Carlos Castaneda

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Carlos Castaneda (originally Carlos Aranha Castañeda, born December 25, 1925 in Cajamarca , † April 27, 1998 in Los Angeles ) was an American ethnologist and writer of Brazilian and Peruvian descent. In the 1970s and 1980s his books gained international popularity. In it he reported that as part of his studies of the Indians of Mexico and their use of medicinal herbs and sacred cacti ( peyote ), he got to know a Yaqui Indian named " Don Juan Matus " and from him a view of reality ( separate reality ) with help learned mind-expanding natural drugs that contradicted his previous scientific and religious models of explanation of the world. His writings were picked up by the New Age movement and at times played an important role not only in esoteric contexts.

Life

Castaneda was born a Peruvian, the son of César Aranha Burungaray, a watchmaker and goldsmith, and Susana Castañeda Novoa. In the 1940s Castaneda attended the public school 91 and the secondary school "San Ramón" in Cajamarca for three years, but did not graduate there.

In 1948 the Aranha family moved to the capital Lima ( Peru ). Castaneda graduated from the "Colegio Nacional de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe", later he attended "Bellas Artes", the national art academy of Peru. According to his own statements (see Carmina Fort: Conversations with Carlos Castaneda , FTV) he was sent to a boarding school in Buenos Aires and later to the United States.

In 1951 Castaneda went on board a small ship ("SS Yavari") in Callao (Peru), which was to bring him to San Francisco with 16 other Peruvian citizens . In September 1951 Castaneda reached the port of San Francisco ( California ) under the name "César Aranha" (according to his Peruvian passport with the number 34477). According to his own account, he came to San Francisco in 1951 at the age of 15, where he lived with an adoptive family and graduated from Hollywood High School in 1955.

In 1955 Castaneda took part in courses at the Los Angeles Community College (LACC) for the first time under the name of Carlos Castaneda. During the first two years he took courses in journalism , science and literature and took two creative writing courses with Vernon King. In 1957 he was granted American citizenship on application ("Petition for Naturalization No. 199531").

In 1959 Castaneda graduated from the LACC with an Associate of Arts degree in psychology . In the same year he went to UCLA . In 1960 he attended lectures by McCusick and Clement Meighan (“Methods in Field Archeology”).

In 1973 he received his doctorate as Dr. phil. He later published his dissertation under the title Reise nach Ixtlan .

Castaneda's work

Castaneda described in his books (see works ) in an autobiographical narrative style how he acquired the knowledge don Juan had imparted to him and, in the course of time, recognized his own position in life on this "path of knowledge".

In collaboration with his wife Florinda Donner-Grau (* 1944) and Carol Tiggs, he also developed a system of exercises called “magical movements” for harmonizing physical energies, which he published in another book. Commercial workshops (Tensegrity) have been offered on this since 1993 . The name of these exercises was borrowed from the work of Richard Buckminster Fuller . They consist of targeted muscle tension, combative movements and breathing coordination. Sometimes they have been compared to so-called hard Qi-Gong exercises that are often found in the North Chinese, Korean and Japanese martial arts. Since the Tensegrity exercises are not directly mentioned in the ten previous Castaneda publications, they are controversial within the Castaneda fan base.

In addition, Florinda Donner-Grau (real name: Regina Margarita Thal), Carol Tiggs and Taisha Abelar published experience reports in which they describe their apprenticeship with a certain Don Juan and his companions as well as encounters with Castaneda. All three women did not appear in public after Castaneda's death.

The teachings of Don Juan Matus

In 1968 Castaneda's book "The Teachings of Don Juan" was published by the University of California Press, California . Advertised with the statement: "It was assumed that the West had not produced a path of spiritual knowledge that could be compared with the great system of the East", the book reached a circulation of 300,000 copies within three years.

