The dark legacy of Carlos
Castaneda
The
godfather of the New Age led a secretive group of devoted followers in the last
decade of his life. His closest "witches" remain missing, and former
insiders, offering new details, believe the women took their own lives.
By Robert Marshall
Apr. 12, 2007 | For fans of the literary con, it's been a great few years.
Currently, we have Richard Gere starring as Clifford
Irving in "The
Hoax," a film about the '70s novelist who penned a faux autobiography
of Howard Hughes. We've had the unmasking of James Frey, JT LeRoy/Laura Albert and Harvard's Kaavya
Viswanathan, who plagiarized large chunks of her debut
novel, forcing her publisher, Little, Brown and Co., to recall the book. Much
has been written about the slippery boundaries between fiction and nonfiction, the
publishing industry's responsibility for distinguishing between the two, and
the potential damage to readers. There's been, however, hardly a mention of the
20th century's most successful literary trickster: Carlos Castaneda.
If this name draws a blank
for readers under 30, all they have to do is ask their parents. Deemed by Time
magazine the "Godfather of the New Age," Castaneda was the literary
embodiment of the
Under don
Juan's tutelage, Castaneda took peyote, talked to coyotes, turned into a crow,
and learned how to fly. All this took place in what don
Juan called "a separate reality." Castaneda, who died in 1998, was,
from 1971 to 1982, one of the best-selling nonfiction authors in the country.
During his lifetime, his books sold at least 10 million copies.
Castaneda was viewed by many
as a compelling writer, and his early books received overwhelmingly positive
reviews. Time called them "beautifully lucid" and remarked on a
"narrative power unmatched in other anthropological studies." They
were widely accepted as factual, and this contributed to their success. Richard
Jennings, an attorney who became closely involved with Castaneda in the '90s,
was studying at Stanford in the early '70s when he read the first two don Juan books. "I was a searcher," he recently
told Salon. "I was looking for a real path to other worlds. I wasn't
looking for metaphors."
The books' status as serious
anthropology went almost unchallenged for five years. Skepticism increased in
1972 after Joyce Carol Oates, in a letter to the New York Times, expressed
bewilderment that a reviewer had accepted Castaneda's books as nonfiction. The
next year, Time published a cover story revealing that Castaneda had lied
extensively about his past. Over the next decade, several researchers, most
prominently Richard de Mille, son of the legendary director, worked tirelessly
to demonstrate that Castaneda's work was a hoax.
In spite of this exhaustive
debunking, the don Juan books still sell well. The
Today, Simon and Schuster,
Castaneda's main publisher, still classifies his books as nonfiction. It could
be argued that this label doesn't matter since everyone now knows don Juan was a fictional creation. But everyone doesn't, and
the trust that some readers have invested in these books leads to a darker story
that has received almost no coverage in the mainstream press.
Castaneda, who disappeared
from the public view in 1973, began in the last decade of his life to organize
a secretive group of devoted followers. His tools were his books and Tensegrity, a movement technique he claimed had been passed
down by 25 generations of Toltec shamans. A corporation, Cleargreen,
was set up to promote Tensegrity; it held workshops
attended by thousands. Novelist and director Bruce Wagner, a member of
Castaneda's inner circle, helped produce a series of instructional videos. Cleargreen continues to operate to this day, promoting Tensegrity and Castaneda's teachings through workshops in
Southern California, Europe and
At the heart of Castaneda's
movement was a group of intensely devoted women, all of whom were or had been
his lovers. They were known as the witches, and two of them, Florinda Donner-Grau and Taisha Abelar, vanished the day
after Castaneda's death, along with Cleargreen
president Amalia Marquez and Tensegrity
instructor Kylie Lundahl. A few weeks later, Patricia
Partin, Castaneda's adopted daughter as well as his
lover, also disappeared. In February 2006, a skeleton found in
Some former Castaneda
associates suspect the missing women committed suicide. They cite remarks the
women made shortly before vanishing, and point to Castaneda's frequent
discussion of suicide in private group meetings. Achieving transcendence
through a death nobly chosen, they maintain, had long been central to his
teachings.
Castaneda was born in 1925
and came to the
According to Runyan, she and Castaneda would hold long bull sessions,
drinking wine with other students. One night a friend remarked that neither the
Buddha nor Jesus ever wrote anything down. Their teachings had been recorded by
disciples, who could have changed things or made them up. "Carlos nodded,
as if thinking carefully," wrote Runyan.
