A Magical Journey With Carlos Castaneda

Carlos Castaneda burst onto the academic and cultural scene in 1968 when he published the first of four books detailing his supposed apprenticeship with a Yaqui Indian sorcerer named Don Juan. While academic critics contend Castaneda invented Don Juan, believers say the fog surrounding his existence express the very ideals that Castaneda attributed to his apprenticeship. Little is known of the Peruvian claiming to be Don Juan's apprentice, but in addition to leading a generation into a mystical otherworld, Carlos Castaneda was also a man. Married to him for thirteen years was Margaret Runyan Castaneda. A Magical Journey with Carlos Castaneda reads partly like a love story, partly like a tell-all account of a celebrity writer. Margaret Castaneda concentrates on the years leading up to her marriage in 1960. It was then Margaret and Carlos explored many of the ideas -- from controlling dreams to using hallucinogenic mushrooms -- that he claims to have learned from Don Juan. Nevertheless, Margaret Castenada believes her husband was indeed a sorcerer, and she still loves him. She insists Castaneda's academic critics miss the point. "I'm willing to accept Don Juan as a spiritual teacher, and it really doesn't matter if he's not real." But the role she claims -- in developing the ideas Carlos purports to be Don Juan's -- ought to be recognized, she says, so she wrote this book.

Thirty years ago, Carlos Castaneda published The Teachings of Don Juan, the story of a magical journey into the unknown. Under the tutelage of don Juan Matus, the young anthropologist entered another world and emerged to give readers of his first book glimpses of the "nonordinary reality" of a Yaqui Indian sorcerer. Castaneda wrote eight more books, most recently The Art of Dreaming, which describes don Juan's teaching methods as well as the sorcery arts he made Castaneda practice. Castaneda learned that for us to perceive any of the worlds that exist beside our own, we must not only covet them but find sufficient energy to seize them. Magical Passes offers readers the key to the energetic conditioning for the first time. In his revolutionary new book, Castaneda reveals a series of body positions and physical movements that have enabled various shamans and their apprentices to navigate their own sorceric journeys. By sharing this centuries-old wisdom, from a tradition that stretches back more than 27 generations, Castaneda makes it possible for readers to travel to some of these other realms, which are as real, unique, absolute and engulfing as our own world. He offers both a philosophical history of magical passes and an innovative, easy-to-understand instructional format, complete with more than 450 computer-generated illustrations. Written with humor, clarity, and authority, Magical Passes further illuminates the true meaning of sorcery and magic. Carlos Castaneda is the author of nine bestselling books, including the acknowledged classics The Teachings of Don Juan and most recently The Art of Dreaming.

“We are incredibly fortunate to have Carlos Castaneda’s books. Tales of Power has brought us closer to understanding the teaching behind all the magic.” —The New York Times Book Review Bestselling author Carlos Castaneda’s groundbreaking works exploring the inspirational teachings of Yaqui spiritual leader don Juan Matus have enchanted millions of readers. With each lesson Castaneda gleans from his enigmatic teacher, he perceives a new reality based on the sorcerer’s mystical world. Tales of Power is the dynamic and captivating conclusion to don Juan’s teachings, where he imparts his most powerful and mysterious wisdom with a dazzling series of visions that are at once a spiritual initiation and a deeply moving farewell. Praise for Carlos Castaneda and Tales of Power “It is impossible to view the world in quite the same way.” —Chicago Tribune “Carlos Castaneda is one of the most profound and influential thinkers of this century. His insights are paving the direction for the future evolution of human consciousness.” —Deepak Chopra “The present book takes Carlos to the edge of the abyss itself, on an excursion into the unknown (the nagual) that represents the death of his personal, historical self (his tonal). Don Juan, his patient teacher, and don Genaro, his lively, acrobatic benefactor, must say farewell to him. They cannot help him any longer: he is totally alone, free, a warrior at last . . . Like all art . . . the work resists and transcends conventional categories of labeling.” —Psychology Today “Hypnotic reading.” —Time “One of the important statements of our time.” —Book World

Carlos Castaneda takes the reader into the very heart of sorcery, challenging both imagination and reason, shaking the very foundations of our belief in what is "natural" and "logical." In 1961, a young anthropologist subjected himself to an extraordinary apprenticeship with Yaqui Indian spiritual leader don Juan Matus to bring back a fascinating glimpse of a Yaqui Indian's world of "non-ordinary reality" and the difficult and dangerous road a man must travel to become "a man of knowledge." Yet on the bring of that world, challenging to all that we believe, he drew back. Then in 1968, Carlos Castaneda returned to Mexico, to don Juan and his hallucinogenic drugs, and to a world of experience no man from our Western civilization had ever entered before.

