CAROL TIGGS WAS THE NAHUAL WOMAN OF CARLOS CASTANEDA

Carol Tiggs was one of Carlos Castaneda's main disciples, and here I will put the information I find about her.

HER LIFE

Carol was born on November 24, 1947, in Los Angeles, California. She met Castaneda in this city when she was around 23 years old. Two years later, in 1973, she distanced herself from Castaneda for ten years and returned to him in 1983.

When Castaneda died in 1998, shortly afterwards five of his closest disciples disappeared (it is suspected that they committed suicide), the only witch who did not disappear was Carol who took over the leadership of Cleargreen, the company that Castaneda founded to market his teachings.

But Carol has remained very hidden, appearing at a tensegrity workshop held in 2015 in Sochi, Russia; and she probably won't appear in public again because she is already very old.

For more details about her, read:

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(Later I put it)

HER DIFFERENT NAMES

Castaneda asked his disciples to change their names, and Carol changed her names on several occasions.

Her birth name is Kathleen Adair Pohlman, but she later changed her name to: Elizabeth Austin, Muni Alexander, Carol Aranha, Muni Tiggs Alexander, although the most famous is Carol Tiggs.

In his later years he decided to call Muni Aranha.

Aranha is Castaneda's original paternal surname, whose full birth name is Carlos César Salvador Arana Castañeda.

HER STATUS IN CASTANEDA GROUP

Carol was part of the "chacmools" (the  warriors), which is what Castaneda called his personal disciples who made up his inner circle.

The three main ones (who supposedly had also met Don Juan) were known as the "witches" and Carol was one of them; the other two witches were Taisha Abelar and Florinda Donner.

But Carol obtained an even higher status since Castaneda stated that she was "the nahual woman", that is, his partner and female equivalent.

The other two witches did not agree with this statement because Carol arrived after them, but they did not dare to contradict Castaneda.

HER LITERARY WORK

Carol, at  the workshop held at the Rim Institute in Arizona from July 23 to 25, 1993, she stated that her book "Tales of Energy," where she would recount her shamanic experiences, would be published soon, but this book never appeared.

And in fact Carol didn't write any books, and people who knew her say that was because she is lazy.

PHOTOS

Carol imitated Castaneda's habit of remaining very secretive, but over time some photos of her have been found.

The following photos were taken when she was a teenager:

 

The following photo is from the 1967 UC Berkeley student yearbook, when Carol was 20 years old:

The following photos were taken when she was a young woman:

 

This photo was taken in 1997, when Carol was 50 years old:

The following photo is a group photo of students from Heather Lyle's Vocal Yoga class, from which Carol received her instructor certification on August 15, 2015.  Teacher Heather Douglas Lyle is the woman in the middle wearing an orange shirt, and Carol is the woman in the back row wearing a black shirt.

CAROL DESCRIBED BY JACOBO GRIMBERG

Jacobo Grinberg was a famous Mexican scientist who became interested in shamanism. In 1991, he spent a week with Carlos Castaneda and his witches, and regarding Carol Tiggs, he mentioned the following:

« Castaneda's closest circle was made up entirely of women. They were all thin and masculine-looking. Some I met were Carol, the Nahual woman; Nuri, his daughter; Florinda Donner; and Ana [Taisha Abelar].

They all had something in common that set them apart from the rest of the women I had met, except for some from Tepoztlán: a yearning for freedom and an energy devoid of worldly feelings.

(Cid's note: To others they appeared to be warriors working hard to merge into the infinite, but in reality they still had worldly tastes, since two people spied on them and discovered that Castaneda bought them luxurious gifts and designer clothes.)  

Ana was the best known for these qualities. Florinda was strong and direct, and the one who most resembled the Nahual, Carol, seemed otherworldly, distant and ethereal.

When we were in Tula, Castaneda told us that the the Death Defier had merged with the Nahual woman and Carol contained them both in one.  Everyone turned to look at Carol and she nodded.

And Castaneda added: “With this woman I have traveled where no one else can travel.”

We turned once more to look at Carol and she nodded again, saying "yes". »

(Cid's note: Castaneda is inventing fantastical stories here, and Carol was supporting him in his lies.) 

CAROL AS DESCRIBED BY TONY KARAM

Marco Antonio Karam, better known as Lama Tony, is a promoter of Tibetan Buddhism. In 1989 he founded the organization Casa Tibet México and has directed it ever since.

Castaneda met Tony around 1982 and decided that Karam would be his successor; and regarding Carol Tiggs, Tony commented the following:

« Carol's arrival changed the group's dynamic. When Castañeda named her his spiritual counterpart, that is, the female nahual, there were negative reactions from the other witches who argued that Carol didn't have the shamanic training or the time they had spent with Castañeda to be their leader. She lacked authority. They didn't believe in Carol.

As part of my initiation into the inner circle, Castaneda ordered me to have sexual relations with Carol (whom Castaneda had also married).

