Carlos
Castaneda asserted that Carol Tiggs was the 'Nagual Woman,' his partner
and female equivalent, but in 1973 Carol Tiggs had to leave with Don
Juan and his sorcerers for 'The Other Side' because that is what the
rule governing these naguals dictates. However, she returned to Earth
ten years later in 1983, something that was not expected to happen. And
now I will detail that event.
CASTANEDA'S CLAIMS
The departure of the Nagual Woman
The first to speak about this was Castaneda himself, who in his book "The Eagle's Gift" (1981) revealed that among the rules in the Don Juan lineage, there
is a rule that says that the nagual of one generation has to take with
him the female nagual of the next generation:
Don Juan detailed that “Rule of the Nagual” as follows:
« To
ensure that the first Nagual man would guide his group to freedom and
not stray from that path or become corrupted, the Eagle took the Nagual
woman to the other world to serve as a beacon, guiding the group towards
the opening.
. . .
When
the first Nagual and his group were ready to go through the passageway,
the first female Nagual was waiting there to guide them.
They
were then ordered to take the new female Nagual with them to the other
world to serve as a beacon for their group, leaving the new male Nagual
in this world, and this has been repeated ever since. »
(Chapter 9)
And at the end of that book, Castaneda recounted how he
was present when in 1973, Don Juan, along with Carol and other members
of Don Juan's group, burned with the inner fire, transformed into
luminous beings and transcended this world of matter without physically
dying, entering another world located in another dimension unknown to
humans.
« [First
the men said goodbye]. Then the warriors came to me. Each one of them
hugged me and whispered a wish in my ear, a wish for fulfillment and
achievement.
The
Nagual Woman [Carol Tiggs] was the last to approach me. She sat down
and placed me on her lap as if I were a child. She exuded affection and
purity. I was breathless. We stood and walked around the room. We talked
and examined our destiny. Forces beyond comprehension had brought us to
this culminating moment.
Her
state of mind on her last day on Earth was unheard of. I understood
then that I would never see her again, and that filled me with boundless
anguish. The dread I felt was immeasurable. And so too was my sorrow.
Then
I saw Don Juan and his warriors [and Carol Tiggs] ignite their
consciousness, and afterward there was only a line of exquisite lights
rising into the sky. At the head of that line was Don Juan, who
generated an immense brilliance. And then the lights vanished. »
(Chapter 15, extracts)
In his book "The Art of Dreaming" (1993) Castaneda spoke again about Carol Tiggs' departure, but there
he contradicted what he had written before because there he indicated
that Carol left with the Death Challenger, which preceded the departure
of Don Juan's group for an unspecified period but certainly more than a
day.
« What do you think happened to Carol Tiggs?" I asked Don Juan.
"Carol Tiggs is gone," she replied, "but one day you'll find the new Carol Tiggs, the one from the hotel room in your dreams."
"What do you mean by 'she's gone'?"
"He has left this world," he said.
…
"But where do you think he went?"
"Where have the sorcerers of old gone? I told you that the gift of the Death Challenger is the infinite possibilities of dreams. »
(Chapter 13)
The Return of the Nagual Woman
But from 1983 onwards, Castaneda claimed that Carol Tiggs had returned from that subtle world back to the physical world.
For example, on one occasion Castaneda said:
« There's
someone venturing into the unknown, waiting for us to join her. Her
name is Carol Tiggs, my counterpart. She was with us, then she vanished.
Her disappearance lasted ten years. Where she went is inconceivable. It
defies reason. So please, suspend judgment… Carol Tiggs is gone. She
wasn't living in the mountains of New Mexico, I assure you.
One
day I was giving a lecture at the Phoenix bookstore and she
materialized. My heart skipped a beat. I kept talking. I spoke for two
hours without knowing what I was saying. I took her outside and asked
her where she had been. Ten years!
She
became evasive and began to sweat. She only had vague memories. She
made jokes. Carol Tiggs' reappearance opened a huge, energetic door
through which we can pass. Her return gave us a new power ring; she
brought with her a tremendous amount of energy that allows us to move
forward. That is why we are available at this time. »
(Details Magazine, March 1994)
On another occasion Castaneda asserted that:
« I was giving one of my rare talks in a Los Angeles bookstore when I
spotted a woman in the audience whom I recognized as Carol Tiggs. I
hadn't seen her in 10 years, because she had been in the 'sea of
consciousness,' a realm in which consciousness is used as a means of
travel.
