Patricia Partin (from her high school yearbook, sophomore year)

Introduction to 2024 Update

What if everything about you was a lie? If your origin and whole life story was the fantastic, grandiose concoction of a famous and powerful man who came into your life in your late teens and then dictated how and where you would live, supporting you all the while, for the next 20 years? Who would you be and how could you carry on after that man died? Nury or Nuri Alexander (it’s Nury on her original name change application, but Nuri shows up on other legal documents), a.k.a. Claude, a.k.a. the Blue Scout (born Patricia Lee Partin) found she could not continue under those circumstances. When her inventor/creator ceased being around to maintain her on the absurdly high pedestal he had erected for her, she inevitably fell to earth and died. 

As the chronology below will illustrate, Patty Partin was the perfect cypher for one of the greatest myth makers of our time. When they met, she was an attractive 19-year-old high school dropout, whose grades in school had been poor at best. Raised in a small, rural town, she was emotionally scarred by the crippling accident her doting father had suffered when she was only 11. The tragic accident caused her really to lose both parents, because not only did her severely brain damaged father have to go into nursing homes, her mother’s grief made her totally self absorbed, with no time or attention for her pre-teen daughter. As a result, Patty grew up deeply narcissistically wounded and emotionally immature. Her friends of that time report that she escaped not only into drinking and drugs, but also fantasies of finding Hollywood stardom. When she met the man who had the financial and creative resources to give her that stardom and sense of specialness she sought, that she could never have attained on her own, she was totally ensnared. In return she gave him the one thing she had going for her: strong sexual energy and a sense of abandon.

In Castaneda world, the former Denny’s waitress with little education became an other worldly, cosmically advanced figure whose supposed creativity and narcissistic whims were indulged to the hilt. Castaneda eventually adopted her as his daughter, so their intense sexual relationship also took on an incestuous edge. And she used her position as the pinnacle and arbiter of the Castaneda cult’s social hierarchy to attract young female lovers, who desperately competed for her favors and attention. And all her bills and luxuries were fully paid for by her creator/lover/father. Given her arrested development and unchecked narcissism, her main activities when not having sex with her father or young female lovers were those of a child: playing with dolls and going to amusement parks. 

So this was the person Castaneda held up not only to his inner circle but also to those of us in the Sunday group and much larger contingent of Tensegrity workshop goers as the most evolved and cosmically attuned being–the one who was not only “ready to go” into the wonder of the infinite, but also to lead Castaneda’s group on its ultimate journey. Castaneda and his fellow supposed disciples of don Juan built her up to us before we ever met her, and Castaneda then oversaw and carefully scripted her handful of public speeches. In reality, of course, she was only a special, cosmically wondrous creature in Castaneda’s eyes and storytelling. No wonder she couldn’t see a way to continue when her creator died. Failing to join the other four women closest to Castaneda on their well-planned suicide pact trip, she took off to Death Valley on her own, abandoning her red Ford Escort–its plates stripped, empty of luggage or anything else–to walk into the burning desert to her death at age 40.

-Richard Jennings


Nury Alexander captured on video circa 1997, courtesy of of Greg and Gabi
Copyright © 1999 Greg Mamishian and Gabi Geuther

Blue Scout Chronology: Patricia Lee Partin

Sept. 4, 1957 – Patricia Lee Partin (later to be known as “the Blue Scout”) is born at 11:40 AM in St. Luke Hospital in Pasadena, CA, to Marion Lee (“Buck’) Partin, 30, and Joyce Jeanette Jensen, 30. The family was then living in Azusa, about 20 miles east of Pasadena in Los Angeles County. [Birth certificate State file no. 57-207997.] She was the fourth of five daughters in the Partin family.

1957-1969 – Per Patricia’s former friends interviewed for Chapter 9 of the Trickster podcast, the Partin family with six women in the house in La Verne, California, seemed like a close knit, “estrogen filled” household. Patricia, or Patty, is described as very skinny with long dark hair. She is said to have been “beautiful,” with “the face of an angel.” The mother was quiet and Patty was too, “until you really got to know her.” The girls were close to their dad, who was outgoing and a hard worker. He was seen as the “foundation of the family,” and spent most of his free time in his garage or working on the family’s camper. They say he was always happy and vivacious. Patty was father’s little girl. The family went on camping trips.

1969 – On a camping trip in Joshua Tree, the family gathered to watch Buck and a friend race their motorbikes. The two crashed and the father was catapulted into the air. He survived but was left with permanent and severe brain damage. He would spend the next 27 years living in nursing homes, a shell of his former self.

1969 – 1971 – Patty’s mother, Joyce, mourned for years. Patricia, eventually the only daughter still living at home with her mother when the other girls graduated, became increasingly withdrawn. She often refused her former playmate’s requests to come out and join them for parties or the movies. When they stopped by, friends reported finding her answering the door bundled in sweaters with a cup of tea in her hand, unwilling to go out with them.

Sept. 1971 – May 1973 – Patricia attended Bonita High School in La Verne, California, enjoying art classes, but flunking out of some courses, most of her grades ranging from C- to D. She hung out in an orchard area with students who were fellow outsiders. That’s where she was introduced to Castaneda’s books. She also drank increasingly, to the point of passing out, and took LSD (per Trickster podcast interviews). [The picture above is taken from the 1972 Yearbook at Bonita. Patricia had already dropped out in 1973, before her junior year picture was taken.]

[1973 – Castaneda’s character “Don Juan” (who Castaneda claims instructed Patricia on “magical passes” that are later the subject of Castaneda’s book by that name) permanently leaves the world with his party of sorcerers.]

May 1973 – Spring 1975 – Patricia attended Chapparal Continuation High School in San Dimas. She failed to graduate, ending with 116 credits (190 being needed to graduate). Toward the end of her time there, she enrolled in training for a position as a medical/legal secretary. Per the Trickster podcast interviews, she sometimes dressed up in vintage clothes with friends and went downtown. She aspired to be an actress and identified with Greta Garbo. She also took advantage of her mother, stealing money out of her purse, drinking her liquor, and taking her car.

Late 1975 – 1976 – At some point, Patty left home heading toward Hollywood. She then worked as a waitress at Denny’s. She met Mark Silliphant, nephew of Hollywood writer and producer Sterling Silliiphant (In the Heat of the Night). According to Joyce Partin, Patty’s mother, it was after meeting Silliphant that Patty “started acting really strange.”

[1976 – 1977? – Sterling Silliphant acquired the film rights to The Teachings of don Juan. Per the Trickster podcast, he intended to make a 16-millimeter movie to be shown exclusively at colleges, and attached his nephew Mark to the project to write the screenplay. According to Richard de Mille’s 1990 edition of The Don Juan Papers, when de Mille tried to reach Sterling Silliphant to inquire about the film, he “could reach only [Sterling’s] brother [sic] Mark, who told me he didn’t like what I was doing, and hung up.” p. 245. De Mille was prompted to call Silliphant by an entry on Castaneda in the 1977 edition of Contemporary Authors, a dictionary of writers’ biographies, that stated, “The Teachings of Don Juan sounds like a novel, but it was Castaneda’s master’s thesis, and all of the experiences are true.” The entry also states that the book, “was produced by Sterling Silliphant as an underground film.” De Mille learned from the Silliphant office at Warner Brothers that the production had been planned but the rights were subsequently withdrawn. An editor at Contemporary Authors informed him the entry mentioning the film “had been prepared for the 1971 edition and approved by Castaneda; and that no reason to revise it had come to the editor’s attention in 1976.” Id.]

January 23, 1977 – Patricia Lee Partin married Mark Wood Silliphant in Las Vegas, Nevada.

February 10, 1977 – Patricia and Mark Silliphant separated, after 19 days of marriage. [Per divorce petition.]

February 22, 1977 – Mark Silliphant petitioned for divorce from “Patricia Lee Silliphant.” [L.A. Superior Court No. WED 31357.]

April 11, 1977 – Mark Silliphant filed a financial declaration, listing his age as 30 and his occupation as writer. Patricia Lee Silliphant’s age was listed as 19 and her occupation as waitress.

1977 – Castaneda’s The Second Ring of Power published by Simon and Schuster

1977 – Patricia, with Mark Silliphant, visited her mother, Joyce Partin, then living in Anaheim, for the last time. Joyce shared with me when we talked in 1999 that she had gotten sober that summer, after having been an alcoholic for years. The couple refused, of course, to let Joyce take their picture. [Patricia will then have no further contact with her family of origin until a brother-in-law tracks her down through Cleargreen in 1996 or ‘97 for a brief telephone conversation.]

[August 2, 1977 – Mark Wood Silliphant filed for change of name to Richard Rollo Whittaker. He listed as his residence 11603 Darlington Blvd., LA 90049. (Yes, the address where Patricia was supposed to be living when Mark filed for divorce.) The petition states that he was born Oct. 7, 1946, in Pasadena, and gives his father–Leigh Arlington Silliphant–in Hawaii as his nearest relative. Final order filed Sept. 6, 1977. WEC 49429.][Mark Silliphant is known to have been a member of Castaneda’s “inner circle” for a time in the seventies. He was also known during this time as “Mark Austin,” which is interesting since Carol’s legal name from November 1972 to May 1988 was “Elizabeth Austin.” Mark had enrolled at UCLA as a Theater Arts major in September 1972, but left the school in March 1974 without obtaining a degree.]

June 30, 1978 – Final judgment is entered in Mark and Patricia’s divorce. Patricia’s address was then given as 11603 Darlington, Los Angeles 90049.

July 28, 1978 – Patricia Silliphant filed for a change of name to Nury Alexander. She listed her birthplace as Pasadena and date as September 4, 1957. She stated that her place of residence was 1376 ½ Midvale, Los Angeles, and that the reason for the change was: “At present I am preparing myself for a career in show business. I am cognizant of the fact that it is very important to have a name that would enhance my chances to succeed. I believe that the name I have chosen, Nury [the typed word “Nuri” is altered by hand to replace the “i” with a “y”] Alexander, has a fluidity to it which will help me in my chosen profession.” She also claimed that her father was deceased and that she had no known relatives (both of which claims were false at the time). L.A. Superior Court No. WEC 54721. Decree changing name filed on Sept. 11, 1978.]

