The Original Witches: The Dark Legacy of Carlos Castaneda
The New Age godfather led a secret group of dedicated followers in the last decade of his life.
Who was Carlos Castaneda?
How was his doctrine transformed?
What happened to the “witches” who accompanied him towards the end of his life?
Carlos Castaneda was a man difficult to classify.
For many people, he was a sage, ahead of his time, and endowed with impressive clarity.
For others, he was a charlatan who speculated about ancestral beliefs and became a millionaire selling books that said nothing.
His prose dragged and still drags entire generations eager to establish contact with the infinite and save their consciences from extinction.
The famous stories of Carlos led some to experiment with entheogens (peyote), especially following the release of his debut book, the teachings of Don Juan, in 1968 in the environment of counterculture and psychedelia of the 60s and 70s.
Castaneda left to the new age a legacy with a great variety of techniques and corporal works (tensegrity) destined to break the perception of daily reality.
That was the witchcraft for Castaneda, to play to break the daily perception, to connect with other realities.
Who was Carlos Castaneda?
His real name was Carlos César Salvador Arana Castañeda, and he was born in Cajamarca (Peru) on December 25, 1925.
Although he claimed to be Brazilian, copies of his birth certificate are in Inca.
He was the child of a jeweller and a housewife. He first studied in his hometown and then finished high school in Lima.
Later he studied at the School of Fine Arts, and when his mother died, he travelled to the United States.
Instead, he worked routine jobs and taught philosophy, literature and creative writing classes at Los Angeles Community College.
Most who knew him then remember a brilliant, hilarious storyteller with fascinating brown eyes.
He was short (some say he was 5 feet 2 inches; others 5 feet 5 inches) and embarrassed to have his picture taken.
He became fascinated by the occult, along with his then-wife Margaret Runyan.
He wrote a series of books describing his training in traditional Mesoamerican shamanism.
However, most of his work was directly inspired by the teachings of and his experiences with Don Juan Matus, the Yaqui shaman with whom Castaneda had a ten-year apprenticeship in the early 1960s.
During this time, Don Juan, with the help of various medicinal plants, took Castaneda on a metaphysical journey through an unknown spiritual realm that the author calls “non-ordinary reality.”
By 1959 he became an American citizen and legitimately adopted his mother’s surname Castañeda, changing the “ñ” for “n” for his reasons (although it is also said that his typewriter did not have the letter “ñ,” which made him sign without this letter, changing it for “n”).
During the same year, he graduated from the State University of California at Los Angeles, where he graduated in anthropology in 1962.
His 10 books, published in 17 languages, were bestsellers in the United States and abroad.
He had tens of millions of readers worldwide and had once been on the cover of Time magazine as the “leader of the American Renaissance.”
He died in the giant Californian metropolis of liver cancer at his home in Westwood. He was a quiet and mysterious person.
He did not like to draw attention to himself.
He always tried to avoid being photographed or having his voice recorded.
He didn’t like the light from the projectors.
That is why, when he died, his friends did not bother to issue a press release. Castaneda had no funeral of any kind.
Just a quick and simple ceremony in which his lifeless body was cremated at Culver City Funeral Home.
Took his ashes to Mexico, the country he loved with a passion.
“The Teachings of Don Juan”
In this work, originally conceived as his academic thesis, Castaneda recounts in first person the cultural reeducation to which he is subjected by Juan Matus, a Yaqui Indian from Sonora whom he meets by chance — or, in his words, “agreement” — at a Greyhound bus stop in a town on the U.S.-Mexico border.
To make him aware of this “separate reality” that leads to an alternative form of knowledge, Don Juan initiates him on the path of sensory expansion produced by peyote, hallucinogenic mushrooms, and toloache, all sacred plants in the cosmogony of ancient Mexico.
Carlos attempts to persuade the reluctant Don Juan to teach him about peyote.
He finally relents and allows Carlos to ingest the buds of the sacred cactus.
Next, Carlos sees a clear black dog, which, Don Juan later informs him, is Mescalito, a powerful supernatural being.
His appearance indicates that Carlos is “the chosen one” who’s been chosen to receive “the teachings.”
“The Teachings” is mainly a conversation between Don Juan, the teacher, and Carlos, the student, peppered with the ingestion of carefully prepared mixtures of herbs and mushrooms.
He goes through weird experiments that, despite Don Juan’s warnings, he continues to think of as hallucinations.
Toward the end of the book, Carlos runs into Mescalito again, whom he now accepts as accurate and not a hallucination.
It was Professor Meighan who encouraged him to take the manuscript to the offices of the University of California Press.
