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:

·        H

(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

Castaneda stated that, besides himself, three other women (known as "the witches") had also known and been disciples of the nahual Don Juan, and Taisha was one of them. He added that he had become their new guide. But most likely that all these assertions were lies and in reality Taisha was part of Castaneda's inner harem.

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 GEOFFREY GRAY

Journalist Geoffrey Gray wrote the following about Carol:

« Carol with Castaneda, they formed a kind of First Family inside 1672 Pandora [Castaneda's house].

Like most of the other witches, Pohlman had an academic and artsy background. She was in graduate school at UCLA when she met Castaneda.

She had been grieving, too. Her father had died in a car crash, and she had an interest in the arts of healing and in obtaining her acupuncture license. She drifted apart from Castaneda and the witches for a few years, only to return under a variety of names — Carol Tiggs, Elizabeth Austin, Muni Aranha, Muni Alexander.

According to Castaneda, Pohlman was possessed. During a trip to Tula, the Toltec capital of ancient Mexico, she was overcome by a shape-shifting supernatural force that Castaneda and Don Juan called the Death Defier. The force was immortal and all-powerful, and shamanistic lore claimed that those who were possessed by it could live forever.

The wild claims that a spirit emerged from the ether, took human form, and offered mystical bargains like the Devil only elevated Pohlman’s status within the cult. Castaneda deemed her the nagual woman, his esoteric counterpart.

She helped Castaneda develop Tensegrity, the theory that they taught at spirituality workshops organized by Cleargreen Inc., the business arm of the cult, which also produced motivational videos, sold T-shirts, and recruited new witches.

Pohlman worked for Cleargreen, and its funds were overseen by the core witches together. The company continues to operate, offering both in-person and virtual workshops. »

(Note: Geoffrey made four mistakes:

1. The title of witch was only given to Taisha Abelar, Florinda Donner, and Carol Tiggs, who supposedly also knew Don Juan.

2. Carol did not live in the residence where Castaneda lived.

3. The Death Defier is not immortal, but she has managed to survive for many years hidden in the dream world. She is not all-powerful, but she possesses advanced dream techniques.

4. Richard Jennings, who was a student of Castaneda, says it is false that Carol helped Castaneda develop Tensegrity.)

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.

TYCHO THAL WAS THE ORANGE EXPLORER OF CARLOS CASTANEDA

Carlos Castaneda stated that in the world of inorganic beings there are "entities of consciousness" that are called explorers because they have the ability to cross over into the reality of human beings.

Those who have read the book 'The Art of Dreaming' know of the existence of the Blue Explorer who crossed over into the reality of human beings and transformed into a young woman who was known among Castaneda's followers as Nury Alexander.

But what few people know is that Castaneda claimed there was also another explorer known as the Orange Explorer who also crossed over into the reality of human beings and transformed into a woman who was known among Castaneda's followers as Tycho Thal.

At the workshop held from July 23 to 25, 1993 at the Rim Institute in Arizona, the witch Florinda Donner announced that the Orange Explorer was her daughter.

The audience then asked him how he avoided having energy holes since Castaneda stated in his books that having children creates holes in the luminous egg.

Florinda explained that a sorceress could simply cause one of her eggs to begin dividing “by an act of will,” but that normally no warrior would want that because it would cause a huge “energy hole.” But in the case of the explorers, she stated that they had their own energy, but no body, so they could be conceived and born without sex and without causing energy holes in the mother.

THE TRUTH ABOUT THIS MATTER

The truth is that Tycho Thal was not Florinda Donner's daughter, nor was the incarnation of the Orange Explorer.

Tycho's real name was Premajyoti Galvez y Fuentes, but since Castaneda asked his recruits to change their names, she changed it in 1993 to Nayely Tycho Aranha Thal.

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

Thal is Florinda's original paternal surname, whose full birth name is: Regine Margarete Thal.

And Tycho was also nicknamed: "the goblin".