[Note: On the same date, July 28, 1978, Beverly Evans (formerly Beverly Madge Ames) filed for change of name to Cecilia Evans. Petition stated that she also resided at 1376 1/2 Midvale, Los Angeles. Her final decree was also entered Sept. 11, 1978. WEC 54720. Carol Tiggs also used this address when she filed for a second change of name in October 1988, and Reni used it when she filed for a name change in 1989. Both Reni and Zaia Alexander, who filed for her name change in November 1992, also gave this as the address of “Nuri” Alexander in their petitions, both claiming that Nuri was their “sister.”]

November 3, 1982 – Nury’s high school transcripts were sent to UCLA Admission Office. (Presumably she had also taken and passed the California High School Proficiency Exam by this time.)

1980s – At least two people who knew Nury and others in Castaneda’s group recall that Castaneda was putting Nury through school at UCLA, and that she was enrolled for awhile at least in the Business School. [UCLA will not give out any information on Nury’s dates of attendance or degrees obtained because she filed a request for confidentiality on information relating to her record there. UMI Dissertation Services—the depository of most of the nation’s university Ph.D. dissertations and some masters’ theses–has no record of a master’s thesis or doctoral dissertation by a Nury or Nuri Alexander.]

October 3, 1985 – Castaneda executed an 11-page will in Beverly Hills leaving his estate in four equal shares to Mary Joan Baker, Regina Thal (a.k.a. Florinda Donner), Annamarie Carter and “Nuri” Alexander.

Late 1989 – Per interview in the Trickster podcast, film producer Janet Yang was invited to a session with Castaneda at a dance studio in Santa Monica where several women and a couple of men were present. The invitation came after Yang and her film production partner Oliver Stone had a meeting with Castaneda and his agent Tracy Kramer (following an announcement Yang and Stone took out in Variety regarding the formation of a production entity called Ixtlan). Nury was present at the dance studio session and Janet recalled she seemed “damaged,” and nervous, “like a deer in the headlights,” in contrast to the very extroverted Florinda.

[1991 – Amy Wallace reconnects with Castaneda, Florinda and Taisha, after having first met Castaneda and Taisha in the early 1970s.]

March 1991 – Jacobo Grinberg, a brilliant Mexican academic and scientist, visited Castaneda and his group in Los Angeles for a week with his wife Teresa and several others. Grinberg’s account of that visit, at Castaneda’s invitation, and further encounters with Castaneda in Mexico shortly thereafter, can be found here. The sessions with Castaneda’s group that he attended sound virtually identical to what I experienced in regular meetings with Castaneda from 1995-1997. Grinberg said Nury was introduced as Castaneda’s daughter with Carol Tiggs, and described her as “a thin extraordinary sensitive girl, dressed like a man, that surprised me in the way that she understood” his “hypothesis of the Synergetic Theory.” Grinberg claimed Nury’s “understanding was direct and complete as if my explanation had been planted perfectly in her mind.”

Feb. 1992 – DIMENSIONS (a Canadian New Age magazine) published article, “Being-In-Dreaming–Florinda Donner in Conversation with Alexander Blair-Ewart.” Florinda: “For [Castaneda], whatever the people he is working with—and there are six of us—it’s a matter of decision. That’s all. Our decision is all that counts, nothing else.” She also explains: “Castaneda is the last of his line. There is no one else. There’s a group of Indians that we work with. You see, Don Juan, in a weird way made almost a mistake with Castaneda. And he rallied right away. His circle of apprentices—and I think it’s in Tales of Power and The Second Ring of Power, when he talks about the people in Oaxaca and the Little Sisters and all those people. And then, years later, Don Juan realizes that that’s not the way Castaneda is going. Castaneda was even more abstract than Don Juan was. His path was a totally different path. And then when he gathered these other people, because the people that are with Castaneda, we all met Don Juan before we met Castaneda. Actually there was only five of us before—four of us and Castaneda.” She also claimed, “Everyone working within this little group has a degree. There are historians, anthropologists, librarians.”

1992 – 1993 – As Amy gets more involved with Castaneda, ultimately becoming his lover and a member of his inner circle, Castaneda tells her constantly about Nury, claiming she was an otherworldly being he had rescued in “dreaming,” as later detailed in his book, The Art of Dreaming, He also obsesses to her about Nury sexually, saying things like, “You should see my daughter naked! Wowie Zimbowie!” Finally Amy meets Nury at Hamburger Hamlet, at a luncheon that included Florinda, Carol and Castaneda. Amy describes Nury in Sorcerer’s Apprentice on this occasion: Nury (then calling herself “Claude”) “was tall, angular, and tense. Her face was pointy, her thin lips pouty; her graying hair jelled into spikey turrets. She bordered on anorexic thinness. She struck me as spoiled, yet her blue eyes twinkled and I optimistically hoped for lively conversation.” They proceeded to talk about Paris, and Nury indicated she was impressed with Amy’s literary career and accomplishments, although she hadn’t read anything Amy had written. At the end of the meal as they were parting, Nury handed Amy a business card that read: “Nury ‘Claude’ Alexander–Finder, of Things Material, and Immaterial.” Although Castaneda later called Amy to exultantly tell her she’d “passed the test” in her encounter with Nury, Amy found herself very underwhelmed by the person she’d been told was “supernatural, the proverbial divining rod.” At a later lunch on Amy’s return to L.A., Nury tells Amy she loved the Sinead O’Connor album Amy had sent her, and sings its raunchiest lyric, badly, “You fucked me so hard, there was blood on the wall.” Sexual topics dominate the lunch discussion, and Nury gets frosty. Castaneda later calls Amy to berate her for her behavior at the lunch, which apparently offended Nury. Amy is then exiled from the group for awhile.

1993 – Castaneda’s The Art of Dreaming published by HarperCollins. [Chapter 7 is entitled “The Blue Scout.”] Having only briefly mentioned the concept of scouts in The Fire from Within– i.e., referring to the allies as “fabulous scouts”–Castaneda leads up to his tale of freeing the Blue Scout from the realm of the inorganics by describing at length the use of scouts in “dreaming.” Don Juan purportedly first described them as “a current of foreign energy” that is “injected” into our dreams. The Art of Dreaming p. 84. Castaneda is told that scouts appear in dreams as energy-generating objects, and that the old sorcerers used them as “vehicles” to take them to the realm of the inorganics. Don Juan instructs Castaneda on “the second gate of dreaming,” explaining it “is reached and crossed only when a dreamer learns to isolate and follow the foreign energy scouts.” p. 107. Don Juan also supposedly tells him that “[w]aking up in another dream or changing dreams is the drill devised by the old sorcerers to exercise a dreamer’s capacity to isolate and follow a scout,” id., just as looking for one’s hands in dreaming is the drill to initiate “dreaming” attention. So Castaneda begins to follow scouts in his dreams, and is soon led to a world of “countless tunnels,” in which he encounters different dark shapes that are either ball-shaped, bell-shaped, or large and undulating like candle flames. p. 111.

During a dreaming visit, Castaneda is supposedly gliding through the tunnels when he comes to a halt “in a tunnel that seemed somehow larger than the others. My dreaming attention became riveted on the size and configuration of that tunnel, and it would have stayed glued there had I not been made to turn around. My dreaming attention focused then on a blob of energy a bit bigger than the shadow entities. It was blue, like the blue in the center of a candle’s flame.” p.120. He recognizes it is not a shadow entity but foreign, and becomes “absorbed in sensing it,” ignoring the efforts of the scout that brought him to signal him to leave. “Suddenly, a considerable force made me spin around and put me squarely in front of the blue shape. As I gazed at it, it turned into the figure of a person: very small, slender, delicate, almost transparent.” Id. He tries unsuccessfully to determine its gender, to ask the emissary about it, and then to talk to this entity. He senses a barrier between them that he can’t break, and then experiences a variety of reactions: “I even felt elation, because I knew that the scout had finally shown me another human being caught in that world. I only despaired at the possibility that we were not able to communicate perhaps because the stranger was one of the sorcerers of antiquity and belonged to a time different from mine.” Id.

“The more intense my elation and curiosity, the heavier I became, until a moment in which I was so massive that I was back in my body, and back in the world.” p. 121. He supposedly finds himself on the grass at UCLA in a line of people playing golf. “The person in front of me had solidified at the same rate. We stared at each other for a fleeting instant. It was a girl, perhaps six or seven years old. I thought I knew her. On seeing her, my elation and curiosity grew so out of proportion that they triggered a reversal. I lost mass so fast that in another instant I was again a blob of energy in the inorganic beings’ realm. The scout came back for me and hurriedly pulled me away.” Id. Castaneda wakes up with a fright, and supposedly spends much of the next two days trying to determine what happened. “After a few days, a dark and mysterious certainty began to get hold of me, a certainty that grew by degrees until I had no doubt about its authenticity: I was sure that the blue blob of energy was a prisoner in the inorganic beings’ realm.” Id.

Castaneda drops everything and runs down to Mexico to consult with don Juan. Castaneda describes his dreaming practices to him, and the emotional impact on him of the vision of the little girl. Don Juan advises him to ignore it and regard it as a “blatant attempt, on the part of the inorganic beings, to cater to my fantasies,” remarking that “if dreaming is overemphasized, it becomes what it was for the old sorcerers: a source of inexhaustible indulging.” p. 122. Don Juan suspects the inorganics are trying to trap Castaneda by tricking him. When Castaneda objects that he has no doubt the little girl exists, don Juan snaps, “There is no little girl . . . That bluish blob of energy is a scout. An explorer caught in the inorganic beings’ realm.” p. 123-24. Don Juan further opines “the bluish blob of energy was from a dimension entirely different from ours, a scout that got stranded and caught like a fly in a spider’s web.” p. 124. Before he leaves, Castaneda “took the liberty of discussing my dreaming visions of the shadows’ world with Carol Tiggs, although don Juan had advised me not to discuss them with anybody.” p. 125. Castaneda claims, “She was most understanding and most interested, since she was my total counterpart. Don Juan was definitely annoyed with me for having revealed my troubles to her.” Id.

