The author attempts to set the ethnographic record straight, by comparing “true Huichol rituals” (which he studied as an anthropologist living with the Huichol Indians for several years) with what he considers the “counterfeit productions” of Castaneda. He compares his own ethnographic writings with Castaneda's books and finds very few similarities. He says that Castaneda's books are mostly the result of “New Age capitalists competing to meet unmet psychological or religious needs,” but never the result of anthropological research, as Castaneda claims. The author did not find any brujo who could fly over waterfalls, as Don Genaro does in A Separate Reality; and to raise suspicions even more, Castaneda refused to send the author his field notes so that he could analyze them. AF

Publisher: Millenia
Paperback: 283 pages
Illustrated