As the rain poured down for hours circa March 14th, having given up my plans for the day because I did not want to be out in it, I returned to Carlos Castaneda for the first time in years, thinking I would listen to his memoir as an audiobook, leaving my eyes and hands free for other tasks. But, perhaps it was meant to be, I was surprised to find instead that the TAISHA ABELAR (second) book that had been at a publishers forever, it seemed, WAS PUBLISHED and available to read online!
The back story on this is that many years ago a young friend, C.B. had read the first and till then only book Taisha Abelar had written, titled The Sorcerer's Crossing, and turned me onto it. After reading her copy, I got a copy of my own. If I recall, I got a copy at the old Bodhi Tree bookstore in West Hollywood. I did have that book for a long time. I loved the mysterious quality of the book and the experiences Abelar told of, her apprenticeship that eventually lead to her acceptance into a group of people who were not intent on being sorcerers or witches as popularly conjured by those terms but in working on developing their energy to become free of this earth. I especially liked the episode with Manfred, the big dog who was actually an old time sorcerer stuck in a dog body and sucking her energy.
But then I learned that, after Castaneda died in 1998, Taisha was one of the "witches" who had gone off somewhere and was either long time missing or dead. Her family, which she was not close with and had departed from, may have been the only family to actually file a missing persons report. (Going to the mine area and finding a fire pit where five colors of broken glass exist, supposedly where five of these women had some sort of celebration before "committing suicide" has become a hiker-fan's local. However, while one of the women's vehicle was found nearby and years later her bones, no bones, remains, or vehicles belonging to the others has ever been found.)
So much speculation about the fate of those women, why they left, what they did - Had they disappeared into rural life in Mexico? Or had they joined Carlos, who had the cancer death of a common human, in some esoteric way? What about suicide in an abandoned mine in the desert? Well, back in that day it was a lot easier to disappear than it is today (with all the ID's required to board a plane, for example), though I suppose much depends on how much money you have and what part of the world you go to. Not outlaws, not on the run so to speak, but perhaps they could not live without him. Yet, some others did not go away but continued to live in obscurity or take charge of a new business, teaching the exercises called Tensegrity. Not Yoga. Not Tai Chi. Yet, like those practices, intended to heal or balane the energy body.
Condemnation of Castaneda, or at least suspicion of him, prevailed. Had he faked his doctoral thesis at UCLA back in the day, in the anthropology department? If so, how could that have been allowed?
I was interested in rock art and ethnobotany back in the day. I was interested in shamanism. But I recall that when I took an anth class in college, I was warned to not consider any of his work. I gave up on rock art and the possible use of hallucinogens by the local Tongva and wrote only of the Tongva and their use of hallucinogens for initiation ceremonies for the boys entering manhood. ( The Tongva shamans intelligently brewed a Datura potion. The girls got smoked with tobacco and did not imbibe.) It was only a paper, not a book I needed to write. Castaneda had not spent any time with the Tongva... But why the warning in anth?
Because, although he had succeeded in academia, at UCLA, to the full extent possible, he was now regarded with suspicion.
Had Castaneda's thesis, turned into a best seller, made him rich enough to never have to work again? What I must say is that I would suspect that anyone granted a PhD. was and is put through a hell of a lot to earn it. There are too many PhD's who end up driving taxis (or Uber or Lyft) and Anthropology, a subject I personally love, is not so easy to gain employment using outside of academia.
Casteneda's first book was first a thesis and then a best seller and because it was a best seller and embraced by then-hippies, it was said to have ushered in drug experimentation. But wait a minute. This was 1968ish and drug use, including LSD, was already happening.
Castaneda had not been suggesting that people who were not apprenticed to shaman's take any datura, also called Jimson Weed or Loco Weed (which still blooms on the hillsides and roadsides in Southern California, where suburban expansion has not taken place) or peyote (the desert cactus) or any other botonical that produces hallucinations, and emphasized that the goal was to hone awareness without such potions. (Though it is said he decided this after having taken Don Juan's potions possibly 22 times.)
I'm sure that I read all his books over time though I can only recall a couple incidents reported in them; certainly the story of the shamans leaping over the cliff - or the shaman who seemed to walk over the waterfall without his feet touching the water. (Which I think may appear in the book Tales of Power.) I'm not sure I understood his books fully and to this day I think that has to do with his unwillingness to call things what they might be called in other cultures - though a "luminous egg" is certainly just like the body of energy of the Yogis. I also recall being - annoyed - that the shamans and others he encountered seemed to break out in laughter at Carlos a whole lot, and I didn't get what was funny.
But his last book, his memoir, The Active Side of Infinity, written when he must have known he was headed to meet Death, the Informant, is perhaps my favorite. He wrote about those moments in his life that turned the wheel. Over the years I've read that book three times. Over the years I've read Taisha Abelar's thrice also.