In Castaneda’s next “dreaming” session, he reaches the shadows’ world and his dreaming attention is “inescapably attracted to that blob of energy. In a matter of seconds, I was next to it.” Id. “All of a sudden, the blue, round shape turned into the little girl I had seen before. She craned her thin, delicate, long neck to one side and said in a barely audible whisper, ‘Help me!’ . . . . I stood frozen, galvanized by genuine concern.” Id. He senses that he is experiencing feelings back in his physical body, which is asleep in bed, the awareness of which suddenly causes the other shadow beings to scurry away, leaving him alone with the little girl. “I watched her and became convinced that I knew her. She seemed to falter as if she were about to faint. A boundless wave of affection for her enveloped me.” p. 126. He tries to direct his thoughts to her, but feels them blocked “by a membrane of energy I could not pierce. The little girl seemed to understand my despair and actually communicated with me, directly into my thoughts. She told me, essentially, what don Juan had already said: that she was a scout caught in the webs of that world. Then she added that she had adopted the shape of a little girl because that shape was familiar to me and to her and that she needed my help as much as I needed hers.” pp. 126-27. Castaneda tries to convey to her his helplessness, and she seems to understand: “She silently appealed to me with a burning look. She even smiled as if to let me know that she had left it up to me to extricate her from her bonds. When I retorted, in a thought, that I had not abilities whatsoever, she gave me the impression of a hysterical child in the throes of despair. I frantically tried to talk to her. The little girl actually cried, like a child her age would cry, out of desperation and fear.” p. 127.

Castaneda charges at her, but his “energy mass” goes through her. He then tries several times to “lift her up and take her with me” until he is exhausted. He is afraid that his dreaming attention will soon wane, and that he will not be brought back to this part of the inorganics’ realm in the future, so that this would be his last visit there: “the visit that counted.” Id. “Then I did something unthinkable. Before my dreaming attention vanished, I yelled loud and clear my intent to merge my energy with the energy of that prisoner scout and set it free.” Id.

In the chapter entitled, “The Blue Scout,” Castaneda awakes from “an utterly nonsensical dream” in which Carol Tiggs, don Juan and the members of his party “seemed to be trying to drag me out of a foggy, yellowish world.” p. 128. [Toward the end of The Eagle’s Gift, Castaneda had described his rescue by la Gorda and “the Nagual woman” from behind a wall of fog after he had become totally depleted. The rendition in The Art of Dreaming is different in a number of respects, so it is difficult to tell whether Castaneda is describing the same incident, or simply elaborating on a similar theme.]
While most of don Juan’s group avoids physical contact with Castaneda during his convalescence, telling him they have never been to the shadows’ world, Old Florinda lavishes attention on him and explains to him that “I had been discharged of energy in the inorganic beings’ world and charged again, but that my new energetic charge was a bit disturbing to the majority of them.” p. 130. She also tells him he fought “those masterful manipulators”–the inorganics–somehow surviving “their death blow.” p. 131.

Don Juan confirms this diagnosis, telling him: “The inorganic beings snatched you, body and all. First they took your energy body into their realm, when you followed one of their scouts, and then they took your physical body.” p. 132. He explains: “The reason you think you’re sick . . . is that the inorganic beings discharged your energy and gave you theirs. That should have been enough to kill anyone. As the nagual, you have extra energy; therefore, you barely survived.” Id. He also explains that the inorganics’ realm “looks like a yellow-fog world to the physical eye . . . [w]hen you thought you were having an incoherent dream [about Carol Tiggs and the others pulling him out] you were actually looking with your physical eyes, for the first time, at the inorganic beings’ universe. And strange as it may seem to you, it was also the first time for us. We knew about the fog only through sorcerers’ stories, not through experience.” p. 133.

During his four-week recovery period, Castaneda experiences a strange longing “for someone I did not know.” p. 134. At the beginning of a nap about the time he is starting to feel normal again “a strange pressure on my temples made me open my eyes. The little girl of the inorganic beings’ world was standing by the foot of my bed, peering at me with her cold, steel blue eyes.” pp. 134-35. He jumps out of the bed screaming, causing three of don Juan’s companions to run in. “They watched in horror as the little girl came to me and was stopped by the boundaries of my luminous physical being. We looked at each other for an eternity. . . . . Don Juan came into the room at the moment. The little girl and don Juan stared at each other. Without a word, don Juan turned around and walked out of the room. The little girl swished past the door after him.” p. 135.

This causes a commotion among don Juan’s companions, who all saw the little girl as she left the room with don Juan. Castaneda feels “on the verge of exploding” and “faint”: “I had experienced the presence of the little girl as a blow on my solar plexus. She bore an astonishing likeness to my father. Waves of sentiment hit me. I wondered about the meaning of this until I was actually sick.” Id. When don Juan returns with his excited companions, Castaneda claims “Their main interest was to find out whether there was any uniformity in the way they had perceived the scout’s appearance. Everybody was in agreement that they had seen a little girl, six to seven years old, very thin, with angular, beautiful features. They also agreed that her eyes were steel blue and burning with a mute emotion; her eyes, they said, expressed gratitude and loyalty.” pp. 135-36. Castaneda confirmed their details, and remembered, “Her eyes were so bright and overpowering that they had actually caused me something like pain.” p. 136.

Castaneda and don Juan’s companions discussed “the implications of this event. All agreed that the scout was a portion of foreign energy that had filtered through the walls separating the second attention and the attention of the daily world. They asserted that since they were not dreaming and yet all of them had seen the alien energy projected into the figure of a human child; that child had existence.” Id. They had no sorcery stories to confirm such an event, although don Juan felt that “it happens all the time . . . but it has never happened in such an overt, volitional way.” Id. Don Juan tells Castaneda that he fell into a pitfall designed for himself alone, a trap “using your inherent aversion to chains.” p. 137. Don Juan further explains “that upon merging my energy with the scout I had truthfully ceased to exist. All my physicalness had then been transported into the inorganic beings’ realm and, had it not been for the scout who guided don Juan and his companions to where I was, I would have died or remained in that world, inextricably lost.” Id.

Don Juan responds to Castaneda’s question as to why the scout guided them to where he was by explaining: “The scout is a sentient being from another dimension . . . It’s a little girl now, and as such she told me that in order to get the necessary energy to break the barrier that had trapped her in the inorganic beings’ world, she had to take all of yours. That’s her human part now. Something resembling gratitude drove her to me. When I saw her, I knew instantly that you were done for.” pp. 137-38. Castaneda has don Juan relate how he then gathered up his group and Carol Tiggs to pull him out, and that they had all thereby received something: “You and Carol Tiggs got the scout. And the rest of us got a reason to round up our physicality and place it on our energy bodies; we became energy.” pp. 138. To the inevitable Castanedan question “How did all of you do that, don Juan?” don Juan responds: “We displaced our assemblage points, in unison. Our impeccable intent to save you did the work. The scout took us, in the blink of an eye, to where you were lying, half dead, and Carol dragged you out.” Id. Don Juan also advises him, “You did free the scout . . . but you gave up your life. Or, worse yet, you gave up your freedom. The inorganic beings let the scout go, in exchange for you.” pp. 139.

Don Juan responds to his own party’s questions as to what is to be done with the scout by explaining, “It is a most serious problem, which the nagual here has to resolve. . . . He and Carol Tiggs are the only ones who can free the scout.” p. 140. When Castaneda asks him how, he advises him to “[a]sk the emissary.” Id. The dreaming emissary does purportedly give Castaneda “instructions on what Carol Tiggs and I had to do to liberate the scout,” but Castaneda never explicitly states in the book what those instructions were. p. 146.

Later, when don Juan lectures Castaneda on “third gate dreaming,” he tells him that, “Every scout you have found so far, except for the blue scout, has been from [the realm of the inorganic beings].” p. 177. He is told that the more “sizzling” a scout’s energy is, the farther away it is from. Those from the inorganics’ realm are apparently set at a medium boil. When Castaneda asks how the blue scout stands in relation to other scouts–including those from farthest away, who supposedly hide behind our parents or friends in our dreams—don Juan explains: “Blue energy doesn’t sizzle . . . [i]t is like ours; it wavers, but it is blue instead of white. Blue energy doesn’t exist in a natural state in our world.” p. 179.

July 23-25, 1993 – Florinda, Taisha, Carol and the Chacmools’ first workshop, at the Rim Institute in Arizona. Florinda blurted out that the Blue Scout was Carol Tiggs’s daughter, and that Florinda’s daughter was the Orange Scout. This gave rise to audience questions about sex and energetic holes. Florinda explained that a sorceress can simply cause one of her eggs to start dividing “by an act of will,” but that normally no warrior would want this because it would cause a huge “energetic hole.” In the case of the scouts, Florinda asserted that they had their own energy, but no body, so they could be conceived and delivered without sex or causing “holes” in the mother either. According to J.J. Stoecker’s recollections, when Carol was later asked about the scouts, she didn’t address Florinda’s story of parthenogenesis, but simply did a turn on the edge of the platform, like a runway model in a fashion show, asking “See any holes?” A summary on page 14-15 of Issue 4 of the Nagualist quotes Carol as saying she was with Castaneda when he planted the power plants given to him by Vicente and the allies appeared asking him for a ride. (This might help explain why a chapter read by Nury at the Feb. 1997 Long Beach Workshop detailing this appearance of the three allies was ultimately omitted from the publication version of The Active Side of Infinity.)

October 14-17, 1993 – Witches appear at four-day workshop at Akahi Farms in Maui. Carol mentioned the Blue Scout was getting her Ph.D. at UCLA.

1993 – 1996 – As Amy Wallace continues to get further involved with Castaneda and his group, eventually moving from Berkeley to Westwood to be closer to them, she is instructed by Castaneda on how to behave around Nury on those relatively rare occasions she sees her socially. Castaneda even dictates speeches to Amy to use at those events to gain Nury’s pity, and to get a good seat by her at holiday dinners. Amy learns from Florinda and others that Nury has a passion for playing with dolls with her favorite young women in the group. She’s also told the story about the three apartments where Nury lives, two of which have nice views, looking out onto a garden, while the third is dark and shabby. Nyei is told she’s going to occupy one of the nice ones, cooking organic meals and taking tea in the garden with Nury. Nyei had been moved out of her family’s home by Taisha and Kylie after meeting them at a lecture one of the Witches had given. Nury had briefly taken a liking to her, but the woman who ultimately becomes known as Zaia Alexander quickly takes Nyei’s place as Nury’s favorite, becoming her lover and frequent companion. So Zaia gets the nice apartment next to Nury while Nyei is relegated to the bad one.