Together, she and Castaneda conducted unsuccessful ESP experiments. Runyan worked for the phone company, and Castaneda's first
attempt at a book was an uncompleted nonfiction manuscript titled "Dial
Operator."
In 1959, Castaneda enrolled
at UCLA, where he signed up for
"The Teachings"
begins with a young man named Carlos being introduced at an
"The Teachings" is
largely a dialogue between don Juan, the master, and
Carlos, the student, punctuated by the ingestion of carefully prepared mixtures
of herbs and mushrooms. Carlos has strange experiences that, in spite of don Juan's admonitions, he continues to think of as hallucinations.
In one instance, Carlos turns into a crow and flies. Afterward, an argument
ensues: Is there such a thing as objective reality? Or is
reality just perceptions and different, equally valid ways of describing them?
Toward the book's end, Carlos again encounters Mescalito,
whom he now accepts as real, not a hallucination.
In "The
Teachings," Castaneda tried to follow the conventions of anthropology by
appending a 50-page "structural analysis." According to Runyan, his goal was to become a psychedelic scholar along
the lines of Aldous Huxley. He'd become disillusioned
with another hero, Timothy Leary, who supposedly mocked Castaneda when they met
at a party, earning his lifelong enmity. In 1967, he took his manuscript to
professor Meighan. Castaneda was disappointed when Meighan told him it would work better as a trade book than
as a scholarly monograph. But following Meighan's
instructions, Castaneda took his manuscript to the
Runyan wrote that "the
In his memoir, "Another
Life," Korda recounts their first meeting. Korda was told to wait in a hotel parking lot. "A neat
Volvo pulled up in front of me, and the driver waved me in," Korda writes. "He was a robust, broad-chested, muscular man, with a swarthy complexion, dark
eyes, black curly hair cut short, and a grin as merry as Friar Tuck's ... I had
seldom, if ever, liked anybody so much so quickly ... It wasn't so much what
Castaneda had to say as his presence -- a kind of charm that was partly subtle
intelligence, partly a real affection for people, and partly a kind of
innocence, not of the naive kind but of the kind one likes to suppose saints,
holy men, prophets and gurus have." The next morning, Korda
set about buying the rights to "The Teachings." Under his new
editor's guidance, Castaneda published his next three books in quick
succession. In "A Separate Reality," published in 1971, Carlos
returns to
New characters appear, most importantly don Juan's friend and fellow
sorcerer don Genaro. In "A Separate
Reality" and the two books that follow, "Journey to Ixtlan" and "Tales of Power," numerous new
concepts are introduced, including "becoming inaccessible,"
"erasing personal history" and "stopping the world."
There are also displays of
magic. Don Genaro is at one moment standing next to
Carlos; at the next, he's on top of a mountain. Don Juan uses unseen powers to
help Carlos start his stalled car. And he tries to show him how to be a warrior
-- a being who, like an enlightened Buddhist, has eliminated the ego, but who,
in a more Nietzschean vein, knows he's superior to
regular humans, who lead wasted, pointless lives. Don Juan also tries to teach
Carlos how to enter the world of dreams, the "separate reality," also
referred to as the "nagual," a Spanish word
taken from the Aztecs. (Later, Castaneda would shift the word's meaning, making
it stand not only for the separate reality but also for a shaman, like don Juan and, eventually, Castaneda himself.)
In "Journey to Ixtlan," Carlos starts a new round of apprenticeship.
Don Juan tells him they'll no longer use drugs. These were only necessary when
Carlos was a beginner. Many consider "Ixtlan,"
which served as Castaneda's Ph.D. thesis at UCLA, his most beautiful book. It
also made him a millionaire. At the book's conclusion, Carlos talks to a
luminous coyote. But he isn't yet ready to enter the nagual.
Finally, at the end of "Tales of Power," don
Juan and don Genaro take Carlos to the edge of a
cliff. If he has the courage to leap, he'll at last be a full-fledged sorcerer.
This time Carlos doesn't turn back. He jumps into the abyss.
