Quote:
Originally Posted by CraigD
Another caveat: not only does reading about Don Juan and other sorcerer warriors not make you one, it doesn’t guarantee that they actually exist, other than as imaginary, fictional characters. It’s pretty universally accepted among anthropologists nowadays that they don’t – though if you’re truly initiate into these or other books and the subculture around them, this isn’t necessarily a hard stop barrier. When I read them as a teen in the 1970s, people I discussed them with, including adult academics, generally believed the characters, though not necessarily the precise events, in Castenada’s books were real.
Even walking the Eagle’s Path - a tradition I can personally attest has real devotees, the last time I checked, ca. 1999, though Hopi, not Yaqui ones, with origins that cannot, by definition, date back further than 4/19/1943 – hasn’t to the best of my knowledge brought Don Juan into objective reality – though it’s an intensely interesting walk. |
The funny and rather ingenious twist to the mystery is that both characters portrayed in the books were fictional.
The Castaneda he portrayed as himself , the bumbling anthropologist/sorcery apprentice, actually was the more fictional of the two.
In reading the latter books of Castaneda, and from scant interviews with people that knew him, it becomes apparent that the author was the true Don Juan.
I am also a big Joseph Campbell fan, and as he would attest, sometimes myth is more real than history,
And sometimes fictional characters are more truthful than real people.
The cryptic configuration of, character/ author, was part of Castaneda’s way of going about things. He was called the “trickster” by the people that knew him, and no one really knew him well.
Understanding this twist of; truth and illusion, is a good primer to deciphering these, as you stated “interesting walks.”
Oh, BTW did you ever read "The Art of Dreaming"?
