卡洛斯·卡斯塔尼达

卡洛斯·卡斯塔尼达（Carlos Castañeda，1925年12月25日—1998年4月27日），秘鲁裔美国作家和人类学家，以唐璜书系列（12本书和许多更短的作品）而著名，书中记载了他拜印第安人萨满巫师唐璜·马图斯为师的经历，唐璜其人的真实性曾被多名学者质疑。

Carlos Castaneda (December 25, 1925– April 27, 1998) was a Peruvian-American writer, trained as an anthropologist. Starting in 1968, Castaneda published a series of books that describe alleged training in shamanism that he received under the tutelage of a Yaqui "Man of Knowledge" named Don Juan Matus. While Castaneda's work was accepted as factual by many when the books were first published, the character of Don Juan and the training he described is now generally considered to be fabricated and to have little relation to the actual cultural practices of the Yaqui. Castaneda's early writings featuring Don Juan were bestsellers with the general public, and are considered to be a significant influence on neoshamanism and the New Age movement more broadly.

The first three books—The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, A Separate Reality, and Journey to Ixtlan—were written while he was an anthropology student at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Castaneda was awarded his bachelor's and doctoral degrees from the University of California, Los Angeles, based on the work he described in these books. Castaneda's later works have a greater focus on religious themes. Always reclusive, and following increasing doubt about the veracity of his encounters with Don Juan, in the early 1970s, Castaneda withdrew from the public eye, and began cultivating a following of young female devotees whom he called his "witches" or "chacmools" who he demanded cut off contact with their families, change their names, and sexually submit to him.

At the time of his death in 1998, Castaneda's books had sold more than eight million copies and had been published in 17 languages. Following his death, five of his closest female devotees went missing. The car and skeletal remains of one of them, Patricia Partin, were later found in Death Valley, though the fate of the other four remains unknown.

Early life and education

According to his birth record, Carlos Castañeda was born Carlos César Salvador Arana on December 25, 1925, in Cajamarca, Peru, son of César Arana and Susana Castañeda. Castaneda repeatedly invented details about his background, claiming to be from a noble family, that his uncle was Brazilian diplomat Oswaldo Aranha, and he had gone to a prestigious Argentine boarding school. In reality Castaneda came from a poor background, the son of a watch repairman and goldsmith (rather than an academic as Castaneda claimed). Castaneda spent time as a child on an extended family member's chicken farm in Brazil, working on tasks such as cleaning coops. While he claimed to have spent time learning sculpture in an art school in Milan, Italy, he never did so, though he did spend time at an art school in Peru's capital, Lima. Immigration records confirm the birth record's date and place of birth. Castaneda moved to the United States in 1951 and became a naturalized citizen on June 21, 1957. Castaneda studied anthropology and was awarded his bachelor's and doctoral degrees from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Career

Castaneda's first three books—The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, A Separate Reality, and Journey to Ixtlan—were written while he was an anthropology student at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He wrote that these books were ethnographic accounts describing his apprenticeship with a traditional "Man of Knowledge" identified as Don Juan Matus, an Indigenous Yaqui from northern Mexico. The veracity of these books was doubted from their original publication, and they are considered to be fictional by many scholars. The Teachings of Don Juan gained widespread public attention outside of anthropological circles, launching his career as a writer, being transferred from the University of California Press in 1967 to the mainstream publisher Simon and Schuster in 1968. Castaneda was awarded his bachelor's and doctoral degrees based on the work described in these books.