CARLOS CASTANEDA'S PRELIMINARY NOTE IN TAISHA ABELAR'S BOOK "THE SORCERER'S CROSSING"

Taisha Abelar was one of Carlos Castaneda's witches. In 1992, she published a book titled "The Sorcerer's Crossing," in which she recounted  her alleged encounter, training, and initiation with Don Juan's witches.

And Carlos Castaneda wrote the following introductory note at the beginning of this book:

« Taisha Abelar is one of the three women who received teachings and were trained in a very deliberate way by sorcerers in Mexico, under the direction of Don Juan Matus.

I have written extensively about my own training with him, but never about the specific group to which Taisha Abelar belongs. There was an unspoken agreement among all of us under Don Juan's tutelage that I would not write anything about them.

I have observed this agreement for over twenty years. Furthermore, although we have all worked and lived in close proximity, we have never discussed our personal experiences. In fact, there was never even an opportunity to exchange views about what Don Juan or the sorcerers in his group did to each of us.

This condition was not linked to Don Juan's presence, since after he and his group left this world, we continued to adhere to it, as we did not wish to waste our energy reviewing previously established agreements.

All the time and energy at our disposal has been used to confirm on our own everything that Don Juan taught us so diligently.

Don Juan taught us that witchcraft is a pragmatic endeavor through which anyone can perceive energy directly. In order to perceive it in this way, he maintained that we must free ourselves from our normal way of perceiving. Freeing ourselves in this way and perceiving energy directly was a task that required all our effort.

One concept of witchcraft is that the parameters of our normal perception have been imposed upon us as part of the process of social adaptation, not entirely arbitrarily, but nonetheless forcibly prescribed. One aspect of these obligatory parameters is the system of interpretation that transforms sensory data into meaningful units, which in turn transform the social order into a structure of interpretation.

Our ordinary functioning within the social order requires blind and faithful adherence to all its precepts, none of which allow for the possibility of directly perceiving energy. Don Juan claimed, for example, that it is possible to perceive human beings as energy fields in the form of enormous, whitish, luminous eggs.

In order to achieve the feat of increasing our perceptual capacity, we require internal energy. Therefore, the problem of obtaining the necessary internal energy to accomplish such a task becomes the primary concern of those who study witchcraft.

Certain circumstances relevant to our current situation have allowed Taisha Abelar to write about her preparation, which was the same as mine and yet entirely different. She took a long time to complete this task because she first had to acquire the means provided by witchcraft for writing.

Don Juan Matus himself entrusted me with the task of writing about his knowledge. And it was he who set the appropriate mood for that task by advising me: "Do not write like a writer, but like a sorcerer." He meant that I should do so in a heightened state of consciousness that sorcerers call reverie.

Taisha Abelar took many years to perfect his dream to the point of turning it into the medium that sorcerers use to write. 

In Don Juan's world, sorcerers, according to their basic temperament, are divided into two complementary groups: the dreamers and the stalkers.

Dreamers are sorcerers who possess an innate ability to enter heightened states of consciousness by controlling their ordinary dreams. Training develops this ability into an art: the art of dreaming.

Stalkers, on the other hand, are sorcerers who possess an innate ability to deal with events; they are capable of entering heightened states of consciousness through the manipulation and control of their own behavior. And training as a sorcerer transforms this natural ability into the art of stalking.

Although all members of the group of sorcerers led by Don Juan had a general knowledge of both arts, they were assigned to one side or the other. Taisha Abelar was assigned to the stalkers and instructed by them. Her book bears the mark of her superb training as a stalker. »

OBSERVATIONS

1. Carlos Castaneda stated that "Taisha Abelar is one of the three women who received teachings and were trained in a very deliberate way by sorcerers in Mexico, under the direction of Don Juan Matus."

The other two women Castaneda mentions were Carol Tiggs and Florinda Donner; but there was also another one that Castaneda only mentioned to his personal students: Joanie Barker.

Supposedly these four women had also been disciples of Don Juan's sorcerers (and that's why they were called "the witches") but the reality is that they did not show any shamanic knowledge and only repeated what Castaneda said, they also did not show any supernatural power or faculty, their books are full of lies, and the study of their biographies shows that they were living in Los Angeles when supposedly they were in Arizona or Mexico carrying out their shamanic apprenticeship.

All of this indicates that these women were NOT disciples of Don Juan's sorcerers, and Castaneda simply invented this falsehood so that they would also support the story he had been telling, since many people accused him of only making up the stories he put in his books.

The reality is that these women were Castaneda's first lovers, but since Castaneda said that shamanic warriors must remain celibate to accumulate energy, instead of presenting them to the public as his personal harem, he preferred to present them as "Don Juan's other disciples."

And when Castaneda specifies that "there was never even an opportunity to exchange points of view about what Don Juan or the sorcerers of his group did to each of us," it is so as not to have to deal with recounting the same experiences and thus not contradict each other more than they already did with their fictional stories.

2. On the other hand, when Castaneda says that "certain circumstances pertinent to our condition at the moment have allowed Taisha Abelar to write about her preparation," he is referring to the unexpected return of the nahual woman Carol Tiggs, who had supposedly gone to another dimension of existence with Don Juan and his sorcerers, or with the Death Defier (Castaneda initially said the former, but then said the latter).

But the reality is that Carol didn't leave this world; she distanced herself from Castaneda in 1973, continued her physical life in Los Angeles, and rejoined Castaneda in 1983. This shows you the big charlatan Carlos Castaneda was, inventing this whole fantastical story to explain Carol Tiggs's departure and return.

3. Then Castaneda says that Taisha took a long time to write her book because "she  took many years to perfect her dreaming to the point of turning it into the medium that sorcerers use to write."

That is a vile lie because what Taisha put in her book is not based on the experiences she had when she was in an heightened state of consciousness (and that is why she had to remember them through dreaming) but on the lies she came up with  –probably with Castaneda's assistance– since  her book is full of falsehoods.

4.  And finally Castaneda says that Taisha was an incredible stalker, but that is false because in Don Juan's lineage, stalkers are shamanic practitioners who dominate the world by manipulating people, and achieving their goals with patience, cunning, and control.

But Taisha had none of that, to the point that when Castaneda died, despite inheriting a great fortune and still having many years to live, she preferred to commit suicide because she didn't know how to continue existing without Castaneda, and someone like that is not a stalker.