Carlos Castaneda

Carlos César Salvador Arana Castañeda was a popular author and hoaxer influential in the psychedelic drug culture of the 1960s and 1970s. He wrote a series of books, starting with The Teachings of Don Juan, in which he purports to describe the teachings of a  Native American from Mexico and a traditional  a shape-shifting magician. Don Juan allegedly initiated Castaneda into a Yaqui tradition of drug-fueled mysticism. Time Magazine has called him the "Godfather of the New Age".

On the strength of these revelations, Castaneda was awarded a doctorate in anthropology by UCLA. Anthropologists demanded that the university revoke his degree; they refused. His entire body of work, including his thesis, is now generally considered to be a hoax. Apologists these days put his works forward as "fiction", which they weren't sold as at the time.

The teachings of Don Juan
A number of psychoactive substances were the key to Don Juan's supposed teachings. Peyote, a cactus (Lophophora williamsii) was the principal drug that he ingested; it is a whose active ingredient is  although ingesting it in cactus form also induces strong vomiting. He also vaporized a smoking mixture called humito or "little smoke" which contained magic mushrooms. Another drug used by Castaneda was commonly known as jimsonweed, a much more dangerous  The books narrated that Don Juan and Castaneda, under the influence of these drugs, were able to travel great distances, move objects with their minds, and transform themselves into animals. This tradition of magic was said to derive from lore handed down from the, an ancient Mexican people who preceded the Aztecs and whose culture died out around 1000 CE.

Under the influence of these drugs, Castaneda learned a number of platitudes, which have gone on to great currency in the New Age movement and probably seem quite profound if you're high:

For me there is only the traveling on paths that have heart, on any path that may have heart, and the only worthwhile challenge is to traverse its full length — and there I travel looking, looking breathlessly.

We are men and our lot in life is to learn and to be hurled into inconceivable new worlds.

Nobody knows who I am or what I do. Not even I.

These and many similar and quotable sayings in Castaneda's books, especially these first three, were widely quoted as inspirational material among early New Agers and drug culture aficionados of the 1970s.

Debunking
Castaneda's accounts began to be widely doubted during his career. The author Joyce Carol Oates wrote to The New York Times, expressing bewilderment that a reviewer had accepted Castaneda's narrative as fact. , a genuine authority on peyote cultures, dismissed Castaneda's account immediately and forcefully, a former Scientologist and psychologist, published Castaneda's Journey: The Power and the Allegory A further debunking appears in Jay Courtney Fikes' Carlos Castaneda: Academic Opportunism and the Psychedelic Sixties.

The chronology of Castaneda's alleged adventures in Sonora with Don Juan was internally inconsistent. They contain no reference to the usual dangers, discomforts, and precautions needed for people wandering the Sonoran desert. No reference to actual contemporary Yaqui beliefs and culture appear in Castaneda's accounts: neither their deep Roman Catholic piety, nor their extensive use of flowers, nor their traditional suspicion of the Mexican government. Don Juan does not resemble a Yaqui or inhabit a Yaqui culture in any identifiable way. Castaneda apparently went through his training in shamanism without learning any Yaqui words for animals or plants he allegedly encountered. Don Juan's philosophical platitudes were cribbed from a number of identifiable sources, including Ludwig Wittgenstein and C. S. Lewis.

The Yaquis traditionally don't use peyote, although some have taken up peyote religions. Another native tribe of Mexico, the do. Castaneda's books persuaded American stoners to visit Mexico. First, they invaded the Yaqui, whose sober culture disappointed them. Then they turned to the peyote-using Huichol, where they caused substantial disruption, and a tribal elder was murdered by a stoned gringo.

Castaneda is no longer regarded as anything other than a fraud by contemporary anthropologists. Dr. William W. Kelley, chairman of Yale's anthropology department, has said, 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. Castaneda disappeared from the public eye in 1973, but continued to publish books containing the alleged teachings of Don Juan until his death. He promoted a philosophy called "Tensegrity", supposedly based on Don Juan's teachings, and established a foundation called "Cleargreen" to promote it.

Cult Leader
After falling out of the public eye, Castaneda started a secretive group, ordering initiates to abandon their families and giving them new names. Several vanished after his death, one turned up dead, and they are suspected of having committed suicide.