A statement that stands behind the "teachings of Don Juan" in Castaneda's works is: Man and the world that surrounds him are an unfathomable mystery; only those who walk the "path of the heart" and always follow their heart can walk the "path of the warrior", expand their consciousness and use their life energy more effectively. This is done by gradually redistributing life energy, the quantities of which are increasingly withdrawn from nonsensical actions and the potential that has become free is invested in constructive activities. The most important practices in this context are: “Fighting the feeling of one's own importance”, “Shedding self-conceit”, “Breaking the mirror of self-contemplation” - self-contemplation, self-conceit and the feeling of self-importance are, according to the magicians, peculiarities, which bind the energy of man and therefore weaken him. Since, according to don Juan, the essence of things consists of such flowing energy, the criterion for judging sense and nonsense seems to be inherent in itself.

According to Castaneda, this knowledge was passed down by the shamans / wizards from pre-Columbian Mexico by the Toltec people . Through these insights, imparted by Castaneda, into the properties of human consciousness and the consciousness of all living things, man experiences the possibility of freedom. This can be achieved if he adopts a way of life that is called the way of the heart or the way of the warrior , whereby this way of life, viewed on the surface, wants to achieve something similar to Zen Buddhism , for example stopping the inner dialogue .

Warriorism ( The Path of Warriors ), an achievement and attitude to life that “has nothing to do with acts of collective violence or individual stupidity” ( allusion to the countless revolutions and wars in human history ), is based on personal confrontation with infinity. According to Castaneda, the path of the warriors was devised to give the seeker physical and character strength so that he can endure the difficulties that stand in his way and not allow himself to be thrown off course by extraordinary perceptions. In addition, this path is intended to give the warrior the energy he needs to enter unknown worlds. Castaneda states that, according to his teacher, his line of magicians had existed for 10,000 years, but that it passed its zenith 3000 years ago. Quote: "A warrior is in the fight against the individual ego, which has robbed us of our former abilities". During this existential confrontation, the assemblage point - i.e. the I / consciousness as the psychic instance that assembles ideas about the world for the purpose of orientation  - was discovered first and finally also the purely energetic nature of things, which materializes in the form of luminous fibers, the bundle into things and living beings. However, only the latter would have the assembly point at which a certain amount of these fibers is concentrated. The warrior's path is to be understood as a search for “absolute freedom”. Castaneda describes it as “freedom from the conventions of perception”, a convention e.g. B. compel today's man to perceive the world as a world of solid objects, although it is possible for man to free himself from this convention and to see everything as it is - as energy. On this path one has to deal with four opponents, the last of which remains insurmountable for individuals: fear, clarity, power and old age. Repeated phased withdrawal of the warrior from his social ties in order objectifying consideration of their correctness and the weakening of the ego up to the world ongoing shutdown of its internal dialogue in this teaching the basic requirements for the successful referral to the warrior path .

Awareness and perception

The principle of the assembly point (orig. Assemblage point ) forms the central aspect of Don Juan's teaching. According to the description of the magicians, all living beings live in an energy bubble, a “cocoon”. This surrounds us humans and represents the limitation of our being. In this "cocoon" is, half an arm's length behind the shoulder blades, the so-called assembly point , which is the size of a tennis ball. According to Castaneda's teachings, the universe consists of an infinite number of energy threads, each of which is aware of itself. The assembly point bundles all the energy fibers that go through it. Since every fiber contains information about the world, perception takes place through the bundling. This means that living beings perceive because the energy fibers of the universe are bundled in the respective assembly point . Since the assembly point of all people is almost at (almost) the same place, all people also perceive the same world, namely our everyday world, i.e. H. a world of solid objects. According to Castaneda, however, it is possible to shift this assembly point , which means that other energy fibers pass through it, so the perception of the person concerned now changes. The goal of the magician is to move the assemblage point to a point where the perception of energy as energy is possible, i.e. an interpretation of the solid object is omitted and the flow of pure energy is perceived. A shift of the assembly point must be deliberately "intended", the most important discipline for this is "stopping the inner dialogue", which u. a. can also be achieved by taking psychotropic substances, but also by hunger, severe exhaustion, extreme stress or z. B. War experiences. The most important thought about the assemblage point is that the world that the normal person perceives is only one of many hundreds.