She was the one who translated the book 'The Art of Dreaming' from English to Spanish.

In real life, Tycho was Carola's aunt.

Carola García Arslán (whose real name is René Gálvez y Fuentes) is the daughter of one of the directors of Cleargreen in Mexico.

Cleargreen is the company that Castaneda founded to market his teachings.

So, as you can see for yourselves, it is completely false that Tycho was Florinda Donner's daughter.

Furthermore, Tycho became seriously ill in 1996, so his role as Explorer ended, and by mid-1997 she received financial compensation and was exiled from Castaneda's group.

Which shows you that she was not at all the reincarnation of a supernatural being, but that in reality she was a common and ordinary person.

CONCLUSION

And this is yet another example of the enormous falsehoods that Carlos Castaneda invented.

FLORINDA DONNER WAS ONE OF CARLOS CASTANEDA'S WITCHES

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

HER LIFE

Florinda was born on February 15, 1944 in Amberg, Bavaria, Germany; but soon her family emigrated to Venezuela, and later she emigrated to the United States.

She met Castaneda in Los Angeles in 1971 when she was 27 and he was 45. At the time, they were both students at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

From then on, she became his devoted disciple until Castaneda died in 1998. After that, Florinda, along with other devoted disciples, decided to commit suicide.

For more details about her life, read:

•        Her biography (I'll add it later)

HER DIFFERENT NAMES

Castaneda asked his disciples to change their names, and Florinda did so as well.

Her birth name is Regine Margarete Thal. She was affectionately called "Gina," a diminutive of Regine.

When she was married in the United States she was called Regine Steiner (she adopted her husband's last name).

After meeting Castaneda, she divorced and applied to change her name to Cristina Casablanca, but she withdrew this application shortly after.

She later changed her name to Florinda Donner-Grau, though she became better known as Florinda Donner. She adopted the name Florinda in homage to the witch Florinda, who was said to have been the teacher of Castaneda and his group after Don Juan left.

HER STATUS IN CASTANEDA GROUP

Castaneda stated that, besides himself, three other women (known as "the witches") had also known and been disciples of the nagual Don Juan, and Florinda was one of them. He added that he had become their new nagual. But most likely that all these assertions were lies and in reality Florinda was part of Castaneda's inner harem.

HER BOOKS

Florinda published three books:

    "Shabono: A Visit to a Remote and Magical World in the South American Rain Forest] " (1982)

    "The Witch's Dream: A Healer's Way of Knowledge" (1985)

    "Being in the Dream: An Initiation Into the Sorcerers' World" (1991)

Below you will find Richard Jennings' review of these books.

PHOTOS

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

The following photos were published in the November 1974 issue of Samurai Magazine where Florinda appears practicing karate with Taisha Abelar (another of the witches):

This photo was taken in 1975. Florinda appears with her younger brother Ulrich at his wedding, which was held in Caracas.

The following photos were taken from a video filmed in 1997 when Florinda was 53 years old.

VIDEO

You can see this short video that was taken in 1997 starting at 0:25.

 

FLORINDA DESCRIBED BY GEOFFREY GRAY

Journalist Geoffrey Gray wrote the following about Florinda:

« Florinda had been with Castaneda for a long time, knew his quirks and how best to manage his moods. She had been raised in Caracas, Venezuela, in a German family and spoke English, Spanish, and German.

She had met Castaneda in Haines Hall, working on her doctorate in anthropology. Like him, she was interested in shamans and methods of persuasion. In Amy Wallace’s book, 'Sorcerer's Apprentice', Florinda recounts a childhood dream that neatly sums up her role inside the compound.

“I had a toy farm and I made all the dolls mate and breed,” she tells Wallace. “I controlled them all, and I loved it! That was my dream, my delight! I always knew I wanted to grow up and run my own human farm, with living people, who I could pair and mate, and whose lives I could play with just like my toy farm dolls!”

