01-03-2014, 12:00 AM
Over and over people have been saying that Don Juan Matus, the Yaqui Indian shaman-sorcerer in the series of Don Juan books by Carlos Castaneda, IF NOT a total figment of the imagination of Castaneda, was not a real person at all, but a composite of two or more people. There are several authors that write about just such a thesis, that is, Don Juan being a composite as the below paragraphs will attest.
When writers suggest a composite they are saying that Castaneda took a "number" of different individuals and combined their shaman-like traits and abilities into one person, in the process "inventing" Don Juan. One of the people most often cited as being used for a potential compositee is the Cahuilla Spiritual Elder, Salvador Lopez. However, the opening paragraph at the top of the page, although it makes reference to the possibilites of "two different people," and may seem to fall into the same camp as an invented composite, there is a huge difference. Two totally separate individuals, each one thought to be the one-and-only Don Juan Matus by different people or groups of people --- and having the twain never meet --- is a totally different approach than a composite. The person most often cited as a totally separate individual is the self-proclaimed Yaqui Shaman, Tezlcazi Guitimea Cachora. But, before getting to Cachora, lets investigate the potential possibiities, if any, of Salvador Lopez being a composite or somehow involved:
SALVADOR LOPEZ: Cahuilla Spiritual Elder
Salvador Lopez (d. August, 1967, with some reports stating 1973) was a member and highly revered spiritual elder of the Cahuilla band of Indians of the Morongo Reservation, Banning, California. He was renowned as an expert on medicinal plants, a bird singer and doing feats with fire as well as being a Bear Shaman. Lopez is considered by some to be at least one of the sources of information Carlos Castaneda used regarding Sacred Datura and other hallucinogenics presented in his first two books.* True, the possibility does exists that Lopez could have contributed in some fashion as an informant of Castaneda's, but it is questionable. It becomes an even more remote possibility if Lopez is thrust into the role of the primary source of information, especially considering the fund of of knowledge Castaneda presented in his first two books. Lopez was known for being quite stoic and non-communicative even among his own band, so it would be highly unlikely that he would depart very much in the way ancient and guarded tribal secrets to a total stranger or outsider, most particularly so in the short space of time Castaneda had with him.
A woman by the name of Mary Joan (Joanie) Barker is said to have been the person that originally took Castaneda to the Morongo Indian Reservation located near her childhood home in Banning where she grew up. While visiting the reservation Castaneda met, among others, Lopez. Because of the ensuing interaction with Lopez it has been extrapolated that Castaneda obtained the information on datura he used in his first book, TEACHINGS OF DON JUAN: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge (1968). That use of datura, outlining datura's four heads, their different purposes, the significance of the roots, the cooking process and the ritual of preparation, all information Castaneda says was learned from Don Juan Matus, was written by Castaneda and found in PART ONE: THE TEACHINGS, Chapter 3, dated Wednesday, August 23, 1961.
However, in the spring semester of 1960, fifteen full months before that August 23, 1961 date cited by Castaneda in his book, Castaneda was an undergraduate anthropology student enrolled in a class at UCLA titled "Methods in Field Archaeology," taught by Professor Clement Meighan. As part of a requirement for that class, Castaneda wrote and turned in a paper with all the exact same information. In regards to that spring semester of 1960 paper, Professor Meighan is on record of saying:
"(Castaneda's) informant knew a great deal about Datura, which was a drug used in initiating ceremonies by some California groups, but had presumed by me and I think most other anthropologists to have passed out of the picture 40 or 50 years ago. So he found an informant who still actually knew something about this and still had used it."
If we disregard Don Juan Matus as the source of the information and go with the suggestion that Lopez was the source, it would automatically infer then that any meeting between the Castaneda and Lopez would have to had occurred BEFORE the end of the spring semester of 1960 inorder for any of the information to have been used in his paper.