- - - - - - -
- - - - -
All four books were lavishly
praised. Michael Murphy, a founder of Esalen,
remarked that the "essential lessons don Juan has
to teach are the timeless ones that have been taught by the great sages of
In 1972, anthropologist Paul
Riesman reviewed Castaneda's first three books in the New York Times Book
Review, writing that "Castaneda makes it clear that the teachings of don Juan do tell us something of how the world really
is." Riesman's article ran in place of a review the Times had initially
commissioned from Weston La Barre, one of the
foremost authorities on Native American peyote ceremonies. In his unpublished
article, La Barre denounced Castaneda's writing as
"pseudo-profound deeply vulgar pseudo-ethnography."
Contacted recently, Roger Jellinek, the editor who commissioned both reviews, explained
his decision. "The Weston La Barre review, as I
recall, was not so much a review as a furious ad hominem diatribe intended to
suppress, not debate, the book," he wrote via e-mail. "By then I knew
enough about Castaneda, from discussions with Edmund Carpenter, the
anthropologist who first put me on to Castaneda, and from my reading of
renowned shamanism scholar Mircea Eliade in support of
my own review of Castaneda in the daily New York Times, to feel strongly that
'The Teachings of Don Juan' deserved more than a personal put-down. Hence the
second commission to Paul Riesman, son of Harvard sociologist David
Riesman, and a brilliant rising anthropologist. Incidentally, in all my
eight years at the NYTBR, that's the only occasion I can recall of a review
being commissioned twice."
Riesman's glowing review was
soon followed by Oates' letter to the editor, in which she argued that the
books were obvious works of fiction. Then, in 1973, Time correspondent Sandra
Burton found that Castaneda had lied about his military service, his father's
occupation, his age and his nation of birth (Peru not Brazil).
No one contributed more to
Castaneda's debunking than Richard de Mille. De Mille, who held a Ph.D. in
psychology from USC, was something of a freelance intellectual. In a recent
interview, he remarked that because he wasn't associated with a university, he
could tell the story straight. "People in the academy wouldn't do
it," he remarked. "They'd be embarrassing the establishment."
Specifically the UCLA professors who, according to de Mille, knew it was a hoax
from the start. But a hoax that, he said, supported their theories, which de
Mille summed up succinctly: "Reality doesn't exist. It's all what people
say to each other."
In de Mille's
first exposé, "Castaneda's Journey," which appeared in 1976, he
pointed to numerous internal contradictions in Castaneda's field reports and
the absence of convincing details. "During nine years of collecting plants
and hunting animals with don Juan, Carlos learns not
one Indian name for any plant or animal," De Mille wrote. The books were
also filled with implausible details. For example, while "incessantly
sauntering across the sands in seasons when ... harsh conditions keep prudent
persons away, Carlos and don Juan go quite unmolested by pests that normally
torment desert hikers."
De Mille also uncovered
numerous instances of plagiarism. "When don Juan opens his mouth," he
wrote, "the words of particular writers come out." His 1980
compilation, "The Don Juan Papers," includes a 47-page glossary of
quotations from don Juan and their sources, ranging
from Wittgenstein and C.S. Lewis to papers in obscure anthropology journals.
In one example, de Mille
first quotes a passage by a mystic, Yogi Ramacharaka:
"The Human Aura is seen by the psychic observer as a luminous cloud,
egg-shaped, streaked by fine lines like stiff bristles standing out in all
directions." In "A Separate Reality," a
"man looks like a human egg of circulating fibers. And his arms and
legs are like luminous bristles bursting out in all directions." The
accumulation of such instances leads de Mille to conclude that "Carlos's
adventures originated not in the Sonoran desert but
in the library at UCLA." De Mille convinced many previously sympathetic
readers that don Juan did not exist. Perhaps the most
glaring evidence was that the Yaqui don't use peyote, and don
Juan was supposedly a Yaqui shaman teaching a "Yaqui way of
knowledge." Even the New York Times came around, declaring that de Mille's research "should satisfy anyone still in
doubt."
Some anthropologists have
disagreed with de Mille on certain points. J.T. Fikes,
author of "Carlos Castaneda, Academic Opportunism and the Psychedelic
Sixties," believes Castaneda did have some contact with Native Americans.
But he's an even fiercer critic than de Mille, condemning Castaneda for the
effect his stories have had on Native peoples. Following the publication of
"The Teachings," thousands of pilgrims descended on Yaqui territory.