Florinda was also a writer. She authored a series of books published by mainstream houses. 'Being-in-Dreaming: An Initiation into the Sorcerers’ World' was printed by HarperCollins and blurbed by the movie director Oliver Stone. “A woman’s gripping tale of self-discovery in present-day Mexico,” he called it.

She also published 'Shabono: A Visit to a Remote and Magical World in the South American Rainforest', with HarperCollins, and 'The Witch’s Dream: A Healer’s Way of Knowledge', with Simon & Schuster.

Her books follow Castaneda’s themes, and he wrote the introduction to 'The Witch’s Dream'. And like his writings, Florinda’s works were met with skepticism about their authenticity. »

FLORINDA DESCRIBED BY RICHARD JENNINGS

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

« As the following chronology establishes, Florinda Donner-Grau (originally Regine Margarete Thal) told numerous contradictory–and, in many cases demonstrably false–stories about her supposed apprenticeship to “don Juan.”

In fact, Florinda Donner was married and living with her husband in Manhattan Beach (just south of Los Angeles) until March 1972, so it is nearly impossible to fit the few trips and long sequences with don Juan and the women of his party described in Florinda’s book Being-in-Dreaming into Florinda’s real-life chronology for the period of mid-1972 to 1973 (the year don Juan’s party supposedly departed from the world), especially considering she was then attending UCLA full time.

Conveniently, however, Florinda never once referred to her husband of five-and-a-half years in anything she wrote or said publicly. (Conveniently too, her ex-, Edward M. Steiner, died in early 1974 only a little more than a year after their divorce, at the age of 44.)

The fact is, Florinda did not hold herself out as a “disciple of don Juan” until late 1992. Even in a February 1992 Dimensions article, after her 1991 book Being-in-Dreaming purported to describe her introduction to don Juan’s party and experiences up to and immediately after don Juan’s party “left,” Florinda explained:

“Actually I’m not an apprentice of Don Juan. I was an apprentice of Castaneda who was an apprentice of Don Juan. And I am one of the ‘sisters’ who were actually of the women of Florinda [Matus], and she gave me her name.”

This not-so-subtle change in Florinda’s apprentice status takes on greater significance when one looks at all the stories Florinda related at workshops between 1993 and 1998. In those workshops, Florinda described major experiences she supposedly had with don Juan that are strangely omitted from her 1991 book, or which directly contradict statements made there (e.g., whereas at the workshops she described being instructed on passes by don Juan in sessions that included Carol and Taisha, and claimed to have gone out to dinner simultaneously with Carol, Taisha and don Juan, in her book she complained about not having met the other women “who had been entrusted to” Castaneda by don Juan prior to don Juan’s departure).

Some of the stories later told at workshops that are in no way mentioned in Being-in-Dreaming (despite the fact that that book seemed aimed at detailing all of Florinda’s relatively few encounters with don Juan during the period covered by that book) include:

1. Twice being taken up into the hills by don Juan (with Taisha on hand for at least one of these times) to disrobe and experience the “wind”.

2. Don Juan’s request that Florinda “find out about intent for him,” and her returning months later after exhaustively researching the subject, only to have him ask her, “Why do you want to be a stupid cunt all your life?”.

3. Being told by don Juan not to use other people for help with her research in the Amazon (when she had earlier claimed in The Witch’s Dream that this instruction was given to her by Old Florinda long after don Juan was gone).

4. Don Juan showing her his penis after instructing Old Florinda to “show me her pussy”.

5. Don Juan telling her she should never wear panties, and that female “discharges” are only the result of “the womb [being] ill because of not using its second function”.

6. Don Juan giving her the “not-doings” of not wearing clothes, wearing different shoes on each foot, and adorning her naked body with insects or vegetables.

7. Don Juan telling her to cut her long beautiful hair (although she had earlier claimed at a different workshop that the short length was the result of having lice and getting totally shaved following her trip to the Amazon, long after don Juan was gone).

