The Sorcerer's Apprentice: My Life with Carlos Castaneda

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Summary: Mind-Blowing "Truth is Stranger than Fiction" Reading!
Review: This alternately beautiful, terrifying, wondrous, disturbing and profoundly human memoir of the author's 30-year spanning friendship-turned-relationship with the legendary Carlos Castaneda is compulsive, memorable reading. Ms. Wallace (a bestselling fiction and nonfiction writer, as well as the daughter of the best-selling novelist Irving Wallace) - a true seeker who is as brilliant as she is spiritual - shows us the best and the worst of Castaneda the man and his group (more accurately, his CULT), taking the reader on an unforgettable journey into both the light and the dark. Must reading for anyone fascinated with the Castaneda mythos; make no mistake, however - this is far more than a provocative New Age study...it's also a devastatingly incisive, ferociously literate, shatteringly tragic and ultimately triumphant story of an incredible and heroic woman's most extraordinary life.

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Summary: sorcerer's apprentice by amy wallace
Review: Fantastic! Worth the wait -- everything I've wanted to know for 30 years about Castaneda -- a great read.

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Summary: Sorcerer's Apprentice
Review: I read this staying up all night -- couldn't put it down. This is a courageous page-turner, beautifully written.

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Summary: An Intimate Look At The Real Castaneda
Review: Bravo! After many years of wild claims regarding Carlos Castaneda, it's a nice change to get a serious look at the reality behind the myth. Amy Wallace shows us the stark contrast between the high ideals and enticing mysteries Castaneda promoted and the harsher, more ordinary realities lying behind them. This book will be a thrill to those who always wondered what it might be like to be in Castaneda's world. It may amaze those unfamiliar with the strange goings-on in the inner-circle of a cult. It will also serve as a good source of information to former Castaneda followers who never quite penetrated the inner sanctum, eloquently documenting many of the more amusing anecdotes associated with Castaneda, and suggesting probable answers to perplexing questions his organization might have preferred to see remain mysteries forever. Amy Wallace pulls down the curtain and shows us the real man with his real flaws, without ever abandoning her sincere affection for him. A must-read if you were ever interested in Castaneda!

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Summary: A Revelation
Review: This book is a MUST READ for anyone who has been fascinated by the Carlos Castaneda - don Juan saga. Up until now, there were simply no books that looked at the man -- Castaneda - beyond his own words. Amy's book is a disburbing and truthful relevation of the man behind the myth. I couldn't put it down. Clearly, Castaneda was so charismatic and had so many great stories that his students were blinded to the everyday reality of his personality, games, and seduction. What a wild and wierd ride. Some readers may not want to read this -- it will be dis-illusioning. But truth will out. This book will totally change the way many people view Castaneda -- his legacy will never be the same. Highly recommended.

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Summary: "A SEPERATE REALITY"
Review: Its more than amazing to read through the reviews and notice the ones from the Castanada devotees. Castanada is still big business, Cleargreen is still giving expensive workshops selling Tai-Chi movements as something original (Tensegrety) please, give me a break. There are many people who are looking to give away their power to some guru...Castanada, Osho, etc. Anyone whom has a fully operative brain would have no trouble seeing through the Castanada mytho..If Castanada was really a shaman and had magical powers...things would have been much different. The reason he was a recluse and unavailable was simply to avoid being scrutinized. This kept him mysterious, and his myth alive and well...Carlos Castanada was a good writer of fiction that a lot of people with no sense of self tried to make the books into non-fiction..like most cults..and some religions. Read the manipulated mind, by Denise Wynn..for a clear picture. Amy Wallace's book is a good account of a person with no seperate identity trying to bond with a con man and getting burned royally. I am sure that the Castanada brainwashees..are having a hard time with this reality that they themsleves are being chumped....good book.

