Year: 1992
Author: Taisha Abelar
ISBN: 978-0140193664
English language
Publisher: Penguin
Format: DOC
Number of Pages: 283
Some twenty years ago, anthropologist Carlos Castaneda electrified millions of readers by describing his initiation - under the Yaqui Indian brujo Don Juan - into an alternate reality. Now Taisha Abelar, who was taught by the female members of Don Juan's group, recounts her own "crossing" in this arresting book.
While traveling in Mexico, Abelar became involved with a group of sorcerers and began a rigorous physical and mental training process designed to enable her to breach the limits of ordinary perception. The Sorcerers Crossing details that process, giving us a highly practical sense of the responsibilities and perils that face a woman sorcerer. Abelar's enthralling story is invaluable as a virtual "sorcerers manual", as anthropology, and as a provocative work of women's spirituality.
Taisha Abelar, born Maryann Simko, is an American author and anthropologist who was a close associate of Carlos Castaneda. She disappeared shortly after Castaneda's death in 1998.
Abelar met Castaneda when she was 19 years old and a student at UCLA where she eventually earned her Master’s degree and Ph.D. in Anthropology. In 1973 Castaneda purchased a compound on Pandora Avenue in Westwood LA and soon after Abelar (she was still known as Maryann Simko at this time), along with Regine Thal, and Kathleen Pohlman, who would come to be known collectively as “the witches,” moved in. In 1974 Samurai-magazine publishes rare photos of Regine Thal doing karate exercises. In the article Abelar is called "Anna Marie Carter."
In keeping with Castaneda’s philosophy of "erasing personal history," the witches maintained a tight veil of secrecy. They used numerous aliases and generally did not allow themselves to be photographed. Not long after moving into Castaneda’s compound Maryann Simko changed her name to Taisha Abelar. Likewise Regine Thal changed her name to Florinda Donner and Kathleen Pohlman hers to Carol Tiggs.
Abelar claimed to have been one of Don Juan’s four students and says she spent a year in his “magical house” in Mexico. In 1992 her book The Sorcerer’s Crossing: A Woman’s Journey, which purportedly documents the training she received from the female members of don Juan’s group, was published by Penguin books.
Through the 1990s Abelar and the other witches started giving workshops in Tensegrity for Cleargreen Incorporated, a company formed by Castaneda for that purpose.
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