"Ixtlan" turns out to be a metaphorical hometown (or 'place', 'position of being') to which the "sorcerer" or warrior or man of knowledge is drawn to return, trying to get home.

The point of the story is that a man of knowledge, or sorcerer, is a changed being, or a Human closer to his true state of Being, and for that reason he can never truly go "home" to his old lifestyle again.

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.

[3] In the book don Juan takes Carlos on these various degrees of apprenticeship, in response to what he believes are signals from the phenomenological world, "The decision as to who can be a warrior and who can only be a hunter is not up to us.