Word: castaneda
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...more clearly than the first three books, the final purpose of Don Juan's painful teachings: a special case of the ancient desire to know, propitiate and, if possible, use the mysterious forces of the universe. In that pursuit, the splitting of the atom, the sin of Prometheus and Castaneda's search for a "power spot" near Los Angeles can all be remotely linked. A good deal of the magic Don Juan works on Castaneda in the books (making Carlos believe his car has disappeared, for instance) sounds like the kind of fakir rope trickery that gurus think frivolous...
...sorcerer's power, Castaneda insists, is "unimaginable," but the extent to which a sorcerer's apprentice can hope to use it is determined by, among other things, the degree of his commitment. The full use of power...
...only be acquired with the help of an "ally," a spirit entity which attaches itself to the student as a guide?of a dangerous sort. The ally challenges the apprentice when he learns to "see," as Castaneda did in the earlier books. The apprentice may duck this battle. For if he wrestles with the ally?like Jacob with the Angel?and loses, he will, in Don Juan's slightly enigmatic terms, "be snuffed out." But if he wins, his reward is "true power ? the final acquisition of sor cery membership, when all interpretation ceases...
...Castaneda claims, he has chosen to duck the final battle with an ally. He admits to an inner struggle on the matter. Some times, he says, he feels strongly tugged away from the commitment to sorcery and back into the mundane world. He has a very real urge to be a respected writer and anthropologist, and to use his new found power of fame in tandem with the printed word to go on communicating glimpses of other realities to hun gry readers...
...will ever write about Don Juan. Now I am going to be a sorcerer for sure. Only my death could stop that." It is a ro mantic role, this anthropological ges ture across a pit of entities which, in a different age, would have been called demons. Will Castaneda become the Dr. Faustus of Malibu Beach, attended by Mephistopheles in a sombrero? Stay tuned in for the next episode. In the meantime, his books have made it hard for readers ever to use the word primitive patronizingly again...