Sham Man is a fictional spec novel/ TV series based on a true story (er, true for whom is another story). Here's the backstory.

 

So after a long search, I find this very old Yaqui Indian healer in Northern Mexico who tells me and my Mexican attorney/translator that he is the real-life Don Juan in Carlos Castaneda's 1960-70s popular series of non-fiction books (1).

 

Uh-huh...

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DJ (as I liked to call him) shrugged it off -- 

"All I know is that little shit was always hanging around here.”

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Despite interviewing him five times between 2007-2009, he refused to come forward as Castaneda's Don Juan --

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“I am not riding in on his coattails.  He rode in on mine.”

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In fact, DJ claimed he had no idea where Castaneda got his "flying around on broomsticks stories," and that his extravagant fabulism had made him a "pariah" in his own Yaqui community.

 

To complicate matters, Castaneda himself never revealed the true identity of Don Juan, the primary source for his doctoral work, which almost cost him his PhD in Anthropology from UCLA. Why? Just for the academic imprimatur? After his first book,The Teachings of Don Juan, A Yaqui Way of Knowledge was published (very profitably) by none other than The University of California Press in 1968, and he'd landed the cover story of Time Magazine (March 5, 1973), I don't think he gave a fuck. Why would he, why would anybody?

 

The larger question is did he know the difference between fact and fiction?  I hope so, eventually, but not soon enough to have a meaningful relationship with his son (2), which is a serious narrative driver in Sham Man. 

 

Or tell his harem of female disciples not to attempt to follow him into "infinity" after he died in 1998. Six of them presumably tried. Five are still missing. (Hmmm, each of whom inherited a $100 grand from Castaneda's will --  changed in his last four days, stiffing his son.)​

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But back to who's the real sham man. From what I gathered, DJ and Castaneda had a complicated relationship. DJ had a huge chip on his shoulder about it and threw me out once for being "just like Carlos" (I deserved it). But it's hard to believe DJ hasn't profited somehow from the Don Juan books, if only from a false equivalency. Continues to. I have to choose my words carefully here.

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No doubt the two men had some kind of personal (familial??) connection. How deep, how long, is anybody's guess. On more than one occasion, I remember DJ bitterly calling Castaneda a "pinche loco" (crazy fucker) but immediately followed with a heartfelt, “God rest his soul.”  

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But for whatever reasons, DJ seems determined to take their story to the grave, just as Castaneda did when he died of excruciating liver cancer. (Watch those 'power plants', people, very hard on your liver, which you need to metabolize pain killers.) 

 

In retrospect, the most interesting insight I got from DJ was his confirmation of the purported existence of Castaneda's "dreaming double", a sort of out-of-body projection with three-dimensional form and a mind of its own, not unlike the Tibetan Buddhists' Tulpa. DJ called it (more aptly I think) El Otro Yo (Other Me), adding with a playful wink, "They're often naughty."   ​

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Indeed.

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Well, think about it this way -- we all have our repressed Otro Yo’s, deeply personal shadow selves that usually only surface in dreams, fantasies and fictions of all kinds (including lies). Sometimes they just take on a life of their own. For better or worse. 

 

Intrigued, I play with these possibilities in Sham Man (see Preview).

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But back to who's the real sham man, I'm sorry to say that I never got the full story, which is as it should be since "truth" depends on who's telling it and what skin they have in the game. ​​

 

Which brings me to my own anonymity --

 

How Castanedian, si?  DJ-esque?  Mea culpa for now.  "Sin Nombre" seems a fitting pseudonym since, to tell the truth, I'm really just a "no-name" PR writer who's published a few short stories in university literary journals, albeit good ones, some time ago.

 

​But hey, sketchy is the name of the game in Castaneda's Don Juanian world. I'm just pulling threads to see where it all leads and self-reflexively, taking it a step further with my own anonymity.

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But obviously I understand the impulse to hide behind a persona. It's a post-truth world, of course, where fact and fiction blur out of confusion and/or self-interest. If you perpetrate a fiction, my only caution would be to be sure the teller and tale are outrageous enough that everyone knows it's a whopper. 

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I assume you have (or you wouldn't be here), read some of Carlos Castaneda's Don Juan books. If not, I recommend reading or re-reading these early ones (in order): A Separate Reality, Journey to Ixtlan and Tales of Power. They're really quite wonderful, thought-provoking, revolutionary in their day and still sell millions of copies worldwide.   

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Some of you may already have a good idea who DJ (or me) is but I urge you to do your own due diligence. I know it's a cliche but I've found it to be very true nonetheless -- it's the journey that counts, not what you find in the end. 

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And while far be it from me to sort out DJ's traditional Yaqui teachings from what Castaneda brought to the mix, in the end, does it really matter which is which?

 

Life is a mash up. Sham Man is my contribution. Take or leave it.

 

It is what it is.​

-- Sin Nombre,  February 2024

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Thanks  to Chris Twomey for my title, Sham Man ( play on 'shaman') from a 1994 article he wrote about the great ethnobotanist and psychonaut, Terence McKenna, entitled "Words with the Sham Man," originally published in Eye Weekly. 

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1. This is confusing but here goes: 1) Castaneda insisted to his death that Don Juan (Matus) was a real person and that (Castaneda's) Don Juan books should be classified non-fiction in the Library of Congress system. 2) The man I interviewed (DJ), who claimed to be Castaneda's Don Juan, was/is an actual living person, still alive to my knowledge as of this writing. 3) In my Sham Man, the Don Juanian protagonist is named Don Anon (from "anonymous") and is a wholly fictional character. (See Disclaimer below). 

 

2. See the excellent book by Mike Sager, Shaman:The Mysterious Life and Impeccable Death of Carlos Castaneda, (The Sager Group LLC/NeoTex, 2020).

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3. As for my own due diligence, I have a xerox of DJ's "official" Mexican ID stating his alleged age, which looked legit; professional photographs of him, audio recordings of our interviews and credible witnesses including a Mexican attorney. 

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DISCLAIMER:

Sham Man is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner.  Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. 

 

The author or author's representative do not assume and hereby disclaim any liability to any party for any loss, damage or disruption caused by errors or omissions, whether such errors or omissions result from negligence, accident or other cause.

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All rights reserved.

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