UCLA professor Douglass Price-Williams, a friend of Castaneda's and a member of his 1973 PhD dissertation committee, has been quoted as saying Barker was a librarian at UCLA sometime in the summer of 1960 and it was during that summer, July or August of 1960, that Castaneda and Barker met. If such was the case, any introduction by her involving Castaneda and Lopez would have transpired AFTER Castaneda's 1960s paper on datura was turned in --- once again opening up the "who was the informant" question.(see)
IF there WAS a meeting between Castaneda and Lopez, regardless of the timing of a meeting, before, during, or after the spring semester, or how long or short it was, there remains a remote possibility Lopez may have had an influence on Castaneda --- just not at the level of being the informant. Not to discount Lopez's abilities or knowledge, a much more credible source would be the Mazatec curandera Maria Sabina or the Huichol shaman-priest Ramón Medina Silva, as cited by anthropologist Jay Courtney Fikes in his book Carlos Castaneda, Academic Opportunism and the Psychedelic Sixties (1993). The problem with Sabina is that she is not known to have ventured very far (physically) from her birthplace. Castaneda's ex-wife Margaret Runyan (1921-2011) confirmed that her husband made frequent field trips to Mexico in the time he was supposedly apprenticed to the shaman sorcerer Don Juan Matus. Even though it has been recorded that Castaneda met briefly with Dr. Timothy Leary at the Catalina Hotel in Zihuatanejo sometime during the summer of 1962 --- albeit somewhat unsuccessfuly --- NOTHING has surfaced that substantiates any sort of meeting between the curandera and Castaneda or that he ever made it all the way to HER remote village in the state of Oaxaca.(see)
As for the Huichol shaman-priest Ramón Medina Silva being Don Juan or a potential composite for Don Juan, the connection is made by a very thin thread that some say leads to Castaneda.(see) Although the thread existed, the strength of the connection weakens because of the timing of events. The person designated only as the Informant that shows up in various writings including Castaneda's last book, The Active Side of Infinity and who is known to have have been friends with Sabina long before her rise to fame is perhaps the most credible source.
"In describing his teacher, Don Juan used the word Diablero. Later I learned diablero is a term used only by the Sonoran Indians. It refers to an evil person who practises black sorcery and is capable of transforming himself into an animal - a bird, a dog, a coyote, or any other creature."
CARLOS CASTANEDA: THE TEACHINGS OF DON JUAN: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge (1968)
Capable of transforming himself into an animal - a bird, a dog, a coyote, or any other creature! As stated prior in the main section above, Lopez was said to be a Bear Shaman. Bear Shamans are a special class of Shaman that have received their power from grizzly bears and that possess many of the qualities of the grizzly, especially their apparent invulnerability to fatal attack. Bear Shamans are said to have the ability to assume the form of bears (i.e., shapeshift) and that they can be killed an indefinite number of times when in this form and each time return to life. In some tribal beliefs the Bear Shaman was not thought to actually become a bear, instead being a man clothed in the skin of a bear, but capable through Shaman powers of inflicting greater injury than a true bear. To see a photo of a Native American Bear Shaman costume using the skin of a real bear, click HERE.
In a quick commment in a continuing theme as mentioned above regarding Carlos Castandea and if Don Juan Matus was a composite of one or more shamans or not. Don Juan is presented, understandably enough, throughout the series of books by Castaneda as if he was NOT. Castaneda states that Don Juan, at the age of twenty, had come in contact with a person Don Juan refered to as a master sorcerer by the name of Julian Osorio. Osorio inturn introduced Don Juan into a lineage of sorcerers that was purported to be twenty-five generations long. Don Juan told Castaneda that Osorio had been an actor and during one of his theatrical tours he had met another master shaman, Elias Ulloa, who transmitted to Osorio the knowledge of his lineage of sorcerers and thus inturn through Osorio to Don Juan, then down in lineage to Castaneda.
TEZLCAZI GUITIMEA CACHORA: Yaqui Shaman
Tezlcazi Guitimea Cachora, who would be well into his 90s by now, is a Yaqui shaman known as Grandfather Cachora, that has indicated he IS the actual, real Don Juan Matus, the person who taught Carlos Castaneda. There are, however, rather stark differences between what he says about himself and his background and what Castaneda has written and made clear about Don Juan and Don Juan's background.
Corey Donovan (aka Richard Jennings), a former student of Carlos Castaneda and creator of the most excellent Castaneda internet site Sustained Action, attended a talk by Grandfather Cachora in September, 2000. At that talk Donovan asked when it was Castaneda studied with Cachora. Bernyce Barlow, author of Sacred Sites of the West and Sacred Sites and Shaman's Flights, a member of Cachora's immediate entourage and sitting at his feet during the talk, responded for him with, "In the early 70s." Donovan asked again, "Not in the 60s?" After looking at Cachora, Barlow responded with "Once maybe in '69."
Castaneda says he met Don Juan in the late summer of 1960 as stated in the now infamous Nogales Bus Station Meeting. Eight years later, Castaneda's first book on Don Juan was published. If Cachora did not meet Castaneda until 1970 --- or possibly 1969 --- who was the person Castaneda met in 1960?
