Talk:Carlos Castaneda/Archive 1

Abysmally Deficient
Having just watched the excellent BBC expose of this charlatan I can only say this article is weak at best.
 * In fact reviewing the entire article again I can say it must be some totally moronic jerkwad who wrote this and that this is all the proof needed to support the argument that Wikipedia can be destructive. No time at all is devoted to the considerable research by serious anthropologists to expose CC; no mention at all is given of his cult following; no mention is made of his mistress/adopted daughter.

Instead all we see is some freako go bananas with all the CC mumbo jumbo that literally killed so many people. I'm sorry - but it's REPUGNANT. Starting now my children will be WARNED about Wikipedia - that is is STUPID and potentially DESTRUCTIVE. I applaud the New Jersey school board. Obviously they're enlightened. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.30.124.218 (talk) 03:09, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

What's good about Wikipedia is that you can add valuable information, why not do that instead of this? 12.202.79.73 (talk) 14:42, 26 February 2008 (UTC)dustfly

Merge Proposal
The article Mystic meditation is probably the shortest article I have ever seen, one line in here is all it needs at best a sub heading if someone was willing to do the work.--Matt 03:43, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't agree with this proposal, I think Castaneda's work stands on it own, and should not be "incorporated" into another listing, nor should other listings be incorporated into his. True, under something like "new age" beliefs you could mention Castaneda. But "meditation" was never really that important in the Castaneda works and the don Juan philosophy, so this proposal is a bad idea. Who wields me, wields the world! 04:40, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

I have never heard or read of the term Mystic Meditation used in connection with Castaneda's works or don Juan. Why not confirm this and then just delete the entry for Mystic Meditation. 01/25/07 68.174.98.249 00:05, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Senses
first excuse my english, but i think that books from CC it´s only a way to say that´s more in this world to know. Our only 5 sense give to us, only a limited view and knowledge. It´s obvius that CC make a mix of his personal experiences, investigations and imagination. But you want to still stuck to our ordinary world?

librevoz from Merida, Yucatán

They're good books - but fiction can take you out of the ordinary world. Castaneda says lots of things that are true: some of them he found in other works of more authentic authors. But Castaneda is an excellent summary of other people's findings. Chevalier violet 22:33, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

I wish someone could give me even one example of something in the castaneda books that is found elsewhere.awp

There are lots of similar things you can find. To shut off the internal dialogue is a zen practice. Yoga teaches that our soul consists of some kind of light/awareness. Feng shui says that all objects are attached to us like strings. But does it mean he looked around in all kind of books to make this huge scam? Or maybe it's just what he says, another way to perceive the world..and learning how to do it, that many people did some thousands of years ago, and some people still know how to do it?

'''Please type ~ at the end of your post to sign it. Thank you.''' --Pixelface 20:06, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

I dont understand what your saying, or even how to get the date to work.

Hi,

Where does Castaneda's biographical information come from? Thanks, Yann 22:18 Feb 21, 2003 (UTC)

Probably from the books. ==> Es02 10:56(AEST) 20 May 2003

No. There is practically no personal information about himself in his books. Some of it might be speculative, and some might come from independent researchers who in turn wrote books or articles about him. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 200.52.181.232 (talk • contribs) 10:23 19 February 2004 (UTC)

It is a compilation of what he told others, interviews, etc. In other words, the most likely scenario. There were also records from UCLA, the immigration department,and peru.

Some Suggestions For Improvement
One example of plagiarism? First of all, if you go to your local library and pick up the Don Juan Papers, you will find over 200. Many of them are nearly innocuous or slightly suspicious taken alone. As a whole they are quite damning, with 13 in particular that are so blatant they are damning in and of themselves. But since you asked, here's two at random:

"The Human Aura... is seen by the psychic observer as a luminous cloud... certain colors being predominant in each person.... It is oval or egg-shaped.... the 'Auric Egg'.... to the psychic vision it appears to be 'streaked' byu umerous fine lines extending like stiff bristles from the body outward.... the several hairs standing out in all directions" (Atkinson 1909: 62, 62, 58)

Castaneda: "The human quality was shown as an egglike cluster of luminous fibers" (Castaneda 1974, page 39). "What I called coloration was not a hue but a glow of different intensities" (Castaneda 1974:41). "The little smoke will help you to see men as fibers of light.... Very fine threads that circulate from the head to the navel. Thus a man looks like an egg of circulating fibers. And his arms and legs are like luminous bristles, bursting out in all directions' (Castaneda 1971:33)

Castaneda almost certainly stole the "four enemies of power" from Opler and Eliade. Read for yourself,

"I was approached by a man... who wanted to transfer his power to me. I told him, "No, I am afraid of it" (Opler 1941:211)

Castaneda: And thus he has stumbled on the first of his nautral enemies: Fear!" (Castaneda 1968:57 - Opler: "Anything that interferes with the clarity of purpose of the shaman gravely weakens the rite" (Opler 1941: 209)

Castaneda: 'That clarity of mind, which is so hard to obtain, dispels fear, but also blinds. It forces the man never to doubt himself' (C 1969: 58) - Eliade: "The powers [and] the magical sense of boundless capability.... they produce... can make the yogin forget his true aim" (Eliade 1964: 416-417)

Castaneda: 'He can do... whatever he pleases....' "But what if he is temporarily blinded by power, and then refuses it?' "That means he is still trying to become a man of knowledge' (C 1968: 59) - Opler: "Power is not always neutral, not always a force ready to act at the bidding of the shaman" (Opler 1941:255)

Castaneda: The power he has seemingly conquered is in reality never his' (C 1968: 60) - Opler: "Power which has seemed to be beneficent may finally demand that the shaman sacrifice a life to it" (Opler 1941:255)

C: The man.... ends in making rules, because he is a master.... His enemy will have turned him into a cruel, capricious man' (C 1968:69) - (Opler 1941: 209): "The older you get, the weaker you become with your ceremony. Your mind is weak. Your praying is mixed up.... Your voice is feeble.... You can't have a good vigorous talk with your power any more"

Castaneda: 'His enemy will cut him down into a feeble old creature. His desire to retreat will overrule all his clarity, his power, and his knowledge." (C 1968: 60) - (Taken from the Don Juan Papers, Richard de Mille, 1980, pp. 409.)

Obviously Castaneda embellished and rearranged these quotes, but the language is strikingly similar. I should also mention that the strongest proof found against Castaneda is temporal inconsistencies - like claiming that Don Juan taught him to "see" in 1962, and in 1969 he published that he didn't know what seeing was and asked Don Juan to please explain (Castaneda's Journey, Richard de Mille, 1976, pp. 37). He couldn't have found the answer in his memory, or if not in his "field notes"?

Castaneda fictioneered, and he probably plagiarized too. I don't know how to use Wiki, or else I would put all this in the main article myself! Will somebody please do it for me? Chevalier violet 05:43, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Update: now THAT is much better! Chevalier violet 22:10, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Needed: we actually now know the real names of many of the surnames listed in the related author section. We know the real names of "Florinda Donner-Grau" "Taisha Abelar" for example. It's all listed in later biographies of Castaneda. Does anybody have that information?

Re (pre-update): In this article, the coverage of the content of Castaneda's books is excellent. The coverage of the critics against him is fairly weak. It's not that there isn't any, it's that the strongest arguments against Castaneda's veracity are not included. . In the Don Juan Papers: the strongest contention is plaigarism. Richard de Mille says "Don Juan followers declare that enlightened minds think alike in all times and places, but there is more ... than similar ideas; there are similar words. When Don Juan opens his mouth, the words of particular writers come out" (De Mille, Don Juan Papers, 1980, 19)- authors that were in the UCLA library, and some of whom were required reading for Castaneda's Anthropology degree. The sentence structures, the word choice agree in some cases to a startling degree, despite the fact that Castaneda supposedly translated his conversations from Spanish. The first quote about the "luminous egg" is almost verbatim taken from an American "hack writer of fake mysticism" from 1903. It's not as though these similarities occur on the book-level - ideas spread out throughout the course of a book that are the same. In certain cases, it's not even paragraph-level similarity of ideas. This is sentence-level similarity - otherwise known as probable paraphrasing, plaigarism, or petty larceny. De Mille says "How many stylistic echos would be needed to prove that don Juan's teachings and Carlos's adventures originated not in the Sonoran desert but in the library at UCLA? The alleglossary... lists some 200 exhibits many of which clearly demonstrate and all of which suggest literary influence of earlier publications on Castaneda's supposed field reports." (Don Juan Papers, Richard de Mille, 1980, 20) . Castaneda defenders (and this wikipedia article) defend Castaneda's constant inventions by saying that Don Juan told him to. A French biographer of Castaneda, Christophe Bourseiller, in Carlos Castaneda : La vérité du mensonge argues that Castaneda had been a liar long before he allegedly met Don Juan. In the 50's, Castaneda claimed, according to friends, to have been part of the American special forces, for which there is no record whatsoever, and seems improbable since he was a recent immigrant at the time. During the 50's, he also claimed to be the nephew of a certain Aranha, a prominent, rich Brazilian politician at the time. This is, of course, blatantly false. Castaneda's family (and illegitimate child) was tracked down and interviewed by Time magazine. His own mother said that Castaneda has been a teller of tall tales since birth. If you accept that Castaneda had been a teller of tall tales long before he met Don Juan, it becomes far easier, and indeed highly probable in light of other evidence, that Castaneda invented him too. . These are the most powerful arguments against Castaneda's work. They need to be included, with less harsh language, in the final article. 15:09, 14 September 2006 (UTC)Chevalier violet 15:09, 14 September 2006 (UTC) CV —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Chevalier violet (talk • contribs) 07:00 10 September 2006.

You fools! Dont you realize that was his game? That stuff about personal history was supposed to be false. I would not be surprised that he used sentences and writing styles from books at UCLA, after all, his intent was not to be a writer, but to take his states of heightened awareness, after recall through dreaming, and bring it back somehow to put on paper. Imagine yourself desribing a dream. If you were to make a story out of it, you would need to borrow, embellish, edit, and connect to make it into something that could be sold as a novel-type book. I think the main thing wasnt actually the story itself, just as the content of dreams isnt as important as the technique and knowledge.awp

LOL! I agree with "nice one" below. Chevalier violet 02:51, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Nice one; excuse plaigarism because it's all now the content of my dreams. "His intent was not to be a writer"? Then why did he write so many books, crafted for popular appeal? Why not just stick to the oral tradition, and talk about his experience. Why would one have to "borrom, embellsh, edit and connect" a dream into a novel, simply to describe a dream story? Shouldn't any shaman worth his salt know that what unites these traditions is an embrace of the oral technique and an avoidance of the written word, one being temporal, the other static and canonical (in short, what reality ain't). Perhaps the Yaqui have some insight into charlatans and plaigarists, and some commentary on those 'shamans' who corrupt oral traditions into static pulp, and a steady flow of royalties. Sept. 2006

I see what you mean by the word self-stalking, but eventually it does include the world and other worlds too. Actually since the emanations inside the cocoon (the ones used for awareness and perception) match the ones outside, it would be fair to say it is stalking the universe.

The article's current form is fairly informative and even-handed, but it could use some polish.

One thing that should be emphasized is Castaneda's protean nature. As documented most notably in "Castaneda's Journey" and "The Don Juan Papers," both edited by Charles de Mille, and "A Magical Journey with Carlos Castaneda" by Margaret Runyon (Castaneda's ex-wife), Castaneda had a history of giving contradictory or ambiguous information about himself. Given the doubts that these authors and others have raised about Castaneda's truthfulness, it might be better to say that Castaneda "allegedly" met Don Juan Matus in 1960. Of course, Castaneda's work has never been proven entirely fraudulent either, despite whatever doubts have been raised about certain elements of it.

A more glaring matter for the article as a whole is that it uses a lot of Castaneda's jargon without really explaining what is meant. Summarizing twelve books' worth of information is difficult to do, but there should probably be some more basic description of the sorcery concepts allegedly learned by Castaneda, so that the unfamiliar reader will not be entirely lost. For example, in the current article such terms as "Toltec," "Warrior," "Eagle," "Dreaming," and "Stalking," among certain others, have very specialized meanings that need to be explained further. There is no mention of "Tonal," and "Nagual," and there is also no explanation of the structure of the warrior's party (the five types of men and the five types of women). —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 141.166.65.61 (talk • contribs) 14:47 15 January 2005 (UTC)

It is not upon anybody to prove his works "entirely fraudulent. That is impossible. We weren't there. What we can do is look for logical errors and plagiarism, which show that these stories resemble books in the library and that Castaneda could not lived the experiences he wrote about. He was taught to see then somehow forgot what it means to SEE? He forgot about 6 hair-raising encounters with la Catalina three years later? Hogwash!

If the question is: did Carlos Castaneda meet some indian guy in his life, the answer is probably! But if you ask, did Castaneda meet a Don Juan AS PORTRAYED IN THE BOOKS, the answer is no! All fiction is partially true. The question is, are the works of Castaneda mostly fact? Again, the answer is no.

Maybe this guy makes a good point that from a practical standpoint, it makes little difference whether the books are fact or fiction. The ideas are there, you can take them or leave them. But for me, the fact that these books are fiction does make a practical difference. I would take the books and the advice given far more seriously if it were a "ten-thousand year old tradition" - rather than something entirely invented in the UCLA library.Chevalier violet 02:51, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Re: You are completly right. The concepts must be better explained. Look how they talk about the "Eagle"....no way. And the explanation of tonal and nagual must be explored indeed! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 201.11.83.173 (talk • contribs) 21:44 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Those examples of plagiarism are quite weak. What is kind of strange is that if Castaneda was just a plagiator, how come he can describe the ideas more clearly than those he plagiated from? And the ideas are similar? How do you explain that different religions are similar, or that yoga is similar to buddhism? Is that plagiarism too? And looking at all those hollywood films, without anything remotely original, and you find Castaneda's books to be plagiarism?

I completely agree with the unsigned comment above. The closest thing to Carlos Castaneda's early work is actually the Sufis by Idries Shah. No-one has picked this up because they are looking in the wrong places and in a hurry to make connections. The examples given by De-Mille are so weak as to be negligible. But the chapter in 'The Sufis' on Datura (the Mandrake root),and the witches and the connection between the words Bruja and Brush would have made a better case for De-Mille and other untalented offspring of famous people who envied Castaneda.Sidney Harry 21:17, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Merge from Carlos Castenada (you say tomato...
I have endeavored to combine these two articles, but the result could certainly use more work; in particular I have not tried to incorporate the suggestions made above. Mwanner 18:28, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)

Anthropologist ???
From what I understand, it is generally held in the scientific community that Castaneda certainly wasn't an anthropologist and his books are novels, not "an anthropologist's journal". I see this has been pointed out in the article, but only as an equally valid, alternative position. Castaneda was not an anthropologist and he should not be categorised as such, lest we fool another generation into taking his work at face value. --Pappa 12:31, 4 August 2005 (UTC) It is always interesting to me how speculation and interpretation plays such an important part in this discussions. At the same time it is assumed that speculation makes it true. That is never the case. In reality, Carlos Castenada did travel with a number of people. Some were "seers", who had clarity and seeing. Others were apprentices. The one I am aware of was a man from Canada who travelled with Carlos a number of times and was instrumental in helping him with his later books because he was a Chemist or a Chemical Engineer and brought special meaning to the "organic" and "inorganic" views of intervention. After attending classes that Carlos gave in California, I became aware of this man and for many years after tried to find him in the United States and also in Canada. To my knowledge he has disappeared and part of this may be his conflict with the Warrior tradition of Don Juan. December 2005 - Marcus Dominici (UCLA)

Has anybody verified Castañeda's degrees? According to http://chiapas.mediosindependientes.org/display.php3?article_id=116634 he never obtained any degree from UCLA. If he got a Ph.D. from UCLA it should be in their library catalog, but it isn't. -- Daniel Eisenberg

Hey man, give a break. He have the PhD from UCLA, and of course it was an anthropologist, at least at the beggining. This article you indicated is horrible. The first book was published by UCLA press. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 201.11.83.173 (talk • contribs) 21:41 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Re: Anthropologist???
He was indeed an anthropologist, graduated at UCLA. And perhaps what you arbitrarily call "scientific community", excluding any and all references to factual proof that his work is fictional, is something we should be wary of taking at face value as well. An encyclopedia article, by the way, is precisely designed to provide "equally valid and alternative positions". There are many other places where one can engage in discussions and arguments over any given subject matter. Thus, "we", who simply expose unbiased information for the encyclopedia cannot become a "we" that oversees the subjective content of an article to make it fit our own personal views. Jan F. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 141.166.65.61 (talk • contribs) 14:59 6 August 2005 (UTC)

I have not seen these "factual" claims that it is fiction, even after seeing some of those crappy 3rd party books you mention. Even the other people who write there own versions of Don Juan I would not recommend taking to seriously.


 * I read De Mille's first book, "The Power and the Allegory". Personally, I am in no doubt that Castenada was a complete charlatan.  As to whether he was an anthropologist...  Yes, he did earn his Masters and then his PhD from his research -- research it seemed to me that De Mille exposed as fraudulent.  So, officially, he was an anthropologist.  It wouldn't surprise me if his PhD was UCLA's most embarrassing mistake.  I suspect that everyone there now realizes he was a fraud, but that the mechanism for retracting his degree was just too complicated, so they let it slide.  I doubt he wrote a single academic paper following his graduation.
 * Only the University of California is qualified to decide who will earn a degree from them. I suspect everyone doesnt think he was a fraud. seems like they could even be proud of it. most people dont write academic papers after graduating. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Awp (talk • contribs) 05:20 18 June 2006 (UTC)


 * For those of you who haven't read "The Power and the Allegory", De Mille compared "The teachings of Don Juan: A Yacqui way of Knowledge" with Castenada's library stack requests. The stack requests documented that he was sitting in the library when his journal said he was squatting in Don Juan's hut.  One of the most memorable discoveries the De Mille made in his examination of the stack requests was that when CC said he was participating in the traditional peyote ceremony -- the least fantastic episode of drug use -- he was not only sitting in the library, but he was reading someone else's description of their experience of the peyote ceremony.
 * The places and dates were changed. Sure, he would like to read others experiences. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Awp (talk • contribs) 05:28 18 June 2006 (UTC)


 * I am going to change back the introductory paragraphs to say that CC claimed to have met a Shaman named Don Juan. --  Geo Swan 04:24, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

I have a different view of all of this, in that it would have been very hard to invent all the concepts he wrote about. The names, places, and times could have been altered or partly fictional. It would be fair to say he wrote the first book for his anthropology degree, but he never claimed to be a practicing anthropologist. I am just glad someone from the Toltec tradition wrote about their knowledge in this fashion, because it almost has no parallel, or maybe other cultures have forgotten.

Your right it would be hard to "invent all the concepts he wrote about." To be sure, much of what he wrote about was part of popular philosophy at the time--thats one of the things that critics point to as suspicious about the works. Not only that, but each succesive books seemed to follow trends in the New Age movement. Of course he didn't "invent all the concepts", very little thought and creativity be it in the form of fiction or non-fiction is ever truly original. De Mille even shows that the basic structure and idea of the story is suspiciously similar to some other works of fiction that were popular in Castaneda's childhood.
 * 'Popular philosophy of the time' didnt seem to include topics or even vocabulary such as the assemblage point, intent, the eagle's emanations, stalking, gazing techniques, naguals parties, etc. The eagle's gift, fire from within, silent knowledge are trends in the new age movement? Actually, what are the trends in the new age movement? Pleiadians, Reiki, combining with christianity, buddhism..? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Awp (talk • contribs) 05:28 18 June 2006 (UTC)

And don't be so sure that you are reading someone from the Toltec tradition. Thats the whole controversy: is it really a work about the Toltec tradition. I think there is ample reason to doubt it. But its still an open question. --Brentt 09:30, 6 November 2005 (UTC) It is always interesting to me how speculation and interpretation plays such an important part in this discussions. At the same time it is assumed that speculation makes it true. That is never the case. In reality, Carlos Castenada did travel with a number of people. Some were "seers", who had clarity and seeing. Others were apprentices. The one I am aware of was a man from Canada who travelled with Carlos a number of times and was instrumental in helping him with his later books because he was a Chemist or a Chemical Engineer and brought special meaning to the "organic" and "inorganic" views of intervention. After attending classes that Carlos gave in California, I became aware of this man and for many years after tried to find him in the United States and also in Canada. To my knowledge he has disappeared and part of this may be his conflict with the Warrior tradition of Don Juan.

The end of the first paragraph reads: "critics claim the books are shams, works of fiction, and not empirically verifiable works of anthropology as claimed." My question is, WHO claims these are empirically verfiable works of anthropology? I don't believe Castaneda made that claim in his books.


 * To User AWP. I've included your findings of David de Mille's "The Power and Allegory" of CC's library stack request commentaries to the criticism section. If you object please let me know.

Bill-

December 26, 2007

Somebody's question
There was a question just after the phrase "neither Eastern nor Western" that belonged here on the talk page:

(what about Northern or Southern(shamanism, Australia,African?))

I didn't bother looking through the history to find out who it was, but I also hope nobody has to answer this question. The article needs a serious rewrite.--Rockero 02:00, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

I used to work at the Ohio State University Bookstore as the manager of Special Services. In a meeting with the trade book manager and a representative of Castaneda's publisher we discussed Castenads's publishing success. The representative stated that all of Casteneda's works were "fiction". That everything was a fake, and that he made up about everything in the books. This was in 1975. The Rep would have no reason to lie since it would negatively impact his sales. Frank Berger —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Francisberger (talk • contribs) 00:53, 1 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I think this representative of Castaneda's publisher must have been a real fool, since it could -- as you point out -- in no way be in their best interests to represent the early works as fictional. Last I noticed, the first couple books at least were published explicitly as nonfiction, so this representative's assertion, aside from potentially negatively-impacting the books' saleability, go further and incriminate himself as a promulgator of fakery.  (Apologies for horrendous grammar there.) -AGS 67.193.46.15 (talk) 08:08, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

The Sorcerer's Apprentice: My Life with Carlos Castaneda
I did not see a mention of Amy Wallace's book The Sorcerer's Apprentice: My Life with Carlos Castaneda in the article or the discussion. This book put off a whole lot of dyed-in-the wool tensegrity practitioners and Castaneda freaks. A friend who belongs to the above category said that when he met one of the Tensegrity instructors in LA, she said that Amy Wallace's book was not completely untrue in the sense that some of these things did happen but it was her interpretation or reactions to the events that were wrong.

The official Carlos Castaneda website, Magical Passes, is worth a look. http://www.castaneda.com/

There are also anti-Castaneda websites for the 'Born Again Unbelievers', groups of people who dedicate their lives to denouncing Carlos Castaneda. An example is the Sustained Action site: http://www.sustainedaction.org/ —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Mulla nasrudin (talk • contribs) 13:25, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Strangely it seems like most of Castaneda criticism is taken from here. Isn't it strange to believe some self-pitying woman trying to despell a respected man, instead of believing the man himself? Not that one should just go on and believing anybody..but how can anyone trust this woman? Maybe because she is aggressive and sceptic just like any averege man?


 * Regardless, Amy Wallace was an established author before meeting CC, as well as being a well known psychic, and this book and link should be mentioned in the criticism section. --Dseer 05:15, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Error
Petty tyrants is not in "Eagles Gift", but in "Fire from Within" —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 201.11.83.173 (talk • contribs) 02:54 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Name - He is Brazilian
I did a lot of research on him and many Hispanic dictionaries spell his surname with the ñ (Castañeda) while others ommit the ñ. However all of his published work has anglicised his name into Castaneda. Anybody know any information on whether he intentionally changed it? --Speakslowly 03:54, 24 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Castaneda is not spanic, but brazilian. And yes, he changed his surname... —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 201.11.83.173 (talk • contribs) 03:45 24 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm assuming you meant not Spanish, but Brazilian? And you are wrong, the last name is Spanish. He was born in Perú where the official language is Spanish, not Portuguese. He also taught Spanish for a couple of years in the United States. You say he changed his surname? I need proof please. --Speakslowly 03:54, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

He was born in Brazil, in the state of Sao Paulo. He always says that, and it is because its true...its simple. When he was in the height of repercussion, TIME magazine, moved by uncertain reasons, release this information to affect his influence. And based on erroneous or false "proofs" released this bulls**** about Peru. Yes, he speaks Spanish and also speakes an perfect portuguese, as noted by the Brazilian journalist who get an exclusive for brazilian VEJA Magazine (1975). He learned Spanish when living in Argentina, teenager. You americans really believe in the text of TIME Magazine? Its clearly partial, and induces the reader to stigmatize CC as a liar. The experiences of his childhood described in Ixtlan and Active Size of Infinity are clearly localized in the interior of São Paulo. Should be impossible for a non-brazilian writer recreate this atmosphere. There are inumerous references to the region and the local culture. And theres a LOT of people named Castaneda in this region of Brazil, but his father was an ARANHA, same family of the former UN president brazilian diplomant Osvaldo Aranha. In the interview for Carmina Fort he emphatized the disgust with the erroneous type of his name with the ~ Castañeda. He doesnt like that. The name is Castaneda, without ~. The partial change of his surname is mentioned by him in a 1968 correspondence.

