Carlos Castaneda
Writer, Sorcerer and Man of Mystery Dies at Age 72
by Michael Peter Langevin
June 19, 1998
http://magical.eden.com/readingroom/castaneda.html
I know now that human beings are creatures of awareness, involved in an
evolutionary journey of awareness, being indeed unknown to themselves,
filled to the brim with incredible resources that are never used.
- Carlos Castaneda
It has been reported by Carlos Castaneda's lawyer and executor of his
estate, Deborah Drooz, that he died of liver cancer at his home in Westwood,
California, on April 27, 1998. Reasons why his death was not revealed in a
timely fashion is still unclear. The Los Angeles Times quoted Ms. Drooz's
explanation: "He always made sure people did not take his picture or record
his voice. He didn't like the spotlight. Knowing that, I didn't take it upon
myself to issue a press release."
Castaneda was obscure even about such matters as his birth. According to
immigration records, he was born December 25, 1925, in Cajamarca, Peru, but
other sources show he was born December 25, 1931 in Sao Paulo, Brazil. He
leaves behind a will, due to be probated in Los Angeles next month and a
birth certificate fraught with dubious infomation. The few people who would
benefit from his copyrights were told of his death, Drooz said, but none of
them chose to alert the media.
Angelica Denas, the doctor who attended Castaneda in his final days, refused
to discuss her secretive patient, as did his former editors and public
relations associates. Ex-wife, Margret Runyan Castenada, wrote in her
memoirs, A Magical Journey with Carlos Castaneda, "The secret to the
Castaneda mystique is based on the fact his closest friends aren't sure who
he is."
Carlos Castaneda became a household name and cultural icon to millions of
baby boomers in the late sixties and seventies for his remarkable accounts
of his tutelage under Yaqui "sorcerer" don Juan Matus. His first book, The
Teachings of don Juan, was written as a master's thesis when Castaneda was
an undergraduate anthropology student at UCLA. Published in 1968, the book's
intimate details of "nonordinary realities" struck a chord with a youth
movement for whom hallucinogens were a sacrament and materialism and
colonialism were regarded as proof of a morally bankrupt government. The
book, with its indiginous anti-hero and drug-induced epiphanies, became a
bestseller, and the elusive Castaneda gained a worldwide following among
those looking for alternatives to Western spirituality and materialism.
Throughout the seventies and eighties, Castaneda continued to define Toltec
sorcery in such books as A Separate Reality, Journey to Ixtlan, Tales of
Power, and The Eagle's Gift. During this period, Castaneda's fierce
insistence on privacy and anomymity was demonstrated when the only
photographs he allowed for a Time magazine interview showed his hand
covering his face. Following his last book, The Art of Dreaming, published
in 1994, Castaneda surprised his fans by appearing in public at a number of
seminars on "Tensegrity," a series of body movement excercises designed to
facilitate entrance into nonordinary reality.
If Castaneda's fans were legion, so were his critics, many of whom regarded
his secrecy and intentional misinformation campaigns as proof of fraud. But
though the factual accuracy of his accounts may have been the subject of
heated debate, those who were moved by the passion and poetry of his writing
showed little concern about what they regarded as academic nit-picking.
Afterall, Castaneda was writing about realities the dominant culture denied
existed, so criticism of his methods hardly seemed relevant. In an interview
published in Magical Blend magazine in 1986, Castaneda suggested that it was
impossible to judge his work from an objective stance, since "ordinary
perception doesn't tell us the truth at all. The art of the wizard consists
of destroy[ing] perceptive prejudices." Even when questioning his veracity,
few critics could deny author Joyce Carol Oats' assesment of his books as
"remarkable works of art."
In its obituary, the Los Angeles Times called Castaneda the "God Father of
the New Age," reflecting the author's own claim to having started a
revolution of spirit. And, indeed, it's hard to find a New Age celebrity who
won't admit to having been influenced by Castaneda's powerful prose and
paradigm-busting philosophy. The gift he gave to a generation disillusioned
by official lying, such as fabricated Viet Nam body counts, was hope-hope
for freedom and a release from the mind-numbing materialism that passed
itself off as the only reality.
The Toltec perspective that Castaneda popularized has turned into a
publishing boom, with new books by various authors coming out each season,
many of whom also claim to have studied with don Juan Matus. It is an irony
that Castaneda publicly disavowed these authors' claims that the Yaqui
sorcerer returned from death to tutor them in the ways of Toltec sorcery,
for it is they who will continue the Castaneda mystique. At the heart of
Toltec teaching is the belief that death can be transcended, that the "man
of knowledge" can pass into other realms with awareness intact and even, as
they say of don Juan, return to teach others. Can it be doubted, then, that
similar tales of Castaneda sightings can be far away?
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