Freedom and imprisonment of consciousness

Because of their unsettled socialization or ignorance, it is still easy for children to shift the assemblage point without being aware of it (see pleasure principle , diversity of childish pleasure behavior). Adults, on the other hand, have a much more difficult time of it due to their perfect upbringing or psychological fixations, or are never able to become aware of the ability to move just by “wanting”, let alone realize it. Only "through alcohol or drugs, through severe (febrile) illness, in extreme conditions such as war situations and dreams " do they shift the assemblage point , but then because of the lack of preparation in such a way that the accompanying changes in perception are not understood . If an intended shift takes place and people's perception changes and they are faced with unknown worlds, according to Castaneda's statements, there is the “voice of seeing” that tells you how the new perception is to be interpreted.

The inorganic beings

According to Castaneda, the nagual can be used to contact other life forms, including so-called inorganic beings , to communicate with them and even to win them over as personal allies. Don Juan, on the other hand - according to Castaneda himself - strongly advised against it, arguing that they would be just as annoying and self-centered as our closest relatives. The collapse of the line of "old wizards" may be. a. due to the fact that they had tried to gain personal advantages from contact with these beings and only subjected them to their own power-hungry purposes. Since the "old wizards" felt invincible as a result, but were not prepared for attacks by people, they were almost completely destroyed by attacks by neighboring Indian tribes. The few survivors withdrew for several centuries to rethink their magical techniques. The magicians then formed anew to the line of "modern magicians". Their cycle began at the same time as the attacks by the Spaniards at the time of the Conquest. The “modern magicians” were largely destroyed. The surviving "modern magicians" broke up and formed small groups. Don Juan's group came from this fact. According to Castaneda, these inorganic beings have their own existence, independent of us, which humans would only perceive through the shifting of the assemblage point, i.e. H. These inorganic beings are always in our environment, only we humans have to sensitize our perception in order to become aware of them.

Dreaming and stalking

Two techniques of magic are named and distinguished: dreaming and stalking . When dreaming - also an innate talent that not all people have equally - it is only a matter of a) bringing the assembly point into certain positions and b) studying the perceptions that are updated there as precisely as possible. "Dreaming" in the sense of Castaneda means to become aware during a dream that one is dreaming, that is: the dreaming knows that he is dreaming and can consciously control his actions in the dream ( lucid dream ). An essential goal of dreaming is to look for objects that generate energy, and thus to enter real worlds while dreaming in order to get strength and power from them. Don Juan speaks of seven doors of dreaming through which one must pass. Another essential goal of dreaming is to reach the energy body . The dreamer reaches this by passing through the fourth gate. With the energy body the dreamer can also act in wakefulness independently of his physical body.

Stalking means being able to change the position of the assembly point in everyday life. A change in the position of the assembly point changes the perception of the world. For example, the memory of a situation that you think you know exactly can change due to newly acquired information. This new information can be details of one's own body awareness, emotional experiences and new insights into the inner dialogue. One form of stalking practice is witnessing. A conversation partner will help investigate such a situation. Based on the newly acquired information, the stalker is able to expand his range of options for decision-making and action. This flexibility in dealing with everyday situations changes the position of the assemblage point from a rigid fixation on routine behavior patterns to actions with the heart. The stalker takes full responsibility for his actions. In short: stalking is a path with a heart.

For the perfect implementation it is particularly important to learn practices that cause the inner dialogue to stop (see meditation ). Specifically, stalking consists of various long repetitive, also physical concentration and habitual exercises ; in occidental magic such activities would be called magical training or consciousness training . Pure dreaming and pure stalking are absolutely mutually exclusive, but complement each other symbiotically. An important position within such groups is occupied by the “nagual” man or woman, whose energy body has a double structure, which is why they alone are able to empathize with dreamers and stalkers alike and take on the leadership of such communities.

Stalking Exercises - Witnessing

There are many references to various forms and uses of stalking in Carlos Castaneda's books. Castaneda was introduced to these techniques by his teacher Don Juan Matus through a "loosely knitted" concept. He received specific instruction in stalking from Florinda Donner-Grau towards the end of his training.