Hey this article must me reviewed, the article is not good as other Wiki articles. Lots of works must me done here. And sorry for my bad english, thanks. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 201.11.83.173 (talk • contribs) 04:29 25 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I've never read the TIME magazine article, but many notable sources such as the Biographical Dictionary of Hispanic Americans (Second Edition) and the Dictionary of Hispanic Biography both state that he was born in Cajamarca Perú on December 25th, 1925. Both also state that he lied about being born in São Paulo in 1931. And you were close about his fathers name, it is César Arana, not Aranha. His full name is Carlos Arana Castañeda and the text say that he decided to take his mothers surname. That interview with Carmina Fort sounds interesting, it would certainly end this entire argument, but I need to see a source (actual interview) before I can give you the benefit of the doubt. If what you say is true, then we can move on. Please try and find that interview and please sign your name. --Speakslowly 03:52, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

These books you quote published this because TIME publish it first. The solely source is the article by TIME Magazine (you can find in Internet this). The other sources just reproduce it. You should read that before search for another sources. Its a main bibliography about this author. The article have the purpose to paint him as a liar, as anybody with critical sense can perceive. So they tried to do an "smart investigation" and presents stupid immigration records to affect his reputation. Its completly untrue, or maybe they found an homonimous. So they say he lies about São Paulo. No!! TIME lies about Cajamarca!! Anybody who knows the nature of both Peru and Brazil can perceive that. Only americans which dont know NOTHING about latin america can believe in that "investigation" of TIME. Time paint he as vitiated in games (such bingo), very creative etc... Why they said that?? To people think the books are false, its so obvious! o.O How can everybody believe in that bulls*** !?

As I said, the atmosphere and references in Active Size are totally integrated with the interior of São Paulo and Brazil. Answer that, please? I can tell some for you, the references for Brazilian region Rondonia, in North of the country for example. He knows the name of a region in São Paulo called Vale do Paraíba (search google for that) which have various Legorn chickens farms and where the family ARANHA are very strong. There are many Aranha´s nearby Campinas. Its a well-know family. Its not "Arana" (hispanic) but ARANHA. Aranha means "spider" in portuguese. Hey, he use to say that Osvaldo Aranha (search for this name, president of UN, proeminent diplomat) was his uncle. I suppose Aranha used his influence as ambassador to facilitate his housing in California, and allocate him with an host family. But he was problematic in family, a kind of bastard. Thats why he doesnt like his father and the reason family keep the secret.

Read the interview for Veja Magazine (search for Revista Veja). He talk an fluent portuguese, even with accent. How can a perunian to forge an portuguse accent of an region, without living that? He have the accent because it is his native language, of course. The reporter from VEJA noted that. In Active Size, he talk about an character which have the prenom "Sô" (Sho Velez). Sô is an abbreviation of "Senhor", (sir, mister) which is used ONLY in the interior of São Paulo. How could a perunian know that? Even an brazilian which leave away from Sâo Paulo (like in north) doesnt know that for sure. He refered to the city which he lives in his childhood as "Juqueri". Well, Juqueri is not an city anymore, it´s a name of an river and a hospital. The actual name is Mairiporã. So, he lies about a city which doesnt exists? No, because the name of the municipy Juqueri changed for Mairiporã only in 1948, after he leaves the country to study in Argentina( he moved maybe with 10-12, in 1945-47). So he dont know the name of the city was changed from Juqueri to Mairiporã an refer the old name, the name he knew when he was a child!!

Hey, if he had borned in 1925, and not 1935, he would have 35 years in 1960, where his relate begins. This dont make ANY sense. He was born in 1935, so in 1960, when he first meet Don Juan, he had 25 years. He just finished the first graduation and tried to get an first paper, as an young intellectual and academic. If he was born in 1925 he would have the same age of some of his teachers in UCLA!! (search for that, there are many names of his teachers in UCLA) No way, he arose in the 60s... see? John Lennon was born in 1940, CC in 1935...and not 25 (which would put here in another generation) No, he was a brilliant student, not late in any sense. He speaks portuguese, spanish, english an italian, because the grandparents are descendant (this is very common in São Paulo) and he studied some time in Italy. And finally, you should read the Carmina Fort book, where he comment the mess of TIME and the fact of people type his name with the ~. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 201.11.83.173 (talk • contribs) 04:41 26 August 2006 (UTC)

->I remember one more episode of his childhood in São Paulo, Brazil. In Power of Silence, chapter Third Point, in the part which begins with "I told him I had played soccer as a boy and had run extremely well. In fact, I was so agile and fast that I felt I could commit any prank with impunity because I would be able to outrun anyone chasing me, especially the old policemen who patrolled the streets of my hometown on foot." So, Sherlocks!! Where football (soccer) are strong? In Brazil, you should know that. Peru doesnt have nothing to do with football. People dont play in Peru. It´s not common. The fact of policemans form amateur teams to play in weekends etc is very common in Brazil. It´s cultural, it´s part of country culture. Almost all little boys play that game, so Castaneda played too. Hey guys, I am arguing serious here! This error should be stopped!!! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 201.11.83.173 (talk • contribs) 20:10 26 August 2006 (UTC)

You can find Castaneda books to read the passages I mention in http://www.geocities.com/total_freedom_warrior/castaneda/ and the interview for Veja Magazine in portuguese you can find in http://www.consciencia.org/castaneda/casvista.html —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 201.11.83.173 (talk • contribs) 20:42 26 August 2006 (UTC)

RE: Thank you for the useful links. For the record, He is almost certainly not Brazilian. He had an uncommon knack for languages, as his books well attest. It's true that he often said he was from Brazil, but in fact, he often said he was from a lot of places: Peru, Brazil, he even once claimed to be Italian - this is all before he supposedly met Don Juan, I might add. He was "erasing his personal history" aka telling big fat lies long before he supposedly met any Shaman whatsoever. ... You say that Castaneda had no accent when he spoke Portuguese, therefore he must be Brazilian. By your logic, he must have been a Portuguese, Peruvian, American - because, in fact, he had no accent in all three. Sometimes he put one on, for instance when he met a certain fashion journalist (sorry I forget who). She claimed he had a powerful Mexican accent, actually. He was just putting it on. I'm not 100% sure he had no accent in English, but it was next to nothing. A french reporter said he spoke perfect, accentless English. I don't know the quality of her English, however. I have been meaning to look into it.15:14, 14 September 2006 (UTC) CV —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Chevalier violet (talk • contribs) 01:12 12 September 2006.

Hey man. I said that he HAVE an accent which is not usual in Brazil, its specific to a region there. You should follow the link and read Veja interview. He choose give an interview for veja in 1975, after all that TIME mess, just because VEJA is a brazilian magazise. It his condition, the interview must be printed in Brazil. After that, he dont tell in public anymore for years.

He dont "often" said he is brazilian. He ALWAYS says that he is brazilian, at least in the main bibliography about this author. See the transcript for Ucla press interview from 1968, The Sam Keem interview for Psychology Today magazine, the Interview for Veja Magazine, the interview for Carmina Fort book and the transcripts of Tensegrity seminars. He Always say the same thing - he is brazilian. Only TIME, based on obscure immigration records, convicend his dumb readers the otherwise. Erase personal history dont have nothind to do with this specific point. Thanks. 02:58, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
 * he was born in Peru. His immigration record confirms this.  For more details on the inconsistancies between his stated biography and reality, see the Salon Article: the Dark Side of Carlos Castaneda.  linked to at the bottom of the article.  it's a fascinating and comprehesnive review of his life, death and writings.LiPollis 09:30, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
 * No, he have nothing to do with Peru. This is a Time Magazine fraud, who find an homonymous. These docs dont proof anything. My arguments do.

Pure POVy propaganda
This "article" is a shame. Castaneda was a fraud, something proven beyond reasonable doubt, but: wiki is for info. So, Castaneda's "teachings" should be fairly exposed, as well as criticism of his eclectic neo-gnostic mush. For the time being, just a NPOV label. Mir Harven 18:48, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Re: Your (im)posture is a shame! Castaneda is not a fraud. At least, is one of most important writers of XX century.


 * Good old Barnum was right. Mir Harven 09:35, 31 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Sorry, Don´t understand.201.11.83.173 17:51, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

A fraud should be other writers and cineasts who copy his work without giving credit. He solds dozen of millions books and people really love it.


 * Both applicable to J.K.Rowlings (sp ?) & the Harry Potter crap. It doesn't prove anything.

http://wrt-brooke.syr.edu/courses/205.03/bloom.html Mir Harven 09:35, 31 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I mean by that declaration: There are an movement to exclude CC and caracterize his work as fraudulent and belonging only to the 60ties, old-fashioned etc. But this isnt the appropriated approach, I think. Please dont compare CC to Harry Potter. Harry Potter is a establishment work, not an outsider. It is promoted by marketing and cultural industry. There is nothing to do. The Castaneda success is organic, natural. I was thinking in Paulo Coelho or Matrix, for example. The fact: there are million of people who take his lessons seriously and  he deserve the same threatment of others doutrines and beliefs. 201.11.83.173 17:51, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

No one will never erase this. His influence is various generations are absolutly magnetic. So the article should resume his concepts. There are many many original concepts which dont have paralell with ANY know tradition.


 * There are absolutely no novel concepts in Castaneda's works whatsoever:


 * a) luminous egg is from theosophy (ego in causal body) & scientology-thetan


 * Man, its all so different, I feel disappointed. Of course that are parallels, but this is a positive thing, which dont proof anything as a "fraud". Sam Keem, for example, tried to make parallels with philosophy when made his interview. And CC give him some concordance. By the way should be impossible for a writer know about all these old tradictions to form an new mix and call this "toltec". For what? Fame? He run away from cameras. Money? He dont live like an millionary. The study of every religion and doutrine is time-consuming. The concatenation of the whole thing in a ficctional self-biography apprenticeship environment  sounds artificial. Anyway, the Socrates of Plato isnt historic, however people dont blame on Plato philosophy for this. Thats not the point. Lets work with what we have: I can point you to 2 passages in CC bibliography in which he affirm the originallity of Don Juan Knowledge. He showed the Tibetan book of dead for Don Juan and Don Juan scares him (Second Book). In Carmina Fort book he also talk about this, when he relate a world travell and his experiences with another gurus in anothers countries. Please refer to it. Show me, please, a literature which have an equal to the "nagual and tonal" concepts, the explanation of the meaning of life and destiny of the conscience after dead (eagles food), the first, second and third attention and the assemblage point. Let me make some points, however:201.11.83.173 17:51, 31 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Teosophy is not an old tradition, its a kind of ecumenic stuff started only in XIX century. They believe in God and reincarnation. CC talks against both God (Theres no God) and reincarnation.201.11.83.173 17:51, 31 August 2006 (UTC)


 * b) The Eagle is good ole Demiurge from the Gnostic tradition


 * No way. Surely you dont understood what he call Eagle. If you want to do an parallel, the Intent from CC is most-like the Intent. Not the Eagle. By the way, theres not only one "gnostic tradition", but a LOT. Its a very complicated and confuse thing. But almost all gnostics are chrstians, and CC talks against christians every time.201.11.83.173 17:51, 31 August 2006 (UTC)


 * c) lucid dreaming is an ordinary paranormal technique


 * So What? Everybody dream, and that´s why is on the scope of every knowledge doutrine. CC approach of dreaming is different from various others. Tell me where I found about "Inorganic Beings", to fix the position of assemblage point to form an dreaming attention, different gates of dreaming. And he talks against "Soul". There´s no soul, but only body and energetic body.201.11.83.173 17:51, 31 August 2006 (UTC)


 * d) the circle of initiates is a trivia from all iniatory traditions
 * The nagual party is original. The types of humans beings (man of will, 4 types of womans, the concept of duplicated human being which is the nagual etc). See The Eagles Gift.201.11.83.173 17:51, 31 August 2006 (UTC)


 * f) "magical passess" is a concoction of various karate and t'ai chi exercises
 * No, its not karate, its kung-fu. But this is a different stage of the work. The purpose of these exercises are specific.201.11.83.173 17:51, 31 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Fraud. Mir Harven 09:35, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Btw you should not use the term "gnostic" in a pejorative way if you worry about NPOV. There are no reason to be excessive critic. You can relativize his academic relevance, but not his importance. The article should tell about that, no doubt, and not to try "dismistify" the author. You can tell what "no doubt" proves you are talking about please?


 * The literature unmasking Castaneda can be easily acqired & is referred to in the site of his detractors, http://www.sustainedaction.org . It's listed at http://www.sustainedaction.org/Explorations/explorations_i.htm Mir Harven 09:35, 31 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Its a long bibliography. I dont have access to it right now but you should distrut in bibliography formed to detract someone. An bibliography to defend CC can also be formed. This is not NPOV as you want. But its POV thrust a site of "detractors" as you admit. This polemic if part of his influence and importance.201.11.83.173 17:51, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Hey, before this campaign agains Castaneda reputation he was on main discussions. Federico Fellini was his friend. Famous philosopher Gilles Deleuze also wrote about him. Anyway how can you wrote about criticism if you admit things without any doubt? This is pre-Descartes... —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 201.11.83.173 (talk • contribs) 08:59 31 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Maxim Gorky was Lenin's friend. So what. The article needs a balanced approach to this popular writer & coycat-guru, not a hagiography. Mir Harven 09:35, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Instead of debating whether or not Castaneda was a fraud, can you guys suggest some specific improvements that can be made to the article (in a sand box or something) that are more NPOV? For example, the sections that detail specific points of the warrior's path (or whatever it is) could be made more succint, with pointers to further details for those who want to explore the mythos; removing the jargon (or isolating it to a couple of sections), etc? I came here because someone gave me Amy Wallace's book, which I read, but now I would like to have a more unbiased description of the man and his works. Anca 23:58, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Quite aside from anything else, just because some people think Castaneda was a fraud doesn't require labels, let alone shrill outcries. The majority of English Wikipedia users no doubt consider Islam a false religion, but the Islam and Allah articles somehow lack NPOV tags.  RGTraynor 08:54, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Removed this:
 * ''According to Theun Mares, the assemblage point can be viewed as a kind of radio dialing device that determines our reality. The assemblage point can be viewed as a focal point, where luminous fibers meet and produce reality. It could be that the Shamans observed the procreation of mushrooms in their Theory of Consciousness. From Biology, we know that when two mycelia fibers meet, a mushroom comes into existence. Thus also, when two of the Eagle’s Emanations meet, a new perception emerges. Thus everything that we consider real is but a product of alignment of the Eagle’s Emanations.

...because its link to Castaneda is tenous at best. --213.35.129.2 18:46, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

removed this book from bibliography
 * geshe Kelsang Gyatso Clear Light of Bliss by (1992) ISBN 0-948006-21-8. describes the same irreducible energy-structure that Carlos Castaneda describes (several close-to-each-other concentric-balls of energy-spokes, with a very few spokes going inward), but from the inside-out (a central-channel, with energy-spokes curving out, and after reaching a distance, splitting each into a "thousand" spokes -- eastern euphemism for many). Carlos gives some of the description of the irreducible human energy-structure in The Fire from Within, and the point about some spokes/fibres going inward (and possibly the bit about it being multiple concentric spheres, rather-than merely a single-sphere) is in Second Ring of Power when "la Gorda" gives that information to him.

--213.35.129.2 22:13, 8 September 2006 (UTC) also removed these links:
 * Gurdjieff Legominism Forum
 * Site about anthropologist William Curry Holden who was a leading authority on the Yaqui Indians.
 * Site about anthropologist Edward Holland Spicer who was a second leading authority on the Yaqui Indians.

Removed from Interpretations and criticisms

The vividness and plausibility of Castaneda's early works argue for their essential truth. Accounts of Castaneda's early life and the memoir "A magical journey with Carlos Castaneda", by his former wife Margaret Runyan Castaneda, exhibit many conflicts with what Castaneda said about himself, however, point the other way. Chevalier violet 22:08, 18 September 2006 (UTC) IMO they are not on topic, unless linked to specific articles to make a specific point. --213.35.129.2 22:16, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Also removed (these two enormous paragraphs have little to do with criticism, especially since anybody could say Don Juan had ordered Castaneda to erase his personal history, habits, and was changing him as a person):

What is easily understood is the fact that the writing style changes greatly from the first to the last of the "Don Juan" books. The Teachings of Don Juan is an anthropologist's journal containing a lot of seemingly irrelevant, non-fiction information. The quasi-journalistic or academic tone of the earliest books disappears definitively in Castaneda's fifth book, The Second Ring of Power. This book marks a significant change in the character of the series. In addition to introducing a large cast of new characters, the later Castaneda books present Don Juan's shamanism in far greater complexity than in the earlier books. The Eagle's Gift (sixth book) is a novel-like work with specific characters on a journey towards what they call "Total Freedom", and where the words of Don Juan seem more like those of a scientist. This could be the result of changes in the mind of Carlos Castaneda.

As Castaneda was very elusive, and because his works were taken up by young people at a time when New Age, Eastern religions, mystical and shamanic traditions were in fashion, many professionals cast doubt on the authenticity of contents of his works, (including leading anthropologists specializing in Yaqui culture). When he followed up The Teachings of Don Juan with a series of equally popular books, including A Separate Reality (1971), Journey to Ixtlan (1972), and Tales of Power (1975), even more questions were raised as to how much of his work was true anthropology and how much was his own creation. [citation needed]

Mescalito redirect
I was surprised to see that Mescalito simply redirects to Carlos_Castaneda. Given that there is a significant amount of actual mythology around this figure, I feel that the redirect should be pulled and perhaps a separate article developed. -FJ | hello  10-6-2006

Academic References
I suggest that more academic references should be submitted and let the readers have an opportunity to do their own research.

Wasson, R. Gordon. 1969. (Bk. Rev.). Economic Botany vol. 23(2):197. A review of Carlos Castaneda?s "The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge."

Wasson, R. Gordon. 1972a. (Bk. Rev.). Economic Botany vol. 26(1):98-99. A review of Carlos Castaneda?s "A Separate Reality: Further Conversations with Don Juan."

Wasson, R. Gordon. 1973a. (Bk. Rev.). Economic Botany vol. 27(1):151-152. A review of Carlos Castaneda?s "Journey to Ixtlan: The Lessons of Don Juan."

Wasson, R. Gordon. . 1974. (Bk. Rev.). Economic Botany vol. 28(3):245-246. A review of Carlos Castaneda?s "Tales of Power."

Wasson, R. Gordon. . 1977a. (Mag., Bk. Rev). Head vol. 2(4):52-53, 88-94. November. Reprints of R. Gordon Wasson?s reviews of Carlos Castaneda?s first four books. With an unsigned introduction by Jonathan Ott. Originally published in Economic Botany.

Someone keeps removing Theun Mares from related authors. The text is as follows: ''*Theun Mares is a nagual from South Africa who published several books on Nagualism and teaches very much the same thing as Castaneda, only from the perspective of a Natural Man, proving through subtle hints that in fact the Path with Heart is the only one worth pursuing, Mr. Mares takes the reader from being a wussy to being an Enlightened Warrior of the Spirit. --84.50.72.7 18:21, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

This text was removed by someone: ''One way to read the books is as a sort of game, almost like a detective novel. Depending upon one's approach, they could be either accepted at face-value in their entirety, or discarded. Some of the material could be considered true, some fictional; and some of the events described probably appeared to be real at the time, but could be interpreted as hallucinations.'' --84.50.72.7 16:22, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Article Unbalance
I find the article to be unbalance. No where does it mention any of the controversies surrounding Carlos Castaneda. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 72.136.204.119 (talk) 08:09, 17 December 2006 (UTC).
 * It does a bit, but it really needs it's own section. I just added a heading on the area where it has criticism. I whole heartedly agree with you. A good place to look would be Ward Churchill's essay "Carlos Castaneda: The Greatest Hoax Since Piltdown Man" in Fantasies of the Master Race. You may also want to see Talk:Plastic shaman, especially the section "To label someone as plastic..."  Ungovernable Force  Got something to say? 08:29, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the link and reference.

Re: ARTICLE UNBALANCE

I am a fan of Carlos Castaneda as well as world religion and philosophy. I also have a Ph.D. in English and know how encyclopedia articles should be written. This article on Carlos Castaneda was clearly written (rewritten, edited, and redacted) by people who are passionately convinced that Castaneda's entire career was a fraud; that he forged or copied his doctorate; that he fooled his dissertation committee in the Anthropology department; that most of what he wrote about he lifted wholesale from other sources. Or just made all of it up (rather than rearranging time, place, and event to keep to a narrative structure and protect the men and women whom he had consulted). Maybe. But not in an encyclopedia article, people. This thing should have been written factually and simply, outlining what Castaneda wrote with no mention of the controversies surrounding him. Those should have been listed _after_ that article and in an orderly fashion.

What's going on here is an argument between "believers" and "skeptics". I haven't checked on the entry for Mormonism or Islam, but I'll bet you it's filled with the same kind of passionate bias and unbridled rancor as the entry here. The skeptics and debunkers aren't going to convince the believers and students of anything. Strangely, it's all about ego. . . and the debunkers seem SO eager that everyone subscribe to their view of the universe. Which is just a view--an extension of the First Attention. But, then, you don't believe in the First Attention, do you? So it's all for nothing. Saturdayloo 21:48, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Saturdayloo said: "I am a fan of Carlos Castaneda ...... This thing should have been written factually and simply, outlining what Castaneda wrote with no mention of the controversies surrounding him. "

You openly state your own bias. Your moltives for surpessing any criticism of Castaneda are transparent. There are two sides of the coin.

(I would highly suggest checking out Wikipedia's policy on what can and cannot be written and in what mannerism.)

(Bob) Sun Jan 21,2007

Hi, Bob! You selectively misread my comment. I understand that there are two sides to every coin and I've read all of the criticism written against Castaneda. I would never suggest that an article such as the one about Castaneda NOT include mention of the controversies; all I suggested that the tone of the article be a bit more objective (than it is right now) starting off with a simple catalog of what Castaneda did, what he wrote about, etc., and then follow it up with the list of his critics (of which there are many) and a list of what his critics contend. I have read Wikipedia's policy on what can and cannot be written and I've also published in the field of literary criticism and I was simply appalled at how nasty the entry on Castaneda was. It was clearly written by an angry debunker who automatically assumed that Castaneda wrote fiction from the very beginning.

Notice how nothing was mentioned of how Castaneda's work was vetted by his dissertation committee at UCLA. I have a Ph.D and they are not easy to get. People have always assumed that Castaneda fooled his dissertation committee in some way. Moreover, in order to get a Ph.D. you have to take five exams in your chosen field and then have an oral exam before your dissertation committee. Had he not passed any of his exams, he wouldn't have been given a doctorate. Moreover, during the decades that followed, neither his dissertation committee nor the Anthropology department at UCLA nor the American Anthropology Association which accredits university departments nationwide moved to rescind Castaneda's degree--which they could have done. This is sometimes what happens to lawyers, for example, who do wrong. The Anthropology Department at UCLA could have faced censure or the loss of their academic accreditation had anyone proven that Castaneda pulled a fraud upon them. DeMille never mentions any of this, nor is any of it mentioned anywhere else. Even Castaneda's famous enemies in the Anthropology field--the men who were the so-called experts on Native American peyote cultures--did not call for Castaneda's censure or for the disaccreditation of the UCLA Anthropology Department.

I'm not saying that Castaneda's books aren't fiction or partly fiction. I'm not saying that Castaneda didn't lie or obsfucate any set of facts during his life about Don Juan and what he taught. I don't know any of those things. All I'm saying is that an encyclopedia article should be an objective statement of the subject _first_. Criticism and controversy about the topic would then follow such a statement. That's all I'm suggesting. --Saturdayloo


 * Compared with similar articles, Saturdayloo has a good point. We should first cover what facts are known and objectively cover CCs claims. Then we should list the criticism. Perhaps CC did have a charismatic, personal and unusual shamanic quality, which allowed him to blend charisma, and some fact with fiction, so well that there was no way for anthropologists to prove or disprove what he wrote at that time about how he acquired that quality. --Dseer 05:43, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

- In response "I also have a Ph.D. in English...." "Notice how nothing was mentioned of how Castaneda's work was vetted by his dissertation committee at UCLA. I have a Ph.D and they are not easy to get. People have always assumed that Castaneda fooled his dissertation committee in some way. Moreover, in order to get a Ph.D. you have to take five exams in your chosen field and then have an oral exam before your dissertation committee. Had he not passed any of his exams, he wouldn't have been given a doctorate. "

First of all a Ph.D in English is NOT a Ph.D in anthropology and should not be compared. The criterias are slightly different. (as for lawyers they go through a bar examination.) Keep in mind c. anthropologists are always researching ethnic groups that have not been previous contacted and would be quite easy to contrive information of an ethnic group that has not been preiviously studied (that possibility is always possible in this field of study). I would add that American society in general tended to be alot more honest back then (now its quite another story sadly.), most anthropologist would have to take the word of another anthropologist (when it comes to newly discovered ethnic groups or when the literature is scant pertaining to the specific ethnic group in question.).

