Never Before Published: Taisha Abelar Chronology
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 them as disciples of don Juan and his party, or as, in the case of the Blue Scout, beings with a supernatural origin story, were patently false. Those stories were reinforced by the ones the women related themselves in their books and workshop lectures (always carefully reviewed, if not fully scripted, by the “Nagual”). Those fictionalized narratives that Castaneda created to give further credence to his own fictional tale of being a sorcerer’s apprentice do not line up whatsoever with their real biographies, as illustrated by legal and other relevant documents.
The story of the third Witch, one of the four currently Missing Women, as disclosed by the facts in her chronology, is the same. Hers for me is the most heartbreaking of the chronologies, however, given she was a person of true talent and accomplishments–in contrast to the others whose chronologies have been published here–and her comments in various contexts, especially to her primary confidante in the last months of her life, Amy Wallace, show her to have been a true believer in Castaneda’s mythos and worldview, significantly more so than the other senior women. That she ultimately sacrificed herself by committing suicide with three of the other Missing Women upon Castaneda’s death, continues to haunt and pain me. The sense of loss as well as shame her family members experienced from her absorption into Castaneda’s cult also became palpable for me when I interviewed a few of them at length.
Taisha was born in Germany, into a formerly wealthy and well-educated Hungarian family from Budapest that was on the run from both the Nazis and the Soviets because Taisha’s father was a noted cancer specialist who was wanted by both sides. The father and mother were separated at the time of Taisha’s birth because being with his family would have made the father too easy to find. Taisha’s mother waited as long as she could (the father had been sent for) but ultimately gave birth to Taisha totally by herself, using “a candle and scissors.” Her mother was too weak to nurse her, so other nursing mothers in the refugee camp they were living in nursed Taisha.
Taisha was the fourth of five children, and she also had an older sister, Agnes (whom she never wrote or spoke about), who was very accomplished and of whom, one gathers, Taisha was more than a little jealous. The family immigrated to the U.S. in the early fifties, settling in Southern California. All of the children have advanced degrees and are very accomplished.
The mother apparently knew that Taisha had gotten involved at age 18 or 19 (i.e., in her first year or two at UCLA) with a much older man, whom they referred to as “her professor.” Taisha’s sister was also disapproving of this relationship, and Taisha was apparently living with her sister at this point in her UCLA career. After arguing about this relationship for some time, Taisha moved out one day and didn’t come back. The family was told that she had married this man, and, later, that they had had a child together.
The family confirmed there was a violent incident between Taisha and her mother, mentioned by Castaneda in Sunday Group sessions, that took place in 1977. Taisha did punch or kick her mother. The terrible encounter with Taisha seemed to send the mother into a downward spiral health wise, and she was never quite the same afterward. Ultimately she had Parkinson’s disease, and spent her last years in a nursing home, passing away of heart failure many years ago. Meanwhile, Taisha’s siblings (it had been a very close family, having survived great hardship and life upheavals together) mourned Taisha’s loss. The word they got was that Taisha had “moved to China.” When her father died, they hired a private investigator who found Taisha and was told she didn’t want anything to do with her family. George, the brother, was reportedly obsessed with his lost sister for years.
The fact that someone I once idolized and admired could treat loving family members this way (even if told to do so by Castaneda, whom I can now see virtually controlled Taisha’s life) was truly shocking to me. It also made me wonder how Taisha felt about the fact that Florinda was allowed to have a relationship with her parents, at least in her later years. It also seems to me that Taisha’s real family story is a lot more interesting and moving than the one she describes in Sorcerer’s Crossing.
–by Richard Jennings
New Chronology Introduction
Taisha Abelar, née Maryann Simko, was, if not the first of Castaneda’s lovers/cult members (that was probably Joanie Barker), certainly the one who served in that role the longest. After meeting him when she was only 19, she somehow found a way to live with him throughout his entire self invented, philandering, megalomaniacal life.
She was also arguably the most accomplished of his many lovers and cult members. She came from a close knit family that had survived the destruction and displacement of WWII, and her siblings all went on to academic distinction and professional careers. She herself not only published articles on a variety of subjects in her early years, but also legitimately gained her masters and Ph.D at UCLA, unlike Florinda who plagiarized her attempted thesis and was expelled from UCLA’s Ph.D program.
Although taken over and groomed by Castaneda from a young age, she was very practical and worldly in her own way, and Castaneda came to depend on her for those qualities. And she procured for him Florinda, among others, as a lover and disciple, receiving her as a lifelong housemate in return.
For me, when I got involved with the group in early 1995, Taisha was the most magical of Castaneda’s circle. Her lectures vividly made us experience her imagined stalking lives as various characters, and their intense, often miserable, but invariably extreme experiences. During the course of the same evening’s remarks, she would make us laugh out loud and sob with uncontrollable tears. Her matter-of-fact telling of the most outlandish tales (e.g., flying for miles through the air in a treehouse), made those stories feel all the more real. She truly seemed to transport us somewhere––to move our assemblage points, in Castaneda’s vernacular—to something outside ordinary reality.
Although I had many more encounters with Florinda, who was the most gregarious of the inner circle, as well as Kylie and Talia, whom I was able to help with many practical tasks, it was Taisha—whom I mainly saw only at the workshops and Sunday sessions, and then a few times for tea in Castaneda’s compound where she lived on one side with Florinda—for whom I had the most respect and admiration.
As Amy Wallace, my closest friend and confidant in Castaneda’s world, shared with me, in real time, her experiences with Taisha in those final days before Castaneda’s death, I gained a different view of what Taisha had become. The first and most lasting disciple had given in to Castaneda’s imagination with her whole heart and her own active imagination, ultimately coming to believe both his tales and teachings, as well as her own “dreamed” or “actively imagined” stories about Castaneda’s imaginary teachers.
When Castaneda came to his end and wasn’t capable of helping her and the others who had been with him so long to “burn with the fire from within,” she was absolutely and understandably devastated. She had given her life, her soul, her total commitment to Castaneda’s philosophy and worldview. Genuinely there was no life for her outside the one she had spent as Castaneda’s “colleague“ and indefatigable supporter. One senses she didn’t want to die, but really had no option but to attempt to join her beloved, her lifelong guru, in death. And she committed to this suicide pact as fervently and stoically as every other task she had had to complete in service to her personal savior.
So Taisha’s chronology was particularly painful for me to put together, and once done, I wrestled with making it public. When her brother and sister-in-law, who ultimately shared with and confirmed for me essential family history after I tracked them down, asked me to keep it unpublished, it wasn’t hard for me to agree. By contrast, my deep anger at Carol‘s ongoing deceptions, and her cruel and callous treatment of Amy and others in the group, made it easy for me to share through the private Sustained Action mailing list, and ultimately this site, what I had learned about her real story, which totally debunked the oft repeated canard that she had “bodily disappeared” from this world for 10 years. For the highly intelligent, talented, true believer Taisha, on the other hand, I felt, and still feel, only deep pity, sadness and regret at her inevitable decision to take her own life.
But the time has finally come, a quarter of a century on, to complete the real story, the truth of the destructive cult that Castaneda—a philosophical inspiration to so many—created to amuse and occupy himself, especially in his last decade. I didn’t come on the scene until the last three years of his life, but those 40 months or so were intense and all consuming for me. I can just barely imagine, then, how deeply stuck and dependent someone like Taisha had become, having been seduced and controlled by Castaneda from her late teens on, for over three rollercoaster decades.
–Richard Jennings
For the full Taisha Abelar Chronology, click here.
©️ 2024 by Richard Jennings, all rights reserved
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