Letters to the Editor
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Mike,
I do get that the guy was a slime, and believe me, I don’t think he was right to do what he did. I am sorry that Caren was hurting, and rather than finding help she found a group of users. Personally, I don’t think you let her down, because it sounds to me that everyone who knew and loved her did what they could, but the situation was beyond everyone’s ability. You couldn't know how some books on your shelf might influence her. A very sad story.
And I realize others have gone through this, too. One of the reasons my first post compared him to Salinger is that in many ways Salinger has practiced the same sort of emotional abuse on the people in his life. He just didn’t use religious terms or re-name his female companions to initiate them as “witches.” Some men, to put it simply, are abusive assholes.
It’s just interesting to me that Castaneda didn’t seem to take money or coerce these people. There was money made through the seminars, but that doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the inner cult. I’m not even sure “cult” is the right term. It sounds more like emotional abuse or, to use a tired clichéd phrase, co-dependant relationships. Taken to the extreme.