Bob

- "Moreover, during the decades that followed, neither his dissertation committee nor the Anthropology department at UCLA ..... moved to rescind Castaneda's degree--which they could have done. "

Academic institutions have their Reputation to protect. Seldom do they admit they are wrong.

Bob ---

"Even Castaneda's famous enemies in the Anthropology field--the men who were the so-called experts on Native American peyote cultures--did not call for Castaneda's censure or for the disaccreditation of the UCLA Anthropology Department." Most anthropologist are more concern with research. Most tend to avoid debates (its not like philosophy, pol. sci. or history etc. where debate is expected.) Besides that anthropologist do not have as much power as you think they have.

Bob --

Every single time you show a "plagiarized idea" you are showing a correlation,in fact, supporting evidence. Every time you say "See, these other traditions believe the same thing!!!" - you are offering supportive facts. If it were true- would it not contain elements common to other forms of spirituality? The very fact that you view finding correlations as disproving implies that you would find the ideas and 'Path' of Don Juan MORE likely to be true if it were NOT backed up by any other systems in history. Such a premise is fallacious logic. I am all for robust analysis, but clear your bias and pov before releasing a battery of half-baked arguements, as some take their life as a spiritual being seriously, and expect this respect to be applied to the science of knowledge. Whether to prove or disprove. Be clear. Be logical. Be free from a heated cranium. Good luck in your undertakings.

Αγαθος και Σωφος, Σωφος και Καλος, Καλος  και  Αγαθος 19:01, 20 March 2007 (UTC)


 * That is not a totally logical statement either. If the author is in fact engaging in creative plagiarism, what you would find is lots of references to more commonly found ideas which may have validity but with creative twists and problematic juxtapositions and assertions. Whether they support the charges of creative plagiarism or are correlative depends on evaluation of a number of factors relating to credibility. --Dseer 04:13, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Clarification "I have a Ph.D and they are not easy to get... in order to get a Ph.D. you have to take five exams in your chosen field and then have an oral exam before your dissertation committee. Had he not passed any of his exams, he wouldn't have been given a doctorate. Moreover, during the decades that followed, neither his dissertation committee nor the Anthropology department at UCLA nor the American Anthropology Association which accredits university departments nationwide moved to rescind Castaneda's degree--which they could have done. This is sometimes what happens to lawyers, for example, who do wrong...."

I'm not sure I get what you're saying about those who "do wrong" after they get the J. D., but as far as what could or could not have happened to the Anthro dept at UCLA, the AAA does not accredit university departments. Departments aren't accredited at all; entire colleges and universities are accredited (usually by regional accreditation agencies). The most that a body like the AAA might do in terms of what you allude to would be to issue a formal complaint at one of its annual meetings, for example. In practice, a top-tier school like UCLA would likely not lose much sleep over such a move, but that's a separate issue.

The question you are raising seems to be whether or why someone connected with the degree-granting institution didn't take action against Castaneda once significant doubts were raised about the claims that he made in his texts. That's not a bad question. But since his works described people turning into glowing eggs, travelling through time, and flying, and since the works were said (by the author) to have been accounts of events that often took place while he was under the influence of various mind-altering drugs, there is a reasonable answer to that question. Castaneda's work is censured, in a way, each time working anthropologists or ethnographers ignore his writings. (I.e., when's the last time you saw a citation to Castaneda's works in a serious ethnography of Northern Mexico?) Scholars in the disciplines of anthro or ethno have more to gain in producing sound, credible narratives, especially since journalists and others have done an adequate job of holding Castaneda's writings to the fire. In that respect, as interesting as it is, it's the wrong question to ask whether those writings were true or false. The scholarly community has, in effect, declared them irrelevant to our understanding of the events, people, or cultures, that Castaneda described. Hard to think of a stronger professional reaction to someone's academic credentials than that. C d h (talk) 18:39, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Location Error
"detailing his experiences with the Yaqui Indians indigenous to parts of Central Mexico."

I think this is just wrong. I used to live in Tucson (1960-85) and traveled at times in Northern Mexico. One of the Yaqui Indian villages was just across the street from where I worked.

"Central Mexico" should be changed to "Northern Mexico and the US boarder area." But I don't want to make a substantive change in this article, let the regulars do it.

Yaqui were a remarkable group in those days. You could tell the Yaqui areas in Mexico because the young women could be seen walking along a road alone, while women walking alone were virtually unknown in the rest of Spanish influenced Mexico. I guess Yaqui women felt they were able to deal with unwanted attention.

In the early 70s I met Nick DeGrazia son of renowned Arizona artist, Ettore DeGrazia. I remember listening to conversations between Nick and some other people I knew where he made the case that his father was Castaneda's model for don Juan. However, I don't know if they even knew each other. Keith Henson 21:54, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

The Name Castaneda & the Journals of Applied Hermeneutics
I thought that Carlos Castaneda freely admitted that Castaneda was his mother's surname. The main article makes out that he was being evasive about this.

The allegation that he was Peruvian comes not just from the Time Magazine article but from FBI immigration records.

A mention or paraphrases from the four issues of The Journals of Applied Hermeneutics that he published before his death, available from Cleargreen, should be in the main text.Sidney Harry 20:57, 9 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Time published his investigation based on the FBI imigration records. Do you have checked this archive yourself? Maybe they´ve find an homonymous? The father surname was Aranha. Castaneda are toked from a grandparent.
 * Anyway, of course he was not perunian. This allegation is : completely nonsense and a conspiracy teory in a simple issue. Why so many efforts in keep this lie? He is brazilian.

POV template added
I have added this template as several sections are clearly not POV:

- In the introduction:

"Nagual has been incorrectly used by anthropologists to mean a shaman or sorcerer who is capable of shapeshifting into an animal form, and/or, metaphorically, to "shift" into another form through Toltec magic rituals, shamanism- Carlos Castaneda's works which more accurately describe "Nagual" have sold more than 8 million copies in 17 languages."

Castaneda did not invent the word, and neither was it created by some anthropologists. It is a real indigenous Mesoamerican word which has become known in the west because of anthropological research done in the last 150 years.

- The section named criticism is also very messy, it starts off with praise for the writer intended to trivialize any criticism, then lists some of the critics' statements in passages that do not quite get to the crux of the matter, followed by two paragraphs which once again are aimed at trivializing any negative statements made on Castaneda's work. Lebanese blond 18:48, 5 September 2007 (UTC)


 * The people who wish to trivialize the fact that his works are fiction, with the argument that their cultural impact is more important, forget that there really exists a tribe called the Yaqui living in Mexico. What is also thereby trivialized is the fact that their spiritual beliefs and culture are strongly disrespected by the works of Castaneda, specifically because he presents his works as being the truth.


 * Perhaps the statement that research has shown his works to be fictitious should be stated like this; research means that people have gone there many times in a respectful and systematic way and have asked the Yaqui to describe their spiritual beliefs and culture. Wholly aside from whether the Castaneda stories are chronologically consistent or not, these anthropologists have compared their findings with what Castaneda wrote about the Yaqui and found out that the two don't match at all. In other words, what the Yaqui themselves have been documented as telling a whole bunch of people for the last 150(!) years about themselves is totally different from what Castaneda claims.


 * There is no insidious anthropological conspiracy to discredit Castaneda. Neither is anybody calling into question the validity of the authentic Mesoamericans belief systems, nor are any of these anthropologists questioning that in the region, as an inherent part of their religious practices, there is widespread use of psychoactive plants to induce altered states of consciousness which they use to contact animal spirits, ancestors, etc. (however the Yaqui themselves state that, in contrast to their southern neighbours the Huichol, they do not actually take Peyote.)


 * Also, equally importantly, this is -not- a case of the validity of these experiences being challenged by the scientific establishment or something, in fact it is the opposite; People like professor Richard Evans Schultes (author of 'Hallucinogenic Plants' and 'Plants of the Gods') of Harvard are trying to defend the validity of authentic traditional use of these plants in spiritual practices by these peoples, against those who would decontextualize them, misrepresent them with concepts culled from a large variety of western sources, and then still put forward such descriptions as authentic.


 * And why is this so bad, one might ask. Firstly, it is with a certain western arrogance that for centuries we have misrepresented other cultures with cliches, I feel one should challenge oneself whether ignoring the real Yaqui people over the popular myth isn't actually just as racist as the rather unsubtle ideas westerners had about Mexicans and black people in the past. Secondly, these cultures, in the face of commercial encroachment, globalization, etc. have become extremely fragile and the countless tourists who have travelled to remote areas looking for Don Juan or curanderos like him have in many cases utterly changed these societies. Rather than being able to practice their culture as they always have done, in many places you will find the number of 'curanderos' having risen manifold in order to cater to this particular kind of tourist industry, in the process ofcourse the culture is lost and all that is left is the intoxication, and often even that is not authentic anymore. If Don Juan ever existed, today he would be horrified that in his name many indigenous people from Mexico to Brazil have been reduced to what are no more than drug peddlers. Lebanese blond 07:59, 6 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Despite the title of the first book, there are few (or zero?) claims that any aspect of Yaqui culture is represented. Don Juan consistently deflects all such inquiries.  Even the use of peyote is among practitioners of Castaneda's brand of sourcery; the Yaquis represented in his works (such as Lucio) fear and despise peyote, and know nothing about Mescalito, which would be consistent with your observations about Yaqui use of peyote cited above.


 * Thus, there is no substantial disrespect to the Yaqui culture in these works.


 * Regarding the trammelling of culture by seekers of all kinds, this is a global phenomenon, a tradjedy of our times, to be seen at every turn. Perhaps the only culture that is safe is the one that erases outward traces of its history and exerts itself to remain unavailable.  I would not like to say anything too pointed against Western science, but if anything, Carlos's self-portrayal in the early books is an apt criticism of investigative anthropology, which differs from this popular trammelling mostly only in the number of boots doing the stomping. -AGS 67.193.46.15 (talk) 07:44, 29 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Regarding your statement "there is no substantial disrespect to the Yaqui culture in these works" let me just quickly run the title of his book by you again "The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge"!

How is the work "an apt criticism of investigative anthropology" if he submitted it to obtain his anthropology PhD? Even though it is fiction, by the very act of submitting it it to obtain his degree he was making the claim that it was an accurate work of research. Instead of then publishing or declaring to the press/public some kind of expose statement on how easy it is to falsify anthropological research and obtain a degree with it, which would support your statement, he does the opposite. He simply goes on to write several more works in the same vein, becomes exceedingly secretive, and never engages in any interviews or even any collaboration with "other" anthropologists to corroborate his "research", or conversely as you suggest, continue with any criticism of investigative anthropology. Lebanese blond (talk) 10:16, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Clean up
I have rearranged the article somewhat to make it more logical in its order. I have created a new section called cultural impact and placed certain parts there. There are still some other things to take care of, starting with the fact that for some reason the author's oevre is listed 3 times. If you are missing some text please see the history of the article and you will see where I've put things, I have not deleted any text. Lebanese blond 22:41, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Salon Article
is cited 3 times, as footnotes 2&3, and as external link. Footnotes 4-6 will have to be re-numbered. Also, the article does not require a subscription, site access can be obtained by watching a video ad. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.159.130.211 (talk) 18:10, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

verification?
Whos the guy in the photo? Is it thee Carlos castaneda?--76.192.71.226 03:41, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
 * There's no proof that that guy is C.C. and judging from the known picture I'd say that there is little resemblance. So, nope 70.48.252.15 01:17, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
 * The hair style is also highly improbable for the claimed date of 1949. -- Infrogmation 23:26, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Absolutely correct, it looks like a British schoolboy, 1970's. That should settle this point. • Michel 08:29, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

castaneda's work
I feel that this page is rather shabby and a poor tribute to a respected man.
 * RESPECTED MAN? What kind of tool are you? Branch Davidian? Jonestown? Hey - PASS THE KOOL-AID!

I expect that the arguments against Castaneda are based on his use of hallucinogenic drugs which are now illegal.
 * Try reading. That part is bad enough. But the man's life was a complete fraud and he caused the deaths of many people. Did you know he adopted his mistress as his daughter? Have you heard what his own family - wife and children - have to say, how contemptible he was? HAVE YOU SEEN AND READ WHAT ACCREDITED PROFESSORS OF ANTHROPOLOGY SAY ABOUT HIM TODAY?

Don't answer that. It's obvious you are a tool and reading or trying to understand anything is futile for you. Next stop Jonestown!

I think that his date of birth should be stated correctly - surely someone knows this and further his place of birth should also be correctly stated.

The section on Castaneda's death is full of unsubstantiated claims which surely are nothing more than crude attempts to sully his character.

I have only read one of Castaneda's books - certainly it was a challenging read. I do not think the author was entirely concerned with pinpoint accuracy in decribing the events that took place, rather the author was concerned about conveying a narrative that gave his impressions about what occurred. As this at times involved the use of mind altering drugs used by his shaman guide Don Juan then necessarily his recollections would be imperfect.

Castandeda's book 'The teachings of Don Juan' is regarded as a classic in it's genre and this page and shabby critiques like this do Wikipedia's reputation as a serious resource for information no credit at all.

John Pretty 1 23:04, 3 October 2007 (UTC)


 * I've dealt with many of the same issues that you bring up here in the section a bit further up; POV template added. I would be curious to hear your views on it, for instance on the drug issue. Lebanese blond 08:51, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Problem with statement
" Nagual has been incorrectly used by anthropologists . to mean a shaman or sorcerer who is capable of shapeshifting into an animal form, and/or, metaphorically, to "shift" into another form through Toltec magic rituals.  "

I have to ask which anthropologists? (I inserted the fact citations.) Please cite sources.

-Bill Oct 14, 2007

Toltecs?
I also have problems with this claim: " ....metaphorically, to "shift" into another form through Toltec magic rituals.. " (I inserted the fact citation.) "Toltec rituals"????

Among academic circles the Aztec claim of Toltec ancestory may be just mythological. Even with the Aztecs themselves they knew very little about the Toltecs. ( please see wikipedia's article on the Toltecs).

I cant help but find the claim of existing 'Toltec rituals' to be highly suspect. Academic fact citation is needed please.

-Bill

Oct 14, 2007

I think what the original poster is referring to is something that Carlos Castaneda wrote in Tales of Power when Don Juan first mentioned the term Nagual, page 119 in my book (Chapter: The Island of the Tonal) he says, "'Nagual' was the name given to the animals into which sorcerers could allegedly transform themselves, or to the sorcerer that elicited such a transformation". Maybe the entry should be rewritten to include that quote, if no facts are available. I see what you mean though, but Nahuatl is still being spoken today, so perhaps such rituals are available, just out of our range of knowledge. Woods Flash 08:12, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

External Link removed? 'Sustain Action'
Why did the 'Sustain Action' link get removed? They are one of the most vocal site that has heavily scrutinized Castaneda's work.

Cherry pick removal???

-Bill

October 15, 2007


 * Hey Bill, once again, in agreement, I have reverted the removal.Lebanese blond 13:23, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Removal from Criticism section
To qoute section removed: " However if his works are viewed not from an anthropological point of view, and one disregards that they claim to be about a real-life culture, but rather from a literary or new age angle the works are found generally to have merit. Regarding the criticism of Castaneda's anthropology, Octavio Paz wrote:
 * "I am more interested about Castaneda's work rather than the stories behind his personality. Who cares if he was from Brazil or Peru? Who cares if he really lived with the Yaquis, Mazatecs or Huichol Indians? Who cares if Don Juan & Don Genaro really existed? This is merely 'poor thinking'. What I am interested on is about Castaneda's work: Ideas, philosophy, paradigms, etc. If Castaneda's books are fiction, great, then they are the best fiction books I have ever read."

" Octavio Paz later wrote in 1973:
 * I may say: The class 'Anthropologist' is not included in the class 'poet' but in some rare cases, one of those is named Carlos Castaneda. All in all, you guys are wasting a life trying to find the charlatan instead of focusing on his work. "

1) I removed the above from the Criticism section this as I dont see how this has to do with Criticism of Castenada's work.

2) It also lacks citation of sources.

It tends to talk about the Literary MERIT of Castenada's work. Perhaps put it in another section (or make up a separate new section for it).

NOTE: I don't remove information without a means of retrieval if someone disagrees. Its just common courtesy.

-Bill

Oct 16, 2007


 * Hey Bill, I agree with what you wrote, including the last note. If you look at the 'criticism' section before 5 September you will see that I was doing just that. I created a new section called 'cultural impact' where I moved part of the text, and put the quotes of Octavio Paz at the bottom of the section adding an appropriate explanation, " However if his works are viewed not from an anthropological point of view...". I did both these things in order to not just delete things even if I disagree with them. I may in the future further amend this article but didn't want to just start removing text straightaway.Lebanese blond 13:05, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Moved this from top of page, where it had no place
[Note: I'm not the author, Michel 16:31, 20 October 2007 (UTC)]

I'm sorry but that photo posted which claims to be Carlos in his mid twenties ... is utterly impossible. It looks nothing like what his "known" photos at a later age look like. Does anyone else agree with me??? Casteneda is a short stocky man ... not a tall slim guy.

Brazilian vs. Peruvian / Veja vs. Time
I'm a bit appalled that so much of this discussion should be about whether Castaneda was a crook or not, or whether his views were valid or not.

I have read the VEJA article mentioned by 201.11.83.173 under 10. above, or in the least its reproduction at the link provided. Not that I have a very high opinion about either TIME or Veja, but I tend to trust the latter a wee bit more (as for the Salon.com article about Castaneda, it's plain crap, and the only thing I find good about it, is that it gives me a chance to revise my previous prejudice in favour of Salon). What Veja's interviewer states, as a matter of introduction, is that C. speaks "with lusitanian fluency [i.e.: he is with all likeliness a native portuguese speaker] - including a local accent". What he does not say, however, is what part of, let's say Brazil, his accent is from. He also states that C. himself says to him that he was born in São Paulo state. Nothing else (disculpe, viu, 201.11.83.173).

Anyone familiar with C.'s world view will readily understand that this, to him, was of secondary importance. But to those concerned with more down-to-earth explanations, I'd say that back a few decades ago, it was much easier (and requiring neither great expenses nor illicit methods) to change nationality and name and acquire a new, more befitting passport. Many countries' immigration services, including those in the US, were just not capable of seeing through that.

Michel 16:08, 28 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes, that's right. The interview says "afirmou ter nascido no interior do estado de São Paulo, numa cidade do vale do Paraíba, e que passara parte de sua infância em Juqueri* ." There's actually no city with the name "Juqueri", as reporter noted. BUT, Juqueri is the old name of the actual Franco da Rocha City. The name Castaneda knew when he was a child, before migrate to Argentina and U.S. The chance ocurred in 1948. This can me comproved in the internet. See for example the site of IBGE (an official institute in Brazil -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBGE) :

http://biblioteca.ibge.gov.br/visualizacao/dtbs/saopaulo/francodarocha.pdf

"Em divisões territoriais datadas de 31-XII-1936 e 31-XII-1937, Franco da Rocha é distrito judiciário do Município de Juqueri. No quadro anexo ao Decreto-lei Estadual nº 9073, de 31-III-1938, o Distrito de Franco da Rocha permanece no Município de Juqueri.(...)"

"Lei Estadual nº 233, de 24 de Dezembro de 1948, cria o Distrito de Francisco Morato e incorpora ao Município de Franco da Rocha"

The geography of "Vale do Paraiba" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Para%C3%ADba_Valley ) matchs with the description of Carlos Childhood in books, for example the Leghorn chickens and white falcon in Ixtlan and with more details in the last book Active Side of Infinity. This region is also plenty of members of both Aranha family and some Castanedas. ( http://www.telefonica.com.br/online/guias/ )

http://www.scielo.cl/scielo.php?pid=S0717-77122004000100003&script=sci_arttext and some references in portuguese can be checked about the chickens.

" Em criações industriais foi diagnosticado10 prevalência de 79,5% em galinhas da raça Leghorn Branca, devido à elevada concentração de hospedeiros vertebrados na área. "

And see what he says in 1998, in a letter for Gordon (he always says the same thing about his origin, theres no trick about that, as Time instigate):

"There is not much to tell about myself. My home was in Sao Paulo, Brazil, but I went to school in Buenos Aires, Argentina, before I came to this country. My full name is Carlos Aranha. Following the Latin tradition one always adds to one's name the mother's last name, so when I came to the United States I became Carlos A. Castaneda. Then I dropped the A. The name belonged to my grandfather who was from Sicily. I don't know how it was originally, but he himself altered it to Castaneda to suit his fancy. "

There are many more proofs and evidences about this fact... Bye o you in US should search in the records for Carlos Aranha 1931 or 1935 and not Castaneda. The perunian Castaneda is a homonymous, and of course Time was not confiable in this point. The propaganda are specialist in difamate people. Of course the Time article about this author is merely difamatory and should not be considered as the final word about the authos country of origin. Bye 201.67.174.27 (talk) 04:56, 25 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I am interested why you are appalled by the discussion, this is of course an encyclopedia with a clear goal to create a truthful article about a subject through a collaborative effort. Also I would like to know why you think the Salon article is plain crap as you describe it. In contrast to the Veja interview or the Time article this piece was written today with the benefit of hindsight. If you know of creditable sources that would counter what is written in the article please provide them, I am always very curious about this topic! Lebanese blond 09:17, 30 October 2007 (UTC)


 * I wrote "a bit appaled", and I think I made quite clear why.


 * No "creditable sources" involved here. You pinned it right: "truthful". You don't need to read the Salon.com article very closely to find out that it is absolutely biased and that its only purpose is to pour trash on Castaneda. As such, this article as a reference belongs to a Wiki article on Salon.com, not on Castaneda. • Michel 17:37, 5 November 2007 (UTC)


 * "...or whether his views were valid or not."

The article has less to do with his "views" (Castaneda's) but to an extent regarding his various Claims. To academics in the field of anthropology, botany, history it does matter to them.

btw "Truthful" and "biased" are not necessarily the same thing (eg. Someone could be biased but still be truthful.)

-Bill Nov 26, 2007

The Force Behind Star Wars - Tales of Power
The Force Behind Star Wars

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/7330268/the_force_behind_star_wars

In this 1977 interview, Lucas attributes The Force to "Tales of Power": "There was a thematic idea that was even stronger about The Force in the earliest scripts. It was really about The Force, a Castaneda Tales of Power thing." George Lucas talks about why robots need love and where Wookies come from

PAUL SCANLONPosted May 25, 1977 12:00 AM

I am not a member, hence cannot post this online.

I am hopeful someone else will.

The Force in Star Wars has had huge societal impact.

Guy C. Lamunyon California, USA Glamunyon@aol.com

May The Force Be With You

71.129.43.228 (talk) 16:45, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

My contribution, please edit carefully
See comments in Talk:Carlos_Castaneda regarding Mmyotis's section formerly here. I suppose this section stub should now be removed. 67.193.183.61 (talk) 23:30, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Works
The structure of the works section does not conform to the expected standard of listing the works in order of publication. The categorization employed is an expression of the ideas contained within the works themselves and should thus be moved to some other section, the ideas section for example.

The works themselves should be listed according to the date of publication.

Tom

--Mmyotis (talk) 17:13, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

You criticize because you fear. Because he took a step that so many people here didn't...

(The preceding comment is inappropriate to the discussion of what should go into an encyclopedia entry. Opinions and flames don't count and should not be tolerated.) --Saturdayloo — Preceding unsigned comment added by Saturdayloo (talk • contribs) 20:19, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

'''Hello. As one outside the field of anthropology, the only step I see is the one he took off a cliff. It's a nice metaphor for an anthropologist going "native"! :o)'''  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.5.236.123 (talk) 20:16, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

That's true, we didn't take the step Castaneda took - because most of us earned our degrees honestly, through the use of actual research and without resorting to plagiarism. Anyway, I don't know what "step" you're talking about exactly since Castaneda was chosen for his path, where his only purpose at the time was to do an interview for his paper. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.8.8.65 (talk) 21:49, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

...Can you all truly point your fingers with such permanence? And shakespeare? Do you really want to know? Indulge. Indulge. Indulge.

If you did not fear, you would have the power to let go of such relentless desire to know this one simple fact....

Its like studying the margin notes in disregarding the text. This is art. It should be treated as a biography.