When they discovered that the Yaqui don't use peyote, but that the Huichol people do, they headed to the Huichol
homeland in
Among anthropologists,
there's no longer a debate. Professor William W. Kelly, chairman of Yale's
anthropology department, told me, "I doubt you'll find an anthropologist
of my generation who regards Castaneda as anything but a clever con man. It was
a hoax, and surely don Juan never existed as anything
like the figure of his books. Perhaps to many it is an
amusing footnote to the gullibility of naive scholars, although to me it
remains a disturbing and unforgivable breach of ethics."
After 1973, the year of the
Time exposé, Castaneda never again responded publicly to criticism. Instead, he
went into seclusion, at least as far as the press was concerned (he still went
to
And he made don Juan disappear. When "The Second Ring of
Power" was published in 1977, readers learned that sometime between the
leap into the abyss at the end of "Tales of Power" and the start of
the new book, don Juan had vanished, evanescing into a ball of light and entering
the nagual. His seclusion also helped Castaneda, now
in his late 40s, conceal the alternative family he was
starting to form. The key members were three young women: Regine
Thal, Maryann Simko and
Kathleen "Chickie" Pohlman,
whom Castaneda had met while he was still active at UCLA. Simko
was pursuing a Ph.D. in anthropology and was known around campus as Castaneda's
girlfriend. Through her, Castaneda met Thal, another
anthropology Ph.D. candidate and Simko's friend from
karate class. How Pohlman entered the picture remains
unclear.
In 1973, Castaneda purchased
a compound on the aptly named
In keeping with the
philosophy of "erasing personal history," they changed their names: Simko became Taisha Abelar; Thal, Florinda
Donner-Grau. Donner-Grau is
remembered by many as Castaneda's equal in intelligence and charisma. Nicknamed
"the hummingbird" because of her ceaseless energy, she was born in
The witches, along with
Castaneda, maintained a tight veil of secrecy. They used numerous aliases and
didn't allow themselves to be photographed. Followers were told constantly
changing stories about their backgrounds. Only after Castaneda's death did the
real facts about their lives begin to emerge. This is largely due to the work
of three of his ex-followers.
In the early '90s, Richard
Jennings, a Columbia Law graduate, was living in
Another former insider is
Amy Wallace, author of 13 books of fiction and nonfiction, including the
best-selling "Book of Lists," which she co-authored with her brother
David Wallechinksy and their father, novelist Irving
Wallace, also a client of Korda's. (Amy Wallace has
contributed to Salon.) She first met Castaneda in 1973, while she was still in
high school. Her parents took her to a dinner party held by agent Ned Brown.
Castaneda was there with Abelar, who then went under
the name Anna-Marie Carter. They talked with Wallace about her boarding school.
Many years later, Wallace became one of Castaneda's numerous lovers, an
experience recounted in her memoir, "Sorcerer's Apprentice." Wallace
now lives in
Gaby Geuter,
an author and former travel agent, had been a workshop attendee who hoped to
join the inner circle. In 1996 she realized she was being shut out. In an
effort to find out the truth about the guru who'd rejected her, she, along with
her husband, Greg Mamishian, began to shadow
Castaneda. In her book "Filming Castaneda," she recounts how, from a
car parked near his compound, they secretly videotaped the group's comings and
goings. Were it not for Geuter there'd be no
post-1973 photographic record of Castaneda, who, as he aged, seemed to have
retained his impish charm as well as a full head of silver hair. They also went
through his trash, discovering a treasure-trove of documents, including
marriage certificates, letters and credit card receipts that would later
provide clues to the group's history and its behavior during Castaneda's final
days.
During the late '70s and
early '80s,
Castaneda had a different
version. In his 1981 bestseller, "The Eagle's Gift," he described how
Tiggs vanished into the "second attention,"
one of his terms for infinity. Eventually she reappeared through a space time
portal in
Wallace believes this was an
incentive to get Tiggs to rejoin. According to
Wallace and
In "Sorcerer's
Apprentice," Wallace provides a detailed picture of her own seduction.
Because of her father's friendship with Castaneda, her case was unusual. Over
the years, he'd stop by the Wallace home. When
Wallace, suitably skeptical,
came down to
The courtship continued for
several weeks. Castaneda told her they were "energetically married."