Other discrepancies exist as well such as Cachora saying he was born in approximately 1912. Castaneda makes it quite clear in a number of places throughout his series of Don Juan books that Don Juan was born in 1891. In THE TEACHINGS OF DON JUAN: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge (1968), Introduction, Castaneda writes, speaking of Don Juan:
"All he said was that he had been born in the Southwest in 1891; that he had spent nearly all his life in Mexico; that in 1900 his family was exiled by the Mexican government to central Mexico along with thousands of other Sonoran Indians; and that he had lived in central and southern Mexico until 1940."
The following is found in DON JUAN MATUS: Real or Imagined:
"(In) the tenth book into his series, titled Magical Passes (1998), Castaneda offers his strongest clarification of Don Juan's chronology, some of which of course, had been spattered here and there throughout each of his previous books over time as well. Don Juan is described as being born in Yuma, Arizona Territory, to a Yaqui Indian father from Sonora, Mexico and a Yuma Indian mother from the Territory of Arizona. The three of them lived together in Arizona Territory until Don Juan was ten years old, whereupon, for reasons not known or undisclosed by Castaneda, he was taken by his father to Sonora, Mexico. There they were unintentionaly caught up in the Mexican government war against the Yaquis. His father was killed, and Don Juan ended up in southern Mexico, where he grew up with Yaquis that had been uprooted previously by the Mexican government and sent to areas of Mexico well beyond the confines of Sonora --- places such as Oaxaca, Vera Cruz, and the Yucatan." (source)
I can attest to the fact myself that in 1960 when Castaneda allegedly met Don Juan Matus for the first time and described him as a a white-haired old Indian (Don Juan would have just been turning into his 70s) that Cachora, who I met outside the Mexican town of Tecate a few months before the Castaneda/Don Juan meeting, following a healing ceremony being held for a dying man, appeared to me to be, at the time, no more than in his late forties or early fifties at the most --- and most surely in those days, nowhere near being a a white-haired old Indian. (see)
Moving on, Cachora himself has stated through discussion that his mother's parents were from Asia, most notably, Mongolia. So too, he states that his father, named Javali, was a Yaqui and, like how Castaneda writes Don Juan Matus out to be, a Nagual or "man of knowledge." Cachora also states that his mother's parents passed their apparently Mongolian shaman traditions on to him. Why such a suggestion would be made if it was not so I cannot say --- other than by inference Siberian shamans such as Tserin Zarin Boo carry such a strong notion of real shamanism ahead of themselves that their North American counterparts do not.
Now, while in the overall scheme of things, to learn that a female offspring of Mongolian parents (i.e., Cachora's mother) would grow up to find herself in an actual physical situation that would allow her to be able to marry and/or procreate with a Yaqui Indian from Mexico (i.e., Cachora's father) seems questionable at best, I guess it would not be totally beyond comprehension either. However, as Castaneda writes, and I have presented above, Castaneda makes it quite clear that Don Juan's mother was of Yuma extraction. He also makes it quite clear in other places that Don Juan learned his man of knowledge craft from another man of knowledge, a man that was NOT of Indian, Yaqui, or Mongolian background. That man was Julian Osorio. Osorio, interestingly enough, as written by Castaneda, was NOT of Indian extraction at all, but the son of European immigrants to Mexico. In turn Osorio had inherited everything from his teacher, Elias Ulloa. Elias had learned from Rosendo; he from Lujan; Lujan from Santisteban; and Santisteban from Sebastian. Before Sebastian there were eight others, but, according to Don Juan, they were quite different. They had a different attitude toward sorcery as well as a different concept of it, although they were still directly related to his line of sorcery. It wasn't until Sebastian's encounter and eventual alliance with the Death Defier that the lineage truly changed.