Just let it go. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.40.239.22 (talk) 23:39, 13 March 2008 (UTC)


 * The Talk:Carlos Castaneda page is intended for discussions of how the Castaneda article might be improved. My comments relate to the structure and quality of the wikipedia entry. I'm not sure how your comments add to the discussion. -Tom Mmyotis (talk) 17:43, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Carlos Castaneda Audio/radio Interview
Does anyone know how to get or listen to the "Radio interview with Carlos Castaneda - 1968 "Don Juan: The Sorcerer"? Or whatever it may be called? Is it on the Internet?

It's available through the Pacifica Radio Archives: http://www.archive.org/details/DonJuanTheSorcerer-CarlosCastanedaInterviewedByTheodoreRoszak

I'll add it to the External links section Pahool (talk) 22:56, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Revamp
Revamped the structure of the Castaneda page to make it easier to read and follow.

First I created a bibliography page:

Then I restructured as follows:

Original Structure


 * 1 Biography
 * 2 Death
 * 3 Works
 * ·	3.1 The Mastery of Awareness
 * ·	3.2 The Mastery of Stalking
 * ·	3.3 The Mastery of Intent
 * 4 Ideas
 * ·	4.1 Intent and awareness
 * 5 Brief descriptions of his books
 * 6 Significant characters in Castaneda's works
 * 7 Cultural impact


 * ·	7.1 Related authors
 * ·	7.2 Books by other authors
 * ·	7.3 Other Creative Works
 * ·	7.4 In popular culture
 * 8 Criticism
 * 9 See also
 * 10 References
 * 11 External links

Current Structure(with explanation)


 * 1 Biography
 * 2 Death
 * 8 Criticism
 * 4 Ideas
 * ·   4.1 Intent and awareness
 * .   3 Works (renamed Toltec Masteries)
 * ·	 3.1 The Mastery of Awareness
 * ·	 3.2 The Mastery of Stalking
 * ·	 3.3 The Mastery of Intent
 * 7 Cultural impact
 * 7.4 In popular culture
 * 12 Bibliography (combines information from 5 and 7.2 plus other sources and links to a separate page)
 * 6 Significant characters in Castaneda's works
 * 7.3 Other Creative Works
 * 7.1 Related authors
 * 9 See also
 * 10 References
 * 11 External links

Sections Deleted (with the appropriate information rolled into the bibliography section):


 * 5 Brief descriptions of his books (taken directly from LitWeb without attribution)
 * 7.2 Books by other authors (deleted and moved to bibliography page)Mmyotis (talk) 22:28, 8 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Somewhere along the line Mmyotis's rather elegant structure has been flattened. Does anyone know why?


 * I'll take a stab at minor structuring, but this should be properly addressed.


 * --UnicornTapestry (talk) 04:39, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Biography citation needed
The biography section has been tagged for citation since October 2007: "Alternatively, evidence suggests[citation needed] Castaneda wrote in the traditional allegorical style of the storyteller (ethnopoetics) common to many native Indian cultures." Since no citation has been provided, the statement has been deleted as unfounded. Mmyotis (talk) 02:57, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

External links to personal blogs
The two most recent additions to external links list (Los Naguales - THE MATRIX and the relation with Carlos Castaneda's teachings, and www.perception.com.mx - El nagual de cinco puntas, conflict with wiki guidelines and should be removed for two reasons. They are unverifiable (foreign language links) and because they point to personal blogs. Mmyotis (talk) 11:22, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Unverified Claims
The latest section added to the introduction has no reliable source and is probably wrong. A reliable source needs to be provided or it will be deleted. Mmyotis (talk) 17:12, 18 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Section deleted. Mmyotis (talk) 18:03, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Toltec Masteries in the Ideas Section
The Toltec Masteries section was lifted word for word from this website: http://www.alphatrades.de/newageguide/new_age/carlos_castaneda.htm without attribution. I considered rewriting it, but it adds nothing of significance to the ideas section and has been deleted. Mmyotis (talk) 17:47, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Birthplace
Undid edit suggesting questions about Castaneda's birthplace. There are multiple citations from reliable sources including Time Magazine and The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives, Volume 5: 1997-1999 that document his place of birth. Mmyotis (talk) 11:48, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Answer to arguments can be found here.

There's no "reliable" nor "multiple" sources. There are just one source. The investigation from Time Magazine. All other books, dictionaries etc who mention the "immigration records" and the "perunian origin" are merely reproducing this "fact" created by Time. The investigation of Time is erroneous. Castaneda are not Perunian, but Brazilian. The article in magazine are clearly difamatory and have the objective to slander Castaneda reputation, painting him as a lier. However, the magazine also reproduces what Castaneda himself says about his biography in the interview. You should put a summary of this controversy at least, and not only reproduces the "immigration records" version as authoritative, with obscure book like this Scribner stuff stating it as only version. ONLY OUT THE TIME MAGAZINE "investigation" or "acusation" without problematize it is a BAD FAITH procedure.

Because Castaneda said to TIME Magazine what he always said, from the beggining to the end. His birthplace is Brazil, nearby São Paulo. He said this in several interviews. See the Psychology Today Magazine, see the 1968 radio interview, the letters, the tensegrity seminars, the interview to Carmina Fort (published in book). Carmina mention the "perunian origin" in the beggining and Castaneda react to that and ironicize the effort to make his a perunian.


 * Citing the numerous instances of Castaneda's unsupported claim regarding where he was born is not providing evidence that his claim has merit. Mmyotis (talk) 18:56, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

The pseudo-argument that he lies about the birthplace based on "erase personal history", a concept from the books, are weak. Erase personal history doesnt have not to do with this specific point, but the fact that Castaneda doesnt proof that TIme lie is an application of this concept. Also, there are mentions about Brazil as his birthplace much time before 1972, when the Ixtlan book is published with the chapter about personal history.

All concrete facts are in according to the date and original birthplace, you can see in the link above some of the arguments. Some of Castaneda ole coleagues recognize the brazilian origin. There one who mention a cover of time, in early 1960, with Oswaldo Aranha in the cover, and he points Oswaldo as a relative. The "Aranha" family of Castaneda is a notorious, big, and famous family in nearby São Paulo, its "Aranha" in portuguese, and not "Araña" Spanish. Castaneda make a interview just one year after the Time Magazine publish (you should correct that in article), in 1975. He conceive an interview to VEJA, a brazilian magazine similar to time. He only agreed to talk with this magazine only because is brazilian and would be published first in brazil. He spooke with the reporter with fluence in portuguese, and also with local brazilian accent, as the reporter note. 201.34.145.243 (talk) 02:20, 5 April 2008 (UTC)


 * You claim that "All other books, dictionaries etc who mention the "immigration records" and the "perunian origin" are merely reproducing this "fact" created by Time." But of course the information has been verified by independant sources, as you can see for yourself if you read some of the evidence given in the bibliography section. If you intend to claim otherwise, you will need to provide a reliable source to support that claim.


 * "Of course" not. A lie repeteated 1000 times becomes true. That whats happen. If you have the theory that the "other sources" has been verified the information provided for TIME, you should precise it. You need to provide a reliable source which show the perunian origin of Castaneda BEFORE Time. Like an doc from UCLA department or something like this. There's nothing before TIME saying about perunian origim. These "immigration records" need to be verified and there are multiple possible that refer to an homonymous or are false. Its a tinny evidente about the Birthplace, you should considere more documents, not only an obscure "immigration record" quoted by a print magazine which is out of context. Time make a original investigation without give details and dont show the images from documents in article. TIME also isnt specilialist in Castaneda, nor the sources that you have mention.


 * The fact is, there is no controversy, there is just Castaneda's multiple false statements and the facts as discovered by independant investigators like DeMille. I agree that Castanedas false statements should be documented in the article, because it demonstrates his lack of reliability as a witness.


 * Of course there's controversy. You are ideological and not a researcher. You're arrogant and you act in bad faith. Its intellectual dishonesty and you know it. I caught you. You reproduce the TIME posture of paiting Castaneda as a lier to affirm the lack of reliability. TIME was difamatory in reportage, and also you make your arbitrary edits to keep the difamatory karma in author. Its a shame, because wikipedia should be free and neutral.


 * The purpose of WP:CIV is to promote positive dialog. Please keep you comments focused on the topic at hand and avoid descending into incivility. Mmyotis (talk) 19:39, 5 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Speaking of lack of reliability, please supply reliable sources to support the claims you are making here on the talk page. For example, don't just say things like "all concrete facts are", provide the facts. Likewise, when refering to a magazine article, state the year of publication, the name of the article, and the volume and page where it can be found. If you want it to be considered as reliable, then make a copy available and if it is in a foreign language, provide a translation so that it can be considered here as evidence in support of a US an English wikipedia article.
 * You didnt read the discussion and the controversy in the archive. You make the changes without consult the arguments in talk page. They archivied a discussion which was not finished. For example, a stated the year of reportage and also gave a link. You can read the full text in portuguese in http://www.consciencia.org/casvista.shtml
 * Revista Veja nº356 -1975  ... Website of Veja Magazine www.veja.com.br
 * Its ' fac-simile. I dont quote obscure books in my claim, requiring that people buy expansive books before can react to my edits. But you can check it in some serious library which keeps this magazine in archive.
 * This interview interview is in portuguese, as I mentioned, Castaneda talked to the reporter with local brazilian accent, which would be difficult to emulate for a perunian-born. This one is a concrete fact. I mention other evidences in the archive page. A brazilian from north would have difficult to emulate an accent from south. As perunian who learn portuguese too. Castaneda accept to give the interview just because its proposed by a brazilian magazine, after the TIME mess.
 * You should't require an english translation as a researcher. This is not scientific. Its very selfish and absurd. You should translate yourself, or not edit at all, if you dont know the problematic envolving this subject. Also you should read the Castaneda article in other languages. In Spanish, for example, people give credit to the brazilian hipothesis. English article is very ideological and  patrolled from pseudo-academicits who wants an difamatory article.
 * You appear not to be familiar with the wikipedia policy on verifiability and specifically with the policy on non-english sources. If you would like the article to be considered, please provide a translation of the article so that its merits can be discussed fairly and reasonably. Mmyotis (talk) 17:34, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Your suggestion that Time Magazine is not a reliable source suggests a distinct lack of neutrality on this matter. Unless you can provide evidence from a reliable source that contradicts the immigration records provided by the FBI and the geneology data provided by Time Magazine, your personnal theory is nothing more than a personnal theory and does not merit consideration. Mmyotis (talk) 05:16, 5 April 2008 (UTC)


 * This is NOT my personal theory. Is a problematic mentioned in ALL main bibliography about the author. I already mentioned that. For example, the Carmina Fort book which are made after SEVERAL interviews with the author. There's no reliable FBI record and TIME article are bogus. The fbi record are from an pseudo-Castaneda, not the author. The author name was Carlos Aranha, he change it to Castaneda for publish the book, it's not a real name. He took the Castaneda from the maternal grandparents. An record with Castaneda name doest mean nothing. And YOU dont merit consideration, not the me or Castaneda books. I am not interested, however, in make an edit war. I hope someone in the community with sincere intentions read this controversy to pass the problematic to the public in the article. And I Hope people don't HIDE again my winner argues in an archive page, because the discussion is not closed. 201.34.145.243 (talk) 16:42, 5 April 2008 (UTC)


 * The talk pages are for discussing how an article can be improved, and your edits which suggest that Castaneda was not born in Peru must be supported by evidence from a reliable source. I am completely open to continuing this discussion, however, you need to present some reliable sources to support what now appears to be simply your POV if you want to be taken seriously. Mmyotis (talk) 17:34, 5 April 2008 (UTC)


 * We can improve the article not taking this information propagued by TIME as reliable source and not hidding the problematic about the birthplace of the author as if the perunian information was final and authoritative. To indicate this I put a lot of arguments here and show other sources and you ignore it and have nothing in counterpoint. You have only bad posture and bad faith, you think you talk in the name of the community of english wikipedia, but wikipedia if for everyone, I am a contributor as much as you. You point me links about internal policies but you make edit war, arbitrary,m without taking care of the discussion in talk page. The perunian information was in the article at the beggining, but people take it out and put the Brazil alternative hypothesis after we discus the problem in talk. You say that this US Wikipedia, but its not true. This is ENGLISH wikipédia, and english is a world-spoken language, so please check you own procedure before give conceils to others contributors. You even don't know where you are heh ... You act like a selfish and all you have is "TIME is a reliable source, TIME is  a reliable source". Or maybe the obscure genealogy that you bring. But both isnt reliables sources, as I show. The thruth is THERE IS CONTROVERSY about this subject, and you should display both (pseudo)evidences of Perunian origim and evidences of the reliability of Castaneda self-declaration about Brazil. You just erase everything about Brazil in article, and in the talk, you may want that is my POV or this a "personal theory" but ISNT. It's a main controversy in the publications about Castaneda, as I said, since the beggining, during TIME mess and after this. Point This would be neutral. But of course you dont nothing about latin america. You even dont want to read sources in the languages envolved. You may think all countries in LA are equal. You are not qualified to do this job. I would suggest that you stop edit this section.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.34.145.243 (talk) 18:05, 5 April 2008 (UTC)


 * And more... You have the explicit POV that Castaneda is a lier and not reliaby as testimonial and you make the edits based in the pov. Would be NPOV keep the information as it was... Reproduce the problematic about the birthplace, as is reproduced in TIME, explain the problem. This problematic appear in the main sources about biography, the printed publications and interviews. And i read the Wiki-page about the non-english sources, it means nothing here, they dont discard other sources, only give preferences for en when there's no problematic point. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.34.145.243 (talk) 18:18, 5 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Actually he admitted making up historical facts. He was actually from Argentina. I even have an article from an argentine magazine he did where he used argentine slang and style. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Awp (talk • contribs) 16:31, 3 September 2008 (UTC)
 * That's really interesting news about Castaneda admitting that he made up historical facts. Well worth documenting. What is your source for that?
 * As for Castaneda's reportedly using argentine slang and style, Castaneda did pretty well with Spanish and English slang and style too, so I guess that doesn't mean very much. This is not the first time you've mentioned the argentine magazine article. As I said before, if you can provide an English language translation, we can take a look at it and make some judgment about its reliability. As it stands now, we have no way of verifying the claim, and wikipedia depends on verifiability. In the meantime, you could try adding theinformation and supporting citation to the Portugeese language version of Wikipedia.
 * BTW, let me give you a hint about pursuing the "Castaneda admitted making up historical facts" tactic. All the written evidence indicates that he was born in Cajamarca, Peru. The only evidence to support the Brazil claim came from Castaneda, so you are undermining your own argument when you claim Castaneda is an unreliable source. Mmyotis   (^^o^^)  03:49, 2 December 2008 (UTC)



It's ridiculous that this article has him being born in both Brazil and Peru. Shouldn't the most well-documented version be presented until someone can prove otherwise? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.213.244.158 (talk) 06:58, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Witches, Chacmools, and Blue Scout
Added some new sections with a request for help expanding them. I also recommend a section be added to cover Cleargreen Incorporated. So much to do, so little time. Mmyotis (talk) 20:50, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

What happened to this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.4.162.2 (talk) 22:31, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Ideas Section
Section is Original Research and does not conform to Wikipedia policy WP:OR and has therefore been deleted. Mmyotis (talk) 22:06, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Cultural impact section
Section is Original Research and does not conform to Wikipedia policy WP:OR and has therefore been deleted. Mmyotis (talk) 22:30, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Original Research
The following uncited statement in the Biography section sounds to me like original research: "Some commentators thought this must necessarily mark the end of the series, and were surprised to find both don Juan and his apprentice Castaneda returning for many more books in the ongoing saga."

Since there's no citation forthcoming, it will be deleted. Objections? Mmyotis (talk) 10:46, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree. It's speculation and shouldn't be part of an impartial, descriptive encyclopedia entry. --Saturdayloo — Preceding unsigned comment added by Saturdayloo (talk • contribs) 20:21, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

LOL, you make the article a piece of bulls*.
Why are you afraid of Carlos? Maybe you're a fanatic religious. The article is very poor. I think people shoulde keep changing it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.67.237.159 (talk) 06:53, 16 June 2008 (UTC)


 * People who believe in Castaneda are brainwashed New Age cultists. Castaneda made totally insane claims. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.113.46.155 (talk) 19:33, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Brief descriptions of his books
I just noticed something wierd. you deleted this section in march 2008, claiming it was plagiarized from http://www.biblio.com/authors/652/Carlos_Castaneda_Biography.html, but i am the one who wrote that part, so they must have plagiarized from here. Awp (talk) 16:52, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

That happens a lot. I see stuff I wrote for Wikipedia all over the place. People know we've given up for all eternity any ownership of our material so they take it without citing the source, which of course is another matter altogether and very sloppy. 24.5.236.123 (talk) 20:29, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

tensegrity link
one of the links to tensegrity links to the wrong definition of tensegrity, yo. -zuck —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.144.203.208 (talk) 05:21, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Okay. Thanks for the note. Feel free to just make the change yourself in the future. Mmyotis   (^^o^^)  03:18, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

The Criticism Section Removals.
Apparently someone remove sections of the criticism section with out any discussion. This person removed comments that had references to them.

I question why the reference to De Mille's book "The Power and the Allegory" in discovering Castenda's university library book request where it showed Castenda was not partcipating in a peyote ceremony but was reading someone's elses discription of the ceremony in the library was removed.

DON'T REMOVE JUST CITE: I'm a first time contributor to anything Wiki, but I have just begun a Castaneda book, but was needled by doubts I found on this Wikipedia page. I got a copy of De Mille's book 'Castaneda's Journey The Power and the Allegory' looking for the source of the most damning claims against Castaneda I read: that he was actually at the UCLA Library reading about peyote ceremonies at the same time that his books claim he was in Mexico participating in a peyote ceremony. I spent two hours last night pouring through the pages of his book but found no such claims. The closest he comes is on page 60 where he says: "My theory finds him there [in the UCLA library], early in 1960, sitting unobtrusively in a corner of the special-collections reading room, perusing Volume Two [of 'Mushrooms Russia and History'] with unbending intent, taking copious notes (this time in English) on what the ethnomycologists had found in central and southern Mexico."

De Mille is presenting this as a theory. He doesn't claim here to have found any "library stack requests." If the author of this section of the Wikipedia page knows where De Mille makes such a factual claim, then it should be cited. As thoughtful and probing as I found De Mille to be in his long careful investigation into Castaneda and his work, I have to think he would find it intolerably ironic to be cited for making factual claims where no facts admit. - Mr. Aeon (October 2nd, 2012) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mr. Aeon (talk • contribs) 12:39, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

I also question why was the Time Life 1973 article on Castenda removed? Agenda? Why because it questions Castenda's claims?

The person who removed it also inserted their own POV: ''Nevertheless, though De Mille and Noel cannot prove beyond a doubt that Castaneda made everything up--as they clearly believe that he did--at the very least, the efforts of both men do suggest that the peyote culture Castaneda encountered was one that was not known to western science. Castaneda never claimed that don Juan Matus and his cohorts were part of any organized Native American peyote religion or part of one whose roots were in northern Mexico. He only reported what he had encountered. Castaneda's main mystical writings themselves, prominent in his later books where the use of psychotropic plants are not discussed, have yet to be dismissed authoritatively. ''Thus, while Castaneda's day-to-day accounts in his early books may be inaccurate (or purposefully evasive), Castaneda's discovery of a thriving Toltec mystical culture in Sonora, Mexico has no equal in literature--anthropological or otherwise. Only the recent writings of ..... offer a similar window into that culture. Castaneda's popularity remains high throughout the world.

I would add I highly question the sources of the comments of this person. Infact many of the comments are highly dubious and has no references. It POV. Its a Criticism section not a debate club. The criticism section is about the criticism of Carlos Castenada.


 * Well, you know, Bill, if you read what I wrote clearly you'll see that it's meant to be a concluding paragraph putting what  came before into a perspective. Everything I said is not pure POV. It's true. None of Castaneda's mystical teachings have been contradicted, analyzed, or refuted --- and even a statement such as this belongs in a criticism section. Saturdayloo (talk) 22:25, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

At the same time Castaneda's reports cant be 100% verify either. Even to this day by any anthropologist spcializing in Mesoamerca studies. --Bill--

It has been disputed if Carlos Castenda has ever even went to Mexico. See De Mille's book "The Power and the Allegory"


 * De Mille is only speculating in his book. There are dozens of individuals who are still alive who know for certain that Castaneda traveled throughout Mexico (as well as Latin America and South America). But then, you don't believe that, do you? De Mille makes claim after claim with nothing to back them up. Saturdayloo (talk) 22:25, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Sources for your statements? De Mille does provide sources and testamonies. Even Castenada library stack requests were documented. I dont think you read his first or second book even. Btw its not just De Mille but a number of others who find Castenda suspect. --Bill--

As for psychotropics. Infact Wasson a highly regarded botanical authority disputes Castenda's geographic location of botanical substances mentioned.


 * Shucks, Bill, I harvested peyote myself in 1969 in central Sonora. Almost got myself killed, but I did it with several friends.Saturdayloo (talk) 22:31, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Where do I say peyote anywhere? --Bill--

As for "thriving Toltec Culture" this is also highly disputed. William Curry Holden, Jane Holden Kelley, Edward Spicer are/were the world's leading authorities on the Yaqui. They all disputed Castenda's claims. Edward Spicer originally supported Castenada's work but later questioned his work as well.) etc.

I could go on....

--Bill-- Monday April 13, 2009

'''Hi Bill, I am the culprit for all of the bad things I've removed from this site. My snarks are above. I removed the wide swath of material because it was mostly speculation, some of it highly biased (I'd even say virulent) against Castaneda, and I then rewrote the entry (some of it) to read like an objective encyclopedia entry--which would include both the bad and the good about Castaneda.

And yes there is a thriving Toltec culture in northern Mexico--it is a culture, not an ethnicity. Castaneda never claimed to discover a hither-to unknown group of Yaquis. He came across a group of diverse individuals who were engaged in certain mystical practices established in Mexico, at least formally, since the early 1700s, none of whom were in the beginning Yaquis. Now, all of this could be bull. But I wanted the entry on Castaneda to simply be objective and not slanted so heavily toward Castaneda's critics. And, by the way, just because someone says Castaneda _could_ have done something (such as copy material from a UCLA library book), doesn't mean he actually did. This is the entire thrust of DeMille's book.

Saturdayloo (talk) 22:25, 19 April 2009 (UTC) '''

As for "Toltec culture" this notion (of Toltecs) is highly disputed by academic scholars. Even though the Aztecs speak of the Toltecs through their mythology. Of course you can argue with the historians and archeologists. --Bill--

"And, by the way, just because someone says Castaneda _could_ have done something (such as copy material from a UCLA library book), doesn't mean he actually did."

Doesnt mean he didnt either. Once again LOTS of anomalies, coincidences of convience etc. Too many in my opinion. --Bill--

"Castaneda never claimed to discover a hither-to unknown group of Yaquis. He came across a group of diverse individuals who were engaged in certain mystical practices established in Mexico,...." This would make them a religious sect or cult then.

--Bill--

The criticism section is not NPOV. It now reads like a defense of Castaneda and a denunciation of his critics. It is FAR from NPOV. [note: I edited this section to remove comments directed toward a particular user. I apologize for my original post. I only needed to reference the material, not the author.] Pahool (talk) 23:14, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

It seems that user Henry123ifa is making an attempt to bring some counterpoints to the currently biased nature of the criticism section. Unfortunately, this seems to be mostly in the form of unsourced parentheticals. I propose reverting the Criticism section to its March 28, 2009 version, before Saturdayloo began removing all the sourced material that was actual criticism. I am reviewing the edits one by one, but on the whole, they have removed sourced material and turned the Criticism section into a defense of Castaneda against his critics. The current criticism section can be moved here to the talk page, for discussion, but I think reversion is in order since this was a removal of sourced material from the Criticism section by a lone user. Pahool (talk) 01:20, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Pahool, I changed the language of the criticism section because it was highly biased _against_ Castaneda. It treated his critics unquestioningly and that, to me, was inappropriate. It basically said that because a handful of Yaqui experts had not heard of don Juan or that some Yaquis might have used peyote, that therefore what Castaneda experienced must be a hoax. But, you're the expert here. Go ahead and rewrite it the way you want it. I don't care. Saturdayloo (talk) 03:20, 23 April 2009 (UTC)


 * My primary concern is that the previous version of the criticism section contained sourced material that was removed to create a largely unsourced criticism section that's sole purpose seems to be to refute Castaneda's critics. I think the summary analysis above of what the previous criticism section said is largely unfair to the authors of that section. It contained materials from a variety of sources and referred to quite a bit more than just the questionable existence of don Juan and the use of peyote among the Yaqui. Among other things, it listed legal conflicts that were removed without any stated reason, which are certainly relevant in a criticism and controversy section. (I know the "controversy" label was removed, but this was done by the same editor who has removed all the sourced material.) The Willis excerpt has been stripped down to look like a vindication of Carlos Castaneda when the entire content of the original excerpt would have to be categorized as skeptical at best. De Mille's material has been almost entirely removed, and whether one agrees with his conclusions or not, his research certainly deserves more than a cursory dismissal in a section on Carlos Castaneda criticism.


