ABSTRACT
Time's 1973 cover story raised serious questions about Castaneda's truthfulness. To the most surprising support for Castaneda has come from Mary Douglas, whose "Authenticity of Castaneda", exemplifies a widespread failure to distinguish two components of truth: authenticity and validity. Pseudo-anthropology is also a thriving field; so a great many books could be assigned to the invalid-inauthentic cell of the table. Psychologist Michael Gorman, for one, found it fascinating that "a Polish count, an Indian philosopher, and a Yaqui sorcerer" all took the central human error to be confusing one's own way of looking at the world with the way the world actually is. As validity comes originally from authenticity, so invalidity springs often, if unpredictably, from inauthenticity. Coyote is a tricky teacher. "In parts, at least, of California," wrote Hartley Burr Alexander, "his deeds are represented as almost invariably beneficent in their outcomes; he is a true, if often unintentional culture hero".