The second step in the publication of the knowledge from the tradition of the Toltec seers took place in 1995 in the form of the magical movements taught in workshops, called tensegrity . Practicing magical passes is a basic form of stalking with the body, with body awareness, also known as kinesthetic awareness. Magical movements are so powerful that they cause the assembly point to shift. And that is the goal of stalking: first small and then larger shifts with full awareness and with the greatest possible sobriety.

A third step on the road to publicizing the Toltec knowledge came in 2002 with the practice of witnessing at the workshops given by Cleargreen as the legal successor to Carlos Castaneda and his classmates. The term witnessing refers to the neutral position of the observer. An observer has achieved the quality of a witness if he can accept his partner's presentation without judgment, judgment or comment. Stories from everyday life that did not work are examined in order to find new options for action. Such possibilities, which go beyond the used repertoire of action patterns, cause a shift in the assembly point. The stalker reaches what is personally unknown to him and extends his radius of action step by step.

Use of mind-altering agents

The "path of the warrior" is conveyed in Castaneda's first two books mainly through two things: a) his conversations in dialogue with Don Juan, which follow the pattern of Socratic elaboration and, among other things, discuss the concerns of sorcery , and b) occasional consumption of various hallucinogenic plants, so u. a. Peyote , Jimson Weed (Datura stramonium) and the Kleine Rauch Humito, a mixture of psilocybin-containing mushrooms and moldy flowers to be smoked in pipes (see also visions , model psychosis ). Experimental drug use for the purpose of a hoped-for widening of consciousness (in any case, changes will undoubtedly occur ) as well as the beginning of a real self-discovery path, feasible under very specific conditions, contributed to the popularity of the works at the end of the 1960s . However, in his later books, drugs no longer play a role in Castaneda's attempt to make another, second level of perception accessible to his consciousness besides that of our ordinary everyday life. Through his own knowledge and experiences of great clarity and intensity, which Don Juan Matus and Don Genaro had described to him, he had become aware that long-term drug use was not a promising way to give up long-established thought patterns or those impressed by socialization from birth To turn away (acquired) worldview. The original administration of drugs by don Juan and his assignment to carefully research the changes in perception caused by them were purely therapeutic; Without this chance to shake his fixed worldview, Castaneda would not have been able to shake or loosen up the manic fixation of his consciousness (assemblage point) enough to be really interested in don Juan's teachings. Don Juan gave Castaneda the consciousness-expanding plants and mushrooms so that Castaneda could free himself from his materialistic worldview and to advance into the areas of perception of the magicians.

The predatory creature

In the book The Work of Infinity , Castaneda describes a being who came to earth thousands of years ago "from the depths of the cosmos". This being, therefore, enslaves people by stealing their consciousness. It "feeds" on the "shine of awareness" that surrounds people and is on the outside of the "human cocoon". This "shine of awareness" originally extended from toe to head when people were still in their natural state. According to Castaneda, it is still present in children; but is attacked from a certain maturity. The being called “Aviator” feeds on this awareness up to the tip of the toes of people, whereby people are robbed of all their possibilities of perception. The rest of the awareness that remains is only enough for people to reflect, to deal with their own self. The only means by which people can drive away the “aviator” is to achieve “inner silence” and make this a discipline. The “aviator” tricked people by giving them a consciousness that they believe is their own. In doing so, he prevents them from defending themselves against him and from becoming aware of their former possibilities. According to Castaneda, these possibilities are immeasurable as soon as the plane is driven away and the “shine of awareness” can rise again to the level of the head.

reception

Castaneda's writings were received primarily in the New Age movement and in the hippie subculture.

The German ethnologist and cultural historian Hans Peter Duerr criticized Castaneda's “Yaqui path of knowledge”: “This laugh of Don Juan [...] got on my nerves enormously over time - because it is directed against life. Castaneda should have made his Don Juan pee in his pants out of fear instead of gluing us with a super guru who would still laugh if his grandchild fell into a cement mixer. "

His first book, the master's thesis The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge , was published by Simon & Schuster in 1968 and soon topped the bestseller lists. His next four books repeated this success. The wide distribution and influence of his work brought Castaneda to the front cover of Time Magazine in 1973. He is seen as one of the founding fathers and key figures of the New Age.