 * I am not making any claim to be a Castaneda expert. In fact, I came to the Wikipedia page to get more information about him. I am aware that he is a controversial figure and I believe that his critics deserve a voice in this Wikipedia article. I don't believe that the previous criticism section contained language that was biased, as the current criticism section clearly does. Presenting critical material in a criticism section in a wikipedia article is appropriate, especially when it is properly sourced. The previous section was not flawless, and could stand some work. But I definitely think it is a better place to start from than the criticism section we currently have. Perhaps individual issues could be discussed on the talk page before drastic changes are made to the article?


 * Having said that I am rolling back the content of the criticism section to the March 28, 2009 version. Saturdayloo seems to have acquiesced to that and I think that it's a good starting point to begin with cleaning up this section. I will be moving the current content of the criticism section here, to the talk page, for discussion purposes.
 * Pahool (talk) 05:06, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Below is the criticism section that was removed when I reverted that section to the March 28, 2009 version: Pahool (talk) 07:34, 23 April 2009 (UTC)


 * While Castaneda's actual writings in Toltec mysticism, the discovery of the assemblage point, and "stalking the self", have never been questioned or analyzed in any fashion, Castaneda's early anthropological writings have been criticized by a number of academics. They were early on seen by some as highly suspect in terms of anthropological fieldwork, particularly in relation to the extent to which his critics claim Castaneda expropriates the research of Barbara Myerhoff without attribution, fictionalizing on the basis of her field research. However, since Myerhoff's writings were published in 1974, six years after Castaneda published The Teachings of Don Juan in 1968, such a criticism is invalid (although Castaneda wrote numerous works after Myerhoff's 1974 writing). Indeed, most of Castaneda's current critics settle for the idea that the stories are fictitious or that they are part of Castaneda's effort to erase his own personal history in accordance with the precepts he learned from the old nagual, don Juan Matus, who had embarked on a similar procedure when he was young, studying under a Nagual named Julian.


 * One genuinely conflicting aspect of his work is the description of the use of psychotropic plants to induce altered states of awareness. In Castaneda's first two books, he describes the "Yaqui way of knowledge" using for assistance the use of powerful indigenous plants, such as peyote and datura. In his third book, Journey to Ixtlan, he makes clear that the use of psychotropic plants ("power plants") or substances was not necessary to achieve heightened awareness, although his teacher advised their use was beneficial in helping to free the stubborn mind of some persons. He says that don Juan used them on him to demonstrate that experiences outside those known in day-to-day life are real and tangible.


 * In Journey to Ixtlan, the third book in the series, he wrote: "My perception of the world through the effects of those psychotropics had been so bizarre and impressive that I was forced to assume that such states were the only avenue to communicating and learning what don Juan was attempting to teach me . . . That assumption was erroneous."


 * The closing part of this quote (after the ellipses) was not present in the article, so I have restored it, since without it what remains is a gross misrepresentation of the passage quoted. 67.193.183.61 (talk) 23:42, 3 August 2009 (UTC)


 * According to Robert J. Wallis, in his 2003 book Shamans/Neo-Shamans: Contested Ecstasies, Alternative Archaeologies, and Contemporary Pagans: "At first, and with the backing of academic qualifications and the UCLA anthropological department, Castaneda’s work was critically acclaimed. Notable old-school American anthropologists like Edward Spicer (1969) and Edmund Leach (1969) praised Castaneda (although Edward Spicer later found Castaneda's work to be highly suspect), alongside more alternative and young anthropologists such as Peter Furst, Barbara Myerhoff and Michael Harner. Although Furst and Harner are running highly profitible shamanic oriented busineses.
 * The authenticity of don Juan was accepted for six years, until Richard De Mille and Daniel Noel both published their critical exposés of the don Juan books in 1976. Most anthropologists had been convinced of Castaneda’s authenticity until then; indeed, they had had little reason to question it."


 * Nevertheless, though De Mille and Noel cannot prove beyond a doubt that Castaneda made everything up--as they clearly believe that he did--at the very least, the efforts of both men do suggest that the peyote culture Castaneda encountered was one that was not known to western science (even though similar peyote cultures were documented by anthropologists). Castaneda never claimed that don Juan Matus and his cohorts were part of any organized Native American peyote religion or part of one whose roots were in northern Mexico. He only reported what he had encountered (even if, according to his critics, he made it all up). Castaneda's main mystical writings themselves, prominent in his later books where the use of psychotropic plants are not discussed, have yet to be dismissed authoritatively.


 * Thus, while Castaneda's day-to-day accounts in his early books may be inaccurate (or purposefully evasive or deceitful), Castaneda's discovery of a thriving Toltec mystical culture in Sonora, Mexico has no equal in literature--anthropological or otherwise (even though no anthropologist have found this culture makes it highly suspect). Only the recent writings of Miguel Ruiz offer a similar window into that culture, even though Ruiz is not an anthropologist. Though Castaneda's popularity remains high throughout the world, he is mostly dismissed by academics.

Hey, Pahool, nice job. Now you've created an entry that suggests that Castaneda's writings were hoaxed; that he made it all up; and that nothing he wrote is of any merit. This is clearly now an anti-Castaneda site. It's not objective by any means. So, you win.Saturdayloo (talk) 23:47, 23 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Feel free to add any properly-sourced relevant material that you want. I only objected to the fact that well-sourced critical material was being replaced with relatively unsourced defenses of Castaneda. Castaneda is a controversial figure. This discussion, if nothing else, illustrates that. You may disagree with his critics. But the criticism section is the proper section for critical material, if it is relevant and properly sourced. Before removing other people's work, why not start a discussion here on the talk page. That gives the community an opportunity to respond to proposed changes. If you go ahead and remove well-sourced material capriciously, you are going to encounter resistance. Also, Using personally derogatory language on the talk page is kind of bad form. People are going to respond a lot better to your changes if you are civil. Pahool (talk) 04:51, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Well, it't seems the Castaneda-stormtroopers are still trying to sabotage this article. Along the same line there's a "lecture" on Wikiversity which is total bull****. It's obviously written by some brainwashed Castaneda, who's miserable enough to still believe in Castanedas hoax. You can believe what ever you want, but that page is propaganda. Why don't you let Tom Cruise lecture on Scientology then? Here's the Castaneda-propaganda page, please delete:

http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Carlos_Castaneda —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.61.173.165 (talk) 21:14, 14 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I remove this insertion made. It was obvious bias and lack sources.

"However, de Mille does not reveal how he came upon this seeming-discrepancy, as there are very tenuous references to dates and times in "The teachings of Don Juan". Yet de Mille asserts that he has such proof." Henry123ifa —Preceding unsigned comment added by Henry123ifa (talk • contribs) 01:22, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Removal of the Metaphysical Aspects section
This section may not have been perfect, but it was well-sourced and it was removed wholesale without any discussion. I am reverting it to the state it was in before it was removed on March 29, 2009. If you have particular objections to the material, perhaps a discussion could occur here on the discussion page? Pahool (talk) 23:11, 23 April 2009 (UTC)
 * The section should be removed, and relevant aspects merged into more appropriate parts of the article. I also think what remains of it after dispersal should be much shorter.  I ask, "metaphysical aspects" of what?  The first subsection ("The Witches") has no metaphysical context whatsoever.  There is little that is "metaphysical" in the other subsections.  Please let more competent hands make changes to the article. 67.193.183.61 (talk) 23:33, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Fair enough, the section definitely didn't warrant the "metaphysical aspects" title. The information was still valid and well-sourced however, and it certainly had biographical relevance. I am not the author, I was only restoring what I thought was valid information. Please refrain from making insulting comments. Pahool (talk) 00:23, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Castañeda?
Why is changed the surname of Castaneda? He signed his books with Carlos Castaneda. Look on Amazon.com books... --Violetova (talk) 21:00, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

I am wondering the same thing... this Wikipedia page is the only place online I see him referred to as Castañeda rather than Castaneda. Blackmetalskinhead (talk) 18:37, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

Hoax?
Shouldn't it be made more obvious that Castaneda created a huge hoax? Should this article be in the hoaxes category? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.113.46.155 (talk) 19:56, 13 June 2009 (UTC)


 * You dont have any rigth to put this article in hoaxes category.

There is a lot of people who truly believe his work. If you put this in hoax, then you have to put also christianity,islam, scientology... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.35.76.147 (talk) 03:49, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Sounds good. 96.50.10.234 (talk) 02:11, 15 June 2012 (UTC)
 * The evidence that Castaneda created a hoax is more than ample. See:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0969696000/roberttoddcarrolA/ http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0310577314/roberttoddcarrolA/ http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=richard+demille http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0595144993/ref=cm_cr_asin_lnk — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.92.174.105 (talk) 00:03, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Death
Did he die of liver or pancreatic cancer or both? Both are listed in the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.153.29.23 (talk) 02:42, 2 July 2009 (UTC)


 * The linked to image of the Los Angeles county death certificate is somewhat hard to read, but it states the primary cause of death as metabolic encephalopathy, and the secondary as liver failure, both due to hepatocelullar cancer. In simple terms, he died from complications of liver cancer, pancreatic cancer is not mentioned. According to the article on Hepatocellular carcinoma, the term is used for a tumor that develops as a primary malignancy, not for one that develops from metastasis.


 * By the way, two different causes of death aren't the only conflicting information the article provides, there are also two different places of birth: Cajamarca, Perú, in the writer info box, and Juqueri, Mairiporã, Brazil in the Biography-section right next to it. Obviously, one of them has to be wrong. The death certificate says Brazil. Textor (talk) 16:12, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Misrepresentation of psychotropic substances
I have objections to the first paragraph of this section: His accounts of hallucinations from psychotropic plants paralleled the "Mind Expansion" hippy ideas of the 60's, and sold in large volumes to the hippies. In contrast, the indigenous Mexican indians that ingest Peyote and Datura do so very rarely, only once a year for peyote, in a deeply sacred communal ceremony, rather than on their own for philosophical insights. It must be added that Castaneda wrote that he ingested peyote in a group situation. The first sentence is true but doesn't support "misrepresentation". The second sentence says "In contrast" but the items counterpoised are not comparable.

Even if the paragraph was restructured, I don't see a basis for misrepresenation. To the best of my knowledge, during all the years of his alleged apprenticeship, Carlos claims to have ingested peyote only twice, and ingested or applied Datura only three times, so if the original author was suggesting this contrast their criticism is false.

The use of the term "deeply sacred" is loaded. There is nothing demonstrably less sacred about his apprenticeship than there is about other practices involving psychotropic plants. Finally, the paragraph ends with a sentence asserting (correctly) that Castaneda reports ingesting peyote in communal ceremonies, nullifying the last possible contrast contained here.

On the basis of these criticisms, I have removed this paragraph from the section. 67.193.183.61 (talk) 23:21, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Book source
"He may be lying, but what he says is the truth": Book chapter on Castaneda in The Invention of Sacred Tradition, Cambridge University Press 2007, discusses Castaneda's reception. Could be a useful source. -- JN 466  05:33, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Recent Removal
"This too is also debatable as most North and Central American Indigenous languages are not phonetically transcribed, let alone found with a symbolism to correspond with the linguistic imagery being described. Moreover, original discussions of these works were conducted in Spanish syntax, which in various situations is not kind to the type of semantics necessary for proper English translation. The word "semantics" itself denotes a range of ideas, from the popular to the highly technical. And it is often found by linguists that English has great difficulty in matching many ancient and indigenous American continent languages to the frame of description and understanding that the Indo-European language family is built upon. "

I remove this from the criticism section. It is not referenced at all. Its more of a personal commentary. Also the topic is about criticism of Carlos Castenada.

Ifa123 Feburary 17, 2010

Castaneda murderer, cult leader, fraud.
I'm alarmed by the overlooking/hiding of the obvious murderous, cult-like and fraudulent aspects of Castaneda's life and works. It seems to be very biased and someone should edit it or revert it to before it was changed.--Ageebo (talk) 17:14, 10 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Biased much? Shii (tock) 06:32, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

New Yorker Artilce, his life in Peru, ...
This article lacks details about Carlos's youth in Peru and his life as a student in the USA before he received his PhD. There are details of this availble in articles and in the recollections of Peruvians who knew Carlos or his Peruvian daughter who might still be living in Peru. To understand him you need to know rual Peruvian culture. Has anyone gone to Peru and interviewed Peruvian anthropologists? Has anyone gone to his home town and found the people who went school with him? Or talked to his daughter who obtained a visa to visit him in California? Why was he taken out of high scool and forced to finish high school in Lima? What about the people who were his early friends in California? Until you add this background information you are leaving out important facts that might help everyone better understand his writings. What I do know is that things I've read, heard, or experienced in Peru are presently missing from the article. Stan Osborne (talk) 19:38, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Questioning the Changes made in the "Reception" section (formally called "Criticism" sections)
With the more recent changes I believe alot of information was unfairly cut out including referenced sections such as the March 1973 Time Life article about Carlos Castenda. I think previous changes also took out of alot of De Mille's material as well. ---

To cut & paste what was there befor the changes were made. (see below)

Criticism ''Castaneda's writings have been criticized by a number of academics, and have been seen by some as highly suspect in terms of anthropological fieldwork. Various critics have tried to reconcile Castaneda’s accounts with his own personal history and those of his fellow apprentices, with no success. Some hold that this is proof that the stories are fictitious but others believe that Castaneda made a strenuous personal effort to erase his own personal history, in accordance with the precepts he learned from the old nagual, don Juan Matus, who had embarked on a similar procedure earlier.

One conflicting aspect of his work is the description of the use of psychotropic plants as a means to induce altered states of awareness. In Castaneda's first two books, he describes the "Yaqui way of knowledge" using for assistance the use of powerful indigenous plants, such as peyote and datura. In his third book, Journey to Ixtlan, he makes clear that the use of psychotropic plants ("power plants") or substances was not necessary to achieve heightened awareness, although his teacher advised their use was beneficial in helping to free the stubborn mind of some persons. He says that Don Juan used them on him to demonstrate that experiences outside those known in day-to-day life are real and tangible.

In Journey to Ixtlan, the third book in the series, he wrote:

My perception of the world through the effects of those psychotropics had been so bizarre and impressive that I was forced to assume that such states were the only avenue to communicating and learning what don Juan was attempting to teach me.

That assumption was erroneous.

According to Robert J. Wallis, in his 2003 book Shamans/Neo-Shamans: Contested Ecstasies, Alternative Archaeologies, and Contemporary Pagans:

At first, and with the backing of academic qualifications and the UCLA anthropological department, Castaneda’s work was critically acclaimed. Notable old-school American anthropologists like Edward Spicer (1969) and Edmund Leach (1969) praised Castaneda, alongside more alternative and young anthropologists such as Peter Furst, Barbara Myerhoff and Michael Harner. The authenticity of don Juan was accepted for six years, until Richard de Mille and Daniel Noel both published their critical exposés of the don Juan books in 1976 (De Mille produced a further edited volume in 1980). Most anthropologists had been convinced of Castaneda’s authenticity until then — indeed, they had had little reason to question it — but De Mille’s meticulous analysis, in particular, disproved the veracity of Castaneda’s work.

Beneath the veneer of anthropological fact stood huge discrepancies in the data: the books ‘contradict one another in details of time, location, sequence, and description of events’ (Schultz in Clifton 1989:45). There are possible published sources for almost everything Carlos wrote (see especially Beals 1978), and at least one encounter is ethnographic plagiarism: Ramon Medina, a Huichol shaman-informant to Myerhoff (1974), displayed superhuman acrobatic feats at a waterfall and, according to Myerhoff, in the presence of Castaneda (Fikes 1993). Then, in A Separate Reality, don Juan’s friend don Genaro makes a similar leap over a waterfall with the aid of supernatural power. In addition to these inconsistencies, various authors suggest aspects of the Sonoran desert Carlos describes are environmentally implausible, and, the ‘Yaqui shamanism’ he divulges is not Yaqui at all but a synthesis of shamanisms from elsewhere (e.g. Beals 1978).

As early as 1973 a Time Magazine article had questioned

"... the more worldly claim to importance of Castaneda's books: to wit, that they are anthropology, a specific and truthful account of an aspect of Mexican Indian culture as shown by the speech and actions of one person, a shaman named Juan Matus. That proof hinges on the credibility of don Juan as a being and Carlos Castaneda as a witness. Yet there is no corroboration beyond Castaneda's writings that don Juan did what he is said to have done, and very little that he exists at all."

Serious analytical criticism of Castaneda's books did not emerge until 1976 when Richard de Mille published Castaneda's Journey: The Power and the Allegory, in which he argues, "Logical or chronological errors in the narrative constitute the best evidence that Castaneda's books are works of fiction. If no one has discovered these errors before, the reason must be that no one has listed the events of the first three books in sequence. Once that has been done, the errors are unmistakable."[10]

The most damning instance of this, according to de Mille, is Castaneda's relations with a witch named 'la Catalina.'

In October 1965 Carlos-One went through an ordeal so unexpected and disturbing that he sadly withdrew from his apprenticeship and avoided don Juan for more than two years. The ordeal was a night-long confrontation with a powerful enemy who had assumed don Juan's bodily form though not his accustomed gait or speech....

Curiously, when Carlos-One begged don Juan to explain what had happened during the "special" event, 'the conversation began with speculations about the identity of a female person' (Castaneda's emphasis) who had snatched Carlos's soul and borrowed don Juan's form. The lady was not named, and the reader was left to wonder whether the galvanizing impersonatress was in fact a certain 'fiendish witch' called "la Catalina," who had been mentioned briefly on November 23, 1961, four years earlier. At that time don Juan had said he was harboring certain plans for finishing her off, about which he would tell Carlos-One 'someday.' Poor Carlos-One had to wait ten years to learn about those plans in Tales of Power, but Table 2 reveals that Carlos-Two, traveling a parallel time track, carried out those plans with moderate success in the fall of 1962, when he met the magic lady six times in a row, once as a marauding but indistinct blackbird, once as a sailing silhouette, and four times face to face "in all her magnificent evil splendor" as a beautiful but terrifying young woman. Reacting to those encounters, he felt his ears bursting, his throat choking, his hands frozen, his body chilled, and his arms and legs rigid. The hair on his body literally stood on end. He shrieked and fell down to the ground. He was paralyzed. He began to run. And he lost his power of speech.

Here we are asked to believe that a flesh-and-blood anthropologist who enjoyed this tumultuous supernatural affair with a glorious witch in 1962 did not recall her name in 1965, did not make the connection between the last meeting and the previous six when sorting through his field notes in the safety of his apartment, did not put it all together when naming her in his first book, but found the memory "as vivid as if it had just happened" on May 22, 1968, a few pages into his second book. Even if we could credit this uncharacteristic amnesia, we would still have to account for don Juan's equal failure to name 'la Catalina' in 1965. The puzzle is easily solved by switching from the factual to the fictive model. The abrupt, unsatisfying ending to The Teachings is not a symptom of ethnographic battle fatigue, for our campaigner has already survived six such battles with colors flying. It is only a serialist's preparation for the next episode, a cliffhanger that makes us hungry for another book.

On these showings, one thing is certain. "The Teachings of Don Juan" and "Journey to Ixtlan" cannot both be factual reports.[11]

In the The Power and the Allegory, De Mille compared The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui way of Knowledge with Castenada's library stack requests at the University of California. The stack requests documented that he was sitting in the library when his journal said he was squatting in don Juan's hut. One of the most memorable discoveries the De Mille made in his examination of the stack requests was that when Castaneda said he was participating in the traditional peyote ceremony—the least fantastic episode of drug use—he was not only sitting in the library, but he was reading someone else's description of their experience of the peyote ceremony.''

Henry123ifa Thursday May, 20, 2010 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Henry123ifa (talk • contribs) 13:39, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Miguel Ángel Ruiz
Is there any reason to have a link to the article on the above author? A quick look at the page in question doesn't show anything other than publishing the same type of book.Autarch (talk) 21:01, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Shamanism
Castaneda opens one of his books by a quotation from San Juan de la Cruz, the spanish mystic,about "The lonely bird", but the shaman world is totally opposed to the catholic religious environment: to the Christian advise: "Love your enemy, do the good to those that hate you", don juan's proposal is "You will be able to harm your enemy", to the commandement "Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect", Castaneda proposal is "I am my own father", and "A sorcerer must be impeccable". Drugs, even when cited several times in the Castaneda books are not the core of the "separate reality" access, it's just a matter of mental work, and adherence to an obviously satanic world. Better don't mesh with this, the end can be the one Castaneda tells: being chewed by something like a dinosaur. The data you give about Castaneda death, although few, are compatible with a liver cancer, that is many times related to B hepatitis infection, whose marker is Anti VHB core Antibodies, a condition related with not very good sanitation measures, as in the Peru C Castaneda was born. Salud + —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jgrosay (talk • contribs) 08:13, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I was advised to read C Castaneda by a Lanzarote (Canary Islands) friend of a Toronto based sculptress. When I realized that this was just witchery, and told them, they became astonished. Some of the things Castaneda depicts appear also in the writings from men of the spanish religious missions to Mexico: the jump from a cliff, the "confession" of sexual sins by those going to take peyotl, were seen with horror by these priests. The keys to enter the Castaneda shaman world are not many: the definition of a sorcerer would be: 1) I am my own father, 2)A sorcerer is interested mainly in this world and only in this world, and 3) The control of "dreaming", that starts by watching your own hands while dreaming. A core issue in the shaman's world is "how far do you go in the way of power depends on the power itself", i.e. the power is not something, the power is somebody.
 * Are you just making a list of shortcomings in Christianity that are solved by shamanism, or what? It's not pertinent to the article... Shii (tock) 21:24, 15 June 2010 (UTC).
 * My intention was remarking some cardinal traits of the Yaqui and Shaman way of knowledge and approach to the world and life, and point that it is radically different, if not opposite, to Christian beliefs,I don't want to say this, Christianity has no shortcomings, christians do have, one of these can be flirting with shamanism.
 * No, I don't think such POV statements about Christianity can be added to the article... on Wikipedia, Christianity and shamanism are equal. Shii (tock) 13:31, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Regarding Quoted Referenced Material Removals
I dont believe there is no justification to remove qouted referenced material. One should refer to wikipedia policies about that. Therefore some of the removals have been reverse in the "Reception" section. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Henry123ifa (talk • contribs) 19:28, 12 July 2010 (UTC)
 * This is an encyclopedic summary, not a thesis paper. Shii (tock) 20:49, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

"This is an encyclopedic summary" what does wiki say about how long an article can be??? imo I think to compare it to a thesis paper is maybe stretching it abit. What is the average length of a thesis paper? Note there are some pretty lengthy articles in wiki such as "Islamic Golden Age", "Alchemy", "Christianity", "Islam", "Freemason", "Shamanism" etc.

Regardless that still does not mean you can remove qouted reference material (if you can rewrite a shorten version of it while still keeping the references thats fine. I have no problem with that). If I recall correctly it is wiki's policy to reference statements and or claims. Further more befor removing anyone's work its common courtesy to at least discuss it on the talk page befor removing it.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by Henry123ifa (talk • contribs) 05:55, 2 August 2010 Henry123ifa

Removal of literary hoax category
I've removed the literary hoax category from the article. This is my view: According to Literary forgery, a work can be described as such if it is "presented as an original, when in fact it is fake". It goes on to say that it is a case of "the text not be[ing] what it purports to be according to its meaning". The problem, it seems to me, in describing Castaneda's work as a hoax, is that there is no definitive evidence as to whether or not his writings are fictional. There is a notable amount of circumstantial evidence to this point, in terms of internal contradictions, and a lack of corroboration. However, since Castaneda writes of essentially mystical and religious topics, to frame it as a hoax would be illegitimate for the same reason that citing the wealth of internal contradictions and factual errors in the Bible, and claiming it to be a hoax. It is the case of two apparently non-scientific and non-realistic narratives, which both have its believers and supporters. Again, the veracity of Castaneda's work has not been conclusively disproven, which his critics recognizes (as seen in the Wallis quote).

Even so, it there was a category for "Purported literary hoaxes", that could be a pertinent sorting. But without sufficient evidence, I think it's injust to frame any author's work, in total, as a hoax. Mystical or not.

One these grounds, I'm reverting. Your thoughts? Shoplifter (talk) 08:44, 16 July 2010(UTC)


 * There are no grounds for reverting. Sufficient proof exists - like the records from the U.Cal. library. Why aren't you asking what proof there is in favor of Castaneda's claims? He never bothered to submit anything verifiable, like photographs or sound recordings. Instead, he told lies, like about having been born Dec. 25, 1935, in Sao Paolo, Brazil. But his immigration file says 1923, Cajmarca, Peru.