Some people say there never was a Don Juan Matus. Others say he was composite of several people, most often being named the revered Cahuilla spiritual elder Salvador Lopez and the Mazatec curandera Maria Sabina. Others, such as Tezlcazi Guitimea Cachora have claimed outright to BE Don Juan Matus. Still others say someone like Alex Apostolides, of whom I address the possibility, or the lack of same, in The Tree, if not Don Juan was the role model for him. Then there are those like Ken Eagle Feather who say they met, knew and actually studied under him. However, even the staunchest critic against Don Juan existing, that is, if he was real or not, would not go as far to say that Castaneda wasn't. He went to UCLA, got his PhD, and did all the events leading up to the bus station meeting in Nogales. After that, no matter how one mixes it, berates it, or whether any of it is true or false, real or imagined, the following still plays out:
"(If) Don Juan was an actual person, a composite of several people, a total fabrication or a figment of Castaneda's imagination, the events leading up to meeting Don Juan and the various interactions with people, places, and things don't necessarily have to be discarded. Then again, if the informant was used as a model by Castaneda for Don Juan, or if aspects of his manners or abilities seeped into the characterization of Don Juan, I can't really say as he was neither Yaqui, Native American, Mexican-Indian nor Mesoamerican or Hispanic. Except for a possible hint in the closing paragraph of Cloud Shaman, relating to the fact cited above where the informant "cloaked by shimmering desert heat waves, simply seemed to evaporate into the rocks and sagebrush without a trace," it was never made clear to me specifically if he himself was a Shaman." (source)
AND NOW THIS:
I may come across seeming a tad bit facetious in my remarks about a potential hook-up between a full-bred Mongolian offspring and a Yaqui --- however, as odd and as remote a possibility as it may seem and I personally question the concept in it's overall viability, again, it is NOT fully or totally out of the question.
Some of you may recall that some days prior to unexpectantly running into Carlos Castaneda in the Nogales bus station on the same day Castaneda met Don Juan (linked above), I was in Mexico in the town of Magdalena, somewhat south of Nogales. In Magdalena I met a man by the name of Maldonado and he inturn, in passing conversation told me, since I was from California at the time, that he had a relative, a brick maker, that lived in Pomona, California, a then small community east of Los Angeles. In that conversation, for no apparent reason except maybe to fluff up his own feathers, he said that his namesake relative, the brick maker, was a direct inline descendent of the great Yaqui warrior and general, Juan Maria Maldonado, known in Yaqui history as Tetabiate.
At the time, except as small talk, none of it meant anything to me one way or the other. Later on, as all of the Castaneda and Yaqui stuff came to the forefront I remembered the story about the brick maker being a Yaqui and living in Pomona, so one day, just for the heck of it, I sought him out.
Most of what he told me about Yaquis and General Maldonado did not seem to come first hand, but what he had formulated and learned over the years as he told the various stories over and over. However, he did tell me something I knew was from personal experience that made my jaw drop --- here, this basically uneducated, broken-english speaking, up from Sonora Yaqui had been to Siberia! Never in my life would I ever have thought of such a thing. What happened was, during the years 1918 to 1920 troops were sent into Siberia from the U.S. and a number of other places in what was called America's Undeclared War to guard segments of the railway between Vladivostok and Nikolsk-Ussuriski. In an almost amazing story, the brick maker got caught up in it and ended up in Siberia. Now, while it is true it was in the 1918-1920 period well AFTER the 1912 birth of Tezlcazi Guitimea Cachora and NOT Mongolia, it still remains at least one Yaqui got as far as Siberia in the early 1900s, which, albeit pushing it, opens the possibility --- at least for me and however remote --- possibly in either direction, of other potential defusional transgressions.
For more on Don Juan's father and if there was a Yuma Indian woman in the picture or not as the mother of Don Juan, please see Footnote [1] to Albert Franklin Banta.
REGARDING THE USE OF THE WORD "SHAMAN":
Some people in some groups do not like the use of the word "shaman," especially so when used in regards to discussing or describing spiritual elders or the like in reference to Native Americans. Castaneda himself was caught in a quandry when he tried to present his works to a much broader audience than just those close to him in anthropological circles. In his ninth book Art of Dreaming (1993) he tried to explain his position thus:
"Following Don Juan's suggestion, I have refrained from using the term shamanism, a category proper to anthropology, to classify his knowledge. I have called it all along what he himself called it: sorcery. On examination, however, I realized that calling it sorcery obscures even more the already obscure phenomena he presented to me in his teachings.
In anthropological works, shamanism is described as a belief system of some native people of northern Asia, prevailing also among certain native North American Indian tribes, which maintains that an unseen world of ancestral spiritual forces, good and evil, is pervasive around us; and that these spiritual forces can be summoned or controlled through the acts of practitioners who are the intermediaries between the natural and supernatural realms.
Don Juan was indeed an intermediary between the natural world of everyday life and an unseen world, which he called not the supernatural but the second attention.
