hn-classics/_stories/2007/14457080.md

1.3 KiB

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

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.