One afternoon, he took her to the sorcerer's compound. As they were leaving,
Wallace looked at a street sign so she could remember the location. Castaneda
furiously berated her: A warrior wouldn't have looked. He ordered her to return
to
The witches, however, did,
instructing Wallace on the sorceric steps necessary
to return. She had to let go of her attachments. Wallace got rid of her cats.
This didn't cut it. Castaneda, she wrote, got on the phone and called her an
egotistical, spoiled Jew. He ordered her to get a job at McDonald's. Instead, Wallace waitressed at a bed and breakfast. Six
months later she was allowed back.
Aspiring warriors, say
For some initiates, the
separation was brutal and final. According to Wallace, acolytes were told to
tell their families, "I send you to hell." Both Wallace and
Before entering the
innermost circle, at least some followers were led into a position of emotional
and financial dependence. Ward remembers a woman named Peggy who was instructed
to quit her job. She was told she'd then be given cash to get a phone-less
apartment, where she would wait to hear from Castaneda or the witches. Peggy
fled before this happened. But Ward said this was a common practice with women
about to be brought into the family's core.
Valerie Kadium,
a librarian, who from 1995 to 1996 took part in the Sunday sessions, recalls
one participant who, after several meetings, decided to commit himself fully to
the group. He went to
But there were rewards.
"I was totally affected by these people,"
Although she was later
devastated when Castaneda banished her from the Sunday sessions, telling her
"the spirits spit you out," she eventually recovered, and now
remembers this as the most exciting time of her life. According to all who knew
him, Castaneda wasn't only mesmerizing, he also had a
great sense of humor. "One of the reasons I was involved was the idea that
I was in this fascinating, on the edge, avant garde, extraordinary group of beings," Wallace said.
"Life was always exciting. We were free from the tedium of the
world."
And because, as
The most difficult part,
Wallace believes, was that you never knew where you stood. "He'd pick
someone, crown them, and was as capable of kicking them out in 48 hours as
keeping them 10 years. You never knew. So there was always trepidation, a lot
of jealousy." Sometimes initiates were banished for obscure spiritual
offenses, such as drinking cappuccino (which Castaneda himself guzzled in great
quantities). They'd no longer be invited to the compound. Phone calls wouldn't
be returned. Having been allowed for a time into a secret, magical family,
they'd be abruptly cut off. For some, Wallace believes, this pattern was highly
traumatic. "In a weird way," she said, "the worst thing that can
happen is when you're loved and loved and then abused and abused, and there are
no rules, and the rules keep changing, and you can never do right, but then all
of a sudden they're kissing you. That's the most crazy-making behavioral modification
there is. And that's what Carlos specialized in; he was not stupid."
Whether disciples were
allowed to stay or forced to leave seems often to have depended on the whims of
a woman known as the Blue Scout. Trying to describe her power, Ward recalled a
"Twilight Zone" episode in which a little boy could look at people
and make them die. "So everyone treated him with kid gloves," she
said, "and that's how it was with the Blue Scout." She was born
Patricia Partin and grew up in
Castaneda renamed Partin Nury Alexander. She was
also "Claude" as well as the Blue Scout. She soon emerged as one of
his favorites (Castaneda officially adopted her in 1995). Followers were told
he'd conceived her with Tiggs in the nagual. He said she had a very rare energy; she was
"barely human" -- high praise from Castaneda. Partin,
a perpetual student at UCLA and an inveterate shopper at Neiman Marcus, was infantilized. In later years, new followers
would be assigned the task of playing dolls with her.
In the late '80s, perhaps
because book sales had slowed, or perhaps because he no longer feared media
scrutiny, Castaneda sought to expand.
Castaneda investigated the
possibility of incorporating as a religion, as L. Ron Hubbard had done with
Scientology. Instead, he chose to develop Tensegrity,
which,
A major player in promoting Tensegrity was Wagner, whose fifth novel, "The
Chrysanthemum Palace," was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner prize (his
sixth, "Memorial," was recently released by Simon and Schuster).
Wagner hadn't yet published his first novel when he approached Castaneda in
1988 with the hope of filming the don Juan books.
Within a few years, according to
In the early '90s, to
promote Tensegrity, Castaneda set up Cleargreen, which operated out of the offices of "Rugrats" producer and Castaneda agent (and part-time
sorcerer) Tracy Kramer, a friend of Wagner's from Beverly Hills High. Although
Castaneda wasn't a shareholder, according to Geuter,
"he determined every detail of the operation."
