---
created_at: '2017-06-01T00:45:07.000Z'
title: The dark legacy of Carlos Castaneda (2007)
url: http://www.salon.com/2007/04/12/castaneda/
author: dbcooper
points: 99
story_text: 
comment_text: 
num_comments: 60
story_id: 
story_title: 
story_url: 
parent_id: 
created_at_i: 1496277907
_tags:
- story
- author_dbcooper
- story_14457080
objectID: '14457080'

---
Whether disciples were allowed to stay or forced to leave seems often to
have depended on the whims of a woman known as the Blue Scout. Trying to
describe her power, Ward recalled a "Twilight Zone" episode in which a
little boy could look at people and make them die. "So everyone treated
him with kid gloves," she said, "and that's how it was with the Blue
Scout." She was born Patricia Partin and grew up in LaVerne, Calif.,
where, according to Jennings, her father had been in an accident that
left him with permanent brain damage. Partin dropped out of Bonita High
her junior year. She became a waitress, and, at 19, married an aspiring
filmmaker, Mark Silliphant, who introduced her to Castaneda in 1978.
Within weeks of their marriage she left Silliphant and went to live with
Castaneda. She paid one last visit to her mother; in keeping with the
nagual's instructions, she refused to be in a family photograph. For the
rest of her life, she never spoke to her mother again.
