- LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Carlos Castaneda, a godfather of the New Age movement
whose best-selling books claimed to relate the ancient mystical secrets
of a shaman named Don Juan, has died.
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- He was believed to be 72.
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- Castaneda died of liver cancer April
27 at his home in Westwood, Calif., said entertainment lawyer Deborah Drooz,
a friend and executor of his estate.
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- "He didn't like attention,"
Drooz said today in the Los Angeles Times newspaper.
-
- "He always made sure people did
not take his picture or record his voice. He didn't like the spotlight.
-
- "Knowing that, I didn't take it
upon myself to issue a press release."
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- For more than 30 years, Castaneda said
he was the apprentice of a Yaqui Indian sorcerer named Don Juan Matus.
He had millions of followers around the world and his 10 books continue
to sell in 17 languages.
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- Castaneda, who held a PhD in anthropology
from the University of California, Los Angeles, said he met Don Juan in
Arizona in the early 1960s while researching medicinal plants and followed
when the shaman moved to Sonora, Mexico.
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- His first book, The Teachings of Don
Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, was a best-seller when it appeared in 1968,
as were several sequels that purported to track Castaneda's 12-year apprenticeship.
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- In the works, Castaneda described supernatural,
peyote-fuelled journeys with a sorcerer who could bend time and space.
The books were critically praised -- respected author Joyce Carol Oates
called them "remarkable works of art."
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- Castaneda argued reality is simply a
shared way of looking at the universe that can be transcended through discipline,
ritual and concentration. The sorcerer, he said, can see and use the energy
that comprises everything but the path to that knowledge is hard and dangerous.
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- Don Juan said "that in order to
navigate into the unknown like a shaman does, one needs unlimited pragmatism,
boundless sobriety and guts of steel," Castaneda said in a 1997 interview.
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- While his books sold millions of copies
worldwide, critics doubted Don Juan existed.
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- Castaneda always maintained all his experiences
were real. "This is not a work of fiction," Castaneda said in
the prologue to his 1981 book, The Eagle's Gift.
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- "What I am describing is alien to
us; therefore, it seems unreal."
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- Castaneda himself rarely made appearances
and never allowed himself to be photographed or tape-recorded.
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- "A recording is a way of fixing
you in time," he said.
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- "The only thing a sorcerer will
not do is be stagnant."
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- While Castaneda contended Don Juan did
not die but rather "burned from within," he had no doubt about
his own mortality.
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- "Since I'm a moron, I'm sure I'll
die," he told the Times.
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- "I wish I would have the integrity
to leave the way he did but there is no assurance."
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- Castaneda was obscure even on such matters
as his birth.
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- Immigration records indicated he was
born Dec. 25, 1925 in Cajamarca, Peru, while a volume of Contemporary Authors
placed it on Dec. 25, 1931 in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
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- No funeral service was held and his cremated
remains were taken to Mexico.
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