8. Asking don Juan about the female entity that grabbed Castaneda’s VW van when she was driving it (with Taisha as passenger) in L.A.

9. And “Going out socially with don Juan,” including once explaining peevishly to don Juan why she had turned down going out for dinner with don Juan, Castaneda, Taisha, Carol and Old Florinda.

Meanwhile, Shabono, Florinda’s 1982 account of living for a year (in 1976? 1977?) with Yanoámo Indians in the Amazon, not only filches details, terminology and whole scenes from a real account of a white woman’s experience of living with those Indians that was published in 1971, but is also impossible to fit within Florinda’s known and documented presence in Los Angeles during the mid-seventies.

So much so that her former doctoral committee published a letter in 1983 stating they were “puzzled” how a graduate student, who did not leave UCLA until the fall of 1977, would never have mentioned to any of her advisors such harrowing and exciting anthropological experiences, which she variously indicated to interviewers took place in 1975-1976 or 1976-1977.

And the account in her 1985 book The Witch‘s Dream of many months–immediately before the year in the Amazon–supposedly spent with traditional curers in Venezuela is similarly contradictory of the known facts of Florinda’s life in Los Angeles during that period.

More lies

Florinda’s credibility further suffers from the many other claims she made during the course of workshops that can readily be proven false.

1) For example, she claimed “Tycho Thal,” the so-called “Orange Scout” was her natural daughter (from a liason with “a huge, fat Indian from Oaxaca,” through a process “very much directed by don Juan”). In reality, the younger “Ms. Thal” is actually the former Premajyoti Galvez y Fuentes, who only got involved with Castaneda and company in the early ’90s, and who filed to change her name to Tycho Thal in September 1993.

2) Florinda also claimed that “Blue Scout” was Carol’s daughter.

3) That Florinda had first met Kylie in Norway (where Kylie was supposedly from), when Kylie was actually from the midwest.

4) And in introductions of the “non-group” group on a couple of occasions in 1997, that Reni was “finishing her law degree,” Zaia “had” her Ph.D., and that “Dr. Miles Reid” was a “surgeon.”

(Note: While those who discount these various fabrications as mere “stalking” are certainly free to do so, please note how many of these false statements seem intended to aggrandize the people referred to, seemingly in an effort to heighten their importance and credibility as people having real “sorceric” teachings to impart.)

5) As the following chronology further details, Florinda failed at every opportunity to be honest with journalists as to the fact she had never received a PhD from UCLA.

6) Along with Taisha, she permitted photos of herself both to be taken and published in martial arts magazines in 1974 and 1975, despite Castaneda and company’s repeated claim that don Juan instructed his apprentices not to allow their pictures to be taken.

7) Also, she and Taisha likewise posed for photos at Florinda’s brother’s wedding in Caracas in 1975.

8) She responded to a 1997 question about the whereabouts of Josefina and the other Little Sisters by claiming they had “left” in 1985, whereas on a few occasions at workshops in 1993, Florinda had described at length the then-current occupations of the Genaros and Little Sisters, whom she claimed they still interacted with.

9) Finally, there is the story of Old Florinda and don Genaro trashing Florinda’s brand new sports car by sending it down a hill into a ravine, which Florinda told at four different workshops from 1996 to 1997.

That story usually ended with the claim Florinda no longer drove (except to back the car out of the driveway, or around the block) because of Old Florinda’s injunction against her driving (purportedly both because her fast driving was endangering her life, and distracting her from her sorceric tasks).

In reality, in the years before Florinda claimed to be a “disciple of don Juan,” she admitted in a 1983 interview with the Los Angeles Times that she no longer drove because she had “accumulated too many tickets and forfeited her license.”

Research documented in the chronologies also shows that her four-year-old sports car was identified as her separate property when Florinda’s divorce became final in November 1972.

