Shaman: The Mysterious Life and Impeccable Death of Carlos Castaneda

Great thanks

Well worth the read, packed with details about the surroundings of Castaneda and his late years. The concerted craziness, the breathtaking naiveté of the people highlighted in an anecdotal, fast-paced account.

I read a good chunk of Carlos Castaneda’s books when I was in college, starting with an aged, non-descript copy of Journey to Ixtlan that somehow jumped out at me from a shelf full of other faded volumes in my ex’s mother’s house. The book cover was goldenrod (or, it had been when it was printed 30 years previous), it had no dust jacket and no alluring graphics—I don’t know what inspired me to choose it.My husband (who was a friend at the time) lent me the rest of the books. He quotes Castaneda often and is dismayed at how little I recall from the teachings of Don Juan. Time to reread, especially after reading Mike Sager’s Shaman: The Mysterious Life and Impeccable Death of Carlos Castaneda. We have wondered over the years about what became of Carlos Castaneda—Sager looks for the answer to that question in Shaman.That question is not easy to answer. Castaneda was notorious for maintaining an air of mystery, which was reinforced by the members of his inner circle and followed him to the grave. Obituaries (which came out two months after his death in April 1998 because the news was kept quiet) mentioned the swirl of question marks surrounding Castaneda’s demise, but didn’t dig much deeper. On assignment for Rolling Stone, Sager set out to do that digging. The magazine ran into financial straits and the story didn’t run back then. The facts that Sager uncovered, which those close to Castaneda had obscured at the time, were reburied. Now we get to learn what he found out.Sager, with his signature no-pressure interview style, earned the trust and recorded the stories of some of Castaneda’s closest companions—his wife, his son, his mistresses, and his followers. Shaman opens with a couple who calls themselves “The Followers” rummaging through Castaneda’s trash from the compound where he lived with his inner circle in Westwood, near UCLA. Weirdness ensues, of course, conveyed in Sager’s fact-filled, intimate style. These are details you won’t find anywhere else.“As you would guess, the Followers learned a great many things from the Sorcerer’s trash. … Clearly, several or many of the women in the compound had a taste for fine clothes—Armani, Barneys, Neiman Marcus. Often the discarded apparel had been cut into pieces. Sometimes pieces remained intact—Gaby often wore a pair of DKNY leggings and a beautiful creamy leather jacket she remembered seeing on one of the Witches. A corduroy jacket with leather elbow patches had belonged to the Sorcerer himself. It fit Greg perfectly; he wore it everywhere, even to practice group. It was his fondest possession.”Sager’s detailed telling brings out the poignancy of Castaneda’s relationship with his son, nicknamed Cho-Cho. Though the two hadn’t spoken in years, C. J. Castaneda knew about Carlos’s death before the inner circle revealed it.“C. J. felt a weird tingle up and down his spine. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end.“‘I think Carlos is dead,’ he said.”Statements from Castaneda’s company, Cleargreen, did nothing to clarify the circumstances of his death.“’Carlos Castaneda left the world the same way that his teacher, Don Juan Matus did: with full awareness,” the statement read in part. “The cognition of our world of everyday life does not provide for a description of a phenomenon such as this. So in keeping with the terms of legalities and record keeping that the world of everyday life requires, Carlos Castaneda was declared to have died.’”Sager follows the story past this unsatisfying conclusion—we find out what he died of, what happened to his body. But Shaman doesn’t attempt to draw any conclusions or make any judgments on the controversy that surrounded Carlos Castaneda in life and in death. Sager tells a juicy tale with just the facts.

Not particularly deeply researched. Relied heavily on other popular novels about Casteneda and relationships with his wives and women acquaintances. Questions about the authenticity of Don Juan were not fleshed out, only discussed as statements from other sources.

Like did you know soon after one of the 'witches' or maybe all of them disappeared into the dessert, only for the skeleton of one of them to be found in 2006? Neither did I till I read wikipedia. It would be nice if the book covered more of the aftermath.