In 1960, Carlos Castaneda, a young graduate anthropologist at the University of California, visited Mexico for research purposes to gather information about medicinal plants used by Indians in their healing practices and to meet an old shaman, Juan Matus. This meeting will drastically change not only his life, but also the lives of millions of readers around the world, because it will begin the countdown to a new era - the New Age. The book The Teachings of Don Juan tells of the first five years of Castaneda's apprenticeship with a mysterious Indian who dedicated him to the mystery of molfarism.
Written as a scientific work on anthropology for a narrow circle of specialists, the book later became a bestseller and made its author world famous. Continuation of the story of Don Juan and the magical world of Mexican shamans were the books "Separate Reality", "Journey to Ixtlan", "Stories of Power", "Gift of the Eagle" and others (a total of 12 books).
The first part of the book is Castaneda's field diaries about the first years of his apprenticeship with don Juan; the second part ("Structural Analysis") - the author's attempt to systematize the information obtained and design it as a scientific work.