Publisher Jim Quebec knew that psychedelia was in vogue, and although he had doubts about the story’s authenticity, he was sure it would be a success.
Thanks to Quebec, Castaneda, nicknamed the Nagual, met Ned Brown, an expert agent in promoting bestsellers.
Michael Korda, an astute publisher at Simon & Schuster, would be his next ally.
Under the guidance of his new publisher, Castaneda published his following three books in rapid sequence.
In “A Separate Reality,” released in 1971, Carlos heads back to Mexico to give Don Juan a copy of his new book.
He rejects the gift, suggesting that he would use it as toilet paper.
A new learning cycle begins, in which Don Juan tries to teach Carlos to “see.”
Most importantly, new characters appear as Don Juan’s friend and fellow sorcerer, Don Genaro.
In “A Separate Reality” and the following two books, “Journey to Ixtlan” and “Tales of Power,” numerous new concepts are introduced, such as “becoming unavailable,” “erasing personal history,” and “stopping the world.”
Don Juan also attempts to teach Carlos to enter the dream world, the “separate reality,” aka the “nagual,” a Spanish term taken from the Aztecs.
Castaneda would later change the meaning of the word, representing a separate reality and a shaman, such as Don Juan and, eventually, Castaneda himself.
In “Journey to Ixtlan,” Carlos begins a new stage of learning. Don Juan tells him that they will not use more drugs. These were necessary when Carlos was a novice.
Ixtlan”, which served as Castaneda’s doctoral thesis at UCLA, is considered by many to be his most beautiful book. It also made him a millionaire.
At the end of the book, Carlos talks to a luminous coyote. But he needs to prepare to join the Nagual.
Don Juan and Don Genaro bring Carlos to the edge of the precipice at the end of Tales of Power.
If he dares to jump, he will finally be a full-fledged sorcerer.
However, this time Carlos does not turn back. Instead, he jumps into the abyss.
After 1973, Castaneda went into seclusion, at least as far as the press was involved (he still went to Hollywood parties).
Claiming that he complied with Don Juan’s instructions to become “inaccessible,” he no longer allowed himself to be photographed or interviewed.
He also cut ties with his past; having attended CJ’s high school graduation and promised it to Europe, he soon exiled his ex-wife and son.
He also disappeared, Don Juan.
At the time “The Second Ring of Power” was released in 1977, readers learned that, somewhere around midway between the jump to the chasm at the close of “Tales of Power” and the beginning of the new book, Don Juan had vanished, turning into a ball of light and entering the Nagual.
But unfortunately, his seclusion also helped Castaneda hide the alternative family he was beginning to form.
Who were Carlos Castaneda’s witches?
The crucial members were three youthful women, Maryann Simko, Regine Thal, and Kathleen” Chickie” Pohlman, who Castaneda had gotten while he was still active at UCLA.
Simko was pursuing aPh.D. in anthropology and was known as Castaneda’s gal on the lot.
Through her, Castaneda met Thal, another anthropology.D. seeker and Simko’s friend from karate class. It’s unclear how Pohlman came into the picture.
In 1973, Castaneda bought an emulsion on Pandora Avenue in Westwood.
The women, soon to be known in his group and his books as” the witches,” moved.
Ultimately, they came to sport short, identical fair-dyed haircuts analogous to those worn by the Heaven’s Gate cult. They also said they had studied with slip Juan.
Keeping with the gospel of” erasing particular history,” they changed their names.
Simko came Taisha Abelar; Thal, Florinda Donner- Grau. Donner- Grau is flashed back by numerous as Castaneda’s equal in intelligence and seductiveness.
Nicknamed” the hummingbird” for her ceaseless energy, she was raised in Venezuela to German parents and is said to have delved into the Yanomami Indians.
Pohlman was given a kindly, less glamorous alias Carol Tiggs. Donner- Grau and Abelar ultimately published their books on necromancy.
The witches, along with Castaneda, maintained a click robe of secretiveness.
They used multitudinous aliases and didn’t allow themselves to be mugged.
As a result, followers were told constantly changing stories about their backgrounds.
Only after Castaneda’s death did the data about their lives crop.
That’s substantially due to the work of three of his former followers.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, believed the group presumably numbered no further than two dozen members.
Members, substantially women, came and went.
At that time, a momentous event was the dereliction of Carol Tiggs, who, according to Wallace, was always the most equivocal witch.
She attempted to separate shortly after joining.
Instead, she went to California Acupuncture College, married a classmate, and resided in Pacific Palisades.
Ultimately, Wallace says, Castaneda allured her back.
Castaneda had a different interpretation.
