New material
24 posts
Advice on Recuperating from Surgery from Carol and Florinda Back when I was attending Cleargreen night sessions with Castaneda regularly (as well as Sunday Group meetings), I had hernia surgery that caused me to miss a few sessions. Following the surgery, I received telephone calls at home from both Carol Tiggs and Florinda Donner. During these conversations
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 is a new Purpose & Policies page on the Menu level. The new page not only outlines the purpose of the website but also summarizes a policy of transparency, and links to the site’s Privacy Policy. Also added is an FAQ page with the most commonly asked questions about Carlos
The page here on Castaneda’s Night Sessions with Cleargreen has been updated with further background and subheadings. This master page now contains a list of all the Night Session notes now available here, on 10 pages–a total of 14 sessions so far. The latest session notes added are those for October 7, 1996, December 7,
Carlos Castaneda was a student of Howard Y. Lee, who taught Kung Fu for many years in Los Angeles. Howard was also an acupuncturist, who eventually performed a version of acupuncture using no needles. Castaneda mentioned Howard many times during Sunday group and other private sessions. The two pieces on this site devoted to Castaneda’s
We have now added a Master Listing of Notes to the Castaneda Sunday Sessions here. The new page provides links to all 13 of the 61 Sunday Sessions that are now up on the site. Those notes have also been revamped with subheadings, jump links and a table of contents so they are easier to
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
A new collection of documents related to Castaneda and the Witches has been added to the site. These are now accessible from the site’s top Menu listing. This collection replaces the set from the 1999 version of the site with new and improved scans of key vital records like Castaneda’s death certificate, Castaneda’s last will
Teresa and Jacobo Grinberg Just added here Professor Jacobo Grinberg’s account of the interactions he and his wife Teresa had with Carlos Castaneda and his group in 1991, when the two were invited to become part of Castaneda’s group in Los Angeles. Professor Grinberg declined the offer, and kept secret his interactions with Castaneda per
Just added to the site is a new piece by former Sunday Group participant and Castaneda scholar David Worrell that succinctly summarizes the timelines covered by Castaneda’s key books. David also identifies a few of the major inconsistencies between Castaneda’s own books, as well as between those books and that of his colleague, Florinda Donner
Just added to the Explorations pages here a new piece by writer and poet Sandy McIntosh about the ways in which he has used “dreaming” and lucid dreaming to turn and shape them into poetry. Sandy was an attendee at Cleargreen workshops when Castaneda was alive, and also a participant in one of Stephen LaBerge’s
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
Carol Tiggs, back row far left, with her August 2015 certification class as a Sound Yoga instructor David Worrell noted and summarized in 2020 for Sustained Reaction these three very different and contradictory versions of the story of Carol Tiggs supposed first meeting with don Juan. In reverse chronological order, the first is from from
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
A new piece by original Sustained Action contributor (and professional writer/poet) Sandy McIntosh, reflects on having re-read all of the works of Castaneda and his cohorts (Florinda Donner and Taisha Abelar) in recent years. The piece is entitled They Are What We Know. A brief excerpt encapsulates what Sandy learns: I reread the books and
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.”
Just added a Menu page to the site regarding Castaneda biographer Ru Marshall, author of the insightful 2007 Salon article about Castaneda, whose long awaited, thoroughly researched biography of Castaneda is due to be published by Red Hen Press in Spring 2006. The new page includes links to Ru’s own website as well as other
Just added to the site excerpts from Amy Wallace’s book Sorcerer’s Apprentice: My Life with Carlos Castaneda. Also added a new introduction by Richard Jennings giving the background on his relationship with Amy starting at the Omega Tensegrity Workshop in May 1995 and through their “deprogramming” of each other from the cult following Castaneda’s death
