Regular readers here know that the West is afflicted with a crisis of meaning, and we have been for a long time. It’s a target-rich environment for clever con artists with no conscience and a penchant for spinning tall tales.
Author JD Cowan brought up a Twitter thread by Lin Manuel Rwanda exposing one of the most colorful charlatans of the twentieth century, Carlos Castaneda.
A Peruvian immigrant who rose to earn an anthropology doctorate from UCLA, Castaneda attained superstardom with a series of books peddling new age mysticism to gullible Boomers. Though long since debunked as fabrications, Castaneda’s works have made a profound impact on American culture – perhaps achieving their widest reach through his most influential reader, George Lucas.
How did a self-styled sorcerer more concerned with building a personal harem than a full-blown personality cult leave such a deep mark on pop culture? Lin Manuel explains:
Whether it’s hippies, Libertarians, or woke cultists, advocating the use of party drugs is always a red flag.
Castaneda was right that the West is being deceived by a malevolent spirit. The striking similarity between all the sex and crystals cults is all you need to discern one malicious will behind it all.
Lewis’ estate should sue. Note that twisting Godly works is a favorite tactic of one malicious actor in particular. Did Castaneda know that he was an agent of that hostile will? Were the disclosure clauses found in all diabolical contracts placed in his writings on purpose?
Only Castaneda knows for sure, but he’s not around to tell us. He died of complications from liver cancer in 1998.
His cancerous work on pop culture done, perhaps?
Anyway, Castaneda’s strange tale didn’t end with his death. It just got weirder.
Proving once again that the Pop Cult is a quicksand trap leading straight to the Death Cult.
It’s not a coincidence.
From the New Yorker article linked above:
And, in other ways, “Star Wars” is of a piece with everything that was happening in the seventies, with the search for greater meaning that was happening at a societal level. The Carlos Castaneda books were a huge influence: all that stuff about going back to basics, finding the magic in everything, becoming your better self, tapping into the power of crystals. All that hippie stuff was influential.
And its influence has left pop culture a sun-bleached wasteland.
Much like the one where the Big Brand referenced above begins.
Much like the one where Patricia Partin’s bones were found in 2003.
There was a sense of, “Let’s pull everything down, let’s find the basis upon which we can all agree, let’s figure out that all religions point to this or that.”
Deconstructionism rears its ugly head again.
The Boomers’ forefathers already knew where all other religions pointed. St. Paul told them in Acts 17: 23.
Jesus Christ is the Alpha and the Omega. His Church is the basis of Western civilization. No wonder that trying to pull her down undermined the West’s foundation.
Hate to say it, but the religious right is posthumously vindicated once again. Diabolical influence did contaminate a lot of the pop culture product consumed by kids in the 70s and 80s. Now, the members of Gen Y who fed on that tainted product are regurgitating it in the endless nostalgia movement.
Reminder: I am not kidding when I call the Current Year entertainment complex a cult. Stop giving money to people who hate you.
Support artists who want to entertain you.
On one end of the spectrum, you have the unholy trinity of the new age: the drugs, the sorcery, and the butt stuff. Fuentes’ followers already know to watch out for these.
On the other end of the spectrum, you have the sweet poison of Protestantism—or as I like to call it, the gateway drug into all of the heresies that the Church methodically dismissed thousands of years ago.
You don’t want to be a churchian, do you? Retreat with your Bible alone into bedroom, and allow a supernatural presence that is definitely the Holy Spirit to guide your intepretation of Scripture. Every thought that comes to you in prayer is legitimate, as long as the Magesterium has no influence over it.
No protestant denies magisterial authority. He just thinks it resides with him.
I know many intelligent and holy Protestants but the more I’ve interacted with them and learned about Christianity the more convinced I’ve become the Catholic Church is the one true Church.
Praise to God for holy Protestants and the grace of discernment.
By the same token, I praise God for the faithfulness and thoughtfulness of holy Catholics. I’ve learned quite a lot from y’all over the last several years, in ways that have enriched my faith, challenged my discipleship, and deepened my prayers.
In the same way that different pastors can lead radically different communities within a Protestant church, your mileage will vary among the different parishes of a Catholic diocese. It’s the inevitable consequence of being big enough to call ourselves “universal.”
…Or possibly having our doors “blown open” by the Holy Spirit at the end of 1965.
I mentioned his death in my Cultural Ground Zero piece, which is also in the free book above, but he wasn’t all that uncommon. When the West gets a cult going they really pull out the stops in making it as crazy as they can. John of God, Castaneda, Jonestown, CERN, Koresh, even foreign ones allowed in like the Rajneesh group.
Anything to avoid Christianity.
It’s consumerism run amok. Western intellectuals went all in on mammon worship a century ago, expecting it to usher in the United Federation of Planets. Instead they got two major bloodbaths and a moral fire sale.
Don’t forget L. Ron Hubbard, whose overlap with some of your other studies would be a fascinating topic for exploration.
Don’t even get me started on Hubbard. Dude had ties to Jack Parsons and Writers and Artists of the Future is yet another tumor on the body of SFF as an industry, right up there with Worldcon.
One of these days I’ll write up something about Scientology b/c it’s way more fascinating than “lol South Park Xenu” when you get down to the influences.
Have you ever looked into Carl Jung’s dark secrets? Like Carlos Castaneda, Jung was a sorcerer, fraud, and cult leader (possibly the most influential one of the past century).
This article is a great place to start, detailing many aspects of his lies and the truth about what he really was:
https://www.hgi.org.uk/resources/delve-our-extensive-library/interviews/mysterious-jung-his-cult-lies-he-told-and-occult
Rodger Buck’s youtube videos on the influence of Theosophy and its ties to Protestantism are essential viewing for any Catholic. I’m currently reading his book Cor Jesu Sacratissimum, and it’s an eye-opening account from a former New Ager and Anthroposophist turned Traditional Catholic.
Junk like Don Juan is kind of like a weird cultural rash indicating a much deeper and darker ethos underneath it all. Much as I hate to say it, the Founding Fathers were all in on much of this proto-theosophical stuff. Ditto for a lot of people you’d be shocked by (L. Frank Baum was one, Oz was allegedly a thesophical Narnia of sorts).