In his bestseller, “The Eagle’s Gift,” he described how Tiggs vanished into the” alternate attention,” one of his terms for perpetuity.
Ultimately, reappeared through a time-space gate in New Mexico.
She then flew to Los Angeles, where they reunited when he met her on Santa Monica Boulevard.
In homage to her 10 times in a different dimension, she was now known as the” nagual woman.”
Wallace believes this was an incitement for Tiggs to return.
According to Wallace and Jennings, one of the witches’ tasks was to retain new members.
Melissa Ward, a Los Angeles- area restaurateur, shared in the group from 1993 to 1994.”
They frequently signed at conferences,” she told me.
She said the thing was to find “women with a combination of smarts, beauty, and vulnerability.”
Inauguration into the inner family frequently involved sleeping with Castaneda, who, the witches claimed in public appearances, was a virgin.
In” Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” Wallace gives a detailed picture of his temptation.
Because of his father’s fellowship with Castaneda, his case was unusual. Nonetheless, over time, she’d drop by the Wallace home.
When Irving failed in 1990, Amy was living in Berkeley, California.
Shortly after that, Castaneda called her and told her that his father had appeared to him in a dream and was trapped in the Wallace house and that he demanded Amy and Carlos free him.
Suitably sceptical, Wallace came to Los Angeles, and the temptation began humorlessly.
She recounts that she soon set herself up in bed with Castaneda.
He told her he had not had coitus 20 times.
When Wallace was concerned that she might become pregnant( they used no birth control), Castaneda jumped out of bed and cried,
“I get you pregnant? Insolvable! The Nagual’s sperm isn’t mortal. Do not let the Nagual’s sperm out, baby. It’ll burn your humanity.”
She didn’t mention the vasectomy; she had hard times ahead.
The courting continued for several weeks.
Finally, Castaneda told her they were” stoutly wedded.”
Then, one autumn, he took her to the conjurer’s emulsion.
Wallace looked at a road sign to flashback the position as they left. Castaneda angrily rebuked her.
A legionnaire would not have looked.
He ordered her to return to Berkeley. She did.
When he called her, he refused to talk to her.
The witches instructed Wallace on the sorcerous way necessary to return.
First, he’d like to relieve himself of his attachments.
Wallace got relieved of his pussycats. That wasn’t enough.
Castaneda, she writes, got on the phone and called her a selfish, putrefied Jew.
He ordered her to get a job at McDonald’s.
Instead, Wallace worked as a waitress in a hostel.
Six months latterly, she was allowed to return.
Followers
In the early 1990s, Richard Jennings, a Columbia Law graduate, lived in Los Angeles.
He was the administrative director of Hollywood Supports, a nonprofit group organized to fight demarcation against people with HIV.
He’d preliminarily served as administrative director of GLAAD, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.
After reading an composition in Details magazine by Bruce Wagner about a hassle with Castaneda, he was intrigued.
Searching the Internet, he went to one of the semi-secret shops in Los Angeles.
He was soon invited to share exclusive classes for select followers in Castaneda’s Sunday sessions, where Jennings took riotous notes.
From 1995 to 1998, he was deeply engaged in the group, occasionally advising on legal matters.
After Castaneda’s death, he opened a website, Sustained Action, for which he collected strictly delved commentaries, ranging from 1947 to 1999, of Patricia Partin’s and the witches’ lives.
Yet past insider is Amy Wallace, author of 13 fabrication and nonfiction books, including the bestselling Book of Lists, which she authored with her family David Wallechinksy and her father, novelist Irving Wallace, also a Korda customer.
She first met Castaneda in 1973 while still at the high academy. Her parents took her to a regale party hosted by agent Ned Brown.
Castaneda was there with Abelar, who was named Anna- Marie Carter.
They talked to Wallace about her externship. Numerous times latterly, Wallace became one of Castaneda’s numerous suckers, an experience reported in his bio,” The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.”
Gaby Geuter, author and former trip agent, had been a factory attendee hoping to get into the intimate circle.
In 1996 she noticed she was being shut out. To discover the verity of the practitioner who had rejected her, she and her hubby, Greg Mamishian, began following Castaneda.
In her book” Filming Castaneda,” she relates how they intimately recorded the group’s appearances and goings from an auto near their emulsion.
There would be no photographic record of Castaneda after 1973, who retained his sportful charm and a full head of tableware hair as he progressed.
They also trolled through his trash, uncovering a treasure trove of documents, including marriage instruments, letters, and credit card bills that would latterly give suggestions to the group’s history and geste during Castaneda’s last days.
Sources:
https://www.clarin.com
https://culturamas.es
https://listamaze.com
Thanks for reading!
Rocio Becerra