Journey to Ixtlan

Infobox Book
name = Journey to Ixtlan
title_orig =
translator =


image_caption = Cover of Simon & Schuster paperback edition
author = Carlos Castaneda
illustrator =
cover_artist =
country = United States
language = English
series =
subject =
genre = Non-Fiction Memoir
publisher = Simon & Schuster
pub_date = 1972
media_type = Print (Hardcover & Paperback)
pages = 268
isbn = 0-671-73246-3
oclc =
preceded_by = A Separate Reality
followed_by = Tales of Power

"Journey to Ixtlan" is the third book by Carlos Castaneda. It was published as a work of non-fiction by Simon & Schuster in 1972. [Castaneda, Carlos. "Journey to Ixtlan." New York: Simon & Schuster, 1972.] As with Castaneda's other books, the claim of non-fiction has been called into question by academics and readers. Responding to their review of "Journey to Ixtlan", Joyce Carol Oates wrote a letter published in the "The New York Times Book Review" expressing her bewilderment at their review of what she saw as an obvious fiction. [Oates, Joyce Carol. "Anthropology-or fiction?" [Letter] "New York Times Book Review", 1972 (Nov 26)] Additional details of the controversy can be found in the article on Carlos Castaneda.

The title of this book is taken from an allegory that is recounted to Castaneda by his shamanistic "benefactor", a colleague of his shamanistic teacher don Juan Matus who is known to Carlos as Genaro Flores. 'Ixtlan' turns out to be a metaphorical hometown to which the "sorcerer" or warrior or man of knowledge occasionally wishes desperately to return. This is because his elevated perspective leaves him little in common with ordinary people, who now seem no more substantial to him than "phantoms". The point of the story is that a man of knowledge, or sorcerer, is a changed being, and for that reason he can never truly go 'home' to his old lifestyle again.

In "Journey to Ixtlan" Castaneda essentially reevaluates the teachings up to that point. He discusses information that was apparently missing from the first two books regarding stopping the world which previously he had only regarded as a metaphor.

He also finds that psychotropic plants, knowledge of which was a significant part of his apprenticeship to Yaqui shaman don Juan Matus, are not as important in the world view as he had previously thought. In the introduction he writes:

My basic assumption in both books has been that the articulation points in learning to be a sorcerer were the states of nonordinary reality produced by the ingestion of psychotropic plants...
My perception of the world through the effects of those psychotropics had been so bizarre and impressive that I was forced to assume that such states were the only avenue to communicating and learning what Don Juan was attempting to teach me.That assumption was erroneous.

In the book don Juan takes Carlos on these various degrees of apprenticeship, in response to what he believes are signals from the supernatural world, "The decision as to who can be a warrior and who can only be a hunter is not up to us. That decision is in the realm of the powers that guide men." ["Journey to Ixtlan", p107]

The book shows a progression between different states of learning, from hunter, to warrior, to man of knowledge or sorcerer, the difference said to be one of skill level and the type of thing hunted, "...a warrior is an impeccable hunter that hunts power. If he succeeds in his hunting he becomes a man of knowledge." ["Journey to Ixtlan", p123]

Throughout the book Castaneda portrays himself as skeptical and reserved in his explanations of the phenomena at hand, but by the end of the book Castaneda's rationalist worldview is seen to be breaking down in the face of an onslaught of experiences that he is unable to explain logically.

ee also

* Castaneda Bibliography
* Carlos Castaneda

References