March 1994 – Details Magazine contains Bruce Wagner’s “The Secret Life of Carlos Castaneda: You Only Live Twice.” [In the article, Bruce mentions that The Art of Dreaming describes “the precipitous rescue of a ‘sentient being from another dimension’ who takes the form of an angular, steely-eyed little girl called the Blue Scout.”]

April 20, 1995 – A fictitious business name statement is recorded for the Chacmool Center for Enhanced Perception, listing 12 names, including “Nuri” Alexander, Kylie Lundahl, Julius Renard, and Tycho Thal. [95-0654347].

May 26-29, 1995 – Omega Institute workshop in Rhinebeck, New York. Florinda speaks the first night, Taisha the second night, and the Chacmools speak the third night, with the Chacmools, Florinda and Taisha fielding questions (in lieu of Carol’s speech, since Carol had supposedly crashed after workshop in Mexico). They talked more at this workshop about the two scouts than they ever had before or ever would again, with Florinda stating the first night that she and Carol had each given birth to one. A man asked Florinda about the impact of children on our luminous eggs. In response, Florinda claimed that both she and Carol Tiggs had each given birth to a scout, and that, “It doesn’t have that much impact, except one just has to work harder or run faster. We may have holes, but it pushes us to work harder.”

On Sunday night, Nyei essentially lectured about the Blue Scout, reading from a prepared statement. According to Nyei: “The Blue Scout is Carol Tiggs’s daughter. Carol Tiggs gave birth to her. Her energy has a blue hue instead of the whitish one that most humans have. Castaneda found this blue-hued energy agglutination in the inorganic beings’ realm. The Chacmools haven’t been to that world yet but we feel its presence.”

All the Chacmools assertedly sensed that the Blue Scout is “foreign.” Nyei said that the Blue Scout was “the love of my life; a person and not a person.” She described the Blue Scout as “brilliant, light, slim, ethereal, wolf-like and pretty. She has brilliant blue eyes, ears that hear all, and dresses impeccably but unpredictably. She is skilled at finding the most exquisite restaurant, piece of music, clothing or antique. She hones in on the truth, and is also skilled at letting you know your deepest secret or uncovering your heart’s desire. She’s a mean imitator and can cook a mean feast.”

Nyei claimed she first met Carol Tiggs and the Blue Scout at a Tensegrity workshop to which Florinda had invited Nyei. [Note: this first meeting was presumably pre-1993, before they were using the term “Tensegrity” or giving workshops. Nyei is apparently referring to the invitation-only sessions at which Castaneda taught movements later known as Tensegrity.] Nyei was told that Carol Tiggs was the Blue Scout’s mother. Since Nyei had heard Castaneda’s clan was into stalking and tricking people and “saw that Carol Tiggs looked only 25 (and seems to be getting younger),” Nyei was insistent that “I wasn’t going to be fooled so easily.” Nyei supposedly went up to the Blue Scout and asked her, “You’re Carol Tiggs’ mother, aren’t you?”

“The Blue Scout gets tinier as time goes on. She could be seven years old, and they estimate she might take 50 years to fully mature. She is exact, fastidious and temperamental. Castaneda says she’s a pain in the neck. She angers easily, just like a seven-year-old, when you’re being an asshole, but then forgets the next moment and invites you to go gambling with her to Las Vegas. The Blue Scout loves gambling, and used to bet on the horses while Carol Tiggs was gone. Now that Carol Tiggs is back, she is her mother 100%. The Blue Scout was also gone for about 10 years, from the chronological ages of seven to 17, returning about a year before Carol Tiggs did. [If Carol returned in 1985, this would put the Blue Scout’s “return” in 1984, which is a pretty bogus assertion since documents show her involvement with the group from at least 1977.] During this time, Florinda and Castaneda took care of her.”

The clan allegedly found out that the Blue Scout had returned when they went to Mexico to see Florinda Grau (“Old Florinda”). “Castaneda brought the Blue Scout back to Los Angeles where he enrolled her in school. The Blue Scout was very upset by this development and didn’t move or change position for 24 hours–a sign of her extreme anger.” At the end of this period, however, she supposedly simply smiled and asked, “What do I have to do now?” Nyei claimed she had been in school in rural Mexico [obviously not remotely true per the facts detailed in this chronology above], but didn’t know how to read or write. “They enrolled her in junior college, because the high school year had already begun [and maybe because she already had her high school equivalency certificate from continuation school in La Verne?]. She is now working on her Ph.D. in social sciences–and somehow assimilates academic material using a totally different process than ours. “The Nagual [meaning Don Juan] took care of her during her early years. Where she went [into the Second Attention] she received a strange training that makes her naturally very commanding. As Castaneda says, the Blue Scout ‘doesn’t sweat.’ Wherever she was, they must have pampered her to no end. She can change her speed very fast, and we sense that her speed is accelerating.”

“Although she is working on a Ph.D., she is still like a young girl [yeah, but chronologically 37 years old at this point], and develops terrible crushes on actors. One of her favorites is Bruce McComb from ‘Kids in the Hall.'” Knowing how much the Blue Scout likes this guy, Castaneda introduced himself to him when he happened to run into him somewhere, and told him, “You have given us endless hours of pleasure.” The actor pulled out the “Z” page from his address book and autographed it “to Scout.” When Castaneda looked at the autograph, he saw that the man had signed it “Kevin McDonald” (i.e., another comedian from the show that Castaneda had mistaken for Bruce McComb). “Scout gets very involved when watching TV and, for example, will scream at a character to ‘Go, go, go!'”

“When not pleased, the Blue Scout can be a horrendous creature. Her true nemesis is the Orange Scout, with whom she often fights like crazy. The Blue Scout loves to take everybody to Disneyland and uses it to disentangle her filaments. She has affected the group energetically, often throwing ‘energy darts’ and then retreating. The Chacmools don’t see or speak to her for months, and then she comes in and changes things, and shakes everything up.” Nyei told us the following images, which Nyei warned “might seem dissociated,” were inspired by the Blue Scout: “The Blue Scout helps us become more durable and more disciplined. She knows other assemblage points and moves us there. She is a flaming blue arrow, and you must gain her trust.” Nyei also read the following passage about the Blue Scout, “Meet me at the cafe, just beyond the border, just beyond the sky. . . . . You must speak and your silence must only protect your own love and not your heart, which has been given to her already.” [At this point, Nyei was visibly overcome by emotion and her eyes welled with tears. She paused for a moment to collect herself and continue.] “Strange beloved, agitation of an unknown memory. You dance a tango through our blood. Our blue dream, our butterfly who belongs to no one. For you, intent of everything.” Nyei concluded by saying that the Blue Scout had given herself the name “Claude.”

Renata, also reading from a prepared statement, claimed: “Castaneda found the Blue Scout in the universe of the Inorganic Beings. She had fallen prisoner there and couldn’t leave. He did his utmost to free her, a blue unit of energy, that transformed interpretation of her into that of a seven-year-old girl. Castaneda nearly died as a result of the energy expended in freeing her. Carol Tiggs and don Juan brought him back, guided by the Blue Scout. What Castaneda didn’t know at the time was that there was another unit of energy behind the Blue Scout–the Orange Scout–that was also trapped. Castaneda’s effort freed her as well. Don Juan was very concerned, knowing that Carol Tiggs would have to give birth to free the Blue Scout. The matter of the Orange Scout was even more difficult, however, because no one wanted to help. Finally, Florinda said, ‘Fuck it! I’ll do it.'” She also claimed the Scouts wouldn’t “allow the Chacmools to teach the public, either, unless people pay them, since their energetic view is, ‘Unless people “pay” through the nose, they won’t “pay” attention.’”

Reni further claimed: “The Blue Scout used to tell us she was caught in the Inorganic Beings’ realm by her curiosity, whereas the Orange Scout was caught as punishment for her duplicity. But the Blue Scout is also a cosmic thief, even stealing roles and personas. In Phantom Theater, she once stole the role of Jesus and played it to the hilt. A dreaming emissary told them that both the scouts were stuck in the Inorganic Beings’ world as a result of their duplicitousness. The Orange Scout just has to be bold in her thievery, because otherwise the thing in question will be taken by the Blue Scout. . . . . The relationship between the two scouts is complicated and intense. When they first see each other, they kiss and dance around together. In the next moment, they may be beating each other. We think they have been doing this for thousands of years. The Orange Scout is younger than the Blue Scout on this plane. Don Juan used to say they were both about 7000 years old or more.”

Kylie also confirmed, “The scouts won’t do anything unless they’re paid, saying it’s the nature of the universe (although it doesn’t matter the amount–whether many dollars or a penny).” She further explained: “The scouts write and direct the skits. The Orange Scout’s skits are very bawdy, raw, irreverent and funny, while the Blue Scout’s skits are sophisticated and ethereal. The Blue Scout, a great actor, writes great skits for Carol Tiggs, who is also a good actor.”

A man asked whether the Chacmools knew where the scouts came from. That question seemed to stump the Chacmools, so Florinda came up to answer, followed by Taisha. Florinda asserted that the scouts “are both, in a weird way, our beacon.” She claimed, “They act from total egolessness; even their appearing to fight with each other is a great delight to us, since the scouts know they can’t live without each other.” [Apparently they found a way, though, when the “Orange Scout” was “let go” from the group in 1997.] 

The group believes they have some energy from “way beyond.” She further claimed, “We don’t know who the scouts’ fathers are.” [So she’s admitting here that Castaneda wasn’t the father of the Blue Scout?]

A man asked Florinda how she manipulated her energy to have the Orange Scout born through her. Florinda responded, “The way we do it in the world.” The Orange Scout was in Florinda “energetically.” The process was very much directed by the Old Nagual (“not that he was there at the time”).

In response to a later question about Castaneda having a son, and the impact of children on one’s edge, or having children causing a hole in one’s luminous egg, Florinda claimed that a child, especially the first born, “does take the edge. This does make it harder [to pursue the sorcerer’s path], but not impossible. Castaneda never had a son. He was given a boy to raise, but that child was taken away from him when the child was six years old. And Castaneda contributed a great deal of energy to the birth of the Blue Scout.” [So now she’s saying he was the father? Or just that he “contributed a great deal of energy” to her “rebirth” as the Blue Scout?]

August 22, 1995 – Irma Elena Arriaga (presumably the one-time “fourth Chacmool,” also known as “Ariceli Zafra,” a professional baker who had been cast out of Castaneda’s inner circle prior to 1995) files a fictitious business name statement for a “Blue Scout Bakery” [Doc. #1370404]. The bakery does business for a time from a storefront on little Santa Monica Blvd. in West Los Angeles.

