Theodore or Theodorus may refer to:

Look up Theodor or Theodore in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

As the name of a person[link]

[edit] The name

• Includes the etymology of the name and a longer list of people whose full name includes some version of the name Theodore.

Saints[link]

• See Saint Theodore (disambiguation)

Ancient people[link]

• Theodorus of Samos, (6th-century BC) inventor and architect
• Theodorus of Cyrene, (5th-century BC) mathematician
• Theodorus the Atheist, (c. 300 BC) philosopher of the Cyrenaic school
• Theodorus (meridarch), (1st-century BC) governor of the Indo-Greek kingdom
• Theodorus of Asine, (4th-century AD) Neoplatonist philosopher
• Theodorus Priscianus, (4th-century) physician
• Theodore of Mopsuestia, (c. 350-428) bishop
• Theodorus I of Milan, bishop of Milan 475 – 490
• Theodorus Lector, (6th-century) Byzantine scholar and historian
• Theodore (brother of Heraclius), (7th century) Byzantine general
• Theodore Trithyrius, (7th-century) Byzantine treasurer and military commander
• Theodore Abu-Qurrah, (9th century) Christian Arab theologian

Family name[link]

• José Théodore (born 1976), Canadian ice hockey goaltender
• Jon Theodore, ex-drummer for The Mars Volta
• Ted Theodore, Australian politician d.1950

Places[link]

• Theodore, Alabama, United States
• Theodore, Australian Capital Territory
• Theodore, Queensland, Australia
• Theodore, Saskatchewan, Canada

Other[link]

• James Bass Mullinger, 19th century author who used Theodore as a nom de plume
• Theodore Racing, Formula One racing team
• Theodore Seville, member of the fictional music group "Alvin and the Chipmunks"
• Theodore Huxtable, character on the television series The Cosby Show
• Theodore "T-Bag" Bagwell, character on the television series Prison Break
• Principality of Theodoro, principality in the south-west Crimea from the 13th to 15th centuries.
• Theodore Roosevelt (1858 - 1919), 26th President of the United States of America.

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

Jenna Ushkowitz
Ushkowitz at the San Diego Comic-Con International, July 2010
Born	Jenna Noelle Ushkowitz (adopted name) (1986-04-28) April 28, 1986 (age 26) Seoul, South Korea
Occupation	Actress, singer, dancer
Years active	1989–present

Jenna Noelle Ushkowitz (born April 28, 1986) is an American stage and television actress and singer, who is perhaps best known for her performances in Broadway musicals and for her role as Tina Cohen-Chang on Glee.^[1]

Early life[link]

Ushkowitz was born in Seoul, South Korea; she was adopted at the age of three months and raised in East Meadow, New York.^[2][3] Ushkowitz was raised Catholic^[4] and attended Parkway Elementary School and Holy Trinity Diocesan High School, a Catholic school in Hicksville, Long Island known for its strong theater department. During high school, Ushkowitz appeared in several musicals, including the first-ever high school production of Les Misérables. Her other roles included Penny in Honk!, Inez in The Baker's Wife, Little Red Riding Hood in Into the Woods, and Romaine Patterson in The Laramie Project. She graduated from high school in 2004 and moved on to attend Marymount Manhattan College, where she once again took the role of Little Red Riding Hood in Into the Woods.^[5] She graduated from Marymount Manhattan in 2007 with a B.A. in Acting, with a concentration in Theater Performance and a minor in Musical Theater.

Career[link]

Ushkowitz has had a career in show business since the age of three. As a child, she appeared on Sesame Street and other children's television shows. Her first role in a Broadway musical was in a 1996 revival of The King and I.^[5]

Ushkowitz at the 2010 SAG Awards

Ushkowitz sang the American National Anthem at a Knicks game at Madison Square Garden when she was thirteen.^[5] Before joining the cast of Glee, she was an understudy for the roles of Anna, Martha, Thea and Ilse in the Broadway musical Spring Awakening.^[6]

In 2009, she landed the role of Tina Cohen-Chang on Fox's musical high school show Glee. Her character had a stutter for the first nine episodes until she revealed she had been faking one due to her extreme shyness. Her storylines have included dating fellow glee club members Artie Abrams and Mike Chang. Her solos have included the songs "Tonight" from West Side Story, "True Colors", and "ABC" by the Jackson 5.

