The Doors Of Perception
Feb. 3rd, 2007 10:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphiloRemember Carlos Casteneda- the guy who turned us on to the druggy wisdom of the native American shamans? There was an hour long documentary about him last night. Turns out he was the worst kind of fraud; he faked his research, he made millions out of his ersatz spiritual teachings, he set himself up as a guru and fucked people up. What does it say about religion in general that every prophet you examine turns out to have been in it for the sex? Castaneda was the sort of abusive shit who would tell a disciple that in order to exorcise the demons of her past he would need to shag her in her childhood bedroom. In old age he lived in Hughesian seclusion with a quartet of female bodyguards who believed he was going to turn into a being of pure light and take them with him into "Infinity".
Unfortunately he died of liver cancer before he was able to get round to it.
And the girls he'd left behind drove off into the desert and either shot themselves to death or died of exposure.
Anyway, the programme was talking about peyote and Ailz says, "We've got some of that." What! "Yes, those little buttony things. They're peyote. That's why they cost so much." But it turns out the peyote cactus is legal- even though its derivative- mescaline- is a Class "A" drug.
I resisted the impulse to rush into the kitchen and eat the house plants.
Peyote is endangered in the wild. It's a very slow-growing plant and- thanks to Casteneda- the fuckin hippies are stripping it out of the desert faster than it can reproduce.
Unfortunately he died of liver cancer before he was able to get round to it.
And the girls he'd left behind drove off into the desert and either shot themselves to death or died of exposure.
Anyway, the programme was talking about peyote and Ailz says, "We've got some of that." What! "Yes, those little buttony things. They're peyote. That's why they cost so much." But it turns out the peyote cactus is legal- even though its derivative- mescaline- is a Class "A" drug.
I resisted the impulse to rush into the kitchen and eat the house plants.
Peyote is endangered in the wild. It's a very slow-growing plant and- thanks to Casteneda- the fuckin hippies are stripping it out of the desert faster than it can reproduce.
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no subject
Date: 2007-02-10 07:34 pm (UTC)I read him with wide-eyed amazement in the--what?-seventies?--when I believed everything anybody told me...I believed him, too.
But the Power Spot---I still believe in that, and some of his teacher's ideas were pretty--heavy and wonderful.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-12 10:54 pm (UTC)I never read him. I think he probably had considerable literary gifts. What a shame he didn't use them honestly.