Revised and Updated Blue Scout Chronology
What is the real story of the supposed Blue Scout from Carlos Castaneda’s The Art of Dreaming? Let’s dive in.
On what would have been the Blue Scout’s 67th birthday in the unlikely event she had continued on after Castaneda’s passing, the chronology of Patricia Partin/Nury Alexander/the Blue Scout has been substantially revised and updated. The original version of this chronology was first published on this site in 1999 The material added to the chronology is based on information we have learned since, including the discovery of human bones near where she abandoned her car on the trail to the Panamint Dunes in Death Valley in 2003. Those bones were positively identified as Nury’s remains using her relatives’ DNA in 2006. The link to the complete, updated, real story of the supposed Blue Scout is here. Below is the new introduction to the update summarizing the tragic tale of the deeply damaged narcissist and how she came to take her own life after Castaneda’s death.
1991 Ford Escort, like the one Nury drove to and abandoned in Death Valley in 1998
New 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 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. This is the real story of the supposed Blue Scout.
-Richard Jennings
©️ 2024 by Richard Jennings, all rights reserved
Nury Alexander captured on video circa 1997, courtesy of of Greg and Gabi
Copyright © 1999 Greg Mamishian and Gabi Geuther
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