Castaneda Cult
15 posts
After eighteen years of research, Ru Marshall’s American Trickster: The Hidden Lives of Carlos Castaneda (OR Books, 2026) has arrived — and it is, by any measure, the most complete portrait of Carlos Castaneda yet assembled. Part biography, part intellectual history, part cult analysis, and part philosophical excavation, the book traces Castaneda’s story from its Peruvian origins
The Dramatis Personae: Castaneda World Who’s Who. In reading about Carlos Castaneda, it can be difficult to follow people’s names, to simply figure out who is who. In Castaneda’s world and mythology, he gave people “sorcery names.” These were considered a great honor among his acolytes. Many of those closest to him legally changed their
Just added to the site here a page summarizing the lawsuit filed by former Cleargreen employees and Tensegrity instructors Aerin Alexander and Miles Reid against Cleargreen. The case resulted in a ruling that there is no copyright or trademark protection for Tensegrity or the movements referred to as Magical Passes. Cleargreen and Laugan Productions, Inc.
Image courtesy Greg Mamishian & Gaby Geuter The chronology of Carlos Castaneda colleague Florinda Donner-Grau has been revised and updated here. Florinda Donner-Grau was one of the three supposed Witches (i.e., fellow apprentices of Castaneda’s teacher don Juan) and one of the five women closest to him who disappeared after Castaneda’s death. This 25th anniversary
Carol Tiggs, aka Muni Aranha, in 2015 Discover the updated Carol Tiggs chronology, detailing her bizarre and mendacious journey over the years. The chronology of Carol Tiggs (aka Kathleen Pohlman, Elizabeth Austin, Muni Aranha) that was originally published here in June 1999 has been updated and expanded (by 40%) to take into account what we
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.
Sandy McIntosh, an original SA contributor (and former Tensegrity workshop attendee), befriended Angelica, the woman who would become Castaneda’s doctor in the two years before his death, at Tensegrity workshops. He was on hand when Florinda and Taisha first singled her out to serve as Castaneda’s doctor (and become, briefly, a member of the inner
Taisha Abelar’s Chronology was published here for the first time to coincide with what would have been her 79th birthday, August 25, 2024. Thanks to Paul M., several items have now been added to that chronology, including references to her and UCLA classes she was teaching from the UCLA Daily Bruin, the University’s newspaper, whose
We just added a piece by original Sustained Action contributor Sandy McIntosh (a one-time workshop goer who is a professional writer and poet), describing an encounter he had with a Castaneda “true believer” who felt threatened by the material we started making available here on Sustained Action in 1999. The article explores how true believers
An upgraded and more complete collection of images of Castaneda, the Witches, the Blue Scout, other prominent Cleargreen members
Taisha pictured in November 1974 Samurai Magazine For the reasons detailed below, this chronology was withheld when the SustainedAction website first went up in 1999, containing chronologies of two of the Witches, Carol Tiggs and Florinda Donner-Grau, as well as the so-called Blue Scout. Those chronologies established that the stories Castaneda told about these women–portraying
“The loathsome, despicable deception Cleargreen has engaged in and doubled down on ever since Castaneda died his mundane death involves promulgating a blizzard of obfuscating falsehoods about the disappearance and likely suicides of five of its highest profile former shareholders. This includes two of the three Witches–Florinda and Taisha–they have continued to claim are still alive, and for awhile asserted were somehow guiding and advising their efforts. Their silence regarding the facts they know about where the women went and their transparently bullshit stories about what happened, all just to avoid damaging the ‘brand,’ have certainly been deeply hurtful to the families of those women, and to those of us who also loved and cared about them, depriving them of any sense of closure. These ongoing deceptions have also helped turn the whole Castaneda enterprise into one of the most scandalous and reprehensible cult coverups of all time.”
As detailed in the Introduction and Chronologies on this site, five of the women closest to Castaneda disappeared in the days immediately following Castaneda’s death on April 27, 1998. Details of the disappearance of five of the women closest to Castaneda, and the eventual discovery and positive identification of the remains of one of them, Nury Alexander (aka the
In sum, despite its length and the author’s claim to be an experienced “investigative reporter,” this piece contains virtually no new information regarding the missing women, other than some further details from the park ranger who found the Blue Scout’s abandoned car and the call Gray received from the current owners of Castaneda’s Westwood compound, who indicate they purchased the property in 2009. Everything else seems to be a summary of material that’s already been long available in the public record, especially here on Sustained Action, along with Gray’s fanciful speculations on that material. Then there are those significant errors, summarized here.
The original Sustained Action website went up in 1999. That version of the website contained material that would be of interest to fellow Castaneda followers (workshop notes, summaries of private sessions with Castaneda) in an effort to lure them into reading the other material (e.g., chronologies of Castaneda and the Witches, reports on likely source