 * As to "writing on mystical and religious topics": in his thesis project, he also made numerous factual claims based on alleged anthropological field work on Yaqui culture. Many of these have been found to be wrong. Academic degrees should be awarded for advancing science through honest and productive efforts, not mendacious flights of fancy. Textor (talk) 09:51, 16 July 2010 (UTC)


 * I essentially agree with you on the standards of academic conferment. I too think Castaneda's work should've been subject to intense scrutiny in the scholarly context prior to him receiving a degree. I also find the U.Cal circumstances troubling. But I still think that the evidence available does not suffice to categorize his output, as a whole, as faudulent. If there was an article or subsection on his doctoral thesis, the (sourced) claim of a possible hoax should be included.


 * In regards to proof in favor of Castaneda's claims, I think that the standard applied must be one of innocent until proven guilty, as far as making an absolute sorting (which is the case with a category). The accusations and corroborating evidence are included in the article, and, in lack of defintive proof, I think we should let everyone make their own judgement. Shoplifter (talk) 10:43, 16 July

2010 (UTC)


 * Where is the evidence that his writings are truthful? He claimed to have turned into an animal, and jumped from a high cliff unharmed. But reliable witnesses there are none. He alleged the Yaqui people use peyote, when other anthropologists showed they do not. Why don't you apply your standards of proof to Castaneda's own words? The Literary Hoax category seems entirely justified, as long as his writings are not credibly substantiated. Textor (talk) 16:50, 16 July 2010 (UTC)


 * As I mentioned previously, Castaneda's work is mystical in nature. In the Bible, Jesus is purported to have walked on water. This has by some been interpreted literally, as a factual event, by others as metaphorical or symbolic. Because of the unambiguously religious context; from a scentific point of view, these narratives are not treated as treatises. They are treated as stories, which have believers and followers, but that are outside the domain of science.


 * I think you're misdirecting your skepticism a little. No scholar acceps claims of supernatural events as fact, and nobody has done so in the case of Castaneda. His critics are not repudiating his account of events on this basis. As far as I can tell, their main gripe with his work is whether he did conduct serious antrophological research to support his descriptions of mundane scientific investigation, such as the one you referred to about the use of peyote among the Yaqui people. That is a legitimate, scholarly inquiry, which can be empirically verified, and thus circumstantial evidence has surfaced, suggesting that Castaneda did not carry out the kind of research he professed to have done.


 * Again, however, as far as this evidence is concerned, it is not sufficient to categorize his entire ouevre as fraudulent. The subsection devoted to reception of his work casts a long shadow, and seems to have been written by a person critical of Castaneda. Personally, I think stern exploration of facts in itself can be useful, so I don't have any problems with it. But one must, I think, separate the supernatural events from those that can be explored within the current realm of science. Shoplifter (talk) 17:26, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

What was removed in the "Reception" section
Are they important enough to be included in the article? Discuss.

''Further discrepancies appeared. As early as March 1973 a Time Magazine article by Sandra Burton had questioned - "... the more worldly claim to importance of Castaneda's books: to wit, that they are anthropology, a specific and truthful account of an aspect of Mexican Indian culture as shown by the speech and actions of one person, a shaman named Juan Matus. That proof hinges on the credibility of don Juan as a being and Carlos Castaneda as a witness. Yet there is no corroboration beyond Castaneda's writings that don Juan did what he is said to have done, and very little that he exists at all." -

- A respected botanist Gordon R. Wasson originally praised Castenada's work later began to question the accuracies of Castenada's botanical claims. -

- The leading anthropological authorities at the time specializing in Yaqui Indian culture namely William Curry Holden, Jane Holden Kelley and Edward H. Spicer (whom orginally supported Castenada's account as true) had questioned the accuracies of Castenada's work. - '' —Preceding unsigned comment added by Henry123ifa (talk • contribs) 06:57, 2 August 2010 (UTC)
 * These individual accounts are unnecessary in light of a larger consensus. Shii (tock) 05:05, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Now what is wikipedia's policy on "individual accounts are unnecessary" due to "larger consensus"? (Since when does wikipedia uses "larger concensus" as a criteria for submitting information?? huh huh —Preceding unsigned comment added by Henry123ifa (talk • contribs) 15:54, 9 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Please learn how to sign your posts... just type ~ after your insights. Anyway, with the large quotes in the article none of these other individuals' opinions are necessary. Shii (tock) 01:05, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Assessment comment
Substituted at 14:28, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

*slow clap*
I'm sure there is some kind of raging wiki-controversy about this article, so I would just say to those editors in the reality-based community who are trying to "fix" it: Don't bother. The work in its laughably bloated, hagiographic state, complete with idiosyncrasies of capitalization and grammar, is actually much more damning than any WP:NPOV article could ever be. TiC (talk) 02:17, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

This claim cannot stand without a source!
''As Carlos wanted a child but did not want to lose his personal power he enlisted a man named Adrian Gerritsen from Utah to father a child for him. '' Says who? hgilbert (talk) 13:37, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Dividing biography and books
I have divided Castaneda's biography and his books - something he had trouble doing. hgilbert (talk) 14:08, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

---Thankyou very much for helping ensure a properly structured and true account ( as accurate and Neutral as possible ) is presented for The Carlos Castanedas page - / I have though returned the Original Opening Paragraph as it seems to cover his works in a Broader sense /apology for editing your comment here as Im not sure where else to thank the contribution appreciated. From Paul in Australia.

Vandalism
In the "Reception" section (formerly "Criticism" section)

There has been some tampering of the quotes (things that De Mille & Wallis never said) And the complete removal of a quote from the Time magazine article (which was replaced by another quote by someone) that I have now recovered. If you go back far enough you will see how and where the quotes have been tampered with. (Writing is not my strong point so please correct my writing errors.) I do know wiki has a policy against vandalism.

I also want to thank the person who has been working hard organizing and cleaning up the "Reception" section. It looks a lot better now than before!

(talk) 16:28, 4 March 2011 (UTC)Henry123ifaHenry123ifa (talk) 16:28, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

== Vandalism / Reply and Extras added to "Reception Section " Introduction Paragraph at TOP - NO WHERE IN ANY VOLUMES HAS CASTENEDAS CLAIMED THAT - the sorcerors world was an INNER experience Unless this person can verify this statement with excerpts from the Writings of Castaneda I will make a Vandalism claim to wikipedia publishers / he always maintained that it is a PRAGMATIC Real world to be intercepted by our OUTER senses, I have corrected this statement twice Now

In the "Reception" section (formerly "Criticism" section) - I have added  to start his reception on The POSITIVE reception Firstly - which the Author deserves also for public to know he has supporting Critics as well as Critics who question his works. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.208.45.194 (talk) 22:42, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

To 'unsigned' person can you qoute the passage you are refering to. It will make it easier for everyone to know what you are reading & refering to. Henry123ifa (talk) 08:18, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

In Reply From "unsigned person" to Henry 123 - Thank you for pointing this out appreciated. The quotation in question has been removed - The Carlos Page is now as 8/3/2011 Exactly as it should be. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.208.56.123 (talk) 22:21, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

In the Paragraph "BOOKS" Is a quoted statement - from the moderator of the Carlos C Page( The moderator is wrong ) - "He also says the sorcerer bequeathed him the position of nagual, or leader of a party of seers." This statement ( Bequeathed )is not correct- In the books Don Juan responded to Carlos "that THE SPIRIT Chose" -not he himself as Don Juan -  I propose to have the word removed please - and instead replaced with the words "Identified Him" as being more correct to the works of Castanedas. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.208.56.123 (talk) 02:28, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes Ill agree with that - someone likes big words lol —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.208.44.253 (talk) 09:12, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Wasson/de Mille/POV bias
Quote: "Despite the widespread popularity of his works, some academic critics question the validity of Castaneda's book as early as 1969. In a series of articles, botanist Gordon R. Wasson, who had originally praised Castenada's work, questioned the accuracies of Castenada's botanical claims.[10]"

Wasson made two main claims: firstly, that hallucinogenic mushrooms did not grow in the Sonoran desert. This was completely wrong, as a quick Google will confirm. (De Mille made the same assertion and his publishers had to recall that first edition of his book and print a new edited edition, without any apology btw).

Secondly, that trees that were big enough to climb did not exist in the Sonoran desert. This is also completely wrong. There are many species of tree that fit the bill. Wasson seems to think that the Sonoran desert consists entirely of the "classic" desert landscape. How can such an academic make such elementary mistakes? What were his research skills like?

Quote: "Anthropologists specializing in Yaqui Indian culture (William Curry Holden, Jane Holden Kelley and Edward H. Spicer), who originally supported Castenada's account as true, had questioned the accuracies of Castenada's work[11]

This was put to bed years ago in the 1970s. Castaneda wrote that, although originally believing that he was learning a Yaqui belief system, he had to change his opinion when Don Juan told him that it was in fact an ancient "Toltec" belief system.

Quote: "In The Power and the Allegory, De Mille compared The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge with Castaneda's library stack requests at the University of California. The stack requests documented that he was sitting in the library when allegedly his journal said he was squatting in Don Juan's hut.Italic text One discovery that de Mille alleges to have made in his examination of the stack requests was that when Castaneda was alleged to have said that he was participating in the traditional peyote ceremony—the least fantastic episode of drug use—he was sitting in the UCLA library and he was reading someone else's description of their experience of the peyote ceremony.

I can't find any specific dates as alleged by de Mille in any of those early books of Castaneda. Without such documentary evidence, de Mille's evidence is just hearsay.

This whole article reeks of bias.. and to use the web sources 1) and 2) as references says it all. They lead to two ad hominem sites that are as far removed from serious critical analysis as is possible. It all points to the origin of this article's mood as coming from that sort of site. The previous (now edited) use of christian names of the main protagonists is a dead giveaway. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.147.190.96 (talk) 09:19, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Regarding comments made. To quote User talk:78.147.190.96|talk: " Wasson made two main claims: firstly, that hallucinogenic mushrooms did not grow in the Sonoran desert. This was completely wrong, as a quick Google will confirm. .... Secondly, that trees that were big enough to climb did not exist in the Sonoran desert. This is also completely wrong. There are many species of tree that fit the bill. Wasson seems to think that the Sonoran desert consists entirely of the "classic" desert landscape. How can such an academic make such elementary mistakes? What were his research skills like? "

Did Wasson EVER made such claims? From which academic journal? Giving the history of vandalism and certain individuals posting fabricated information it should be ask.

Wasson from my understanding went to Mexico in 1953 to search for hallucinogenic mushrooms. Where he was able to contact a Mazatec curandera named Maria Sabina. And as a result wrote an article about it in Life Magazine in 1957(Castenada's The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge was published in 1968 which was 11 years after Wasson mentioning hallucinogenic mushrooms in Mexico). ???

REPLY: Wasson published some papers in which he threw doubt on the botanical claims of CC regarding the Sonora Desert. The papers are cited at the beginning of the Wiki article. If you think that this is hearsay, why haven't you criticised the inclusion of the Wasson reference in the first place? Why is it even there, when his claims were disproved in the 70s, leading to the withdrawal of de Mille's first edition by his publisher?

Henry123ifa reply: You take put words out of context. Wasson questioned the accuracy of CC botanical claims now where does he specifically say "hallucinogenic did not grow in the Senora desert" (in those papers)? You claim that Wasson's "claim" was disproved in the 70's can you cite your source for this? According to whom??? To emphasize Wasson from understanding went to Mexico in 1953 to search for hallucinogenic mushrooms. He is well known for his LIFE MAGAZINE May 13, 1957 article on curandera Maria Sabina and the use of hallucinogenic mushrooms in Mexico. This is 11 years prior to the publication of A Yaqui Way of Knowledge(1968).

Also what is the source that de Mille's first edition was withdrawn by his publishers? Where does this info come from??

qoute User talk:78.147.190.96|talk " (De Mille made the same assertion and his publishers had to recall that first edition of his book and print a new edited edition, without any apology btw). "

I'm skeptical of the source of this. A publisher is going to spend thousands of dollars to recall a first edition over a tiny thing??? What is the original source of this information comming from? One can put this in the category of hearsay just as well.

REPLY: It wouldn't have cost "thousands of dollars" and it most certainly was not over "a tiny thing". All they had to do was pulp the remainders of the edition- it didn't involve recalling books from thousands of bookshops: the print run was a relatively modest one and it would not have been a costly exercise. Check de Mille's print run and sales figures: relatively small.

Henry123ifa reply: You said "The Publisher was protecting itself against litigation, which would have run into thousands of dollars.. and which they would have lost because their printed information was false." Do you have sources or evidence for this claim? It still seem mostly speculative hearsay. One has to ask what is the original source of this info comming from?

To qoute User talk:78.147.190.96|talk [ " ''Quote: "Anthropologists specializing in Yaqui Indian culture (William Curry Holden, Jane Holden Kelley and Edward H. Spicer), who originally supported Castenada's account as true, had questioned the accuracies of Castenada's work[11] This was put to bed years ago in the 1970s. Castaneda wrote that, although originally believing that he was learning a Yaqui belief system, he had to change his opinion when Don Juan told him that it was in fact an ancient "Toltec" belief system.'' "]

Some might consider that to be back peddling though. First Yaqui. Then Huichol. And then finally "Toltec"?

REPLY: I think you mean "back-pedalling" but "back-peddling" brings a smile. CC didn't back-pedal: he wrote the "I am a Toltec" (DJ) quote before any criticism: the critics obviously hadn't caught up with this fact when they called him out on the "Yaqui" reference, possibly because they only read the first book... and btw.. CC never wrote anything about DJ or his "teachings" being Huichol.

Henry123ifa reply : You said "...he wrote the "I am a Toltec" (DJ) quote before any criticism:...." can you cite the specific published source of this information? And specifically when it was written by CC? (chronological time period is important here)

LOL your right I should have spelled it as "back-pedalling" not "back-peddling".

Henry123ifa (talk) 14:39, 9 October 2011 (UTC)comment added by Henry123ifa (talk • contribs) 21:32, 9 September 2011 (UTC) Henry123ifa (talk) 14:39, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Distinct POVs ensure a NPOV article
Yes, I will try to collaborate here; hopefully this can improve this article (please, be patient). My background: I read all books by Castaneda, and many others related sources written by mystics, critics and supporters, and not only in English but also in Spanish. Yeah, I am truly knowledgeable about Castaneda (you don’t need to believe me, I really don’t care). So what? My POV? Well, I think he was not completely but significantly honest in his first three books, and later he did what any writer does: he mixed literary fantasy and facts but keeping intact the core of his message, the alternative view of the don Juan’s world. Did he lie? Yes, sometimes. Did he tell the truth? Yes, sometimes. Was he a hoax? Of course not, but his books shouldn’t be taken word for word. The good news it is that English Wikipedia embraces foreign sources specially when English refs are absent. Of course English WP aims to be a universal and therefore a complete encyclopedia and not only one built on written English texts. English WP wants comprise the whole world knowledge and bring this to English language, obviously. However the bad news it is that sometimes bizarre things happen in English WP: when editors (creators) source foreign references, some critics ignore such materials, disqualify, and delete the content and refs. Therefore English WP has a huge flaw in its set of rules, and such attitude shouldn’t be tolerated because it is vandalism. The onus of a translation has to be enforced to the critics as a rule. WP cannot lose knowledge because critics don’t want so much work. Remember, creators are volunteers, they already made hard work providing sourced information, thus, don’t be ridiculous and irresponsible making demands, or removing knowledge. Removing content from foreign source it is obscurantism and violates NPOV. And even worst: unfortunately continuously emerge editors making their own interpretation of WP rules/guidelines, disregarding other sources/opinions, enforcing exclusively their POV, and thus instigating edit-wars like historically we see in these repulsive battlefields settled in Wikipedia. Different sourced POV should be added, enriching the article; nothing sourced should be removed; that was the plan to WP, what did happen? One more example of how grotesque all this is: demanding tags are evil and unaesthetic, most of the time they don’t help to improve WP, they belong to the Talk page, not in the article, but for some procedural disaster lost in time, they started to be put in main space. Wake up, the hardest part of an encyclopedia it is to write and source articles, yeah I know you know that. Oh yeah, I was almost forgetting: What I wrote here I took some parts from others discussion/user’s talks (I hope you don’t mind).

Very well, I think this article precisely reveals all these structural problems; among them it lacks of foreign references (official documents, mainly). I will stop here pointing out one example: Castaneda’s death certificate says he was Brazilian while immigration register says he was Peruvian; which American department received wrong information? You really don’t know. Therefore both possibilities should be present in the article. Where are they? That it is only an example of many not NPOV here. Eddietrich (talk) 21:44, 6 July 2011 (UTC)


 * An angle I don't see anyone using is the material from the 30th Anniversary edition. Castaneda specifically calls out Professor Clement Meighan "who started and set the course of my fieldwork and Professor Harold Garfinkel "who gave me the model and spirit of my inquiry", Professor Robert Edgerton, "who criticized my work from the beginning", Professors William Bright and Pedro Carrasco "for their criticisms and encouragement", and Professor Lawrence Watson "for the invaluable help in the clarification of my analysis." (Frontispiece, 1998). So if this man's web is so easily pierced by Library Records, or sequence of events, wouldn't one of these professors have known? Some have passed on, but would any notes exist? Basically, the article reads like something from about 1990 before the web really caught on. Maybe the mystique is passing, because if it was really important to someone, someone would have checked with the University(ies). This edition has been out there for 13 years. TaoPhoenix (talk) 21:50, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Dead link to Wikiquote
The link to Wikiquote would seem to indicate that there exists a page there about Castaneda. It is only a search link, and the page http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Carlos_Castaneda was deleted over 2 years ago due to ¿lack of attribution?

As a side note, it does seem odd that there is no Wikiquote page, for such a prolific writer/seer/cult leader or whatever people want to refer to Castaneda as.Halibutron (talk) 21:10, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

First person passage
The following was inserted inappropriately in the text of the article: ''My introduction to Guadalupe was in 1993 at a midnight ceremony in the hills overlooking Santa Fe, New Mexico.[who said this?] Over the years we became good friends, and she often came to stay in my home in Canada. When my son[clarification needed] was born (1997), Guadalupe stayed several weeks with us and shared many stories about her life. Until then she hadn't talked about herself. Of Castaneda, she had very little to say. "He took our knowledge, our stories, made his millions, and didn't send money to us even though we were poor as dogs" (G. de la Cruz, personal communication, September 26, 1997). She told me that one of Castaneda's wives contacted her after his death to set the record straight, promising to publicly credit Guadalupe's father. Guadalupe returned to Mexico and became very ill. I never saw her again, and I have no idea if her father was ever credited.'' I'm copying it here in case anyone wants to find where it came from and reference it. I'll excise it from the main article. Autarch (talk) 17:01, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Looking more closely, the rest of the paragraph also looks like a copy-and-paste: ''The late Huichol shaman, Guadalupe de la Cruz, told the author[who?] that her father was the real 'don Juan' on whom Carlos Castaneda modeled his fictional sorcerer teacher (G. de la Cruz, personal communication, September 15, 1997). His books sold in the millions and were still in print for years after his death from liver cancer in 1998 (Frey, 2007). According to Guadalupe, who inherited her father's 'sorcery bundle', Castaneda stayed at her father's house many times over the course of nearly a decade, taking notes. Guadalupe said Castaneda never credited her father. Nor did he credit her shaman husband, Ramon Medina, who also spent time with Castaneda. Today most people assume don Juan never existed and was entirely fictional (Applebome, 1998). Some doubt whether Castaneda even traveled beyond his local library (de Mille, 1976).'' Autarch (talk) 17:04, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

A New Approach
This sad article and sadder talk page needs a whole new approach. Clearly, it cannot be determined whether Castaneda's writing is factual or fiction. It can't even be determined where he was born. However, that should not prevent a good encyclopedic article from being written. Take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus for an example of a well written article where the fundamental facts are in doubt. That article doesn't sink into internal dispute over whether the bible is fact or fiction. It simply, and skillfully, reports the contents of the bible and what various sources say about it.

With regard to Castaneda, report what others say - with references. Castaneda himself says he was born in Brasil; Time Magazine says he was born in Peru. That's the encyclopedic approach. Same with the fact vs. fiction nature of his writing - these sources say fact, while these say fiction. Report all widely held points of view from published sources and be done with it. It is important for the reader to be told when there is uncertainty. Wikipedia is here to report, and not to take sides in religious disputes. — Preceding unsigned comment added by JonathanHuie (talk • contribs) 06:16, 8 February 2012 (UTC)


 * If you read his books, he says that "personal history" doesn't matter. His attitude, if he were to make it known now, is that he does not care whether you think he existed. Don Juan may or may not have been a real person. If Don Juan did exist, he may or may not have been a Yaqui, and and even if he was, why would Yaqui traditions and culture apply to him; the entire lesson is to become sui generis and outside of culture. I see little wrong with the article as it stands, but the constantly shifting ambiguities (or lies, if you prefer) are intentional in Castaneda's world-view. Perhaps there should be a section that draws on the books and clarifies that. Wastrel Way (talk) 21:52, 7 September 2020 (UTC)Eric

Credulous much?
I noticed in reading this article that all of Castaneda's claims were treated as factual and all of his critics suspicions couched in terms like "alleged". Surely, this is an indication of bias, no? Phiwum (talk) 19:31, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

"RECEPTION" section (information removed)
" Anthropologists specializing in Yaqui Indian culture (William Curry Holden, Jane Holden Kelley and Edward H. Spicer), who originally supported Castaneda's account as true, had questioned the accuracies of Castaneda's work[11]"

Why was it removed (in December 2011)? The article now ONLY has anthropologists who praise Castaneda. When infact there has been several anthropologists (mentioned in the qoute) who questioned Castaneda's research.

The article is no longer neutral.

Henry123ifa (talk) 22:53, 18 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I'm sure it was removed because the footnote, "[11]", is not a valid citation and as the article is edited, the citation numbers change. If you want to readd the sentence, please source it correctly. Yworo (talk) 00:10, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

The footnote "[11]" was the old footnote source. The new footnotes was included.

The issue of neutrality has still not been adressed. Henry123ifa (talk) 00:53, 19 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Isn't that what you're doing? Please use only reliable sources (pages on Angelfire.com are not generally considered reliable) and please also use full citations, the name of a book with a year and page numbers is incomplete. We need the author, publisher and ISBN as well. Yworo (talk) 01:06, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Distinct POVs ensure a NPOV article. With the mentioning of only anthropologists who supported CC's work it cant be neutral.

Yep I am working on that.

btw Thanks

Henry123ifa (talk) 01:14, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

The new lies of Carlos Castaneda
In my opinion the original versions of Castanedas first 4 books ( The Teachings of Don Juan; Separate Reality, Journey to Ixtlan and Tales of Power) were truly beautiful, the rest were twisted and wrong,  this was because he failed completely in his "leap into the abyss" and was rescued by another brujo who has since used his fame for his own needs. Don Juan had already abandoned him as a useless cause.

The present versions of his first four books have been massively re written with much important detail removed, such as the discussions of objects of power...virtually rule 1 in the teachings of don juan..." never accept an object of power from someone that you wouldnt trust with your soul" ( on the castaneda website...www.cleargreen.com...the first thing that one sees are objects of power FOR SALE !!!!!), the whole story of the nagual woman has been removed, the jump into the abyss isnt mentioned until the last chapter of Tales of Power...the battle for his lost soul ( the corn magic ) isnt even there, the peyote and humito sequences are much editted and glossed over..

Truly a travesty and an obvious indication of the lack of pure intent and impeccability. In fact the impeccable aspect of Castaneda is his weakness and deceit.

Tragic waste of beauty. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.153.205.28 (talk) 19:15, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

This article is ridiculous
The article is filthy and utterly untruthful.

Not because it doesn't describe verifiable facts. It probably mostly does that.

It is filthy and disgusting because it doesn't give even a remotest idea about the content of Castaneda's books. That makes it utterly untruthful and makes you guys, who have compiled it, charlatans of the highest order. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mr Floyd Pink (talk • contribs) 22:52, 29 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I agree. Please fix it. I will support whatever you want to add. Shii (tock) 03:52, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Academic credentials
While the UCLA Dept. of Anthropology might want to now stay far, far away from association with his work, it is not typical to describe individuals who have received a PhD as "students". Either just describe him as an "author" or "author and anthropologist" but he is not merely a "student of anthropology". Someone who has that designation would be a college student who had taken a few classes in the discipline. Whether you approve of his work or not, he was awarded a doctorate by the University of California and shouldn't be referred to as merely "a student". 69.125.134.86 (talk) 14:54, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Maybe useful link - the magical worldview
It may make sense to add a link to the writings of Bob Makransky (eg Thought Forms), who met Castaneda and writes that over the decades, whilst following Castaneda's books, he was able to validate most of what was written. The current wiki page takes only the consensus reality perspective/worldview, not the magical. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.246.238.18 (talk) 17:55, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Alas, Wikipedia has a strict policy of adhering to consensus reality. Shii (tock) 20:39, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

Richard de Mille and Scientology.
Richard de Mille was a Scientologist, who co-founded the movement with L.Ron Hubbard, as writer (nom de plume D. Folgere), self-publisher and P.A. Although he inferred that he had lost belief in the movement, by stating that he had fallen out with Hubbard in the 1950s, he continued to publish works on Dianetics and delivered Dianetics-based treatment and seminars right up to the time of his death. (There is no forthcoming evidence of any involvement of his with the splinter group Scientology Freezone, a group of disaffected Church members who state that they have left the Church and formed a breakaway Scientology group).

