Word: juan
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...teacher, Castaneda asserts, was born in 1891, and suffered in the diaspora of the Yaquis all over Mexico from the 1890s until the 1910 revolution His parents were murdered by soldiers He became a nomad. This helps explain why the elements of Don Juan s sorcery are a combination of shamanistic beliefs from several cultures. Some of them are not at all "representative of the Yaquis. Many Indian tribes, such as the Huichols, use peyote ntually, both north and south of the border ?some in a syncretic blend of Christianity and shamanism. But the Yaquis are not peyote users...
...Juan, then, might be hard 1 find because he wisely shuns his pestering admirers. Or maybe he is a composite Indian, a collage of others. Or he could be a purely fictional shaman concocted by Castaneda...
...Castaneda's writing. "Is it possible that these books are nonfiction?" Novelist Joyce Carol Gates asks mildly. "They seem to me remarkable works of art on the Hesse-like theme of a young man's initiation into 'another way' of reahty. They are beautifully constructed. The character of Don Juan is unforgettable. There is a novelistic momentum, rising, suspenseful action, a gradual revelation of character...
...very least, though, it is clear that "Juan Matus" is a pseudonym used to protect his teacher's privacy. The need to be inaccessible and elusive is a central theme in the books. Time and again Don Juan urges Castaneda to emulate him and free
Unhappily for anyone hot for certainties about Carlos Castaneda s life, Don Juan's apprentice has taken the lesson very much to heart. After The Teachings became an underground bestseller, it was widely supposed that its author was El Freako the Acid Academic, all buckskin fringe and pinball eye, his brain a charred labyrinth lit by mysterious alkaloids, tripping through the desert with a crow on his hat. But castaneda means chestnut grove, and the man looks a bit like a chestnut: a stocky, affable Latin American, 5 ft. 5 in., 150 Ibs. and apparently bursting with vitamins. The dark...