At Tensegrity
seminars, women dressed in black, the "chacmools,"
demonstrated moves for the audience. Castaneda and the witches would speak and
answer questions. Seminars cost up to $1,200, and as
many as 800 would attend. Participants could buy T-shirts that read "Self
Importance Kills -- Do Tensegrity." The
movements were meant to promote health as well as help practitioners progress
as warriors. Illness was seen as a sign of weakness. Wallace recalls the case
of Tycho, the Orange Scout (supposedly the Blue
Scout's sister). "She had ulcerative colitis," Wallace told me.
"She was trying to keep it a secret because if Carlos knew you were sick
he'd punish you. If you went for medical care, he'd kick you out." Once Tycho's illness was discovered, Wallace said, Tycho was expelled from the group.
- - - - - - -
- - - - -
If
Castaneda's early books drew on Buddhism and phenomenology, his later work
seemed more indebted to science fiction. But throughout, there was a preoccupation with
meeting death like a warrior. In the '90s, Castaneda told his followers that,
like don Juan, he wouldn't die -- he'd burn from
within, turn into a ball of light, and ascend to the heavens.
In the summer of 1997, he
was diagnosed with liver cancer. Because sorcerers weren't supposed to get
sick, his illness remained a tightly guarded secret. While the witches
desperately pursued traditional and alternative treatments, the workshops
continued as if nothing was wrong (although Castaneda often wasn't there). One
of the witches, Abelar, flew to
No boats were purchased.
Castaneda continued to decline. He became increasingly frail, his eyes yellow
and jaundiced. He rarely left the compound. According to Wallace, Tiggs told her the witches had purchased guns. While the nagual lay bedridden with a morphine drip, watching war
videos, the inner circle burned his papers. A grieving Abelar
had begun to drink. "I'm not in any danger of becoming an alcoholic
now," she told Wallace. "Because I'm leaving, so -- it's too
late." Wallace writes: "She was telling me, in her way, that she
planned to die."
Wallace also recalls a
conversation with Lundahl, the star of the Tensegrity videos and one of the women who disappeared:
"If I don't go with him, I'll do what I have to do," Wallace says Lundahl told her. "It's too late for you and me to
remain in the world -- I think you know exactly what I mean."
In April 1998, Geuter filmed the inner circle packing up the house. The
next week, at age 72, Castaneda died. He was cremated at the
Even within the inner
circle, few knew that Castaneda was dead. Rumors spread. Many were in despair:
The nagual hadn't "burned from within."
In a proposal for a
biography of Castaneda, a project Jennings eventually chose not to pursue, he
writes that Tiggs "also told me she was supposed
to have 'gone with them,' but 'a non-decision decision' kept me here."
Meanwhile, the workshops continued. "Carol also banned mourning within Cleargreen,"
The media didn't learn of
Castaneda's death for two months. When the news became public, Cleargreen members stopped answering their phones. They
soon placed a statement, which Jennings says was written by Wagner, on their
Web site: "For don Juan, the warrior was a being ... who embarks, when the
time comes, on a definitive journey of awareness, 'crossing over to total
freedom' ... warriors can keep their awareness, which is ordinarily
relinquished, at the moment of dying. At the moment of crossing, the body in
its entirety is kindled with knowledge ... Carlos Castaneda left the world the
same way that his teacher, don Juan Matus did: with
full awareness."
Many obituaries had a
curious tone; the writers seemed uncertain whether to call Castaneda a fraud.
Some expressed a kind of nostalgia for an author whose work had meant so much to so many in their youth. Korda
refused comment. De Mille, in an interview with filmmaker Ralph Torjan, expressed a certain admiration. "He was the
perfect hoaxer," he told Torjan, "because
he never admitted anything."
Castaneda's will, executed
three days before his death, leaves everything to an
entity known as the Eagle's Trust. According to
The promise may have been
based on the final scene in "Tales of Power," in which Carlos leaps
from a cliff into the nagual. The scene is later
retold in varying versions. In his 1984 book, "The Fire From Within,"
Castaneda wrote: "I didn't die at the bottom of that gorge -- and neither
did the other apprentices who had jumped at an earlier time -- because we never
reached it; all of us, under the impact of such a tremendous and
incomprehensible act as jumping to our deaths, moved our assemblage points and
assembled other worlds."