September 11, 1995 – First session of what became the “Sunday group,” from 1-4 PM at a large dance studio at 1711 Stewart Street, in West L.A.

?1995 – Castaneda formally adopts Nury Alexander as his daughter. Castaneda’s then lawyer Deborah Drooz (now executor of his estate and trustee of the Eagle’s Trust) told me in 1998 that she had handled this proceeding for Castaneda “a few years before.” She jokingly remembered how the judge, when confronted by the appearance of several women with extremely short hair and otherwise similarly dressed in his courtroom, asked her sharply, “Debbie, what’s going on here?” [California is one of the states that permits adoption of adults, and no consent of other living parents is required.]

November 10-12, 1995 – Workshop at Culver City High School Cafetorium. Theme was “Intersubjectivity.” The speakers are Castaneda, Carol, Florinda, Taisha and Nury, in her first speaking appearance at a workshop.

Castaneda is asked: “What can we do to help make our children more fluid?” He replied something like this: “Nothing. It is kind of a meaningless question. Our children as they grow up as young children become just like us: If the parents are fluid there children will be fluid. Look at my daughter! (He points to the Blue Scout.) [So now she is his daughter. Wonder why “they didn’t know for sure who the father was” at Omega in May.]

She was raised by us and she is as fluid as us. So leave your children alone! If you are fluid they will be fluid! But maybe it is too late for them. You should love them, take care of them, and treat them with respect, but that’s as much as you can do. Leave them alone.”

Nury reads selections from “my father’s” poetry. Some of the poems supposedly went back to the beginnings of his apprenticeship with don Juan while others were relatively recent (such as the poems “Syntax” and “The Other Syntax,” that later appeared at the beginning of The Active Side of Infinity). She told us she wanted to read them to us because she claimed she had rescued them from Castaneda’s attempt to destroy them.

Nury at first seemed rather shy and nervous. She referred to Castaneda and Carol as her father and mother. She also stated that her name, supposedly given to her by don Juan, was in don Juan’s native tongue (Yaqui?). Her first name, assertedly, was “Nuli,” which meant “permanent.” Her second (something like “Alik”?) and third names, when translated from Yaqui, meant “blue scout.” She described herself as “a very restless being, which is why I am so slender and unable to put on weight.” She also referred to a solitary energy emanating from a galaxy between Cassiopeia and Corona Borealis that don Juan had indicated had something to do with her origins. She commented on each group of poems and related elements of the poems to the theme of intersubjectivity. In one, Castaneda referred to the devastatingly “sad hum” of the Hollywood freeway.

November 18, 1995 – At that day’s Sunday session, Castaneda talked about the Blue Scout, who was not present, claiming she was “always alert and used words with maximum effect.” He told us she argued with him a lot as to how he should be using his energy (i.e., that he should be “storing it up to make the leap”), and told us she did not approve of him meeting with our group “all the time.” Castaneda told us, “I do not say anything.” Now, after the November 1995 workshop, she had supposedly suggested to him to get the group together on a Sunday “so that she can read something to you.” Castaneda claimed he acted like he was not meeting with us anymore, supposedly responding, “Uhh, Kylie can probably dig up their numbers to call them together again.” Castaneda then looked for Adam and Michael Salter to specifically ask them not to say anything to the Blue Scout about the Sunday sessions [since they often saw her around UCLA where they lived].

December 3, 1995 – Sunday session with Castaneda. Near the end of the session, Castaneda told us to telephone only Ellis to find out about the Sunday sessions. He explained, “Cleargreen doesn’t know what we’re doing, and we want to keep it that way. If the Blue Scout, who is very suspicious that something’s going on, found out about it, she would shut it down.” He claimed the only one among the senior members of his group that knew it was going on was Florinda. He further explained the Blue Scout was focused on wanting them to leave. He claimed they all “want to go now,” except Taisha, who was “indifferent.” But he could see “something is happening” that required him to be there with us. “But you must take care to keep the Blue Scout from finding out about the sessions. Someone called into Cleargreen saying they knew there were Sunday sessions happening on top of the workshops. Fortunately Nyei grabbed the telephone from the Blue Scout and just denied it. The Scout asked questions of them as though she knew, to trip them up.” He asked rhetorically, “Why can’t we just keep this among ourselves? Concealing something shouldn’t be a burden. It’s a pleasure!” He also mentioned the two “Scouts” had made an “energetic link” that had “allowed” the workshops to happen.

December 17, 1995 – Sunday session with Castaneda. Castaneda told us the Blue Scout “could tell you stories that would make your hair stand on end.” He claimed she would try to tell him things and expect him to “get it” on the first telling. When he didn’t understand or asked her to repeat, she would get frustrated and give up. Castaneda claimed, “Her stories are so foreign, so strange because she has a dual subjectivity, one blue and one human.”

December ? 1995 – At a holiday party at Cleargreen Amy relates in Sorcerers’ Apprentice, Amy tries to lighten the mood in the pre-dinner hour by reading to the group from the copy of The Rules: Time-tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right, published that year, that she finds on Grant Vospher’s office desk. After getting glares from Castaneda and Florinda, Amy puts the book down, but Castaneda castigates her for taking something from someone else’s desk. His tirade goes on at length, including these phrases Amy remembers: “Those are never to be touched. A desk is sacred. Cleargreen is a temple, sacred! Those are not yours to touch, you piece of shit!” In tears, Amy returns the book to Grant’s desk. Nury later arrives and after a trip to the bathroom, comes back with the same book and excitedly flips through it, reading selections to the group. Castaneda laughs and thanks her for the amusement. As they proceed to dinner, Nury tells Grant to let her know when he gets more stuff like that.

January 1996 – Cleargreen began publishing Castaneda’s The Warrior’s Way: A Journal of Applied Hermeneutics. Four issues were mailed to subscribers before the journal was terminated in Spring 1996. Castaneda proudly informed the Sunday group that Nury was primarily responsible for the design and artwork on the Journal, although the design credit contained in the journal itself was “Journal design by Elaby Gaethen.” This was clearly a pseudonym for Nury. The second and third issues, for February and March, each contained a poem authored by “the Blue Scout.” The March poem was entitled “Angels’ Flight.” The February poem, entitled “The Conception of a B.F.,” reads as follows:

“She was made in an Arizonian trailer,
after a night of playing poker
and drinking beer with friends.
His foot got caught
in the torn lace of her nightie.
She smelled like a mixture of tobacco smoke
and Aqua Net hair spray.
He was thinking of his bowling score
when he found himself erect.
She was wondering how this life
could possibly last a lifetime.
She wanted to go to the bathroom
when she found herself pinned down.
He stifled a belch as she was conceived,
but luckily for her,
The two were in the desert,
and at that moment,
a coyote howled,
sending a chill of longing
through the woman’s womb.
That chill was all
she brought into this world.”

January 21, 1996 – Sunday session with Castaneda. Castaneda repeated the Blue Scout was opposed to his doing the Sunday classes, so we were not to mention them to anybody. “People call Cleargreen, and the Blue Scout sometimes works there. They’ll call up and say, ‘I know Castaneda is giving a class on Sundays, in Santa Monica.’ The Blue Scout will say, ‘I knew it!’ and close us down. She is very powerful, and I walk an energetic tightrope fending her off. Because she could always spin and leave.”

“She loves to go to Disneyland, because she loves the speed. She’ll get on a ride, going very fast, and it can take her away. She drives fast too. So she’ll say to me that if I don’t want her to stay, just give the word and she’ll spin.” He told us his group “got very upset with me for referring to her as a ‘bitch’ at one of the sessions. I adore her, but she’s very tough. She also does mathematics, geometry, calculus (I can hardly add, that’s not my thing), and she gets straight ‘A’s’ but she doesn’t know how she does it.”

He warned us, “She knows something’s going on. I finished working on the next issue of the Journal, and Nyei and I stayed up all night editing it. The Blue Scout changed things around and offered to print out a clean copy. She told me she was going to bring it by this morning. She called around 9 AM to say it was taking a little longer. At 9:30 AM she was saying she was having formatting problems, so it would be 10 or so. At 10 she blamed it on something else, and said, ‘You’re not going anywhere are you?’ When she asks things like that in person,” as he demonstrated with one of us, she would stand an inch or two away and stare into his eyes. Castaneda responded “No.” Finally she showed up at his house at 1 PM (obviously, he indicated, to see if he was still there, or was leaving for class). He told us that was why he had been late to the class (showing up about 1:20 PM, instead of 1:00 sharp as usual).

January 26-28, 1996 – Mexico City Workshop in large ballroom at Centro Asturiano in Chapultapec Park. Castaneda lectured Friday night, Saturday morning and Saturday night. Castaneda was asked, in Spanish, “What’s for sure about the Blue Scout?” He responded it was “my fault” that she entered don Juan’s world, because don Juan always told him not to hang out in the inorganics’ realm, but he went, and saw the Blue Scout there “as a 7-year-old child that looked a lot like my father.” She said “help me,” and he gave all his energy so she could leave. The inorganics had trapped the Blue Scout for exploring. “Carol Tiggs brought her to life. She’s now the daughter of Carol Tiggs. This girl is our epicenter! She can do many things, but otherwise is normal . . . almost . . . The appearance of this explorer is confirmation of the extinction of don Juan’s lineage.”

February 4, 1996 – Sunday session with Castaneda. Castaneda ended the session by claiming that when the Blue Scout was trapped in the inorganics world, she was in a position similar to human beings who are trapped here until we die. “She has this longing, which isn’t a nostalgic kind of longing, but a longing to be traveling and to lose herself voyaging out there. We came from somewhere, and we should continue the journey. The Blue Scout just so much wants to go off.”

March 1-3, 1996 – Women-only workshop on “The Female Energy Body,” at UCLA. Carol, Taisha, Florinda, Castaneda and Nury all spoke. Nury read two chapters from Castaneda’s upcoming Memorable Events book. In introducing herself, Nury commented, “My parents told me that I came from a far-away galaxy. However, I myself am not preoccupied with that.” Nury gave her name, part of which was “Nuli.” Then she talked about two kinds of love–love based on the social order and the kind of love that sorcerers know. She also talked about the sorcerer’s path as being one of solitariness (not to be confused with loneliness). Passes supposedly given to the Witches and Nury by the members of don Juan’s party were taught at this workshop.

