New Names Guide: Castaneda World Who’s Who
The Dramatis Personae: Castaneda World Who’s Who.
In reading about Carlos Castaneda, it can be difficult to follow people’s names, to simply figure out who is who. In Castaneda’s world and mythology, he gave people “sorcery names.” These were considered a great honor among his acolytes. Many of those closest to him legally changed their names to their sorcery names, sometimes multiple times. As a new resource to readers, we just posted a Castaneda World Who’s Who guide.
Castaneda also instructed members of Cleargreen, the corporation he established in 1995 to organize workshops and Tensegrity training, to use different names for different purposes. So, for example, people like Renata Murez (née Alexis Burzynski), used the name “Angela Panaro” when handling PR.
The publisher of Amy Wallace’s book Sorcerer’s Apprentice: My Life with Carlos Castaneda, the most complete source published to date describing the group around Castaneda, also had her use pseudonyms for most of Castaneda’s inner circle. The glossary to those pseudonyms is here.
The first section of the new guide comprises Castaneda and his inner circle, the members and/or employees of Cleargreen. Their most prominent sorcery name appears first, bolded, with their birth name in parens. If they had a title in Castaneda’s mythology, that appears next. Then we list any additional names or akas they may have used, after that. Next in brackets there is a brief description of their actual role in Castaneda world.
Included in another section of the new guide are names of other people who played important roles in Castaneda’s life and story. That includes people like his editor and estate lawyer, even though they were never given sorcery names. There is also a listing of other people mentioned in stories about Castaneda or announcements on Cleargreen’s website. This includes characters like the author Victor Sanchez and self-described “nagual woman” Merilyn Tunneshende. There are also sections for the more prominent Sunday group people and attendees of prior private group sessions Castaneda conducted, going back to the late 1970s.
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