So, Castaneda says, "Following Don Juan's suggestion, I have refrained from using the term shamanism, a category proper to anthropology." Here is Castaneda, with a PhD in anthropology, saying only under Don Juan's suggestion does he refrain from using the term. He goes on to say the term shamanism is a catagory proper to anthropology. Some within certain groups may not like the use of the word "shaman" when applied to them, but, in the vast litany of universal knowledge called Anthropology shamanism IS a term, and thus then by inference the word shaman, proper to anthropology. For more please see:
When writers suggest a composite they are saying that Castaneda took a "number" of different individuals and combined their shaman-like traits and abilities into one person, in the process "inventing" Don Juan. One of the people most often cited as being used for a potential compositee is the Cahuilla Spiritual Elder, Salvador Lopez. However, the opening paragraph at the top of the page, although it makes reference to the possibilites of "two different people," and may seem to fall into the same camp as an invented composite, there is a huge difference. Two totally separate individuals, each one thought to be the one-and-only Don Juan Matus by different people or groups of people --- and having the twain never meet --- is a totally different approach than a composite. The person most often cited as a totally separate individual is the self-proclaimed Yaqui Shaman, Tezlcazi Guitimea Cachora. But, before getting to Cachora, lets investigate the potential possibiities, if any, of Salvador Lopez being a composite or somehow involved:
SALVADOR LOPEZ: Cahuilla Spiritual Elder
Salvador Lopez (d. August, 1967, with some reports stating 1973) was a member and highly revered spiritual elder of the Cahuilla band of Indians of the Morongo Reservation, Banning, California. He was renowned as an expert on medicinal plants, a bird singer and doing feats with fire as well as being a Bear Shaman. Lopez is considered by some to be at least one of the sources of information Carlos Castaneda used regarding Sacred Datura and other hallucinogenics presented in his first two books.* True, the possibility does exists that Lopez could have contributed in some fashion as an informant of Castaneda's, but it is questionable. It becomes an even more remote possibility if Lopez is thrust into the role of the primary source of information, especially considering the fund of of knowledge Castaneda presented in his first two books. Lopez was known for being quite stoic and non-communicative even among his own band, so it would be highly unlikely that he would depart very much in the way ancient and guarded tribal secrets to a total stranger or outsider, most particularly so in the short space of time Castaneda had with him.
A woman by the name of Mary Joan (Joanie) Barker is said to have been the person that originally took Castaneda to the Morongo Indian Reservation located near her childhood home in Banning where she grew up. While visiting the reservation Castaneda met, among others, Lopez. Because of the ensuing interaction with Lopez it has been extrapolated that Castaneda obtained the information on datura he used in his first book, TEACHINGS OF DON JUAN: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge (1968). That use of datura, outlining datura's four heads, their different purposes, the significance of the roots, the cooking process and the ritual of preparation, all information Castaneda says was learned from Don Juan Matus, was written by Castaneda and found in PART ONE: THE TEACHINGS, Chapter 3, dated Wednesday, August 23, 1961.
However, in the spring semester of 1960, fifteen full months before that August 23, 1961 date cited by Castaneda in his book, Castaneda was an undergraduate anthropology student enrolled in a class at UCLA titled "Methods in Field Archaeology," taught by Professor Clement Meighan. As part of a requirement for that class, Castaneda wrote and turned in a paper with all the exact same information. In regards to that spring semester of 1960 paper, Professor Meighan is on record of saying:
"(Castaneda's) informant knew a great deal about Datura, which was a drug used in initiating ceremonies by some California groups, but had presumed by me and I think most other anthropologists to have passed out of the picture 40 or 50 years ago. So he found an informant who still actually knew something about this and still had used it."
If we disregard Don Juan Matus as the source of the information and go with the suggestion that Lopez was the source, it would automatically infer then that any meeting between the Castaneda and Lopez would have to had occurred BEFORE the end of the spring semester of 1960 inorder for any of the information to have been used in his paper.