March 31, 1996 – Sunday session with Castaneda Castaneda explained the delay in the manufacture of the “paperweight” devices he had mentioned earlier for “attaining inner silence.” He told us we should be getting them in two weeks. He referred to Talia as “the Master of Bored Fucks.” He told us she had asked him if he wanted the paper weights in three weeks, and he excitedly said yes. So she went to the Blue Scout (who apparently was doing some kind of design for the paperweights) and told her that Castaneda wanted them in three weeks so they needed her art work that day. “The Blue Scout won’t comply with that kind of a deadline, and refused.” So Talia went back to Castaneda and said that the Blue Scout wouldn’t work on that kind of deadline. So Castaneda said he didn’t want deadlines. But, Talia came back with, “Do you want it in three weeks?” “Yes, yes!”

April 12-21, 1996 – Second Oakland Workshop, at the Oakland Convention Center. Florinda distinguished don Juan’s group from theirs by saying that don Juan’s had a lot more mass–there were 16 of them. Don Juan’s group also had the purpose of training others to continue their lineage. “But the five of us don’t have that mass.” [People were surprised when she said “five,” but the fifth, we gathered from her next statement, was the Blue Scout.] She claimed the Blue Scout “is very talented and can just go off” in an instant. She was asked to clarify why she had said five. She responded, “Oh, did I say five?” Then she looked down at the group in the first two rows and said, “Well, you count.” She then explained that the five were “the basic group,” the students of don Juan.

April 28, 1996 – Sunday session with Castaneda. Castaneda advised us we could learn a lot by watching the Witches and Carola. He asserted the Blue Scout is “also very weird,” but she’s “too strange to get anything from. She will fly into an anxiety fit instantly. And she can take me or pull me anywhere, because she’s so strong. But her humanness is paper thin.”

May 1996 – Los Angeles Magazine publishes Bruce Wagner piece, “Don Juan Takes a Meeting.” Bruce describes himself surfing alt.dreams.castaneda: “Upcoming workshop gossip. Speculation about possible attendance of Blue Scout, a stellar wild child introduced in 1994’s The Art of Dreaming.“

May 12, 1996 – Sunday session with Castaneda. Castaneda referred to Zaia Alexander, telling us that sometimes he would yell, “Where is she? She’s such an idiot!” He said he wanted to show her how to move from “here to there,” and then when he looked around, she was already “there.” “How does she do that?” When she is with the Blue Scout, as her “sidekick, they’re a scary team. I don’t even know what the Blue Scout is. She is scary.”

May 19, 1996 – Sunday session with Castaneda. Castaneda told us there was “someone in my life who means so much to me, but I can’t be just another human with her.” He urged us, “If there is someone you really care about, you can’t just act like a human. You have to ‘trim yourself down.’” He told us if he were to “just be human with the Blue Scout, it would destroy me. I have to ‘trim myself’ in order to help her.”

June 2, 1996 – Sunday session with Castaneda. Castaneda told us, “Carol had wanted to come” that day, but “she couldn’t.” Later on he explained the Blue Scout had not been feeling well, so Carol was looking after her. Castaneda said it “really gets to me,” since these are both powerful, independent women. “They both could leave anytime on their own,” Castaneda explained, claiming, “the Blue Scout could go incredibly far, unimaginably out there,” and “Carol too can go where she wants. They are both so strong.” But when the Blue Scout is not well, Castaneda explained, she asks for, “Mommy, Mommy.” When “she’s feeling well,” on the other hand, she will say things to Carol like, ‘Why do you have such a fat ass? That’s disgusting! You’re too fat.’” But the “little girl” [the Blue Scout] and “the big girl” [Carol] are “just amazing.” He told us he had watched Carol “fussing over” the Blue Scout, wiping her face, and that because they are each so strong, independent and capable, “this kind of tenderness” between them just broke him up. Later, Talia, Kylie and others distributed to each of us one of the leather paperweights they had created, inspired by a paperweight the Blue Scout had found that they had agreed was “the perfect weight and nature to induce silence.”

July 1, 1996 – Cleargreen, Inc., files its required annual “Statement by Domestic Stock Corporation,” listing “Nuri” Alexander as one of the corporation’s directors, along with Muni Aranha and Talia Bey.

July 20-25, 1996 – Intensive Tensegrity Workshop at UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion at which Castaneda, the three Witches and “Marie Alexander” (the Blue Scout) all spoke. Nury performed a “snake” long form with Zaia, both of them wearing skin tight outfits, black gloves with silver thimble tips and wrap-around sunglasses. During the course of the workshop, Nury (then “Marie”) also read two chapters from Castaneda’s manuscript that became The Active Side of Infinity: first a chapter about one of Castaneda’s professors (in the book, “Professor Lorca”); and the second about Castaneda’s preparing to jump from the mesa immediately prior to don Juan’s departure, and the three people whose valuable life lessons he needed first to review and acknowledge.

After a lunch break, on the second or third day, Nury briefly took the stage to deliver a blistering attack in response to a few people who had apparently come up between sessions and pestered her with questions about what it was like to come from another galaxy or another dimension. Her essential message was “Deal with your own shit!” She also stated, rather convincingly, that her lack of memory about her life prior to Castaneda’s freeing her from the inorganic’s world had to do with the fact that memory depended to a large degree on one’s physicality. She claimed that in her prior existence, she had not been “bi-pedal” like a human being. Thus, any memory she could muster would have to be somehow converted to one that we–and now she–could understand within our “bi-pedal” experience. This brief, but memorable outburst had a pretty strong stifling effect on questions at all subsequent workshops regarding Nury’s “pre-birth memories” of her existence as an alien energy “scout.”

October 1996 – SEDONA Journal of EMERGENCE publishes “Journeys with Carlos Castaneda’s Tensegrity,” by Elizabeth Kaye McCall. [She describes the November 1995 Culver City Workshop: “A slim young woman who said she lives in two worlds introduced herself as the Blue Scout. She explained that it is hard for her to keep weight on because she’s restless; as a scout, her role is the one who goes ahead. In this world she is the daughter of Carol Tiggs and Carlos Castaneda, the woman said. Then she read poetry written years before by her father that expressed the thoughts and feelings of a man who traded the academic life for the sorcerer’s world. The Blue Scout’s own poetry emerged this year in Carlos Castaneda’s Readers of Infinity (formerly The Warrior’s Way), A Journal of Applied Hermeneutics, which is published by Cleargreen Inc.”]

October 30, 1996 – Cleargreen shareholder distribution of $447,411 net income [another incomplete scrap of financial information, per documents filed with C.J. Castaneda’s motions in the 1999 probate proceedings]. Of 102,864 shares, Muni, Taisha, Florinda, Nury, Talia and Fabricio each have 12.9618% of the shares. Kylie, Nyei, Reni, Darien, Zaia, Erin, Haley and Gavin each have 2.7775% of the shares. Tracy and Bruce have 5 shares each, or .00149%. Somehow these percentages translate to payments of $28,497 to Talia, $9,799 to Muni, $9,658 to Kylie, $7,321 to Florinda, $7,270 for Taisha, $5,171
 to Nuri, $5,048 to Fabricio, $2,696 each to Bruce and Tracy, $2,504 to Renata, $2,331 to Nyei, $2,227 to Zaia and $1,854 to Tycho (also known as “the Orange Scout”).

November 3, 1996 – Sunday session with Castaneda. Castaneda told us he used to fish for information about Taisha and Florinda from don Juan. Don Juan would say something like, “Florinda is having a strange time with her father,” and Castaneda, his ears pricking up, would respond, “Oh, yes? What’s happening?” But don Juan would not fall for it; he would just point out to him, “You’re fishing.” But the Blue Scout, he claimed, “is an artist at getting information like that, because she ‘sees.’” He said she would come to him and synopsize something that was happening. She would put out so many details that were right that he just assumed that she knew, so he would say a little bit more about it. Then she would get horribly angry and say, “Why didn’t you tell me!” Then he would realize she “didn’t know, that she just got it out of me,” and he would not believe he had fallen for it again. “But it happens all the time. She mesmerizes me.” He claimed she “mesmerized me when she was seven years old.” He asserted that he took care of her for awhile when she was seven and did the same thing to him.

November 29-December 1, 1996 – Pasadena Workshop at the Pasadena Center Exhibition Building.
Castaneda, Florinda, Carol and Taisha spoke, and Nury read the chapter from the book in progress, “Memorable Events” (published in 1998 as The Active Side of Infinity), about Carol Tiggs’s return. [This chapter was not included in the final, published version of The Active Side of Infinity.]

December 4, 1996 – A night session with Castaneda and most of Cleargreen. Castaneda told us he “and Florinda and Taisha and Carol are all going to leave. The Blue Scout will come with us too, or maybe she won’t. Who knows? And certainly Renata is going to come with us, and Nyei. So people who aren’t ready to leave when we’re ready to go–[people] who say, ‘But I can’t go now, I just got a new floor put in.’ Or ‘I just got this door fixed and now it opens really nice.’ Or ‘New carpeting!’ Or ‘I just got this new television and now I can watch all these great programs.’ What, the same programs that you watch every day? Those terrifying things? I watch a little TV and I’m scared; what have they done to us? It’s very scary–horrifying.”

December 7, 1996 – A night session with Castaneda and most of Cleargreen. Carol spoke briefly, reporting that the Pasadena workshop was “very strange” for them. She explained the three Witches “didn’t have the energy; there was a hurdle, and we didn’t get across it. But thanks to the Blue Scout, who is not here tonight, but who opened the way, we crossed the barrier and are now with the Nagual.” Carol further explained that when she had to say or present something, “generally the Blue Scout is not there, which you may have noticed, because we have this peculiar relationship.” Carol claimed, “She’s definitely my daughter, but [and she sort of hung her head for a moment] Nuri is also my mother. And yet I’m also her mother, and in the world of the sorcerers there are these complex and inexplicable relationships.”