Controversies about Castaneda's work

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Castaneda's first books were viewed as scientific field studies of Central American shamanism , but an academic scandal broke out after a critical Time edition (1973) and Richard De Mille's publications. De Milles uncovered the non-existence of Don Juan Matus and proved that Castaneda's alleged ethnological field research took place in the university library, where he evaluated the abundant occult literature there in order to develop his "scientific field research " with it.

Today Castaneda no longer has any support in anthropology. The peyote researcher Weston La Barre , however, already spoke of a pure ego trip after the first book , but also more friendly-minded experts such as the ethnohistorian and Yaqui researcher Edward H. Spicer, the well-known British anthropologist Edmund Leach and the ethnobiologist and researcher hallucinogenic Mushrooms R. Gordon Wasson, as well as writers such as Donald Barthelme, noted that Castaneda's books were fiction - hardly solid cultural anthropology.

Castaneda uses partly an anthropological-scientific language, but his books also have autobiographical traits, they are the personal records of a search and full of suggestive power. They describe a way to a liberated perception that makes his inheritance available to man - the perception of further worlds that were closed to him due to his constant self-examination and entanglement in his ego. Frequently taken up topics include a. Magic , sorcery and out-of-body sensations .

Linking Castaneda's works exclusively with drug experiences would be a mistake. In the trip to Ixtlan, for example, he addresses the expansion of consciousness and the experience of additional worlds without drugs being used as an aid, yes he later expressly points out in an interview with Graciela Corvalan ("The Way of the Toltecs", FTV) that the The learning process actually sought is not one through drugs. Drugs are a tried and tested, but very seldom used, because they are dangerous to health ("... the liver has been with the devil since then").

Castaneda used in his first two books the scientific approach as well as language and codes that were common in anthropology at the time. His first book was published by the University of California Press and his third book, Journey to Ixtlan , earned him a PhD (virtually unchanged) under the title Sorcery . Castaneda's early books were taken seriously by his anthropology department, e.g. B. wrote Walter Goldschmidt, an internationally established anthropology professor at UCLA, an enthusiastic preface to Reise nach Ixtlan .

Serious doubts arose later in anthropological circles: Castaneda's descriptions had little in common with the lived spiritual tradition of the Yaqui. A number of contradictions accumulated, e.g. B. about the psychotropic substances used, which do not occur in the desert area. Castaneda did not provide the critics with appropriate evidence to confirm his fieldwork in the Sonoran Desert.

Castaneda died in 1998. Little is known about the exact circumstances of his death. Then five of several devoted women who had lived with him since 1973 disappeared without a trace. It wasn't until 2006 that a skeleton found in Death Valley was identified as belonging to one of them.

As early as 1999, there were several critical reports on the Internet about events relating to Carlos Castaneda and his followers. In the years that followed, the myth was increasingly questioned (see e.g. the book by Amy Wallace, a former lover of Castaneda).

Works

literature

  • Garciela Corvalan: The Way of the Toltecs. A conversation with Carlos Castaneda . Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main 1987, ISBN 3-596-23864-1 .
  • Carmina Fort: Conversations with Carlos Castaneda . Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main 1996, ISBN 3-596-13095-6 .
  • Norbert Claßen: The knowledge of the Toltecs. Carlos Castaneda and the philosophy of Don Juan . Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main 1994, ISBN 3-596-12169-8 .
  • Norbert Claßen: Carlos Castaneda and the legacy of Don Juan . Hans Nietsch Verlag, Freiburg 1994, ISBN 3-929475-40-5 .
  • Roman Katzer: The heirs of Don Juan. Conversations with Carlos Castaneda, Florinda Donner-Grau and Taisha Abelar . Hans Nietsch Verlag, Freiburg 2005, ISBN 3-934647-77-4 .
  • Ulla Wittmann: Live like a warrior. The hidden message in the teachings of the Yaqui magician don Juan . Ansata Verlag, Interlaken, ISBN 3-7157-0068-8 .
  • Paul Samuel Widmer-Nicolet: From the path with a heart. The Essence of the Teaching of Don Juan - A tribute to the work of Carlos Castaneda . Nachtschatten Verlag, Solothurn 2002, ISBN 3-907080-91-2 .
  • Bernard Dubant. Michael Marguerie: CASTANEDA. the way of strength . Verlag Böhlau, 1983, ISBN 3-205-07201-4