This Castaneda article uses references to other Scientologists and websites connected to Scientology and as such is biased.

The article in no way resembles an encyclopedia entry and should be ruthlessly edited to remove all traces of personal bias and Scientology. As it stands at the time of posting, it is a blatant advertisement for the Scientology-biased. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.147.183.40 (talk) 19:26, 5 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Daniel Noel doesn't seem to be a scientologist. The only connection I found to de Mille is that his book came out around the same time. Is there some reason that this scientology connection with de Mille is notable? Bhny (talk) 19:16, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

I was a close friend of Richard de Mille for the last thirty years of his life in Santa Barbara. He had no involvement with Scientology after his youthful falling out with L. Ron Hubbard in 1953. He did not publish anything on Dianetics or Scientology after that time. Efforts to paint him as a Scientologist seem aimed at discrediting his later critiques of Carlos Castenada, which were thoroughly researched and have no connection to Scientology. Jonathan Young — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.6.75.31 (talk) 17:47, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

Copy editing?
Okay if I do a bit of copy edit to organise the information in the article? It seems scattered atm. I'd like to be bold etc, but am aware it's a precious subject to some. Manytexts (talk) 06:48, 18 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Go ahead Shii (tock) 15:10, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

False statement concerning Richard De Mille's book.
Quote (Reception section): "In The Power and the Allegory, De Mille compared The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge with Castañeda's library stack requests at the University of California. The stack requests documented that he was sitting in the library when allegedly his journal said he was squatting in Don Juan's hut. One discovery that de Mille alleges to have made in his examination of the stack requests was that when Castañeda was alleged to have said that he was participating in the traditional peyote ceremony – (the least fantastic of many episodes of drug use that Castañeda described in his books) – he was sitting in the UCLA library and he was reading someone else's description of their experience of the peyote ceremony. Other criticisms of Castañeda's work include the total lack of Yaqui vocabulary or terms for any of his experiences.[16]"

This is not true and is an edited cut-and-paste from the referenced book ref. 16.

Nowhere in the cited De Mille book can any such allegation be found. He mentions no documented 'library stack requests', no examination of any such material. He does theorize that Castaneda may have been sitting in the UCLA library when he wrote that he was in Mexico, but does not go beyond this proposition. He makes no mention whatsoever of having witnessed and documented such evidence from the UCLA library.

In the light of this and with the lack of any supporting opcit., this paragraph should be deleted and the referenced book 16 removed.

So I shall now try so to do.

EDIT: When I preview this page, it looks fine, but when I save it, there is some extraneous text (article references) that appear under my text. I want to edit them out, but I can't see them in preview.

?? 89.240.162.127 (talk) 21:09, 26 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Good call on the removal of that material. Regarding the references, some posters above forgot to add reflist talk when placing references in a section on talk pages. I have corrected that now. -   Cwobeel   (talk)  00:10, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

Personal life
"In January 1960 Carlos married Margaret Runyan. Even though there are many rumors of a divorce in 1973, they were actually never divorced and were still married at the time of Carlos's death in 1998. On August 12, 1961, Carlton Jeremy Castañeda was born in Hollywood, California. Carlos spoke of CJ as his biological son and is listed on the younger Castañeda's birth certificate as his father.

Castañeda also married Florinda Donner-Grau in Las Vegas in September 1993. According to his will of April 23, 1998, Castañeda adopted Patricia Partin also known as Nuri Alexander."

Implying, as it does, that the subject of this article was a bigamist, this section contains no attribution nor references and therefore should be removed, which I shall now do.

89.240.167.146 (talk) 19:52, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

Early Life.
A recent edit to the Early Life section added the following:

" Carlos married Margaret Runyan in 1960, one son came from this marriage CJ Castañeda he was born on August 12 1961. Castañeda in an elaborate scheme conspired with a man named Ed Gerritsen to father his child and Vanish, Gerritsen did just that. There were rumors that Runyan and Castañeda were Divorced in 1973 but the divorce was never finalized by either party, the two were married until Carlos death in 1998."

This is unsubstantiated, unreferenced hearsay and is therefore unreliable and should be removed.

78.147.187.250 (talk) 13:08, 24 September 2014 (UTC)


 * http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jan/30/local/la-me-margaret-castaneda-20120130 is a reference that substantiates the bulk of the above two passages, but is in conflict with parts. It confirms the marriage, says it's unclear if or when he was divorced...   A variation of the above passages is being added and removed over and over by multiple editors. It seems appropriate that it was deleted repeatedly due to a lack of attribution and references, BUT since I've found a reliable source to back up much of it, I'll be adding the source and leaving just the portions that I can find in said source. --Elvey(t•c) 18:33, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

Two bones of contention.
There are two major points which I feel need addressing, if this article is to struggle towards the goal of the unbiased encyclopedia entry.

1) Castaneda's place and date of birth;

2) The alleged death of Patricia Partin (Castaneda friend and follower);

Regarding 1), the only evidence cited in the article regarding the author's place and date of birth, is conflicting: one is based on a 1973 Time reporter's statement that she had seen the 'real' birth certificate and that the data contained thereon contradicted Castaneda's own version of his place and date of birth. This Time magazine reference was later included in the cited reference book 'Scribner's American Lives' which is used as a back-up reference to the Peruvian birth date evidence (which remains unseen and only referenced back to the Time article). To me, this is not strong enough, reliable evidence and seeing as the author gave a different set of birth details, there is substantial doubt over his true birth data.

I therefore think that the birth details should be deleted and an addendum to explain the unclear nature of the author's birth circumstances inserted, which I shall do.

As regards 2), the article states that "The remains of Partin, also referred to by Castañeda as Nury Alexander and/or Claude, were found in 2003 near where her abandoned car had been discovered a few weeks after Castañeda's death in 1998, on the edge of Death Valley. Her remains were in a condition requiring DNA identification, which was made in 2006."

I can trace no official Police statement regarding this allegation. The INYO County Coroner's Court has no record whatsoever of any Inquest nor pathology pertaining to the remains of Patricia Partin. The source for the original story is a small Pahrump Valley news website that used an article submitted by a freelance journalist who quoted "..according to Inyo County Sheriff's investigator Marston Mottweiler." That's a very unusual name: the only person in the whole of the US who has that name is now an official employee of a Freezone Scientology Church in Bishop, CA. In light of this and the fact that the INYO County Coroner's Court has no records whatsoever pertaining to this story, this makes this whole evidence unreliable and unsubstantiated and it should be removed, which I shall do.

Further on, the article states: "Their opinion changed in 2006 after the remains of Patricia Partin were identified, and the LAPD finally added Bey to their missing person database.[9]" Well no, they didn't. Neither the LAPD nor the FBI did any such thing. The reference [9] leads to a controversial independent website, purportedly to post details of 'missing people', but which has in the past been accused of stalking and harassment of people not wishing to be 'found'. In light of this, this last statement and reference should be removed as an unreliable, unsubstantiated source, which I shall now do. 92.24.217.42 (talk) 22:26, 17 October 2014 (UTC)
 * I agree with both of these things, since the Partin matter is possibly a WP:BLP issue. Shii (tock) 22:34, 17 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Wow. Partin and Castaneda are both dead.  The L in BLP is short for living...   Amazing tortuous justifications for what's really just sanitization. --Elvey(t•c) 01:45, 25 November 2014 (UTC)


 * http://www.salon.com/2007/04/12/castaneda/ says, "Patricia Partin, Castaneda’s adopted daughter as well as his lover, also disappeared. In February 2006, a skeleton found in Death Valley, Calif., was identified through DNA analysis as Partin’s.". Salon.com is a respected news source; surely they fact-check their articles.  Shii, do you have anything more to say about this?  I'm not seeing the B L P issue here.  Also, I just requested partial page protection.  Who do we trust: Salon.com or an anonymous IP.  I think Salon.com.  --Elvey(t•c) 23:04, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Is Salon our only source for this? This specific article is obviously a hit piece on Castaneda, so I was concerned about the lack of verification. Shii (tock) 23:27, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the quick reply. No!  It's an additional source I just happened to find.  I think http://archive.pahrumpvalleytimes.com/2006/02/10/news/remains.html is one of the other RS.  County's largest circulation newspaper seems to make for a good source, IMO. --Elvey(t•c) 23:45, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Shii: Hit piece? It's a heckuva lot more complimentary and charitable tan the salon article, which has such damning bits as (my emphasis) :
 * Among anthropologists, there’s no longer a debate. Professor William W. Kelly, chairman of Yale’s anthropology department, told me, “I doubt you’ll find an anthropologist of my generation who regards Castaneda as anything but a clever con man It was a hoax and surely don Juan never existed as anything like the figure of his books. Perhaps to many it is an amusing footnote to the gullibility of naive scholars, although to me it remains a disturbing and unforgivable breach of ethics.”
 * not to mention, well, the whole rest of the thing. Our article is, relatively speaking, charitable toward him.  --Elvey(t•c) 23:57, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Agreed, the second source makes this quite firmly verifiable. And I meant that this specific Salon article is a hit piece, even though they have published many good things on other topics. Much of the Salon article is unnecessarily negative, compared to the man's general reception in the intellectual world. I have half-heartedly tried to explain the affirmative use of Castaneda in the fields of anthropology and religious studies, but I am not an expert on him (haven't read his book) so I gave up Shii (tock) 00:21, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

1) As outlined previously in this section, the cited salon.com article uses unsubstantiated, self-published data as its primary source and remains a thinly-veiled plug for the website sustained action/reaction and is also in breach of WP:BLP: the women concerned may all still be living. The Partin story is just that - a story. There is no corroborative evidence for any of the allegations contained therein: the INYO County Coroner's Court has no records whatsoever of any Inquest nor pathology pertaining to Patricia Partin;

2) The cited Pahrump Valley Times article uses the salon.com article as its primary source: the data bounces between these two articles as they symbiotically support each other. (The Pahrump Valley Times is not a newspaper - it's a self-published news website, whose circulation is measured electronically, not in paper copy). As for the observation that salon.com checks all the facts in articles that it publishes, I have to say that this observation is somewhat naïve: it would be logistically impossible. All news websites have to take much on trust: they neither have the time nor the staff to check everything that they print. Also noteworthy is the fact that this story was never syndicated: no analogue newspaper decided to cover it, which in itself is telling.89.240.170.34 (talk) 01:08, 24 January 2015 (UTC)
 * If the Pahrump Valley Times is self-published, then this allegation remains serious. Elvey, please consider as well that this is not a major claim about Castaneda or his writings that needs to be in the article; it is, on the contrary, a serious claim about a non-notable person. Shii (tock) 01:23, 24 January 2015 (UTC)


 * If the Pahrump Valley Times is self-published, indeed. I await evidence thereof.


 * Speaking of unsubstantiated, "the cited salon.com article uses unsubstantiated, self-published data as its primary source" is itself an unsubstantiated claim. Same for the IPs other claims, e.g. "The cited Pahrump Valley Times article uses the salon.com article as its primary source"!  I think we're dealing with True Believers here.  We're dealing with a cult leader, so it's to be expected...   Who do we trust: Salon.com or anonymous IPs.  I think Salon.com.  And any reliable sources IPs bring to our attention.  But not editors say-so, be they me, Shii, or anon IPs.--Elvey(t•c) 04:35, 24 January 2015 (UTC)


 * Also, thanks for clarifying the 'hit piece' and verifiability comments, Shii.--Elvey(t•c) 04:35, 24 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Pahrump Valley Times really does look like a reliable newspaper that did independent reporting on this, and has nothing to do with Salon. These two sources together ought to be sufficient. Shii (tock) 04:52, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

As for the place of birth, here too :Unsubstantiated means without evidence. If the facts are unclear due to conflicting but similarly solid reliable sources, we should probably be reporting the conflict and the positions (Peru, per Time, and the LA Times), (Brazil per the subject) with appropriate weight, as I think is the case here. --Elvey(t•c) 18:33, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

Death/Obit
The New York Times reported cancer and liver failure in the months and weeks before his death, and said of "his dubious biography and shaman like tales" that "[f]ew academics regard them as serious scholarship." The above was removed as "Redundant" but I think it's appropriate and not redundant; the words of the Times have a certain weight, the liver failure is not mentioned in the article now. I think the Times quote is most valuable and propose this compromise: just adding it alone.--Elvey(t•c) 01:45, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

Reply: It's not appropriate, in my opinion: it's unsubstantiated and opinionated and as such, has no place in an encyclopedia. 89.240.166.225 (talk) 22:00, 26 November 2014 (UTC)


 * (lost edit session?) Unsubstantiated means without evidence.  The cited source, the New York Times, is evidence.  Restored.--Elvey(t•c) 22:14, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

'Unsubstantiated' means 'without substance' which the NYT article certainly is. Deleted.78.146.0.230 (talk) 05:11, 3 January 2015 (UTC)


 * Holy hooey, batman. You know, there's a free online wiki dictionary you can refer to?  Unsubstantiated means without evidence.  Your deletion constitutes vandalism.  There is no excuse for your removal of ", What happens when anthropology goes bad?" FROM A CITATION.  What blatant example of bias that is.  Thanks for making it so blatantly obvious.  Not to mention your removal of


 * An Original: Richard de Mille, Carlos Castaneda, Literary Quackery Science-Based Medicine - Wallace Sampson


 * from the article.


 * You removed an ENTIRE ~450-word SECTION that starts, "After Castaneda stepped away from public view in 1973" with the same edit. I'm wondering if the same motivation driving the above-discussed edits drove the deletion of this section, which I see is described and deleted on the basis that it is a POSSIBLE BLP violation.  --Elvey(t•c) 21:55, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

Castaneda vs. Castañeda
If his name appears on all of his works as "Castaneda" and in most English-language sources, WP:COMMONNAME clearly dictates that it should be "Castaneda" and not "Castañeda" regardless of how it appears in many Hispanic dictionaries. -- Irn (talk) 23:35, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Castaneda name.
The subject's cited name "Carlos César Salvador Arana Castaneda" references to a 1973 Time magazine article, in which the reporter alleged that she had seen the 'real' birth certificate of Castaneda.

As the Time magazine evidence has been shown to be without substantiation and until such time as the author's authentic and reliably-substantiated birth details come to light, this name should be replaced by the author's given name "Carlos Castaneda".

Someone has replaced the letter 'n' in many of the proper surname spellings (Castaneda) with an Hispanic 'enye' (n + tilde). This is plainly wrong and all such examples should be reverted to the correct form of 'Castaneda'.

92.24.217.42 (talk) 10:06, 18 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Unsubstantiated means without evidence. Time is a WP:Reliable Source.

Unsubstantiated nomenclature.
In the 'Early Life' section, it states:

"His first family name, Aranha, is the paternal one, inherited from his father's paternal family name, César Aranha Burungaray; while the second family name, Castaneda, is the maternal one, inherited from his mother's paternal family name, Susana Castañeda Navoa. His maternal surname appears with the ñ in many Hispanic dictionaries, even though his published works display an anglicized version."

This is unsubstantiated data: Castaneda's birth details are unclear and ergo so too are the details of his parentage. This statement should be removed.

78.147.187.219 (talk) 23:40, 24 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Unsubstantiated means without evidence. If the details are unclear due to conflicting but similarly solid reliable sources, we should probably be reporting the conflict and the positions with appropriate weight.   Time is a WP:Reliable Source.

--Elvey(t•c) 18:33, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

Double posting-double delete.
Information regarding the Partin Case has been reposted after it was deleted due to unreliability and unsubstatuation, so it shall be undone. Mentions of self-published websites, also previously deleted due to infringement of Wikirules concerning the promotion of self-published websites, have been reposted. This will also be removed, as per Wiki guidelines.78.146.0.230 (talk) 04:25, 3 January 2015 (UTC) EDIT: also removed links to websites with connections to Scientology; removed 'Fate of Companions' section as being firstly extraneous (real estate prices and private addresses - in an encyclopedia) and in breach of WP:BLP (the women may all still be living and are being harassed by a group of people who keep posting false and misleading info in this article). This latter point has already been raised in the deletion forum and two of the women concerned have had their Wikipages deleted; plus, some cleanup.78.146.0.230 (talk) 05:03, 3 January 2015 (UTC)


 * How typical! A few wiki uber editors dictate a how an article should read by hiding behind or twisting convoluted wiki rules. No wonder nobody gives Wikipedia any money when they come asking for a handout. 2001:5B0:22FF:CF0:0:0:0:3A (talk) 16:02, 3 January 2015 (UTC)


 * Re. 78.146.0.230 claims: You don't know if the women are still alive, and yet you know they're being harassed, and you know there's a group of people who keep posting information that's false and misleading. Forgive me if I don't believe you.  Provide a diff that shows it was "deleted due to unreliability and unsubstatuation" .  Provide evidence of a BLP violation that is at least plausible or go away.   --Elvey(t•c) 22:05, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

Re: Elvey. Read this précis from Wikirules:

"Neutrality

Further information: Wikipedia:Neutral point of view

Even when information is cited to reliable sources, you must present it with a neutral point of view (NPOV). All articles must adhere to NPOV, fairly representing all majority and significant-minority viewpoints published by reliable sources, in rough proportion to the prominence of each view. Tiny-minority views need not be included, except in articles devoted to them. If there is disagreement between sources, use in-text attribution: "John Smith argues that X, while Paul Jones maintains that Y," followed by an inline citation. Sources themselves do not need to maintain a neutral point of view. Indeed, many reliable sources are not neutral. Our job as editors is simply to summarize what the reliable sources say. Notes

^ Please do note that any exceptional claim would require exceptional sources.

Applicability to deceased persons, corporations, or groups of persons

Recently dead or probably dead

Policy shortcut:

WP:BDP

Anyone born within the past 115 years is covered by this policy unless a reliable source has confirmed their death. Generally, this policy does not apply to material concerning people who are confirmed dead by reliable sources. The only exception would be for people who have recently died, in which case the policy can extend for an indeterminate period beyond the date of death—six months, one year, two years at the outside. Such extensions would apply particularly to contentious or questionable material about the dead that has implications for their living relatives and friends, such as in the case of a possible suicide or a particularly gruesome crime.

Presumption in favor of privacy

Avoid victimization

When writing about a person noteworthy only for one or two events, including every detail can lead to problems, even when the material is well sourced. When in doubt, biographies should be pared back to a version that is completely sourced, neutral, and on-topic. This is of particular importance when dealing with living individuals whose notability stems largely or entirely from being victims of another's actions. Wikipedia editors must not act, intentionally or otherwise, in a way that amounts to participating in or prolonging the victimization.

Remove contentious material that is unsourced or poorly sourced

See also: Wikipedia:Libel

Remove immediately any contentious material about a living person that is unsourced or poorly sourced; that is a conjectural interpretation of a source (see No original research); that relies on self-published sources, unless written by the subject of the BLP (see below); or that relies on sources that fail in some other way to meet Verifiability standards. Note: although the three-revert rule does not apply to such removals, what counts as exempt under BLP can be controversial. Editors who find themselves in edit wars over potentially defamatory material about living persons should consider raising the matter at the BLP noticeboard instead of relying on the exemption.

Administrators may enforce the removal of clear BLP violations with page protection or by blocking the violator(s), even if they have been editing the article themselves or are in some other way involved. In less clear cases they should request the attention of an uninvolved administrator at Wikipedia:Administrators Noticeboard/Incidents.

Avoid gossip and feedback loops

Avoid repeating gossip. Ask yourself whether the source is reliable; whether the material is being presented as true; and whether, even if true, it is relevant to a disinterested article about the subject. Be wary of sources that use weasel words and that attribute material to anonymous sources. Also beware of circular reporting, in which material in a Wikipedia article gets picked up by a source, which is later cited in the Wikipedia article to support the original edit.

Questionable sources

Questionable sources are those that have a poor reputation for checking the facts, lack meaningful editorial oversight, or have an apparent conflict of interest.[8] Such sources include websites and publications expressing views that are widely considered by other sources to be extremist or promotional, or that rely heavily on unsubstantiated gossip, rumor or personal opinion. Questionable sources should only be used as sources of material on themselves, especially in articles about themselves; see below. They are not suitable sources for contentious claims about others. Anyone can self-publish information regardless of whether s/he is truly knowledgeable about the topic in question. For that reason, self-published works are largely not acceptable to use as sources, though there are exceptions.

Self-published material is characterized by the lack of reviewers who are independent of the author (those without a conflict of interest) validating the reliability of contents.

Sources that are usually not reliable

See also: Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources § Questionable and self-published sources

Self-published sources

Further information: Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons § Avoid self-published sources and Wikipedia:List of self-publishing companies

Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established expert on the subject matter, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications.[7] Exercise caution when using such sources: if the information in question is really worth reporting, someone else will probably have done so.[9] Never use self-published sources as third-party sources about living people, even if the author is an expert, well-known professional researcher, or writer.

Self-published doesn't mean a source is automatically invalid

Some self-published works are sometimes acceptable as sources, so self-publication is not, and should not be, a bit of jargon used by Wikipedians to automatically dismiss a source as "bad" or "unreliable" or "unusable". While many self-published sources happen to be unreliable, the mere fact that it is self-published does not prove this. A self-published source can be independent, authoritative, high-quality, accurate, fact-checked, and expert-approved.

Properly published sources are not always "good" or "reliable" or "usable", either. Being properly published does not mean that the source is independent, authoritative, high-quality, accurate, fact-checked, expert-approved, or subject to editorial control. Properly published sources can be unreliable, biased, and self-serving.

Further information: Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons § Avoid self-published sources."

80.44.150.88 (talk) 23:12, 24 January 2015 (UTC)


 * Hello? I still see no diff that shows that stuff was "deleted due to unreliability and unsubstatuation" . Just a wall of TLDR text  (Holy cow!   ?? ) about policies I'm familiar with.  Provide evidence of a BLP violation that is at least plausible or go away.  For starters, you could identify by name a living person that makes the BLP policy relevant.  Then the objectionable content about said living person.   AGAIN: FS: Partin and Castaneda are both dead.  The L in BLP is short for living...    --Elvey(t•c) 18:33, 30 January 2015 (UTC)
 * HELLO? Please do not continue to ignore: "Provide evidence of a BLP violation that is at least plausible or go away.  For starters, you could identify by name a living person that makes the BLP policy relevant."--Elvey(t•c) 20:57, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

Test: bias alteration.
To call the Scientologist Richard de Mille and D. Wieve critiques 'exposés' is biased: they are nothing like. They do not 'expose' anything, so I have altered the loaded word 'exposé' to 'critique' and have removed a qualifying sentence as also biased. It will be interesting to see how long this edit remains, before certain editorial incumbents feel the need to revert. 78.146.4.74 (talk) 22:32, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

Citation needed - not reference.
A proper citation is needed to qualify this sentence concerning R. Gordon Wasson:

"In a series of articles, international banker and amateur mycologist R. Gordon Wasson, who had originally praised Castaneda's work, questioned the accuracies of Castaneda's botanical claims."

I shall replace the reference number with a 'citation needed' tag and if a proper op.cit does not appear within 7 days, I shall delete the Wasson reference. 2.98.195.228 (talk) 19:40, 19 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Why do you keep changing IP addresses? Please register an account. Shii (tock) 22:20, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

I don't, but my ISP may so do.. and as for 'registering an account', there's a principle at stake here: "Wikipedia - the encyclopedia that anyone can edit."2.98.195.228 (talk) 01:42, 20 February 2015 (UTC)
 * It would be helpful just so we know that these edits are coming from the same person. I have no issue with removing that sentence BTW Shii (tock) 03:05, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

The User Elvey reverted this edit arbitrarily and without cause, so I have deleted it again as per this thread.