Ushkowitz has performed live concert shows in the US, Canada, UK, and Ireland with her castmates from Glee. She has known Glee co-star Lea Michele since they were eight years old; they also co-starred on Broadway in Spring Awakening. Ushkowitz was initially given little information about Tina's backstory, and believed that her stutter was real. She was pleased when the truth was revealed, however, explaining: "It would have been fun to keep it because that just gives her one more quirk, but this opens up a whole new set of doors for Tina."^[7] During the show's first season, Ushkowitz created her own backstory for Tina, and believed that she was rebelling against her mother rather than genuinely being a goth. She explained in late 2009, "I don't think her room is filled with dark posters and heavy metal stuff—I just think this is a phase she's going through. There's definitely a lot of options for all the characters to evolve and change next year. I'm totally rooting for Tina to join The Cheerios [the school's cheerleading squad] or something crazy like that."^[7]

In 2011, Ushkowitz appeared briefly in Lady Gaga's music video for Marry the Night playing Gaga's friend, Bo.

Filmography[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Jenna Ushkowitz

• Jenna Ushkowitz at the Internet Movie Database
• Official Site of the Broadway production of Spring Awakening.

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (November 2008)

Brother Theodore (November 11, 1906 – April 5, 2001), born Theodore Gottlieb, was a German-American monologuist and comedian known for rambling, stream-of-consciousness dialogues which he called "stand-up tragedy".

Early years[link]

He was born into a wealthy Jewish family in Düsseldorf, North Rhine-Westphalia, where his father was a magazine publisher. Theodore attended the University of Cologne. At age 32, under Nazi rule, he was imprisoned at the Dachau concentration camp until he signed over his family's fortune for one Reichsmark. After being deported for chess hustling from Switzerland he went to Austria where Albert Einstein, a family friend and alleged lover of his mother, helped him escape to the United States.^[1][2]

Comes to America[link]

He worked as a janitor at Stanford University, where he demonstrated his prowess at chess by beating 30 professors simultaneously,^[2] and later became a dockworker in San Francisco. He played a bit part in Orson Welles's 1946 movie The Stranger. This was one of the several movie appearances he made beginning in the 1940s and continuing into the 1990s. These were mostly small parts in B-movies, although he did provide the voice of Gollum in the 1977 made-for-television animated version of The Hobbit and the follow-up adaptation of The Return of the King. He also voiced Ruhk - Mommy Fortuna's assistant and carnival barker in The Last Unicorn.

Success[link]

Theodore's career as a monologuist began in California in the late 1940s, with dramatic Poe recitals. He moved to New York City, and by the 1950s his monologues, now darkly humorous, had attracted a cult following. In 1958 he presented a one-man show that promoted the idea that human beings should walk on all fours. He reached a wider audience through television, with 36 appearances on The Merv Griffin Show in the 1960s and '70s, and was also a guest on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, The Dick Cavett Show, and The Joey Bishop Show. As his nightclub and TV appearances in the 1950s and '60s waned,^[2] he was forgotten, and he retired in the mid-1970s.

Comeback[link]

He was pulled out of retirement and booked by magician Dorothy Dietrich and Dick Brooks in the Magic Towne House on the affluent Upper East Side of Manhattan for special weekend midnight performances. Years earlier, Brooks had remembered seeing Brother Theodore packing them in at small, funky and eclectic clubs all across the Lower East Side i.e. Greenwich and the East Village, and sought him out for his new club. This resulted in a resurgence of interest in Brother Theodore that brought him success in his later years starting with Tom Snyder's Tomorrow Show in 1977 followed by more TV appearances and movies. According to Brooks, it took multiple calls to Theodore to convince him to make a comeback. Theodore's attitude was very bleak, and felt his career was over. Brooks wanted to charge ten or more dollars, but Theodore insisted on four dollars, so as not to scare people away. The show was a success and ran for several seasons. A picture of the Magic Towne House ad that appeared in local New York newspapers such as the Village Voice and The New York post can be found at http://www.shockcinemamagazine.com/brother.html

Talk-show viewers probably remember Theodore for his 16 appearances on NBC's Late Night with David Letterman in the 1980s. In the early 1980s, he was a regular on the Billy Crystal Show. In 1989 he appeared in the Joe Dante comedy film The 'Burbs. Up until the late 1990s, he was a guest actor in several episodes of Joe Frank: Work in Progress radio show on NPR. An article on Theodore appeared in RAVE magazine (with color photos) and segments from it are in the book Who's Who in Comedy. Just prior to his death from pneumonia, he taped several monologues for the controversial documentary series, Disinformation. He appeared in Billy Crystal's "Don't Get Me Started" mockumentary, and voiced the character of an ointment expert on NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday audio version of Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer in 1995.