Critical literature

  • Daniel Noel: Seeing Castaneda: Reactions to the “Don Juan” Writings . Perigee Books, 1976, ISBN 0-399-50361-7 .
  • David Silverman: Reading Castaneda: A prologue to the social sciences . Routledge & Kegan Paul, London 1975, ISBN 0-7100-8145-6 .
  • Nevill Drury: Don Juan, Mescalito, and modern magic: The mythology of inner space . Routledge & Kegan Paul, London 1978, ISBN 0-7100-8582-6 .
  • Donald Lee Williams: Border Crossings: A Psychological Perspective on Carlos Castaneda's Path of Knowledge . Inner City Books, 1981, ISBN 0-919123-07-4 .
  • Hellmut Coerper: Access to Knowledge: Depth Psychological Interpretation of Castaneda's Literature . Bonz, Fellbach 1981, ISBN 3-87089-310-9 .
  • Jay Courtney Fikes: Carlos Castaneda, Academic Opportunism and the Psychedelic Sixties. Madison Books, 1993, ISBN 0-8191-8503-5 .
  • Margaret Runyan Castaneda: A Magical Journey With Carlos Castaneda. Millenia Press, 1996, ISBN 0-9696960-1-9 .
  • Richard de Mille: Castaneda's Journey: The Power and the Allegory . Backprint.com, 2000, ISBN 0-595-14508-6 .
    • Richard de Mille: The Travels of Carlos Castaneda . Morzsinay Verlag, Bern 1980, ISBN 3-7213-0001-7 .
  • Richard de Mille: The Don Juan Papers: Further Castaneda Controversies . Backinprint.com, 2000, ISBN 0-595-14499-3 .
  • Christian von Sehrwald: In the footsteps of the gods - peyote and the ethnic groups of northwestern Mexico with special attention to the ceremonial cycle of the Huichol Indians . Nachtschatten-Verlag, Solothurn 2005, ISBN 3-03788-113-5 .
  • Amy Wallace: The Sorcerer's Apprentice: My Life with Carlos Castaneda. Frog, 2003, ISBN 1-58394-076-6 .
  • Gaby Geuter: Filming Castaneda the Hunt for Magic and Reason . Authorhouse, 2004, ISBN 1-4140-4612-X .
  • Dennis Timm: Reality and the Knower: A Study on Carlos Castaneda . Private print 1977, new: Fischer, 1989, ISBN 3-596-24290-8 .

Criticism from ethnologists

  • Weston La Barre : Stringing criticism from the author of 'The Peyote Cult'. In: Seeing Castaneda, Reactions to the “Don Juan” Writings of Carlos Castaneda. Daniel C. Noel (Ed.), Putnam's, 1976, pp. 40-42.
  • Edmund Leach : High School. In: The New York Review of Books , June 5, 1969, pp. 12f.
  • Edward H. Spicer : Review of the Teachings of Don Juan. In: American Anthropologist. Volume 71, 1969, No. 2, pp. 320-322.
  • Critique of the ethnobiologist R. Gordon Wasson :
    • Review of The Teachings of Don Juan. In: Economic Botany. Volume 23, 1969, No. 2, p. 197.
    • Review of A Separate Reality. In: Economic Botany. Volume 26, 1972, No. 1, pp. 98f.
    • Review of Journey to Ixtlan. In: Economic Botany. Volume 27, 1973, No. 1, pp. 151f.
    • Review of Tales of Power. In: Economic Botany. Volume 28, 1974, No. 3, pp. 245f.