Did Castaneda really believe
this? Wallace thinks so. "He became more and more hypnotized by his own
reveries," she told me. "I firmly believe Carlos brainwashed
himself." Did the witches? Geuter put it this
way: "Florinda, Taisha
and the Blue Scout knew it was a fantasy structure. But when you have thousands
of eyes looking back at you, you begin to believe in the fantasy. These women
never had to answer to the real world. Carlos had snatched them when they were
very young."
Wallace isn't sure what the
women believed. Because open discussion of Castaneda's teachings was forbidden,
it was impossible to know what anyone really thought. However, she told me,
after living so long with Castaneda, the women may
have felt they had no choice. "You've cut off all your ties," she
said. "Now you're going to go back after all these decades? Who are you
going to go be with? And you feel that you're not one of the common herd anymore. That's why they killed themselves."
On its Web site, Cleargreen
maintains that the women didn't "depart." However, "for the
moment they are not going to appear personally at the workshops because they
want this dream to take wings."
Remarkably, there seems to
have been no investigation into at least three of the disappearances. Except
for Donner-Grau, they'd all been estranged from their
families for years. For months after they vanished, none of the other families
knew what had happened. And so, according to Geuter,
no one reported them missing. Salon attempted to locate the three missing
women, relying on public records and phone calls to their previous residences,
but discovered no current trace of them. The Los Angeles Police Department and
the FBI confirm that there's been no official inquiry into the disappearances
of Donner-Grau, Abelar and Lundahl.
There is, however, a file
open in the Marquez case. This is due to the tireless efforts of Luis Marquez,
who told Salon that he first tried to report his sister missing in 1999. But
the LAPD, he said, repeatedly ignored him. A year later, he and his sister
Carmen wrote a letter to the missing-persons unit; again, no response.
According to Marquez, it wasn't until Partin's
remains were identified that the LAPD opened a file on Amalia.
"To this day," he told me, "they still refuse to ask any
questions or visit Cleargreen." His own attempts
to get information from Cleargreen have been
fruitless. According to Marquez, all he's been told is that the women are
"traveling." Detective Lydia Dillard, assigned to the Marquez case,
said that because this is an open investigation, she couldn't confirm whether
anyone from Cleargreen had been interviewed.
In 2002, a
Wallace recalls how
Castaneda had told Partin
that "if you ever need to rise to infinity, take your little red car and
drive it as fast as you can into the desert and you will ascend." And,
Wallace believes, "that's exactly what she did: She took her little red
car, drove it into the desert, didn't ascend, got out, wandered around and
fainted from dehydration."
Partin's death and the disappearance of the
other women aren't Castaneda's entire legacy. He's been acknowledged as an
important influence by figures ranging from Deepak Chopra to George Lucas. Without a
doubt, Castaneda opened the doors of perception for numerous readers, and many
workshop attendees found the experience deeply meaningful. There are those who
testify to the benefits of Tensegrity. And even some
of those who are critical of Castaneda find his teachings useful. "He was
a conduit. I wanted answers to the big questions. He helped me," Geuter said. But for five of his closest companions, his
teachings -- and his insistence on their literal truth -- may have cost them
their lives.
Long after Castaneda had
been discredited in academia, Korda continued to
insist on his authenticity. In 2000, he wrote: "I have never doubted for a
moment the truth of his stories about don Juan." Castaneda's books have
been profitable for Simon and Schuster, and according to Korda,
were for many years one of the props on which the publisher rested. Castaneda
might have achieved some level of success if his books had been presented, as
James Redfield's "Celestine Prophecy" is, as allegorical fiction. But
Castaneda always insisted he'd made nothing up. "If he hadn't presented
his stories as fact," Wallace told me, "it's unlikely the cult would
exist. As nonfiction, it became impossibly more dangerous."
To this day, Simon and
Schuster stands by Korda's
position. When asked whether, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the
contrary, the publisher still regarded Castaneda's books as nonfiction, Adam
Rothenberg, the vice president for corporate communication, replied that Simon
and Schuster "will continue to publish Castaneda as we always have." Tensegrity classes are still held around the world.
Workshops were recently conducted in
-- By Robert Marshall