![]() ![]() ![]() Although he makes progress, he eventually becomes too frightened to continue his training. (This theme, only hinted at in Teachings, is developed in later books.) Under Don Juan’s tutelage, Castaneda takes several drug trips, which are alternately exhilarating and terrifying. One of these plants will become Castaneda’s “ally,” Don Juan says, and help him see the world as it is. Don Juan decides to make Castaneda his apprentice and teach him the ways of a “man of knowledge.” This consists mainly of giving cryptic answers to Castaneda’s naive questions and instructing him in the use of hallucinogenic plants - peyote, jimsonweed, and a mushroom possibly containing psilocybin. The student, Carlos Castaneda, strikes up a friendship with the old man, who eventually reveals himself to be a Yaqui Indian sorcerer. Teachings, published in 1968 by the University of California Press, purports to be the first-person account of a UCLA anthropology student who meets an old man named Juan Matus at a bus station on the Mexican border while on a field trip looking for medicinal plants. There will always be disagreement, but the smart money is on the latter. The issue is whether he hallucinated these events or simply invented them. ![]() Except for a few lost souls, nobody really thinks that Castaneda turned into a crow, flew, fought with a diablera (witch) for his soul, etc. I’ve been waiting for this one for a long time.Īt least you frame the question properly. ![]()
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