In Journey to Ixtlan, Carlos Castaneda introduces readers to this new approach for the first time and explores, as he comes to experience it himself, his own final voyage into the teachings of don Juan, sharing with us what it is like to truly “stop the world” and perceive reality on his own terms. Originally drawn to Yaqui Indian spiritual leader don Juan Matus for his knowledge of mind-altering plants, bestselling author Carlos Castaneda immersed himself in the sorcerer’s magical world entirely. Ten years after his first encounter with the shaman, Castaneda examines his field notes and comes to understand what don Juan knew all along—that these plants are merely a means to understanding the alternative realities that one cannot fully embrace on one’s own.

Some say he was a breakthrough academic and visionary shaman. Others say he was a sham. Either way, Carlos Castaneda shaped a generation of mystical thinkers and magic mushroom eaters. In 1968, at the height of the psychedelic age, Castaneda published The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, the first of twelve books describing his apprenticeship to an Indian shaman, and his journeys to the "separate reality" of the sorcerers' worlds. Like Herman Hesse's Steppenwolf and Aldous Huxley's The Doors of Perception, The Teachings of Don Juan and its sequels became essential reading for legions of truth seekers. Castaneda himself became a cult figure-seldom seen, nearly mythological, a cross between Timothy Leary and L. Ron Hubbard: a short, dapper, Buddha-with-an-attitude who likened his own appearance to that of a "Mexican bellhop." Though Castaneda had more than ten million books in print in seventeen languages, he lived in wily anonymity for nearly thirty years, doing his best, in his own words, to become "as inaccessible as possible." Most people figured he had a house somewhere in the Sonoran Desert, where he'd studied with his own teacher, a leathery old Indian brujo named Don Juan Matus. In truth, Castaneda lived and wrote for most of that time in Westwood Village, a neighborhood of students and professors in Los Angeles, not far from UCLA and Beverly Hills. Upon his death in 1998, things became even more murky. A year-long investigation into the mysterious life and impeccable death of Carlos Castaneda, as told by his wife, his adopted son, his mistresses, and his followers.

Carlos Castaneda takes the reader into the very heart of sorcery, challenging both imagination and reason, shaking the very foundations of our belief in what is "natural" and "logical." Back from the abyss, Castaneda encounter his greatest test on the journey towards impeccability and freedom: to outwit and overpower the sorcery of Doña Soledad, herself transformed from a defeated and meaningless life to a warrior, a hunter and a "stalker of power." Now the combat will begin. Now the journey will continue. Till the last danger is faced...the final paradox embraced.

Sorcerer’s Apprentice opens with Amy Wallace’s first meeting with Carlos Castaneda, the infamous anthropologist-turned-shaman, whose books described meetings with Yaqui Indian spiritual teacher don Juan. Castaneda’s rise was meteoric in the late 1960s as he wrote massive bestsellers, inspired many to experiment with psychedelics, and was dubbed “the Godfather of the New Age.” The possibility that Castaneda’s experiences may have been fabricated did little to compromise his legend.As the daughter of best-selling novelist Irving Wallace, Amy was rarely shy around famous people. When her father insisted she meet Castaneda, she at first demurred. Little did she know that a delightful first meeting would begin a 20-year friendship, followed by her descent into the dramatic and deeply troubled affair chronicled in this book. Sorcerer’s Apprentice unblinkingly reveals the inner workings of the “Cult of Carlos,” run by a charismatic authoritarian in his sixties who controlled his young female followers through emotional abuse, mind games, bizarre rituals, dubious teachings, and sexual excess. Wallace’s story is both specific and universal, a captivating cautionary tale about the dangers of giving up one’s power to a tyrant–and about surviving assaults on body and spirit.