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The
existential shamanism of Carlos
Castaneda
After
taking part in a basic course in shamanism with the late Michael Harner in
southern Sweden in 1983 my own shamanic journey brought me into different
paths of wisdom; among them the Nordic tradition of Rune Magic and the
strange world of Carlos Castaneda’s books. Many enthralling experiences and
synchronicities convinced me that these different paths in mystical ways were
quite entangled. So how is it that a shamanic tradition from Scandinavia has
so much in common with the world of pre-Columbian Mesoamerican sorcerers? The
longer and deeper that I have worked with rune magic, the more I have
understood of Castaneda’s writings and the more I have been able to extract
workable shamanic methods from the long expositions of Castaneda’s teacher
don Juan Matus. The
authenticity of don Juan’s teachings have been questioned but to me it is
crystal clear that they stem from ancient Mesoamerican traditions. This is
corroborated e.g. by the new book by Carl Johan Calleman on the cosmological
implications of Maya spirituality – Quantum
Science of Psychedelics. The Mayan macrocosmic quantum theories fit very
well with Castaneda’s view of the cosmos as a dynamic flow of vibrating
fibres. To Castaneda this flow has its origin in what he calls the Eagle, or
The Active Side of Infinity, and this is very close to what Calleman (and the
Maya) calls The Tree of Life, or the Place of Creation. The origin of the
runes is described in similar ways as the Great Void, Ginnungagap, a dimension that alchemists call Unus Mundus. This
understanding of the origin and essence of cosmos as a dynamic flow of
formless energy which manifests in manifold ways in ordinary reality is the
basis of everything that Castaneda wrote. His 12 books are filled with
remarkable experiences and stories of how to achieve balance with this cosmic
flow in order to gain knowledge and power; something that ultimately might
lead to what Castaneda calls total freedom. My 90-page book on Castaneda is
an effort to extract workable shamanic methods from his vast and overwhelming
sea of words and, at the same time, keep him at arm’s length, since he
harbors some very obvious and treacherous trickster qualities. The
main constituent of Castaneda’s path of knowledge is how to move one’s
assemblage point, i.e. the receiving area on one’s energy body of flowing
fibres in order to see and experience the essence of everything. A
prerequisite of this is to dethrone one’s self-importance, erase one’s
personal history, disrupt the routines of life, take full responsibility for
one’s actions, achieve inner silence, become inaccessible and utilize death
as an adviser (“our only true friend”). The aim of Castaneda’s path is to
become a warrior, a man of knowledge, and when that happens all that counts
is “energetic facts”. A man, or woman, of knowledge touches the world
sparingly but with quality. Castaneda’s
way might seem very individualistic but that is an illusion. The warrior is part
of everything else, being neither more nor less important than anything else,
and he/she is in deep love with Mother Earth. Castaneda describes this in a
wonderful scene where don Juan’s cohort don Genaro after an exhausting show
of bodily tricks is lying on his stomach embracing the earth. She is his
mother, his teacher and his conveyor of cosmic energy flowing from the active
side of infinity. To me this means that the shaman’s knowledge and power is
very much an outflow of the earth and the shaman’s freedom implies the
freedom of Mother Earth. My
books The Active Side of Infinity:
Castaneda and Shamanism and Rune
Magic and Shamanism can be ordered from Amazon or directly from
norrshaman@gmail.com This
article was originally published in the May 2020 issue of The Echo World http://theechoworld.com/ |
