The Witches Of Westwood And Carlos Castaneda’s Sinister Legacy | LAist
“In the ’70s, there was a sense of this great excitement around him and there was this sense that they were part of this avant-garde cause,” says writer Robert Marshall, co-producer of the podcast Trickster and author of the upcoming book Carlos Castaneda: American Trickster. “But with Carlos, you never knew exactly what the cause was. They were going to bring about a revolution but exactly what that revolution meant, who knew?”
This vagueness was evident in every aspect of Castaneda’s life. He refused to be photographed and rarely gave interviews. There was probably a good reason for this. Almost every story he told from the details of his background to tales of his time with don Juan was a fabrication. By the early 1970s, investigative journalists and researchers were finding massive holes in his accounts and questioning the existence of the mysterious don Juan.
In 1976, Richard DeMille, son of director Cecil B. DeMille, published Castaneda’s Journey, a point-by-point repudiation of Castaneda’s tale of don Juan. He noted that Castaneda kept no field notes, incorrectly used Native terms, inaccurately described Native practices and everything he claimed to have uncovered was already known to anthropologists and researchers.
For those who found meaning in Castaneda’s work, these pointed critiques didn’t matter. UCLA also stayed silent on the matter, although the university had promoted and published the work of a proven charlatan.
via laist.com
“For me there is only the following of paths with heart,” said the fraud. Oh well.