Criticism from writers, philosophers and literary critics

  • Donald Barthelme , The Teachings of Don B. A Yankee Way of Knowledge , New York Times Magazine , Feb. 11, 1973, pp. 14f., 66f.
    • Also in: Donald Barthelme: Guilty Pleasures. Dell, 1974, pp. 53-62.
  • Joyce Carol Oates : Anthropology, Or Fiction? Letter to the New York Times Book Review. Nov. 26, 1972, p. 41.
    • Joyce Carol Oates: Don Juan's Last Laugh. In: Psychology Today . Volume 8, 1974, No. 4, pp. 10, 12 and 130.
    • Joyce Carol Oates: Letter to Daniel D. Noel In: Daniel C. Noel (Ed.): Seeing Castaneda. Reactions to the "Don Juan" Writings of Carlos Castaneda. 1976, p. 69.
  • Ronald Sukenick : Upward and Juanward, The Possible Dream. In: Village Voice. Jan. 25, 1973.
    • Also in: Daniel C. Noel (Ed.): Seeing Castaneda. 1976, pp. 110-120.
  • Joseph Margolis : Don Juan as Philosopher. In: Daniel C. Noel (Ed.): Seeing Castaneda. 1976, pp. 228-242.
  • Calvin Tomkins : The Teachings of Joe Pye (Field Notes for Carlos Castaneda's Next Epiphany). In: New Yorker. Feb. 3, 1973, Volume 48, No. 50, pp. 37f.
  • Luis Carlos de Morais Junior: Carlos Castaneda ea Fresta entre os Mundos: Vislumbres da Filosofia Ānahuacah no Século XXI. (Carlos Castaneda and the Crack Between the Worlds: Glimpses of Ānahuacah Philosophy in Century XXI). Litteris Editora, Rio de Janeiro 2012.

Video

Film about Castaneda

  • Enigma of a Sorcerer (2004)
  • Documental Carlos Castaneda BBC (2006)

Web links

Wikiquote: Carlos Castaneda  - Quotes
Wikibooks: Pensamiento castanediano  - Learning and teaching materials (Spanish)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Encyclopedia of Latino Popular Culture, Volume 1, ed. by Cordelia Candelaria u. a., Greenwood Publishing, 2004, p. 115.
  2. ↑ Per de Mille: The Don Juan Papers: Further Castaneda Controversies. 1990 edition, p. 362.
  3. ↑ The Art of Dreaming, p. 48, "Don Juan believed that we use the greater part of our energy to maintain our own importance [...]"
  4. ↑ Brigitte Helbling: On the death of the New Age ancestor Carlos Castaneda. With the eternal peyotl . In: Berliner Zeitung , June 20, 1998.
  5. ↑ Shamans and Charlatans: Assessing Castaneda's Legacy
  6. ↑ Interview with Hans Peter Duerr in: The return of the imaginary: fairy tales, magic, mysticism, myth, beginnings of another politics. Trikont-dianus 1981 p. 33.
  7. ↑ Charlotte E. Hardman: "He may be lying but what he says is true": the sacred Tradition of don Juan as reported by Carlos Castaneda, anthropologist, trickster, Guru allegorist . In: James R. Lewis, Olav Hammer (Eds.): The Invention of Sacred Tradition . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2007, ISBN 978-0-521-86479-4 , chap. 2 , p. 40 ( books.google.de ).
  8. ↑ "The cause of death was an advancing, unstoppable poisoning, which in turn went back to a liver tumor." Quoted in: Roman Warszewski: Conversations with Carlos Castaneda , chapter postscript . Michaels Verlag, Peiting 2007, p. 69. ISBN 978-3-89539-469-0 .
  9. ↑ Petra Steinberger: New Age guru Castañeda: Sleeping with Carlos . In: Süddeutsche.de. dated December 13, 2008, accessed May 19, 2014.
  10. ↑ above all sustainedaction.org
  11. ^ Carlos Castaneda: Enigma of a Sorcerer. Internet Movie Database , accessed June 10, 2015 .
  12. ↑ Tales from the Jungle. bbc , accessed on August 20, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Castaneda, Carlos
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Aranha, Carlos; Aranha Castañeda, Carlos
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American anthropologist and writer
DATE OF BIRTH December 25, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH Cajamarca , Peru
DATE OF DEATH April 27, 1998
Place of death los Angeles