SOURCE: Review of The Eagle's Gift, in Saturday Review, Vol. 8, No. 5, May, 1981, p. 73.

[In the following review, Gilder praises Castaneda's attention to the irrational world of magic.]

The Eagle's Gift is phase six in Castaneda's continuing adventures in search of the mystical "Yaqui way of knowledge." His Mexican Indian mentor, Don Juan, has long since vanished into incorporeity and the "third awareness," leaving behind his motley group of sorcerer's apprentices to stumble along on their own. Juan isn't completely absent from this account, however: Carlos meets up with him again during his "controlled dream" wanderings and they continue their flipped-out Socratic dialogues.

Castaneda writes once more in the preface that this is not a work of fiction, neither is it strictly speaking anthropology. The second assertion is easier to accept. Still it isn't necessary to believe to get swept up in Castaneda's other-worldly narrative; like myth it works...