Death[link]

Theodore died in New York City on April 5, 2001, at the age of 94 in Mount Sinai Hospital,^[1] and is buried in Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York.

His headstone reads: Known as Brother Theodore / Solo Performer, Comedian, Metaphysician / "As Long As There is Death, There Is Hope"

Discography[link]

• Entertainment of Sinister and Disconcerting Humor (Tears from a Glass Eye, With a Tongue of Madness): (10 in. disc, Proscenium 21)
• Coral Records Presents Theodore: (Coral S 7322)

Television appearances[link]

• The Joey Bishop Show: 10/31/1967, 11/8/1967 [dates needed]
• The Merv Griffin Show: [dates needed]
• The Tomorrow Show with Tom Snyder: 10/31/1977
• Late Night with David Letterman (NBC): 9/10/1982, 10/20/1982, 2/3/1983, 5/19/1983, 7/8/1983, 9/7/1983, 2/21/1984, 5/16/1984, 9/17/1984, 12/19/1984, 7/8/1985, 10/31/1985, 9/17/1986, 7/24/1987, 1/13/1988, 2/17/1989^[3]

Radio appearances[link]

• Joe Frank's radio shows. Episodes: The Decline of Spengler, The End, A Tour of the City, Black Light

• Steve Post's The Outside radio show on WBAI in New York during the 1960s and 70s.
• Bob Claster's Funny Stuff on KCRW in Santa Monica, September 24, 1989.
• The Ointment Expert: Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Martin, Douglas (April 6, 2001). "Theodore Gottlieb, Dark Comedian, Dies at 94". The New York Times. Retrieved on 2008-08-01.
• Adams, Kathleen; August, Melissa; Hartwell, Randy; Martens, Ellin; Pierro, Joseph; Song, Sora (April 16, 2001). "Milestones". Time Magazine. Retrieved on 2008-08-01.

External links[link]

Biography portal

• Brother Theodore at the Internet Movie Database
• "Brother Theodore". Find a Grave. http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=12315313. Retrieved August 10, 2010. 
• a personal memoir of Theodore by Robert "Bob" Martin

Jon Theodore
Background information
Born	(1973-12-30) December 30, 1973 (age 38)
Origin	Baltimore, MD United States
Genres	Progressive rock, experimental rock
Occupations	Drummer
Instruments	Drums
Years active	1993–present
Associated acts	The Mars Volta, One Day as a Lion, Golden, Giraffe Tongue Orchestra

Jon Philip Theodore (born December 30, 1973) is a drummer, formerly a member of The Mars Volta. He is currently a member of One Day as a Lion as well as hard rock supergroup Giraffe Tongue Orchestra. Theodore has become best known for his explosive, multi-textural and dynamic playing style.

History[link]

Theodore first started playing drums at the age of 15. He was soon involved with his high school concert band at Gilman School in Baltimore, Maryland, and took lessons on a full kit shortly after. It was at this point that he studied percussion and learned how to map arrangements; dedicated practice had already become a habit. He also listened to a great variety of music, growing to love the likes of Billy Cobham, Elvin Jones and John Bonham. He studied at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Ohio.

Around the end of his time in high school, he joined the band Golden and recorded and toured with them for ten years. He also played with Royal Trux for a year-and-a-half. It was during this time that he met Cedric Bixler Zavala and Omar Rodríguez-López, who were performing their first gig with their experimental dub band DeFacto in El Paso, TX. They became friends and the former At the Drive-In duo would later invite Theodore to join their Latin-tinged prog-rock band, The Mars Volta. Theodore was The Mars Volta's drummer from 2001 to 2006. On July 30, 2006, it was announced that Jon Theodore would be permanently replaced. He was quoted in Modern Drummer: "It was long overdue and unquestionably the best thing for everyone involved. We had a great run of things, made some decent records, blew it up for a minute, and had some really great times. But the life ran out of it. I’m currently working on some pretty sweet tunes for a new project. The details will follow once it takes shape." Theodore has also completed a collaboration with Zack de la Rocha of Rage Against the Machine entitled One Day as a Lion. Their first EP was released on July 22 of 2008^[1] In January 2012, he joined Giraffe Tongue Orchestra, replacing fellow former-The-Mars-Volta drummer Thomas Pridgen.^[2]

