Castaneda the Sorcerer

Fifty years ago today on 5 March 1973, Carlos Castaneda — literary sensation, countercultural icon and possible charlatan — manifested on the cover of Time Magazine. The author was at the zenith of his influence. Five years earlier, his UCLA graduate thesis The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge had been published by the University of California Press. Presented as an ethnographic account of an eight year apprenticeship with a mysterious sorcerer, the book was an immediate bestseller. Resold to Simon & Schuster, repackaged in a psychedelic cover and advertised as “nothing less than a revelation”, by 1973 it had sold 300,000 copies and was still selling at a rate of 16,000 copies per week.