The chronology–an ordering of the key events of Florinda’s life, as discernable from public records, her books, statements made in interviews and at workshops, and interviews with her parents and brother, as well as others who knew her at various times in her life–further identifies documents linking Florinda with Castaneda that have been unearthed to date, including her aborted petition to change her name to “Cristina Casablanca” (a name that Castaneda later urged another girlfriend to take) in the fall of 1972, and her being one of the incorporators of Hermeneutics Unlimited, along with Castaneda, Taisha, Beverly Evans and Joanie Barker, on September 5, 1974.

Florinda’s marriage to Castaneda in 1993 (under their respective legal names) is also documented, along with her marriage the following year (apparently without the benefit of an intervening divorce) to Castaneda’s agent and one-time Tensegrity “Element” Tracy Kramer.

The chronology concludes with Florinda’s departure, along with Castaneda’s other four closest women associates, and presumed suicide upon his death in April 1998, and Cleargreen’s subsequent repeated invocation of her name as one of the three “supervising” the current workshops, along with their purported, but highly unlikely, stories about instructors’ prior encounters with Florinda related to their teaching of Tensegrity.

Additional explanation about Florinda

I was much too easy on Florinda in my 1999 introduction to her chronology. I do identify, in that original introduction below, the huge barrage of lies and contradictions that made up Florinda’s three books and later sorcery apprenticeship stories she told at workshops.

In retrospect, though, I let my great affection and admiration for Florinda cloud my judgment when it came to fully comprehending her consistently pathological behavior.

This is someone who not only reveled in lying on a constant basis, and doing so for the sheer joy of it, but who also employed those lies in the pursuit of her other great joy and passion– the manipulation and control of others. And then there’s all that pimping she did for Castaneda that Amy describes in some detail, and that is borne out by stories I’ve heard from other women.

Castaneda’s supposed philosophy of warriorship, and his milieu of secrecy and “suspended judgment,” gave Florinda a rich environment to be able to live out her fantasies. As she revealed to Amy Wallace, as a child growing up in Caracas, she loved playing with and having total control over her toy farm creatures.

She dreamed of being able to control a similar menagerie of individuals in real life. When she met up with Carlos, she truly encountered a like spirit. Here was someone who not only enjoyed lying and making up stories as much as she did, but who also had the wealth, fame and charisma to be in a position to do exactly what Florinda dreamed of–manipulate and control a devoted group of individuals.

The fact they did so artfully does not disguise the fact that they employed classic guru techniques. Florinda basically functioned as the gatekeeper to Castaneda world. This gave her immense power, and she spent decades using her charm and prodigious people skills to manipulate and control the inhabitants of that world.

Unlike Carol Tiggs, though, she didn’t envision a future for herself without Castaneda. She couldn’t see a way to continue to do what she loved–shamelessly lie and manipulate others–in his absence. As she frequently told Amy, and as I heard her say too, “There is no game without the Nagual.” She knew her position and power were totally derivative of Castaneda, so she could not see a way to continue once he was gone.

Like Taisha, Kylie and Talia, I am firmly convinced she committed suicide right after Castaneda passed. But unlike them, I don’t think she was doing it in a misguided attempt to “join Castaneda.” I think she simply figured she didn’t have anything to live for once her power and position were obliterated by his death. 

The conundrum though is that of the four women who disappeared (five counting Nury, who we know died in the desert), given her having lived in other countries, being multilingual, and her demonstrated facility for interacting with diverse groups of people, she clearly had the experience and skills that would have enabled her to make a new life for herself–in a different country, with a different identity–much more successfully than the other three.

But like the other three, Castaneda’s death effectively cancelled the life she had known and loved. She fully expected Castaneda’s passing would cause the facade of his lineage to collapse, revealing the phoniness of his philosophies she had employed so skillfully to establish and maintain her authority.

Without his powerful personality and charisma, as well as his financial support, her power to manipulate and control a group of individuals was simply going to evaporate. She could no longer be the gatekeeper and master manipulator of Castaneda world without Castaneda in it. As detailed below, it also seems she may have had health issues that could have compounded her willingness to abandon her life at the relatively young age of 54.