Influences[link]

Theodore draws inspiration from many different forms of music but those most prevalent in his playing are jazz, fusion, and rock. He has also touched upon another factor which adds to his individual style - "Then there's a whole bunch of stuff from Haïti because my dad's Haïtian. My favorite Haïtian drummer is this guy called Azor... ...The Haïtian music that moves me has the drumming from the voodoo rituals. It moves me because the patterns are connected to different spirits; it's a spiritual thing that is interconnected with dancing, sacrifice and devotion. It's fully passionate. There is nothing contrived about it."

In interviews he regularly cites Billy Cobham of The Mahavishnu Orchestra as his main drumming influence: "My all-time favorite drummer is Billy Cobham. I love the way he plays... ...[his] playing is so natural, powerful and dynamic at the same time. I pattern a lot of stuff after him.". He has also been heavily inspired by John Bonham of Led Zeppelin: "He had one of the best feels in the history of rock... ...because [of him] I try and play with as much bombast as I possibly can."

Theodore has also mentioned the following drummers and musicians as influences: Elvin Jones, Keith Moon, Phil Rudd, Tony Williams, Sebastian Thomson, Tim Soete, Herbie Hancock, Doug Scharin, Joseph "Zigaboo" Modeliste, Mitchell Feldstein, Damon Che, Dale Crover, John McEntire, Ryan Rapsys and Brann Dailor.

Equipment[link]

Drums:
Ludwig Stainless Steel Kit
14x10 tom
16x16 floor tom
18x16 floor tom
24x14 bass drum

Jon has stated in interviews that he is still hoping to find a 26x14 stainless steel kick but also enjoys the punchier sound of his current bass.

Prior to the Stainless Steel kit he used:

Fibes Crystallite Acrylic Kit
14x10 tom
16x16 floor tom
18x16 floor tom
26x14 kick

Added to the kit were a DW Rail Mount + tom mount and kick spurs.

He uses a Ludwig LM402T chrome over aluminium snare drum with aftermarket die cast hoops.

Cymbals:
Of recent times Jon has an endorsement contract with Zildjian cymbals. Like most artists his setup varies somewhat over time.

13" combo hats (e.g. K top over A New Beat bottom or A Quick Beat top over A New Beat top)

2x 19" medium thin crashes from any of the A Custom, Avedis or K lines:
For example, he has on occasion used two 19" A Custom Projections, on others a 19" K Med Thin Dark and a 19" Avedis Med Thin and on still others a 19" A Custom Projection and a 19" Avedis Med Thin. His Zildjian profile states he uses 2x 19" Avedis med Thin crashes.

21" Avedis Sweet Ride with four sizzlers (this cymbal is often used as a crash)

A "stack of totally busted stuff on a cymbal stand." On the stand are two hi-hats cymbals with holes drilled through them, a splash cymbal with a cracked bell, a Zildjian ZXT Trashformer and various, smaller shredded cymbals with metal washers.

Jon's Zildjian Artist Profile: http://www.zildjian.com/EN-US/artists/artistDetail.ad2?artistID=1375

Hardware:
Pearl Eliminator single kick pedal (with surf wax; he plays with bare feet), a DW 7000 Hi-hat stand, and DW cymbal stands.

Heads:
Remo coated Ambassador on snare batter, CS black dots on tom and bass drum batters, clear Ambassadors on bottoms of toms and on front of bass drum.

He has also used Powerstroke 3 bass batters (and, on occasion, as resonant heads, too) with a falam pad.