January 31, 1997 – Cleargreen shareholder distribution of $137,333 from retained earnings of $596,876. (This time Talia scoops up $34,097, Kylie snags $18,758, Muni rakes in $12,419, Nyei at $10,146 edges out Renata’s $10,124, Florinda manifests $9,941, Taisha blinks in $9,890, Nuri registers $7,791, Fabricio grabs $6,668, Bruce and Tracy each pull in $6,043, Zaia liberates $2,574, Tycho generates $2,201, while Grant slams down $632.) [Another accounting scrap from documents filed as an exhibit to C.J. Castaneda’s motion in the probate proceedings.]

February 15-16, 1997 – Intensive Review Workshop on the Cal State University Long Beach campus. [Nury read the chapter from the book in progress, “Memorable Events” (published in 1998 as The Active Side of Infinity), detailing Castaneda’s encounter with the three inorganics in the desert who ask him for a ride. In it, Castaneda described the three as “a writer, an aspiring agent and a lesbian” (but strangely failed to connect up these descriptions with the obvious current counterparts of these “inorganics”: the three whom he had previously referred to as “cyclic beings” in other workshops—Bruce Wagner, Tracy Kramer and Zaia Alexander—who had first known each other in grade school. [This chapter was not included in the final, published version of The Active Side of Infinity.]

February 1997 – Interview with Castaneda published in Uno Mismo (in Chile and Argentina), “El Mundo de don Juan al Alcance de Todos,” by Daniel Trujillo Rivas. [Castaneda is asked, “Besides your three cohorts, the people who attend your seminars have met other people, like the Chacmools, the Energy Trackers, the Elements, the Blue Scout . . . Who are they? Are they part of a new generation of seers guided by you? If this is the case, how could one become part of this group of apprentices?” Castaneda responds: “Every one of these persons are defined beings who don Juan Matus, as director of his lineage, asked us to wait for. He predicted the arrival of each one of them as an integral part of a vision. Since don Juan’s lineage could not continue, due to the energetic configuration of his four students, their mission was transformed from perpetuating the lineage into closing it, if possible, with a golden clasp. We are in no position to change such instructions. We can neither look for nor accept apprentices or active members of don Juan’s vision. The only thing we can do is acquiesce to the designs of intent.”]

Spring 1997 – A young, attractive blond from the Sunday group becomes Nury’s new favorite and lover, supplanting Zaia. She eventually gets the name Halley Alexander van Oosten.

May 28, 1997 – Nury’s father, Marion “Buck” Partin, passes away, having had no contact with his daughter for 20 years.

June 8, 1997 – Special performance of Theater of Infinity given to the Sunday group. Skits include the “Alien Invocation” (Nury, Zaia and Halley).

August 2, 1997– Zaia gives a talk at Midnight Special Bookstore on the Promenade in Santa Monica, with Nury, Florinda, Carol and others in attendance (caught on tape by Greg and Gabi).

August 16, 1997– 5 PM – Sorcery Theater Rehearsal and party at the compound on Pandora. Felix Gutsmuths and I attended, along with most of Cleargreen. Nury played several roles including that of a helpless inorganic worrying about imagined disasters likely to plague Taisha in “Globus and Phoebus Save the World” with Carol; “Space Pyrates in Search of the Golden Behind” with Zaia and Halley; “The Burden of Decision-Making,” a brief dialogue between two self-absorbed roommates trying to get advice from each other on their outfits for a party, with Zaia; “Man’s Best Friend,” a skit about two hunters encountering a flyer, with Kylie; “The Proper Spirit,” a rather precious piece featuring a floating head and spiritual mediums, apparently written by Nuri, with Erin and Darien; and “Love Among Insects,” with Halley.

Aug. 23-27, 1997 – Intensive workshop, L.A. Convention Center. [In her litany of the supposed professions and degrees of the Cleargreen contingent, Florinda states, “The Alexanders are Nuri and Zaia–both currently pursuing Ph.D.s.” Nuri also appeared in a few of the Sorcery Theater skits on August 27, including “Alien Invocation, or Ode to Air,” “Love Among Insects” (which she performed with Halley), and “Space Pyrates,” in which she, Zaia and Halley performed stereotypical gay male characters, with a taste for rather decorous and unlikely S&M.]

September 23, 1997 – $536,000 worth of income is distributed to Cleargreen, Inc., shareholders (including $66,925 to Nuri, $71,536 to Florinda, $70,536 to Taisha, $70,786 to Muni, $70,786 to Talia, $71,536 to Fabricio, $14,480 to Nyei and Reni and $17,680 to Kylie.) [Again, only an incomplete scrap of Cleargreen financial information, per documents filed by C.J. Castaneda in connection with his motions in the probate proceedings.]

October 22, 1997 – Castaneda signs a will in which he states that he “legally adopted Nury Alexander as my daughter,” and intentionally omits Adrian Vashon (C.J.). His estate is to be given 50% “to those of Tisha [sic] Abelar, Florinda Donner Grau, Muni Alexander, Nury Alexander and Haley Van Osten who survive me, in equal shares,” and 50% “to those of Kylie Lundahl, Talia Bey, Naya [sic] Murez, Maria Guadalupe Blanco, Zaia Alexander, Carola Alexander and Fabiana Pompa who survive me, in equal shares.”

January 1998 – Harper Collins publishes Castaneda’s Magical Passes: The Practical Wisdom of the Shamans of Ancient Mexico. On page 84, introducing the five magical passes supposedly originally taught by don Juan and his party to the Blue Scout, Castaneda asserts: “The value of the Blue Scout’s magical passes resides in the capacity of each of them to give the womb the hardness that it requires in order to arrive at its secondary functions, which can be easily defined, in the case of the Blue Scout, as the ability to be alert without pause.” [Note: When don Juan and his party supposedly “burned from within” in 1973, Patricia Lee Partin and her “hard womb” were fifteen years old and attending school in La Verne. Maybe her class got to go on a field trip to Mexico?]

February 7-8, 1998 – Not-Doing Workshop at Pomona Fairplex Convention Center. Florinda introduced the team of Miles and Zaia as “Awareness through Harmony,” and the team of Nury and Halley as “Awareness through Sameness.” Then she claimed, referring to the latter team: “We believe the ancient sorcerers knew of such an occurrence, but don’t think that don Juan or the 27 generations of sorcerers before him ever saw it. The effect of these two is so powerful that we guarantee that everyone will feel the effects of the not-doing passes because of them. If not today, then after you leave the workshop.” Florinda’s written remarks further claimed: “Even Carlos feels the impact of Nury and Halley leading the not-doing passes. When he is with them,” they “take him and smash his head into the ceiling again and again until it goes into the attic and he reaches a new level of awareness. He has gone into fits of rage over their effect on him because he’s too old to be affected by these young people!”

Nury and Halley taught their sections of the Not Doing passes wearing sunglasses (a stylish measure to counter the harsh lights directed on them that allowed the video camera to display their image on the six large video screens set up around the hall). Nury introduced the first segment, asserting the Elements and Energy Tracker’s primary motivation was the enhancement of awareness. She claimed everything else in their daily lives was secondary to this single-minded pursuit. It was their purpose. “This is how we live. We don’t do one thing and say another. This is our life.” She then led the instruction of The Legs Rule Vitality.

In the evening, Nury introduced the Running Man series by claiming it delivered a “weird, mysterious punch.” After demonstrating the series a few times, Nury asserted that, in ancient times, the Running Man series would sometimes be performed to sounds, “whether sounds of nature, such as wind or rain, or the sound of music. The speed and rhythm at which the passes were executed would be determined by the sound. The execution of the passes would then become non-volitional,” she claimed, “dictated by the sounds of nature or whatever music was being played.”

Nury told us we were going to do The Running Man series one last time to the music of Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons.” She asserted the feet do not often have a chance to experience “joy and freedom,” and that they would end the Running Man series on the penultimate piece, so that we could listen to the last piece in silence and “let our feet exult!” She also claimed it took her a long time to realize vitality and awareness are the only things that matter. She asserted the only thing that sustains the Tensegrity instructors is Tensegrity. She also urged the Running Man passes should be done “as if there is no tomorrow.” She sang a little song: “There is no ‘tomorrow’ today.”

April 4, 1998 – Workshop at Santa Monica College Gymnasium, 2 – 9:30 PM. [Florinda, Taisha and Carol were all on hand, and Nury and Halley taught part of the Wheel of Time series of passes. This was Nury’s last public appearance.] Introducing the Wheel of Time leg passes in the early afternoon, Nury began by recounting the information about the Wheel of Time from the end of The Eagles Gift. She then gave a definition of space and time, explaining that what scientists think of space and time differs from the view of shamans. (She was reading from cards, and the words sounded to observers like those of Castaneda.) In practicing the wheel of time passes, she said, the goal is to make the body resemble a ball. “The passes help one to manipulate time and space. The ancient sorcerers identified time with intent and space with infinity. Time is a product of intent and cannot be defined. Modern man retains a small portion of intent and it can be ‘redeemed.'” Space, or infinity, “is the sum total of man’s endeavors and is more accessible to us.” She stated these concepts were not abstracts, but are “actual, workable units.”

She described the wheel of time as “a tunnel of infinite length and width with an infinite number of furrows. To be in that furrow meant to live that furrow. The goal was to make the furrow turn. One can gaze into any furrow. When gazing into a furrow one gazes back and forward in time.” This, she said, “is an energetic fact.” With this capability “sorcerers are able to foresee the flow of time.” In doing the passes the body turns into a ball and in the furrows “one has the distinct sensation of seeing the flow of time.” She asserted the passes had to be taught and learned in a “slow, patient manner” and that they could not be learned in one session. She indicated there were over 60 passes in the series, of which they taught that day a total of 12. “The Running Man opens the gate. The other passes fixate your awareness and the Wheel of Time conducts you through awareness.”

Halley introduced the evening session. She began by talking about her name, explaining it was given to her by Nury and asserting that both of their names were “very ancient.” She also asserted she and Nury “are exactly the same in every respect except for one, Nury has always known her name and I haven’t. But that doesn’t matter at all because I couldn’t now imagine being anyone besides Halley Alexander Van Oosten.” Halley then talked about the impeccability of don Juan’s party of sorcerers, attributing this to their perfect performance of the passes. She also explained that just going to the movies with the Witches was a daring act. They demanded “total attention and total recall.” But when they were kidding around they demanded “total kidding around.” Don Juan’s party, she indicated, was more serious. She recounted that Castaneda had described in awe how he had seen 16 shamans “burn with a bright light” and then disappear.