And, it seems to me there is some sort of resurgence of his work, as of late there are a number of audiobooks on YouTube, some which include discussions or explanations of the work, the old exercise videos are on there, and so on. It seems that his exercise system and workshops have especially been embraced in Russia, Ukraine, eastern Europe.
A look at the website that advertises seminars to learn energy work gave me the impression that it had all become highly pragmatic and worldly.
Taisha Abelar's second book, now entitled Stalking With the Double, which was supposed to be published by a real publishing house, got lost in some discussion. There were promises it would come out and delays. I posted about that years ago. Not sure who was negotiating for her - Cleargreen? Her estate lawyer? Her family? YEARS WENT BY. How did INTERNET ARCHIVE ORG get a copy? What is meant by "restored version?"
About half way in, I've found two misspelled words and some missing punctuation, giving me the sense this was a manuscript copy rather than one that went through editing or was closely read for errors. A little further and I found a note about a lost page and some skips. That's OK. For sure it was a "scanned" manuscript or someone typed on up.
Here is the link where you can read it at no cost. https://archive.org/details/taisha-abelar-stalking-with-the-double/page/1/mode/1up?view=theater
Excerpt: page 260 I felt a jolt. I knew he was angry with me because of the luminous worm. I felt like a traitor, guilty of still being energetically attached to men that, by now, I didn’t give a fig about. I had one foot in the world of sorcery, the other gangrenous one, was immersed in the world of human affairs. Upon more soul searching, I realized I was still concerned with finding love, thinking of who will take care of me in times of need, and what will happen to me if I didn’t succeed in the sorcerer’s world. I was investing, expecting rewards for my efforts, and when no rewards were forthcoming, I tended to give up and revert back to my familiar pattern of behavior.
***
I don't want to ruin the read for you but it does hold some surprises; Taisha did meet Don Juan Matus. .... Or did she meet his energetic double?
C 2023 Christine Trzyna
NOTES: This statement appears at the end of the scan:
this text is a best effort to produce a “finished” version of Taisha Abelar’s unpublished manuscript, that can currently be found at https://archive.org/details/taisha-book. Any and all changes made, were intended to further enhance the manuscript and, as such, changes from the original scan have been minimized and focused on giving this book the same professional demeanor of the published works of Carlos Castaneda, Taisha Abelar, and Florinda Donner-Grau. No ownership or recognition for helping Taisha get this puppy across the finish line is needed or desired. Thank you, Taisha!
........ This is unsigned
* just to verify, by sorcerer or witch, they are not saying High magic, witchcraft, Wicca, putting curses or vexes on other people, conjuring the Devil or Demons. Such doings were supposed to be what the Old Shamans of long ago were up to but not these people, who were moving forwards to developing and traveling with the energy body. No doubt there were other magical brews used for healing and other purposes among those in Mexico - as well as many - perhaps most - so called primative cultures. The Americans in the United States who became those closest to Castaneda seemed to be on a departure from that wordly engagement.
If interested you may also want to read the book Sorcerer's Apprentice by Amy Wallace. Wallace did not change her name as many did when the joined the Castaneda Cult. She has died. In her book she mentions that at the Westwood address she saw things that belonged to Castaneda such as tickets to Mexico being burned in the fireplace, as if people here were attempted to further obscure the man. Her book gives an account of what was happening around his death. She first met Carlos when he came to a party at her parent's. The writer Irving Wallace was her father and she and her brother both published books.
*** Re the search for the witches in old abandoned mines in the desert. One woman's skeleton was found, and her car had been found abandoned near a mine in the desert, but here are the reasons why the whole suicide in a mine theory might be wrong.
Each of the five women who went missing purposefully shut their phones off with the phone company before they went wherever. They all had vehicles and were supposed to have been seen driving around Los Angeles after Castaneda's death as if they had a lot of errands to do. While it would only take one vehicle to take all of them to the location where one car and one skeleton were found, none of these vehicles that also went missing have been found nor have more skeletons. Numerous hikers through the years have looked around, including one who posted on YouTube about going into the mine herself. While I get it that five women and five colors of glass broken around a firepit, as if they raised glasses of poison there, might be a clue, by now it's unlikely that the contents of said glasses is long gone, destroyed in the heat. Perhaps at one time DNA was present. As well, any other group of persons might have made the fire pit and done some sort of ritual or ceremony there, without it having anything to do with these missing women.
As well, there has long been talk that they knew they had to go away and/or die after he did, yet my understanding that inheritances were left for them - which were never collected. If that is true, well, it seems to me that the money would have come into good use if they purposefully wanted to disappear into Mexico.
Although I don't know how thorough the search, for instance the DMV might have records of the vehicles being sold to other owners, these vehicles were not found abandoned anywhere, such as in the desert.
Because these women legally changed their names and were supposed to, as a sorcerer's practice, take on other identities so as to remove themselves from their past, it is assumed also that they might have gone to Mexico and taken on other identities there.One of them, then called Carol TIggs, possibly Castaneda's true partner in the occult sense of the word. is said to have inherited his estate and decided to stay.