Sticks: Jon is a Vic Firth endorser, he uses their American Classic Extreme 5B wood tip model.
Jon's Vic Firth Artist page: http://www.vicfirth.com/artists/theodore.html

Discography[link]

With Golden

• Golden
• Super Golden Original Movement
• Golden Summer
• Apollo Stars
• Rhythm & Beat Jazz 12"

With HiM

• New Features
• Five & Six In Dub
• Our Point Of Departure

With Royal Trux

• 3-Song EP (1998)
• Veterans of Disorder (1999)

With Will Oldham

• Ease Down the Road

With Trans Am

• Illegal Ass EP
• The Red Line LP (2000)

With Utada

• Exodus

With The Fucking Am

• Gold (2004)

With The Mars Volta

• Tremulant (2002)
• De-Loused in the Comatorium (2003)
• Live (2003)
• Frances the Mute (2005)
• Scabdates (2005)
• Amputechture (2006)

With SaberTooth Tiger

• Death Valley b/w Love Money (GSL 12th Anniversary Single)
• Extinction Is Inevitable LP (2006)

With Omar Rodríguez-López

• Se Dice Bisonte, No Bùfalo (2007)
• Old Money (2008)

With One Day as a Lion

• One Day as a Lion (EP, 2008)

With Holloys

• Art Wars (2009)
• Make It Happen (2009)

With Brandon Boyd

• The Wild Trapeze (2010)

References[link]

External links[link]

• Golden's Page on Epitonic
• The Holloys
• The Mars Volta
• Him in Allmusic
• Jon Theodore In Taringa

Carlos Arana Castaneda^[1] (December 25, 1925 – April 27, 1998) was a Peruvian-American anthropologist and author.

Starting with The Teachings of Don Juan in 1968, Castaneda wrote a series of books that describe his alleged training in shamanism. The books, narrated in the first person, relate his supposed experiences under the tutelage of a Yaqui "Man of Knowledge" named Don Juan Matus. His 12 books have sold more than 8 million copies in 17 languages. Critics have suggested that they are works of fiction; supporters claim the books are either true or at least valuable works of philosophy and descriptions of practices which enable an increased awareness.

Castaneda withdrew from public view in 1973 to work further on his inner development, living in a large house with three women ("Fellow Travellers of Awareness") who were ready to cut their ties to family and changed their names. He founded Cleargreen, an organization that promoted tensegrity, purportedly a traditional Toltec regimen of spiritually powerful exercises.^[2]

Books[link]

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 these books as his research log describing his apprenticeship with a traditional "Man of Knowledge" identified as don Juan Matus, a Yaqui Indian from northern Mexico. Castaneda was awarded his bachelor's and doctoral degrees based on the work described in these books.

In 1974 his fourth book, Tales of Power, was published. This book ended with Castaneda leaping from a cliff into an abyss, and signaled the end of his apprenticeship under the tutelage of Matus. Castaneda continued to be popular with the reading public with subsequent publications.

In his books, Castaneda narrates in first person the events leading to and following after his meeting Matus, a Yaqui "Man of Knowledge", in 1960. Castaneda's experiences with Matus inspired the works for which he is known. He also says the sorcerer bequeathed him the position of nagual, or leader of a party of seers. He also used the term "nagual" to signify that part of perception which is in the realm of the unknown yet still reachable by man, implying that, for his party of seers, Don Juan was a connection in some way to that unknown. Castaneda often referred to this unknown realm as nonordinary reality.

The term "nagual" has been used by anthropologists to mean a shaman or sorcerer who is believed capable of shapeshifting into an animal form, or to metaphorically "shift" into another form through magic rituals, shamanism and experiences with psychoactive drugs (e.g., peyote and jimson weed - Datura stramonium).^[3]

Biography[link]

Immigration records for Carlos Cesar Arana Castañeda indicate that he was born on 25 December 1925 in Cajamarca, Peru.^[4] His first family name, Arana, is the paternal one, inherited from his father's paternal family name, César Arana Burungaray; while the second family name, Castañeda, is the maternal one, inherited from his mother's paternal family name, Susana Castañeda Navoa. His maternal surname appears with the ñ in many Hispanic dictionaries, even though his famous published works display an anglicized version. He moved to the United States in the early 1950s and became a naturalized citizen in 1957. In 1960, he was married to Margaret Runyan in Tijuana, Mexico. They lived together for only six months but, contrary to rumor, were never divorced^{[citation needed]}. On August 12, 1961, Carlton Jeremy Castaneda was born in Hollywood, California. Carlos spoke of CJ as his biological son and is listed on the younger Castaneda's birth certificate as his father.

