A Magical Journey with Carlos Castaneda

by Margaret Runyan Castañeda

Book Overview

-- Reveals the sorcerer's apprentice in an entirely new light. -- Includes never before published photos of Carlos Castaneda. -- Describes in detail their marriage. -- His first four books are... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0969696019
• ISBN13: 9780969696018
• Release Date: January 1996
• Publisher: Millenia Press
• Length: 186 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

INTERESTING READING.

If you are a Castaneda fan, you got to read this book. Despite the bad editing/grammar, it was still very intereting to read. Margaret gives you an insight into Carlos' early days back in the mid 50's all the way through the 90's. I enjoyed reading about all the people that had an impact on Carlos' life from family and friends to anthropologists, professors, authors, visionaries, and don Juan. The content of the book appears to have been written with all honesty.

glad this was written

Contrary to what some other glassy-eyed true believers in the don Juan myth seem to think, this book is not at all exploitative or particularly gossipy; it is merely a simple, anecdote-driven, descriptively written biographical account of, hands down, the greatest novelist of the 20th century--Carlos Castaneda. No other book that I am aware of contains so much information on the man or such insight into his personality, which turns out, not surprisingly, to be inherently secretive and almost pathologically deceptive. Thank goodness this woman chose to write; there is little enough truth in print regarding this type of thing in general and Castaneda in particular.

An insightful and touching read.

While the book suffers from poor editing, I found it an interesting and insightful read. Perhaps I had expected to find a bitter former companion of Carlos Castaneda in Margaret, but instead I found an intelligent and caring person. Some of the situations do indeed show Carlos in a negative light, but he, like the rest of us, was a human being. I have been a Castaneda devotee for over 20 years, from the days when his books were regularly used in college courses as fact. As I've grown older I realize that we commonly don't want to see the truth, when one of our heroes turns out to be human. By these denials, we deprive that person of their wholeness, their humanity, with our dreams and expectations being the weapon. My view of Carlos has changed over the years, but maybe I'm seeing him with a bit more wisdom than I did all those years ago. Margaret's book included touching scenarios that revealed more about the man and the source of his philosophy and tales...like! Margaret pointed out to Carlos, the lessons of don Juan were the lessons Carlos was teaching himself. Carlos Castaneda is one of the greatest philosophers of all time in my eyes and will always be so...his struggles laid out before us, akin to Jesus' parables. These are lessons that can be used each day in our lives. Carlos' art turned out to be his life and our world is richer for his existence. Thank you Margaret, for writing the book. I think it is a fine companion for Carlos' works, one that helps complete the picture.

Insight into Carlos & how he arrived at stopping the world.

If Carlos did indeed arrive at doing and not-doing by sitting at a typewriter, then all the more valuable are his insights, all the more available is the Man of Knowledge for me. I loved the book, reading about a part of Carlos' life. Thanks, Margaret.