Rebel voodoo madness

[Rizzo in a box]

I was surprised to hear from a friend of mine that I once wrote a book called "Doktor Snake's Voodoo Spellbook." I have no recollection of doing so. If I did, it seems to me to have been an odd kind of book to write.

I got hold of a copy the other day. Looked like sheer nonsense to me.

Spells and magic and such like. How can anyone seriously believe that doing a damn fool ritual with potions and bones can have any effect on the real world?

It goes against science and common sense. Look at Bill Gates. He's a billionaire and he didn't need any occult hokum. I bet lots of people into magic and the occult wish they could become rich - practise their patently silly rituals to try and get that way.

But they never succeed! Do you know anyone who has got rich using occult means? I don't.
Serious drinking with a shaman

Well ... okay ... I admit it. I did know someone. He's dead now. His name was Carlos Castaneda, best-selling author of "The Teachings of Don Juan" and "The Art of Dreaming." I knew him for about eight years before he passed away.

I was in LA with him one time, having met him through a mutual friend. He invited me to his apartment to "shoot the breeze," as he put it. But it turned into a serious drinking session.

After we'd downed a whole bottle of Wild Turkey bourbon, I said to him: "Carlos, you're fucking charlatan. You made it all up! You're no shaman. You got your dreaming stuff from Tibetan mysticism. Your silencing the internal dialogue and stopping the world ideas from the Russian mystic, G.I. Gurdjieff. The list goes on, man. There was no Don Juan or Don Genaro."
Fueled the dreams of millions

He cracked open another bottle of Wild Turkey, laughed for a long time, then replied: "Maybe ... but I fueled millions of people's dreams. I gave them exactly what they wanted. And I got so fucking rich. Unbelievably fucking rich. You just can't know how that feels. The sheer power of it. I can do what the hell I want. Anything."

"So what do you do?" I asked.

"I go to parties to pick up beautiful women."

I paused to drink some more bourbon. Then said the only thing I could say in the circumstances: "Carlos, could you take me to some of those parties?"

He only took me to one. Not surprising, really, I was a struggling and very poor writer at the time. My jeans were stained (with god knows what) and had holes in. So I wasn't going to be enticing any super-models to my dilapidated apartment.

The funny thing was, Castaneda spent about an hour chatting up a stunningly pretty LA model. Then he left her and came over to me.
Deadly real

He ushered me into a corner and said: "There was a fair level of teaching metaphor in my books. But you should know one thing: Don Juan and Don Genaro were real - deadly real. Just about no-one understood that my books were rebel voodoo. They were not to be taken on face value. Juan and Genaro were trickster shamans. Crazy sages - like the sufis. You never knew where you were with them. And that is how it should be. Trust no-one, young Snake, especially not the spiritual teachers of this world."

With that he said it was time to indulge himself in the base pleasures of this world. Before he took off with the model, he said in a whisper, "Remember this, be a rebel voodoo man. Fuck all the rules."

He then disappeared into the night. The next thing I heard he was dead.

The term "rebel voodoo" stuck in my head. And I'm told by my friend that this inspired me to write that useless piece donkey turd called "Doktor Snake's Voodoo Spellbook."

Why I did it, I don't know. It's much, much better to do a proper job. Even if it means sweating it out in a hamburger bar. At least that way you're not peddling dreams.

Doktor Snake
Jun 17, 2004

http://web.archive.org/web/200412272...4/8carlos.html

ah, yes.