Carlos Castaneda was educated at UCLA (B.A. 1962; Ph.D. 1973).^[5]

Castaneda also married Florinda Donner-Grau in Las Vegas in September 1993. According to his will of April 23, 1998, Castaneda adopted Nuri Alexander.

In all, twelve books by Castaneda were published, two posthumously.

Castaneda was the subject of a cover article in the March 5, 1973 issue of Time.^[6] The article described him as "an enigma wrapped in a mystery." When confronted by correspondent Sandra Burton about discrepancies in his personal history, Castaneda responded by saying: "To ask me to verify my life by giving you my statistics...is like using science to validate sorcery. It robs the world of its magic and makes milestones out of us all". The interviewer wrote that "Castaneda makes the reader experience the pressure of mysterious winds and the shiver of leaves at twilight, the hunter's peculiar alertness to sound and smell, the rock-bottom scrubbiness of Indian life, the raw fragrance of tequila and the vile, fibrous taste of peyote, the dust in the car, and the loft of a crow's flight. It is a superbly concrete setting, dense with animistic meaning. This is just as well, in view of the utter weirdness of the events that happen in it." Following that interview, Castaneda retired from public view.

In the 1990s Castaneda once again began appearing in public to promote Tensegrity, a group of movements that he claimed had been passed down by 25 generations of Toltec shamans. On 16 June 1995, articles of incorporation executed by George Short were filed to create Cleargreen Incorporated. The Cleargreen statement of purpose says in part, "Cleargreen is a corporation that has a twofold purpose. First, it sponsors and organizes seminars and workshops on Carlos Castaneda's Tensegrity, and second, it is a publishing house." Cleargreen published three videos of Tensegrity movements while Castaneda was alive. Castaneda himself did not appear in these videos.

Castaneda died on 27 April 1998 in Los Angeles due to complications from hepatocellular cancer. There was no public service; Castaneda was cremated and the ashes were sent to Mexico. It was not until nearly two months later, on 19 June 1998, that an obituary entitled "A Hushed Death for Mystic Author Carlos Castaneda" by staff writer J.R. Moehringer appeared in the Los Angeles Times.^[7]

Four months after Castaneda's death, C. J. Castaneda, also known as Adrian Vashon, whose birth certificate claims Carlos Castaneda as his father, challenged Castaneda's will in probate court. For many years Castaneda had referred to Vashon as his son. The will was signed two days before Castaneda's death and Vashon challenged its authenticity. The challenge was ultimately unsuccessful.^[8]

Companions[link]

After Castaneda stepped away from public view in 1973, he bought a large house in Los Angeles which he shared with three of his female companions. The women broke off relationships with friends and family when they joined Castaneda's group. They also refused to be photographed and took new names: Regina Thal became Florinda Donner-Grau, Maryann Simko became Taisha Abelar and Kathleen Pohlman became Carol Tiggs.

In the early 1990s, Florinda Donner-Grau and Taisha Abelar published two books purporting to describe their experiences with don Juan and his party. Together with Carol Tiggs, they appeared and sometimes lectured at many of the Tensegrity workshops that began in July 1993, and Donner-Grau and Abelar appeared at book signings and gave occasional lectures and radio interviews as well.

Shortly after Castaneda died, Donner-Grau and Abelar disappeared, along with Patricia Partin. Amalia Marquez (also known as Talia Bey) and Tensegrity instructor Kylie Lundal had their phones disconnected and also disappeared. On 2 August 1998, Carol spoke at a workshop in Ontario. The remains of Partin, also referred to by Castaneda as Nury Alexander and/or Claude, were found in 2003 near where her abandoned car had been discovered a few weeks after Castaneda's death in 1998, on the edge of Death Valley. Her remains were in a condition requiring DNA identification, which was made in 2006.^[2]

Because the women had cut all ties with family and friends, it was some time before people noticed they were missing. There has been no official investigation into the disappearances of Donner-Grau, Simko and Lundahl. Luis Marquez, the brother of Talia Bey, went to police in 1999 over his sister's disappearance, but was unable to convince them that her disappearance merited investigation. Their opinion changed in 2006 after the remains of Patricia Partin were identified, and the LAPD finally added Bey to their missing person database.^[9]

