Castaneda, << kas tuh NAY duh, >> Carlos (1931?-1998), an American author, gained fame for a series of books about his apprenticeship with a sorcerer of the Yaqui Indians named Don Juan Matus. Castaneda was supposedly a pupil of Don Juan for several years, visiting the sorcerer periodically in Arizona and in Sonora, Mexico. Under Don Juan’s guidance, Castaneda explored different mystical levels of consciousness, sometimes through the use of drugs that cause hallucinations.
Castaneda wrote the first account of his work with Don Juan in The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge (1968). Castaneda continued his accounts of Don Juan and his teachings in A Separate Reality: Further Conversations with Don Juan (1971), Journey to Ixtlan: The Lessons of Don Juan (1972), and The Power of Silence: Further Lessons of Don Juan (1987). Castaneda’s related studies include Tales of Power (1974), The Second Ring of Power (1977), The Eagle’s Gift (1981), The Fire from Within (1984), The Art of Dreaming (1993), and Magical Passes: Practical Wisdom of the Shamans of Ancient Mexico (1998).
Most scholars now doubt Don Juan actually existed. Some critics claim that the Yaqui sorcerer is a fictional creation of Castaneda, who perpetrated a hoax. But Castaneda’s books have also been widely praised for their vivid prose style, insights into the life of a sorcerer, and accounts of the culture of the Yaqui and other Mexican Indians.
There is uncertainty over Castaneda’s birthplace and year of birth. The author gave his place of birth as São Paulo, Brazil, and gave several different birth dates, including 1931 and 1935. Castaneda settled in the United States in 1951. United States immigration records list the place and year of his birth as Cajamarca, Peru, in 1925. Still other sources give various years of birth from 1925 to 1935. Castaneda received three degrees from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA)—a B.A. in 1962, an M.A. in 1964, and a Ph.D. in 1970. UCLA later stripped Castaneda of his Ph.D. degree after critics showed that many of his descriptions were fictional. Castaneda died on April 27, 1998.
