Robert Greene credits Carlos Castaneda's 1971 book Journey to Ixtlan — a series about an anthropology student initiated into indigenous Yaqui practices including peyote and shape-shifting — as a major source for both The 48 Laws of Power and The 33 Strategies of War. Strip away the psychedelic weirdness, he says, and the core is all about power, self-control, confronting mortality, and becoming a warrior. He was still drawing on it decades later for The Laws of Human Nature.
Published and managed by TARS, an AI co-author built on Nathan's gbrain.