Their
return marked a new, more public phase in the work of the four
sorcerers. With Carol Tiggs's return, the decision was made to lift the
traditional veil of mystery and secrecy and present the sorcerers'
teachings to a wider world. And in this spirit, Florinda Donner-Grau and
Taisha Abelar wrote books describing their training. »
(Yoga Journal, December 1995)
And on another occasion Castaneda stated that:
« Don Juan could never have addressed a group like this tonight. He was
only interested in himself and his group. But things changed for us when
Carol Tiggs returned after a ten-year absence. Her return changed
everything. »
(Workshop of March 1996)
THE STATEMENTS OF THE PERSONAL DISCIPLES
OF CASTANEDA
Several
important members of Castaneda's group also supported that assertion,
and below I give some examples of this, but there are more:
Florinda Donner
In
October 1992, Florinda gave a lecture to an audience of two hundred
people at the Jewish Cultural Center in Berkeley, and at the end of her
lecture she introduced Carol to the audience, saying:
« She
is the nagual woman who had disappeared into the Infinite for ten
years, body and all, but to Carol it only seemed like a second. She lost
all track of time. When Carol miraculously reappeared, jogging in her
tracksuit… she opened the magic door that allowed me to be here tonight,
the door that has allowed Carlos to begin making public appearances. »
At the Workshop held in Maui from March 24 to 26, 1995, Florinda mentioned the above again and added:
« The
return of Carol Tiggs, the nagual woman, brought a new atmosphere to
the group. During her lecture, Carlos saw Carol’s glow at the back of
the tent. She had returned after ten years! For two hours, he didn’t
stop babbling during the lecture, so impactful was this event. »
The writer Amy Wallace mentions in her book "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" that Florinda told her:
« Carlos,
Taisha, and I almost died when Carol left; we were on the verge of
disappearing! She, the nagual woman… she was supposed to be a shining
beacon, radiating her light to guide us to the other side. But we
couldn’t find her, not even in our dreams. We were devastated,
struggling to survive. When Carlos saw her trotting along, he tried to
chase her, but she escaped.
But
a few weeks later, boom! Carlos saw her face in the audience while he
was giving a lecture at the Phoenix Bookstore in Santa Monica... Amy had
total amnesia about her experience! She vanished from the world for ten
years! Vanishing! All she remembers is waking up in Arizona, wandering
around, and noticing that the buildings were taller. She said she
unearthed some bundles of cash that Don Juan had told her to hide.
. . .
Well,
that was the omen! It meant we could come out into the open after
twenty years of secrecy. Castaneda could speak to his readers and tell
the world about the three of us. We've been his biggest secret for
twenty years! »
Taisha Abelar
In a conversation with novelist Bruce Wagner, who was also a student of Castaneda, Taisha declared:
“We felt Carol Tiggs in our bodies when she left. She had a tremendous
mass of energy. She was like a lighthouse, a beacon. She gave us hope,
an incentive to keep going. Because we knew she was there. Whenever I
let myself get carried away with complacency, I felt her touch my
shoulder. She was our magnificent obsession.”
Bruce asked, “When they spoke of 'crossing over,' did they mean their physical bodies?”
Taisha replied that changing the Self did not mean the Freudian ego, but the real and concrete Self: "Yes, the physical body."
Bruce
concluded: “Before meeting with Castaneda for the last time, I had a
breakfast appointment with the mysterious Carol Tiggs. Twenty years
earlier, she had left with Don Juan Matus’s group into the unknown.
Incredibly, she had returned, somehow unleashing a veritable circus of
sorcerers. I was growing increasingly uneasy about our meeting. Every
time the Big Question assailed me (Where the hell were you those ten
years?), it vanished. I felt as if I were standing on the train tracks
and Carol Tiggs was waving at me from the last car.”
(Details Magazine, March 1994)
Kylie Lundahl
Kylie, at the workshop held in New York from May 26 to 29, 1995, stated:
« Carol
Tiggs returned, but that was something she shouldn’t have done, since
according to tradition, the rule dictated that the Nagual Woman
accompany the previous Nagual’s group and remain on the other side to
help the new Nagual’s group cross the void. But Carol returned instead
of waiting to help them. This changed everything drastically for them.
The disciples of the old Nagual now found themselves alone in the world
and opened it up. Tensegrity is the result of that opening. »
And at the workshop held in Seattle on July 19, 1997 , Kylie stated:
« Our endless categorization and classification traps us in our own
little world and makes us incapable of considering the possibility that
someone like Carol Tiggs could go somewhere else for ten years and then
return. Carol really did physically leave and wasn’t in this world
during those years. »
At first, Carol was very evasive about this matter.
