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Shaman: The Mysterious Life and Impeccable Death of Carlos Castaneda
Some say he was a breakthrough academic and visionary shaman. Others say he was a sham. Either way, Carlos Castaneda shaped a generation of mystical thinkers and magic mushroom eaters.
In 1968, at the height of the psychedelic age, Castaneda published The Teachings of Don A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, the first of twelve books describing his apprenticeship to an Indian shaman, and his journeys to the “separate reality” of the sorcerers’ worlds.
Like Herman Hesse’s Steppenwolf and Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception, The Teachings of Don Juan and its sequels became essential reading for legions of truth seekers. Castaneda himself became a cult figure—seldom seen, nearly mythological, a cross between Timothy Leary and L. Ron a short, dapper, Buddha-with-an-attitude who likened his own appearance to that of a “Mexican bellhop.”
Though Castaneda had more than ten million books in print in seventeen languages, he lived in wily anonymity for nearly thirty years, doing his best, in his own words, to become “as inaccessible as possible.” Most people figured he had a house somewhere in the Sonoran Desert, where he’d studied with his own teacher, a leathery old Indian brujo named Don Juan Matus.
In truth, Castaneda lived and wrote for most of that time in Westwood Village, a neighborhood of students and professors in Los Angeles, not far from UCLA and Beverly Hills. Upon his death in 1998, things became even more murky.
A year-long investigation into the mysterious life and impeccable death of Carlos Castaneda, as told by his wife, his adopted son, his mistresses, and his followers.
“Castaneda wasn’t a common con man, he lied to bring us the truth. His stories are packed with truth, though they are not true stories, which he said they are . . . This is a sham-man bearing gifts, an ambiguous spellbinder dealing simultaneously in contrary commodities—wisdom and deception.”—Castaneda scholar Richard de Mille
What the critics say about Mike Sager
“Sager plays Virgil in the modern American Inferno . . . Compelling and stylish magazine journalism, rich in novelistic detail.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Like his journalistic precursors Tom Wolfe and Hunter S. Thompson, Sager writes frenetic, off-kilter pop-sociological profiles of Americans in all their vulgarity and vitality . . . He writes with flair, but only in the service of an omnivorous curiosity and defies expectations in pieces that lesser writers would play for satire or sensationalism . . . A Whitmanesque ode to teeming humanity’s mystical unity.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Mike Sager is the Beat poet of American journalism, that rare reporter who can make literature out of shabby reality. Equal parts reporter, ethnographer, stylist, and cultural critic, Sager has for twenty years carried the tradition of Tom Wolfe on his broad shoulders, chronicling the American scene and psyche. Nobody does it sharper, smarter, or with more style.” —Walt Harrington, author of Intimate Journalism
“I can recognize the truth in these stories—tales about the darkest possible side of wretched humanity. Sager has obviously spent too much time in flop houses in Laurel Canyon.” —Hunter S. Thompson, author of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
About the Author
Mike Sager is a best-selling author and award-winning reporter.
In 1968, at the height of the psychedelic age, Castaneda published The Teachings of Don A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, the first of twelve books describing his apprenticeship to an Indian shaman, and his journeys to the “separate reality” of the sorcerers’ worlds.
Like Herman Hesse’s Steppenwolf and Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception, The Teachings of Don Juan and its sequels became essential reading for legions of truth seekers. Castaneda himself became a cult figure—seldom seen, nearly mythological, a cross between Timothy Leary and L. Ron a short, dapper, Buddha-with-an-attitude who likened his own appearance to that of a “Mexican bellhop.”
Though Castaneda had more than ten million books in print in seventeen languages, he lived in wily anonymity for nearly thirty years, doing his best, in his own words, to become “as inaccessible as possible.” Most people figured he had a house somewhere in the Sonoran Desert, where he’d studied with his own teacher, a leathery old Indian brujo named Don Juan Matus.
In truth, Castaneda lived and wrote for most of that time in Westwood Village, a neighborhood of students and professors in Los Angeles, not far from UCLA and Beverly Hills. Upon his death in 1998, things became even more murky.
A year-long investigation into the mysterious life and impeccable death of Carlos Castaneda, as told by his wife, his adopted son, his mistresses, and his followers.
“Castaneda wasn’t a common con man, he lied to bring us the truth. His stories are packed with truth, though they are not true stories, which he said they are . . . This is a sham-man bearing gifts, an ambiguous spellbinder dealing simultaneously in contrary commodities—wisdom and deception.”—Castaneda scholar Richard de Mille
What the critics say about Mike Sager
“Sager plays Virgil in the modern American Inferno . . . Compelling and stylish magazine journalism, rich in novelistic detail.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Like his journalistic precursors Tom Wolfe and Hunter S. Thompson, Sager writes frenetic, off-kilter pop-sociological profiles of Americans in all their vulgarity and vitality . . . He writes with flair, but only in the service of an omnivorous curiosity and defies expectations in pieces that lesser writers would play for satire or sensationalism . . . A Whitmanesque ode to teeming humanity’s mystical unity.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Mike Sager is the Beat poet of American journalism, that rare reporter who can make literature out of shabby reality. Equal parts reporter, ethnographer, stylist, and cultural critic, Sager has for twenty years carried the tradition of Tom Wolfe on his broad shoulders, chronicling the American scene and psyche. Nobody does it sharper, smarter, or with more style.” —Walt Harrington, author of Intimate Journalism
“I can recognize the truth in these stories—tales about the darkest possible side of wretched humanity. Sager has obviously spent too much time in flop houses in Laurel Canyon.” —Hunter S. Thompson, author of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
About the Author
Mike Sager is a best-selling author and award-winning reporter.