I was on hand when I heard Florinda and Castaneda both describe Florinda‘s intent, if she could not join Castaneda in “burning with the fire from within,” to hire a plane and fly into an active volcano. I was also on hand when we were told multiple times that Talia and Kylie were looking for abandoned mines and similar places where they might disappear if they couldn’t accomplish the ultimate goal of transcending death (and also minimize the possibility of their remains being found when they did the deed).

And given that Florinda had been the only one for all those years to have remained in close contact with her parents and other family members, for her never to be in contact with them again, as the evidence shows, is impossible to comprehend had she continued on after Castaneda’s death.

More notes on her books

In reviewing my 1999 introduction, I also don’t think I was as tough on Florinda’s literary output as I should have been. Those three books are absolutely nothing but a pack of lies, and narcissistic ones at that.

Her first book, Shabono, was entirely plagiarized from one obvious source. The idea that anybody with even one foot in academia could imagine they could get away with such a fraud reveals her fundamental audacity.

Her mentor Castaneda was, by contrast, much more careful in basing his stories and philosophy on a variety of sources. And when real anthropologists and her own former faculty advisors blew the whistle on her shameless fiction, she managed to avoid suffering any real consequences for her mendacity, instead gliding right into writing and publishing another piece of “anthro-romance.”

While this one–The Witch‘s Dream–was based at least loosely on Castaneda’s philosophies, or at least in harmony with them, she took liberties with the “nagualism” by injecting more “love“ in the story than Castaneda had any use for, and a great deal more sex and exhibitionism, which appeared to be her predilection.

She moved on from those two pieces of fiction to supposedly telling the story of her own apprenticeship with don Juan and his party. In doing so, she had the benefit not only of Castaneda’s many books, but also of spending years listening to him fashion those stories, retelling them differently each time. He had given her both a rich milieu and ready-made characters from which to fashion her tale, that was in turn designed to buttress and confirm Castaneda’s long debunked claims to have been taught by a Yaqui Indian sorcerer. 

But she couldn’t help but contradict even that fictional book by telling new fictions on a regular basis in the course of the workshops the group produced from 1993 until Castaneda’s death in 1998.

As detailed in my 1999 chronology intro, there were numerous glaring contradictions between what she told workshop attendees and journalists in the years following the publication of Being-in-Dreaming and the substance of that book.

And when one examines the actual life she lived as evidenced by public documents and interviews with people who knew her, there is little basis to believe any of the stories about her supposed apprenticeship with don Juan and his group. It becomes easier then to understand why she didn’t even start to claim she had had such an apprenticeship until the workshops began in earnest in 1993 and onward.

Bilan

So the ultimate picture I now have of Ms. Donner-Grau is of a sociopathic personality who was able to use her relationship with Castaneda and her innate people skills in order to realize her dream of being able to manipulate and control a group of individuals who felt they had nowhere else to go.

With his demise, that world and her position in it were going to evaporate. She didn’t want to hang around to witness that collapse. She was an action oriented person, and she decided to join her three colleagues in the one option they saw for themselves that would not only take them out of a world they no longer had any use for, but that also might serve, at least in a small way, to help sustain the myth. 

The Florinda I loved and admired was a mythic creation. The fact that she was clear eyed at the end about what she was doing and why she was doing it–in contrast to Taisha, Kylie and Talia–is, I suppose, some comfort. Like her, I cannot now imagine how she would have gone on without the accomplice who enabled her to tell such bald faced lies and get away with it for as long as she did. »

CONCLUSION

Florinda Donner was a manipulative and deceitful woman who, upon entering the world of Carlos Castaneda, found the perfect place to satisfy her ego, but after her mentor passed away, she preferred to take her own life rather than confront the decline of the fantasy where she had been placed on a pedestal.