OLD COLONY MENNONITES TIMELINE

1525:  A group of adult men baptized one another, Zurich; other rebaptisms occurred in the Low Countries. This group was eventually known as Anabaptists (re-baptizers) and Mennonites (after one of the leaders in the Low Countries, Menno Simons).

1560:  A schism occurred among followers in the Low Countries (now the Netherlands and Belgium).

1600s:  Mennonites in the Low Countries migrated to East Prussia (now Poland); Mennonites began to use German in religious services and in schools. Mennonites continued to speak their language of origin, Low German or Plautdietsch, at home.

1789-1803:  Mennonites migrated from East Prussia to Russia (now Ukraine), where they established exclusively Mennonite settlements. The oldest settlement was in Chortitiza or Khortitsa and became known as the Old Colony. Significant divisions among Mennonites in Russia over education and worship music emerged. Mennonites firmly established themselves as agricultural communities.

1870s:  Mennonites migrated from Russia to Manitoba in Canada and Kansas and Nebraska in the U.S. In Manitoba, Mennonites settled on two large tracts of land, the East Reserve and the West Reserve. The group from Chortitza or the Old Colony settled primarily in the West Reserve.

1885:  The villages in the West Reserve, the settlement that originated in Chortitza, formed a single church under a single bishop. They called their church the Reinlaender Mennoniten Gemeinde, and it became popularly known as the Old Colony. This group has refused to accept federal and provincial ideas of how to divide the settlement into villages.

1920:  Leaders in the West Reserve, from the Old Colony or Reinlaender Mennoniten Gemeinde, did not accept Canadian ideas about education. They searched for new homelands. In the

1920s, Old Colony Mennonites migrated to Mexico; in the 1940s, a smaller group migrated to Mexico; in the 1960s, from Canada to Bolivia. Other groups migrated within Latin America.

FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY

Old Colony Mennonites trace their origins to the sixteenth century Protestant Reformation in Europe. At that time, major leaders like Martin Luther [Image at right] and Ulrich Zwingli broke with the Catholic Church, emphasizing the importance of the Bible and salvation, respectively. Several groups across Europe sought further reforms.

Those who later took the name Mennonite or Anabaptist draw many of their convictions and behaviors from the Swiss Brethren. A group of men in Zurich, including Felix Manz and Conrad Grebel, decided that the other reformers had not gone far enough. In 1525, they baptized one another upon confession of a new faith, meaning that they were re-baptizers, or Anabaptists. At or around the same time, people were gathering in the Low Countries (what are now Belgium and the Netherlands) and professing similar beliefs and engaging in similar religious rituals. Menno Simons [Image at right] was a prominent organizer of these groups of people and Mennonites draw their name from him.

In 1560 in the Low Countries, Anabaptists or Mennonites began to formalize their beliefs through a catechism and rules of church life. The central questions for these early Mennonites were how to live together as a community (Gemeinde), how to mark differences between those who belonged to the group and those who remained outside of it, and how to deal with members who failed to uphold these religious and social norms (Werner 2016).[i]

The first schism among these Mennonites occurred at that time, between Frisian and Flemish factions, from Frisland, today part of the Netherlands, and Flanders, today part of Belgium. Historians have described the divisions as over questions of Flemish community responsibility vs. Frisian individual responsibility; Flemish community pietism or religious devotion vs. Frisian individual pietism; the quantity and quality of household goods (Flemish) and dress (Frisian) or simply as conservative vs. progressive. While these  century categories do not do justice to sixteenth century lifestyles, from the twenty-first century vantage point, it is clear that early Anabaptists followed their leaders in continually striving for reform. As historian Hans Werner observes, while technology and fashion are the visible expressions of belief, the central questions are around community behavior and how to deal with a community member who is not behaving appropriately (Werner 2016:123).[ii]2 In other words, when a group begins by saying that none were Christ-like enough, except for their own group, it has ripple effects for the next five centuries.

Mennonites in what is now Switzerland and South Germany as well as Mennonites in the Low Countries faced significant persecution for their beliefs, particularly in refusing infant baptism and refusing compulsory military service. The solution for both groups was migration. Many of the Swiss Brethren immigrated to what is now the United States in the 1683, at the invitation of William Penn, who invited many non-majority religious communities (like Quakers) to what is now Pennsylvania. Today, their most visibly distinct descendants became what we know as Old Order Amish and Old Order Mennonites.[iii] They, like many other immigrants from German-speaking parts of Europe became part of broader Pennsylvania Dutch or German culture; today Old Order people still speak Pennsylvania Dutch. Some members of these groups immigrated to what is now Canada after the U.S.’ War of Independence from Great Britain, in 1786.

The Mennonites from the Low Countries, including those who are today known as the Old Colony Mennonites, also experienced significant migrations. While some Mennonites remained in the Netherlands (and continue to gather as religious communities today), in the late seventeenth century, a larger group migrated to East Prussia, now Poland. Between migration and 1789, the most important development for Old Colony Mennonites is that Mennonites adopted German as their religious language. They began using a German hymnbook called the Gesangbuch and Luther’s translation of the German bible. [Image at right] Their catechism, which governed community life, was written in German (Neff and Bender 1953.3)[iv] It becomes the language of church services, baptisms, weddings, and funerals. Another important element of this century (as it pertains to Old Colony Mennonites) is that the Mennonite communities in Prussia continued to speak Low German or Plautdietsch at home. This was not unlike other Protestant religious communities in the Prussian empire – who may have used Luther’s Bible and its standardized German for written communication, especially across regions, and who maintained their own language at home.

In 1789, Mennonites migrated again, this time to the Russian empire, near what is today Ukraine. Some Mennonite communities remained in East Prussia and Poland until the middle of the twentieth century, largely emigrating after World War Two. The most important development for Old Colony Mennonites is that community life became structured into separate agricultural settlements called colonies, where Mennonite men were exempted from mandatory military service, and where Mennonite children were educated in German by Mennonite teachers. These colonies, so named because of the Russian empire’s desire to promote group settlements, had their own civil and religious leaders who negotiated with imperial authorities on behalf of the entire colony. The first group of primarily Flemish Mennonites migrated to Russia to found the Chortitza or Khortitsa colony in 1789, and a second migration of primarily Flemish Mennonites migrated to Russia to found the Molotschna colony in 1803. As the communities were predominantly agricultural, land was an ongoing issue, and the Chortitza colony founded the Bergthal colony in 1835. Both colonies founded multiple other settlements.

Over the next century, several important changes within and outside the Mennonite colonies occurred, all of which have continued to affecte the people we call Old Colony Mennonites. There were significant internal conflicts over education and over how to sing in church and therefore how to teach singing in school (see the section on religious rituals). The outside influence came in the form of pietism, a religious belief that emphasizes personal conversion, that is, a moment where one makes a cognitive assent to a new series of beliefs. This led to the emergence of the Mennonite Brethren church in Russia, which adopted immersion baptism and choral singing[xx]

These conflicts around how to live together as a community in relation to the broader world were solved for some, by accepting Russian in schools, and for others, by migration.[xx[v]] Mennonite leaders explored options in the new states of Kansas and Nebraska in the United States and the new province of Manitoba, in Canada. 11,000 people immigrated to the USA. They were more progressive, largely from the Molotschna colony, and were willing to adopt some but not all of the changes imposed by the outside government. They no longer lived in large tracts of land only inhabited by members of the same religious tradition, with their leaders. Indeed, they lived in towns with Mennonites who immigrated from Pennsylvania, as well as migrants from the Eastern U.S. and immigrants from other countries.

A portion of the 8,000 Mennonites who immigrated from Russia to Manitoba would become the Old Colony Mennonites. They were from the Chortitza colony [Image at right] and its “daughter” colonies, and so were already predisposed to preserving community boundaries, especially around education. They settled in two block settlements, which they called the East Reserve and the West Reserve. Both settlements were made up of villages entirely composed of Mennonites, and a Bishop was the sole leader of each Reserve. The East Reserve organized under a bishop in 1873, and the West Reserve, in 1875. Those in the West Reserve called their church the Reinlaender Mennoniten Gemeinde.[[vi]] They were also most intent on preserving their community boundaries through education and singing in church. Moreover, the settlers in the West Reserve ignored the Manitoba government’s municipal divisions and lived under the authority of the Bishop. In 1880, the two groups officially separated. The Reinlaender Mennonite Gemeinde members on the West Reserve were popularly called Old Colony, because they had come from the oldest Mennonite settlement in Russia.

The Old Colony were the most conservative of the Mennonites in Manitoba, meaning that they were the most determined to follow a separate and more communal way of life: they wanted to live in street villages on a block of land by themselves and run their own affairs; they were firm in resisting all governmental overtures about teaching English in their schools; and they had strict dress codes and rules about the use of technology. (See section on education) Today most Old Colony Mennonites live in Latin America and most white Mennonites with roots in the Dutch-Prussian-Russian migration who live in countries like Mexico, Bolivia, and Belize, belong to Old Colony Mennonite churches.

There are differences even among the churches that carry this name. The biggest distinction has been between those who use electricity at home and in their businesses, and who rely on their own personal vehicles with rubber tires (that is, cars and trucks as opposed to horse and buggy) for transportation. Other distinctions can be made around issues of education, but those would be between Old Colony Mennonites who use electricity and those who do not. Music also continues to be a dividing line, where the Old Colony Mennonites who use horse and buggy for transportation usually singing slower melodies and those who use electricity, singing faster melodies. These groups, however, use the same hymnbook for their songs, the same translation of the Bible, and the same catechism to outline their beliefs and rules for community life.

There are some variations among white, Low German speaking Mennonites who historically held church services in German (today may hold services in Low German). Some of this is because of migration, and some of it is because of evangelization. The migration timeline (divided by country) will expand on this in detail.

In Paraguay, for instance, there are some Old Colony Mennonites (see below). Large numbers of Mennonites immigrated from the Molotschna colony in Russia and then from the Soviet Union to Paraguay in the 1920s and 1940s. They established Mennonite and Mennonite Brethren Churches. A small group immigrated from the West Reserve of Manitoba (who had originally come from the Bergthal colony in Russia) and were conservative but not Old Colony Mennonites in the 1920s. These Mennonites live in their own settlements with their own secular leaders, colony businesses, religious leaders, and schools. People in these colonies all speak Low German and hold church services in German, and today are part of religious denominations that have German, Spanish and Guaraní-speaking members.

A small number immigrated from the Soviet Union to Mexico at the same time, establishing Mennonite Churches there. Then in 1948, a small group of Kleine Gemeinde (conservative but not Old Colony Mennonites) immigrated from Canada to Mexico. Old Colony Mennonites joined these denominations.

From evangelization: Old Colony Mennonites have joined some of the more progressive German-speaking Mennonite denominations in countries where they exist (Paraguay and Mexico), or Low German speaking evangelical denominations. In recent decades, more progressive Amish, and Old Order related groups (Nationwide Fellowship, Beachy Amish, etc) have evangelized Old Colony Mennonites. Some Mennonite-related denominations in Germany have also set up churches and schools among Old Colony Mennonite settlements.[[vii]]  

The migration timeline generally indicates that those who migrate or remain in Northern areas (such as Northern Mexican states of Chihuahua and Durango, as well as the United States and Canada) are less traditional Old Colony Mennonites or have left that religious group. Those who migrate South are those who are the most committed to maintaining a traditional lifestyle.

1920: After World War I (1914-1918), Canadian provincial governments passed laws making attendance at English language public schools compulsory. Since most Old Colonists would not send their children to such schools, they had to pay fines. They also sought new homelands. Old Colony and Bergthaler Mennonite leaders from Canada visited Mexico and Paraguay. In Mexico, Old Colony leaders negotiated with representatives from then-president Álvaro Obregón. He assured them of complete freedom in the education of their children, control over their own affairs and exemption from military service and from swearing oaths. One reason why Obregón agreed to their requests is that Mexico was still in the midst of a revolution (having established itself via constitution only in 1917), and so as the leader, Obregón wanted to attract good farmers and loyal subjects in northern Mexico. These areas had become depopulated during the revolution and were places where many people were loyal to other revolutionary leaders.[[viii]]

In 1922, 6,000 Low German speaking Old Colony Mennonites, along with smaller numbers of Bergthaler Mennonites, from Manitoba and Saskatchewan, migrated to the Mexican states of Chihuahua and Durango.

In 1948, small numbers of Old Colony Mennonites and Kleine Gemeinde migrated to Mexico.

During the 1950s, Old Colony Mennonites who had access to Canadian citizenship began migration to Canada for summer farm labor, and permanent settlement, especially in Southwestern Ontario, Southern Alberta and Southern Manitoba. This was due to decades of drought, farming technologies that had worked in Canada being unable to adapt to Mexico. Large families led to constant pressures to find more land; more people moved back to Canada to escape poverty;[[ix]] some people wanted schools that provided more than six years of education with a limited, German language, Bible focused, curriculum; and new church groups began to appear.

There has been considerable Old Colony migration within and between nations over the last century:

Over the course of the twentieth century, there was some expansion into neighboring states of Zacatecas and Tamaulipas.

During the 1970s, there was migration to Texas in the United States.

Through the 1990s, internal and external migration took place on a greater scale. After the North American Free Trade Agreement was signed and put into effect in 1994, all but one colony in Northern Mexico adopted electricity (that colony, Sabinal, adopted electrical technology in or around 2020). This coincided with a period of massive economic instability in Mexico, the beginning of the so-called War on Drugs. It led to significant out-migration for more conservative (i.e. non-electric, horse-and-buggy) Old Colony people to other colonies in southern Mexico (Campeche), Belize, and Bolivia, leaving deep divisions within colonies and families.

In 2020, Sabinal, the last non-electric colony in Northern Mexico, adopted electricity. This resulted in many colony members migrating to Campeche.

In 1958, Old Colony Mennonites migrated to British Honduras, which is now Belize. There currently are very traditional colonies, as well as less traditional Old Colony settlements, and other types of Mennonites.

In the 1990s, a group of Kleine Gemeinde Mennonites with Old Colony background migrated from Belize to Nova Scotia, Canada.

In the 1960s, large numbers of Old Colony Mennonites migrated to Bolivia from Canada (1967) and Mexico (at various points throughout the decade).

In the 1980s and 1990s, Mennonites in Belize migrated to Bolivia.

During the 1920s and 1940s, Mennonites migrated from Canada and Russia/the Soviet Union to Paraguay. They established colonies but are not Old Colony Mennonites.

In the 1990s, Old Colony Mennonites from Mexico established their first colonies.[[x]]

In the 1980s, Mennonites from Mexico establish colonies in Argentina.

In 2016, Old Colony Mennonites from Mexico established colonies in Colombia.

In 2017, Old Colony Mennonites from Bolivia and Belize migrated to Peru and founded four colonies.

In the 2020s, Mennonites from Bolivia establish colonies in Angola.[[xi]] 

DOCTRINES/BELIEFS

Old Colony Mennonites, like other Mennonite and Anabaptist Christians, believe in community, and adult participation in a community of faith after joining it via baptism. They, like Old Order Mennonites and Amish, take very seriously the idea of maintaining a community that is separate from the surrounding world, with implications for military service and education.

A fundamental aspect of Old Colony Mennonite life is living in a separate community, where children learn the catechism in separate schools so that they can participate in this separate community as adults. Therefore, religious practices, education and beliefs are intertwined.

The beliefs are best represented by the Elbing catechism, which demonstrates multiple similarities with other Christians, in particular, with other Protestants. Old Colony Mennonites profess belief in the Trinity, that God is revealed in the Bible, the idea of heaven after death, a final judgment from a divine power, and ideas about sin and salvation. The catechism also stresses the importance of a community of believers, the necessity of living in this community to perhaps go to heaven after death. Some distinct practices include adult baptism, refusing to say oaths, and refusing military service. These and other non-Christian behaviors can lead the community to ban a member.[[xii]]

In practice, Old Colony men elect male ministers for individual congregations, and a male bishop to supervise a group of churches. According to John J. Friesen, un-ordained lay members do not play public roles or have a say in church matters; rather, they participate in the religious life of the community by living by its norms. The norms address many areas of life, including military service, dress, lifestyle, modes of transportation, vocations, sexual relationships, conspicuous consumerism, and interpersonal relationships.

RITUALS/PRACTICES

Old Colony worship services involve many elements common in other Christian churches: singing, Bible reading, prayers, and a sermon. These services are held in plain buildings without significant information regarding service times written down anywhere. They begin as early as 8:00 AM. Men and women sit on opposite sides of the church. People bring their German, gothic script hymnbooks (or Gesangbuecher) with them. [Image at right] To sign, the congregation follows the Vorsaenger or song leader and group of male song leaders. The vorsaenger give a hymn number, and then start singing a line, and then the congregation joins in without any instruments to accompany them. The more conservative Old Colony churches will sing a slower melody, called Langewiese, or Aulewiese, that some have compared to Gregorian chanting; other Old Colony churches, meaning those who’ve accepted some of changes, use a melody that is a little less slow. It is called Kurzewiese. According to Hans Werner “The Ole Wies was never meant to be a performance of aesthetically pleasing sound, but rather was an/ emotional coming together of individuals in a communal act of worship” (129-30). In my experience the Kurzewiese has a similar effect.

Old Colony worship services have two silent prayers for which the people kneel. The minister reads a sermon in German, having written it himself or taken from earlier ministers. The ministers wear particular clothing: black suit pants, shirt and coat, no tie, and boots. The reason for the boots lies in Ephesians 6:15. In English it says “As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace,” In the German version of this verse the word for shoes is boots.

Old Colony people celebrate communion twice a year. The church emphasizes that before people come to communion, they needed to “make things right” with one another ([xv])

Old Colony Mennonites celebrate most Christian holidays, emphasizing Easter, Pentecost and Christmas, which are celebrated with multiple church services, and no school for children. They  consider Epiphany and Ascension to be minor holidays, celebrated with a single day of church.([xvi])

Children learn the catechism, Bible, and rudimentary writing and arithmetic in order to join the church in adulthood.[xvii] Young adults must be baptized before marriage, and must prove they have memorized the catechism before baptism. Engagements are celebrated two weeks before marriage, and typically in the bride’s home. Weddings take place in church, at the end of a church service.

Funerals are similar to other church services. A trajchtmoake or bone setter will usually be the community midwife and undertaker. She will prepare the body for burial, and lay the deceased person’s body out at home. Sometimes family members may take photographs of the body (even in the groups that shy away from photographs) as it may be difficult or impossible for all family members to attend the funeral.

Each colony has its own restrictions on dress. Old Colony women typically wear mid-calf length dresses with stockings (for women) and socks (for girls). Women also wear black kerchiefs. The way she wears a kerchief, and if it has a print, embroidery or painted design, likely indicates the colony she comes from. Many Old Colony girls only wear head coverings after they are baptized, which usually occurs a short time before marriage. For their daily life, say working in the garden, the women would wear sun hats over kerchiefs. Women and girls are not allowed to cut their hair or wear makeup or jewelry. Some less traditional Old Colony Mennonite girls may cut their hair. All women who wear kerchiefs protect their hair with intricate braids.

More traditional Old Colony Mennonite men wear homemade overalls and shirts, and less traditional ones would wear jeans and button-down shirts. For work they may wear Mexican or Southwestern style cowboy hats, or baseball caps, depending on their colony and country of origin. Young men who have not yet been baptized might have flashy belts. Men are clean shaven with short hair.

Old Colony Mennonites speak Low German or Plautdietsch, which originated in the Low Countries, and, over five centuries of migration, includes vocabulary and linguistic structures from the surrounding cultures. The language is generally not written but it is their primary language for daily conversation. It has some similarities to Pennsylvania Dutch but, as with the Amish and Old Order Mennonites in states like Ohio, Indiana or Pennsylvania. The Bibles, hymnbooks, and catechism of the Old Colony Mennonites are in standard German. Old Colony schools are also primarily in German.

ORGANIZATION/LEADERSHIP

Old Colony Mennonites in Latin America today have a distinct community structure. They live in a similar way as Mennonites in eighteenth and nineteenth century Russia, which nineteenth  century Canadian bishops discussed in their sermons. The first Old Colony bishop in Manitoba, Johann Wiebe, [Image at right] preached sermons about community organization.[[xiii]] He established the importance of church leaders as independent from civil authorities. The church bishop should control its “secular” elements, that is, he would vet the colony Vorsteher or secular leader.

Men in Mennonite colonies in Mexico currently can vote for their Vorsteher regardless of church affiliation. A bishop  or a group of bishops (depending on colony size) will be appointed to oversee all the churches in a colony. Each village will have a church and a religious school. The church will have its own preacher or minister, a deacon (to oversee social welfare), a song leader and then men who sing with him. The village will also have a teacher who has to be a church member, as the (usually male) teacher instructs children in their hymnbook and catechism to prepare them to be church members. In some colonies a Waisenamt oversees social services such as homes for people with disabilities, homes for elderly people and drug and alcohol rehabilitation centers. In some colonies missionary organizations partner with these programs. Historically the Waisenamt also functioned as a type of credit union, offering loans to community members.

Old Colony Mennonites in Latin America currently live in colonies on the large blocks of land. Each colony is composed of darpa or street villages. A village is essentially a very long street, with houses, barns, a school, and most of the time, a church (if the village is smaller, a couple of villages will share the same church). Crops or orchards are often at some distance from their homes. But in the early decades many became very poor. Crops that had worked well in Canada did not work so well in Mexico; markets were uncertain, it seemed that they had bought land that was not actually the seller’s to sell, and other problems.[[xiv]] But in some ways their vision held.  Everyone in a given colony belonged to the same church; the church was led by a bishop and a council of ministers; they regulated many aspects of life in the colony (farm tractors with rubber tires were prohibited, and the village schools were carefully controlled).

ISSUES/CHALLENGES

There are many issues that face Old Colony Mennonites in Latin America. One is the effects of several generations of migration, between colonies in search of a more appropriate religious future, or back and forth to Canada for summer work, or for those who live close to the U.S. border, working as undocumented people for Old Colony Mennonites in Texas, or other Mennonite communities in Kansas, Nebraska and Oklahoma.

Constant migration creates insecurity, as does the security situation in many parts of Latin America, most notably in North-Central Mexico. Some Mennonites have been kidnapped, with the earliest case documented in Mexico in the 1970s (although this person was not a descendant an Old Colony Church member). Mennonites have been involved in drug-trafficking at lower levels and there have been some high-profile arrests.[[xviii]]

Another issue relates to land ownership. In many places, Mennonites (as foreigners) were not able to own their land and so entered land lease agreements with governments. In other instances, once members had gained access to the new country’s citizenship, they purchased land from sellers who may have been misrepresenting themselves as landowners, or land that was under dispute in a land redistribution program. In several cases in Mexico, Indigenous people refused to leave land that was theirs until armed forces removed them, in the 1920s, the 1960s and the 1970s.[[xix]]

Other issues relate to agriculture. As an overwhelmingly agricultural and rural community, Old Colony Mennonites need to purchase more land for their large families, and this land may not be suitable to the type of farming to which they are accustomed. They may also, as in several cases in Northern Mexico, be reputedly drilling too many wells that are far too deep, for agricultural purposes, and thus endangering the future of the region. In Southern Mexico, and perhaps in other places, they are engaged in significant deforestation. Not only is this environmentally devastating, it also destroys the sacred places of their Maya neighbors.[[xx] ]

There are also issues that arise because most Mennonites cannot communicate with their neighbors. This affects women particularly, as they do not have business contacts and thus less practice with colloquial Spanish, and is particularly challenging when they are having children and using, for example, publicly available health care. This also happens in encounters with the police as there are only a limited number of Low German-Spanish interpreters.

There are very high-profile cases of violence in women’s lives, most notably in Bolivia, which Miriam Toews and Sarah Polley represented in a novel and a film, Women Talking.[[xxi]] It is easy to sensationalize sexualized violence in visibly distinct or separate religious communities. That being said, since approximately two percent of all crimes related to sexual assault or rape lead to convictions in the U.S. (for survivors across all backgrounds), I believe it is important to emphasize the shared issues rather than the uniqueness of the experience of Old Colony Mennonite women in Bolivia.

The history and current experiences are more complex than this brief introduction. Eileen Kinch recently interviewed Old Colony people in Bolivia and showed that they are aware of advantages and disadvantages in their community.[[xxii]] I am confident that Old Colony Mennonites will

IMAGES

Image #1: Martin Luther.
Image #2: Menno Simons.
Image #3:  Chortitza colony church.
Image #4: Gothic script hymnbooks (Gesangbuecher).
Image #5;  Johann Wiebe and is wife.

REFERENCES

[i] Hans Werner, “Not of This World: The Emergence of the Old Colony Mennonites,” Journal of Amish and Plain Anabaptist Studies 4.2 (2016): 122-123, https://ideaexchange.uakron.edu/amishstudies/vol4/iss2/2/. For further information see Delbert Plett, ed., special issue of Preservings vol 22 (2003)

https://www.plettfoundation.org/files/preservings/Preservings22.pdf.

[i] Werner, Hans. 2016. “Not of This World: The Emergence of the Old Colony Mennonites,” Journal of Amish and Plain Anabaptist Studies 4.2:122-23.

[ii] Werner 123.
Werner 2016:123.

[iii] There are many distinct plain-dressing groups. There is also a group that traces its roots to Pietistic movements, and immigration to Pennsylvania, and the Old Order River Brethren and some Church of the Brethren members are among its plain dressing descendants. As these groups have lived in the same geographical area for centuries, they have influenced one another. For more information about Amish people, see Donald B. Kraybill, Karen M. Johnson-Wiener and Steven M. Nolt, The Amish (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013).

[iv] Neff, Christian and Harold S. Bender. 1953. “Catechism,” Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. Accessed from https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Catechism&oldid=174931 on 2. April 2024

[v] Many Mennonites remain in Russia – some immigrating to Canada, Paraguay (and a small group to Mexico) in the 1920s and 1940s, with some immigrating to Germany in the 1980s and 1990s.

[vi] Zacharias Peter D. 2011. “Biography of Johann Wiebe, (1837-1905), Rosengart.” Pp. 45-48 in Old Colony Mennonites in Canada 1875-2000, edited by Delbert Plett. Winnipeg, MB: D.F. Plett Historical Research Foundation, Inc.

[vi] Zacharias, Peter D. 2011. “Biography of Johann Wiebe, (1837-1905), Rosengart.” Pp 45-48 in Old Colony Mennonites in Canada 1875-2000, edited by Delbert Plett. Winnipeg, MB: D.F. Plett Historical Research Foundation, Inc.

[vii] For more information about Old Colony Mennonites in Latin America see the Journal of Mennonite Studies  vol 22 (2004) , 31 (2013) and 41 (2022).

[viii] Daniel Nugent, Spent Cartridges of Revolution: An Anthropological History of Namiquipa, Chihuahua (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1993), 112; Rebecca Janzen, Liminal Sovereignty: Mennonites and Mormons in Mexican Culture (Albany: SUNY P, 2018), 61-82.

[viii] Nugent, Daniel. 1993. Spent Cartridges of Revolution: An Anthropological History of Namiquipa, Chihuahua, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Janzen, Rebecca. 2018. Liminal Sovereignty: Mennonites and Mormons in Mexican Culture. Albany: State University of New York Press.

[ix] Friesen, John J. 2004. “Old Colony Theology, Ecclesiology, and Experience of Church in Manitoba,” Journal of Mennonite Studies 22:131-44.

[x] For more information on Old Colony Mennonites in Argentina and Bolivia see Lorenzo Cañas Bottos, Old Colony Mennonites in Argentina and Bolivia: Nation Making, Religious Conflict and Imagination of the Future (Leiden: Brill, 2008).

Blake Hamm, “Low German Mennonite Migration: A Geopolitical Framework and History,” Journal of Mennonite Studies 41.2 (2023): 111-146.

[xi]Hamm, Blake. 2023. “Low German Mennonite Migration: A Geopolitical Framework and History.” Journal of Mennonite Studies 41.2:111-46.

[xi] “Elbing Catechism.” Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online, 1778.  https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Elbing_Catechism&oldid=172028.

[xii] “Elbing Catechism.” 2021. Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online, 1778. Accessed from  https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Elbing_Catechism&oldid=172028 on 2 April 2024.

[xiii] Friesen 2004132.

(Friesen 2004:132)

[xiv]Janzen, 61-82.
Janzen 2018:61-82.

[xv] Friesen 136.
(Friesen 2004:136)

[xv] Anna Wall’s “Dead Butterflies in Mexico,” Mennopolitan 29 June 2017, http://www.mennopolitan.com/2017/06/dead-butterflies-in-mexico.html,  describes some Old Colony Mennonite Christmas traditions.

[xv] Wall, Anna. 2017 “Dead Butterflies in Mexico,” Mennopolitan, June 29. Accessed from http://www.mennopolitan.com/2017/06/dead-butterflies-in-mexico.html on 2 April 2024.

[xvii] See for example Wendy Crocker

[xviii] See Janzen 83-90 for more information.
(Janzen 2018:83-90).

[xix] Janzen 75-82.
(Janzen 2018:75-82

[xx] See Lars Akerson, Tina Fehr Kehler and Anika Reynar, “The Meaning of Seeds: Groups Seek Mutual Wellbeing amid Maya-Mennonite Tensions,” Canadian Mennonite 28.4, February. Accessed  https://canadianmennonite.org/stories/meaning-seeds. See also the film Maya Land: Listening to the Bees, dir. Katarzyna Beilin and Avi Paul Weinstein, 2022, https://www.mayalandlisteningtothebees.com/home/#About.

[xx]Akerson, Lars, Tina Fehr Kehler and Anika Reynar. 2024. “The Meaning of Seeds: Groups Seek Mutual Wellbeing amid Maya-Mennonite Tensions.” Canadian Mennonite 28.4, February. Accessed from https://canadianmennonite.org/stories/meaning-seeds on 2 April 2024.

[xxi] Miriam Toews, Women Talking (Toronto: Knopf, 2018); Women Talking, dir. Sarah Polley, Orion Pictures, Plan B Entertainment and Hear/Say Productions, 2022.

[xxi] Toews, Miriam. 2022. Women Talking. Toronto: Knopf.

[xxii] Eileen Kinch, Eileen “Keepers of the Old Ways: Colony Mennonites in Bolivia Preserve Tradition, Innovate as Numbers Grow,” Anabaptist World 27 Oct 2023, https://anabaptistworld.org/keepers-of-the-old-ways/ .

[xxii] Kinch, Eileen. 2023. “Keepers of the Old Ways: Colony Mennonites in Bolivia Preserve Tradition, Innovate as Numbers Grow,” Anabaptist World, October 27. Accessed from https://anabaptistworld.org/keepers-of-the-old-ways/ on 2 April 2024.

Dr. Christine M. Sarteschi, LCSW is a Full Professor of Social Work and Criminology at Chatham University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She is a fully licensed clinical social worker and serves as a victim’s advocate with the Cold Case Foundation. She has been a consultant to police agencies involving criminal cases. Her current research efforts focus on extremism including sovereign citizens and related extremist groups. Dr. Sarteschi has an extensive publishing record spanning both scholarly academic papers and those written more broadly for the public. She has published empirical articles, and two detailed research on extreme violence as well as sovereign citizens. Her recent work examines the intersection of QAnon and the sovereign citizen movement and the social phenomenon of Romana Didulo, a self-appointed QAnon figure who falsely believes she is the queen and president of Canada. She also has written articles published in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Just Security, Salon, New York Daily News, Homeland Security Today, MedPage Today, New York Law Journal, The Legal Intelligencer, New Jersey Law Journal, and Texas Lawyer. Dr. Sarteschi’s work has been featured in a number of national and international news outlets and documentaries and she has been quoted in The Associated Press, Rolling Stone, USA Today, The Daily Beast, The IndyStar, The Salt Lake Tribune, The Boston Globe, CBC, BBC, Stuff, Newsweek, Asia Times, among others.

ROMANA DIDULO TIMELINE

1974 (November 5):  Romana Didulo was born in the Philippines.

1984:  Didulo’s father passed away.

1985:  Didulo’s mother passed away.

1990 (July 25):  Didulo moved to Vancouver, Canada to live with family.

2000 (June 19):  Didulo was recognized for her cleanup efforts as part of her work with the West End Neighbours in Action.

2006:  Didulo was featured in a magazine article as the president and CEO of Global Solutions Canada, a human resources corporation that focused on the labour shortage facing the energy sector.

2020:  Didulo identified herself as the founder and leader of the “Canada 1^st Party of Canada.” The main goal of the Party was to dissolve “All Natural Parties…and to eliminate “globalists and Communists.”

2021 (February):  Didulo joined Telegram, an alternative social media platform popular among conservatives banned from more mainstream platforms, such as Facebook.

2021 (May):  Didulo had amassed approximately 20,000 followers on Telegram. She referred to herself as “Sovereign Head of State” and “Commander-in-Chief of the Sovereign Republic of Canada.”

2021 (June):  Didulo gave herself new titles including “Head of State” Commander-in-Chief,” “Head of Government of Canada,” and “Queen of Canada.”

2021 (June):  Didulo added two new tag lines to her Telegram signature: the QAnon slogan “where we go one we go all” (#WWG1WGA) and “Peace and Prosperity. Or Perish.”

2021 (July):  Didulo set up a GoFundMe donation page to build homes for wildfire victims in British Columbia. Website administrators quickly shut down her campaign.

2021 (August):  Didulo’s Telegram numbers increased to 40,000 followers.

2021 (November 27):  Didulo was detained by law enforcement for threats against healthcare workers. She was released the same afternoon with no formal charges filed.

2021 (December):  Didulo reached her peak Telegram numbers of approximately 73,000 followers.

2021 (December 3):  A Didulo follower was arrested for making threats against his daughter’s school.

2022 (January):  Didulo and eleven of her closet followers (her inner circle) began touring Canada in recreational vehicles (RVs).

2022 (February 3):  Didulo and her inner circle joined protestors at the Freedom Convoy at Parliament Hill. She and a group of followers burned the Canadian flag.

2022 (April):  Didulo and her inner circle attempted to enter the United States three times. Each time they were denied entry.

2022 (May):  Didulo followers started reporting that they had stopped paying their utility bills in response to Didulo’s “free natural resources” decree.

2022 (August 22). Didulo and her followers were involved in an attempt to arrest  Peterborough police officers.

2022 (September):  Didulo tried to fundraise from a paid Cameo video by Roger Stone, a Donald Trump political advisor.

2023 (February):  Didulo’s follower count on Telegram dropped to approximately 50,000.

2023 (February):  Didulo introduced “loyalty money” that had a “100,000’ denomination and was meant to replace traditional currency. It reportedly was “backed by gold and silver” and could be redeemed at the “National Treasury.”

2023 (September 19):  Didulo and her closet followers were chased out of Kamsack, Saskatchewan after only a day. They left the town with the assistance of a police escort.

2023 (September 20):  Didulo and her inner circle took up residency in an abandoned school in Richmound. Saskatchewan.

FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY

Very little information is available about Romana Didulo. [Image at right] What is known about her comes primarily from what she has chosen to reveal to the public. This minimal information is often not corroborated by evidence from other sources. The portrait of her early life is, therefore, largely hagiographic. Further, much of her presentation of her own life and the movement that she created and leads can best be understood through a conspiracy theory framework. Most simply, conspiracy theories can be understood as explanations for circumstances and events alleging that they are the product of secret plots created and carried out by a network of powerful, secret, organized malevolent groups (Uscinski and Parent 2014; Douglas et al 2019). In this case, Didulo has drawn on a variety of contemporary American conspiracy theories.

Didulo reports that her name is a combination of her father’s name Romualdo and her mother’s name Romana. On her website, Didulo states that she grew up in the Philippines. She reports that as a young child both of her parents died but there is no indication as to cause of death. However, losing her parents meant going to live elsewhere with relatives. When she was fifteen, she was sent to live with her grandparents in Vancouver, Canada. Didulo recounts that her grandmother taught her how to speak five languages. As an adult she lived in a small apartment with a roommate. She worked at menial jobs, and was once was homeless for an unspecified period of time (Sarteschi 2023).

Didulo became a visible public figure in October 2006 when a magazine profile featured her work. She was described as the president and CEO of Global Solution Canada, a private human resources company (Sarteschi 2023). The company recruited engineers for commercial oil, sand, gas, and mining companies. They assisted those seeking professional employment in Canada from around the world. No other information is available regarding her professional life beyond the two businesses, Infinite Wealth 24.7 and LTD and Romana Didulo Estate, INC. Both of those have since been dissolved.

In 2020, Didulo founded the “Canada 1^st Party of Canada.” At that time, she named herself “Head of State” and “Commander-in-Chief of the Republic of Canada.” She claimed to have been appointed to this role by the “white hats and the US military along with global allied forces and their governments.” She claimed that these were the same people who had helped President Trump, had confiscated Vatican church assets, had confiscated the assets of the UK’s fake royal family, had been installed by central bankers, had confiscated the assets of the thirteen family bloodlines, had confiscated the fortunes of most (but not all) of Europe’s royal families, and that have removed around the world by criminal governments.

Part of her hagiographic presentation is that her family is descended from an ancient royal bloodline whose members contributed trillions of dollars towards aiding humanity. According to statements that she has made in live stream videos, she and her family emigrated from the Philippines (previously known as the “Kingdom of Maharlika”). In her version of events, the “Kingdom of Maharlika” was invaded by the “Spanish King” and colonized for 500 years, primarily motivated by its status as “the richest country in the world” and having the “majority of the world’s gold” (Sarteschi 2023).

Family wealth had several consequences. One was that many countries found themselves having to borrow money from the Philippines. Another was that she became the leader of Canada partly due to her family wealth.

In February 2021, Didulo began posting messages on the social media platform Telegram. It was on this platform that she adopted the titles of: “Queen of Canada,” the Commander-In-Chief, The President, and The National Indigenous Chief of the “Kingdom of Canada.” During this period, she began to acquire followers whom she dubbed “digital soldiers” or “I AMs.”

By the end of 2021, Didulo’s Telegram channel followers had grown to a high of approximately 73,000.  Since then, however, her follower counts decreased to approximately 31,000 as of March 2024. Telegram remains the main platform through which she communicates with her followers. She has continued to post messages on the platform daily.

As of 2024, she and a group of her closest followers were living in an abandoned school in Richmound, Saskatchewan. [Image at right] It remains unclear how they spend their time, though those in the inner circle claim they are renovating parts of the school. Didulo is responsible for much of the security on the premises, which includes her surveilling the outside perimeter of the school. Didulo’s “press secretary” (Darlene Ondi) and others hold nightly the “Queen Romana Tell Real Vision” (QRTVN”) news program streamed via Telegram to an audience that averages approximately 150 viewers. The program has consisted of reading conspiratorial/alternative news, reiterating the importance of Didulo’s decrees, and updating viewers on the daily activities of Didulo and her inner circle. They group also requests funding support. The expectation has been that the group would stay at the school for at least several months. It has remained unclear if the group will resume driving across Canada in their RVs or remain stationed at the school. For unspecified reasons, they have been prepping to live “off the grid.”

DOCTRINES/BELIEFS

Didulo has not established formal doctrines; rather, she has issued decrees. Her decrees essentially serve as the “laws” of her “kingdom” and thus function as the foundational basis for her thought system. Didulo has issued over 200 decrees. All the decrees reside on her website, the functionality of the site notwithstanding. Further insights into her thought can be garnered from her live-streamed speeches and the nightly “news” presented by members of her inner circle. The themes in these messages are drawn from QAnon, conspirituality, New Age, sovereign citizen, anti-vaccination, anti-immigration, anti-LQBTQA, and anti-government.

Most broadly these messages express a deep disdain for “mainstream media,” government agencies, and other institutions. By contrast, Didulo expresses admirations for “strongmen,” including Vladmir Putin, Rodrigo Duterte and Donald Trump. Consistent with this authoritarian perspective, she commonly threatens those who do not adhere to her edicts and decrees with severe punishments. Her followers mirror that same attitude, regularly and openly fantasizing about publicly hanging public officials or anyone else they deem an enemy.

Didulo claims to possess supernatural abilities as an Acturian alien, including shapeshifting, self-healing, changing her eye color and the shape of her pupils, curing the blindness of others, appearing in the dreams of her followers, and emitting a glowing light as a symbol of her divine connection to the higher dimensional realms (Sarteschi 2023). During a livestream with members of her inner circle, she asserted that the recreational vehicle, in which they were currently living, [Image at right] had levitated. She maintains that she is in contact with the alliance of the “Intergalactic Federation of the World of Light Beings and Protectors,” alongside “star people” who watch over her from above. She reports that the adoption of her two “royal” puppies was precipitated by the dogs contacting her telepathically to request that she adopt them and that they are celestial beings. As an extraterrestrial being, Didulo requires a special diet. She cannot eat fish but not meat as when she eats meat her “natural gifts and ancient wisdom” are “removed from my soul and person and I AM unable to move for 30 days or more.”

Given the ideological pool from which Didulo draws her ideas, it is not surprising that she frequently complains about immigrants and has created specific decrees that limit their ability to live inside her kingdom. She also has outlawed immigrants from owning property in her kingdom. Correspondingly, she has given her followers permission to “shoot to kill” health care works for giving the COVID vaccination (Bremmer 2021) and also immigrants if they are found to be engaged in certain types of criminal behavior (Smith 2023).

With respect to education, Didulo has created additional decrees in support of homeschooling. She supposedly has designated millions of dollars (“backed by gold and silver”) to people in her kingdom to “home educate” their children. Based on her assertion that there actually are only two genders, she opposes public schools that she insists indoctrinate and groom children to become transgender. Didulo and her followers regularly publicly denigrate transgender individuals.

RITUALS/PRACTICES

Movement rituals have evolved over time and consist primarily of public presentations by Didulo. In the beginning, Didulo operated alone and simply posted messages on a website and/or social media platforms, such as YouTube. In these videos, she articulated her worldviews, which to date remain largely unchanged.

After amassing a substantial base of followers, she began traveling across Canada in a RV. A small entourage traveled with her, most of whom have subsequently left the movement and have been replaced. At the height of her popularity, it was common for the entourage to travel to various locations and give in-person speeches. Locations often included Walmart parking lots and camp grounds. Location details were announced on Telegram, inviting those who lived nearby to attend. The speeches would be live-streamed on Telegram. Typically, no more than fifty people would be in attendance. The speeches typically lasted thirty minutes to an hour and were often repetitive. Afterwards, guests could meet the “Queen.”

Very little is known about the group’s day-to-day operations. Members of the inner circle often say they work “24 hours a day seven days a week” but have never articulated what type of work they are doing in the school. Each night several of them participate in the nightly news show, ending every episode with a request for funds from “those who are in abundance.” The group has claimed that it needed approximately $20,000 a month to cover its travel expenses. Though no financial records are available, it seems clear that breakdowns have been frequent and costly, and constant traveling has taken a toll on members. Former members have reported that at the movement’s peak it had amassed hundreds of thousands of dollars. The group was gifted an abandoned school in the small town of Richmound, Saskatchewan by a local resident. The townspeople reacted with anger and held protests but have not dislodged the group (Lamoureux 2023).

ORGANIZATION/LEADERSHIP

Didulo has been at the center of the organization throughout its history. It is telling, for example, that the organization itself has no name independent of Didulo. She makes a number of claims designed to legitimate her leadership exclusivity. These include constructing a hagiographic history for her leadership, issuing “decrees” that have the force of law within (and at least theoretically beyond) the movement, and creating specific missions that are integral to her position. The organization itself exists primarily online and is coordinated by a small group of loyal followers.

Didulo claims a spiritual contract with the “Galactic Federation,” an extra-terrestrial  organization established to assist those on Earth. She states that her title was assigned from higher dimensional beings existing beyond our planet Earth. Didulo explains that she was “appointed” to her role by powerful people who she refers to as the “white hats.” The “white hats” are a QAnon-based phenomenon in which covert operatives, who are the “good guys,” assist in the fight against the black hats (the “bad guys”) or the cabal/deep state/globalists (Sarteschi 2023). Relatedly, the cabal is comprised of individuals operating covertly inside governments across the world, to cause harm to those in the world, particularly children who they are secretly sex-trafficked in underground tunnels (Amarasingam and Argentino 2020).

According to Didulo, she rose to power after removing the Chinese communist military, who were occupying tunnels underneath Canada, and were attempting to attack both Mexico in the United States (Sarteschi 2023). According to Didulo, these individuals were located in Beijing and were utilizing tunnels for adrenochrome production (a chemical compound produced by the oxidation of adrenaline that it is alleged global elites harvest from kidnapped children to ingest as an elixir of youth), organ harvesting, and the manufacture and sale of children for sex trafficking (Sarteschi 2023). She claimed that she single-handedly removed these individuals from Canada, and in so doing she prevented World War III. As a result of her great effort, she was bestowed the title of Queen. [Image at right]

This depiction of history, of course, places Didulo in the midst of intense conflict. She alleges that information about her is being censored by the cabal/deep state and the globalists who are being paid to destroy her. This campaign is driven by her formidable influence in the world, which is a personal threat to other world leaders. She has also claimed that individuals claiming to be national leaders, such as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, actually are actors or fabricated otherworldly entities, robots, or even computer-generated images, but they are not real.

According to Didulo, her decrees serve as laws in her “kingdom.” She has clear definitions of criminal behavior and punishment in the kingdom. Broadly, she prioritizes combating crimes against children, asserting that it is her responsibility to protect and rescue victims of child sex trafficking. She is also seeking to punish anyone who administers the COVID-19 vaccine to children. She has stated that for anyone who gives children vaccines the punishment shall be “two bullets to the head.” Crimes punishable by execution, consist of anything she has designated as a “crime against humanity.” These include anyone who “promotes transgenderism, medical surgeries, pharmaceutical means, hormone blockers, and gender inversion.” Other crimes that would garner the death penalty, in Didulo’s “kingdom,” include kidnapping, war crimes, genocide, famine, manufacturing adrenaline crumb, producing foods, drugs, products, or chemicals that are harmful to humans or animals, rape, torture blackmail, extortion, child sex trafficking, human organ harvesting, human trafficking, slavery, bribery, corruption, arson, trafficking illegal drugs and firearms, smuggling illegal firearms, trafficking weapons of mass destruction, and targeted killings. All “crimes against humanity” are punishable by public hanging or firing squad in the “city square” and can be witnessed by anyone twenty-four years of age or older (Sarteschi 2023).

Didulo has identified a series of missions for which she is responsible, responsibilities that have been largely ignored by established institutions who live in “ivory towers.”  Most broadly, she has stated that it is her mission to bring back “morality” to Canada, along with “common sense.” She has claimed that unnamed individuals have offered her billions of dollars to dissolve her movement, yet she has declined their offer on moral grounds, feeling compelled by her divine duty to assist “we the people.” For example, she perceives it as her duty as Queen to travel to every town and city in Canada to get to know we the people and gain deeper insight into their needs. As an Acturian alien she is endowed with extraordinary abilities and responsibilities. One is including the facilitation and guarding of celestial magical pods (med beds) that can cure all ailments (Sarteschi 2022). She has made med beds available to all “Canadian nationals” and anyone with a veteran status. This responsibility has proved challenging because, she claims, pharmaceutical companies have deliberately stolen and hidden the med bed technology to maintain corporate profits. Didulo reports that she has provided billions of dollars in funding to cure homelessness, to cure addictions, to repair the infrastructure, to repair the roads, and to ensure that everyone has access to groceries. She promised to construct grocery stores in Canada available to all “Canadian nationals” and will name them ‘We Go One We Go All’ (WWG1WWA) (the QAnon meme), where her followers can acquire their groceries for free.

Didulo has also presumed to authority outside of the movement. In one of her decrees she abolished the requirement to pay government taxes (including utility bills and mortgages). She explained that Canada was a bankrupt “corporation,” an idea consistent with sovereign citizen ideology. She therefore regarded taxes as a form of “slavery” and as Queen, she was returning all of the natural resources to we the people. On the basis of these decrees, many of her followers prepared “cease-and-desist orders” (created by Didulo), along with copies of certain royal decrees. These were intended to inform various public and government officials, tax agencies, banks, and related entities about Didulo’s decrees. None of these tactics have proven effective, leading to negative financial and legal consequences for many of her followers.

In another move that would erode state power, Didulo created a movement-based  currency called loyalty money. [Image at right] This money was printed by Didulo and distributed to select subjects. The printed money includes her emblem, and her flag and has a “100,000” denomination. While the money currently has no value outside of the group. Didulo has told her followers that they will eventually be able to cash it in at the “national treasury,” which has yet to be formed. Future planning, which is certain to spark additional conflict with state agencies includes the creation of passports, and “Canadian national” ID cards for members.

These various missions and decrees inevitably create tension between the movement and social control agencies if Didulo or her followers attempt to actually implement them. There are conflicts for followers also, of course, as they are caught between opposed imperatives as state citizens and movement adherents. Committed members commonly manage these tensions by stating that Didulo simply has not been “announced” yet, that the cabal pays the “mainstream media” to lie about her, or that politicians and public officials are taking credit for her work.

Didulo’s movement organization is actually rather small. Her closest confidants (those in her inner circle) include her “press secretary” who hosts the nightly news show. As such, the “press secretary” acts as the spokesperson for the group. Other members of the inner circle have designated responsibilities such as operating and repairing the RV, providing security, food preparation, doing laundry, managing waste disposal, attending to the “royal puppies,” and managing social media accounts.

Didulo has named approximately twenty members as “Ministers” of the “kingdom of Canada.” In their appointment ceremonies the Ministers were required to pledge their loyalty to the “kingdom” and take an oath to we the people. Each Minister is required  to carry out decrees associated with their specified roles. She has also designated “coordinators” who are meant to replace duly elected public officials throughout the Canadian providences. Coordinators are volunteers who live throughout the country. Their role is to be the contact person for other followers who live close by and who have questions about decrees and policies in the kingdom of Canada. On occasion, the coordinators hand out loyalty money.

The primary point of contact for most Didulo followers is the Telegram platform. There are fifteen to twenty Telegram groups each of which has a designated administrator who monitors all postings. The administrators are tasked with removing any posts that “bring down the vibrational frequency” of the group. They frequently remind group members that they will remove or otherwise delete any post that “sows negativity or hatred.” In practice, this means that administrators remove any comment that negatively characterizes Didulo; offenders are often banned permanently. Followers who compliment Didulo are often rewarded by her reposting their messages on her main Telegram channel.

Within the many Telegram channels, followers chat amongst themselves. It is customary for them to post photographs of letters they have received from tax agencies, legal firms, utility companies, and other affected businesses. These letters threaten to terminate service for unpaid bills. Followers who have lost their homes will often post photographs or videos of themselves having to be escorted from their premises. Those who lose utilities will often post angry messages about what has happened to them. Some have even shared photographs of utility workers arriving at their homes to shut off their utility service.

Another prominent aspect of the Telegram platform involves followers posting photographs or videos of them sending copies of the decrees or a cease-and-desist order to one of the aforementioned companies or agencies. For instance, when a follower is facing eviction, they may send decrees and cease-and-desist orders via certified mail. Group members congratulate followers on “standing up” to the “cabal” or the “minions” who are decidedly ignoring Didulo’s edicts.

ISSUES/CHALLENGES

Through the history of the movement, Didulo has faced a number of challenges. The most important of these is loss of followers and operating funds as the viability of the movement is at issue. In addition, the conflicts with local residents, relentless negative media coverage, and vocal opposition from former members have kept the movement in a high level of tension with its surrounding environment.

While Didulo was initially successful in gaining Telegram followers, she recently has lost approximately 40,000 followers on Telegram. This erosion of the following has created two problems for the movement. First, the movement has fewer followers to engage in recruiting that might stem the current exodus. Second, the movement has less capacity to generate financial resources to pursue movement goals, particularly travel expenses that fund new members and resources.

A second major issue has been Didulo’s authoritarian leadership style. Reportedly, she demands extreme obedience and loyalty. Some who have left the group say they experienced “never-ending” abuse from Didulo (Lamoureux 2022). They regard her as dangerous and report that she threatened to kill them on many occasions. Some admittedly still fear for their safety despite having separated from the group.

The coterie of hostile former members has led to negative media coverage of the group (Lamoureux 2022). In addition, the secretive nature of the group and the constant media coverage has made the group unwelcome. In 2023, for example, Didulo and her closet followers were chased out of Kamsack, Saskatchewan after only a day. They left the town with the assistance of a police escort. The groups subsequent settlement in Kamsack, Saskatchewan was met with an equally hostile response.

Finally, Didulo’s decrees have sometimes created serious problems for individuals following her directives. Some former members report that they stopped making payments to utilities, local governments, and banks, with predictable legal and financial consequences. In one case some followers unsuccessfully attempted to arrest the Peterborough police in August 2022 (Lamoureux 2022).

Romana Didulo’s movement appears to be precariously balanced at this time. It is small with a declining following and located in a small, remote Canadian community. Didulo is an authoritarian leader with few successes to show and no apparent successor. Internal problems combined with negative media coverage, local resident pushback, and resistance to her decrees by a variety of financial and governmental institutions have left the movement’s future prospects opaque at best.

IMAGES

Image #1: Romana Didulo.
Image #2: The abandoned school in Richmound, Saskatchewan.
Image #3: One of the RVs that followers used to travel across Canada.
Image #4: Romana Didulo as Queen of Canada.
Image #5: Alternative currency created by Didulo.

REFERENCES

Amarasingam, Amarnath and Marc-André Argentino. 2020. “The QAnon conspiracy theory: a security threat in the making?” CTC Sentinel 13:37-41. Accessed from https://ctc.westpoint.edu/the-qanon-conspiracy-theory-a-security-threat-in-the-making/on 2 April 2024.

Brenner, Jade. 2032. December 3. “Canada’s QAnon ‘queen’ claims she was arrested over ‘shoot to kill’ healthcare workers posts.” Independent, December 3. Accessed from https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/crime/qanon-canada-queen-arrested-b1968818.html on 2 April 2024.

Lamoureux, Mack. 2021. “QAnon’s Queen of Canada is raising serious cash on GoFundMe.” Vice World News, July 28. Accessed from https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3dxy7/qanons-queen-of-canada-is-raising-serious-cash-on-gofunde on 2 April 2024.

Sarteschi, Christine. 2022. “How the self-proclaimed ‘Queen of Canada’ is causing true harm to her subjects.” The Conversation, June 28. Accessed from https://theconversation.com/how-the-self-proclaimed-queen-of-canada-is-causing-true-harm-to-her-subjects-185125 on 2 April 2024.

Sarteschi, Christine. 2023. “The social phenomenon of Romana Didulo: ‘Queen of Canada’.” International Journal of Coercion, Abuse, and Manipulation, 6. Accessed from https://www.ijcam.org/articles/the-social-phenomenon-of-romana-didulo on 2 April 2024.

Smith, Peter. 2023. “QAnon “Queen” of Canada Romana Didulo tells followers to shoot ‘illegal’ migrants on sight.” The Canadian Anti-Hate Network, February 8. Accessed from https://www.antihate.ca/queen_of_canada_romana_didulo_shoot_illegal_migrants on 2 April 2024.

Uscinski, Joseph and Joseph Parent.  American Conspiracy Theories. New York: Oxford University Press.

Publication Date:
10 April 2024

LUCIFERIANISM TIMELINE

1231:  Luciferian was used as an accusation against heretical Christians in Tier, Germany.

1667:  John Milton´s Paradise Lost was published.

1840:  Alphonse Louis Constant published Bible de la liberté.

1875:  The Theosophical Society was founded.

1885:  Marie Joseph Gabriel Antoine Jogand-Pagès, using the pen name Léo Taxil, “converted” to Catholicism and began an expose of Luciferians within Freemasonry.

1888:  The Secret Doctrine by Helena Blavatsky was published.

1899:  Charles Leland published his Aradia; the Gospel of the Witches in which Lucifer appeared as a sun god.

1906:  Ben Kadosh (Carl William Hansen) published The Dawn of a New Morning: Lucifer-Hiram: The Return of the World’s Master Builder and referred to himself as a Luciferian in a Danish population census.

1914:  Anatole France published Revolt of the Angels (La Révolte des anges)

1926:  The Fraternitas Saturni was founded by Gregor A Gregorius (Eugen Grosche).

1929:  Magick in Theory and Practice by Aleister Crowley was published  in which he described Lucifer as identical to “AIWAZ, the solar-phallic-hermetic ‘Lucifer’,” His own Holy Guardian Angel.”

1956:  Madeleine Montalba and her partner, Nicolas Heron, founded the Order of the Morning Star, or Ordo Stella Matutina (OSM).

1966:  The Process Church of the Final Judgment was founded.

1972:  The Kenneth Anger movie Lucifer Rising was released.

1989:  Dragon Rouge was founded in Stockholm, Sweden.

2005:  The Neo-Luciferian Church was founded in Copenhagen, Denmark.

2015:  The Greater Church of Lucifer opened a church in Springs, Texas, leading to protests from Christian groups.

2015:  Author Michael Howard, central in the popularization of Luciferianism died.

FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY

Luciferianism does not have a founder nor is it represented by a specific group or ideology; [Image at right] rather, it’s a reference to a heterodox and internally conflicted modern religious/spiritual phenomenon. Like “Witchcraft” and “Satanism,” “Luciferian” was originally used as an accusatory label by the Church. The first time the term seems to have been used is 1231 in Gesta Treverorum a chronology and history of the Archbishops in Tier, present day Germany (Luijk 2016:30). Here we find mentioned a woman, Lucardis, who lead a pious religious circle but was accused of secretly lamenting “the unjust expulsion from Heaven of Lucifer.” Following this “expose” of Luciferians, the church began a crusade to find more Luciferians. In 1234, Pope Gregory IX sent the bull Vox in Rama where we find one of the first descriptions of Luciferian initiations and rituals that foreshadow later descriptions of the Witches Sabbat and Black Masses with desecrations of the Host, inversions of the Mass and sexual orgies (Luijk 2016:31). That there existed any Luciferians during this period outside the imagination of the Church and the Pope is, however, unlikely.

During the thirteenth through the fifteenth centuries there where several cases where worship of Lucifer was used as an accusation against heretical groups, like the Cathars and the Waldensians. There is, however, no evidence that any of the groups or persons mentioned had beliefs that in any form resembled the Papal descriptions; rather, they seemed to have regarded the Church as being under the control of Lucifer (Luijk 2016:28). Even if there never existed any Luciferians in this period, the myth of their existence would be used by both anti-Satanists as well as modern-day Luciferians and Satanists. It gave their traditions a more substantial pedigree, even if most of both Luciferians and Satanists probably see this as more of a mythological story. As an example of how the myth of early Luciferians influenced modern Satanism and Luciferianism is H.T.F Rhodes’ 1954 history of early Satanism in The Satanic Mass that was a central inspiration for the founder of the Church of Satan, Anton LaVey. During the reformation in the sixteenth century and the internal conflicts within Christianity that followed, accusations of Devil and Lucifer worship continued, again directed against other Christians. However, there is no evidence of any groups that venerated Lucifer existing in this period (Medway 2001:9).

Central for the development of both modern Luciferianism and Satanism was a literary work John Milton’s Paradise Lost from 1667. While presented as a defence of the rule of God, some later readers would find Lucifer not as a the villain but as a heroic character reminiscent of the Greek Titan Prometheus who stole the fire from Heaven and gave it to humanity, Indeed, Lucifer’s speech in the first book has become central for the development of the heroic Satan (Lucifer):

Here at least
we shall be free; the Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure, and in my choice
to reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven

Milton’s image of Satan (as a tragic, courageous being, who even act with love and comradery with his fellow fallen angels) was essential to the image of Lucifer that we find later, and modern Luciferianism can’t be understood without this reference. Reception of Milton’s Lucifer as a heroic symbol for liberation and rebellion would develop with the Romantics, and with poets. Writers like Mary Wollstonecraft, William Blake, Percy Shelly, and Lord Byron all made use of Milton’s work to present a heroic, if not always outright positive image, of Lucifer (Werblowsky 2007).

While heterodox views of Lucifer and Satan were presented, it should be noted that the primary source of inspiration for the Romantics was Hellenism and Greek mythology dominated the writings. Lucifer became associated with the Greek titan Prometheus that stole the fire from Mount Olympus. Noticing the similarities between the two myths, it became easy to view Lucifer in a favourable light, even if poets like Percy Shelly emphasised that, while heroic, Lucifer was not as noble as Prometheus who rebelled without selfish motives (Schock 2003:39).

One of the best examples of the romantic reimagining of Milton was William Blake’s The Marriage between Heaven and Hell (1793) that presents an image of Hell and Satan as symbols of creativity and movement, in balance and opposition to the stasis of Heaven. Blake refers to Milton and claims he was of the Devils party without knowing it. With the Romantics, the image of Lucifer as a symbol of rebellion and quest for knowledge is established, but it is only in a literary sense and not without ambivalence. There is no indication or evidence that there developed any form of spiritual movement from the Romantic Satanists in the nineteenth century, although they would inspire later Luciferians and Satanists. There is also no real separation between Satan and Lucifer, rather they are treated as synonymous, but based on a reception of Milton rather than the Bible (Schock 2003).

Among some nineteenth-century socialists Lucifer would become a role model for the revolution, often more satirical and anti-clerical, as with Anarchists like Pierre Proudhon and Michael Bakunin, than based on a veneration for Lucifer. An interesting example of how Lucifer was used by nineteenth-century socialists are the “Ten commandments of Lucifer” (1886), a short text distributed among Swedish socialists by Atterdag Wermelin (1861-1904). The text is a mockery of the Ten Commandments but also contains serious calls for solidarity among workers, equality between men and women, and a rejection of monogamy and the institution of marriage (Faxneld 2013). For the early, more radical part of the labour movement, Lucifer appears rather frequently as a symbol for freedom and liberation, and several magazines took the title Lucifer. In Sweden there was the yearly published periodical for the Social Democrats titled Lucifer: the light bearer (Lucifer: Ljusbringaren, 1891-1895, quarterly 1902-1903) and in the United States we find Moses Harmans anarchist magazine Lucifer, the Light Bearer (1883-1907). We also find the fictional work of the socialist author Anatole France Revolt of the Angels (La Révolte des anges) from 1914 that describes Lucifer as a force that through the ages has attempted to help humanity. France identifies Lucifer with Satan and see the evolution of Lucifer to Satan as a positive. The book is perhaps one of the clearest examples of literary Satanism and in the twenty-first century, and the book became one of the canonical texts for the Satanic Temple (Hedenborg White and Gregorius 2019).

In the middle and later part of the nineteenth century, a revised version of Lucifer starts to enter esoteric movements both in fiction and reality. A bridge between the socialist interpretation and the esoteric is Eliphas Lévi (i.e., Alphonse-Louis Constant, 1810–1875). Following the Romantics, Leví wrote in Bible de la liberté (1840) that Lucifer was an angel of Liberty and that in the end he would be reunited with God. Leví would continue these themes later when his work would turn to more occult ideas around the Astral Light. While earlier biographies of Leví argued that there was a clear break between his earlier political writings as Constant and his later occult writings, religious scholar Julian Strube has argued that there is a continuity and his later occult works must be understood from the backdrop of his utopian socialist ideals. Leví was part of a occult movement in France that presented themselves as Neo-Catholic or Gnostic and still regarded themselves as Christians (Strube 2016).

The most important Luciferian legacy from France in the nineteenth century did not come from an existing Luciferian milieu but a mostly imaginary one. In 1885, the French Anti-Catholic, Marie Joseph Gabriel Antoine Jogand-Pagès, using the pen name Léo Taxil (1854-1907), had publicly converted to Catholicism and at the same time exposed a massive conspiracy against the Church directed by Freemasons. Jogand-Pagés would publish several books both under the name Leo Taxil, and other pseudonyms, in which he described a global cult around Lucifer that he claimed where at the centre of Freemasonry. The secret inner circle was called the Palladium and was lead by a woman, Diana Vaughn. The Palladium, as described by Taxil, believed that Lucifer was the true God, in opposition to the lesser god Adonai, and the two gods were in a battle for control over the Earth and mankind (Luijk 2016:266-69). A few years later, Jogand-Pagés revealed publicly it was all a prank, carried out to ridicule both the Catholic Church and Freemasonry. Despite this, many would continue to take his ideas seriously, and they can still be found in conspiracy theories around secret societies. For some esoteric writers this was seen as intriguing, however, and they developed a positive reception to Taxil´s hoax. One example of this was the Danish Luciferian Ben Kadosh who will be discussed below. While most of the descriptions about Luciferians were based on accusations, as we have seen, there where esoteric writers that had a more sympathetic view on Lucifer.

The most influential proponent of a positive view of Lucifer came from the Theosophical Society (1875), founded by Helena Blavatsky (1831-1891) and Henry Steel Olcott (1832-1907). With the Theosophists, we generally see Lucifer presented as a symbol of illumination, and they would even name their magazine Lucifer. For Blavatsky, Lucifer was the bringer of light to mankind and identified Lucifer with Prometheus but also with “Mahasura” in Hinduism, who was cast down after rebelling against Brahma, and made, according to Blavatsky, to repent. Lucifer can be seen as a symbol of human evolution and initiation.  For Helena Blavatsky Lucifer was integrated in a non-dualist cosmology based on a Western reception of Buddhism and Hinduism, and a rejection of Christian doctrines, as is noticeable in the quote above as well. As to what degree Lucifer and Satan where identified within Theosophy is debated, often Blavatsky would be clear in distinguishing them but scholars like Per Faxneld have argued that the writings of Blavatsky contained “unembarrassed and explicit  Satanism” (Faxneld 2012).

Within Blavatsky’s voluminous writings there are clear positive descriptions of Lucifer, and while it is debatable as to whether this should be regarded as central to her worldview, the references we find, most notably within The Secret Doctrine (1888), would have a central impact on later receptions of Lucifer. For some Theosophists the positive image of Lucifer would become central, as with the Swedish painter Sven Bengtsson (1843-1916), who painted Lucifer as an angelic being combatting the forces of ignorance, represented as a dark monster.

Perhaps the first person who used “Luciferian” as a self-identification was Ben Kadosh, the penname for the Danish esotericist and eccentric Karl William Hansen (1872-1936). Kadosh had been involved with several different forms of esoteric order and was an early, pre-Thelemic, member of Ordo Templi Orients. In 1906, when he was thirty-three, he published Den Ny Morgens Gry, Lucifer-Hiram, Verdensbygmesterens Genkomst (The Dawn of a New Morning, Lucifer-Hiram, The Return of the World’s Master Builder). The Neo-Luciferian Church, which considers its work to be partially a continuation of Kadosh, published a revised translation of the text in 2010. Later, a new translation was made by Johan Nilsson and Rebecca Bugge and published in the anthology Satanism: A reader, 2023. In the small book we see a strong influence from Theosophy but also Leo Taxil. Kadosh sees Lucifer as the true god of creation and individuality:

Lucifer is the “sum” – or I – of the material nature, the creative logon or force. Both personal and impersonal or individual and non-individual, just as everything else in nature, as it should be. Actually, he is the object and the individual in the third person. (quoted in Nilsson 2023a:132).

Further, he associated this doctrine with the secret teachings that he believed were found in Freemasonry, which is evident from the title of Lucifer as the “Worlds Master Builder.” Lucifer is regarded as the energy of Darkness, and thus superior to the Light, partially following Blavatsky. As Per Faxneld has commented the image of Lucifer is rather unique:

Lucifer is portrayed by Kadosh as a sort of rebellious and “criminal” initiator, giving man access to mysteries that the Christian church has tried to keep hidden. He is, according to Kadosh, a phallic and expansive personification of energy, which is why he is the nemesis of all attempts to confine and limit. (Faxneld 2011)

The idea of Lucifer as a phallic and vitalist force is reminiscent of Crowley’s presentation of Lucifer but predates Crowley as he would present this mostly in later in works, like the 1929 Magick in theory and Practice. The short text is complicated and at times difficult to follow. Lucifer is also seen as Pan and Venus. Kadosh makes a point that this might seem paradoxical as Lucifer is very masculine. Pan is particularly important, and a large part of the text deals more with Pan than with Lucifer. Kadosh sees something sacred in the animal nature and regards a union or an integration of the animal intelligence as a form of path to enlightenment.

Kadosh took a lot of inspiration from the sensationalist book Satan og hans kultus (1902) by Carl Kohl that also builds upon the Leo Taxil-hoax. Apart from Lucifer-Hiram, Kadosh never published more about Luciferianism, and while he claimed to have gathered a small number of followers, there is no indication that they continued after his death or even remained active during his lifetime. What little we know about his life is from other sources, some being ironic and cynical descriptions by August Strindberg, who seems to have regarded him as a fascinating but a to confused (Faxneld 2011). After his death in 1936 he would become almost completely forgotten until an English translation of Lucifer-Hiram was published in the Swedish occult journal The Fenris Wolf nr 3 in 1993. In recent years, there has been a revived interest in Kadosh and he is seen as one of the main antecedents for the Neo-Luciferian Church. There has also been a growing academic interest in Kadosh, primarily through the work of Per Faxneld who has published several articles about him. Kadosh is of interest as one of the few, if not the first that identified himself as a devotee of Lucifer/Satan and identified as Luciferian in a national census in Denmark in 1906 (Faxneld 2011). Whether his interest in Luciferianism remained through his life is uncertain as there is limited information about his life and the only other text available from him is a later Rosicrucian text that contains no Luciferian aspects or such doctrines (Nilsson 2023a:123).

During the same period, but only partially related to each other, there was also a significant positive reception of Lucifer in the early modern re-imagining of Witchcraft as a positive form of spirituality. Charles Leland´s Aradia; the Gospel of the Witches (1899) tells the story of the goddess Aradia, daughter of Diana and Lucifer, incarnating on Earth to help the people with magic and poison against the oppression of feudal lords and the Church. In Aradia, Lucifer is the god of the Sun and Moon, and the twin and reflection of Diana, who is seen as the primary creatrix. Still, even though clearly more Pagan, Lucifer is still presented as a rebellious and proud spirit: “Diana greatly loved her brother Lucifer, the god of the Sun and of the Moon, the god of Light (Splendor), who was so proud of his beauty, and who for his pride was driven from Paradise.”  (Gregorius 2012:232f)

Aradia is a controversial text as Leland claimed that it was not his own invention, but rather that the text was given to him from his assistant Maddelena and based on genuine folk magical traditions from Italy. Many critics have argued that the text was Leland’s own invention. Regardless of the origin, Aradia would be a central influence of the Wiccan movement in the 1940’s. While Wicca would disassociate from any types of Satanism, references to Lucifer in Wiccan literature would continue, as in the works of Alex Sanders and Janet and Stewart Farrar. Here Lucifer has become a solar deity, developed from Aradia but with very little to do with the fallen Angel (Gregorius 2012:234).

Following Theosophy, we find several esoteric writers that present an ambivalent if not outright positive view of Lucifer in the twentieth century. One important example is Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) who continually presents Lucifer as a positive symbol, representing initiation and knowledge. He even identifyied Aiwass, the angelic being that dictated The Book of the Law to him, with “Solar-Phallic hermetic Lucifer” (Crowley 1998:227). An influential poem regarding Lucifer was then undated, and, during his lifetime, the unpublished poem Hymn to Lucifer ends with:

His body a bloody-ruby radiant
With noble passion, sun-souled Lucifer
Swept through the dawn colossal, swift aslant
On Eden’s imbecile perimeter.
He blessed nonentity with every curse
And spiced with sorrow the dull soul of sense,
Breathed life into the sterile universe,
With Love and Knowledge drove out innocence
The Key of Joy is disobedience (Crowley in Nilsson 2023b:170).

The poem would later have a significant impact on modern occulture through the American film maker Kenneth Anger (1927-2023), who used the poem as a primary inspiration for his 1972 movie Lucifer Rising. It also seems that the first time the poem was published was by Anger in 1970. Anger saw, like Crowley in Lucifer a spirit of freedom and rebellion and as the patron of the artist. He regarded Lucifer as separate from Satan. Anger would also tattoo Lucifer across his chest.

Still, it would be wrong to label Crowley a Luciferian, and he never uses the term, even if his works undoubtedly have such aspects, as well as a revision of Biblical motifs and characters. How Crowley interpreted negative Biblical symbols as positive has been analysed in Manon Hedenborg White´s The Eloquent Blood: The Goddess Babalon and the Construction of Femininities in Western Esotericism (2019). A similarly positive image of Lucifer is also found in the writings of Crowley’s disciple Jack Parsons (1914-1952). He presents Lucifer as a spirit of individuality and rebellion, pared with the goddess Babalon, and connected this with his ideas about “the Witchcraft.” While a few short texts survive, there is no evidence that Parsons managed to create any form of practice around these beliefs before his death in 1952.

As we move further in the twentieth century, there is more open expressions of Luciferian ideas. One notable example is the German esoteric order Fraternitas Saturni, founded 1926 by Eugen Grosche (1888-1964), writing as Gregor A Gregorius. According to Thomas Hakl, the cosmology of the Fraternitas Saturni is based on a polarity and conflict between, light and dark, fire and ice, and this cosmology is light as separated from darkness as represented by Chrestos (light, the sun). Lucifer is the force carrying the light to Saturn, the planet farthest from the Sun,  representing the other polarity as opposed to Chrestos. Lucifer also becomes the higher octave of Saturn. While Fraternitas Saturni used the term “Luciferian Principle,” there is no indication that participants labelled themselves as Luciferians or that the Lucirerian Principle played a significant role (Hakl 2013). Fraternitas Saturni was introduced to the anglophone world with Stephen Flowers book Fire and Ice: Magical Teachings of Germany’s Greatest Secret Occult Order (1995), which also included translations of some of their ceremonies. In his book Flowers emphasised the Luciferian and Satanic elements of Fraternitas Saturni.

One of the more interesting examples of a non-Satanic Luciferianism was the British occultist Madelaine Montalban (1910-1982). Montalban published very little about her Luciferian ideas during her lifetime, so a lot is ascribed to her comes from people associated with her, like Michael Howard. Julia Philps’ Madeline Montalban: The Magus of St Giles is the only currently available biography of her (2012).

In 1956, she founded, with Nicolas Heron, the Order of the Morning Star, or Ordo Stella Matutina (OSM). OSM developed a system of magic based on astrology and interaction with angelic beings, one of the aims being for the adept to develop a relationship with these angelic beings themselves. She wrote a small text, The Book of Lumiel, that is as of yet unpublished. Based on extracts from the book, primarily from Michael Howard and Julia Philips, we encounter Lucifer as Lumiel, the light-bringer [Image at right] that seek to guide mankind from darkness to light. For Montalban, Lumiel was originally a Babylonian god, and she made several references to Chaldean magic as central for her work and associated it with Venus.

Montalban made a clear distinction between Lucifer and Satan, and, according to Howard, the teachings of Lumiel or Lucifer came rather late in the courses of OSM and were further developed in a text called The Book of the Devil. In this text, Lucifer is presented as the first created being, the first subdivision of God “representing divine knowledge and wisdom and the intellect.” Lucifer is appointed by God or “the Cosmic Creator” to rule over the Earth and is devoted to the evolution of mankind. Montalban interprets the story of the fall of the Watchers as the angelic beings mixed their vibrations with the “daughters of men.” The reason being that Lucifer felt that the evolution of mankind was too slow. However, mankind was not prepared for this wisdom, and so it led to chaos and anarchy. As punishment, Lucifer had to incarnate in human form and become “The Light of the World” and take upon himself “pain and sorrows” of mankind. Montalban is presenting an idea that Christ was one of Lucifers incarnations. Following this description, we see a developed and original take on the story of the fall of Lucifer, in some respects it is reminiscent of the ideas found among the Kurdish Ezidi or Yezidi. The Order of the Morning Star considers its understanding of Lucifer to have nothing to do with Satanism.

Montalban’s teachings from OSM are largely unpublished, and so later interpretations largely come from the recollections of her students. One of the most important of these was Michael Howard (1948-2015), a member in OSM between 1967-1969. Howard was one of the most central and original thinkers within the British Pagan scene, being the chief-editor of The Cauldron (1976-2015) and one of the primary writers popularising Luciferianism within modern Paganism and Witchcraft. Howard was a member of several different Pagan and Esoteric organisations, and in 1999 he was initiated into Andrew Chumbleys Cultus Sabbati. Howard developed ideas about Lucifer that contained elements from a variety of esoteric authors, like Montalban, Cochrane and Chumbley. Writing under the pseudonym Frater Ashtan, he wrote articles about Luciferianism for The Cauldron, and later these ideas would be published in books like Pillars of Tubal Cain (2001) and The Book of Fallen Angels (2004). Howard also wrote about the history of Traditional Witchcraft in Children of Cain (2000) and several works on local British forms of Witchcraft where he emphasised the Luciferian element. The Luciferian elements are noticeable in his later works and particularly the above-mentioned Pillars of Tubal Cain and The Book of Fallen Angels (Gregorius 2012:243f).

Howard attributed strong Luciferians components to the work of Montalban but also to the work of Robert Cochrane (1931-1966), founder of a Witchcraft traditions during the 1950s that diverged from Gerald Gardner’s. This has led to some critique that Howard overemphasized Lucifer and interpreted Cochranes texts to fit his own beliefs, as Lucifer does not seem to be mentioned in the surviving writings of Cochrane.

While the term “Luciferian” was established as a reference to a form of spirituality that expressed a positive view of Lucifer, and there were several positive reimagining’s of Lucifer in the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, it is more difficult to find examples of groups or individuals that used the label Luciferian about themselves. Neither Blavatsky or Crowley used it, and as far as I can see, neither did the Fraternitas Saturni, although there is mention about a Luciferian principle. The first to publicly call himself Luciferian seems to have been Ben Kadosh in 1906. Another early example of the use of the term Luciferian publicly as a self-imposed identity was within the Process Church of the Final Judgment (active from 1966 until the middle of the 1970´s) which identified “Luciferian” as one of the identities to be used by their members, the others being Jehovian and Satanist. The Process is of interest as they make a clear distinction between Lucifer and Satan, as well as Luciferian and Satanist. For the Process Church, Luciferians where more optimistic and positive to life than the Satanist:

LUCIFER, the Light Bearer, urges us to enjoy life to the full, to value success in human terms, to be gentle and kind and loving, and to live in peace and harmony with one another. Man’s apparent inability to value success without descending into greed, jealousy, and an exaggerated sense of his own importance, has brought the God LUCIFER into disrepute. He has become mistakenly identified with SATAN. (De Grimston 1970)

For the Process Church the goal was the unity of the gods of the universe (,Jehova, Satan, Lucifer and Christ), the latter being both a fourth god and the unifying principle. None of the gods was evil but could be unbalanced and reflected aspects of a person that had to be both embraced and worked upon. Members could be combinations of these gods. The idea of the unity between the gods was also related to a millenarian idea about the end times that would happen when the gods where united in love.  Later in the 1970’s, the Process Church faced a lot of internal conflicts and outside pressure and was disbanded.  In 1977, it reformed as the Foundation Faith of the Millennium (Gregorius 2023a).

It is in the later part of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries that we find clear examples of self-identified Luciferian groups. One example is the Neo-Luciferian Church (NLC) founded in Copenhagen, Denmark in 2005 by Bjarne Salling Pedersen in collaboration with Michael Bertiaux from Chicago. The NLC practices a form of Luciferianism that is inspired by Gnosticism and draws a lot of inspiration from the writings of Ben Kadosh, but also from the Thelema and Bertiaux eclectic interpretation of Vodou. The Neo-Luciferian Church has a linage that traces back to the different esoteric and occult orders that where founded by Michael Bertiaux, but also Gnostic French esoteric traditions. Organized as an initiatory order NLC have seven degrees, but only six are named: Lightbearer, Deacon, Priest/priestess, High Priest/priestess, Bishop and Arch-Bishop. As initiations are only performed physically, NLC have not expanded in any significant degree outside of Denmark and Sweden, though there are a few members in the United States. There is a visible influence from the degree structure found in the Thelemic organisations Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica and Ordo Templi Orientis (Neo-Luciferian Church website 2013).

Members of NLC are expected to develop their own understanding of Lucifer and Luciferianism, and NLC encouragescritical thinking and rejection of authorities. The idea of Lucifer is non-Satanic and NLC contrast Luciferianism with Satanism. Lucifer is presented as a force for illumination and the quest for knowledge, and members argue strongly against an identification between Lucifer and Satan. As such they are a distinctly non-Satanic form of Luciferianism. While the webpage for NLC is no longer active, the group maintains its activities primarily in Denmark and Sweden (personal communication)

One of the most important Luciferian authors is the American Michael Ford who has published several books on Luciferianism such as The Bible of the Adversary, Luciferian Witchcraft, Luciferian Goetia, to name a few. He also runs the webpage Luciferian Apotheca and is currently one of the leaders of the Assembly of Light Bearers. Before he was one of three leaders of the Greater Church of Lucifer, founded. The Greater Church of Lucifer opened a physical church 2015 in Spring, a suburb to Houston, Texas. After a few months the church had to close due to protests and harassment and one of the leaders later converted to Evangelical Christianity (Blakinger 2017). In articles connected to the opening of the church and the following protests, Ford, and other members, where clear that they were not Satanists and regarded Luciferianism as being a separate tradition. Like other forms of Luciferianism Ford places a central emphasis on rebellion and questioning authority, but he also uses symbols and images that are more Satanic and Demonic than many other forms of Luciferianism (Cevjan 2023:317-321). Ford see his form of Luciferianism as part of the Left Hand Path, a term not used by all Luciferians. After the collapse of the Greater Church of Lucifer in North America Ford with two other members created the Assembly of Light Bearers that remains active (Assembly of Light Bearers website 2018).

While there are some organizations that will explicitly use the term Luciferian like the Greater Church of Lucifer (reconstituted as Assembly of Light Bearers), the Neo-Luciferian Church, the Luciferian Society, there are also orders that have Luciferian tendencies and been central to the development of modern Luciferianism. The Swedish based order Dragon Rouge, founded in 1989, has strong Luciferian tendencies, and, as their material have become available in English, they are now more influential globally with active groups especially in South America. Dragon Rouge use term “dark magic” for their practice and see themselves as part of the Left Hand Path. The founder Thomas Karlsson have claimed to have had revelations from Lucifer that he sees these the foundation of his order. Dragon Rouge is however an organisation that contains a lot of different forms of magical practices, and the order cannot as such be labelled as explicitly Luciferian, even if Lucifer plays a central and recurring role (Gregorius 2023b:306-13 and  Granholm 2014:113, 122). The Polish artist and writer, Asenath Mason, who used to lead the Polish section of Dragon Rouge, Lodge Magan, has published extensively on Lucifer. In her organization, Temple of the Ascending Flame, the focus is on Lucifer as a part of a Draconian trinity. The other is Leviathan and Lilith, and Lucifer representing the solar and enlightenment (Mason 2007;  Aseanth Mason: Author and Artist website 2024). Her work often follows similar themes as those found in Dragon Rouge with work on the Qliphotic.

DOCTRINES/BELIEFS

Luciferianism is as an umbrella term for different new religious movements and ideologies that venerate Lucifer as either as an ideal or as a deity and there are no set doctrines as such to be found.  Luciferians can differ on who Lucifer is supposed to be and there are Luciferians that are atheists and those that are theistic, some are closer to Satanism while other emphasise Lucifers pre-Christian origins like the Order of the Morning Star and the Neo-Luciferian Church.

Certain themes have developed that is recurring in Luciferian literature. In the twentieth century, Luciferianism has increasingly become a term of self-definition and often refers to an understanding of Lucifer that has been significantly separated from its Christian origin, and many forms of Luciferianism also regard their tradition as distinct from Satanism. Many Luciferians see themselves as part of a Gnostic tradition with a focus on knowledge and enlightenment as a path to self-deification, we see this from Order of the Morning Star to Assembly of Light Bearers. Still there is no true or original form of Luciferianism, and the term is fluid and changing.

Clear separation between Luciferianism and Satanism only exist as a theoretical ideal type, and it should be noted that lived practices are far blurrier. We further have the problem that the positive reimagining of Lucifer up to the twentieth century follows the same history of reimagining as  with Satan. Thus there are strong links to “Romantic Satanism” within both Luciferianism and Satanism as well as the reception of Milton´s Paradise Lost. The scholar of Religion Masimo Introvigne has for this reason chosen not to make a distinction between Satanism and Luciferianism historically (Introvigne 2016:4). As modern Luciferians however do make this distinction, it is important to understand Luciferians from their own perspective.

To distinguish Satan and Lucifer many Luciferians emphasise the pre-Christian origin of Lucifer, the name being derived from lucem ferens, Latin for Light-bearer, or Light-bringer, and referred originally to referring to Venus as the morning star. In Roman religion there are a few references to Lucifer; sometimes he is paired with Noctifer (Night-bringer, Venus as the evening star) as in the poetry of Catullus. It is debatable if Lucifer was a proper god in Rome or seen as a personification of the morning or as a form of Aura (Dawn). While Luciferianism tends to use the Christian myth of Lucifer’s rebellion against the host of Heaven, many Luciferians want to emphasise the connection to the Roman god to make a clearer distinction between themselves and Satanism. Groups that place an emphasis on the pre-Christian origin of Lucifer are the Order of the Morning Star (which argues more for a Babylonian origin) and the Neo-Luciferian Church. Still, there do not seem to be any Luciferians that only focus on the Roman Pagan god and so aspects from Christian mythology are present even in the Neo-Luciferian Church. They elevate the rebellious nature of Lucifer and use him as a symbol of Enlightenment, presenting their understanding of the nature of Lucifer as (Neo-Luciferian Church website 2013):

Lucifer is the deity of illumination, education and insight.
Lucifer is the deity of pride.Lucifer is the deity of freedom.
Lucifer is the deity of prosperity.
Lucifer is a primeval force.

Christianity established a narrative from the fourth century onwards about a rebellious angel that was seeking to overthrow God but due to his pride fell and became Satan. As this development came rather late in Christian theology the use of the morning star is often not used negatively in the Bible, as in 2 Peter 1:19 where it is in reference to Christ as: “a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.” There are also references that identify Christ with the morning star in Revelations. This has led some Luciferians to see an identification between Lucifer and Christ and thus rejecting their tradition as being anti-Christian One of these was Madelaine Montalban and her Order of the Morning Star.

Luciferians then tend to distinguish themselves between themselves and Satanism seeing the two as separate. Michael Ford presents Luciferianism as a more spiritual philosophy in contrast to Satanism, that is presented as being more materialistic (probably connecting Satanism to LaVey´s Church of Satan). Similar sentiments can be found among other Luciferians. Luciferianism is regarded as being more focused on knowledge and illumination rather than physical gratification. Also, Luciferianism is not a dualistic philosophy while Satanism is seen as being bound in their opposition to Christianity.

For Ford the goal is self-deification using antinomianism, something often found in Satanism as well (Cevjan 2023:230). In his book Apotheosis (2019) he presents ” the Luciferian 11 points of power” that aim to explain the central core of Luciferian belief. The focus is on Lucifer as rebellious and striving for autonomy, and to challenge all forms of dogmatism and authorities, and for the Luciferian to strive to self-deification (apotheosis), not to worship Lucifer or any other god. The eleven  points are referred to by the Assembly of Light-Bearers as:

The 11 Points are the basic foundation for the Luciferian Philosophy. They are non-dogmatic and adaptable to the individual to support a Left Hand Path, or self-determined path of power utilizing the continual process of Liberation, Illumination and Apotheosis (https://www.assemblyoflightbearers.org/luciferian-11-points-of-power).

When presenting the differences between Satanism and Luciferianism it´s necessary to remember that Satanism is here presented as the” Other,” and these divisions say little about Satanism as understood by Satanists. Satanism is an equally heterogenic phenomenon, some being materialistic while other are theistic and spiritual, and many forms of Satanism are indistinguishable from Luciferianism, with many using both to describe their practice. One reason to emphasise that there are differences is to create an identity for Luciferianism. In the case of the Neo-Luciferian Church there is an emphasis on the pre-Christian and Gnostic aspects of their teachings that are considered to distinguish their ideals about Lucifer from Satanism. A distinction between Lucifer and Satan is not uncommon and can be found in other forms of Esotericism as well as exemplified by the writings of Robert Ambelain and Jean Chaboseau where Lucifer is related to Venus and contrasted to Satan, ideas also expressed in the modernist poetry of H.D. (1886-1961) (Robinson 2016:107). Luciferians then tend to see Lucifer as less based on Christianity than Satan. While historically indistinguishable, Luciferianism and Satanism have begun to develop as two different forms of spirituality and many Luciferians regard their traditions to be distinct, we need to treat it as such.

While there is no symbol of Luciferianism that is accepted by all, many Luciferians use the seal of Lucifer as a symbol for Lucifer (Image at right). The symbol was part of the seal of Lucifer originally used in the Grimorium Verum from the eighteenth century onward and has been used by both Michael Ford and Asenath Mason. It has today become one of the most popular symbols for Lucifer and has also been adopted by the Swiz avantgarde metal band Zeal and Ardor who present Lucifer as a force against oppression and subjugation (Zeal and Ardor website. n.d.).

RITUALS/PRACTICES

Specific Luciferian groups have distinct rituals, and these also vary in the importance they play. Some, like the Neo-Luciferian Church, uses as structure that are well familiar from other forms of esoteric orders, like co-Masonic orders such as the Ordo Templi Orientis but encourage their members to develop their own understanding and practice. Michael Ford has published extensive ritual writings, often following a ceremonial magical format, often with inspiration from traditional European grimoires and references to non-Wiccan forms of Witchcraft, like those of the Cultus Sabbati. Ford´s books are the most ritualistic, and we find similar formats here as in other twentieth century magical traditions, with the opening of a circle space, developing a body of light, assumption of god-forms, and invocations of “dark entities” (Cevjan 2023:232). Also, the works derived from Dragon Rouge, like those of Thomas Karlsson and Asenath Mason, contain ritual description often focused in the Qliphotic side of the tree of life, often oriented to astral work and travel. Not all Luciferians, however, are as oriented toward rituals, and some are more interested in Luciferianism as a philosophy. All forms of Luciferianism discussed here reject the use of animal sacrifice in their practice; here they are aligned with many forms of Esoteric and Occult traditions that developed in Western Europe and North America in the twentieth century, including most forms of Satanism.

ORGANIZATION/LEADERSHIP

There are different forms of Luciferian organization, and most Luciferians are probably not even members of a Luciferian organization, which in any event tend to be small, but rather practice alone as a private form of spirituality. An important area for Luciferians to meet is online on platforms like Facebook and Discord groups that can have several thousands of members. Still, this is a poor indication on the level of interest. Organized Luciferian groups many use the structure from co-Masonry and Ceremonial Magical groups like the Hermetic order of the Golden Dawn with fixed degrees. This is mixed with a rejection of authority that can appear paradoxical. Organizations like Assembly of Light Bearers and Temple of Ascending Flame both reject a traditional form of organization and don´t offer conventional forms of membership, being more of a network. Many Luciferian organizations are local in their activities, like the Neo-Luciferian Church, so most Luciferians will work solitary or be members on non-Luciferian groups that still are open to such approaches. There currently are no central figure that can be said to represent most Luciferians.

ISSUES/CHALLENGES

Due to the association with Satanism, Luciferians have had to face similar forms of prejudice and hostility as Satanists. One example was the protests in Spring, Texas related to the opening of the Greater Church of Lucifer. This opposition is perhaps also a reason Luciferians have tended to distance themselves from Satanism. Like Satanism and Witchcraft, the term has its origin as an accusatory label and little if no distinction was made between Satanism and Luciferianism originally. Even within Pagan and Occult communities the use of Lucifer can be controversial and connected with black magic and Satanism. For Luciferianism this can pose a challenge in two directions, one is that the connection to Satanism means that the same stigma will become associated with them, the other is that a complete rejection of Satanism and separation of Lucifer from Christian mythology can also lead to the symbol losing meaning and cultural relevance.

While there has been controversy around individual groups using Lucifer either as their focus or as one central aspect of their practice, like the Process Church of the Final Judgment, and there have been internal conflicts, most Luciferian organisations seem to have avoided much public controversy.

IMAGES

Image #1: William Blake’s illustration of Lucifer as presented in John Milton’s Paradise Lost.
Image #2: Logo of Lucifer: The Light-Bearer.
Image #3: The seal of Lucifer.

REFERENCES

Aseanth Mason: Author and Artist website. 2024. Accessed from  https://www.asenathmason.com/ on 17 March 2024.

Assembly of Light Bearers website. 2018. Accessed from https://www.assemblyoflightbearers.org/ on 17 March 2024.

Assembly of Light Bearers website. 2018. “Luciferian 11 points of Power” Accessed from https://www.assemblyoflightbearers.org/luciferian-11-points-of-power on 17 March 2024.

Blakinger, Keri. 2017. “Exorcised: Luciferian church looks to start anew after harassment”. Houston Chronicle, April 23. Accessed from https://www.houstonchronicle.com/lifestyle/houston-belief/article/Exorcised-Luciferian-church-looks-to-start-anew-11093429.php on 17 March 2024.

Cevjan, Olivia. 2023.“Michael W. Ford (The Order of Phosphorus, etc), excerpt from The Bible of the Adversary (2007).” Pp. 317-22 in Satanism: A Reader, edited by Per Faxneld and Johan Nilsson. New York: Oxford University Press

Crowley, Aleister. 1998. Magick: Liber ABA, edited by Hymenaeus Beta. York Beach: Weiser.

De Grimston, Robert. 1970. The Gods and Their People. Chicago: Process Church of the Final Judgment, Chicago Chapter.

Faxneld, Per. 2013. “The Devil is Red: Socialist Satanism in the Nineteenth Century.” Numen 60:558-58.

Faxneld, Per. 2011. “The Strange Case of Ben Kadosh: A Luciferian Pamphlet from 1906 and its Current Renaissance.” Aries 1:1-21.

Flowers, Stephen. 1995. Fire and Ice: Magical Teachings of Germany’s Greatest Secret Occult Order. Woodbury: Llewellyn Publications.

Frisvold, Nicholaj de Mattos. 2023. Seven Crossroads of Night: Quimbanda in Theory and Practice. West Yorkshire: Hadean Press.

Gregorius, Fredrik. 2023a.“The Process Church of the Final Judgement, excerpts from “The Gods on War” (1967) & “The Gods and Their People” (1970).” Pp. 187–216 in Satanism: A Reader, edited by Per Faxneld and Johan Nilsson. New York: Oxford University Press.

Gregorius, Fredrik. 2023b. ”Thomas Karlsson (Dragon Rouge), excerpt from Kabbala, kliffot och den goetiska magin (2004).” Pp. 306–316 in Satanism: A Reader, edited by Per Faxneld and Johan Nilsson. New York: Oxford University Press

Granholm, Kennet. 2014. Dark Enlightenment: The Historical, Sociological, and Discursive Contexts of Contemporary Esoteric Magic. Leiden: Brill.

Gregorius, Fredrik. 2013. “Luciferian Witchcraft: At the Crossroads between Paganism and Satanism.” Pp. 229-49 in The Devil’s Party: Satanism in Modernity, edited by Per Faxneld and Jesper Aa. Petersen. New York: Oxford University Press.

Hakl, Hans Thomas. 2013. “The Magical order of Franternitas Saturni.” Pp. 37-66 in Occultism in a Global Perspectives, edited by Henrik Bogdan and Gordan Djurdjevic. Stocksfield: Acumen Publishing.

Hedenborg White, Manon. 2019. The Eloquent Blood: The Goddess Babalon and the Construction of Femininities in Western Esotericism. New York: Oxford University Press

Hedenborg White, Manon and Fredrik Gregorius. 2019. “The Satanic Temple: Secularist Activism and Occulture in the American Political Landscape.” International Journal For the Study of New Religions. 10:89-110. Sheffield: Equinox Publishing.

Howard, Michael. 2016.”Teachings of the Light: Madeline Montalban and the Order of the Morgning Star.” Pp. 55-65 in The Luminous Stone: Lucifer in Western Esotericism, edited by Michael Howard and Daniel A. Schulke. Richmond Vista: Three Hands Press.

Howard, Michael. 2004. The Book of Fallen Angels. Somerset: Capall Bann Publishing.

Introvigne, Massimo. 2016. Satanism: A Social History. Leiden: Brill

Luijk, Ruben van. 2016. Children of Lucifer: The Origins of Modern Religious Satanism. New York: Oxford University Press

Mason, Asenath. 2007. “Necronimicon Gnosis: A practical introduction.” Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein. Accessed from https://deepcuts.blog/tag/asenath-mason/  on 17 March 2024.

Medway, Gareth J. 2001. Lure of the Sinister: The Unnatural History of Satanism. New York: New York University Press.

Neo-Luciferian Church website. 2013. Accessed from https://web.archive.org/web/20131228124306/http://www.neoluciferianchurch.dk/neo-luciferian-church-welcome.php) on 17 March 2024.

Nilsson, Johan. 2023a. ”Ben Kadosh (aka Carl William Hansen), Den ny morgens gry (1906).” Pp. 122-34 in Satanism: A Reader, edited by Per Faxneld and Johan Nilsson. New York: Oxford University Press

Nilsson, Johan. 2023b. ”Aleister Crowley, “Hymn to Lucifer” (undated) & excerpt from The Book of Thoth (1944).” Pp.  153-73 in Satanism: A Reader, edited by Per Faxneld and Johan Nilsson. New York: Oxford University Press.

Phillips, Julia. 2012. Madeline Montalban: The Magus of St Giles. London: Neptune Press.

Rhodes, Henry Taylor Fowkes. 1965. The Satanic Mass: A Sociological and Criminological Study. London: Arrow.

Robinson, Matte. 2016. The Astral H.D. Occult and Religious Sources and Contexts for H.D´s Poetry and Prose. New York: Bloomsbury.

Schock, Peter A. 2003. Romantic Satanism: myth and the historical moment in Blake, Shelley and Byron. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan

Strube, Julian. 2016. “The ‘Baphomet’ of Eliphas Lévi: Its Meaning and Historical Context.” Correspondences 4. Accessed from https://correspondencesjournal.com/15303-2/) on 17 March 2024.

Temple of Ascending Flame website. n.d. “About Us.” Accessed from http://ascendingflame.com/index.php/about-us/) on 17 March 2024.

Werblowsky, R. J. Zwi. 2007. Lucifer and Prometheus: A Study of Milton´s Satan. Oxon: Routledge.

Zeal and Ardor website. n.d. Accessed from https://www.zealandardor.com/ on 17 March 2024.

Publication Date:
23 March 2024

MAGNIFICAT MEAL TIMELINE

1953 (June 17):  Debra Burslem was born in Melbourne.

1973:  Debra Burslem married Gordon Geileskey.

1992 (some date to 1986 or 1990):  The Magnificat Meal Movement (MMM) began in Melbourne.

1993:  The Geileskeys’ real estate business collapsed; they relocated to Toowoomba (Queensland).

1993:  The Magnificat Meal Movement arrived in Toowoomba (Queensland). The group soon moved to nearby Helidon.

1995 (December):  The Geileskeys  moved into “Shrine of Mary” at Mary’s Mount, Helidon.

1996 (February):  MMM families begin relocating to Mary’s Mount.

1996 (May 17):  Bishop Morris wrote to Priests indicating the MMM had no official church approval.

1997:  Debra Geileskey clashed with the Parish Priest at Helidon.

1997 (July 1):  Bishop Morris issued a statement reiterating his earlier letter to priests.

1997 (September 1):  Bishop of Toowoomba, William Morris, established a Diocesan Commission of Enquiry to investigate the Magnificat Meal Movement.

1997 (November):  The Commission of Enquiry into the Magnificat Meal Movement completed its first report.

1998 (October):  The Commission of Enquiry into the Magnificat Meal Movement completed its second report.

1998:  An investigation was conducted by the Office of Consumer Affairs of the Queensland Department of Justice into allegations regarding use of monies for religious purposes. There were no negative findings due to insufficient evidence.

1999 (February 11).  Bishop Morris issued an episcopal declaration censuring MMM.

1999 (June):  Debra and Gordon Geilesky separated. Gordon threatened to evict Debra and her followers from convent and denounced his wife as fraud. Debra issued a domestic violence order against husband.

1999 (October):  Former member Wal Maggs self-published a critical book, An End Times Tragedy: Debra Geileskey and the Magnificat Meal Movement.

1999 (October 13):  A judgement in the legal dispute over MMM property was handed down by Justice John Muir in the Supreme Court of Queensland.

2003:  Bishop William Morris wrote to priests in the Diocese of Toowoomba reiterating the status of the Magnificat Meal Movement.

2007:  Debra Geilesky relocated to Vanuatu.

FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY 

The Magnificat Meal Movement International (MMM) originated in Melbourne (Victoria, Australia) around 1992 (though some sources claim as early as 1986) as a loose-knit set of prayer groups affiliated with strands of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal (CCR) which sought to encourage increased devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Eucharist. In addition to its devotional concerns, the group also distributed a series of, at times, apocalyptic private revelations allegedly received by the group’s founder Debra Burslem (b.1953), in the form of diaries entitled What Might God Say to Me Today…in Australia. [Image at right]

It is difficult to unravel the early part of Debra Burslem’s biography as her own writings are often contradicted by the information uncovered by journalists and ecclesiastical investigations. Debra Burslem (later Debra Geileskey) was born in Melbourne in 1953 and educated in local parochial Roman Catholic schools and eventually attended teacher training college in the 1970s. She married Gordon Geileskey at around age twenty. It was around this time that she embarked upon a career as a schoolteacher during the late 1970s and early 1980s in the Catholic education system in Victoria, rising to the level of an acting principal before quitting the teaching profession. Debra Geilesky later claimed she was “black-banned” for a close spiritual association with a priest, although this was denied by the priest in question. Other sources, obtained by a later ecclesiastical investigation, suggested that Debra was overly disciplinarian in her treatment of children. Following leaving the teaching profession, Debra Geilesky went into the real estate industry with her then husband, Gordon. The couple’s fortunes were not positive, and according to contemporary reports they were near bankruptcy by the mid-1990s. According to media reports it was around this time that Debra became increasingly involved in the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, through the parish of Our Lady Help of Christians in East Brunswick, Melbourne. [Image at right]

Debra Geileskey became increasingly influential in this milieu, much to the chagrin of the parish priest, who claimed she began to organise against him. This was the first of a series of conflicts between Geileskey and the parochial Catholic clergy over the succeeding years. It was around this time, in 1993, that Debra Geileskey claimed that she was given a “miraculous sign,” and she and her husband relocated to Toowoomba in Southeast Queensland. Upon arrival the group continued its activities under the auspices of prayer groups in the Holy Name Parish in Toowoomba. Once again tensions over oversight emerged with the parish priest, with Geileskey and her followers decamping to Helidon and purchasing a disused convent called Mary’s Mount, located behind the parish church of St Joseph’s.

Over the ensuing years the group became an increasingly controversial presence within the Diocese of Toowoomba. While initially Bishop William Morris [Image at right] had permitted the group to operate in his diocese, he had not given any official approval and was awaiting further documentation. During this early period Bishop Morris had received both Debra and Gordon Geileskey in his office to discuss the movement. Concerns were raised, however, when the movement began publishing Debra’s diaries, which contained various bizarre claims about the Church. Over time Debra began to claim that the Church, at the instigation of the Devil, was persecuting her.

In mid-1996 Bishop Morris responded to these claims in a first letter to priests in his diocese in which he noted that questions had been raised regarding the movement’s status in the Church, its orthodoxy, its alleged private revelations and miracles, and its financial activities. Distancing himself from the group, Bishop Morris concluded the letter by noting that “from this moment in time until further notice the Magnificat Meal Movement has no standing within this Diocese.” Bishop Morris, however, left the door open to the group.

After a year, when it became clear that Debra was not interested in rapprochement, Bishop Morris issued a second public statement in which he reiterated his earlier letter:

I stated then and I state again now that the Magnificat Meal Movement is a private movement sponsored and foundered by Debra Geileskey. It is of Debra and has absolutely nothing to do with the Catholic Church. There is no Church approval of the Magnificat Meal Movement or for the alleged private revelations and visions of Debra.  Those who attend and participate in the practices of the Magnificat Meal Movement do so as private individuals and not as members of the Catholic Church. 

Bishop Morris repeated his warnings of the previous May, noting that there “is clear evidence of the half-truths and inconsistencies in statements and reports made by the Magnificat Meal Movement,” and, moreover, that “The Magnificat Meal Movement uses traditional Catholic practices to entrap people into a sect or cult that is not Catholic.” Morris considered the movement to be damaging to its members, concluding that:

The confusion and the hurt surrounding Debra and her movement saddens me for there have been many who through traditional devotion to Eucharist and to Mary have experienced conversion of heart and deepened their faith in the Risen Lord.
Unfortunately because of the half-truths, the inconsistencies and in some instances the lack of orthodoxy concerning aspects of statements made and practices performed, the Magnificat Meal Movement places itself outside the catholic Church.

Mary’s Mount, however, continued to attract a significant influx of pilgrims for First Saturday devotions and other events, drawing busloads from as far away as Ireland. Meanwhile, the Magnificat Meal Movement increased its property holdings around Helidon. Debra also began to collect a considerable amount of funds toward plans to build a Basilica at Mary’s Mount. Followers later claimed that these donations were obtained under false pretences. Investigations by Australian regulatory authorities continued until as recently as 2016.

With the sizeable number of pilgrims continuing to attend First Saturday devotions in Helidon, and the influx of supporters living at Mary’s Mount, in September 1997 Bishop Morris established a commission to investigate the Magnificat Meal Movement, following the (then classified) norms set down by the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for investigating alleged apparitions. This commission produced two reports, and subsequently consulted with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on further actions. Debra was expressly invited to participate, but refused, later claiming not to have received an invitation. The findings of the commission were negative. Its final report recommended a strategy of not provoking further controversy and simply reaffirming the position already stated by Bishop Morris in 1996. More importantly, the final report recommended providing both Eucharistic and Marian devotional outlets within the diocese, as well as offering psychological and spiritual support for those who decided to leave the movement. To this end, Bishop Morris issued a Declaration on February 11, 1999, in which he stated:

On the basis of all the information available it can only be concluded that the alleged apparitions associated with the Magnificat Meal Movement are devoid of any supernatural origin. The writings published by the Movement itself also lead to the inevitable conclusion that it neither has, nor desires, any place in the Catholic Church.

Moreover, Bishop Morris quoted the response of the Secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith who noted, among other things, that:

There is an obvious lack of due respect and obedience to legitimate authority and a disregard for Church discipline. It is misleading, to say the least, that these attitudes should be presented as inspired by Our Blessed Lady. None of this can come from a good source…All of this constitutes a clear danger to many good people who may be lead away from proper obedience and loyalty to the Church.

Meanwhile, as the turn of the millennium fast approached, the group’s behaviour became increasingly concerning to authorities. In April 1999, Debra together with fourteen members of the movement pleaded guilty to disturbing a worship service at St Joseph’s Church in Helidon. Soon after authorities began to investigate what they feared were plans for a mass suicide by members of the group. The same year also witnessed attempts by Debra’s estranged husband Gordon to evict members from the group’s property at Mary’s Mount and widespread media coverage including two nationally broadcast documentaries Slaves of the Eucharist and Two Roads to Helidon. No mass suicide took place and following the turn of the millennium the group has largely faded into obscurity, only occasionally popping up as part of periodic media exposés.

In 2003, in a final public comment on the matter, Bishop Morris reiterated his earlier statements and warned priests of the need for permission to celebrate the sacraments within his diocese. This letter also noted the need to pastorally care and pray for those within the group and those who choose to leave. In this letter Bishop Morris was emphatic that he considered the group a “cult,” noting:

Throughout the world there are many similar cult like movements which have caused great distress to individuals and families because they take away people’s freedom to think for themselves.  Some members realising this have accepted the invitation of the Church to move away from this cult.

After this time the movement’s activities have attracted far less attention, outside of the occasional cult exposé stories following a series of further defections of key members over the ensuing years. Since 2007, the group’s founder has been resident in the island nation of Vanuatu and the group’s only public presence appears to be online through its website.

DOCTRINES/BELIEFS

Several volumes of What Might God Say to Me Today…in Australia  are held in the National Library of Australia. [Image at right] In addition to this are the statements of Bishop Morris and various analyses undertaken by scholars. Other helpful resources include a dissertation by Irish cult watcher Mike Garde and a self-published book by former member, Wal Maggs, entitled An End Times Tragedy.

In general, the Magnificat Meal Movement initially shared the belief structures common to many of the Marian apparitional movements which have periodically emerged in Roman Catholicism since the nineteenth century. In terms of specific emphases, one finds many of the features of these movements including Eucharistic adoration, devotions to Mary through prayer and consecrations, warnings against social sin, eschatological tinged language, warnings of natural disasters, and calls to repentance. Also common in the Magnificat Meal Movement’s private revelations were attacks on the local clergy and vast conspiracy theories regarding wider corruption within the Church.

Our Spirit is upon this land, redeeming and renewing as never before. 
O Spirit call forth those the Father has chosen to go out into the harvest.
The harvest is ripe, Father. My suffering is freely given
My distress calls upon My fellow sufferers.
To repair the wounds of sin in this land.
O Father You are glorified through this resounding love.
Australia – receive love.
The Father and the Son breath the Spirit of love upon you.
Be made one with love, in love and through love.
O Southern land, so desolate in the filth of your sin.
I will gather you up. I have suffered for your salvation.
From this filth and squalor (of sin) that you have become, I will remake you to shine like a precious jewel in the Father’s crown. (What Might God Say to Me Today…in Australia Diary 6, 6 July 1992).

The group’s relationship with the institutional Roman Catholic Church, as suggested by the history above, has been fraught from the outset for both organizational and ideological reasons which are commonly found across the wider Marian apparition milieu. For example, at various times the group has flirted with Catholic traditionalism, and its approach to the Second Vatican Council has been ambivalent, fluctuating between affirming or condemning the Council depending largely on the whims of the leadership.  Similarly, at various stages the Magnificent Meal Movement has sought to align itself with various religious bodies both within a Catholic milieu and further afield. During he late 1990s, for example, Burslem attempted to align herself with dissident traditionalists from the Society of St Pius X (SSPX). However, the Society (traditionally skeptical regarding private revelations) was not receptive to this and concluded by suggesting that an examination could go much deeper, that:

Suffice it to say that, with the study made so far, there are enough proofs to conclude that the Magnificat Meal Movement cannot come from God.  Moreover it certainly leads to Protestantism by its Protestant approach to the Bible, to the Holy Eucharist, and by by-passing the submission to the Holy Catholic Church (Couture 2001).

Burslem made similar approaches to the Melkite Eparchy (who similarly rejected her overtures) and, according to one former member, local Seventh-Day Adventist congregations. Evidence suggests that these shifting emphases appear to follow the whims of the leadership.

MMM was confronted by the tabloid television program A Current Affair in Vanuatu in early 2015. Since that time it has become far more difficult to trace the Magnificat Meal Movement’s shifting belief system through its seemingly erratic online development through its website and its presence in Australia. It is rare for a group to receive the kind of media or public attention that MMM has garnered throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. MMM is now only discussed when former members are interviewed in the media.

More recently, the group’s website and YouTube channel have become largely an output for the occasional musings and personal interests of Burslem. They comprise a pastiche of New Age healing mixed with a veneer of eclectic Christian imagery, and some recordings of Christian hymns, with an occasional hint of the group’s earlier apocalyptic emphasis and conspiracy theories. Indeed, there is little today to distinguish the Magnificat Meal Movement from other wellness blogs, and so far as can be surmised from this online presence it is unclear whether the movement continues to have any real offline presence.

RITUALS/PRACTICES

As with its belief system, much of the Magnificat Meal Movement’s original ritual repertoire is drawn from traditional Roman Catholic practices. From the outset the group focused on devotional piety, in particularly Eucharistic devotion; indeed, the group members often referred to themselves as the “Slaves of the Eucharist.” The group listed eight stated aims in a pamphlet entitled “Come Join the Pilgrimage” issued in September 1998:

To participate in the Mission of the Church for the salvation of souls.
To promote and encourage Adoration of Jesus Christ, truly present in the Blessed Sacrament.
To foster evangelization and a more widespread opportunity for Adoration of Jesus Christ, by encouraging members to act as Missionaries of the Eucharist, to personally (sic.) Adoration and awareness of our God.
To promote fidelity to, and to live in conformity with, the authentic teaching authority of Christ, as expressed through His Church and His Vicar on earth.
To promote and foster devotion to Christ, through the Blessed Virgin Mary, in accordance with the traditions of the Church and the teaching of Chapter Eight of Vatican II document, Lumen Gentium, and to encourage the daily recitation of the Rosary as recommended by every Pope holding office this century.
To encourage First Saturday devotions in reparation for our personal sins and the sins of the world, as approved by Holy Mother Church.
To distribute the Icon entitled Mary, Co-Redemptrix; Mediator of All Graces and Advocate, to explain its symbolism and to legitimately participate in efforts, both prayerfully and actively, for the Church to declare, as a Dogma of Faith, that Mary is Co-Redemptrix, Mediatrix of All Graces and Advocate. By this (sic) means we pray that Jesus our King may come to reign in all hearts through the Motherly intercession of Mary.
To welcome all persons of good will into the presence and teaching of the Lord.

While many of these aims were, by mainstream Catholic standards, uncontroversial, the group’s advocacy of Mary as Co-Redemptrix, Mediatrix, and Advocate was controversial, especially after 1999.

In terms of behavioral norms, the Magnificat Meal Movement exhibited many behaviors like other conservative Catholic groups.  According to former members, who have become a major source of information, the group restricted clothing options for the purposes of modesty. Followers were not permitted to wear shorts or t-shirts. Members were banned from reading magazines. Neither CDs nor radio were permitted. Other practices were more idiosyncratic. Former members have spoken of restrictions on Christmas trees and on the celebration of birthdays, Mother’s Day, and even Easter. Within the group’s community, followers were encouraged to tithe to the movement, often in the form of cash, and to work on its properties. The group was conspicuous for its long blue robes or dresses which were worn both in the cloister and in the wider community. [Image at right]

Following the 1999 Declaration of Bishop Morris, the trajectory of the group’s rituals and practices has become significantly more difficult to trace. According to former members, the group’s severing of ties with the Catholic Church appears to have led to the abandonment of the devotional emphases of earlier times and a significant number of members left and were reintegrated into the Catholic Church. Mainstream.

ORGANIZATION/LEADERSHIP

While there is some dispute regarding who the founder of the Magnificat Meal Movement was (one article suggests the Magnificat Meal Movement was founded by someone else), the group never developed a clear leadership or organizational structure outside of the charismatic leadership of Debra Geileskey. While the group produced several ephemeral documents outlining aspects of its beliefs, there is far less information available about its organization.  According to some sources the group operated as a company Our Lady’s Mount Pty Ltd, which was registered between 1995 and 2019; however, the exact relationship between this company and the movement is not clear and at one stage legal action took place between the two entities. This confusion between the two entities was noted in the Supreme Court of Queensland in 1999, where Justice John Muir observed that:

Of the three directors of OLM, Mrs Geileskey was the one most actively involved in the management of its day to day financial affairs. She was also the person who had the most central role in the management of the Movement’s financial affairs.

Moreover, Justice Muir found that:

The complexity of the legal issues for determination in this matter arises, to a considerable degree, from the fact that the directors of OLM and Magnificat Meal have tended to act in disregard of legal entities and concepts when dealing with the large sums of money donated for the purposes of the Movement.

While Justice Muir was not asked to rule on these specific issues, his ruling suggested that there was perhaps further legal action to be taken regarding Geileskey’s fiduciary obligations and accountability, noting that “Mrs Geileskey was a director of Magnificat Meal and OLM and the guiding force of Magnificat Meal at all times.” Indeed, this was not the first time this was raised, and earlier concerns were raised by the Catholic Church about the lack of accountability outside of Geileskey and her immediate family and this increased tensions with the mainstream Church. In its second report, submitted to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith a year earlier in 1998, the Diocesan Commission concluded that it “finds unanswered questions regarding financial accountability and has concerns that every activity of the Movement is seemingly accompanied by a range of profit-making activities.” Moreover, in the group’s post-Roman Catholic phase it is difficult to identify any other figures involved other than Geileskey.

ISSUES/CHALLENGES

As the history above indicates, from the outset the group has been the subject of a series of both internal and external controversies. These are best divided into ecclesiastical, legal, and civil disputes. Perhaps the most repeated controversies have related to the group’s status in relation to the Roman Catholic Church. Like numerous other Marian apparition movements to emerge in the past century the Magnificat Meal Movement has had an ambivalent relationship with the hierarchy of the Church. As noted above, initially Bishop Morris sought to take a pastoral line with the group and met with Gordon and Debra Geileskey. This relationship soured, however, when questions were raised and Debra became increasingly scathing of individual clergy, making various unsubstantiated claims about individual priests. This led to an official Diocesane Commission, which drew the ultimate conclusion that:

After examining all the written and oral evidence, this Commission can find nothing to substantiate her claims of supernatural revelations and apparitions, nor of miraculous events associated with them.

Over the years MMM sought to adopt a series of strategies to overcome this including attempts to bypass the authority of the local bishop through alliance with either canonically irregular groups or through Eastern Rite Catholic Churches.

In terms of legal disputes, the Magnificat Meal Movement, its members, and its associated legal entities have been involved in a series of issues ranging from disturbing worship services, to child custody and property disputes. Moreover, the group’s activities in the town of Helidon have resulted in a considerable amount of antipathy in the wider community, most clearly evident in the documentaries Slaves of the Eucharist and The Road to Helidon. [Image at right]

While the circumstances of Debra Geileskey’s move to Vanuatu has remained a source of speculation, with some suggesting this was to avoid potential legal proceedings against her. Meanwhile, the group appears to be in terminal decline. Moreover, its alienation from its Catholic moorings and abandonment of all the Catholic devotional practices has cut-off its only real source for the recruitment of future members.  It remains controversial in Vanuatu and the subject of ongoing scrutiny by former members.

IMAGES

Image #1: Debra Burslem Geileskey.
Image #2: Our Lady Help of Christians Parish in East Brunswick, Victoria.
Image #3: Bishop William Morris of Toowoomba.
Image #4: Cover of What Might God Say to Me Today…in Australia.
Image #5: Magnificat Meal Movement Members.
Image #6: St Joseph’s Catholic Church, Helidon, Queensland.

REFERENCES

Couture, Daniel. 2001. “The Magnificat Meal Movement – An Assessment.” SSPX Newsletter of the District of Asia, January-June. Accessed from https://sspxasia.com/Newsletters/2001/Jan-Mar/magnificat-meal-movement.htm on 15 March 2024.

Dobbyn, Paul. 2015. “Warning on cults.” The Catholic Leader, April 21. Accessed from https://catholicleader.com.au/news/warning-on-cults/ on 15 March 2024.

Doherty, Bernard. 2017. “Marian Arks Cut Adrift: The Post-Roman Catholic Development of Two Australian Marian Apparitional Movements.” Pp. 98-121 in Mariology at the Beginning of the Third Millennium, edited by Kevin Wagner et al. Eugene: Wipf and Stock.

Gearing, Amanda and Paul Whittaker. 1999. “Donors to sect basilica plan want cash back.” The Courier-Mail. July 17, p. 5.

Griffith, Chris. 1999. “Clouded Vision.” The Sunday Mail, June 27, p. 6.

Kahl, Janet and Bernard Doherty. 2016. “Channelling Mary in the New Age: The Magnificat Meal Movement.” Alternative Spirituality and Religion Review 7:295–313.

Owen, Ray. 1999. “ ‘Why I quit Helidon cult’.” The Catholic Leader, July 4, p. 9.

Murray, David. 2015. “A life of luxury for sect chief.” Courier Mail, February 22, p. 28.

A Current Affair. 2015. “Queensland MMM cult leader tracked down and confronted in Vanuatu.” February 15. Accessed from https://www.9news.com.au/national/queensland-mmm-cult-leader-confronted-in-vanuatu/e689870a-722e-4f78-8653-f91926b97e05 on 15 March 2024.

Wear, Peter. 1996. “Holy Orders.” The Bulletin, August 13, p. 38.

Publication Date:
19 March 2024

CONCERNED CHRISTIANS TIMELINE

1954 (April 20):  Monte Kim Miller was born in Burlington, Colorado.

1974:  Miller married his first wife, Dana.

1983:  Miller and Dana divorced.

1983-1984:  Miller reported converting to Christianity.

1980’s (mid-decade):  The group Concerned Christians was formed by Miller.

1996:  Miller began a radio show called “Our Foundation.”

1996 (June):  Miller proclaimed himself to be one of the two end time witnesses of Revelation 11, and a prophet of God.

1998 (September):  Miller, and perhaps as many as seventy-two disciples, sold or left behind their possessions and families, and headed to Jerusalem, Israel.

1998 (October 10):  Miller prophesied an earthquake would destroy Denver, CO, setting in motion the impending apocalypse. The date passed without incident.

1999 (January 3):  Israeli police detained fourteen Concerned Christian members, alleging that the members were in Jerusalem to attempt to violently precipitate the second coming of Christ and the imminent apocalypse.

1999 (January 9):  All fourteen detained members were returned to Denver. Most of the returnees and some other members of the Concerned Citizens left the U.S. and traveled to Greece.

1999 (December):  Eighteen members of the Concerned Citizens were deported from Greece “after overstaying their residence permits.”

2002 (February 15):  Miller announced that the seventh angel sounded his trumpet, marking this day as the 777^th day of the 7^th millennium. Predicted by the Book of Revelations, this day would set the end-of-the-world-events in motion, starting with a holocaust in the United States.

FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY

Monte Kim Miller [Image at right] was born on April 20, 1954 in the farming community of Burlington, Colorado to a family that was not religiously devout. Not much is known about the details of Miller’s early life. Miller took a marketing job with a pharmaceutical company just out of college and began to build a life with his wife, Dana, according to family members. The couple divorced after moving to Denver in 1983” (Shore 1999). Miller also worked for a time as a marketing executive at Proctor & Gamble.

Prior to his conversion to Christianity in 1983, Miller did not attend church. He claimed to have had a conversion experience after listening to Bill Bright, founder and president of Campus Crusade for Christ (later known as Cru). Miller received no formal theological training or education, thus allowing him to claim that he learned only from God and that he avoided the pitfalls of organized religious teachings.

In the early 1980’s, while working at Proctor & Gamble, Miller was an who lectured at local churches about the dangers of “cults.” Miller then formed Concerned Christians to counter the New Age movement and what he regarded as the anti-Christian media bias. Report from Concerned Christians, one of Miller’s newsletters, entertained such topics as feminist spirituality, the Harmonic Convergence of 1987, New Age trends infiltrating churches, alternative medicines, the World-Faith Movement, and the Roman Catholic Church. This served as the precursor to his formal attacks on organized Christianity.

In the 1990s, Concerned Christians began to create a greater public presence. The group began publishing two newsletters every two months, Report from the Concerned Christians and the Take Heed Update. Miller’s radio program, Our Foundation, began airing in 1996 (Leppäkari 2014). That same year he claimed he was a prophet who was “the voice of God” (“Concerned Christians” 2008) and was one of the two witnesses presented in the story of Revelation 11. Also during his radio show, Miller predicted an earthquake would destroy Denver on October 10, 1998 and set in motion the apocalypse, that he would be violently murdered in the streets of Jerusalem in December 1999, and that he would be resurrected three days later. Miller’s radio show was taken off the air after he refused to pay for air time. He justified his actions with the claim that God instructed him not to pay. Miller and his second wife, Marcie, filed for bankruptcy in October 1997, showing $142,628 in assets but $748,852 in debts. He demanded $100,000 from all of his disciples to pay off the debt and warned them that they would go to hell if they did not cooperate. Some members reportedly donated their properties to Miller (Leppäkari 2014).

On September 30, 1998, Miller and seventy-eight of his members suddenly abandoned their homes and migrated to Jerusalem, most likely to avoid the supposed destruction of Denver. The members of the group quietly disappeared with little connection with friends or relatives in the United States. The group seemed to all but vanish until an Israeli police raid, which was was carried out in coordination with the Israeli Center for Victims of Cults, on two homes in the Mevasseret Zion suburb took place. Fourteen members of the Concerned Christians cult were detained and later deported back Colorado for “overstaying their visa limits.” Upon returning to the U.S. the members boarded a bus and later fled to several different locations. Some fled to Greece (and were returned to the U.S shortly thereafter), others to the Philadelphia area, and yet others to areas unknown. Miller’s whereabouts have remained a mystery.

DOCTRINE/BELIEFS

The only record of the group’s beliefs are Miller’s original forty-five recorded audio tapes from Our Foundation. The early beliefs of the Concerned Christian group mirrored most of the views of fundamental religious groups with an emphasis on the New Testament and the Gospel of Matthew. Miller preached on the importance of attaining the fruits of the Holy Spirit through a spiritual rebirth. He added that this is the age of humility, and humility is at the center of the fruits of the Holy Spirit. Some fruits of the Holy Spirit include long-suffering, joy, peace, humbleness, love, goodness, and faith.

The means to achieving this spiritual rebirth can be summarized as “cross-carrying,” the death of the self, humbling oneself before believers and nonbelievers, resisting Satan (not evil), and distancing oneself from law-making and government positions.

Cross-carrying refers to being able to identify with the suffering Christ experienced on the road to his crucifixion. Humans must be humble and meek in their hearts and actions to diminish themselves and allow room for Christ to fill an individual. Only through a complete diminishing of the self, while simultaneously filling with Christ through the fruits of the Holy Spirit, will the Holy Spirit present itself in a person and in the world.  Characteristics of the self-include selfishness, self-centeredness, and self-interest.  The only positive form of the self is self-improvement, but the only action viewed as self-improvement is the death of the self and manifestation of the Holy Spirit in an individual.  The death of the self is the key to walking in the light of Christ with the Holy Spirit.

Miller has asserted that this world is ruled by Satan and thus teaches that one should not resist evil, but Satan. A person is actually resisting Satan when they resist the evil perpetrated against them. Miller implores true believers to bless the people who curse them, to do good to the people who hate them, and to pray for those who evilly use them. Self-defense and non-violence are condemned forms of action. They are viewed as unbiblical by Miller. Individuals are to accept accusations posed against them and forgive their enemies. Miller preaches that believers should see Christ’s light shining through all individuals. To mirror the example of Christ, one must not condemn their oppressors or adversaries. Miller states that the New Testament’s emphasis on Christ’s world of grace trumps the Old Testament’s rule of law.

To aid his followers in the avoidance of the pitfalls of this “fallen world,” Miller has warned people of the dangers of laws, law making, and governmental systems, and tells his followers not to take part in any law-making processes or government work. Miller taught that America is Babylon the Great and is ruled over by the great emperor Satan. One must avoid the agents of Satan (politicians). Miller also states that no one has legitimate right to judge nonbelievers.

As Miller summed up his own thought (Leppäkari 2014:126-27):

We are of a heavenly kingdom church and we operate on completely different principles, preaching that the love of Jesus Christ can redeem the most evil people, no matter what they have done. See, that’s our message to the world. That’s what we are to give them … the Lord has chosen us out of the world. That’s his purpose for us as we walk with him.

ORGANIZATION/LEADERSHIP

Monte Kim Miller is the only publicly known church official. He has announced himself as a prophet. He has claimed that God was using him as a messenger to speak directly to his followers, and therefore Miller’s pronouncements are God speaking (Davies 2000). While Miller clearly was the public face of the movement, he apparently was not present when the group moved to Israel, and there is no evidence of his functioning as a leader after that point. [Image at right]

The Concerned Christians were functioning as a group internally until their deportation from Israel. Externally their presence was largely on the internet. Around 2001 Miller created a website (Kim Miller and the Called  and Chosen  and Faithful website n.d.). Its initial purpose appears to have been to sell the original forty-five audio tapes broadcast on his radio program, Our Foundation. The website subsequently listed hundreds of recordings by Miller. On February 20, 2002, Miller posted an email that condemned Christians who believed that they could live both as good Christians and as patriots to their countries. There were no further postings and the website was largely unattended.

ISSUES/CHALLENGES

It is not surprising that the Concerned Christians quickly encountered stiff and determined resistance. Miller’s innovations on Christian theology, his quasi-messianic claims for himself, and his condemnation of mainstream religions were certain to and did generate rejection and rebuke. His apocalyptic pronouncements also destabilized the stability favored by mainstream religious traditions. All of this was more than sufficient to generate the antagonistic media coverage that Concerned Christians and Miller received.

By the 1990s cult-monitoring groups were well established, and Concerned Christians became just another case of a “dangerous cult.” Proponents stepped forward to testify that Miller “is practicing behavioral modification and mind control” (Davies 2000). Potential violence was an important theme in this coverage. For example, the daughter of a Concerned Christian member reported a memory of her mother: “My mother told me that if Kim Miller told her to kill me, she would” (“Kim Miller” 1998).

Formal governmental action was particularly consequential for the movement. When the Concerned Christians attempted to migrate to Israel, apparently without Miller, the group immediately became a focus of attention for Israeli law enforcement. While it is unclear that law enforcement had any actual evidence, police officials alleged that the group was planning an armed confrontation near the Church of the Holy Sepulcher where it is believed Jesus’ tomb is situated (Robinson 2002). Early in 1999, Concerned Christians were deported from Israel. The group fragmented at that point, and Miller simply disappeared. While a largely unattended website has remained online, Miller has never publicly resurfaced, and the already small group splintered. Recent media coverage indicates that the movement’s leader and its remaining membership continue to live in seclusion (Bohlen 2023).

IMAGES

Image #1: Monte Kim Williams.
Image #2: Concerned Christians logo.

REFERENCES

Bohlen, Teague. 2023. “Mother God One of (Too) Many Colorado Cults.” Westword.com, December 5. Accessed from https://www.westword.com/news/mother-gods-love-has-won-one-of-many-colorado-cults-18425373 on 10 March 2024.

“Concerned Christians and Kim Miller.” 2008. Concerned Christians and Kim Miller. The Apologetics Index. Accessed from http://www.apologeticsindex.org/c35.html on 10 March 2024.

Davies, Eryl. 2000. “Concerning Cults – Concerned Christians (2).” Evangelical Times. Accessed from http://www.evangelical-times.org/archive/item/1341/Cults-and-other-religions/Concerning-Cults—Concerned-Christians–2-/ on 12 May 2013.

“Israeli Police Detain Cult Group.” 1999. Lubbock Avalanche-Journal. Accessed from http://lubbockonline.com/stories/010499/LA0690.shtml on 12 May 2013.

Kim Miller and the Called  and Chosen  and Faithful website. n.d. Accessed from http://www.kimmillerconcernedchristians.com/ on 10 March 2024.

“Kim Miller Rocky Mountain News.” 1998. Cephas Library. Accessed from http://www.cephas-library.com/discernment/kimmiller.html on 12 May 2013.

Leppäkari, Maria. 2014. “Apocalyptic Management by Monte Kim Miller.” Journal of Religion and Violence 2:122-34.

Miller, Monte K. 2001. “Kim Miller Concerned Christians – Unsealing Bible Prophecy.” Accessed from http://kimmillerconcernedchristians.com/ on 12 May 2013.

Robinson, B. A. 2002. “The Concerned Christians Cult.” Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance.  Accessed from http://www.religioustolerance.org/dc_conc.htm on 10 May 2013.

Shore, Sandy. 1999.  “PROFILE: Cult ‘mastermind’ Monte Kim Miller.” The Rick A. Ross Institute. Accessed from http://www.rickross.com/reference/cc/cc16.html on 12 May 2013.

Publication Date:
17 March 2024

Tam Wai Lun is Professor in the Department of Cultural and Religious Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

TRUE BUDDHA SCHOOL TIMELINE

1945:  Lu Shengyen was born in Jiayi, Taiwan.

1969:  Shengyen reported receiving extraordinary visions of Bodhisattvas and a spiritual awakening at the Temple of the Jade Emperor. He had a vision of his previous incarnation, the white Lotus Youth, in a dream at home. There were continued visits by invisible spiritual teachers at night.

1969:  Shengyen started a small home temple for divination, geomancy consultation and performance of rituals for the dead and penance rituals.

1972:  Shengyen took refuge in Buddhism and received the precepts of Bodhisattvas at the Bishanyan temple in Nantou in Taizhong, Taiwan. He became a Daoist at the Shibi branch of the Cihui Tang Daoist temple in Hualian, Taiwan.

1969- 1975:  Shengyen underwent a period of spiritual education and development, mainly under the Daoist recluse Qingzhen on Mt. Liantou at Nantou.

1975:  Shengyen published three nonfiction books; he wrote newspaper columns on his encounters with world of spirits.

1976:  Shengyen encountered His Holiness the Sixteenth Karmapa, head of the Karma Kagyu (white) school of Tibetan Buddhism, during the Karmapa’s first visit to Taiwan.

1977:  Shengyen completed his decade of service with the Army and began to allow non-Taiwanese to take refuge in him.

1981:  Shengyen moved to the United States (Seattle). He was formally initiated by and received more advanced empowerment from the Karmapa and received secret high tantric teachings from H.E. Dezhung Rinpoche of the Sakya (Flower) school of Tibetan Buddhism.

1983:  Shengyen announced his enlightenment experience, calling it “achieving luminosity.”

1984:  Shengyen renamed his school the “True Buddha School of Spirits and Immortals” (later simplified to “True Buddha School”).

1987 (March 7):  Shengyen began lecturing on the Amitābha sutra (Sukhāvatī-vyūha), a series of sixty-two lectures that ended on June 12, 1988.

1989:  Shengyen began a four-year worldwide proselytizing campaign, with one large international Dharma ceremony at a different location each year.

1991:  Shengyen began a one-year broadcast on North American satellite television to give an account of his enlightenment experience and lectures on Heart Sūtra (Prajñāpāramitāhṛdaya).

1993:  Shengyen toured Europe, set up a Central Committee for the school’s affairs, and maintained a letter-replying centre in Seattle. He made the first of a series of retirement announcements that were soon followed by a resumption of writing and lecturing (1993, 1994, 1995, 2000, 2006, 2008, 2013, 2016, 2021, 2022).

1994:  The True Buddha News Weekly, a newspaper serving the movement internationally, was founded. It was followed by the Enlightenment Magazine in late 1990s.

1996:  Vancouver’s Lotus Light Temple (Huaguang), became the home base of the True Buddha News Weekly and the Lotus Light Charity Society, the movement’s primary charitable organization.

1997:  The True Buddha Foundation was organized to support charity work carried out by the Lotus Light Charity Society.

1997 (June):  Rev. (unnamed individual #1), Finance Director of the True Buddha Foundation, Chairman of the Huaguang Merit Society in California, and Abbot of the Weiguang temple at Los Angeles was dismissed from his positions.

2016 (September):  Rev. (Unnamed individual #2) of the Purple Lotus Temple at Fremont, California was dismissed from her position.

2016 (October 3):  “Demon soldiers,” were said to have been sent by Rev. (unnamed individual #2)  to Shengyen’s home at night but were defeated by his spiritual protectors.

2017:  Seventeen monks and nuns belonging to the Purple Lotus Temple were excommunicated by the True Buddha Foundation.

FOUNDER/ GROUP HISTORY

The True Buddha School belongs to an esoteric form of Buddhism known as the Diamond Vehicle or Vajrayāna. It is also called Tantric Buddhism, but as this form of Buddhism is popular in Tibet, most people simply call it a “Tibetan” form of Buddhism. The school was started in 1973 in Taiwan, and its following has permeated the Chinese diaspora community throughout southeast Asia and the West. In 1984, the school calculated its membership as 40,000, but by 1996, it reportedly had increased one hundred times and numbered over 4,000,000. In 2013, the reported membership of the school reached

5,000,000. Worldwide, there are now over 300 chapters and about sixty temples. There is a rumour circulating within the school that the founder of the school may leave this world once the membership exceeds 5,000,000; therefore, the school ceased calculating its membership after it reached 5,000,000.

The founder of the True Buddha School, Lu Shengyen, [Image at right] was born in Jiayi, southwest Taiwan in 1945. He grew up as a Christian and belonged to the Presbyterian church, but he had a deep religious experience in 1969 that led him from his Christian upbringing into a period of seeking, study, and learning. During that period, he became a Buddhist and began to teach Buddhism. Near the end of this period, he founded the True Buddha School and moved to the United States, a symbol of his intention to spread Buddhism internationally.

According to the hagiographic account of Shengyen’s, religious conversion is fascinating. One day in 1969, he and his mother visited a temple in Taizhong called the Palace of the Jade Emperor. A female medium called Qiandai suddenly called out his name and told him that the gods in the temple wanted him to kneel before them. Notwithstanding his surprise at a stranger’s calling him by name, he did what he was told to do and became “possessed.” In other words, he was suddenly given, without his consent, the ability to see and communicate with the spiritual world. After returning home, he also had a vision of his previous incarnation, the white Lotus Youth, an identity that became clear to him only in later years. Lu later referred to an infant standing on a lotus (a character often portrayed in the Dunhuang Mogao Buddhist caves, also known as the Thousand Buddha Grottoes in Gansu) as his previous incarnation. Shengyen claims that the “white Lotus Youth” is his Dharma-body (as opposed to his physical body). [Image at right]

After the miraculous encounter in 1969, Shengyen continued to receive the nocturnal visits of an invisible spiritual teacher who taught him Daoist ritual dances, different spells, and hand gestures to be used in ritual performance. Under the direction of this teacher, he sought out a highly accomplished Daoist master, Qingzhen (d. 1971), on Mount Liantou in Nantou of Taizhong to teach him different Daoist practices, such as the writing of magical charms, spells, alchemy, geomancy, and divination.  Qingzhen was in his eighties and was a former Buddhist monk by the name of Liao­ming (later identified as a disciple of Nuona Hutuketu [1856-1936], of the Nyingma [Red] School of Tibetan form of Buddhism), who became a recluse to practice Daoism on Mount Liantou. The dual identity of Qingzhen is not as surprising. [Image at right] Scholars now understand the frequent crossover and interaction between Daoism and Tantric Buddhism in their rituals, and between Daoist inner alchemy and Tantric Buddhist inner cultivation (Teiser and Franciscus 2011:9). Shengyen continued to learn from Master Qingzhen for two years on his days off from military service as an Army Surveying Officer, until the death of his master. In short, Shengyen equipped himself with all the techniques of a traditional Chinese religious master, from communicating with the spiritual world to charm writing and divination. What remained was to attract followers.

Shengyen first became known to the public as a famous diviner, and from 1969 to 1975, he claimed that every day about two hundred people came to him for divination. In 1975, he published three nonfiction books and began writing columns in the newspaper, telling fascinating stories about his divination and his encounter with the world of spirits. His books have been best sellers and made him even more famous. Since then, Shengyen has been the most prolific writer in Taiwan. He was extremely successful in attracting followers by writing extensively on his own religious experience and inner cultivation. He has produced, on average, six books per year since 1975, and his writings, which his disciples publish in a series, now number over 300 volumes. He has continued to write daily.

Shengyen claims to receive five hundred letters each month from his readers and more than a thousand requests for appointments to see him. Letter-writing remains one of the main ways for him to keep in touch with his disciples around the world. In 1976, he took a three-year retreat from the rush of followers seeking him for divination services and spiritual counselling. It was at this time that he first met the Sixteenth  Karmapa, head of the Karma Kagyu (White) school of Tibetan Buddhism, during Karmapa’s first visit to Taiwan. This was Shengyen’s second contact with the Tibetan form of Buddhism, after his study under the Nyingma master Qingzhen/Liaoming, which convinced him to move closer to tantric Buddhism. Divination was not Shengyen’s primary career. He had received his tertiary education in a military college in Taiwan and was trained as an Army Surveying Officer.

The period of Shengyen’s extraordinary experience (1969-1975) was the time when Jiang Jingguo (1910-1988) assumed political leadership of Taiwan. Jiang eventually became president in 1978, succeeding his father Jiang Jieshi (1887-1975), a powerful nationalist military commander in the Kuomintang (the Chinese Nationalist Party in Taiwan). In 1971, Taiwan was forced out of the United Nations, and Taiwan’s diplomatic relations with important nations like Japan and United States were unilaterally ended. At the same time, the economy of Taiwan grew rapidly. It was in these times of great changes and uncertainty that people in Taiwan were attracted to spiritual writings and teachings like those of the True Buddha School.

In addition to writing letters and providing divination services, Shengyen also started a small home temple in 1969 in the city of Taizhong. Beginning in 1969, people went to his temple for divination, geomancy consultation, and the performance of baidou (a star-worship penance ritual) and the chaodu (soul deliverance) ritual for the dead, which became one of the most important rituals of the True Buddha School. In 1972, Shengyen received the (Buddhist) Bodhisattva precepts at the Bishanyan temple in Nantou County of Taizhong. Because of the fame of his remarkable divination skills, Shengyen had to move to a bigger house in 1973. His second home temple had space for forty small statues, and he registered as a group member of the Chinese Daoist Association. He named his home temple Cihui Leizang Si, combining the name of the Daoist temple, Cihui, and the term for Buddhist temple, si. Among the statues at his temple were the deities of the (Daoist) Golden Mother of the Primordial Pond, Sakyamuni Buddha, and the Buddhist Bodhisattva Kitigarbha (Dizang, in Chinese). [Image at right] From the beginning, the True Buddha School was a mixture of Buddhism and Daoism. Leizang Si (literally womb/storehouse of thunder) later became the standard name of all the school’s temples.

From Shengyen’s home temple, branch temples/chapters (Fentang in Chinese) soon developed, first in Taiwan (in a manner like that of the Cihui temple) and then beyond the Cihui model in the main cities of the entire world. In 1977, Shengyen completed his decade of service with the Army and began to allow non-Taiwanese to formally take refuge in him.

In 1981, with the help from early followers in Taiwan, Shengyen moved to Seattle to look for a quiet place to continue his spiritual growth. Chapters of the new school quickly emerged across Canada and the United States, as well as across Southeast Asia. In the same year, Shengyen was formally initiated by and received more advanced empowerment from the Sixteenth Karmapa (1924-1981), the head of the Karma Kagyu (White) School of Tibetan Buddhism, during Karmapa’s last tour to the West. Shortly before the Karmapa’s death, Shengyen received the Five Buddha Empowerment, conferred as an entry point to the practice of Mahayoga, from the Karmapa. Shengyen also received secret high tantric teachings from H.E. Dezhung Rinpoche of the Sakya (Flower) school of Tibetan Buddhism, who happened to be in Seattle during 1982-1985. In 1984, Shengyen made his first trip to Hong Kong and sought out a Chinese teacher, Thubten Dorge (Li Ting Guang), of the Gelug (Yellow) school of Tibetan Buddhism, whose temple is located on Mt. Furong in Tsuen Wan, Hong Kong. By this time, Shengyen had already received religious empowerment from the four major schools of Tibetan Buddhism: Yellow, White, Red and Flower. He also renamed his school, from the Spiritual Immortal (Ling Xian) School to the True Buddha School of Spirits and Immortals (later simplified to the True Buddha School). The name change was occasioned by an unauthorized use (by some of Shengyen ‘s own disciples) of the school’s name to publish a magazine. They had also used the name to collect money from other believers without Shengyen’s consent. Shengyen, therefore, renamed his school to distance it from this incident. The first chapter of his school in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Jakarta, and Sulawesi (aka Celebes), Indonesia were formed in 1984. Many of Shengyen’s disciples subsequently came from Malaysia and Indonesia.

In 1985, Shengyen set up two biannual conventions for the school: (1) the celebration of the Chinese New Year (usually late January or early February, in the second week following the Chinese New Year) at the Taiwan Lei Tsang Temple in Nantou of Taizhong; (2) the Fall Bardo Soul Deliverance Ceremony for the dead (in August or September, in the last week of the seventh month of the lunar calendar) at the Ling Shen Ching Tze Temple in Redmond, Washington (in the Seattle area).

In 1989, Shengyen returned to Taiwan for a visit after living in Seattle for seven years. It later became an established practice that he would leave Seattle to stay in Taiwan for half a year, until the Chinese New Year convention, when he would return to Seattle. In Seattle, every Saturday night, Shengyen would preside over a cultivation session at the Ling Shen Ching Tze temple, preaching and lecturing on a chosen scripture at the end of the session. On Sunday afternoon, he would preside over a fire ritual at the Rainbow Villa Temple in North Bend (also near Seattle), with similar preaching and lecturing. During his half-year stay in Taiwan, he would preside over a ritual at the Taiwan Lei Tsang Temple in Nantou of Taizhong, with a lecture on a chosen scripture, every Saturday afternoon. The Seattle temple and the Taizhong temple became the two headquarters of the school.

From Shengyen’s home temple, branch temples/chapters (Fentang in Chinese) soon developed, first in Taiwan (in a manner like that of the Cihui temple) and then beyond the Cihui model in the main cities of the entire world. In 1977, Shengyen completed his decade of service with the Army and began to allow non-Taiwanese to formally take refuge in him.

In 1981, with the help from early followers in Taiwan, Shengyen moved to Seattle to look for a quiet place to continue his spiritual growth. Chapters of the new school quickly emerged across Canada and the United States, as well as across Southeast Asia. In the same year, Shengyen was formally initiated by and received more advanced empowerment from the Sixteenth Karmapa (1924-1981), the head of the Karma Kagyu (White) School of Tibetan Buddhism, during Karmapa’s last tour to the West. Shortly before the Karmapa’s death, Shengyen received the Five Buddha Empowerment, conferred as an entry point to the practice of Mahayoga, from the Karmapa. Shengyen also received secret high tantric teachings from H.E. Dezhung Rinpoche of the Sakya (Flower) school of Tibetan Buddhism, who happened to be in Seattle during 1982-1985. In 1984, Shengyen made his first trip to Hong Kong and sought out a Chinese teacher, Thubten Dorge (Li Ting Guang), of the Gelug (Yellow) school of Tibetan Buddhism, whose temple is located on Mt. Furong in Tsuen Wan, Hong Kong. By this time, Shengyen had already received religious empowerment from the four major schools of Tibetan Buddhism: Yellow, White, Red and Flower. He also renamed his school, from the Spiritual Immortal (Ling Xian) School to the True Buddha School of Spirits and Immortals (later simplified to the True Buddha School). The name change was occasioned by an unauthorized use (by some of Shengyen ‘s own disciples) of the school’s name to publish a magazine. They had also used the name to collect money from other believers without Shengyen’s consent. Shengyen, therefore, renamed his school to distance it from this incident. The first chapter of his school in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Jakarta, and Sulawesi (aka Celebes), Indonesia were formed in 1984. Many of Shengyen’s disciples subsequently came from Malaysia and Indonesia.

In 1985, Shengyen set up two biannual conventions for the school: (1) the celebration of the Chinese New Year (usually late January or early February, in the second week following the Chinese New Year) at the Taiwan Lei Tsang Temple in Nantou of Taizhong; (2) the Fall Bardo Soul Deliverance Ceremony for the dead (in August or September, in the last week of the seventh month of the lunar calendar) at the Ling Shen Ching Tze Temple in Redmond, Washington (in the Seattle area).

In 1989, Shengyen returned to Taiwan for a visit after living in Seattle for seven years. It later became an established practice that he would leave Seattle to stay in Taiwan for half a year, until the Chinese New Year convention, when he would return to Seattle. In Seattle, every Saturday night, Shengyen would preside over a cultivation session at the Ling Shen Ching Tze temple, preaching and lecturing on a chosen scripture at the end of the session. On Sunday afternoon, he would preside over a fire ritual at the Rainbow Villa Temple in North Bend (also near Seattle), with similar preaching and lecturing. During his half-year stay in Taiwan, he would preside over a ritual at the Taiwan Lei Tsang Temple in Nantou of Taizhong, with a lecture on a chosen scripture, every Saturday afternoon. The Seattle temple [Image at right] and the Taizhong temple became the two headquarters of the school.

From 1989 until 1993, Shengyen embarked on a worldwide proselytizing campaign, presiding over large ritual ceremonies in different parts of the world. These efforts helped the school to develop into an international movement, although over ninety percent of the converts were Chinese. In 1993, Shengyen announced his plan to retire, but this was realized only in 2000 when he ceased his travels and teaching duties. Right before he moved into seclusion in a secret place known only to a few, Shengyen started to teach the Kālachakra (literally “wheel of time”) tantra, which is taught in all major Tibetan Schools of Buddhism including the Gelug (Yellow), Kagyu (White), Nyingma (Red) and Sakya (Flower) schools.

2006 was an eventful year for the True Buddha School, as Shengyen came out of retirement to attend the funeral of his Hong Kong teacher Thubten Dorge. He then resumed his busy schedule of traveling and ritual leadership, including several Kalachakra Empowerment rituals. In the same year, he dismissed a teaching master of the school, Rev. (unnamed individual #1), the then-Finance Director of the True Buddha Foundation (organized in 1997 to support charity work carried out by the Lotus Light Charity Society). Rev. (unnamed individual #1) was also the Chairman of the Huaguang Merit Society in California and Abbot of the Weiguang temple at Los Angeles. After his dismissal, (unnamed individual #1) changed the name of his temple to the Weiguang Chan temple and addressed himself as a Chan master . Leaving the True Buddha School with Rev. (unnamed individual #1) were some chapters of the True Buddha School closely related to him, including Dazhi in Gaoxiong, Taiwan, Haitian in Singapore, and the Yuanming and the Jintai chapters in Indonesia.

In 2016, Shengyen dismissed another teaching master, Rev. (unnamed individual #2) of the Purple Lotus Temple at Fremont, California. She changed her name after her dismissal but kept the temple’s English name. Fascinating stories were told about this event. “Demon soldiers” were said to be sent by (unnamed individual #2) to Shengyen’s home at night, only to be defeated by his spiritual protectors in a midnight war. Seventeen monks and nuns belonging to the Purple Lotus Temple were then excommunicated, together with (unnamed individual #2), by the True Buddha School.

DOCTRINES/BELIEFS

Shengyen’s teachings can be divided into two periods. In his early years, Shengyen taught about the “activation of the soul,” a Daoist folk practice to develop a devotee’s ability to communicate with the spiritual world. One is encouraged to practice quiet sitting while chanting of the name of a deity of one’s choice, adding a short petition asking the deity to help one’s activation of the soul. If one succeeds, one will experience an involuntary movement of the body, driven by an external force, causing the limbs to exercise, a phenomenon Shengyen calls the “movement of the soul.” Shengyen explains that the “activation of the soul” is the activation of inner flowing of air from the base of the spine. The flowing of air within the body causes the involuntary movement of the body and hence allows a person to have some awareness of her own “soul.” The so-called technique to “activate the soul” lies mainly on the achieving of non-arising of thoughts. The most important technique is to reduce ceaseless arising of thoughts in the mind into a single thought, and then proceed to the cessation of all thoughts.

A second stage of Shengyen’s teaching was the esoteric stage, in which he identified his teachings with the path of esoteric Buddhism. As a branch of Buddhism, esoteric Buddhism shares the same goal as Buddhism in general, i.e., to be enlightened and attain the state of Buddhahood. This is achieved by, as the Nirvana Sūtra states, “not to commit wrongs, but to do all that is good, and to keep oneʼs thought pure—this is the teaching of all the Buddhas.” These four lines are regarded as the very source of all the teachings of Buddhism. The adherents of the esoteric path believe that the esoteric path is more effective. By following the esoteric path, one can overcome affliction and deluded thoughts, progress rapidly and attain the state of Buddhahood to benefit others by focusing on ritual, visualization, and symbols. The esoteric Buddhist way to achieve the purity of thought is to fully occupy activity through the body, mouth, and mind with (1) physical signs and postures (mudrās), (2) voicing of incantations (mantras), and (3) visualization on a chosen Buddha or Bodhisattva (mandalas). Esoteric Buddhism is characterized by a personal relationship with a spirit guide or deity who leads one to enlightenment. By constantly practicing recitation of incantation of a chosen deity with the accompanying hand gestures and visualizing the image of the deity, one keeps one’s thought pure. There are eight choices of such deity in the True Buddha School: (1) Buddha Amitābha; (2) Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara (Guanyin); (3) Bodhisattva Kşitigarbha (Dizang); (4) Mother of All Buddhas, Bodhisattva Cundi; (5) Padmasambhava (literally “master born from a lotus”); (6) Champara (Yellow Fortune God); Image at right] (7) Medicine Buddha ; (8) White Padmakumara (White Lotus Youth).

According to the esoteric Buddhist path, before one can establish a personal relationship with an invisible spirit guide or deity, one must attain a personal relationship with a human master. Through unfailing confidence and intense devotion to one’s master, one can eliminate one’s ego, the root of ignorance. Whereas there is a “Three Refuge” tradition in Buddhism, there is a “Four Refuge” tradition in esoteric Buddhism. This means that, in addition to taking refuge in the Buddha, his Dharma (teachings), and his Sangha (community), the esoteric Buddhist also takes refuge in a Guru (Shengyen, in the case of the True Buddha School). This is a complete revision of one of the most quoted principles of Buddhism: “Relying on the Dharma (teachings), not on the persons who expound it.” The esoteric path modifies this principle to “rely on both the Dharma and the persons who expound it.” The devotion to one’s master is concretely expressed as the practice of the path of Guru Yoga.

There is a common fourfold division of the esoteric path into (1) Action Tantras, also known as the “Four Preliminaries” (2) Performance Tantras, (3) Yoga Tantras, and (4) Highest yoga Tantras (Power 1995:242). In Action Tantras, the first level of esoteric practice, one engages enthusiastically in external rituals and activities, including constructing an elaborate altar to pay homage and make offerings to Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. These include prostration, supplication, and recitation. As one proceeds to Yoga Tantra, more inner cultivations are involved.

The True Buddha School adopts the same gradual approach to religious practices. The devotee starts with (1) the practice of the Four Preliminaries, followed by (2) Guru Yoga, (3) Deity Yoga, (4) the Vajra practices and finally (5) the Highest Yoga Tantra. The Four Preliminaries include taking refuge, making offerings, repentance, and recitation of the Hundred-syllable mantra of Vajrasattva. The True Buddha School places great emphasis on the recitation of the 100-Syllable mantra of Vajrasattva (a central deity of esoteric Buddhism) as a powerful purification prayer. Before one can advance to another level of practice, it is recommended that one should: complete a recitation of the 100-syllable mantra of Vaijrasattva 100,000 times, perform a full prostration 100,000 times, recite the ‘Four Refuge’ 100,000 times; and recite the sacrificial mantra 100,000 times. These four practices are collectively known as the Four Preliminaries.

To proceed to the next level of practice, which is Performance Tantra, one practices the Guru Yoga. By chanting the mantra of ones’ guru while performing his hand gesture, one endeavors to perfect one’s ability to visualize one’s guru without mental fluctuation. The goal of Guru Yoga is to develop a one-pointed concentration on one’s guru, thereby receiving an unceasing empowerment from one’s guru and becoming identified with one’s guru. When this is achieved, one can proceed to the practice of Deity Yoga, which is like Guru Yoga, except that one must choose a deity as the object of visualization. One visualizes oneself and the archetypal deity as separate beings, and then one causes the deity to enter oneself, resulting in the merging of the deity and its devotee in meditation.

In Yoga Tantra, one enters a whole new level of inner cultivation which emphasizes internal yoga or yoga without signs. In concrete terms, it involves the practice of a breathing exercise called “Capturing Air in a Precious Vase” and the “Inner Heat Yoga.”

In practicing the “Capturing Air in a Precious Vase,” one must visualize the breathing in of air from one side of the nose down to the Cinnabar Field or the “elixir field.” This is one of the three loci in the human body, located 1.3 inches below the navel, which is believed to be the seat of life-force energy in the body. While holding one’s breath, one visualizes the circulation of the incoming air inside the body, through the left and right “side channels” and the “central channel” that runs from the base of the spine to the head, and finally letting the air come out from the other side of the nose. A long period of practice of this simple exercise allows a sensation of an inner flowing of invisible energy in the form of air and an unblocking of one’s channels. This is achieved by visualization.

A similar mechanism applies to Inner Heat Yoga, in which one visualizes a source of heat present in the Cinnabar Field. This visualization is reinforced by rubbing of two hands until heat is produced. The heat is then transferred to the Cinnabar Field by hands touching the navel and further rubbing in the area between our abdomen and bladder. A long period of visualizing heat generated in the Cinnabar Field leads to an actual feeling of the rising of flame inside one’s body. Directing the “inner air” one generated in the first stage to “blow up” the flame will strengthen this feeling.

Both the flowing of “air” and “fire” inside the body generate bliss and alter the state of our consciousness, so that a different realm of reality is revealed to the devotee. This is the reality of spiritual existence, the Buddhas and their pure land. Shengyen interprets this new awareness generated by our own body as the “union between Heaven and Human being,” or a “merging with the consciousness of the universe.” He also calls it an enlightenment experience that he himself attained in 1984, one year after he arrived in America. He describes it as an experience in which time and space dissolves and there is a temporary loss of the individual self. The self becomes nothing but luminosity (Tam 2002:163ff).

One can identify three kinds of language in Shengyen’s teaching of his enlightenment experience: Indian Yoga of Kundalini, Buddhist Tantra, and Daoism. For instance, Inner Heat Yoga, one of the “Six Yogas” of the illustrious Indian Buddhist Master Naropada (b. 1016), was used by Shengyen to describe his own religious experience. The purpose of the Inner Heat Yoga is a technique of tantric meditation, which gives rise to a special tantric ecstasy. The Inner Alchemy (neidan in Chinese) of Daoism has much in common with the tantric tradition. The central idea is that enlightenment has a corporeal or somatic aspect. There is a reservoir of latent cosmic energy lying in every human being which is in a scattered and latent state. The arousal of this latent life energy, causing it to dart upwards to the top of the head will elevate the devotee to a state of spiritual ecstasy. This enlightening experience is brought about by a long persistent practice of intense mental concentration and absorption (Tam 2002:166).

One anthropologist has found that, in a sample of 488 societies in all parts of the world, 437 (or ninety percent) are reported to have one or more institutionalized, culturally patterned forms of altered states of consciousness (Bourguignon 1973:1). In the True Buddha School, this worldwide religious phenomenon is presented in the framework of cultivational discourse as a sophisticated Tantric system of four levels of practice with Inner Heat Yoga as the highest level.

Shengyen’s choice of scripture for his weekly lecture reveals another important feature of the teaching of his school, namely the harmony between esoteric Buddhism and exoteric Buddhism. From 2008-2011, he lectured on the (exoteric Chan Zen) Platform Sutra by the Sixth Patriarch. He followed with lectures on the esoteric Hevajra Tantra, which is especially popular in the Sakya and Kagyü schools until June 2013, followed by the Dzogchen (The Nine Stages of the Great Perfection) until May 2016. Next, he started lecturing on esoteric Daoguo (Lamdré or Path with the Result of Virūpa), concluding in 2021. He finished by lecturing on the exoteric Diamond sutra (Vájra-cchedikā-prajñā-pāramitā-sūtra), until May 2022. His most recent lectures have been on the famous (exoteric) Weimo sutra (Vimalakīrti Sūtra).

A unique feature of Shengyen’s teaching is his constant use of jokes in his preaching. To him, joking is not a rival to seriousness. Joke-telling in his preaching echoes the concept of “play” of John Huizinga (1872-1945). His Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture describes how culture is developed not only through play, but as play (Huizinga 1955). Joke-telling also echoes a teaching of Confucius. Zigong (520-446 BCE), a loyal disciple of Confucius, once told his master that he could not identify with the common folk’s carnival spirit during the agricultural sacrifice at the end of the year. Everyone seemed to be crazy, according to Zigong. Confucius, however, replied:

For their hundred days’ labour in the field, (the husbandmen) receive this one day’s enjoyment … (Even the great heroes of China) Wen and Wu could not keep a bow (in good condition), if it were always drawn and never relaxed; nor did they leave it always relaxed and never drawn. To keep it now strung and now unstrung was the way of Wen and Wu. (Analects Zaji II).

The principle of alternating “drawn” and “relaxed is fully in play in Shengyen’s preaching, as he fills his “serious talks” with endless “jokes.”

RITUALS/PRACTICES

The True Buddha School is particularly rich in ritual. Using the True Buddha School temple in Hong Kong in 2023 as an example, the following rituals are common to the True Buddha School temples around the world: Rituals related to Chinese New Year [Installing the Year Planetary Ruler according to Daoist Astrology (February), Blessing the tablets/lamps honouring a living benefactor (February), Burning the first incense of the year (February), Celebrating the Chinese New Year (February)]; Deliverance of the souls of the dead during Qingming Festival (April); Deliverance of the souls the dead during the Yulanpen (Ghost festival in July); Celebrating the birthdays of Buddhas, Sakaymuni (May); Bhaiṣajyaguru (Medicine Buddha, November); Celebrating the birthdays of Bodhisattvas [Manjusri (May), Cundī (April), Uṣṇīṣavijayā (March), Guanyin (March)]; Commemorating leaving the household of Grand Grandmaster Lu (February); Celebrating the birthday of Grandmaster Lu (July).

One of the most intriguing features of the True Buddha School’s ritual is, no doubt, its fire-ritual offering, in which all offerings are literally burnt in a fire. [Image at right] There are four kinds of fire-ritual offering: i) Purification, ii) Magnetization, iii) Enrichment, and iv) Subjugation.  Depending on the purpose of a specific fire offering, the form and colour of the altar and the offerings to be made will differ. Nevertheless, the overall structure of the performance is the same, in three main parts: (1) Prologue: preparatory practice (2) Main Body: practice (3) Epilogue: concluding practice.

The True Buddha School embraces paranormal or supernatural and magical elements in religious practice. Shengyen himself reported a dramatic clairvoyant experience and extra-sensory perceptions, the ability for which was bestowed on him from the spirit world. He was taught by invisible teachers and possesses miraculous powers. Miracles and miraculous responses are perennial themes of his many books. Extra-sensory perceptions and miraculous power, Shengyen claims, can be obtained through training or self-cultivation. One of the most recurring concepts of the True Buddha School practices is the concept of response (ganying in Chinese). Every single disciple of the school has his or her story of response, mostly consisting of a healing miracle or a story of having contacts with the spiritual world. In the True Buddha School Weekly, a column is devoted to a story of response in every issue. Shengyen’s preaching usually begins with the self-reporting of his response (his perception of how Buddhas and Bodhisattvas descended during the ritual to receive the offerings and bestowed their blessings). These spiritual blessings could bring about worldly attainment, which is used as a skillful or expedient means (upāya) to attract followers, and re-direct them to the practice and wisdom of the Buddha. Magical responses tend to be reported more often by new followers. For converted devotees, they must be earned through faithful continual daily practice, which Shengyen prescribes for an hour per day for laymen and laywomen, and four hours per day for monks and nuns. The daily practice of the school follows the same tripartite structure of Prologue, Main Body/Practice, and Epilogue outlined above. It consists of the same tripartite tantric elements: mantra, mudra, and visualization. The efficacy of each practice depends on the visualization power of a practitioner, i.e., the ability to visualize a deity and merge with him or her (Tam 2001:162-63). The response of practice for converted devotees may no longer be a worldly attainment. It could be the vibration of the body as in the case of activation of the soul or circulation of inner heat and air in the body as in the case of inner heat yoga. Activation of the soul is related to the communication with the spiritual world and inner heat yoga is the key to enlightenment which is the goal of Buddhism.

ORGANIZATION/LEADERSHIP

Members of the True Buddha School can be broadly divided into two groups: the missionaries and the laymen and laywomen. In early years of the True Buddha School, missionaries only consist of Acharya, addressed as master, and monks or nuns, addressed as Reverend (or Fashi in Chinese). Later, three more categories were added to make up five ranks of the True Buddha School missionaries with Shengyen (Grandmaster Lu) as the Root Guru at the top. They are:（1）Acharya (Shangshi in Chinese, clothed in Lama uniform with a yellow collar); [Image at right]（2）Senior Reverend (Jiaoshou shi in Chinese, Lama uniform with a green collar);（3）Reverend (Fashi in Chinese, Lama uniform with a red collar);（4）Dharma Instructor (Jiangshi in Chinese, Lama uniform with a blue collar)（5）Dharma Assistant (Zhujiao in Chinese, Lama uniform with a white collar).

Missionaries are selected from core members of a temple or chapter of the school and are recommended to Shengyen for formal conferment. In recent years, a training and assessment by Shengyen himself has been added to the process. On September 6, 2009, Shengyen announced that all those who want to become an Acharya in the True Buddha School must first leave their households, that is to become monk or nun. The same requirement applies to the rank of Senior Reverend.

From the “letter reply centre” in Seattle, maintained by Shengyen and his close disciples, charms of all kinds are also sent out to those who request them. The days before and after the annual conventions are also occasions for disciples to meet Shengyen for blessing and or divination-consultation sessions. From April 11, 2020, onwards, added an interaction section before every sermon of his. Pre-selected questions from disciples will be answered. This increases substantially the chance of interaction with his disciple, which plays an important role in nurturing the charisma of Shengyen as Grandmaster Lu and the leader of the school. Barker has labelled this process of personal and group socialization “charismatization” (Barker 1993:181-201).

A Central Committee for the School’s Affairs was set up after Shengyen’s retirement in 2000 to assume group leadership of the school. The committee was elected from among the Acharyas of the school, now numbering over 130. Each local temple and chapter of the school enjoys a high degree of autonomy, especially in financial matters, from the school’s headquarters in Seattle or in Taizhong. The Central Committee sets only general guidelines in religious and administrative matters for all local temples and chapters. The Central Committee, though, may excommunicate individuals and criticize behaviour violating guidelines set by the committee by issuing warning letters through the official newspaper, the True Buddha School Weekly (Zhenfo bao).

ISSUES/CHALLENGES

Melton has noted that “as the True Buddha School has assumed a role in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and throughout southeast Asia as a significant competing organization to the larger Pure Land and Chan organizations, Shengyen has increasingly become an object of controversy” (Melton 2007:298). Mainstream Buddhist schools tend to use the label of “new religion” to describe the True Buddha School. Labelling a group as a “new religion” could be used as a strategy by dominant religious groups to marginalize a more recent group and take away the right of the recent group to claim to be part of an established religion (Tam 2007:303-16). In order not to privilege unfairly the older and better-established religious groups and discriminate against smaller, less well-known groups, Durham proposed that an organization should be entitled to “religious freedom protection” unless and until they operate to injure or threaten the concrete rights and interests of the state (Durham and Sewell 2006:85). These rights and interests include the protection of public health, safety order, morals, and the fundamental rights and freedoms of others. They become significant only when there are immediate and concrete concerns, not just when abstract, speculative, and remote worries are voiced. Unless state interests are compromised, we should defer as much as possible to a group’s own claims as to whether they belong to an old tradition or a new religion. Otherwise, we will be in danger of falling into the trap of siding with the dominant organizations in marginalizing a more recent group.

The True Buddha School is, thus, best seen as a distinct new sect of Buddhism that is becoming an increasingly important element of the Vajrayana community, laying out an innovative path within the older Vajrayana Tantric Buddhist community as represented by Tibetan, Mongolian, and Japanese Shingon Buddhism. It is this new path being developed by the True Buddha School, more than any other feature, which has made it and its leader an interesting object of study.

The True Buddha School in the West manifests as an ethnic-based religion, serving primarily Chinese diaspora communities in North America and Europe. In Southeast Asia, it has been the subject of a variety of theological controversies, especially in Taiwan and Malaysia, while in the West, where Buddhism is itself a distinct minority, it had developed largely without significant controversy as simply another branch of the Buddhism at large. It also emerges as one of the interesting movements to assume a place on the Western religious landscape. A study of the school may well help us to recognize the importance of the immigrant Buddhist communities in the reshaping of Western Buddhism and the developing vision of Western Buddhist life.

IMAGES

Image #1: Founder of the True Buddha School, LU Shengyen.
Image #2:  A portrait of the ‘White Lotus Youth’ of the True Buddha School (image provided by the Taizhong Temple of the school https://tbsec.org/).
Image #3: Daoist teacher of the founder, Master Qingzhen.
Image #4: A portrait of the pantheon in the True Buddha School (picture provided by Master Tige from Vancouver).
Image #5: The Seattle Temple of the True Buddha School (Image provided by Master Tige from Vancouver).
Image #6: Champara (Yellow Fortune God, a manifestation of the Vaiśravaṇa, one of the Four Heavenly Kings).
Image #7: Fire ritual in Seattle on 30 October 2022. (Image provided by True Buddha School Net https://ch.tbsn.org/home/index )
Image #8: Acharya (Shangshi), clothed in Lama uniform with a yellow collar.

REFFERENCES

Barker, Eileen. 1993. “Charismatization: The Social Production of ‘an Ethos Propitious to the Mobilization of Sentiments’. ” Pp. 181-201 in Secularization, Rationalization, and Sectarianism: Essays in Honor of Bryan R. Wilson, edited by Eileen Barker, James A Beckford and Karel Dobbelaere. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Bourguignon, Erika. 1973. “Introduction: A Framework for the Comparative Study of Altered States of Consciousness.” Pp. 1ff in Religion, Altered States of consciousness and Social Chang, edited by Erika Bourguignon. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, p.1ff.

Durham, W. Cole. Jr. and Elizabeth A. Sewell. 2006. “Definition of Religion.” Pp. 1-84 in Religious Organizations in the United States: A Study of Identity, Liberty, and the Law, edited by James A. Serritella et al. North Carolina: Carolina Academic Press.

Huizinga, Johan. 1955. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture. Boston: Beacon Press.

Melton, Gordon. 2007. “The Affirmation of Charismatic Authority: The Case of the True Buddha School.” Australian Study of the Play element in Culture. Religion Studies Review (now the Journal for the Academic Study of Religion) 20:286-302.

Powers, John. 1995. Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism. New York: Snow Lion Publications.

Tam, Wai Lun 2016. “The Tantric Teachings and Rituals of the True Buddha School: The Chinese Transformation of Vajrayāna Buddhism.” Pp. 308-36 in Tantric Traditions in Transmission and Translation, edited by David B. Gray and Ryan Richard Overbey. New York: Oxford University Press.

Tam, Wai Lun. 2007. “Re-examining the True Buddha School: A ‘New Religion’ or a New ‘Buddhist Movement’? Australian Religion Studies Review (subsequently the Journal for the Academic Study of Religion) 20:303-16.

Tam, Wai Lun. 2002. “Enlightenment as Hope according to the True Buddha School.” Pp. 155-79 in Interpretations of Hope in Chinese Religions and Christianity, edited by Daniel L. Overmyer and Chi-Tim Lai. Hong Kong: Christian Study Centre on Chinese Religion and Culture.

Tam, Wai Lun 2001. “Integration of the Magical and Cultivational Discourses: A Study on a New Religious Movement Called the True Buddha School.” Monumenta Serica 49:141-69.

Teiser Stephen F. and Verellen Franciscus. 2011. “Buddhism, Daoism, and Chinese Religion.” Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie 20:1-12).

Publication Date:
12 March 2024

CHRISTIAN EXODUS TIMELINE

1976:  Cory Burnell was born

2004 (March):  Christian Exodus was launched.

2007 (Fall):  Christian Exodus announced that some supporters would resettle in Gem County Idaho.

2007:  Cory Burnell resigned as head of Christian Exodus and was replaced by Keith Humphrey.

FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY

Communities of various types founded around religious or spiritual principles have been commonplace through American history. Several of the early colonies were organized around religious principles, and the American landscape has continuously been dotted with self-contained communes. At present, there are numerous religious and spiritual enclaves scattered through the contemporary U.S.: Spiritualism camps; New Age centers; Mormon polygamous and conservative Jewish communities; and Amish and Hutterite settlements. Contemporary organized resettling of populations for a combination of religious and political reasons, as is the case with Christian Exodus, is somewhat more distinctive. The Free State project to resettle conservative Christian populations in New Hampshire and New Jersey are other examples (Ross 2006).

The key figure in the creation and development of Christian Exodus was Cory Burnell. [Image at right] Prior to establishing Christian Exodus, Burnell had directed a Texas branch of the League of the South, one of the nation’s largest secessionist organizations. He recognized that the U.S. was much more tightly integrated that in had been prior to the Civil War era: “We must realize that demographic changes of 140 years make it impossible to reclaim the entire geography once controlled by our Confederacy.” As a result, a different strategy was necessary (Morrison 2005):

These circumstances demand that we sift through the populace of all 50 states and call our people out. We must separate the wheat from the chaff and then concentrate our numbers geographically so we’re no longer dispersed and diluted among the enemy.

As a cofounder and early leader of Christian Exodus, Cory Burnell, along with his wife and three children, lived for a time in Texas, teaching mathematics in a local Christian school, managing the “Jitters” local coffee shop, and selling cell phones. He subsequently moved to Lodi in northern California (Kuenzie 2004). At the time Cory Burnell was living in Texas in the early 2000s, he began to formulate a plan for resettling conservative Christians in large numbers to create political jurisdictions where they could control the social, cultural and political environment. Broadly, the objective was to encourage the migration to political/territorial jurisdictions that offered favorable environments and work to assume control over local and then state administrative offices based on their interpretation of the Tenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution (The Tenth Amendment states that powers not constitutionally delegated to the federal government or not prohibited by the Constitution are granted to the states or the people.)

The movement was established by Cory Burnell and Jim Taylor in 2003 in the wake of the Supreme Court decision in Lawrence v Texas (a decision that overturned a Texas law that criminalized same sex sexual relations) and the decision by the Alabama Judicial Ethics panel to remove judge Roy Moore, the Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court for defying court orders to remove a Ten Commandments monument from rotunda of the courthouse (Sweet and Lee 2010). These, and other federal government decisions (criminalization of prayer in public schools, decriminalization of abortion, appropriation of federal funds for education and for the Department of Education, a national retirement system [Social Security] and medical coverage [Medicare], and the creation of a national currency, were regarded as intrusions on states’ rights. As Burnell put the matter, “Ultimately, it’s up to the people of each State to choose whether to place themselves under God s authority or maintain their humanist and statist ways” (Sweet and Lee 2010:9).

Burnell reported that he had explored several destination state possibilities in the Bible Belt (such as Mississippi, Alabama and South Carolina) but settled on South Carolina, which includes 750,000 Southern Baptists and fundamentalist Bob Jones University, a conservative Christian population base upon which to draw, and ocean access that would prevent an independent state from being landlocked. The initial plan was to relocate supportive populations from around the country to South Carolina. The first Phase involved 100 families to Anderson, South Carolina. Combined with existing supportive residents, the movement would elect Christian Constitutional majorities to city and county councils,  elected judgeships and law enforcement positions by 2009. This model would then be replicated in other parts of the state until the entire state was under the control of Christian Constitutionalists by 2014. Larger resettlements of 12,000 each were envisioned. Political control would then be translated into state constitutional control by 2018 (Sweet and Lee 2010). The plan was unsuccessful, however, and the movement was able to claim only fifteen resettled families in 2007. The movement then announced a shift in plans, with a new resettlement destination in Gem County, Idaho where several supportive families already resided. Some members even considered moving outside of the U.S. entirely. Further, in the spring of 2007, Cory Burnell stepped down as head of the organization, citing his inability to find work in South Carolina, and subsequently Keith Humphrey became the Executive Director of the organization. [Image at right]

Idaho offered an inviting alternative. It has been one of the nation’s fastest growing states for some time (Vos 2022). The state, and the northern part of the state in particular, has been a magnet for a variety of population groups: white supremacist and militia groups, “prepper” families, and residents of California seeking lower taxes and home prices or more conservative surroundings. In addition, the state is home to a number of Christian nationalist churches that have posted impressive membership gains, such as Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho. Idaho is also the center of the “American Redoubt” movement, whose title is attributed to James Wesley Rawles. Rawles identified several states and portions of states to create the redoubt safe haven (Kustra 2023; Jenkins 2023): [Image at right]

I strongly recommend this amalgamation, and that it be formalized. I’m calling it The American Redoubt. I further recommend Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, eastern Oregon, and eastern Washington for the réduit.

There are no reliable numerical estimates of the size of the Christian national population in Georgia and Idaho. However, it is clear that the numbers are substantial, that there are a number of related movements involved, and that there are some openly separatist churches and militia groups that together form a loose coalition.

DOCTRINES/BELIEFS

In his early formulation of Christian Exodus doctrine, Burnell did not invoke a God’s chosen nation perspective. As he put it, “there’s nothing special about the United States as a nation or government in biblical prophecy” and to assert that the U.S. Constitution is divinely inspired is “absolute nonsense.” What he did assert was that America was central to God’s lager mission as God “put Christians here to establish a beacon of light to the rest of the world in an evangelist way” and used the U.S as a base to send missionaries to other parts of the globe (Sweet and Lee 2010:10). It appears that only a handful of families actually moved to South Carolina, which did not include Burnell and his family, and that, combined with supporters already state residents, Christian Exodus could count just over 1,000 members in South Carolina.

As the resettlement plan did not meet movement expectations, Burnell began to stress that personally separating from a sinful society was the core principle of the movement. As he put it, “We have learned, however, that the chains of our slavery and dependence upon godless government have more of a hold on us than can be broken by simply moving to another State (Sweet and Lee 2010:12) :

It is not important that they live apart from them, so much as that the BE apart from them. We are not to participate in evil, sinful behaviors nor give our approval to such activity. Sharing a government that promotes evil, and being complicit in the evil by refusing to arrest it should not be tolerated by Christians.

An early version of the Christian Exodus website spelled out details (Christian Exodus website 2013):

As many like-minded Christian activists pursue independent Christian living without relocating, the scope has expanded to promote “personal secession” though many and various tracks, wherever they can be implemented. The long process of disentanglement from idolatrous dependencies includes such practices of moving towards a home-centered economy, with intentional community, home-schooling, home-gardening, house churches, health-cost sharing, private exchange, unlicenced ministry, and any other way in which we might live free and godly lives in Christ Jesus, without prostrating ourselves to eat from the hand of the imperial magistrate.

At a national level, Christian Exodus supports the repeal of the Sixteenth Amendment (legitimating the federal income tax) and the seventeenth Amendment (permitting the direct election of U.S. senators).

ORGANIZATION/LEADERSHIP

Christian Exodus has always had more network than formal organization qualities. While Christian Exodus was launched as an organization in 2004, it made little progress toward achieving its political goals. Indeed, the movement shifted its focus from South Carolina to Idaho within three years and the movement leader resigned his position. The movement then consisted of loosely connected branches, and each consisted of a combination of already resident supporters and a small number of resettlers.

ISSUES/CHALLENGES

Through its history Christian Exodus has stood as more of a symbolic protest network than an actual, organized political force. It has faced and continues to face two problems: internal organization and continued external opposition.

Christian Exodus began as a vision for reclaiming a conservative Christian America. While there was substantial rhetorical support for the group, there never has been organizational cohesion. Cory Burnell did not personally undertake the resettlement he urged on others, and he resigned his position in just three years. His successor has never shown much vision or initiative. The movement fragmented and has thus became parallel branches when the primary resettlement location shifted from South Carolina to Idaho. There is little evidence of an organizational resurgence.

The movement also has been resolute and uncompromising in its positions. A number of these positions were part of the League of the South’s agenda in support of the Confederacy following the Civil War and combined them with contemporary conservative Christian positions. These positions would translate conservative Christian moral preferences into law, seek dominant political control at the state and federal levels, and retain the right of secession if lesser initiatives failed. These positions raised red flags with mainstream religious organizations that fit into the denominational model of religious organization.  For example, In a recent editorial, Episcopal Bishop Gretchen Rehberg decried Christian nationalism as “heresy for Christians and dangerous rhetoric for all Americans” and stated that “To state that is not a denial of Christianity, or a denigration of patriotism, rather the call to a proper relationship between church and state” (Jenkins 2023). Reverend Carlisle Driggers, Executive Director of the South Carolina Baptist Convention commented on Christian Exodus’ openness to secession: “South Carolina is a patriotic state, with a real love of family and a clear commitment to this country in the past century,” Driggers said. “I can’t imagine this plan being received well at all in this state” (“Group Promotes Secession” (2004). A South Carolina state senator, Pastor Darrell Jackson referred to Christian Exodus as a “modern day Jim Jones” and added that “ It tells me that we have a whole lot of work to do as it relates to our public image outside of the borders of South Carolina” (Kuenzie 2004).

The future of Christian Exodus as an organized movement appears to be fragile at best. However, there are other movements and churches that share elements of the Christian Exodus agenda. Across America population resorting and resettling continues. These trends bear watching as indicators of the extent of polarization in the contemporary U.S.

IMAGES

Image #1: Cory Burnell.
Image #2: Keith Humphrey.
Image #3: American Redoubt map.

REFERENCES

“Christian Exodus About Us.” Accessed from Christianexodus.org on 21 August 2013.

“Group promotes secession from U.S.” 2004. Religion News Blog, June 15. Accessed from https://www.religionnewsblog.com/7556/group-promotes-secession-from-us on 5 March 2024.

Jenkins, Jack. 2023. “In North Idaho, religious and secular activists work to fight Christian nationalism.” Religion News, March 8. Accessed from https://religionnews.com/2023/03/08/in-north-idaho-fighting-christian-nationalism-can-be-exhausting-and-dangerous/ on 5 March 2024.

Jenkins, Jack. 2023. “’Christian patriots’ are flocking from blue states to Idaho.” Washington Post, February 24.

Kuenzie, Jack. 2004. “Christian group plans mass exodus to SC.” WS10, November 19. Accessed from https://www.wistv.com/story/2587218/christian-group-plans-mass-exodus-to-sc/ on 29 February 2024.

Kustra, Bob. 2023. “OPINION: Idaho at the epicenter of American Redoubt, white Christian nationalism movement.” Coeur d’Alene Press, April 14. Accessed from OPINION: Idaho at the epicenter of American Redoubt, white Christian nationalism movement | Coeur d’Alene Press (cdapress.com) on 5 March 2024.

Morrison, Alexander. 2005. “Christian Exodus leader has a history.” GoUpstate, October 13. Accessed from https://www.bing.com/ck/a?!&&p=c6984ca8bdd80e0aJmltdHM9MTcwOTMzNzYwMCZpZ3VpZD0xY2ZjOTAyYy04MGY2LTY3MzAtM2ViYi05ZmIwODEwYjY2YzQmaW5zaWQ9NTIxMA&ptn=3&ver=2&hsh=3&fclid=1cfc902c-80f6-6730-3ebb- on 2 March 2024.

Rawles, James. 2011. “The American Redoubt – Move to the Mountain States”. Survivalblog. Accessed from https://survivalblog.com/redoubt/ on 5 March 2024.

Ross, Bobby. 2006. “Exodus New Jersey: Journey of a lifetime.” Christian Chronicle, June1. Accessed from https://christianchronicle.org/exodus-new-jersey-journey-of-a-lifetime/ on 5 March 2024.

Sweet, Joanna and Martha Lee. 2010. “Christian Exodus: A Modern American Millenarian Movement.” Journal for the Study of Radicalism 4:1-23.

Vos, Japp. 2022. “Idaho’s Demographics Changing at Unprecedented Rates, U of I Analysis Finds.” Uidaho news, August 18. Accessed from https://www.uidaho.edu/news/news-articles/news-releases/2022/081822-demographics on 5 March 2024.

Publication Date:
7 March 2024

BAYS TIMELINE

1938 (June 29):  Juan Percowicz was born in Buenos Aires.

1971:  Percowicz started taking both yoga classes at GEBA, the Gymnastic and Fencing Club of Buenos Aires, and private lessons from Dante Norberto Parandelli.

1983:  Percowicz started teaching Raja Yoga in Buenos Aires. He later referred to his pupils as students of an “Escuela de Yoga de Buenos Aires” (Buenos Aires Yoga School, BAYS), although no formal structure existed before 1993.

1990:  Percowicz and a group of students bought land in State of Israel Avenue in Buenos Aires’ neighborhood of Villa Crespo, where a building with a coffee shop also used for lectures and apartments for some of the students were built.

1993:  The Fundación Escuela de Yoga de Buenos Aires was incorporated as a legal structure for BAYS. It functioned for one year only, due to the 1994 court case.

1993 (November 30):  After suffering a deprogramming attempt on November 27 and 28, an adult female BAYS student (twenty-four) filed a complaint against her stepfather for unlawful deprivation of liberty and left her family home with the aid of police agents.

1993 (December 22):  The stepfather of that student filed a complaint claiming his stepdaughter had been “brainwashed” by BAYS. A few of his friends, who also had adult children as students at the institution, joined him, later followed by a young man who had relatives in the BAYS and had himself attended the school for a short period, Pablo Salum. They accused the BAYS of operating a clandestine prostitution ring, where female students worked as prostitutes to finance the school. A criminal investigation was opened in 1994.

1999:  Because of the pending court case and other considerations, Percowicz decided that no new students would be admitted into the school, with some limited exceptions for adult children of existing students.

2000 (May 11):  All BAYS defendants were found innocent of all charges in a first-degree decision stating that no evidence of crime had emerged. The decision would be confirmed both on appeal and by the Court of Cassation in 2001.

2022 (August 12):  Based on a complaint by Pablo Salum, the special prosecutors’ office against human trafficking PROTEX instructed the police to raid the State of Israel building in the presence of the media, and the private homes of several BAYS members, looking again for evidence of prostitution activities. Nineteen BAYS members were arrested, including Percowicz.

2022 (September 8):  Judge Ariel Lijo of the Buenos Aires court indicted the nineteen defendants. They appealed.

2022 (November 4):  The Court of Appeals partially confirmed seventeen indictments, found lack of merit in the other two, ordered the release of all detainees, and urged Judge Lijo to hear the nine alleged female victims and especially to submit them to psychological and psychiatric tests through experts and allow the defense evidence that he had not previously admitted. One of the three judges, Eduardo Farah, in a partially dissenting opinion stated that he would have simply declared all the defendants innocent and closed the case.

2023 (July 3):  The expert psychological examination of the alleged victims was concluded, and all the nine women, who denied ever having worked as prostitutes, were found in normal mental health and believable.

2023 (July 4):  Judge Lijo, without taking into account the forensic medical reports or having allowed evidence from the defense, closed the investigation.

2023 (September 19):  Judge Lijo committed the defendants to trial.

2023 (October 10):  The alleged victims appeared before the Court of Appeals and denied the existence of any crime against them, claiming that PROTEX is using them to increase its victim statistics.

2023 (December 7):  The Court of Appeals of Buenos Aires annulled the decree that considered the investigation closed and all its consequences, including the elevation to trial, and sent the case back to Judge Lijo, asking him to take into account the expert psychological examination of the alleged victims. In another partially dissenting opinion, Judge Farah reiterated that he would have simply acquitted all the defendants and put an end to the case.

2023 (December 22):  The prosecutors filed an appeal against the Court of Appeals decision of December 7.

2024 (February 8):  The Court of Appeals declares the prosecutors’ appeal inadmissible.

FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY

Juan Percowicz [Image at right] was born in Buenos Aires on June 29, 1938, from Polish-Ukrainian Jewish parents. By his own account, he was a mediocre student. From his childhood he was as interested in philosophers and the great figures of world literature while his friends were in Argentinian football players, which somewhat distracted him from the regular school curriculum. He was good with numbers, though, and eventually graduated from the School of Economics of the University of Buenos Aires with a degree in business administration and became a certified public accountant (Percowicz 1992:12).

He never made it to the Olympus of high-profile accounting firms, but he had a prosperous business, which allowed him free time to keep studying philosophy and opened to him the doors of the, the Gymnastic and Fencing Club of Buenos Aires (GEBA), regarded by many as the finest club in the city. There, a police doctor named Dante Norberto Parandelli (1933–2010) was offering yoga classes. A look at the books written by him (Parandelli 1989, 1991) helps to dispel a misunderstanding about the word “yoga.” When they raided the BAYS in 2022 (see below under “Issues/Challenges”), the PROTEX prosecutors were surprised that they did not find yoga mats at a place called a school of yoga. But in fact in its millennia-old history in India, yoga has always been a philosophy before being a system of physical exercises. Parandelli taught both, although some of his books deal with the philosophical part only, and it was yoga as a philosophy (Raja Yoga) that mostly interested Percowicz.

From 1971, Percowicz took classes with Parandelli at GEBA, and private lessons from him as well. Later, when the first criminal case against the BAYS started, Parandelli tried to downplay his relationship with Percowicz (Juzgado de Instrucción Criminal n° 46 2000:67). While stating that Parandelli only helped him in the first part of his philosophical itinerary, Percowicz remained grateful to him. In one of the few books he published, Los cinco magos de la Notre-Dame (The Five Magicians of Notre Dame), co-authored with Susana Franca and César Pallotta in 1991, Percowicz included Dante Parandelli (Etnad, or Dante spelled backwards) and the mysterious man Parandelli himself mentioned as his own master, “Durante” (Etnarud), among the five magicians who meet every hundred years above Paris’ cathedral to work on behalf of humanity (Percowicz, Franca, and Pallotta 1991).

To become the man known to his pupils as the founder and leader of BAYS, Percowicz did not rely on groups and schools. He spent more than ten years avidly reading Western and Eastern philosophers and esoteric masters, from Plato (ca. 428–348 BCE) to Walt Whitman (1819–1892), and from Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) and Paramahansa Yogananda (1893–1952) to Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) and Maurice Nicoll (1884–1953). His list of preferred authors (that he would later recommend to his students) included Hindu masters such as Vivekananda (1863–1902) and Western esoteric luminaries such as Helena Blavatsky (1831–1891), Charles Webster Leadbeater (1854–1934), Mabel Collins (1851–1927) and Paul Brunton (1898–1981). It also included Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) and Hermann Hesse (1877–1962). While the catalog looks eclectic, by interviewing both Percowicz and his students (personal interviews, Buenos Aires, March 20–24, 2023) the importance of one particular tradition emerged, the teachings of George Ivanovich Gurdjieff (1866?–1949) as presented by his independent disciple Pyotr Demianovich Ouspensky (1878–1947). This does not mean that Ouspensky’s book In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching (Ouspensky 1949), with which all BAYS students are familiar, is a textbook or a manual for them. They just take from it some basic ideas, for which they find confirmations in other texts and traditions.

In 1983, three ladies called in the school the “Three Bs” [Bibí Lefèvre de Giglioli, Beba Fernández de Morales (1932–2016), and Beatriz Vigil de Sosa Molina (1936–2005)] asked Percowicz to teach Raja Yoga to them (Percowicz 1992:12). This was the origin of what later became the BAYS. It was always a group of friends, which never exceeded 300 members, with a larger circle of perhaps 1,000 who occasionally attended events and lectures. The lectures attracted, among others, distinguished members of the artistic and musical community, including soprano Verónica Iácono, the late violin player, composer, and director Rubén González (1939–2018), who had an important career in the United States, Mariano Krawczyk (Mariano Krauz), regarded as one of the best oboists in the world, and composer Susana Mendelievich [Image at right]. They expressed the ideas of the school in musical compositions that caught the attention, among others, of Spanish opera singer Plácido Domingo, who became their friend of many years (although, after the 2022 raid, he also tried to distance himself from the group). Artists of a different field also joined: Carlos Barragán went on to win the 1997 World Championships of Stage Magic in Dresden, Germany, with a team entirely composed of BAYS members (FISM 2023).

My interviewees commented that the school also attracted a large number of members from two minorities, Jews and homosexuals. They all maintained that anti-Semitism was a component of the opposition, and in the early days the fact that the school welcomed homosexuals also raised eyebrows. In 1990, a group of students teamed up with Percowicz and hired architects from the same school to build a ten-story building on State of Israel Avenue in the (historically Jewish) Villa Crespo neighborhood of Buenos Aires. Percowicz would own a café [Image at right] where courses would be held, on the ground floor, and the other members of the group would own the flats on the other floors. The café was inaugurated in 1992. The construction of the rest of the building was halted in 1994 due to the first criminal proceedings and restarted in 1995.

During the criminal case of 1994–2000 and even after all its defendants were declared innocent of all charges in 2000 (see below, under “Issues/Challenges”), BAYS kept a low profile and lived a quiet life until 2022, when its activities were disrupted by the police raid and the arrest and prosecution of Percowicz and  eighteen other members of BAYS.

DOCTRINES/BELIEFS

The BAYS does not regard itself as a religious movement, and students keep their own religion if they have one (interviews of Juan Percowicz and fifteen BAYS students, Buenos Aires, March 20–24, 2023, on which this section is largely based). I interviewed one who told me that she regularly goes to Catholic Mass, and another spent a good part of her life as an executive in different leading Argentinian Jewish organizations. Rather than “religion” or “spirituality,” they prefer to use the word “philosophy.” However, they insist that we are all naturally philosophers, whether we use this word or not. We can, however, repress and deny our philosophical attitude (i.e., the natural tendency to ask questions about the meaning of life), but this generates stress, frustration, violence at the individual and social level. It is even the root cause of the alarming spread of drug addictions and of wars. Some of my interviewees were medical doctors and clinical psychologists and insisted that the study of philosophy may help solving serious problems of addiction, besides improving the general well-being.

Just as it happened with Gurdjieff, the focus was much more on this life than on the next. Percowicz told me he personally inclines towards the doctrine of reincarnation and finds the idea of karma reasonable, but nobody is obliged to be religious or to believe in any religious doctrine in the school, although there are groups studying (but from a “philosophical” more than from a dogmatic or theological point of view) the sacred scriptures of different religions [Image at right].

The teachings of Gurdjieff are notoriously obscure. Despite biographies, conferences, special issues of academic journals, and courses devoted to him in several universities, Gurdjieff’s thought remains elusive to the non-initiated (Needleman and Baker 1996). Gurdjieff was a harsh spiritual master, who believed that most humans were in a sleeping state without knowing it and needed shock therapy, including verbal abuse, and demanding physical exercises, to wake up.

Percowicz told me that these were methods perhaps appropriate for a different historical time. He never adopted them but from Gurdjieff, as presented by Ouspensky, he took two fundamental ideas. One of them is that one of the most difficult human endeavors is to observe ourselves. The first stages of Gurdjieff’s “Work” propose observation, verification, and acceptance of the truth of the human condition through study, participation in group work, and mindfulness exercises (“self-remembrance”). Theoretically, each of us should be able to perform this self-observing routine individually. In practice, however, since the risk of self-delusion is always present, group work with others is indispensable for evolution. By working in a group, self-observation can be more objective; and an experienced master may make the path to evolution considerably shorter.

Gurdjieff also taught that many contradictories, competing “I”s or selves coexist in each person. This conflict makes thinking and acting in a unified form ultimately impossible. A contradictory set of thoughts, emotional reactions, and repetitive mechanisms of self-protection determines a state of confusion and unhappiness. An awareness of this state is the first step in the direction of awakening. As Australian scholar Carole Cusack has demonstrated, Gurdjieff (who disliked putting his ideas in writing) did teach a model of evolution where humans were divided into types, although the number of them varied over time and each of his main disciples adopted a slightly different model (Cusack 2020).

Percowicz used a seven-type model, and within each degree introduced the distinction between aspirant, informal, and formal. While in the first three levels humans are dominated by one feature only (physical, emotional, or intellectual), some balance is achieved at level four, which allows to move to the higher levels of evolution, five (the genius), six (the saint), and seven (the master or the angel). Theories of types are, of course, not exclusive to Gurdjieff. Students found similar ideas in Hermann Hesse’s novel Steppenwolf (Hesse 1927), which became an important reference for the school.

Some Gurdjieffian harshness remains in sentences in Percowicz’s lectures, which  may give the impression that those at the lower levels, dominated by the “low ‘I’s” (yoes bajos), are hardly human. As a matter of fact, the concept is a little more complex. It refers to the idea of contradictory “I’s” defined above, according to which some ideas or emotions of ours can lead to erroneous decisions while others can be much wiser. The representation of “I’s” as distinct persons within us is often used in BAYS to help students differentiate among these “I’s,” References to “humans” or “low I’s” made this way are never meant to disdain others but to repel one’s own bad tendencies. In this context, “human” refers not to a person but to a state: the “sleeping state” described by Gurdjieff as common to most human beings, opposite to the “self-remembrance” state, which is also possible for everybody. According to the school, achieving this higher level is difficult but not impossible.

In fact, Percowicz teaches a method more than contents. Ouspensky offers a point of view from which a great number of authors and texts can be mobilized at the service of spiritual evolution, often through short aphorisms that are then commented on in all their philosophical implications. The texts and authors the school studies the most changed and rotated over time. Benjamín Franklin (1706–1790), Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), William Shakespeare (1564–1616) were all discussed at one time, and I encountered several references to Argentinian poet Pedro Bonifacio Palacios, “Almafuerte” (1854–1917). Fyodor Dostoyevski (1821–1881) has a special importance in the BAYS, the image of a poker game where the cards corresponded to aphorism-like sentences of the Russian writer inspired a book published in 1993 (Percowicz, Franca, and Pallotta 1993), and an opera the school’s musicians wrote and represented in 1995 (Loiacono, González, Krauz, and Mendelievich 2007). During the COVID lockdown, which was very strict in Argentina, students deemed it fit to meditate on Les Misérables by Victor Hugo (1802–1885: Hugo 1862). The BAYS also created subgroups exploring a great variety of subjects. One was astrology, approached psychologically according to the school of Oskar Adler (1875–1955). [Image at right]

Yet, the school discovered that, while philosophy made it easier to become better human beings and even overcome alcohol or drug addictions, problems remained. These problems were connected to the fact that we constantly need to communicate with others, who may be very different from us, and we do not really know them. Communication was always a major theme of BAYS and was originally approached through the notion of “the way of the geisha” (geishado), an idea that came from a poem by Percowicz’ old yoga master, Dante Parandelli. Scholars of Japanese culture know that a geisha is not a prostitute (Gallagher 2003). Although she may sometimes enter into sexual relationships with her clients, she mostly entertains them with her artistic, musical, and conversational skills and a superior art of courtesy. “Geishado” meant in the BAYS acquiring a style of refined courtesy and was applied to both women and men. When the school was accused of favoring prostitution, “geisha” as synonym of an aristocratic courtesy typical of Japanese culture was increasingly replaced by “samurai courtesy,” which Hollywood had popularized in the meantime.

Since 2010, however, the main reference for communication became Dale Carnegie’s (1888–1955) 1936 book How to Win Friends and Influence People, one of the greatest bestsellers of all times (Carnegie 1936). Carnegie’s book created a whole generation, in fact more than one, of American businesspersons and politicians who believed that we could change others by changing our own attitude to them. Carnegie is generally considered as a quintessential torch-bearer of American values of moralistic benevolence. It is not the lesser paradox of the BAYS case that its ubiquitous presence in the school was later interpreted by the prosecutors as yet another way of teaching the sinister arts of “brainwashing” and manipulation.

Carnegie would have in fact agreed with Percowicz’ very simple ethic, which is based on the principles of not harming themselves and not harming others. I was told by some of the earliest students that, at a time where life was difficult for homosexuals in Argentina, they were surprised when, having disclosed their sexual orientations, they were told that BAYS regarded them as irrelevant. BAYS also welcomed artists and musicians whose way of living was somewhat unconventional and “scandalous” for conservative Argentinian standards. While in thousands of recorded lectures by Percowicz references to sexuality are very scarce, he did maintain a non-judgmental attitude towards different forms of sexual behavior among consenting adults [Image  at right].

RITUALS/PRACTICES

There are no specific rituals or practices in the BAYS, which regards itself as a school of philosophy and Raja Yoga where students are encouraged to listen to lectures and study texts, although they may also demonstrate what they have learned through artistic performances.

Until 2022, at the center of the life of the school were the classes given twice a week in the café, personally by Juan Percowicz in the early years and mostly by senior students more recently. Although classes were not offered after the 2022 raid, the café keeps what looks like a stage with musical instruments where shows and performances were offered before the lectures.

In addition to the classes, there were ceremonies and “rituals” organized by a group of women, humorously called the “Ghostbusters” after the 1984 American comedy movie. While the judge in the court case suspected these were rituals of “black magic” or “sexual orgies,” I interviewed some of the Ghostbusters themselves, who insisted that they consisted in lighting candles and ritually cleansing apartments with vinegar and the medicinal herb known as rue (ruta graveolens), which is often used in ritual magic [Image at right]. These “rituals” did not involve all students. Those who participated did not necessarily believe in magic, the Ghostbusters explained, but did find the ceremonies had a positive psychological effect on participants.

ORGANIZATION/LEADERSHIP

For most of its forty years and more of existence, the BAYS has been an informal group of students, united by the common acknowledgement of Percowicz’s authority as a teacher, but without formal structure. In 1993, the BAYS tried to create a legal structure overseeing its activity, the Fundación Escuela de Yoga de Buenos Aires, but it was put into receivership in 1994 at the time of the first court case and, after 29 years of inactivity on the part of the receiver, finally liquidated in 2023.

The school per se continued to function without legal organization. However, there was a list of those considered students and the levels they had achieved through years of studying in the BAYS, based on the classification into types inspired by Gurdjieff. According to the list I examined, twenty students had achieved the seventh level, nine of whom were “7 formal,” including Percowicz. He presents himself as one “who knows what he knows and knows what he does not know.” Some early students took it to mean that, by knowing both what he knows and what he does not know, Percowicz in fact knows everything. He told me he took this interpretation as a joke, clarifying that “knows what he does not know” means that he is aware of what he has yet to learn. At any rate, all students I interviewed were very grateful to him, and claimed to have benefited from his suggestions and insights even in fields he is not directly familiar with.

Members of the BAYS created businesses that were not part of the school but applied some of its ideas to different fields and employed mostly fellow students. B.A. Group offered coaching through both courses and private lessons and had among its clients some large Buenos Aires institutions and businesses. Aznarez Propiedades was a real estate agency, and some students also worked at Salum Propiedades. The owner was the brother of anti-cultist Pablo Salum, Germán Javier Salum, who eventually left the BAYS but unlike his brother remained a friend.

CMI Abasto was called within BAYS a “clinic” but was more exactly a center with offices of several doctors and psychologists, not all of them members of the school. There, one of the services offered were the “sleep cures” (curas de sueño) where stressed patients could engage in therapies through which they were induced to sleep for longer hours than usual, as well as to recreate by painting, reading, or listening to music for relaxation purposes and, if they wanted, following a nutritional diet. [Image at right] There was also a law firm led by a female student, Susana Barneix, who is an attorney, and several companies in the United States, where the school had a few members. In the court cases an informal “bank” was also mentioned. This in fact was a common fund where those who lived in the State of Israel Avenue building and others might contribute to common expenses and borrow money when needed.

I interviewed those responsible for these businesses and BAYS students who worked there. They told me that most clients were not members of BAYS, and never received a proposal to join the school. Before 2022, Aznarez sold dozens of properties, only four of them to students of the school. B.A. had no clients at all that were part of BAYS. CMI Abasto had BAYS patients, including Percowicz, but many were not part of the school and had not even heard about it. They all denied that the businesses were used to promote the school, although they did apply philosophical principles their managers had learned from the BAYS.

ISSUES/CHALLENGES

In the early 1990s, the BAYS looked like a small but prosperous organization. When on June 5, 1992, Percowicz presented the school’s philosophy in a lecture at the Sheraton Buenos Aires Hotel & Towers, the event had been declared of “national interest” and had received the official congratulations of the Ministry of Culture and Education, the City of Buenos Aires, and several other institutions (Percowicz 1992) [Image at right]. The school’s musicians were gaining national and international recognition. Carlos Barragán and his all-BAYS team were on their way to being acknowledged as the world champions of stage magic. Others had gained awards in the artistic, business, and medical fields. Percowicz himself was awarded in 1993 with the “Orden Al Mérito Cristóbal Colón” (“Cristopher Columbus Order of Merit”) by the World Council for Curriculum and Instruction (on which see Overly 2003), “for his outstanding work as a relevant figure in Latin America, contributing to world peace, to the understanding of peoples and to the cultural and educational elevation of nations” (World Council for Curriculum and Instruction 1993).

Unbeknownst to BAYS members, however, the wind of the anti-cult campaigns had started blowing over Argentina as well. Small anti-cult groups were organizing themselves, with the help of U.S. and French anti-cultists.

On November 27 and 28, 1993, the mother and stepfather of a BAYS young adult female student (twenty-four years-old) hired an anti-cult psychologist to conduct a deprogramming on her in order to force her to leave BAYS. Two days later, the young female sought legal help, filed a complaint against her stepfather for unlawful deprivation of liberty, and was assisted by the police to fetch her belongings so that she could leave for good.

On December 23, 1993, the stepfather of that female BAYS student claimed that she had left his home because she had been “brainwashed” by the school. While the stepdaughter argued that the real reason was her stepfather’s abusive behavior (which was later confirmed by a psychologist during the trial), the man recruited a few other parents who claimed their adult children had been “brainwashed” too. Some told extraordinary tales of women compelled to have lesbian relations or work as prostitutes, and of boys sexually initiated by older women, including their own mothers. One of those who told these stories was the father of Pablo Gastón Salum, who is well-known today in his country as the leading Argentinian anti-cultist. Pablo’s mother, brother, and sister remained in the school. His father said Pablo had left because he was “horrified” (Juzgado de Instrucción Criminal n° 46 2000:51).

Pablo himself testified in the case and denied his father’s story. He said he had left BAYS because he had lost interest in its classes, which he had attended for three or four years since age ten, but that he had not seen anything improper there. He declared that after leaving BAYS he kept living with his mother for a year, and only left his mother’s home and went to his father’s because his mother asked him to work or complete elementary school (which he had also left), something he didn’t want to do (Juzgado de Instrucción Criminal n° 46 2000:102–3). Later, however, after further family quarrels (in one of which his brother reported he had been threatened by him with a knife) Pablo testified again, and said he had rendered a false deposition following instructions by Percowicz. He backed up his father’s story by saying that young boys in the BAYS were sexually initiated by older women, including his own mother, and added lurid details about orgies and prostitution. He claimed that the BAYS was the most dangerous “cult” operating in Argentina (Juzgado de Instrucción Criminal n° 46 2000:111–17). Pablo’s career as an anti-BAYS “professional apostate” had started. Meanwhile, Percowicz and another thirty BAYS leaders and students had found themselves under criminal investigation. [Image at right]

Judge Julio César Corvalán de la Colina had to put some order in what looked like a hopeless mess of contradictory statements. It took him several years, as the case had started in 1993 and his decision was dated May 11, 2000, which was confirmed by the Court of Appeals on December 28, 2000 and by the Court of Cassation on September 10 and November 28, 2001. He devoted several pages to discuss whether the BAYS was a “cult” (secta), although he also noted that operating a “cult” was not a crime under Argentinian law. He stated he did believe in “brainwashing” theories, based on a book with this very title, El lavado de cerebro (Brainwashing) by Spanish social psychologist Álvaro Rodríguez Carballeira, a digest of the early anti-cult “brainwashing” ideology (Rodríguez Carballeira 1992).

Judge Corvalán de la Colina came to the conclusion that, although he believed “brainwashing” existed, the BAYS had not practiced it. He declared all the defendants innocents. The most serious crime they had been accused of was corruption of minors. Corvalán noted that the two alleged victims denied absolutely that they had been corrupted or abused, a scenario that would repeat itself in 2022. The judge regarded them as more believable than the anti-BAYS witnesses. He also found that the two declarations of Pablo Salum contradicting each other made him a highly doubtful witness and noted that his and his father’s stories were highly conditioned by a situation of family conflict.

Psychological expert reports had confirmed that, although perhaps in some cases easily influenceable, the alleged victims, who denied having been victimized, were all mentally competent. The judge was also impressed by the fact that, after some seven years of a judicial ordeal and considerable media slandering, they had all remained in the school. He wrote that theirs was a “project of life their parents probably did not approve of,” but it had been freely chosen, and that choice was protected by the Argentinian Constitution (Juzgado de Instrucción Criminal n° 46 2000:198). [Image at right]

As mentioned earlier, after the judicial victory of 2000, and in fact even before it, the BAYS decided to keep a low profile. The story of how the BAYS had been attacked and had emerged victorious from the long 1993 court case was not publicly told. One student who had two cousins among the “desaparecidos” of the military regime told me that perhaps the memories of these years, haunting a generation so much marked by fear, had made them reluctant to criticize the police. However, the fact that the first criminal case and its outcome were not well-known outside of the two subcultures of the BAYS members and the anti-cultists would make more difficult for BAYS to react when a second raid happened twenty-two years after the favorable decision of 2000.

The date was August 12, 2022. In the cafeteria located on the ground floor of the State of Israel building, some fifty BAYS students were listening to a class about philosophy. The youngest were in their forties and the oldest in their eighties. All of a sudden, a thunderous noise was heard. Fully armed SWAT team police broke the door and entered the coffee shop with weapons loaded, with safety removed, and ready to shoot. In a few seconds, all hell broke loose. [Image at right] The police went up to all the apartments and started breaking all the doors, pursued in vain by their owners who offered the keys to the officers so that they could enter without destroying the entryways. Once inside, the police searched everywhere, gutting furniture and throwing all the contents of the cabinets on the floors. When the agents left, almost all owners complained that money and jewels had been stolen.

Meanwhile, in the State of Israel Avenue, dozens of agents and reporters were taking pictures of people taken out of the building, whom the media interpreted either as criminals or “victims” rescued from them. Similar scenes took place around Buenos Aires during all the night, in another fifty private apartments of members of what was believed to be the same criminal organization. All in all, nineteen persons were arrested, three of them at Buenos Aires airport before boarding a plane to the United States, and warrants for arrest were issued against other nine, five of whom were abroad.

When the raid hit the BAYS, lawyers were immediately contacted. Susana Barneix, a student holding a level seven formal, was herself a lawyer, but she was also among those arrested. The attorneys immediately advised their BAYS clients that their best defense was double jeopardy. They were being accused of crimes for which they had already been investigated and acquitted in 2000. Many women believed to be “victims” and prostitutes were also the same of the old case, only twenty-two years older. Pablo Salum himself implied in some of his public statements that what had changed since 2000 was not the facts, but the laws. However, criminal laws cannot be retroactive, not to mention the fact that the judgment in the previous case had dismissed not the criminal nature of the alleged facts but their mere existence.

What the prosecutor tried to apply against the BAYS was the Argentinian law 26.842 of 2012 against human trafficking. Why and how this law was passed has been reconstructed in a critical book by the academic and assistant prosecutor Marisa S. Tarantino, published in 2021 (Tarantino 2021). Tarantino describes both the international and domestic pressures on Argentina for a tougher law on human trafficking. Law 26.842 went beyond the international conventions that regard as victims of human trafficking, even if they deny their condition of victims, those who are exploited for prostitution or forced labor through violence, threats, or deception. In the Argentinian law of 2012, these are not features of the crime, although if present they are considered as aggravating circumstances. This means that there may be human trafficking even in absence of violence, threats, or deception.

Tarantino explains that there were two reasons for introducing this Argentinian peculiarity. The first was the influence of the movement for the abolition of prostitution. Although prostitution per se, if freely exercised by the prostitute, is not illegal in Argentina, the 2012 law implies that there is no such a person as a free prostitute, and all are at least suspect of being trafficked. The second reason is the lobbying activity of a special prosecutorial office called PROTEX (Procuraduría para el Combate de la Trata y Explotación de Personas, Office of the Procurator for Combating the Trafficking and Exploitation of Persons), whose powers and resources were greatly expanded.

According to Tarantino, the tool used to criminalize prostitution in general (without explicitly saying it) is “vulnerability as a tool of control” (Tarantino 2021:200). This creates a “paradigm of victimization” that denies certain subjects their “political agency” (Tarantino 2001:206). In other words, a prostitute is by definition “vulnerable” and “a victim.” If she says that she has freely decided to be a prostitute, this only proves that the “victimization” has been especially effective, and what remains to be done is for the PROTEX to ascertain who the victimizer is.

The PROTEX luminaries quoted by Tarantino in her book as defending a wider-ranging paradigm of vulnerability were the same people who organized the raid against the BAYS. The PROTEX, who started a regular cooperation with Pablo Salum and raided several other “cults,” claimed that just as those who work as prostitutes, those who join “cults” are all “victimized” by “abusing their vulnerability,” even when they deny it. Their denial is evidence they have been “brainwashed.”

Judge Ariel Oscar Lijo on September 8, 2022, indicted nineteen BAYS defendants through a document of 572 pages (Juzgado Criminal y Correccional Federal n° 4 2022). In a nutshell it told the following story. The BAYS is a “cult” according to the definition of anti-cultists, which attracts its members and keeps them in the school through the use of “brainwashing.” While ostensibly its aim is to teach philosophy, its real purpose is to enrich Percowicz and other leaders through the practice of prostitution. Female members are submitted to a continuous “brainwashing,” some of them almost since birth because their parents were already members of the school and are deprived of their free will and personality. They are then trafficked and sent to meet male clients. Most of the money from their prostitution business goes to BAYS. The different companies operated by BAYS members, such as the coaching company and the real estate agencies, are fronts whose aim is to fraudulently justify the presence of profits that come in fact from prostitution, so that the businesses are in fact money-laundering organizations. The so-called clinic is also used for money-laundering, but the “sleep cures” there are also used to further brainwash the women who work as prostitutes and punish those who try to rebel or escape (why Percowicz and other leaders also went through these cures was not explained). While a comparatively small number of student-prostitutes were regarded as victims, many leaders and members of the school were considered perpetrators and part of a criminal conspiracy, which justified their arrest.

Obviously, this vast conspiracy needed to be proved. The indictment mentions one complainant, who was not named but is obviously Pablo Salum, and four witnesses, who seem to be persons who cleaned the apartments in State of Israel Avenue, and others where students lived, and the so-called “clinic.” One was identified by students as a cleaning lady who had been caught stealing and fired and had vowed to “go to Pablo Salum” as vengeance. The witnesses do not say much, except that they heard rumors and saw women “dressed like prostitutes.” One witness said she saw students dressed in “red and blue,” which she believed to be “the colors typical of ‘old prostitutes’.”

Based on Pablo Salum’s claims, the PROTEX believed that sexual encounters were videotaped, and the tapes kept in the house of the stage magician Barragán for possible future uses as blackmail material. However, thousands of videos seized in Barragán’s apartment were patiently viewed and indexed by the agents and only included stage magic shows and BAYS courses.

What the judge was left with was the interpretation of tapped telephone conversations and the journals of some female members, with some ambiguous references to boyfriends and sexuality open to different interpretations and that the PROTEX presented as evidence of prostitution. The defense also claimed that, when confronted against the actual recordings, several transcriptions proved to have been seriously altered to the detriment of the defendants.

To make matters worse, the judge did not take into account (and when they were subject to his approval, did not even allow) the many pieces of evidence provided by the defendants to prove the legitimate origin of their savings, which were seized in their entirety, while considering well-known 30-year-old companies as “facades” without carrying out even the most elementary analysis. The unreasonableness reached such a point that, for example, an apartment that a student inherited from her deceased mother was considered as obtained through human trafficking (Juzgado Criminal y Correccional Federal n° 4 2022).

Only after the indictment, in October 2022, nine women indicated as victims or “possible victims” were called to testify through a “Cámara Gesell,” a closed room where witnesses answer questions prepared by the prosecutors but asked to them by psychologists. They all stated that they were not prostitutes, had never traded sex for money, had not been trafficked, and were normal, professional women, with a life, work, and friends outside of BAYS, so that the accusations that they were “brainwashed” were ridiculous. Both I and, separately, two other scholars of new religious movements, Susan Palmer and Holly Folk (Palmer 2023), interviewed all of them, who told us as much. [Image at right] They certainly did not look like prostitutes, moved freely around Buenos Aires, and if they had lost their jobs it was because of the raid and the investigation. The youngest of them was thirty-five and the oldest was sixty-six.

The judge had anticipated that the victims would deny that they were victims, and here is where the “brainwashing” issue and how law 26.842 is interpreted by PROTEX emerged as the keys of the matter. If a trafficked prostitute denies that she is a prostitute, the PROTEX argues, this is further evidence she is trafficked, and somebody is abusing her vulnerability. In many cases of trafficking, it is in fact true that trafficked prostitutes refuse to testify because they are terrorized by organized crime. The BAYS case, however, was different. These were not terrorized migrants or marginalized women but cultivated professionals who had (before the raid) regular jobs and a very normal social life.

The BAYS prisoners were submitted to a very harsh jail regime. Ten shared the same cell. Those of them who were male homosexuals reported to me that they were insulted and intimidated by dangerous gang men who occupied a nearby cell. They survived thanks to their artists and musicians, who started working at an opera, “The Power of God.” [Image at right]

On November 4, 2022, the Court of Appeals freed all defendants from jail. Two of the three judges still believed there was evidence justifying going on with the case against seventeen defendants, although they chastised Judge Lijo for not having allowed the defense to present its evidence. The third judge, Eduardo Farah, wrote in partial dissent that it was a very good idea to send the prisoners home, but the court should also have considered whether the case should not have been simply dismissed. He quoted approvingly Spanish criminologist Josep Tamarit Sumalla, that “some may use a crusade against the cults as a path towards the criminalization of minorities” (Tamarit Sumalla 2004:270).

The Court of Appeals urged Judge Lijo to hear the alleged victims and to conduct psychological and psychiatric tests through experts. On July 3, 2023, the expert examination of the nine alleged victims was concluded, with results signed in agreement by the court-appointed experts of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation and the experts on behalf of the parties, including those of the prosecution. The mental health experts found no traits of disorders in the women’s psychosexual sphere, and a total absence of indicators of submission, emotional dependence, lability, manipulation, or the assumption of a merely passive role in their interpersonal relationships. Ultimately, the results unanimously stated that the nine women were in good mental health, without any sign of vulnerability or posttraumatic alterations related to mental subjugation or sexual enslavement.

However, on August 17, 2023, the prosecutors filed a “supplementary report,” prepared by their expert witnesses, in which the latter argued that the nine women had misled even the experts because they were under “coercive persuasion.” Furthermore, they took as evidence of “coercive persuasion” the good relationship the women had between each other and with other BAYS students. The report was contested by each of the women mentioned, who refuted it point by point with demonstrable information. Again, the defense attorneys went to the Court of Appeals in a hearing held on October 10, 2023, in which the nine alleged victims were also present to request that their personal statements included in the case file be heard, as they had never suffered any crime and PROTEX was using them to increase its victim statistics. On December 7, 2023, through three parallel decisions, the Court of Appeals declared the nullity of the decree closing the preliminary investigation and the consequent elevation to trial of defendants and sent the case back to Judge Lijo, urging him to examine the results of the expert psychological examination of the victims (Sala 2 de la Cámara Nacional de Apelaciones en lo Criminal y Correccional Federal de Argentina 2023a, 2023b, 2023c). In another dissenting opinion, Judge Farah stated once again that he believed all the defendants should be acquitted and the case closed, while the other two judges argued that the issue of lack of crime should be dealt with only after a full exam of the psychological evaluations. On December 22, 2023, the prosecutors filed an appeal against the Court of Appeals decision of December 7 (Amicarelli 2023). This appeal was considered inadmissible by the Court of Appeals on February 8, 2024 (Sala 2 de la Cámara Nacional de Apelaciones en lo Criminal y Correccional Federal de Argentina 2024).

At the time of this writing, the case is still far from being concluded, notwithstanding Judge Farah’s comment that the women “victims” had been harassed enough. He wrote that the public exposure of private matters of the nine women concerning their personality, their intimacy, and their life choices was “more than enough to rule out the need for any further inquiry, interrogation or molestation in the future, which I reaffirm based on the impression I gathered from the statements made by these persons in the hearings held before the Court” (Sala 2 de la Cámara Nacional de Apelaciones en lo Criminal y Correccional Federal de Argentina 2023a, 43).  After the decision of February 8, 2024, Judge Lijo should examine the new evidence. After this, he may pronounce a new elevation to trial, but it will presumably be appealed again. In the case decided in 2000, these skirmishes went on for seven years. Proceedings in Argentina are now quicker, but the path towards a final decision will not be short.

IMAGES

Image #1: Juan Percowicz.
Image #2: Composers Susana Mendelievich, Mariano Krauz (left) and Rubén González (right) receiving a gift by the Ambassador of the Popular Republic of China, Yicong Xu, in Buenos Aires’ National Radio Auditorium, January 18, 1999.
Image #3: The café in the State of Israel Avenue building.
Image #4: Juan Percowicz in his younger years.
Image #5: BAYS explored various philosophies and religions. Here, on New Year Eve 1997, an interreligious encounter featuring Imam Mahmud Husain, Pastor Ricardo Couch (1928–2009), Father Alejandro Ferrari Freyre and Rabbi Arieh Stockman (from left to right).
Image #6: Percowicz greeting students and their families at a Christmas Eve dinner in the Café of State of Israel Avenue.
Image #7: A “Ghostbuster” (note the humorous logo on her pants) ceremonially places rue herb in a room.
Image #8: The therapies for relaxation and rest at CMI included artistic activities. On the picture, a student’s painting made during a “sleep cure” depicting the flowers on one of the CMI´s building terraces.
Image #9: Billboard placed at the entrance of the Sheraton Hotel on the occasion of the conference held there on June 5, 1992, which reads: “Buenos Aires Yoga School. The Pleasure of Evolving. Conference by the founding teacher Juan Percowicz: ‘Western Philosophy as an Alternative to the Scourges of Drugs, AIDS, and Violence.’”
Image #10: Sensationalist coverage of the first BAYS case in the Argentinian media.
Image #11: During the first legal case in the 1990s, several BAYS students gathered daily in front of the courts of justice to peacefully protest and ask the judge acting at that time, Mariano Bergés, to stop persecuting them.
Image #12: The police raiding the café on August 12, 2022.
Image #13: Scholars Holly Folk (center) and Susan Palmer (right) with musician Mariano Krauz (left) during their 2023 interviews at BAYS headquarters.
Image #14: During their three-month imprisonment, the BAYS detainees turned to art to keep themselves calm. One of them dedicated himself to drawing by hand daily situations in the cells, to which he added a philosophical phrase. In this picture, several of BAYS members in a tiny cell, with the quote “Incorrigible prisoner / that life imprisonment does not deter / and on iron and on stone / he goes and writes freedom”, by Argentinian poet Pedro Bonifacio Palacios “Almafuerte.”

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Publication Date:
27 February 2024