In 1960 Carlos Castaneda first met don Juan Matus, a Yaqui Indian feared and avoided by many in the American Southwest region because of his reputation for possessing unnatural powers. Over the next five years don Juan's arcane knowledge led Castaneda into a world of beauty and terror, ruled by concepts and forces beyond the Western imagination. Using psychedelic plants and compounds, Castaneda lived through encounters with disembodied spirits, shamans in the form of huge wolves, and death in the shape of silver crows. This book-submitted as his Master's thesis in anthropology-remains a controversial account, variously seen as fiction or a work of remarkable insight.