For
example, Amy Wallace recounts that after the October 1992 conference, a
friend of hers approached Carol to ask her what it had been like to
spend ten years in another dimension.
Amy
found Carol's reaction shocking as she backed into a corner, stammering
and sweating profusely. A crowd gathered around her. She stammered,
"I... uh... I don't remember... I can't, um..." She continued backing
away until she hit a wall, then lowered her head like a trapped mule,
frantically pushing her way through the crowd, stumbling as she went,
until she reached Florinda. The crowd was bewildered by her anxiety to
escape that question.
BUT LATER CAROL SPOKE VERY RESOLUTELY ABOUT THIS SUBJECT
For example, at the Workshop held on the Hawaiian island of Maui from October 14 to 17, 1993, Carol said she was lost for two years after her "return" in 1983, and that she wandered disoriented.
When
she happened to walk into the Phoenix bookstore in 1985, where
Castaneda was giving a lecture, Castaneda approached her and asked,
"Where have you been, my little freak of nature?"
She said she was "remembering things little by little."
And at the Workshop held in Mexico City from May 19 to 21, 1995, Carol told the audience:
« When
I returned from that place, I found myself in Tucson, Arizona, ten
years later. It was hard for me to even recognize the area, but I'm sure
Don Juan knew beforehand that this was going to happen, because he made
me hide plastic bags with money in different parts of that and other
cities, which at the time seemed absurd to me, but in that instant I
understood it perfectly.
So
I went to get one of those bags and with that money I went to Los
Angeles and stayed there for a while, as if in a trance, until I found
out that Castaneda was going to give a lecture at the Phoenix Bookstore
in Santa Monica.
I went, and Castaneda saw me and spoke for two hours without me knowing what he was saying, because he was so amazed to see me there. »
Although Carol also made mistakes, such as in the Workshop that took place on May 2, 1998, where she stated: "Teacher Florinda fell behind after Don Juan's group left to perfect the four of us."
By
"the four" she means Castaneda, herself, Taisha Abelar, and Florinda
Donner, but Carol could not receive that improvement because supposedly
she had gone with Don Juan.
DEATH OF CASTANEDA
Castaneda died in 1998.
THE TRUTH IS REVEALED
In
1999, the website sustainedaction.org revealed that Carol had not gone
to another dimension, but that she had actually separated from Castaneda
and continued to live physically in Los Angeles.
Carol went to live with her mother
Carol's mother stated that her daughter lived with her, mainly in Pacific Palisades, for 14 years, from 1971 to 1985 , with some interruptions.
The
original family home was in Pasadena, but Harriet resided in Laguna
Beach during the summer of 1971 and then moved to Pacific Palisades
after her husband's death.
Harriet
met Castaneda a couple of times when he visited the house and knew that
he was trying to get Carol to break away from her family.
Carol took an acupressure course
In 1974 or 1975, Carol attended an acupressure workshop at Ron and Ilona Teagarden's acupuncture studio.
Carol ran into her ex-boyfriend
Around
that time, her former boyfriend, CJ Russell, last saw her. He was
living in Pasadena at the time and knew she was taking classes at the
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he was also studying
structural engineering to prepare for his architect's license exam.
CJ got her phone number from her mother or a mutual friend. Carol was living in an apartment on Wilshire Blvd. at the time.
After
one of her classes, he picked her up and invited her for coffee. He
believes she was a graduate student at UCLA and earned money writing
questions for a game show ("Family Feud" or something similar).
In
a message he sent to Amy in 2002, he recounted that they had a long and
pleasant conversation and caught up on each other's lives. He doesn't
remember her mentioning Castaneda, except that she may have asked him if
he had read his books. CJ had read and enjoyed "The Teachings of Don Juan."
CJ
said she tried to contact her several times after that, but she
finished her course and soon after started another relationship. She
remembered that Carol didn't want her to see her apartment because she
was embarrassed by how messy it was. One night, after class, she stopped
by to say hello, but Carol wasn't there. Through the glass, she could
see why she was embarrassed. "She was messy, but I found her endearing,"
she said.
Carol studied acupuncture
It
was probably in the fall of 1977 when Carol began her studies at the
California Acupuncture College, from which she graduated in 1980.
Carol got married
On October 25, 1980, Carol married Marc Benoit LeBel, a Canadian-born man who was also studying acupuncture at the same place.