Reception[link]

Despite the widespread popularity of his works, some critics questioned the validity of Castaneda's books as early as 1969. In a series of articles, international banker and amateur mycologist R. Gordon Wasson, who had originally praised Castaneda's work, questioned the accuracies of Castaneda's botanical claims.^[10]

In 1976, Richard de Mille published Castaneda's Journey: The Power and the Allegory, in which he argues, "Logical or chronological errors in the narrative constitute the best evidence that Castaneda's books are works of fiction. If no one has discovered these errors before, the reason must be that no one has listed the events of the first three books in sequence. Once that has been done, the errors are unmistakable."^[11] On these showings de Mille asserts, The Teachings of Don Juan and Journey to Ixtlan cannot both be factual reports.^[12]

In the introduction to A Separate Reality, his second book, Castaneda addressed the incomprehensible nature of his experiences as being understood only in the context of the alien system of perception from which they arose, suggesting that his books are by their very nature contradictory and incomprehensible (as to time and place especially) to academic and critical inquiry.

Castaneda's works were presented as real-life accounts, but critics held that they were fictional. At first, and with the backing of academic qualifications and the UCLA anthropological department, Castaneda's work was critically acclaimed. Notable American anthropologists like Edward Spicer (1969) and Edmund Leach (1969)^[13] praised Castaneda, alongside more alternative and young anthropologists such as Peter Furst, Barbara Myerhoff and Michael Harner.

The authenticity of Don Juan was accepted for six years, until Richard de Mille and Daniel Noel both published their critical exposés of the Don Juan books in 1976. Most anthropologists had been convinced of Castaneda's authenticity until then — indeed, they had had little reason to question it — but some averred that de Mille's analysis disproved the veracity of Castaneda's work. Later anthropologists specializing in Yaqui Indian culture (William Curry Holden, Jane Holden Kelley and Edward H. Spicer), who originally supported Castaneda's account as true, questioned the accuracies of Castaneda's work.^[14]

In The Power and the Allegory, De Mille compared The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge with Castaneda's library stack requests at the University of California. The stack requests documented that he was sitting in the library when allegedly his journal said he was squatting in Don Juan's hut. One discovery that de Mille alleges to have made in his examination of the stack requests was that when Castaneda was alleged to have said that he was participating in the traditional peyote ceremony—the least fantastic episode of drug use—he was sitting in the UCLA library and he was reading someone else's description of their experience of the peyote ceremony. Other criticisms of Castaneda's work include the total lack of Yaqui vocabulary or terms for any of his experiences.^[15]

A March 5, 1973 Time article by Sandra Burton stated:

... the more worldly claim to importance of Castaneda's books: to wit, that they are anthropology, a specific and truthful account of an aspect of Mexican Indian culture as shown by the speech and actions of one person, a shaman named Juan Matus. That proof hinges on the credibility of Don Juan as a being and Carlos Castaneda as a witness. Yet there is no corroboration beyond Castaneda's writings that Don Juan did what he is said to have done, and very little that he exists at all. A strong case can be made that the Don Juan books are of a different order of truthfulness from Castaneda's pre-Don Juan past. Where, for example, was the motive for an elaborate scholarly put-on? The Teachings were submitted to a university press, an unlikely prospect for bestsellerdom. Besides, getting an anthropology degree from U.C.L.A. is not so difficult that a candidate would employ so vast a confabulation just to avoid research. A little fudging perhaps, but not a whole system in the manner of The Teachings, written by an unknown student with, at the outset, no hope of commercial success.^[6]

David Silverman sees value in the work even while considering it fictional. In Reading Castaneda he describes the apparent deception as a critique of anthropology field work in general—a field that relies heavily on personal experience, and necessarily views other cultures through a lens. According to Silverman, not only the descriptions of peyote trips but also the fictional nature of the work are meant to place doubt on other works of anthropology.^[16]

Donald Wieve cites Castaneda to explain the insider/outsider problem as it relates to mystical experiences, while acknowledging the fictional nature of his work.^[17]

Related authors[link]

Two other authors, Taisha Abelar and Florinda Donner-Grau, wrote books in which they claimed to be from Matus' party of Toltec warriors. Both Abelar and Donner-Grau were endorsed by Castaneda as being legitimate students of Matus, whereas he dismissed all other writers as pretenders. The two women were part of Castaneda's inner circle, which he referred to as "The Brujas," and both assumed different names as part of their dedication to their new beliefs. They were originally both graduate students in anthropology at UCLA.^[2]

Felix Wolf, one of Carlos Castaneda's apprentices and translators, wrote The Art of Navigation: Travels with Carlos Castaneda and Beyond. In his book Wolf details how his life had been transformed by his association with Castaneda. While touching on all aspects of the teachings, Wolf highlights what he perceives to be the overriding and essential transmission that came through Castaneda's work: The Art of Navigation.

