additional_resources/biblio/me_too_naguals/o-neil_cachora

On John O'Neil, From a Middle-Aged Woman On This Subreddit, Written in April 2023:

"I have a (female) friend who told me that Dan was talking about putting John O'Neil in a Cartoon. Before I had heard of this Reddit, or Dan, I actually talked to John O'Neil on the phone because he wanted to write a book and have me help him as an editor.

During our conversation he talked about having a encounter with an IOB. It had happened to me once before at the time, so I asked him, "How did it feel when it swooped you?" He muttered he didn't feel a thing. I was incredulous so I asked again. He said he felt "Nothing."

He must have figured out I didn't believe him because he became flustered and tried to get off the phone quickly.

I never heard from him again, but I think I still have our messages from Facebook. Then he dropped Daniel's name and I found this Reddit and dropped everything about John O'Neil. It was funny, in his book he wanted to just make it about his dreaming and leave everything about Carlos and the Witches out. He seemed embarrassed about his status in the classes and mentioned he had been cgased away. He wanted to know if he could write a book without explaining his relationship to Carlos's classes and if it would still sell.

The man is an up and up faker and had me convinced I couldn't do any magic because of my own background.

The only good thing about that guy was he hates Dan so much he dropped his name.

I was told he now is making up his own "magical passes" with weapons to take on fighting Jinn. I guess it's all on YouTube.

I went back through O'Neil messages...they are from March 2020. One particularly hysterical one was about "activating the energy bodies using the charkras." He felt this was one of his core contributions and essential to his book.

Here is a typical example of his pontificating. You absolutely can see that this guy doesn't know a thing about moving his AP. He is obviously so busy trying to corrale all of these energy bodies that he has decided to color code them....

"I've been perusing my past writings on the subject and have concluded that I did an incomplete job of explaining it across many threads. The basic idea is that you can activate any of your energy bodies by thinking with them, which of course means moving your assemblage point. Along with that, each energy body is connected to a different chakra in our body, so for example, if you think with your heart chakra then it would activate your nagual energy body, and thinking with your navel chakra would activate your dreaming body, etc. It is just a different way of looking at sorcery that some people might find more approachable than simply saying that you have to move your assemblage point."

What drivel...oh well. I never wanted to give much energy to him. I am just glad I found this place because of him.

That's all I'll say about it."

On Tata Cachora, the ridiculously blatant charlatan who pretends to be Don Juan:

Angry men, such as the "zombie" followers of Cachora, are huge pests and are a constant energy drain on our community. Those who stand in "solidarity" with the chubby and senile Tata, are the ones who can't understand or explain why the books beyond the first 4 are so amazing, so they claim that Carlos made them up...and that Cachora is "the real don Juan" and is responsible for the earlier books.

Or that Carlos was himself a copy, and that the real Castaneda had nothing to do with the later books; basically any lie that can explain away the Cachora's ineptitude and laziness will do.

Why some of these duped/casual Castaneda readers don't see through his charlatanism is more than perplexing, but understandable if they don't actually want 'magic' in their lives and only want to be seen as 'magical' and special by other people, or aligned with those who have (supposed) 'magical' social status.

It parallels certain uglier aspects of new age shamanism in the 20th-21st centuries, which is mostly designed to draw in funds from westerners who are dissatisfied with western spirituality and want something more exotic or aesthetic...and don't actually want or need pragmatic and empirical change in their lives.