Have you experienced Carlos Castaneda's sorcery?

New Grimoires and techniques outlined in books like NAP, NIP, Frater Malak, etc.

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Gnosticangel2
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Have you experienced Carlos Castaneda's sorcery?

Post#1 » Thu Nov 20, 2014 12:19 am

Friends, I hope to discuss with you some thoughts and experiences from a controversial sorceric tradition that for me at least, has been extraordinarily valuable to reframing all my diverse magical studies into a stronger energetic whole. I’ve hesitated to raise the issue before this not only because the tradition itself is controversial and much maligned, but also because its tenets requires that one practice severe discipline and accumulate energy even before attempting to communicate it. Basically, it is supposed to take energy to discuss it properly. However this tradition has been powerful for me and perhaps will be of interest to some members here.

The tradition is the Toltec Sorcery tradition of the late recluse Carlos Castaneda, and also his immediate inner circle including “the Three Witches,” namely Florinda Donner, Taisha Abelar and “the Nagual Women” Carol Tiggs, and supplemented by the work of their apprentices Talia Bey, Patricia Partin, Kiley Lundahl and student Bruce Wagner, and later writers Lujan Matus and Armando Torres. There are numerous other authors who claim knowledge of this lineage, but according to the original members of this circle, those are without merit.

Apparently Wagner, Matus and Armando are still alive, but after Casteneda died in April 1998, Donner, Abelar, Bey and Lundahl disappeared immediately and Tiggs followed six months later, with all still missing to this day and presumed dead by the world at large. (There are sizeable fortunes in trust available to them but apparently they have still been left untouched decades later.) Patricia Partin, the famed Blue Scout, also disappeared that same year but bones found in Death Valley in 2002 were identified as hers in 2006. Also, still living 3rd-generation apprentices Nyei Murez and Renata Murez administer the closely associated Cleargreen Tensegrity trainings to this day. That’s pretty much the lineage through which a purported ancient tradition attempted to translate itself to the modern world.

Starting in 1968, all of Castaneda’s written works became international bestsellers and for decades were considered highly influential works of anthropology and speculative philosophy. Extraordinarily secretive, Castaneda was one of the literary world’s great mysteries, giving few interviews and no photographs or public appearances. He based his works on his purported apprenticeship with an old Yaqui Indian shaman, Don Juan Matus, later including experiences with the sorceric colleagues of Matus all known together as the “warrior’s party.” In the works, Don Juan always referred to himself as a “seer” and his tradition as “sorcery” stemming from the ancient Toltecs of Mexico.

These works impacted an entire generation but as the apprenticeship evolved, the frankly magical content of the books became more fantastic and general skepticism increased. Finally several academic authors undertook to debunk the works, basing their analysis on general comparative studies (similarities to existing books he might have read, etc.) rather than on actual evidence of fraud. Academia and the world press quickly breathed a sigh of release however, and the tradition was written off as the crazed ramblings of another New Age guru, where it lies today. Maybe so, but Castaneda and the three witches never admitted to anything other than the absolute reality of their experiences.

My own connection to the tradition came about in an unusual way. In the 1980s I was living in a small scholarly retreat community in Southern California focused on shamanic and Buddhist practice, in quite primitive conditions, with many indigenous elders and shamans visiting. A few of the small staff community including myself were devoted to the Castaneda material, and we structured ourselves along its precepts attempting to use them to mediate visionary experience. At that time I also began writing letters to Castaneda c/o his publisher, hoping to meet him. He never responded but I kept writing.

Flash forward a decade later to another wilderness retreat center, this time in Northern Arizona, where I was responsible for developing the program content. I wrote yet another bi-annual letter to Castaneda, which by now for me was a magical exercise. This time I received my first reply, from one of his apprentices, saying that Carlos had brought the letter to their group and that he wanted to initiate a series of worldwide sorcery retreats to explore the specific practice of “magical passes” (sorceric gestures and movements) which he termed “Tensegrity,” (also an architectural term referring to integrated tension). His intention in coming out after three decades of secrecy was purely energetic and magical and he chose the retreat center that I represented as the first venue.

So I worked with the three 3rd generation apprentices known as the “Chac Mools” to bring Castaneda's peers, the “Three Witches,” to the mountains of Arizona for what became the first public appearance of the lineage anywhere in the world. It was truly a crazy, remarkable event, soon to be followed by others in California, New York and then around the world for several years leading up to Castaneda’s death. This was a huge sensation at the time and literally hundreds of thousands of people attending the worldwide Tensegrity retreats. Though I produced three or four more of these events in New York over the next few years, I did not accompany them around the world or become a member of their group. However, I did have an unforgettable opportunity to work briefly but closely with each of the Three Witches; Florinnda Donner, Taisha Abelar and Carol Tiggs. I had a number of sorcery experiences with them and believe to this day that they were sincere, authentic practitioners of their lineage.

So that’s my connection to it. The tradition itself describes a sorceric description of reality which first views humans as energetic beings in an infinite universe, and only secondarily as humanoid solid forms in a material reality. With most of us lost in the density of the forgetful human world, we lack access to the extraordinary magical abilities that are potentially our birthright. However, many sorcery practices (magic) exist which can help us manage our energy to the point from which we can again operate from an energetic perceptual basis.

There are two or three major groups of sorceric practices, divided up into 1) “Stalking,” referring to sorcerous strategies including ritual practices for managing waking energy and people ; 2) “Dreaming,” referring to managing nonordinary energy and entities; and sometimes 3) “Recapitulation,” referring to the practice of liberating our blocked energetic perception.

Also according to this tradition, we are not alone in this reality but share it with a number of paraphysical nonhuman entities, with some indifferent to us, some friendly and some actively hostile. These entities (analogous to nature spirits, angels, demons and djinn) may be resident in natural locations on this earth or dwell in other dimensions that are as real as anything one could experience in normal consensus reality. "Dreaming" provides opportunities to interact with these demons or “inorganic beings,” which are considered as potentially risky as similar interactions with the demons of Abramelin, the 6th and 7th Books of Moses or other medieval grimoires. However, “Sorcerers” are those who have successfully performed the practice of dreaming interaction with these entities to the point in which they have absorbed some of their nonhuman energy.

There is much more to this tradition, but this is already a large block of text (and my thanks and apologies to anyone who is still with me so far)! I will close by saying that for those interested, there is an immense amount of insightful material buried in these works with direct bearing on the practice of Western magic, including the premises of evocation and sorcerous pacts. And in another example, the Magical Passes book contains many qigong-like practices designed to work with energy/astral bodies within a refined gnostic-type paradigm with references to inorganic beings.

Finally, one of Castaneda’s final works, The Art of Dreaming, is to me one of the single most important magical works on demons and "the Nightside Tree" in my own library and I would be very interested to hear if other members of the forum have had any experience with it, or the Castaneda material in general.

My thanks.

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