Maison d'Être Philosophy Bookstore

Carlos  Castañeda
[1925-1998]

        The thing to remember about Carlos Castañeda is that he was an anthropologist. He indeed accomplished what Margaret Mead had once attempted (and failed) to do, which is to embed the anthropologist in a native culture, becoming a member of that culture, and then reporting the internal workings, the seeming strangeness of that culture to the Western academic community. For that is what Carlos did: He trained for and became a Yaqui shaman or sorcerer or brujo, one of the practitioners of the perhaps dying nagual tradition.
        His reportage, though often mis-represented in popular media, opens up the notion that there are unknown worlds on this planet that you and I would not otherwise access.

        Carlos Castañeda claimed that he was born in Brasil in 1931; however, immigration records show that he was born in Peru in 1925.
        His first three books were written as course-work while a student in anthropology at U.C.L.A. {B.A. 1962, PhD 1970}. His works were criticized against strict standards of academic procedure, but were wildly popular with the public. He remained extremely secretive most of his life; photos and interviews are rare, though Time Magazine published a cover story 5 March 1973 (see below). Carlos sued his ex-wife in 1997 to prevent release of her book on their marriage; the suit became moot when Carlos died.
        The overlapping tales in the books describe many years of study by Carlos under the tutelage of don Juan Matus, a practicing nagual shaman in rural Mexico, and a coterie of older and younger sorcerors. The often-trying, often-funny don Juan teased Carlos and shocked him and pressed him to break thru his 'civilized' barriers to see what don Juan and his companions were able to experience, to visit the worlds that they did, and ultimately to achieve the Yaqui 'way of knowledge', a very distinct and separate reality indeed. Psychotropic drugs such as peyote and cannabis were often used in the nagual rituals. These were also widely popular recreational drugs in the late Sixties and early Seventies, perhaps in part due to Carlos's works giving them some legitimacy. Carlos later disavowed such drug use as potentially damaging to the luminous ball of energy within each human.

        The death of Carlos Castañeda was also mysterious. He supposedly died of liver cancer on 27 April 1998 in the Westwood area of West Los Angeles, California; no services were held, and his ashes were sent to Mexico. (Part of Toltec teachings on impeccability require erasing one's personal history.)
        That personal history was always obscure, partly because of the restrictions of shamanism, and possibly due to Carlos's own persona. He was married for thirteen years to Margaret Runyon Castañeda; she bore a son, Adrian Vashon, whose birth certificate lists Carlos Castañeda as the father. Adrian called himself C.J. Castañeda at times, while often hounding Carlos for money. Four months after Carlos's death, Adrian contested the will, but when asked to provide DNA for testing, he backed down and 'admitted' that Carlos was not his biological father. The case was tossed out of court in early 1999.

        Carlos Castañeda wrote twelve books, and also helped make 3 videos thru his direct apprentices at ClearGreen. Whatever the truth about his career and his life, he intended that his written works be his legacy.