my mescalito trip

Castaneda’s most beautiful trick was based on the popular belief in the existence of fiction and nonfiction. This belief takes it for granted that there is a qualitative difference between two books if the first one tells a success story that never happened to a fictitious character, and the second one tells a success story that will never happen to you. In a way, this difference does exist. But it is not a difference between two books, it is a difference between two settings of the reader’s mind.

unpsychological thinking giegerich

history symptom-making of the psyche

The samizdat incarnation of a Castaneda book was a photocopy of the typewritten translation (into Russian). That was the reason why the access to a Xerox machine could drastically improve your position in the esoteric hierarchy.

(Peyote) gives you a little side effect that suddenly makes the side center and the center side. With all his tricks and failures, Castaneda shines high above the blurred crowd of many a “distinctive voice of his/her own” on the steep road from obscurity to oblivion.”