UCLA professor Douglass Price-Williams, a friend of Castaneda's and a member of his 1973 PhD dissertation committee, has been quoted as saying Barker was a librarian at UCLA sometime in the summer of 1960 and it was during that summer, July or August of 1960, that Castaneda and Barker met. If such was the case, any introduction by her involving Castaneda and Lopez would have transpired AFTER Castaneda's 1960s paper on datura was turned in --- once again opening up the "who was the informant" question.(see)
IF there WAS a meeting between Castaneda and Lopez, regardless of the timing of a meeting, before, during, or after the spring semester, or how long or short it was, there remains a remote possibility Lopez may have had an influence on Castaneda --- just not at the level of being the informant. Not to discount Lopez's abilities or knowledge, a much more credible source would be the Mazatec curandera Maria Sabina or the Huichol shaman-priest Ramón Medina Silva, as cited by anthropologist Jay Courtney Fikes in his book Carlos Castaneda, Academic Opportunism and the Psychedelic Sixties (1993). The problem with Sabina is that she is not known to have ventured very far (physically) from her birthplace. Castaneda's ex-wife Margaret Runyan (1921-2011) confirmed that her husband made frequent field trips to Mexico in the time he was supposedly apprenticed to the shaman sorcerer Don Juan Matus. Even though it has been recorded that Castaneda met briefly with Dr. Timothy Leary at the Catalina Hotel in Zihuatanejo sometime during the summer of 1962 --- albeit somewhat unsuccessfuly --- NOTHING has surfaced that substantiates any sort of meeting between the curandera and Castaneda or that he ever made it all the way to HER remote village in the state of Oaxaca.(see)
As for the Huichol shaman-priest Ramón Medina Silva being Don Juan or a potential composite for Don Juan, the connection is made by a very thin thread that some say leads to Castaneda.(see) Although the thread existed, the strength of the connection weakens because of the timing of events. The person designated only as the Informant that shows up in various writings including Castaneda's last book, The Active Side of Infinity and who is known to have have been friends with Sabina long before her rise to fame is perhaps the most credible source.
"In describing his teacher, Don Juan used the word Diablero. Later I learned diablero is a term used only by the Sonoran Indians. It refers to an evil person who practises black sorcery and is capable of transforming himself into an animal - a bird, a dog, a coyote, or any other creature."
CARLOS CASTANEDA: THE TEACHINGS OF DON JUAN: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge (1968)
Capable of transforming himself into an animal - a bird, a dog, a coyote, or any other creature! As stated prior in the main section above, Lopez was said to be a Bear Shaman. Bear Shamans are a special class of Shaman that have received their power from grizzly bears and that possess many of the qualities of the grizzly, especially their apparent invulnerability to fatal attack. Bear Shamans are said to have the ability to assume the form of bears (i.e., shapeshift) and that they can be killed an indefinite number of times when in this form and each time return to life. In some tribal beliefs the Bear Shaman was not thought to actually become a bear, instead being a man clothed in the skin of a bear, but capable through Shaman powers of inflicting greater injury than a true bear. To see a photo of a Native American Bear Shaman costume using the skin of a real bear, click HERE.
In a quick commment in a continuing theme as mentioned above regarding Carlos Castandea and if Don Juan Matus was a composite of one or more shamans or not. Don Juan is presented, understandably enough, throughout the series of books by Castaneda as if he was NOT. Castaneda states that Don Juan, at the age of twenty, had come in contact with a person Don Juan refered to as a master sorcerer by the name of Julian Osorio. Osorio inturn introduced Don Juan into a lineage of sorcerers that was purported to be twenty-five generations long. Don Juan told Castaneda that Osorio had been an actor and during one of his theatrical tours he had met another master shaman, Elias Ulloa, who transmitted to Osorio the knowledge of his lineage of sorcerers and thus inturn through Osorio to Don Juan, then down in lineage to Castaneda.
TEZLCAZI GUITIMEA CACHORA: Yaqui Shaman
Tezlcazi Guitimea Cachora, who would be well into his 90s by now, is a Yaqui shaman known as Grandfather Cachora, that has indicated he IS the actual, real Don Juan Matus, the person who taught Carlos Castaneda. There are, however, rather stark differences between what he says about himself and his background and what Castaneda has written and made clear about Don Juan and Don Juan's background.
Corey Donovan (aka Richard Jennings), a former student of Carlos Castaneda and creator of the most excellent Castaneda internet site Sustained Action, attended a talk by Grandfather Cachora in September, 2000. At that talk Donovan asked when it was Castaneda studied with Cachora. Bernyce Barlow, author of Sacred Sites of the West and Sacred Sites and Shaman's Flights, a member of Cachora's immediate entourage and sitting at his feet during the talk, responded for him with, "In the early 70s." Donovan asked again, "Not in the 60s?" After looking at Cachora, Barlow responded with "Once maybe in '69."
Castaneda says he met Don Juan in the late summer of 1960 as stated in the now infamous Nogales Bus Station Meeting. Eight years later, Castaneda's first book on Don Juan was published. If Cachora did not meet Castaneda until 1970 --- or possibly 1969 --- who was the person Castaneda met in 1960?