The
marriage certificate indicates that it was the first marriage for both;
Co. Reg. 39821, State File # 80-136642 P. The certificate also
indicates that Carol was living at the time at 1276 Rimmer Ave., Pacific
Palisades, her mother's house, and was a graduate student, having
completed grade 18.
The
witnesses were Tom L. Zinche and Camille Bertolet, and the wedding was
officiated by Reverend CJ van Loon of the Universalist Church, at 3007
Santa Monica Blvd., Santa Monica.
Camille had known Elizabeth since the acupressure workshop with Ron and Ilona Teagarden that they both attended in 1974 or 1975.
On
April 5, 1981, Carol obtained her acupuncture license (number AC1178),
which was issued in the name of Elizabeth Austin, but is currently in
the name of Muni Alexander. Both are names that Carol adopted.
Carol's husband graduated from the California College of Acupuncture that same year and received his license the same day.
Carol got divorced
On
December 28, 1984, Marc LeBel filed for divorce from Elizabeth Austin.
They subsequently filed a joint petition for summary dissolution,
listing their address as 821 Third St., #106, Santa Monica, CA 90403.
They stated they had no marital property or debts. Elizabeth's mailing
address was 1276 Rimmer Dr., Pacific Palisades, CA 90272. The final
judgment was entered on July 22, 1985.
The
one-page marital property agreement they signed stipulated that “all
silverware will revert to the wife’s ownership.” Also included were a
1970 Karmann Ghia, a hairdryer, and a savings account at Home Savings
& Loan. The husband agreed to buy his wife a living room sofa for
$200, a refrigerator for $50, a bed for $100, two bookcases for $70, and
a dinnerware set for $30. The husband also agreed to relinquish four
detailed Visa cards and one May Company card. They also stated that they
were storing an additional $2,000 worth of marital property, the
proceeds of which would be divided upon sale. Los Angeles Superior Court
Case No. WED045350, filed in Santa Monica.
(Note:
Marc LeBel continued to practice acupuncture in Los Angeles and was
listed in the 2000 Santa Monica phone book with offices in both Marina
del Rey and Santa Monica.)
Carol reconciled with Castaneda
In late autumn of 1985, Carol met Castaneda again at a conference he gave at the Phoenix Bookstore in Santa Monica.
THE HYPOCRISY OF CASTANEDA'S SUCCESSORS
When
the public found out about this, the leaders of Cleargreen (the company
that disseminates Castaneda's teachings), instead of accepting that
Castaneda had been lying, preferred to continue with this charade,
giving answers that only a very gullible person would believe.
For
example, when researcher Linda Zoontjens asked Cleargreen shareholder
Nyei Murez in April 1999 how it was possible that Carol Tiggs married
LeBel in Los Angeles in 1980, when she was supposed to be in another
dimension.
Nyei replied, "Well, sorcerers can be in two places at once."
And Cleargreen's website in 1999 offered the following response to try to alleviate that contradiction:
« Carol Tiggs left and was absent for ten years, anchored somewhere else
in infinity. During those ten years, a projection of Carol Tiggs
occasionally returned here to live in the world we know. It took Carol
Tiggs—the being who left—ten years to return here, to reintegrate her
energy body (dream body) and her physical body into a single being. »
And in response to those answers I ask:
So why didn't "Carol's projection" end up with Castaneda instead of marrying and divorcing another man?
And
why, after divorcing that other man and reconciling with Castaneda, did
"the real Carol coincidentally return to the physical world"?
If Carol is so powerful, then why has she never shown those powers to others?
Nobody has seen her perform the slightest feat; on the contrary, those who have met her say that she is a very ordinary person.
And
if many of Castaneda's claims have been proven false, why wouldn't this
story of Carol traveling to another dimension and then returning also
be another lie?
CONCLUSION
Everything
indicates that when Carol separated from Castaneda, Castaneda, instead
of simply saying that Carol had left, preferred to invent that
outlandish story, claiming that the Nagual Woman had gone to another
dimension and never returned.
But
when Carol reconciled with Castaneda, the Nagual Woman "miraculously"
returned to the physical world (when supposedly the Nagual rule
prevented it).
So
Castaneda, to resolve that contradiction, simply told his audience that
this unexpected event was a sign of a change in the rules.
And
relying on that falsehood, Castaneda added yet another falsehood,
claiming that Carol brought a lot of energy so that he and his witches
could show themselves to the public and teach people about Tensegrity,
and the witches could publish their own books.
Which was a very lucrative business, although I have serious doubts that those 'magic passes' actually work.
And
that crude charlatanism that Carlos Castaneda was engaging in shows the
lack of respect that this writer had for his followers.
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