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Summary: Outing the inner circle
Review: The Casteneda clan had what you could call a group mind-soul (or energy body) wherein Amy Wallace found herself rather beautifully (and at other times rather terribly) ensnared. The chief disciples could be alarmingly candid to the point of being cruel, and Amy seemed to be like me [a romantic], and thus at times was the victim of their tough love.
This account is emotionally wrenching at times, but I was actually incredibly helped by it, finishing it after hardly putting it down.
She doesn't dwell on Carlos' teaching from the "dreaming" point of view - she is most impeccably what they call one of the "stalkers". Her story is less of a visionary one than nuts-and-bolts social/emotional interaction. But in the end, her assessments are unbelievably cogent and I think fair, especially to herself. The lady possesses a fine mind and good heart, and a great facility with words and ideas.
She pronounces that Carlos teachings as laid out in his 'novels' [etc.] form are valid, useful, and enlightening; but she recognizes that his close-knit cult was not so much - being prey to all the emotional failings of people in general but raised to a near-fever pitch.
If you've read all the Casteneda [etc.] books this seems quite superficial until around halfway through, then Amy's story really starts to jell. Anyone who's been in a cult or clique of any nature could profit greatly from reading/experiencing this book. Please note that Amy doesn't paint any of her former cohorts as evil - she still loves them all at the end - friends to the end.
Amy: I also have favored 'Journey to Ixtlan' over Carlos' other tales; and I felt that 'The Art of Dreaming' was a bit off the deep end in terms of excessively meandering into the realms of the paranoid branches of the paranormal. For what it's worth, I still may finish it one day.
I seem to have been strengthened in mysterious, and not-so-mysterious ways by your book - though undoubtedly other factors are also at work.
Thanks.

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Summary: Dissonance
Review: What is the world without dissonance? We question all around us, and Amy kicks Carlos in the you-know-what! Serious questions as to the validity and truth to his teachings. Out-and-out suggestions it all was a cult, but they also questioned Columbus in his time, and had good reasons to. What Carlos did turned the world on it's side. Reads well, but she comes from a great literary family so don't expect anything but interesting and challenging facts/ fiction for Castanedas fans. Go for it...

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Summary: The Failure of the Feminine
Review: This book is happening on two levels, and is thus a perceptual challenge. There is the obvious level of the romantic young woman who wants a relationship with famous fatherly author on her own terms. And that's about as far as she can see. Romance is it. This is not to say that Carlos didn't have a romantic side, but to see this remarkable sorcerer, in the final analysis, as a romantic ("just like me") kind of sums up the book as heavily influenced by (still) adolescent fantasy and major projection.

Another adolescent signal that alarms me is the pages of acknowledgements to people who, Amy has to assure us, really do love her. She hoped writing the book would heal her. It apparently hasn't, and she fails in its purpose because she never really gets to the second level and the truth, namely that she (as we all do) created this absurd "reality" she experiences. All these insane players are her own reflection. And that to navigate and own this excruciating lesson without the recrimination, and without the resultant injury and bitterness, to see it as a gift, is what the mastery of sorcery is really all about. Despite all the apparent realizations, understanding, healing, and transformation that she claims, "Sorcerer's Apprentice" is still a book about "poor me".

Carlos tells her it is all a metaphor. She doesn't get it. The sorceresses keep lambasting her for "not getting it". She thinks they are mostly talking about her clothes and failure to conform. She has, steadfastly and stubbornly, almost no clue about the sorcerer's world. They keep trying to pull her across, and she won't get there.

The tragedy of the book is the failure of the feminine. In Amy's telling, the women dissolve into petty jealousies. That's Amy's level of reality, her own level of challenge and seeing. The truth of it is that all this chaos and challenge and emotionally painful work IS the sorceress' path, the migration through jealousy and apparent betrayal from small-l love to Love. They tell her how much they Love her, and make extravagant overtures to correction, but they obviously can't give her a map to help her up the mountain. (They didn't get one, either.) She ponders the value of the jealousy work, but never embraces it as the gift (while she relishes Muni's awkwardness). What might a woman encounter at the summit? `Most likely the personal mastery that leads to freedom, and unconditional Love.

Contrast this to Amy's fondest memory of Carlos being that of their very best sex. She chose to write yet another book about the sex lives of famous people. That's what she did for her beloveds (!)... polluted the life's work of Carlos and the real sorceresses who are dealing not only with the end of their lineage, but also with their personal failures and the death of the man they Love. The book is Amy's idea of love? She knows nothing about Love.

I could almost hear Carlos laughing between the lines. They (indirectly) left us a book that invites us to choose. Do we want to write them off as sick, a cult, according to a short-sighted in-the-world-dream of sorcerers in their last desperate days? Or, do we want to entertain a different level of Love and Seeing according to the Art they left us, be it real or imaginary? For all their apparent cruelty, I think they nailed Amy quite accurately. She really couldn't get it. She didn't belong in the sorcerer's world, and she failed miserably. As such, I can't grant much credibility to her observations of them and, in particular, what she thinks they said and did to her. It's too too much interpreted around injured Amy.





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Summary: Poor Amy
Review: Even when Florinda tells her to smile, Amy can't do it. Such a simple thing but Amy can't do it. Instead she diverts her energy onto blaming Florinda for being a bad teacher. The whole book encapsulated in that moment.