Other discrepancies exist as well such as Cachora saying he was born in approximately 1912. Castaneda makes it quite clear in a number of places throughout his series of Don Juan books that Don Juan was born in 1891. In THE TEACHINGS OF DON JUAN: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge (1968), Introduction, Castaneda writes, speaking of Don Juan:
"All he said was that he had been born in the Southwest in 1891; that he had spent nearly all his life in Mexico; that in 1900 his family was exiled by the Mexican government to central Mexico along with thousands of other Sonoran Indians; and that he had lived in central and southern Mexico until 1940."
The following is found in DON JUAN MATUS: Real or Imagined:
"(In) the tenth book into his series, titled Magical Passes (1998), Castaneda offers his strongest clarification of Don Juan's chronology, some of which of course, had been spattered here and there throughout each of his previous books over time as well. Don Juan is described as being born in Yuma, Arizona Territory, to a Yaqui Indian father from Sonora, Mexico and a Yuma Indian mother from the Territory of Arizona. The three of them lived together in Arizona Territory until Don Juan was ten years old, whereupon, for reasons not known or undisclosed by Castaneda, he was taken by his father to Sonora, Mexico. There they were unintentionaly caught up in the Mexican government war against the Yaquis. His father was killed, and Don Juan ended up in southern Mexico, where he grew up with Yaquis that had been uprooted previously by the Mexican government and sent to areas of Mexico well beyond the confines of Sonora --- places such as Oaxaca, Vera Cruz, and the Yucatan." (source)
I can attest to the fact myself that in 1960 when Castaneda allegedly met Don Juan Matus for the first time and described him as a a white-haired old Indian (Don Juan would have just been turning into his 70s) that Cachora, who I met outside the Mexican town of Tecate a few months before the Castaneda/Don Juan meeting, following a healing ceremony being held for a dying man, appeared to me to be, at the time, no more than in his late forties or early fifties at the most --- and most surely in those days, nowhere near being a a white-haired old Indian. (see)
Moving on, Cachora himself has stated through discussion that his mother's parents were from Asia, most notably, Mongolia. So too, he states that his father, named Javali, was a Yaqui and, like how Castaneda writes Don Juan Matus out to be, a Nagual or "man of knowledge." Cachora also states that his mother's parents passed their apparently Mongolian shaman traditions on to him. Why such a suggestion would be made if it was not so I cannot say --- other than by inference Siberian shamans such as Tserin Zarin Boo carry such a strong notion of real shamanism ahead of themselves that their North American counterparts do not.
Now, while in the overall scheme of things, to learn that a female offspring of Mongolian parents (i.e., Cachora's mother) would grow up to find herself in an actual physical situation that would allow her to be able to marry and/or procreate with a Yaqui Indian from Mexico (i.e., Cachora's father) seems questionable at best, I guess it would not be totally beyond comprehension either. However, as Castaneda writes, and I have presented above, Castaneda makes it quite clear that Don Juan's mother was of Yuma extraction. He also makes it quite clear in other places that Don Juan learned his man of knowledge craft from another man of knowledge, a man that was NOT of Indian, Yaqui, or Mongolian background. That man was Julian Osorio. Osorio, interestingly enough, as written by Castaneda, was NOT of Indian extraction at all, but the son of European immigrants to Mexico. In turn Osorio had inherited everything from his teacher, Elias Ulloa. Elias had learned from Rosendo; he from Lujan; Lujan from Santisteban; and Santisteban from Sebastian. Before Sebastian there were eight others, but, according to Don Juan, they were quite different. They had a different attitude toward sorcery as well as a different concept of it, although they were still directly related to his line of sorcery. It wasn't until Sebastian's encounter and eventual alliance with the Death Defier that the lineage truly changed.
Some people say there never was a Don Juan Matus. Others say he was composite of several people, most often being named the revered Cahuilla spiritual elder Salvador Lopez and the Mazatec curandera Maria Sabina. Others, such as Tezlcazi Guitimea Cachora have claimed outright to BE Don Juan Matus. Still others say someone like Alex Apostolides, of whom I address the possibility, or the lack of same, in The Tree, if not Don Juan was the role model for him. Then there are those like Ken Eagle Feather who say they met, knew and actually studied under him. However, even the staunchest critic against Don Juan existing, that is, if he was real or not, would not go as far to say that Castaneda wasn't. He went to UCLA, got his PhD, and did all the events leading up to the bus station meeting in Nogales. After that, no matter how one mixes it, berates it, or whether any of it is true or false, real or imagined, the following still plays out:
"(If) Don Juan was an actual person, a composite of several people, a total fabrication or a figment of Castaneda's imagination, the events leading up to meeting Don Juan and the various interactions with people, places, and things don't necessarily have to be discarded. Then again, if the informant was used as a model by Castaneda for Don Juan, or if aspects of his manners or abilities seeped into the characterization of Don Juan, I can't really say as he was neither Yaqui, Native American, Mexican-Indian nor Mesoamerican or Hispanic. Except for a possible hint in the closing paragraph of Cloud Shaman, relating to the fact cited above where the informant "cloaked by shimmering desert heat waves, simply seemed to evaporate into the rocks and sagebrush without a trace," it was never made clear to me specifically if he himself was a Shaman." (source)
AND NOW THIS:
I may come across seeming a tad bit facetious in my remarks about a potential hook-up between a full-bred Mongolian offspring and a Yaqui --- however, as odd and as remote a possibility as it may seem and I personally question the concept in it's overall viability, again, it is NOT fully or totally out of the question.