Castaneda presented this to me as a worthy honor for his designated successor.

I stayed at a hotel with Carol during her trips to Mexico City. We were just two disciples following our master's orders.

Castañeda told us that having sex was a ritualistic exercise that united energies and sought to align the spiritual genes of his group.

It wasn't something passionate, it was something mechanical that simply had to be done to achieve this supposed harmony.

Carol remained indifferent and impassive to this order; she was simply told that she had to do it and she did it .

After Carlos Castaneda's death, everything fell apart. Without a capable leader to replace him, the burden fell on Carol, but she wasn't suited for be the new lider. »

CAROL DESCRIBED BY RICHARD JENNINGS

Richard Jennings was a student of Castaneda during his later years; he knew the witches well, and about Carol he commented the following:

« Many years after Carlos Castaneda’s death, Carol Tiggs continues to maintain the absurd story that Castaneda “burned with the fire from within,” and that the missing women who committed suicide following his death were “traveling”–is consistent not only with narcissistic personality disorder, just like Castaneda, but is also that of a sociopath.

Unlike Castaneda, however, she is not the rare “charismatic guru” type of narcissist. She lacks that type’s ability to “read” people that Castaneda possessed in spades. She also has none of his preternatural gift for storytelling, or even inventing believable and consistent lies. All she had to go on was her relative attractiveness for an individual of her age, and the grandiose but unsustainable stories he left behind that caused gullible Castaneda followers to project super powers on her, at least until she opened her mouth. Welcome to the Carol Tiggs Chronology.

From Carol’s behavior over the years, both with Castaneda in the picture and without, it is pretty clear she lacks any kind of moral compass, and will simply use people for her own ends, no matter the harm that causes.

She has been around the New Age bullshit block long enough that she’s picked up some techniques for conning the most gullible, including the basic hypnosis induction techniques Castaneda had her learn in the early ’90s from videotapes and books.

But she has no skill at telling effective stories–for example, she could not and would not ever write the book about her supposed sorceric experiences that was long claimed to be in the works–and is apparently too lazy even to put in the minimal effort needed to keep her stories straight.

She has at least been smart enough to stay out of the public eye for most of the last 25 years. Given she is a Stanford grad, she’s clearly not stupid. But she stumbled badly on her first outing at a Cleargreen workshop in 17 years as detailed below, not only making up a melodramatic and patently absurd story about her childhood, but also claiming a technique she had just learned that summer in getting certified as a vocal yoga instructor had been taught to her by don Juan in their first supposed meeting. It is highly unlikely then that she will ever make the mistake of appearing in public like that again. 

Carol’s very sad workshop “comeback” after all these years only confirmed what those of us who had watched and known her through the years had long come to realize: Carol is nothing without the svengali who scripted, staged and oversaw her appearances as one of the two most important living protagonists of his elaborate myth.

As Bruce Wagner told Amy Wallace following Castaneda’s death regarding Carol, “She is no more fit to take on the job of leader than I am to redo the plumbing in your house.” Far from being a supremely powerful “sorceress” who “rides the Death Defier,” or even “superpussy,” she is a pathetic victim of her own and Castaneda’s grandiose web of lies aimed at making a narcissist loser seem special enough to merit others’ attention and admiration.

And the supreme irony, in my mind, is that all these years after Castaneda’s death and her elevation as a supernatural being, Ms. Tiggs and the few other remaining charlatans at Cleargreen are reduced to peddling bogus “breath techniques,” exactly like the many gurus Castaneda claimed to have once visited and that he mercilessly lampooned to us in Sunday sessions.

Whereas Taisha Abelar was an intelligent and talented true believer, and Florinda Donner was a naturally charismatic serial liar and sociopath, Carol is basically just a sociopathic but inept nobody without a puppet master around to transform her into a “magical being.”

Based on the material I reviewed and people I spoke to in putting together this updated chronology, I have nothing but contempt for how Carol has operated and treated people. Her choices, actions and inaction have generated nothing but increasing suspicion and ridicule of Castaneda’s legacy. She deserves to be shunned and what’s left of the Cleargreen organization disbanded.

As we know, however, from the painful national spectacle of Donald Trump, pathological narcissists never admit their misdeeds or failures. They will blame it on others, and otherwise make up lies and excuses until their dying day.

Yes, the cult of Castaneda is a story of victims and villains. Carol was both–a victim of Castaneda’s years of abuse and manipulation–but her own misdeeds, abuses of trust and outright fraud make her the singular villain of the post Castaneda years. In honor of all the people whose trust and faith she abused and crapped on, it is time to update the ludicrous and sad chronology of one Carol Tiggs. »

CONCLUSION

Carol was initially just another victim of Carlos Castaneda, but she got used to lying, living very well, and being admired by liying others, so she ended up participating in and believing the fantasies that Castaneda had invented for her, and she continued to nurture those lies for many years after Castaneda passed away.