Proper quotations are needed to back up the allegation that Wasson 'questioned the accuracy of Castaneda's botanical claims'. 78.147.18.208 (talk) 19:07, 16 March 2015 (UTC)


 * IP: Please learn/use proper talk page etiquette, including normal indentation. All: See also: . And Shii's comments re. op. cit., also below.--Elvey(t•c) 21:00, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

User Elvey - You have twice reverted my edit (as per the top of this section) without any reason given. I proposed the edit, gave my reasons therefore and waited for due diligence before deleting. Your disruptive behaviour does you no favours. I am reverting your latest edit. 80.44.196.152 (talk) 00:13, 18 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Not true. Actually I gave multiple reasons for reverting vandalism by various IPs. You are a squeaky wheel we appropriately reject, block and ignore. (WP:RBI).  What part of Please learn/use proper talk page etiquette, including normal indentation. All: See also: . And Shii's comments re. op. cit., also below. do you not understand?  Please leave.  Shii has protected the page from IP vandalism, I guess since you won't leave voluntarily, and the IP vandalism continues.  --Elvey(t•c) 21:43, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

My edits
I wasn't aware that there was an on-going dispute over different portions of the article, including the "Early life" section. I just wanted to fix what looked like poor referencing, so I tried to set the record straight according to the information in the given source (the LA Times article). If someone wants to change this I'm not going to squabble over it, but I did my best to reflect the source as fairly as possible. Equilibrial (talk) 04:17, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

Update: I've tried to set the record straight with available sources in regards to the DOB dispute. Equilibrial (talk) 03:34, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

Good grief. 37 edits in 2 days? Another bipolar Wiki editor. 78.147.30.138 (talk) 23:58, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

Link leading to article containing contentious material about living persons.
There is a link in this article which points to an article containing contentious material about living persons: it points to a salon.com article that not only contains contentious material about living persons, but which also references said material to known Scientologists and which advertises their websites and other online articles which contain the same contentious data.

There is another link that points to a sciencebasedmedicine.org article which is a thinly-disguised advert for a well-known major Scientologist, an admitted personal friend of said article's author.

Is this acceptable under WikiRules? And are works by known Scientologists acceptable references? 78.146.8.64 (talk) 13:21, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Other citations needed.
I've replaced three references with 'citation needed' tags, because proper op.cits are needed, not references to 'trade publications' (vanity-published books). 92.24.212.38 (talk) 21:37, 7 March 2015 (UTC)


 * You have no idea what an WP:RS is. Don't do this. Shii (tock) 20:57, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

REPLY: You seem to have no idea what a proper citation is. I removed the trade book references and put 'citation needed' tags, because it is not enough to say: "so-and-so says xyz" and then just reference a book title - a proper op.cit. is needed, otherwise anyone can post anything without proper citation.

I know exactly what WP:RS means. That the books in question are RSs is not in dispute at this time, just that direct quotes are needed here - with full and proper op.cits. 80.44.149.67 (talk) 14:19, 14 March 2015 (UTC)
 * You are completely incoherent. What is an "op cit"? I also wonder why you call them "vanity-published books" when you agree they are RS. Shii (tock) 21:37, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

So, now you know what an op.cit. is.

I call them 'vanity-published books' because they are: 'trade publication' is a publishing euphemism for 'vanity publication'.

I don't agree that they are RSs, although I won't quibble about that now. The point remains that op.cits. are needed to qualify critical statements. Without, anyone can write any allegation/opinion without specific citation, which is against Wiki policy and rules.78.147.18.208 (talk) 19:15, 16 March 2015 (UTC)


 * I know what "op cit" means, and you don't. You don't know what an academic reference is, either. Shii (tock) 12:27, 17 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Word. Seems these UK IPs are all the same banned editor. --Elvey(t•c) 22:46, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

To the User Elvey - I am not banned, I am not a vandal. You are the one with the history of being banned for aggressive editing and disruption. 78.147.18.208 (talk) 19:15, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Spurious link.
The Wiki editor Elvey has posted a link to a sciencebased.org article by the controversial Wallace I. Sampson MD, extolling the virtues of the freezone Scientologist and originator of Dianetics, Richard de Mille. It's a thinly-disguised propaganda piece for a man whom Sampson freely admits is "a personal friend".

An internet search shows that in 2003, US court judges found Sampson to be "biased and without credibility": Los Angeles Superior Court 2003 (NCAHF vs. King Bio - appeal - Judge Fromholz presiding). In the official summary, they also called into question his academic credentials and expertise, as well as pointing out his self-promotion of his own online presence and websites for financial gain.

More searches cast further doubt on the academic credentials and credibility of this man.

In light of both of these issues, I'm removing the link. 92.24.212.38 (talk) 02:10, 8 March 2015 (UTC)


 * I don't believe a word of what you've said, either about the article or Sampson and I don't care to spend the time to verify it. Restoring.

Provide links to your sources. Use a real account. Also, IIRC, I reposted it after someone censored it. Probably you, using another IP. --Elvey(t•c) 02:03, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

REPLY: If you can't be bothered to verify my points concerning the deletion of said link, you shouldn't be reverting it. And as for "use a real account" - there is an important point of principle here: "Wikipedia - the encyclopaedia that anyone can edit."

I have stuck fastidiously to Wiki rules in my editing and every edit and the reasons therefore have been backed-up on the Talk page. You have neither followed Wiki rules nor procedure- and your aggressive style and ad hominem rudeness seem to be par for your course. After all, it is you who has the history of being blocked several times for your aggressive editing and attitude.78.147.31.230 (talk) 15:37, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

Castaneda is a fraud - Long-term campaign to cleanse article as much as possible
Not only has the sciencebased link (*An Original: Richard de Mille, Carlos Castaneda, Literary Quackery « Science-Based Medicine - Wallace Sampson) been removed as noted above, so have and been replaced with citation needed templates. Sad and pathetic. Speaking of citation needed templates: A shit ton of citation needed templates were added to the paragraph that had read: Because the women in question had cut all ties with family and friends, it was some time before people noticed they were missing. There has been no official investigation into the disappearances of Donner-Grau, Simko and Lundahl. Luis Marquez, the brother of Talia Bey, went to police in 1999 over his sister's disappearance, but was unable to convince them that her disappearance merited investigation. In 2006, Partin's remains discovered in the desert were identified by DNA. The investigating authorities have ruled her death as undetermined.

Every fact in there, as I noted earlier, is in the citations. A lot of POV editing. Frustrating that the article still isn't better protected. --Elvey(t•c) 01:58, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

REPLY: You don't understand the difference between a citation and a reference. What you have cited are references. Proper citations are needed to support the qualifying statements - it's not enough to say "so-and-so says that xyz" and then just cite a reference. In such cases, proper op.cits are needed.

It should also be made clear that, rather than saying "x+y=z", it would be far better to say "(insert name) claims/alleges that x+y=z." I attempted to do this in regard to the salon.com writer, but you deleted it.

I also have to take issue with your allegation that I exhibit POV bias. In my opinion it is you who exhibits such bias, as evidenced by your editing and also by the title you have written for this section: "Castaneda is a fraud". A good encyclopaedic article should show balance and should demonstrate a NPOV. Your aggressive deletions and reversions are loaded with POV bias.

I note that you have a history of being blocked for aggressive editing and attitude. You need to calm down. 78.147.31.230 (talk) 15:12, 12 March 2015 (UTC)
 * sciencebasedmedicine.org is supposed to be an RS for information about missing people? Shii (tock) 23:15, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

The user Elvey has posted contentious material about possibly living persons at the beginning of this section. Plus, her article edit does not make it clear that these are the claims of the referenced salon.com author, not corroborated by any Police nor Coroner's records and not syndicated by any national newspaper. Those facts are telling. There is a line between "missing/disappeared" and "gone incognito" and the women concerned have the right to anonymity. That material should be deleted. Two of the women concerned have already their had Wiki pages deleted because of the "contentious material about living persons" issue.80.44.192.160 (talk) 14:47, 13 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Same old nonsense. Partin and Castaneda are both dead.  The L in BLP is short for living...   Amazing tortuous justifications for what's really just sanitization.  A POSSIBLE BLP violation indeed.  Please do not continue to ignore: "Provide evidence of a BLP violation that is at least plausible or go away."  Name the relevant living person.  The thing is, the evidence is very strong that Castaneda is a fraud, and the world is not flat.  --Elvey(t•c) 17:59, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Reply to User:Elvey:

I disagree. The evidence that 'Castaneda is a fraud' is not very strong at all. Fraud is a very serious accusation. Such an accusation can not be proved and such hearsay and postulation should have no place in an encyclopaedia entry, which should have a neutral point of view. I note that you have named this section 'Castaneda is a fraud' which does nothing but exhibit your own ingrained bias towards the subject of this article.

I also note that you have a colorful history of disruptive editing, warnings from other editors about your bias and confrontation and that you have previously been blocked for the same. You are currently blocked. In light of your most recent behaviour elsewhere on Wikipedia and consequent self-imposed edit ban (under threat of Wiki sanctions), I propose that the indefinite edit block be removed from this article. User: Shii take note. 92.24.215.52 (talk) 00:45, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

What is going on with this blocked article?
Why is the bulk of this article 17 years old? And copy/pasted from another site?

http://www.self.gutenberg.org/articles/carlos_castaneda Why has the User: Shii indefinitely disallowed above-board IP editing and allowed the disingenuous editing of the blocked User: Elvey?

Why has information that has come to light in the last 17 years (Castaneda's Brazilian birthplace evidence - the Scientologist author Richard de Mille's CV - the disproval of the Wasson critique - the fake Pahrump Valley Times evidence - been deleted?

Who is this User:Shii character?

And how has WikiPedia become overrun with such editors? 89.240.172.251 (talk) 22:43, 22 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Can you be more specific about the problems you have with the articles? Perhaps specific edits you disagree with? And if you could provide sources to support your claims, that would be even better. Cheers. -- Irn (talk) 02:12, 23 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Perhaps the better question for User:Shii is why they haven't indefinitely disallowed IP editing of this, the talk page, too; they've been so disruptive here.


 * Why shouldn't it be? (I haven't confirmed it is, but not that it says "Sourced from World Heritage Encyclopedia™ licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0" at the top of that page. Noting that because I'm nominating/working to bring this to GA status.  Oh and it says "Help to improve this article, make contributions at the Citational Source"; it's a !wp:wikipedia mirror!


 * --Elvey(t•c) 17:19, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Regarding the GA review.
I've created a new section, because I didn't want to impinge upon any Wiki rules by posting in the previous GA review section.

I was a contributor to the article before it was blocked to unregistered editors. Most of my contributions were reverted by User:Elvey, who accused me of vandalism and subsequently, under the auspices of User:Shii, had the current edit block imposed. (User:Elvey is currently blocked for disruptive editing elsewhere on Wiki; User:Shii has been inactive since the 15th of July, 2015).

So - do I qualify as a 'significant' contributor to the thread or not, seeing as most of my edits were reverted, as outlined above? Because, if not, I would like to post in the GA review section on this Talk page and make some comments about the article and its nomination.

Some guidance, please. 79.75.197.228 (talk) 02:31, 18 March 2016 (UTC)
 * The GA is closed; there is nothing more to be done there. Jytdog (talk) 20:39, 6 April 2016 (UTC)


 * Okay - thanks for that, although guidance would have been welcome before the deadline date. I realise now that I could have quite properly commented in the previous GA review section here on the talk page. 88.108.235.232 (talk) 12:09, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

User: Yaquifox; edit as of 04.58, 15th of April 2016.
The editor Yaquifox has inserted a reference, purportedly to Castaneda's USA naturalization in 1957.

As it stands, the reference itself is untraceable. (Try it).

A Google search reveals only two hits regarding this information:

1) This Wikipedia article itself;

2) The self-published website 'Sustained Action', references to which have already been deleted on Wikipedia many times, due to infringement of WP:RS, said website being a self-published, unreliable source.

Would a responsible editor please revert the edit? I am unable so to do, as unregistered editors are blocked from editing this article. 78.145.158.75 (talk) 13:48, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 25 June 2016
In section DEATH I think this: ...tales" that "[f]ew academics regard [as] serious...

should be changed to this: ...tales" that "[few] academics regard [as] serious...

Dennisfreud (talk) 20:16, 25 June 2016 (UTC)


 * Information.svg I haven't refused your request, but have removed the entire line as neither quotation appears in that source - Arjayay (talk) 11:40, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 12 July 2016
Please add this line at any appropriate place:

The motifs and themes found in Castaneda's 'Way of the Warrior' and other works are used in the short animation film, 'Shaman's Wisdom: The Gates of Eternity', to be released in December 2016 by the Amaralis Art Group.

References:

http://www.amaralisart.com/#!about/z8nvz http://www.amaralisart.com/

Thanks! Amitwikia (talk) 17:39, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

Amitwikia (talk) 17:39, 12 July 2016 (UTC)


 * ✅ Wikipedian Sign Language  Paine   08:59, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

Victor Sanchez court case- Castaneda sued
If you look you can find material related to the Carlos Castaneda suing Victor Sanchez. I found this paragraph on the Sustained action Website:

On March 5, 1998, Drooz filed numerous supporting declarations aimed at proving Castaneda's "damages" against Sanchez. Many of these declarations dealt primarily with Sanchez's alleged conduct at his small workshops, held in Mexico and other countries. These included a declaration by Castaneda that states: "Because Sanchez conducts activities at his seminars that pose a danger to life and limb (e.g., directing participants to walks dangerously close to precipices, burying participants in desert sand, etc.) I fear that I might be sued if anyone is injured during such activities. Further, Sanchez's wrongful diversion of participants away from the Cleargreen seminars is a constant drain on my business activities that will undoubtedly continue unless enjoined." Another declaration by Francisco Victor Bringas, a former Sanchez workshop participant, claimed, "I stopped attending Mr. Sanchez's seminars because I came to know Mr. Sanchez as an egocentric person who took advantage of his magnetism with women. Specifically, I noticed that individuals and couples suffered psychological harm when Mr. Sanchez would use his charisma to seduce married and single women, although he never forced them." A Georgina Silva also signed a declaration that claimed, "I stopped attending Sanchez's seminars because some of the exercises he taught made me feel uncomfortable. For example, he would instruct everyone to sit on the floor and turn off the lights so that it was very dark. Then he would tell us to reach out and touch each other. This made me feel violated. I couldn't understand how such an exercise could come from the teachings of Carlos Castaneda." http://sustainedaction.org/Explorations/Castaneda%20vs.%20Sanchez%20summarized.htm I remember reading interviews with Carlos Castaneda where he said he had no recollection of meeting Victor Sanchez and he was more damning of others trying to cash in on his name. But I am writing this as this article makes Victor Sanchez sound genuine. --Wool Bridge (talk) 13:27, 17 October 2016 (UTC)--Wool Bridge (talk) 13:27, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

Checking the facts.
It seems strange, although I have never read the book. When I did nto chronological comparison between the books I got the opposit results.:In 1976, author and Scientologist Richard de Mille published Castaneda's Journey: The Power and the Allegory, in which he argued, "Logical or chronological errors in the narrative constitute the best evidence that Castaneda's books are works of fiction. If no one has discovered these errors before, the reason must be that no one has listed the events of the first three books in sequence. Once that has been done, the errors are unmistakable."[14] On these showings de Mille asserts, The Teachings of Don Juan and Journey to Ixtlan (his third book) cannot both be factual reports.[15] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.172.0.200 (talk) 19:59, 26 October 2016 (UTC)
 * What is this "'Scientologist' Richard de Mille" line? De Mille, who died in 2009, left scientology in 1954, and never went back.  Calling him a "Scientologist" is like calling Martin Luther a "Catholic".  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.89.176.249 (talk) 00:21, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

Experience
All I can say is that everything he said to do works — Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.172.0.200 (talk) 20:07, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

Proposal for lifting edit restrictions.
Now that the User:Elvey has been indefinitely site banned for disruption, edit-warring and 'battleground behaviour', I propose that the edit restrictions be lifted from this article. (User:Elvey initiated the restriction proposal and was supported by User:Shii, who has since become inactive). 88.108.233.238 (talk) 21:42, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
 * It will never happen because Castanada acolytes / postulates with "ownership" issues sit on this article protecting their holy prophet. ~ JJB — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:603:C00:E8E:219:D1FF:FEA8:25F0 (talk) 00:37, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Quotations...
Is it appropriate to have a quatations section? Who's to say what goes in it? We could fill it with dozens and hundreds, and all would be "suitable". Quotations should only appear as linked to other notable content. In my opinion ~ JJB — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:603:C00:E8E:219:D1FF:FEA8:25F0 (talk) 00:33, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

See also - Noam Chomsky
Why is Noam Chomsky listed in this section? There is no other mention of him in the article that I can see. Autarch (talk) 20:03, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

Was Castaneda a Fake?
Not very likely. The one person who is touted to "prove" it was Richard De Mille. Here is what one reviewer said about De Milles Castandea: The power and the Allegory: One has to be able to present the evidence and draw the conclusion in a coherent way. The author says he has proven or will prove his claim eruditely and undeniably. This is not the case. Rather, the evidence in many instances is far too flimsy and incidental to prove that Castaneda was a charlatan. We must also remember that De Mille was a Scientologist who worked closely with L. Ron Hubbard and so wanted to get rid of anyone who might hurt the teachings of Scientology. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.51.254.141 (talk • contribs) 16:50, 31 October 2017 (UTC)
 * But what changes would you like to see to the article? Do you have sources you would like to bring in? -- irn (talk) 20:43, 14 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Please - de Mille had left Scientology 14 years before Carlos even wrote his first book. If you're going to try and discredit one of Castaneda's biggest critics, could you at least find something contemporary to go with? 68.145.132.165 (talk) 15:46, 13 August 2018 (UTC)
 * if that's true, the IP makes a good point. ~Anachronist (talk) 17:00, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

Potential sources
— Paleo Neonate  – 15:01, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Also potentially relevant, since it seems to give a pretty good overview of opinions up to 1979: --tronvillain (talk) 15:54, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
 * In addition: --tronvillain (talk) 15:54, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

Authenticity of Carlos Casteneda's books
I studied Castaneda's works from a young age in 1968. The critics of his works are only intellectual and not based upon sound reasoning. None of the critics actually practiced what Castaneda taught, nor did they truly investigate anything. De Milles work is not good science, or even good writing. It is a terrible work with no redeeming qualities and yet is held up as a true critique of Castaneda. I have also studied virtually every major and minor mystical and religious systems in the world and I am also an initiate in high degrees of secret orders and I can tell you that there are things taught by other mystical orders that are in Castaneda's works that he could not have known The techniques he described do work and thy work very well. In one exercise I cross referenced all the dates in Castaneda's works and there were no inconsistencies. As mysticism is real things like the description of the luminous egg is subjective and can be described exactly as Castaneda describes. There is a book called Nagualism that was published in the late 1800's that deals with the reality of nagualism as it existed then. Much of what Castaneda describes is confirmed by this book which details the history of Nagualism since early Mayan times staring in about 250 BC. There is nothing incosistent with what Castaneda wrote with the true history of the Order of the Naguals. The Naguals were one of the leading segments of Aztec society and were trained at the Calmacecs, which were the Aztec Universities. They were doctors and scientists. There was a free health system in the Aztec Empire and every neighborhood had it's own Nagual who would act as doctor, counselor and psychologist for the people.

The science of the Aztecs was much more advanced than the Europeans at the time of the conquest. They used thousands of plants and chemicals to make drugs for medicine. They even had pharmaceutical companies. The Spanish were shocked when they went there reporting they made drugs from plants, chemicals, minerals and even insects. They called it all sorcery. That is the reason why Don Juan called the practice sorcery as it was a joke. There was no sorcery in the sense that we think of sorcery, but as Arthur C. Clark put it, "Any techniques so advanced would appear as magic to a primitive mind." This is what has happened with the works of Carlos Castaneda. All the people who criticized the works really had no idea what they were ad are talking about. They are not mystics and so should leave this kind of the work to the 'professionals.'

The rest of you think all of the things described in the books cannot happen, but they do and you are all in a state of ignorance about the true nature of the world. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.64.124.116 (talk) 14:43, 20 October 2018 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 8 December 2018
Edmund Leach praised book.

Should be changed to

Edmund Leach praised the book. Timothybrace (talk) 19:24, 8 December 2018 (UTC)
 * ✅ Good call, thank you! -- irn (talk) 20:35, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

In that "High School" review, Leach praised The Teachings as a "work of art rather than of scholarship". He doubted its factual authenticity. RichFrederickM (talk) 22:00, 29 September 2019 (UTC)
 * I have replaced 'Edmund Leach praised the book' with 'Edmund Leach praised the book as "a work of art rather than of scholarship", doubting its factual authenticity'. If folks think this should be further changed, feel free to let me know. Pablo Stafforini (talk) 15:20, 15 October 2019 (UTC)

contradiction between related articles
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Teachings_of_Don_Juan  notes a MS degree from his work this article notes BS and PhD

might wish to resolve this, if you can. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.58.94.212 (talk) 15:39, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

Classification of Castaneda's books
The first book published by Castaneda was 'A Separate Reality'. This was classified as non-fiction. This classification is important as it forms part of the Marc record, in the USA produced by the Library of Congress. This means legally the book is about real events and is accurate and complete in all respects. It is very important as publishers and authors can be sued for libel for publishing inaccurate facts in a non-fiction book.

The series of books Castaneda published after this, up to and including, 'The Art of Dreaming' are all classified in the Penguin editions as fiction. This is crucial, all fiction can only be judged by literary standards because it is not real. The classification of 'fiction' has important legal implications. Such books cannot be considered libellous or untrue legally, (unless they use the names and locations of real people).

The Wiki article on Castaneda states and I quote, 'Castaneda's books are classified as non-fiction although they have been criticised as fictional.'

The opposite is actually the situation except for his first book.

These classifications appear on all copies of the book and can be found on the first few pages.

So many have criticised the books on the grounds that they are true, non-fictional works but that is ridiculous. They are stories, made-up, they may be based on real events and real characters but they have been fictionalised. This the case with many, many, novels.

That people can get it so wrong with Castaneda is astounding.

Ross Hamilton Hill — Preceding unsigned comment added by Walpiri (talk • contribs) 13:08, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

Castaneda's grave
In 2016 the news of a probable discovery in Omsk, Russia, of the burial place of Carlos Castaneda came: the source should be verified ... See link to YouTube.com — Preceding unsigned comment added by 5.168.101.140 (talk) 14:32, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

Awkward wording
"Castaneda withdrew from public view in 1973, living in a large house in Westwood, California from 1973 until his death in 1998, with three colleagues whom he called "Fellow Travellers of Awareness.""

Seriously? He died along with three colleagues? Wouldn't that be considered rather unusual circumstances, worthy of at least a formal inquest?

Or, perhaps this was meant:

"Castaneda withdrew from public view in 1973. From then until his death in 1998, he lived in a large house in Westwood, California, with three colleagues, whom he called "Fellow Travellers of Awareness".

I'd have fixed it, but editing appears to be broken for this article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.95.43.253 (talk) 01:37, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

"Con man"
Let's talk this through here—every indication is that the man made up material that he submitted in order to receive both his Masters and Doctorate. Essentially every source on the page indicates that this was the case. (In fact, I've had trouble finding any sources that support Castaneda's account). If he received his graduate degrees based on faked information, and then used that to peddle books to unsuspecting people, he is definitionally a con man.

Also, User:Nagualdesign, your user name makes it look like you could have a conflict of interest on this page. Please refrain from editing until you clarify here. Thanks. Suomichris (talk) 18:48, 23 May 2021 (UTC)


 * I tend to agree with Nagualdesign that it doesn't belong in the lead. Note that I added the complete "con man" quote from William W. Kelly to the main body, however, since I think that it has encyclopedic value. I'm also not sure that Nagualdesign's user name is inherently problematic –– whether it refers to Castaneda's work or to the legit mythological concept (see Nagual). Suomichris's recent edits have been largely constructive here, and I thank them for that, but let's be careful not to overdo the WP:TONE. There are lots of academic frauds with articles on Wikipedia that do not refer to them as "con men" in Wikivoice, and that is probably for the best. Generalrelative (talk) 18:56, 23 May 2021 (UTC)


 * I don't think Nagualdesign's user name is inherently problematic, but it could be, which is why I've asked for clarity. I suppose I'm okay with leaving con man out of the lede, but I'm not sure that just saying "author" is an accurate reflection either, as it seems that his writings and teachings were with the express purpose of misleading people, and that he worked to set up a small cult of personality around himself. "Controversial author and teacher"? Something like that? Suomichris (talk) 19:05, 23 May 2021 (UTC)
 * In short, if a source or sources present the opinion that Castaneda was a con man then it's okay to present that opinion, but it's not okay to present it as fact in Wikipedia's voice. Castaneda was never charged with fraud, so to call him a con man in the opening sentence is pretty egregious. As for my username, I can confirm that I have no affiliation with Castaneda, his groups or his publisher, and there is no conflict of interest. I appreciate you following WP:BRD. I hope you will also be mindful of WP:NPOV. nagualdesign 19:14, 23 May 2021 (UTC)
 * it seems that his writings and teachings were with the express purpose of misleading people, and that he worked to set up a small cult of personality around himself. "Seems" isn't good enough. nagualdesign 19:25, 23 May 2021 (UTC)