April 18, 1998 – Video shows new cars and a van parked outside of the Pandora compound being packed up by Fabricio, Brandon and others between 5 and 6:30 PM.

April 23, 1998 – Castaneda signs a six-page will leaving his estate to be channeled through the Eagle’s Trust, established by a Trust Agreement signed the same day, and specifically disinheriting C.J. Castaneda and Margaret Runyan. The will also recites, “I have legally adopted Nuri Alexander as my daughter. I have no other issue.” Castaneda also signs a quitclaim deed, apparently on the house, to the Eagle’s Trust, Deborah Drooz as Trustee, which is recorded on April 29, 1998 [98-0715277], along with a quitclaim deed to First American Trust Company [98-0715276].

April 24, 1998 – Castaneda enters a coma the last few days of his life, per his doctor’s report to Amy.

April 27, 1998 – Castaneda’s death certificate, signed by Angelica Duenas, MD, reports his death at 3 AM that date, his cremation on that date by Spalding Mortuary in Culver City, and the disposition of the remains to Talia Bey on April 28. Death certificate lists immediate cause of death as metabolic encephalopathy for a period of two days, triggered by liver failure for a period of two weeks, due to hepatocellular cancer for a period of 10 months–i.e., since July ‘97.] Carol Tiggs says she wears “widow’s weeds” when she goes to the mortuary to arrange for the cremation. Meanwhile, Florinda Donner-Grau, Taisha Abelar, Kylie Lundahl and Talia Bey leave in two cars after cleaning out their apartments, cancelling their phone services and utilities, and having given away their jewelry and other precious objects to Amy and other Cleargreen members in the preceding weeks.

April 27-May ?, 1998 – In the days that follow, Carol Tiggs initially tells the remaining Cleargreen contingent that Castaneda “burned with the fire from within,” and that the others who had left had done so in pairs in the Westwood compound. She tells them Castaneda and Nury went together, then Florinda and Taisha, and Kylie and Talia. Cleargreeners are given tours of the compound, being shown where their “burning” departures supposedly happened in particular rooms.

Late April 1998 – Nury Alexander departs Los Angeles, one or more days after Florinda Donner-Grau, Taisha Abelar, Kylie Lundahl and Talia Bey had left following Castaneda’s death.


1991 Ford Escort

May 2, 1998 – Death Valley Park Ranger Dave Brenner finds an abandoned red 1991 Ford Escort with no plates on it on the dirt road leading to the trail to the Panamint Dunes in Death Valley. Per Geoffrey Gray’s 6/19/2024 Alta Journal piece, as Brenner remembers it: “Wearing his flappy ranger cap to block the sun and equipped with a Pentax camera to snap images for his report, Brenner inspected the unattended car closely. He peered through the front windows, the back windows. He checked the handles of all the doors. They were locked, he says. He used a slim jim to open one of the doors and then searched the interior. He carefully examined the front and back seats, the console, the glove box, the drink holders. ‘This car was clean,’ he recalls. Nothing was inside. No coffee cup. No loose change. No stick of gum. It was suspicious. The license plate had been stripped. The front one was missing too. ‘There was nothing there,’ he says.” According to John Miller of John Miller Towing who subsequently tows the car, the keys are even still in it.

[May 2, 1998 – Workshop at Santa Monica College Gymnasium. Carol spoke, mentioning how Old Florinda stayed behind for them. She expressed her thanks, and appeared tearful. Mood was somber, and I had a sense that something had happened. Carol spoke only 10 minutes instead of scheduled 30. Carol said that after don Juan’s party left, an “event” occurred that caused them to decide to teach the magical passes to the public. She said that “big” Florinda, who was called that because she was so tall and elegant and packed an incredible wallop, was left behind after don Juan’s party left to fine tune the four of them. (Her voice broke, but she recovered quickly.) She said one of the reasons they had brought Tensegrity public was to search for something big Florinda had foretold before she left. She had said that if the four of them had enough “gall” to continue to pursue the path of the warrior with all they had, that someday a time would come when the mood of the ancient sorcerers would be completely removed from the passes. Instead of being heavy, cold and detached, they would find a new mood, one that was light and very precise. “That time has finally arrived,” she declared. “It occurred right here in this room last month at the last workshop.” She claimed she had witnessed it for herself, and ascribed it to a combination of the energy of the participants and the instructors. She said that a new mood had begun and would prevail from now on. Later on Zaia, once Nury’s lover, said that “giving it their all” in instructing us was their way of saying thank you for all the help they had received.]

May 1998 – John Miller of John Miller Towing Company is called in to pick up the car. In interview for the Trickster podcast, Miller says in almost 50 years he’s towed thousands of cars. He remembered that car instantly because the circumstances were so unusual–the car was immaculate, keys were in it, it was very odd. He towed it back to his shop in Lone Pine.

May – June 1998 -In the weeks following Castaneda’s death, Carol confides the truth in Amy Wallace, whose Westwood home she visits virtually every day, to relax in the pool and get away from the remaining Cleargreeners who are seeking her guidance as their sole remaining leader. She repeatedly tells Amy that Florinda, Taisha and the others died. She also tells her a lurid story about Nury having called her from a Death Valley motel after botching a suicide attempt. She had told Amy that when Nury took off for the desert, she had left her apartment a mess that she, Tracy Kramer and Brandon Scott had to clean up. They then divided up her more valuable things and distributed them to members of the group. After supposedly getting Nury’s call, Carol claimed she drove to the desert with a lot of cash for Nury, finding her “covered in blood.” She told Amy that Nury “clung to my leg pathetically,” saying over and over she was “worthless, a total failure.” Carol claimed she told Nury to go to Ireland and start a printing business. Personally, I think this was just one of Carol’s many lies. It’s hard to imagine her driving hours to Death Valley to take money to Nury. And if Nury was bleeding when she found her, why wouldn’t she take her to the hospital or otherwise get her medical attention? At any rate, as Sorcerer’s Apprentice details, Nury was the one who had long before taken Carol’s place as Castaneda’s favorite. Carol had suffered years of humiliation and abuse because of Nury. Would she really have gone out of her way to drive hours to the desert to take money to her, when she knew she’d really left town to die? That story doesn’t make any sense and I don’t believe it happened.

May ? 1998 – Per Geoffrey Gray’s 6/19/2024 Alta Journal piece, Park Ranger Dave Brenner checked the car’s VIN number using a law enforcement database and learned it had been registered to Partin. The address and contact info were for Cleargreen in Los Angeles. “When Brenner called the office, the employee who answered did not seem to care about the missing car. ‘It was like, ‘Ho hum. Blah, blah, blah. No, we have not seen her,’  Brenner says. He remembers thinking that the person’s cavalier attitude was strange. The lack of empathy and concern for Partin gave him pause. ‘They were never like, “‘”Oh, is she OK? ”'” As it happens, Amy Wallace Amy was working at Cleargreen when Brandon took the call. As she reports it in Sorcerer’s Apprentice, days later, one or more L.A.P.D. officers came to the office and met with Tracy Kramer. Tracy subsequently drove to the Death Valley, and others in the group were afraid he was going to commit suicide. 

May 1998 – 2006 – Cleargreen‘s lies about the whereabouts of the Missing Women continue for years.

1999 – I publish the first version of this chronology of Patty Partin on SustainedAction.org.

November 11, 1999 – Patty’s sister Kim, after reading her sibling’s chronology, adds the following comment via the Sustained Action feedback form: “Just read about my sister, Patty Partin. Glad to see she is being exposed for what she is–a complete and utter phony, not to mention a con artist. Among her other ‘attributes,’ I consider her to be a murderess. She kills people in her mind. She killed me and she killed my family. She had ‘false memories’ of a horrible childhood that simply did not exist. To think that people had to hold themselves up to her as the ‘perfect being’ is laughable. I could not think of a more twisted, hateful or sick ‘being,’ although the part about her not being human does ring true.”

February 15, 2003 – Scattered bones are discovered by two hikers in the Panamint Dunes area of Death Valley National Park. One of the discoverers, Kevin Barth, described the scene in an interview for the Trickster podcast: “We could see some bones spread around in an area. We assumed coyotes had dragged them around. . . . We put up tent and made dinner. It was a full moon night, we went back to look at the bones. Went down with flashlights and poked around.” They thought they were looking at vertebrae. Barth’s friend Blaine held up a jawbone with teeth and fillings and they realized it was human. A “kind of chill goes through your spine finding a dead body in Death Valley,” Barth says. He is still amazed he noticed the bones at all, given that “the backdrop was white on white.” The two hikers report the finding the next day to the Inyo County Sheriff’s office, giving the coordinates of the find.

February 17, 2003 – Inyo County Sheriffs investigator Marston Mottweiller and Deputy Coroner Cecil Compton arrive at the location of the remains. Per their interviews that are part of Chapter 9 of the Trickster podcast, they see bones, in particular a femur, jawbone, the backbone and lower part of the sacrum. Everything else is missing. There is no skull and no identification. According to Mottweiller, maggots would have attacked the body, along with insects, and possibly coyotes, wolves, mountain lion. “That’s why you find the bones scattered around the desert floor.” He also reports two “puzzling discoveries”: shreds of nylon athletic style exercise pants (pink), and in the pocket “a silver metal disc about the size of a half dollar but thicker with a curved knife blade that folded out.” The two bagged the bones and took them to the morgue. The bones were too weathered for DNA testing. The coroner determined they belonged to a woman, probably in her 40’s at time of death. The two were puzzled over how she got there, but “needed an ID to figure that out. You have to have facts and then you try to fit it into a story.” They subsequently sent out interagency communications. Two months passed and they learned Death Valley Park Ranger Dave Brenner had found the abandoned car May 2, 1998.

February 2003 – Mottweiller asked John Miller, who had towed Nury’s car in 1998, if he could find it. Miller tracked it down with the VIN number. Mottweiller found out Patricia Partin had been adopted by Castaneda, and that she was his lover, by searching the Internet (i.e., SustainedAction.org)

June 25, 2003 – Mottweiler wrote Patty’s mother to let her know remains were discovered that might be those of her daughter. He concluded the letter, “I’m sure this is distressing but hopefully could lead to answered questions and closure for you.”

February ? 2006 – The remains discovered by hikers in 2003 were positively identified as Nury Alexander’s using advanced DNA testing techniques. They were compared to DNA samples taken from Partin’s mother and three sisters.
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