Often covers become fused with a book’s content due to a reader’s affection. But there are times when art and content are perfectly matched, as is the case with the six Castaneda titles collected here. 

The method used to achieve the near-surrealist scenes is so simple and ring quite true for psychedelic endeavors undertaken in the desert: the perception of scale is a matter of one’s perspective. As well, in each, there is a clarity regarding that stark but ravishing beauty one encounters in those environs.

About this site


Though a highlighting of Castaneda may seem the intention here this isn’t really the case; it’s personal and not quite self-evident. An impression is being attempted, the heart of which is not post-hippy or the New Age, it is California — or rather my experience of these collected works in that place. A place wholly unlike the ones in which I started. I emerged from the stifling plainness of Friesland, and stumbled to the overconfident obfuscations of Amsterdam and Manhattan, eventually coming to a full stop in Los Angeles, the place of night blooming jasmine, coastal sage, endless dumpster alleys and the constant view of that big hillside sign parallaxing in dumb beauty behind all manner of structure. To me Los Angeles and its body, California, is a place of pure and realistic magick.This site is not solitary; it exists as a kind of partner or even foil to two others: Turing Type and Oerlaap. The three sites are wholly different in nature but similar in impulse; the hope is that together they form a kind of recapitulation. Perhaps it is true: What shakes loose rolls west.

Above: Carlos Castaneda reading in a research room of the UCLA library.



Bibliography



  • The Teachings of Don Juan — Carlos Castaneda, 1968
  • A Separate Reality — Carlos Castaneda, 1971
  • Journey to Ixtlan — Carlos Castaneda, 1972
  • Tales of Power — Carlos Castaneda, 1974
  • The Second Ring of Power — Carlos Castaneda, 1977
  • The Eagle's Gift — Carlos Castaneda, 1981
  • The Fire From Within — Carlos Castaneda, 1984
  • The Power of Silence — Carlos Castaneda, 1987
  • The Art of Dreaming — Carlos Castaneda, 1993
  • Turn Off Your Mind — Gary Lachman, 2001 
  • Autobiography of a Yogi — Paramahansa Yogananda, 1946 
  • Breaking Open the Head — Daniel Pinchbeck, 2002 
  • Children of the Sun — Gordon Kennedy, 1998 
  • The Visionary State — Erik Davis, 2006 
  • The Celtic Twilight  — W. B. Yeats, 2011
  • Desert Oracle — Ken Layne, 2020
  • The Hasheesh Eater — Fitz Hugh Ludlow, 1857
  • The Doors of Perception — Aldous Huxley, 1954 
  • Forty days in the desert B — Moebius, 2009 
  • Shelter — Lloyd Kahn, 2000
  • Cosmos and History — Mircea Eliade, 1954
  • Magick (Book 4), Aleister Crowley, 1912 
  • Diary of a Drug Fiend, Aleister Crowley, 1922 
  • The Book of Lies, Aleister Crowley, 1912 
  • Moonchild, Aleister Crowley, 1917  
  • Soma: Documents — Carsten Höller, 2011 
  • The Moons at Your Door — David Tibet, 2016
  • Star Maker — Olaf Stapledon, 1937 
  • The Immense Journey — Loren Eiseley, 1957 
  • The Anathema of Zos — Austin Osman Spare, 1927 
  • The Author of the Acacia Seeds — Ursula K. Le Guin,  1974
  • Cloud-hidden, Whereabouts Unknown — Alan Watts, 1974
  • The Joyous Cosmology — Alan Watts, 1962
  • The Willows — Algernon Blackwood, 1907
  • Esalen — Jeffrey Kripal, 2008 
  • The Glass Bead Game — Hermann Hesse, 1943 
  • Memories, Dreams, Reflections — Carl Jung, 1962
  • Divine Mushrooms and Fungi — John W. Allen, 2014 
  • Handmade Houses — Richard Olsen, 2012
  • The Sacred Mushroom — Andrija Puharich, 1974 
  • Understanding Media — Marshall McLuhan, 1964 
  • The Medium Is the Massage — Marshall McLuhan, 1967
  • The Morning of the Magicians — Louis Pauwels & Jacques Bergie, 1960
  • Be Here Now — Ram Dass, 1971
  • Cosmic Trigger I, II, III — Robert Anton Wilson, 1977
  • TiHKAL — Alex & Ann Shulgin, 1997
  • PiHKAL — Alex & Ann Shulgin, 1991
  • The Adventure of Self-Discovery — Stanislav Grof, 1988
  • Maria Sabina: Her Life and Chants — Álvaro Estrada (transl. Henry Munn)
  • The Way of the Shaman — Michael Harner, 1980
  • The Road to Eleusis — R. Gordon Wasson, Albert Hofmann, Carl Ruck, 2008
  • The White Goddess — Robert Graves, 1948
  • Confessions of an English Opium-Eater – Thomas De Quincey, 1821
  • Psilocybin: Magic Mushroom Grower's Guide — Terence & Dennis McKenna, 1976
  • Dune — Frank Herbert, 1965
  • Hallucinogens and Shamanism — Michael Harner, 1973
  • Flashbacks — Timothy Leary, 1983 
  • The Yage Letters – William Burroughs & Allen Ginsberg, 1963
  • Psychonaut — Peter J. Carroll, 1982





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