Teachings of Don Juan

Author(s): Carlos Castaneda

Fiction | Shamanism

The first book in Carlos Castaneda's spiritual journey into the world of sorcery... In 1960 Carlos Castaneda first met don Juan, a Yaqui Indian feared and shunned by the ordinary folk of the American Southwest because of his unnatural powers. During the next five years don Juan's arcane knowledge led Castaneda into a world of beauty and terror, ruled by concepts far beyond those of Western civilization. Using psychedelic drugs - peyote, jimson weed and a mushroom called 'humito' - Castaneda lived through encounters with disembodied spirits, shamans in the form of huge wolves, and death in the shape of silver crows. Finally, after a night of utter terror in which he knew that his life was threatened by forces which he still cannot fully explain, he gave up his struggle to become a Man of Knowledge. The Teachings of Don Juan is the story of Carlos Castaneda's extraordinary experiences.


Product Information

"It's impossible to view the world in quite the same way after reading him ... If Castaneda is correct, there is another world, a sometimes beautiful and sometimes frightening world, right before our eyes at this moment - if only we could see." --- Chicago Tribune

Carlos Castaneda was a graduate student in anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles, gathering information on various medicinal herbs used by the Indians in Sonora, Mexico, when he met the old Yaqui Indian, Don Juan. His first book, The Teachings of Don Juan, was the story of the first period the two men spent together as master and pupil. This was followed by the other volumes in the series, A Separate Reality, Journey to Ixtlan, Tales of Power, The Second Ring of Power and The Eagle's Gift, all of which are published in Arkana. He also wrote The Art of Dreaming (1993). Carlos Castaneda died in 1998.


In its obituary for him the Guardian wrote, "It is hard to find a New Age celebrity who won't admit to having been influenced by Castaneda's powerful prose and paradigm-busting philosophy ... Few critics would deny author Joyce Carol Oates's assessment of his books as 'remarkable works of art'."

General Fields

  • : 9780140192384
  • : Penguin Books, Limited
  • : Penguin Books, Limited
  • : 0.174
  • : December 1989
  • : 198mm X 129mm X 16mm
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : Carlos Castaneda
  • : Paperback
  • : Feb-90
  • : English
  • : 256
  • : HRQM2