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The 1970s were thick with New Age spiritual fads and movements, from the benign (crystals) to the unspeakably toxic and cultic (Jonestown). Somewhere in the middle of that woo-woo spectrum lies the work of Carlos Castaneda. A UCLA anthropology grad student turned self-appointed guru, Castaneda became a counterculture icon with the publication of his first book, \u201cThe Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge,\u201d in 1968, purporting to find enlightenment via psychedelic mushrooms, peyote and the cryptic musings of Don Juan, an Indigenous spirit guide.<\/p>\n
That book, and the stream of his that followed, seduced millions of readers, plenty of them no doubt hoping that with the proper dosage they, like Castaneda, might also transform into a crow and soar across the purple skies of the dusty Southwest. That Castaneda\u2019s books were largely flimflam isn\u2019t in dispute. But Ru Marshall\u2019s hefty biography, \u201cAmerican Trickster,\u201d <\/a>reveals the depth of his deception \u2014 and, just as potently, how easily people can be taken in by it.<\/p>\n \u201cHe didn\u2019t lie out of convenience or opportunism,\u201d Marshall writes. \u201cHe lied because he loved to. Lying was, for him, an art, and he did it exceptionally well.\u201d This is a 1970s story, but anybody in the present can relate.<\/p>\n Born in Peru (not Brazil, as he often claimed) in 1925 (not a decade later, as he often claimed), Castaneda demonstrated no particular intellectual promise. But in the mid-1950s, first at L.A. City College and later at UCLA, he developed an affection for writing, philosophy and history. While pursuing a graduate degree in anthropology in the \u201960s, he grew enchanted with Buddhism, Theosophy, existentialism and Native American spirituality \u2014 all key elements of the spiritualist goulash he would eventually cook up for his books. His timing was impeccable: From Timothy Leary\u2019s LSD experiments to transcendental meditation, non-Christian religion and drugs fueled the zeitgeist. And Castaneda\u2019s manuscript of \u201cThe Teachings\u201d spoke effervescently about both.<\/p>\n Read more:<\/strong>A Hushed Death for Mystic Author Carlos Castaneda<\/a><\/p>\n It hardly seemed to matter that the book also demonstrated his ignorance of both: He had little understanding of psychoactive drugs (you don\u2019t smoke shrooms, dude), and there was nothing meaningfully Yaqui about Don Juan. Still, the book \u2014 and their follow-ups \u201cA Separate Reality\u201d and \u201cJourney to Ixtlan\u201d \u2014 were massive bestsellers. Castaneda made it to the cover of Time magazine<\/u><\/a>. His work provided George Lucas with more than a little inspiration for his master-and-student space opera, \u201cStar Wars.\u201d And he became a target for parodists, the surest sign of fame. Donald Barthelme satirized him in his story \u201cThe Teachings of Don B.: A Yankee Way of Knowledge.\u201d<\/p>\n That the \u201970s American psyche, brutalized by Watergate and Vietnam, found solace in Castaneda\u2019s sophistry isn\u2019t surprising. More shocking is that the academic establishment tolerated it too: UCLA awarded him a PhD in anthropology with \u201cIxtlan\u201d serving as his dissertation. Castaneda, Marshall writes, made an end run around the department\u2019s Yaqui expert, with the other committee members overly impressed by his au courant melange of fieldwork and gauzy ruminations, despite the fact that his timelines and grasp of mycology didn\u2019t make sense. \u201cIf we stop telling ourselves that the world is so-and-so, the world will stop being so-and-so,\u201d Don Juan mused. Perversely, Castaneda\u2019s success proved him right.<\/p>\n Read more:<\/strong>6 desert books we can’t stop talking about<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cAmerican Trickster,\u201d at more than 600 pages, is at once more information about Castaneda than any reader needs, and not nearly enough. Marshall (who in 2006 published a novel, \u201cA Separate Reality,\u201d <\/a>inspired by Castaneda), has gone to ground on every element of his subject\u2019s life, from his upbringing in Peru to his celebrity (he\u2019d find his way into the orbits of former Gov. Jerry Brown, Federico Fellini and Oliver Stone at various points), to the years before his death of liver cancer in 1998. By that point he\u2019d focused his attention on Tensegrity, a modified martial arts practice demonstrated at pricey workshops, and gathered a host of followers, mostly women, who he played against each other and psychologically abused in various ways.<\/p>\n But who did this guy think he was? How did he come to invent such a strange spiritual system, and develop the nerve to sell it both to mainstream publishers and the academic establishment? Why did he keep a box of knives under his bed? \u201cCarlos acted in the zone where the trickery of the cult leader and that of the literary hoaxer (and the anthropological hoaxer) overlap,\u201d Marshall writes. But all the biographical detail brings us no closer to what made him such a successful triple threat of eyewash.<\/p>\n Perhaps a book that couched Castaneda\u2019s story more deeply in the context of the \u201970s counterculture and the nature of cults past and present would make his story clearer. But perhaps not \u2014 his tale is inevitably something to wonder at, evidence of humans\u2019 capacity to spin a yarn that flatters our egos and urge to understand our spiritual selves, and to buy into what\u2019s spun.<\/p>\n Maybe it\u2019s unsurprising that one of the first people to publicly sound the alarm about Castaneda was a novelist. In 1972, Joyce Carol Oates wrote a letter to the New York Times Book Review questioning a credulous review of Castaneda\u2019s books. (The New York Times had spiked a more skeptical one, Marshall reports.) \u201cIt is quite possible that Don Juan represents a \u2018non-ordinary\u2019 reality so strange to me that I cannot accept it, and must try to reason my way out of believing,\u201d she wrote. \u201cBut I don\u2019t think so\u2026 I\u2019d be very interested in whether other readers share my bewilderment.\u201d No doubt others did. But what if bewilderment was exactly what they were seeking?<\/p>\n Athitakis is a writer in Phoenix and author of \u201c<\/em>The New Midwest.\u201d<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n