The Teachings of Don Juan
Author: Carlos Castaneda
In the 60s, UCLA anthropology student Carlos Castaneda met a Yaqui Indian Sorcerer named Don Juan. Faculty encouraged him to do field research, and he decided that there was much to be learned from Don Juan. Castaneda became Don Juan’s apprentice, setting out to learn the ways of the Yaqui sorcerers.
Throughout the 5-ish years of the apprenticeship, Castaneda was indoctrinated into a religion with a fully formed belief system that was built around hallucinogenic plants including peyote, Jimson weed and Psilocybe mexicana (magic mushrooms). By his own admission, at some point in the process he lost sight of his academic field research goals and became absorbed into the religion (my word, not his). He eventually cut off his apprenticeship rather than pursue what he believed was a permanent break with reality.
The book is divided into two sections. In the first section, the author recounts his first-hand experience absorbing the teachings of Don Juan. This includes his personal encounters with peyote (and the magic creature unleashed by the cactus called mescalito) and the other plants, as well as how he learned the other related elements of the shamanistic religion. The second section is Castaneda’s attempt to fit together all he learned into a coherent description of the beliefs of the Yacqui sorcerers. It reads much more like an anthropological study.