Carlos Castaneda: C/D?

Plus there's his ruinous influence on the mexican indians (not the yaqui, he tried to protect the real tribe at first).

A vague update on the missing women: http://disinfo.com/2015/09/don-juan-lie-carlos-castaneda-4-missing-women/ - links to this site: http://www.4missingwomen.com

If you haven't read "The dark legacy of Carlos Castaneda" yet, it's well worth reading: http://www.salon.com/2007/04/12/castaneda/

Pretty good five-part podcast on Castaneda and the four (still) missing women:
https://tricksterpodcast.com

Back in his first flower, when his first brujo book was published, it was still possible to read him with a certain suspension of disbelief and the alluring hope he was reporting rather than mythologizing.

It didn't last. For me, that suspension was badly frayed by the second book and his insistence on the veracity of many miraculous doings. I never finished the third book; it was obviously pure shite. After that, I knew he was a monumental fraud, a liar and a charlatan.

I heard long ago that he just made up everything in the books, but I didn't know how he lived (cult leader, preying on women). Apparently this is all well known now, but I just read this LAist article on him. And yes, I just discovered this thread.

https://laist.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/carlos-castanedas-sinister-legacy-witches-of-westwood

Looked up this thread by chance as I grabbed one of Castaneda's books randomly from a junk shop the other week(Journey To Ixtlan), vaguely knowing of him but not really any details and I thought it might be an interesting period piece if nothing else.

Uh, sounds like this guy was a bit of a piece of work then, huh.

Mainly I was curious if there was a consensus on his credibility as the first few pages were enough to set off my bullshit detector. Did people take this seriously at the time as a genuine spiritual odyssey? I mean, it was the early seventies so I guess they might've done.

I think many people took it seriously, the crystals and incense set, but academics not so much.

That's pretty much what I thought, although being associated with UCLA would've given him a certain amount of (undeserved) academic standing I guess?

Must check out that podcast when I've got a moment, this story seems like a real rabbit-hole.

the story linked above is horrifying.

Have to admit, the podcast mentioned above is quite engrossing (and rich in detail). There’s more episodes of it available now, though I don’t think it’s finished yet (?)

I don’t think I’ve ever been in a bookstore that doesn’t have Carlos Castañeda books in it. This is going back to the mid-1970s.

The cynical story is that the UC was putting up with Castañeda for so long because The Teachings of Don Juan was making a lot of money for the University of California press. I suppose there's some truth to that - academia is no different from anyplace else in that even if you're making *everything* up you as you go, you can still fail upward if you have some heavy friends.

In the 80s, one of my sociology professors at UC Irvine liked to Journey To Ixtlan to all his students. The book wasn't required reading, students weren't tested on it, and when questioned he'd fog up his replies with a lot of postmodern handwaving about the impossibility of subjective truth, but it seemed that he was very affected by reading it and just wanted to share it with other. Later I found out that he was one of Harold Garfinkel's students at UCLA and probably met Castañeda himself at some point.

Have to admit, the podcast mentioned above is quite engrossing (and rich in detail).

Not to give too much away, but by episode 10 you're so far into the the story that you're hanging out on Larchmont Ave in LA and shopping for synthesizers with Federico Fellini.

Mainly I was curious if there was a consensus on his credibility as the first few pages were enough to set off my bullshit detector. Did people take this seriously at the time as a genuine spiritual odyssey? I mean, it was the early seventies so I guess they might've done.

― "Spaghetti" Thompson (Pheeel), Monday, November 15, 2021 11:02 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

it's probably mentioned on some piece itt, as I think this is where I got the information from. but basically there were people challenging his books from the beginning, and there was some coverage of this in the press, but clout and business interests helped him.