Some of you may recall that some days prior to unexpectantly running into Carlos Castaneda in the Nogales bus station on the same day Castaneda met Don Juan (linked above), I was in Mexico in the town of Magdalena, somewhat south of Nogales. In Magdalena I met a man by the name of Maldonado and he inturn, in passing conversation told me, since I was from California at the time, that he had a relative, a brick maker, that lived in Pomona, California, a then small community east of Los Angeles. In that conversation, for no apparent reason except maybe to fluff up his own feathers, he said that his namesake relative, the brick maker, was a direct inline descendent of the great Yaqui warrior and general, Juan Maria Maldonado, known in Yaqui history as Tetabiate.
At the time, except as small talk, none of it meant anything to me one way or the other. Later on, as all of the Castaneda and Yaqui stuff came to the forefront I remembered the story about the brick maker being a Yaqui and living in Pomona, so one day, just for the heck of it, I sought him out.
Most of what he told me about Yaquis and General Maldonado did not seem to come first hand, but what he had formulated and learned over the years as he told the various stories over and over. However, he did tell me something I knew was from personal experience that made my jaw drop --- here, this basically uneducated, broken-english speaking, up from Sonora Yaqui had been to Siberia! Never in my life would I ever have thought of such a thing. What happened was, during the years 1918 to 1920 troops were sent into Siberia from the U.S. and a number of other places in what was called America's Undeclared War to guard segments of the railway between Vladivostok and Nikolsk-Ussuriski. In an almost amazing story, the brick maker got caught up in it and ended up in Siberia. Now, while it is true it was in the 1918-1920 period well AFTER the 1912 birth of Tezlcazi Guitimea Cachora and NOT Mongolia, it still remains at least one Yaqui got as far as Siberia in the early 1900s, which, albeit pushing it, opens the possibility --- at least for me and however remote --- possibly in either direction, of other potential defusional transgressions.
For more on Don Juan's father and if there was a Yuma Indian woman in the picture or not as the mother of Don Juan, please see Footnote [1] to Albert Franklin Banta.
REGARDING THE USE OF THE WORD "SHAMAN":
Some people in some groups do not like the use of the word "shaman," especially so when used in regards to discussing or describing spiritual elders or the like in reference to Native Americans. Castaneda himself was caught in a quandry when he tried to present his works to a much broader audience than just those close to him in anthropological circles. In his ninth book Art of Dreaming (1993) he tried to explain his position thus:
"Following Don Juan's suggestion, I have refrained from using the term shamanism, a category proper to anthropology, to classify his knowledge. I have called it all along what he himself called it: sorcery. On examination, however, I realized that calling it sorcery obscures even more the already obscure phenomena he presented to me in his teachings.
In anthropological works, shamanism is described as a belief system of some native people of northern Asia, prevailing also among certain native North American Indian tribes, which maintains that an unseen world of ancestral spiritual forces, good and evil, is pervasive around us; and that these spiritual forces can be summoned or controlled through the acts of practitioners who are the intermediaries between the natural and supernatural realms.
Don Juan was indeed an intermediary between the natural world of everyday life and an unseen world, which he called not the supernatural but the second attention.
So, Castaneda says, "Following Don Juan's suggestion, I have refrained from using the term shamanism, a category proper to anthropology." Here is Castaneda, with a PhD in anthropology, saying only under Don Juan's suggestion does he refrain from using the term. He goes on to say the term shamanism is a catagory proper to anthropology. Some within certain groups may not like the use of the word "shaman" when applied to them, but, in the vast litany of universal knowledge called Anthropology shamanism IS a term, and thus then by inference the word shaman, proper to anthropology. For more please see: