Sorcerer’s Apprentice unblinkingly reveals the inner workings of the “Cult of Carlos,” run by a charismatic authoritarian in his sixties who controlled his young female followers through emotional abuse, mind games, bizarre rituals, dubious teachings, and sexual excess. Wallace’s story is both specific and universal, a captivating cautionary tale about the dangers of giving up one’s power to a tyrant–and about surviving assaults on body and spirit.
NABC: What compelled you to write Sorcerer’s Apprentice?
Amy: Carlos used to tell me to “Write a book about all this! Write a book!” This probably isn’t what he had in mind. And by the time he died of liver cancer, I was profoundly fed-up with his spurious “sorcerer’s tasks” – things he would tell us to do to keep us busy, ostensibly as part of our work as warriors. Someone very high-up in the hierarchy of the group, Carol Tiggs, told me these tasks were just so many Easter Egg hunts, meant to keep us busy. By then I was ready to write my own book, not to prate the sorcerer’s party line.
And so I wrote it because I was carrying an elephant-ful of pain in my heart. I’ve been a writer all my life, born to a family of writers – my father was the world-famous novelist, Irving Wallace, and he had become friends with Carlos. Finally, writing is the way I know to exorcise pain. Many people committed suicide “to be in the other world with Carlos”, because they couldn’t stand to live without him, and they had no goals of their own, no form of exorcism.
The most painful suicides, for me, were some of the women closest to Carlos, lost without the cult. A woman in New Mexico jumped off a cliff to join him, as it were. I got letters from people who read Sorcerer’s Apprentice telling me that if they hadn’t read my book, they would have killed themselves.
I almost took my own life during my time in the cult, because Carlos told me that I had “poisoned him” by sleeping with him while taking an antidepressant. I had no idea that this was verboten, and I later found out that many women in the group took lots of drugs, recreational and prescription, one of the higher-up witches had a drinking problem; most of these women slept with him and no one but me got in trouble for it.
My near-suicide terrified me more than I can possibly say. In writing Sorcerer’s Apprentice, I hoped to help people, and happily, I did.
NABC: Was the act of writing your memoir a transformative experience in itself? How so?
Amy: It was a painful book to write. I still suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from being in this cult – this is a very commonplace aftermath for people who have been in cults. I have intense nightmares about the cult, about the public humiliation Carlos singled me out for, more than anyone else, I can’t go to certain streets or neighborhoods or restaurants without shaking and panicking. At one stage, I was afraid to leave the house.
Writing the book dipped me back into all of that, and at the same time it felt so RIGHT – I felt sorry for anyone who has left a cult and isn’t a writer or public speaker. Writing gave me catharsis, though as I said, some symptoms creep back. Other people in the group told me, after Carlos died, “I don’t know how you did it, I really don’t.” Carlos had such complicated feelings of love, hate and respect for me, and indeed, he was afraid of women – and he took it all out on me in group situations as well as alone. And by turns, he would be tremendously, marvelously romantic.
NABC: Sorcerer’s Apprentice is very much a cautionary tale. Do you have any advice for individuals at risk of giving up their free will to another person?
Amy: Please, whatever enticements there are, even the one I had, falling deeply in love: Don’t do it! Only regret and grief follow.
I’m going to quote a friend of mine, Don Cushman, who studied teachings from the Sufi lineage. In essence, the teachings are that the more energy we develop (by meditating, doing martial arts, doing anything creative) – that energy will go to the weakest part of the self unless you are very careful! Why do we see so many egotistic gurus, including Carlos, yet who seem charismatic and powerful?
Wrote Don: “This (Carlos’ method) was supposed to lead to freedom – but once the power resides in the approval of hierarchy, the result is not freedom but the creation on automatons afraid of being kicked out . . . The ego is battered with even more force, and the result is even more fear . . . . The ‘perfected’ ones are BY DEFINITION without ego and therefore free to discipline others while doing what they want themselves. No one can become perfected like the leaders – the process does not allow it.”
Don is accurate: it was a closed system. When faced with difficult questions, the sorcerers replied, “You’re not ready for the answer, someday, perhaps.”
