Castaneda, Carlos

Castaneda, Carlos (1931–  ) cultural anthropologist, author; born in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Educated at the University of California: Los Angeles (B.A. 1962; Ph.D. 1970), he published The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge (1968), which he claimed was based on his five-year apprenticeship with a Yaqui Indian sorcerer. (The Yaqui live in northwestern Mexico and bordering U.S. states.) Because Castaneda was so elusive, and because the book was taken up by young people at a time when numerous such mystical traditions were in fashion, many professionals cast doubt on the authenticity of the book's contents. When he followed it with a series of equally popular books, including A Separate Reality (1971) and Tales of Power (1975), even more questions were raised as to how much of his work was true anthropology and how much was his own creation.