Amy Wallace wrote Sorcerer's Apprentice: My Life with Carlos Castaneda,^[18] an account of her personal experiences with Castaneda and his followers.

In Carlos Castaneda e a Fenda entre os Mundos - Vislumbres da Filosofia Ānahuacah no Século XXI Brazilian writer Luis Carlos de Morais analyzes the work of Carlos Castaneda, its cultural implications, and its continuation in other authors.

Bibliography[link]

• The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, 1968. ISBN 0-520-21757-8. (Summer 1960 to October 1965.)
• A Separate Reality: Further Conversations with Don Juan, 1971. ISBN 0-671-73249-8. (April 1968 to October 1970.)
• Journey to Ixtlan: The Lessons of Don Juan, 1972. ISBN 0-671-73246-3. (Summer 1960 to May 1971.)
• Tales of Power, 1974. ISBN 0-671-73252-8. (Autumn 1971 to the 'Final Meeting' with don Juan Matus in 1973.)
• The Second Ring of Power, 1977. ISBN 0-671-73247-1. (Meeting his fellow apprentices after the 'Final Meeting'.)
• The Eagle's Gift, 1981. ISBN 0-671-73251-X. (Continuing with his fellow apprentices; and then alone with La Gorda.)
• The Fire From Within, 1984. ISBN 0-671-73250-1. (Don Juan's 'Second Attention' teachings through to the 'Final Meeting' in 1973.)
• The Power of Silence: Further Lessons of Don Juan, 1987. ISBN 0-671-73248-X. (The 'Abstract Cores' of don Juan's lessons.)
• The Art of Dreaming, 1993. ISBN 0-06-092554-X. (Review of don Juan's lessons in dreaming.)
• Magical Passes: The Practical Wisdom of the Shamans of Ancient Mexico, 1998. ISBN 0-06-017584-2. (Body movements for breaking the barriers of normal perception.)
• The Wheel of Time: Shamans of Ancient Mexico, Their Thoughts About Life, Death and the Universe, 1998. ISBN 0-9664116-0-9. (Selected quotations from the first eight books.)
• The Active Side of Infinity, 1999. ISBN 0-06-019220-8. (Memorable events of his life.)

See also[link]

• Lucid dream
• Neoshamanism
• New Age
• Toltec (Castaneda)
• William Patrick Patterson

Notes[link]

References[link]

• De Mille, Richard (1976). Castaneda's Journey: The Power and the Allegory. Capra Press. ISBN 978-0-88496-067-6. 

Further reading[link]

• Morais Junior, Luis Carlos de. Carlos Castaneda e a Fresta entre os Mundos: Vislumbres da Filosofia Ānahuacah no Século XXI (Carlos Castaneda and the Crack Between the Worlds: Glimpses of Ānahuacah Philosophy in Century XXI). Rio de Janeiro: Litteris Editora, 2012.
• Sanchez, Victor. The Teachings of Don Carlos: Practical Applications of the Works of Carlos Castaneda. Bear & Company, 1995. ISBN 1-879181-23-1
• Williams, Donald. Border Crossings: A Psychological Perspective on Carlos Castaneda's Path of Knowledge Inner City Books, 1981.
• Collier, Richard "The River That God Forgot" (Background on Julio Cesar Arana, despotic rubber baron, Carlos Castaneda's paternal grandfather) E.P. Dutton & Co., N.Y., 1968. Library of Congress CATALOG CARD NUMBER:68-12451

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Carlos Castaneda

• Carlos Castaneda's Tensegrity (Cleargreen.com)
• Sustained Action, a website evaluating the legacy of Carlos Castaneda as a hoax.
• Carlos Castaneda at the Open Directory Project