80 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 3, 2020
36 people are currently reading
64 people want to read
About the author
Mike Sager
34 books37 followersMike Sager is a best-selling author and award-winning reporter. A former Washington Post staff writer under Watergate investigator Bob Woodward, he worked closely, during his years as a contributing editor to Rolling Stone, with gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson. Sager is the author of four collections of non-fiction, two novels, and one biography. He has served for more than fifteen years as a writer at large for Esquire. In 2010 he won the American Society of Magazine Editors’ National Magazine Award for profile writing for his article “The Man Who Never Was.” Many of his stories have been optioned for film. For more information, please see www.mikesager.com.
Sager is also the founding editor and publisher of The Sager Group. for more information, please see www.TheSagerGroup.Net.
Sager is also the founding editor and publisher of The Sager Group. for more information, please see www.TheSagerGroup.Net.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
June 4, 2024
This was a fine piece of new journalism on the sham-man that was Carlos Castaneda. It has everything you NEED to know before you dive into his series of so-called anthropological studies of psychedelic possibilities and dreamscapes.
It confirmed everything I suspected, but did so with respect to the material's potential value and the man's shadow life.
If you're going into the other states of consciousness, then I recommend this book to set off with your eyes open.
It confirmed everything I suspected, but did so with respect to the material's potential value and the man's shadow life.
If you're going into the other states of consciousness, then I recommend this book to set off with your eyes open.
November 4, 2022
This short book is a collection of short accounts from various people whose lives intersected with Carlos Castaneda. It doesn’t attempt to build a theory about Castaneda or the alleged teachings of Don Juan, about which Castaneda penned 12 books. What it does provide is a broader perspective on Castaneda’s life beyond the books—his relationships, his followers, his adopted son, and his death. While he remained a shadowy figure that avoided the spotlight, he had three close disciples (the witches, called Chacmools) with whom he lived. Weird. He also had other pseudo-sexual relationships. Weird. At his direction, the Chacmools developed and sold an odd program called Tensegrity, which taught something the equivalent of yoga movements (a glimpse of which can be seen on YouTube). Weird. He had followers who essentially stalked him in secret, collecting and sorting through his trash. Weird.
In short, the book paints a picture of an evasive cult figure, who in the end, died of cancer, whereas he was supposed to deathlessly transmute to a non-ordinary realm. Contrary to the book’s subtitle, Castaneda’s conventional life was not mysterious like his character in his books, nor was his death impeccable. At the same time, he contributed to the ordinary world something rather extraordinary. Richard DeMille said it best, “Castaneda wasn't a common con man. He lied to bring us the truth. His stories are packed with truth, though they are not true stories, which he said they are. This is not your familiar literary allegorist painlessly instructing his readers in philosophy. Nor is it your fearless trustworthy ethnographer returned full of anecdotes from the forests of Ecuador. This is a sham-man bearing gifts, an ambiguous spellbinder dealing simultaneously in contrary commodities—wisdom and deception.”
In short, the book paints a picture of an evasive cult figure, who in the end, died of cancer, whereas he was supposed to deathlessly transmute to a non-ordinary realm. Contrary to the book’s subtitle, Castaneda’s conventional life was not mysterious like his character in his books, nor was his death impeccable. At the same time, he contributed to the ordinary world something rather extraordinary. Richard DeMille said it best, “Castaneda wasn't a common con man. He lied to bring us the truth. His stories are packed with truth, though they are not true stories, which he said they are. This is not your familiar literary allegorist painlessly instructing his readers in philosophy. Nor is it your fearless trustworthy ethnographer returned full of anecdotes from the forests of Ecuador. This is a sham-man bearing gifts, an ambiguous spellbinder dealing simultaneously in contrary commodities—wisdom and deception.”
May 19, 2021
I wrote a new Carlos Castaneda review with the name "The Science of Seers". It has a different perspective comparing Modern Science and the wisdom of the Shamans of Ancient Mexico and also the religion while touching all the main existential questions of human beings. And for me, it puts the writings of Castaneda to the right place as it has never done before. If you could take a look and read it I will be pleased.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5...
September 16, 2024
Besides being a very easy read, Sager provides a concise overview of the Castaneda phenomenon with insights about many of the life details of the writer and of different players involved in his saga. Although all Sager's information is available in other sources, he does not weigh down the text with references. However, a bibliography would have been useful
December 2, 2021
Pretty good. He's a good writer, but there's quite a bit of chronological jumping around for no reason in the the first half before he settles down to tell the actual story of Castaneda, and he doesn't cover the disappearance/death of the witches at all.
February 3, 2021
I was interested in the subject but nothing new was added to general info you can pick up on a google search
May 6, 2024
This was a great book, and I only wish it was longer since it was like an article that was expanded into a short book. I grew up seeing Castaneda’s books all over. I feel like they were always in the used bookstores, and I always thought the covers and titles were so cool looking. I never knew where they belonged—whether they were sci-fi, fantasy, self-help, or something else. Seager paints a similarly chameleon-like picture of Castaneda, someone who seemed to never belong, but always able to blend in somehow. I ended up reading this after listening to the podcast Trickster, also about Castaneda. I didn’t realize that there were these doubts about his scholarship and research, as well as his background and credentials. I also didn’t realize that he created a kind of cult-like existence, living with a group of women who seemed to do his bidding. I hope there is more about Castaneda’s life and strange, mysterious death since this book seemed to raise more questions than it answered.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews