as I’d already been introduced to Avatar Meher Babas perfect words of wisdom after much searching elsewhere. When I told friends I wasn’t buying this Casteneda stuff I was often told I was naivé. Anyone that has read at least a few words from Perfect Masters through history could come up with Don Juans apparently unique gems, it wouldn’t be that difficult for me to do that now after 40 years of reading sacred texts! Thank you for this vindication. So much nonsense just like 99% of so called websiteers. They may occasionally contain gems from others but based on decipt. “Any hint of decipt will sweep you off the Spiritual path.” ~ “There are more than a few who feel they are far progressed along the Spiritual Path but in truth they haven’t even begun yet.” A.M.B. (paraphrased) ☘ 💖🙏💫
thank you for your presentation – it was very informative to hear YOUR point of view… but the movement Castaneda created has not died and unfortunately many young women from various cultures and countries including Great Britain and Russia and American women still follow his path… dropping out of family and leaving in Peru or Oregon and other places disconnected from their primary social circle – the movement is alive and will get momentum again when modern pharma companies introduce mushroom pills on the market, ayahuasca getting commercialized, this will be a marketing trend to sell mind alternation and healing with native plants – dont close your books but keep researching – we will get back to 70s craze again but in more “for profit” manner!
Florinda was a character’s name in some of the Castaneda books. Pretty sure I read all of them back in the 90’s. I don’t know why, but I was really into it for years. I have to say, I have actually never heard of Tensegrity. ??? Unless it was a term in the books that I forgot? Of course in the very first book “integrity” is a key term.
I read almost every book of Castaneda’s in my early 20’s after an ex-girlfriend gave me “The Active Side of Infinity.” The one quote that sticks with me was related to the abundance of “crackpots” within the spiritual community. Ironically Carlos’s character was not “impeccable.” Like the fraudster gurus before him and, the wu wu crowd that followed, fragmented teachings mixed with narcissism didn’t hold water. On the other hand, where did he come up with “Magical Passes?” It is pragmatic and concise, with effects similar to Qigong. It’s hard to fake a whole-body exercise routine with therapeutic effects.
I was introduced to Castaneda’s books in the late 1970’s. I am a very open minded, and science based thinker and as I read the books, I thought, “our perception of the world is based on our senses and there could be things happening beyond our perceptions”. But they don’t matter to me because without data (quantified “perceptions”) we can’t really construct a reliable model. No model, no use as a predictor of outcomes. His ideas tickle my imagination but they are not useful in solving real world problems. Does that make me a “fun hater”?
M’yeah… difficult to conclude definitely whether on their disparition, or Don Juan’s actual existence. Having said this, if you extract from the 8 “first” books, only what Don Juan says (and it has been done somewhere on the net), it takes a whole new perspective, much more aligned with other paths of wisdom around the world. Castaneda, in any case, was far from it.
I don’t know when I read the first book, but I’m guessing it was in the 1970s. It never occurred to me at the time that I was supposed to take it seriously. Years later I read that it was supposed to be based on anthropological research, and that it had been debunked. Then I never heard another word – this is all new to me. I wonder why it never got publicized.
I read all the Castaneda books back in the 90s. Never heard any of this cult stuff or other negative about him until now. That said, the first book comes off as plausible. It really does read like a naive anthropologist encountering a mercurial witch doctor. But by the time you get to the later books, it is so obviously a bunch of made up BS. I can forgive anyone for buying into his shtick on the first 2 books. They are actually well written and intriguing. But the 3rd, 4th and later books are clown shoes. There is a reason people use Castaneda as way to describe a certain type of dreadlocked white person.
I found a lot of interesting comments below. I had never heard of this guy but I can see a lot of the 70’s in him. I perhaps wouldn’t call his book a lie, rather he collected info from various sources and said it was from this 1 guy. These thoughts and beliefs were already out there. I also wonder if murder/suicide isn’t the answer to the missing women. The person I find most interesting is the girl he left everything to in his Will, and that there is no photo of her. No PASSPORT/ DRIVERS LICENSE /SCHOOL id/ VISA? Isnt that strange. Who owns the property now?
Jesus I’m 76 years old and have spent a lot of time perusal YouTube articles and all of a sudden Carlos Castaneda pops up in my algorithm. I was hooked right from the start even after his books were relegated onto the fiction section of bookstores. So what’s interesting to me about this story of these women and Castaneda is the idea that “cult” applies. Anybody think we can connect Carlos and the Donald? A couple of very effective con men who recognize that there’s an opportunity to pull a fast one over on the gullible.😂
Yes interesting. The funny thing was to the 1980’s readers of Cataneda, well me anyway, the veracity of the story, wasn’t the point. It was the lesson. I think that’s how he survived. A good yarn or lifestyle suggestion.True the books weren’t sold as fiction, so mislabled indeed. Without labouring the point he was a sort of Jordon Peterson of the 70’s. And Peterson’s working materials were/are the religious scripts of the bible, and thats all myth and good story telling.
Carol Tiggs, not her real name likely is living or was in Tucson, Arizona. Castaneda was rumored to go there often before venturing into Mexico for some mysterious rendevous. His home in Los Angeles may only be one of several others he provide for himself and his “witches” or Chocmools in the U.S. and Mexico. Maybe the other witches disappeared to Mexico where finding them will be all but impossible.
I think Castaneda stumbled on to being a cult leader. Many people, including me, in the 70’s had lost our faith in religion but hungered for something magical to give life meaning and purpose to replace it. Castaneda made up the Don Juan story and I think he was surprised by how well it did. Like many before and after him he found how many believed his shit just like Trump was supervised (his run for the Presidency was meant to be only a publicity stunt). As a cult leader Castaneda was not too “bad”. He didn’t get too greedy (unlike Fundamentalist Preachers) and used it just enough to not have to ever have to work again, get some nice woman groupies (some that wanted to learn to be cult leaders like him), and make some interesting friends/followers. He actually taunted many of these people with the fact he was just bullshitting them but they not only didn’t believe him but thought he was just testing them. Suckers are born every minute so why not profit from it.
Doesn’t the fact that there was no real Don Juan makes Castaneda’s system even more impressive? I don’t believe the metaphysical claims either but if you practice the exercises you will see all sorts of shit, it’s pretty fun to explore your mind. If he came up with that by himself that’s pretty impressive, even if he drank his own koolaid in the process.
Castaneda strikes me as having narcissistic personality disorder (NPD). The love-bombing alternating with dismissive rejections, continual gaslighting, womanizing or creating a harem (in some cases and definitely in his case), and magnetic charm are some traits of this personality disorder. Think Donald Trump, although Castaneda was deeply intellectual, highly educated, and a brilliant researcher and writer by contrast to the conman from NYC. I’ve often wondered why Castaneda wasn’t satisfied with being known as a gifted researcher and storyteller – apparently the lure of his alter identity as the Nagual was too big for him to ignore. Amy Wallace states in her book that he seemed to believe his own projected fantasies (and yes, some are realistically based on metaphysical and philosophical phenomena and cultural studies, so there’s some truth there about alternate realities and some indigenous cultural features. This weird mix of living within a mix of fantasy and reality is also a trait of of many people with NPD. NPD develops in early childhood as a survival defense mechanism and is reinforced as an inauthentic personality while the authentic personality is subverted at whatever point in childhood that the child begins to develop the PD. I was unfortunate to have a parent with the disorder, which led to my having young adult relationships with abusive men with NPD until I began to understand my predicament. I have had family connections to Los Angeles from the early ’70s onward and feel thankful that I never sought out the Castaneda group as many women and a few men did.
Castaneda gave the world a profoundly important gift, but you have to look beyond his personal narrative and human doings to see it. There’s a reason, even after 50-60 years, that many of Castaneda’s books about his experiences with Don Juan are still best selling on Amazon. It’s because the wisdom from Don Juan speaks to the reader. Is Don Juan fake or real? Is Castaneda fake or real? it doesn’t matter. What matters is that we have access to this information and Castaneda made it available to us. For that I am grateful.
I’m sure you are aware of this already, but in Castenada’s “the art of dreaming” (copyright 1993) “Carol Tiggs” (assuming not her real name) goes missing and the book abruptly ends in a heavily dramatic fashion. I have read only this book. I will soon begin his final work to see what details it might contain. What do you make of this detail? is it foreshadowing of some hoax or conspiracy that he laid out prior to his death for these women to go into seclusion and commit suicide? It is one example that disappearance was on his mind. Something stranger perhaps?
I think he was kind of a cosmic trickster. Knew how to have a good time. Knew how to draw attention. Played many angles. Cosmic opportunist, and he gave a lot of material for people to chomp on. It also wouldn’t surprise me if he were part of culture creation on purpose by some larger clearing house, along with so many others who seemed to have a foot in CIA or something like. Maybe culture has long been steered so as control the flow. And give people stuff to do. And experiment on people to see how they respond to different set-ups and drugs, etc. And has the many comments show, people get different things from his offerings, cherry picking for their own personal appetite for development.
Its a subtley inspired but twisted way of looking at the world differently… some ways of thinking are convincing and have an effect on you… I wouldn’t just dismiss it as harmless It encourages demonic evocation for one (inorganic beings) and also encourages disconnection from others… as well as over self-reliance (which is not always healthy) and fantasy/overconfidence… not to mention his real life behaviors outside of his bliss-bunny-woo-woo books were actually quite insane and pretty uncomfortable. These people obviously were in a sex cult relationship and all were convinced through some means to suicide when Carlos died… you could tell they were upset when he was sick most probably because they had some sort of understanding that they had to leave together… as if Carlos would guide them after death…. or they would “miss the boat” so to speak. It almost was Anti-Christian the concepts… they say they want to fly past the eagle of infinity? Why and what does it mean? Reincarnation soul trap? It almost festers a fear of being farmed after death in people who believe in what they are saying. No one else was talking about the strangeness of reality like Carlos so many people flocked to his books I would say, hoping to find things that were true. I think time is non-linear and there are interesting caveats of what that implies… but taking that and running with it off a cliff is foolish and self-destructive
I searched ‘carlos castaneda’ having no idea that he was a fraud. I was anticipating a wealth of knowledge. Glad I saw this stuff before wasting my time reading ‘The Art of Dreaming’. Charles Manson vibes. Bleh. I’m gonna question the teachings of every person who cites him as being their main influence from now on.
The book I read, The Active Side of Infinity ends with Castaneda “leaping into the abyss”. That was the last book. There’s no doubt in my mind what happened after his death: his followers were bewildered, felt alone, without direction, in sorrow, and followed Castaneda “to the other side”. It’s all in the ending of his last book. And of course most of them haven’t been found: prairie wolves / coyotes and other animals would eat the remains. Even the bones. My own dog eats the full bone of a cow if I don’t stop her. So why wouldn’t a wild animal?
20:55 I don’t agree with this at all. I’d particularly point to the end of the 1990, where Y2K intersected with Christian Millennium eschatology, when techno Utopianism was in bloom, and in particular Deepak Chopra and Eckhart Tolle. They could never fly under the radar as much as Castaneda did in his later years, social media is so important now. I don’t mean to morally equate the writers I mentioned. Perhaps they, (or just one of them) are morally better people, or at least a bit less insane. But to think that only someone in the 1970s could “get away with this”, is incredibly naive. There are Castanedas all around us!!!
I don’t know much about Carlos Castenada, but it sounds, Sean, like you haven’t even read his books. Drawing conclusions based on other cults etc to figure out what these women’s lives were like is as much fiction as his books are. The truth is, none of us know. It sounds like Any Wallace’s book is all we have to go by. And judging them for hanging out with Castenada (and “cult” is also pure projection) is impossible. Should any of us be judged for sitting around accepting our culture’s idea of reality, surfing Netflix and ploughing junk food while you try not to think about our approaching death?
Discovering well after the fact that Castaneda was a complete fraud was actually hard for me, and I’m sure many other people. Because of (I’ll be honest) a certain innocence and persistent imaginative naiveteé. I had hoped that the marvels and mysteries he described were true. No one likes to be bilked. No one enjoys being tricked. I have even been unable to retain any of the wisdom that was presented in the series, or if I have, with reluctance. It’s a very bitter thing to me, but it has definitely added to what I would hope is a certain well-advised cynicism.
He made the facade pretty flimsy. I read his stuff when I was in high school in 1977 and it was just all wrong. In 1980 a female friend who had been burned by the Maharishis came back to college with, not making this up, a good ‘ol paper grocery bag FULL of peyote, many buttons over 30 years old. The real experience and the book did not match. Another friend was involved in deprogramming a Krishna female who I hooked up with and who described the international prostitution networks, how they recruited on campuses. The imaginary master’s name was Don Juan is just in-your-face-Supid! Do you believe in magic? Watch your money disappear as you buy these books.
I am sorry Sean, I am afraid you are missing the big picture. If we compare the phenomena that is Carlos Castaneda to an elaborate cart drawn by horses, you are focusing on the spokes of the wheels of this cart and missing the magnificent cart, specially the horses.. Have you even read ALL his books? Reading one or two halfheartedly does not count. And comparing teachings of Don Juan or writings of Castaneda to a “religious movement” is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard.
Thank you for a great article .Carlos,Hubbard Scientology,and others seem to be a fad in the 60’s and 70’s even Lyn Andrews took a shot at it. mysticism is real I believe that shamanistic practice or even any kind of religion can be misused for greed and destruction. tapping into unknown power to control people is a very bad thing . Native American tradition is always to do good to our planet and Preserve Mother Earth and find medicine that will heal us but it is known All Around the World in all indigenous cultures that there’s a bad side, most of the time it’s negative male attacking powerful female energy,it’s unfortunate he wrote so many books that has to do with manipulating to gain without consideration of people’s Health well-being and safety. I read most of his books none of them really talk about Good Karma just tapping into energy for fun even if it meant it was going to hurt other people. even HG Wells who studied mysticism and Shamanism around the world shamelessly disrespected indigenous people when they asked him not to take pictures and movies of their practices .he didn’t care, the money is what he did it for.He also pushing mysticism on anyone that will listen just another 1950-60,70’s fast-talking used car salesman mentality cloaked in education. misusing power for a buck… And though some of Carlos Castaneda and Lynn Andrews and El Ron Hubbard to name a few, some of the information is helpful,they usually tap into something that is from psychology mixed with mysticism.
I have only recently subscribed to your website and am really enjoying what I have watched thus far as I attempt to catch up with what you have already posted. I was born and raised into a cult which I broke free from about a year ago. That, started me on a journey of exploration to find the ‘truth’ of and within ‘religion’. To that end, I have enrolled in a Bachelor of Arts (Religious Studies) as a 63yo mature age student. While my mind is now wide open to any and all possibilities with regard to religion, I do find Animism quite compelling with everything having spirit depending on how one interacts with it. Your article of today sort of reinforces that view though, your example was Magick. Anyway, I am looking forward to viewing much more content from you and hope you keep the articles coming. <3 <3 <3