Carlos Castaneda Critical Essay | Carlos Castaneda

Critical Review by Publishers Weekly

SOURCE: Review of Magical Passes: Practical Wisdom of the Shamans of Ancient Mexico, in Publishers Weekly, December 15, 1997, p. 41.

[In the following review of Practical Wisdom of the Shamans of Ancient Mexico, the reviewer explains Castaneda's "tensegrity," a combination of tension and integrity, to describe his physical movements to release body energy.]

It has been 30 years since Castaneda published The Teachings of Don Juan, the first volume of his continuing story of his extraordinary apprenticeship to a Yaqui Indian sorcerer. In the eight books that followed, Castaneda maintained secrecy about many of the practices he was taught. Here, however, he lifts the veil on aspects of a tradition that he claims reaches back 27 generations, revealing a set of physical movements, called "magical passes," allegedly discovered by shamans of ancient Mexico. The purpose of the movements is to "agitate" and "redeploy" stuck energy fields within the body,...
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