The Teachings of Don Juan
The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge was published by the University of California Press in 1968 as a work of anthropology, though it is now widely considered a work of fiction. It was written by Carlos Castaneda and submitted as his master's thesis in anthropology. It purports to document events that took place during an apprenticeship with a self-proclaimed Yaqui Indian Sorcerer, don Juan Matus from Sonora, Mexico between 1960 and 1965.
Synopsis
The book is divided into two sections. The first section, The Teachings, is a first-person narrative that documents Castaneda's initial interactions with don Juan. He speaks of his encounters with Mescalito, divination with lizards and flying using the "yerba del diablo", and turning into a blackbird using "humito". The second, A Structural Analysis, is an attempt at disclosing "the internal cohesion and the cogency of don Juan’s Teachings."Publication history
The 30th-anniversary edition, published by the University of California Press in 1998, contains commentary by Castaneda not present in the original edition. He writes of a general discouragement from the project by his professors. He offers a new thesis on a mind-state he calls "total freedom" and claims that he used the teachings of his Yaqui shaman as "springboards into new horizons of cognition". In addition, it contains a foreword by anthropologist Walter Goldschmidt, who was a professor of anthropology at UCLA during the time the books were written, and an introduction by the author.A 40th anniversary edition was published by the University of California Press in 2008.