Picasso Revisited

 October 10, 1997 with minor edits 2010, 2012. 2021

Picasso Revisited:

The Mighty I AM and a Newer Prophet
(Viewing the newer Church Universal and Triumphant)

by Joe Szimhart

Early on a beautiful Sunday morning, I strolled down State Street over the green Chicago River and turned right onto Washington. I stopped to see the giant, rusted steel Picasso sculpture at the Chicago Civic Center. Many years ago (1991?), I first encountered this monstrous, cubist version of an Afghan dog. Then it was a busier day when jaded businessmen passed it as a few tourists gazed upward in quizzical admiration. On this day, Picasso's dog presided over no one save a street person sitting unceremoniously near its base. The thirty-foot, welded construction is still an impressive icon of modernity. It takes me back to a time when modern art was yet shocking and dramatic. I read that Chicago’s Mayor Daley received the proposed Picasso badly around 1966, visibly not appreciative of the model he held in his hand. It was installed in 1967.

The rusted Afghan has aged well, but its massive flat steel planes and long support spokes sing plaintively now of dramas past, like the faded feline, Grizabella, in Cats. Old memories fade as new ones are created when another person stops to wonder what or why. I wondered how many today this modern sculpture touches or who might touch it back. I slapped the unforgiving metal with my hand before I left for a more cryptic, less famous monument further west on Washington Street.

The street is named after America's first president, and I was about to see a life-sized photo of a man who claimed to have been George Washington in a past life. That is correct: Guy Ballard, who died in 1939, was George Washington; ask an "I AM" Activity devotee. Guy's wife, Edna Ballard, who lived into the early 1970s, was Benjamin Franklin according to the group. The I AM Temple is inside a twelve-story building at 176 West Washington. The sect purchased it in 1948. The Mighty I AM owns many significant properties purchased after its meteoric rise in Great Depression-racked America. Today, it has reading rooms in many cities, and main centers in Mt. Shasta, California and Santa Fe, New Mexico. I visited a smaller “I AM” center in a wealthy but old Philadelphia suburb neighborhood.

By 1939, the I AM reportedly had 50,000 followers after a mere five years since its start. That may have been an exaggeration as is the 1 million members touted by the cult. Today, only a few thousand or so hard-core members remain by my estimate, despite renewed interest in the I AM teachings within the post-1960s New Age Movement and recent upticks in radical conservative politics. I AM books turn up in many New Age and occult bookstores. The Ballard teachings form the basis of many active but separate sects that claim larger followings: Summit Lighthouse/a.k.a. Church Universal and Triumphant (CUT), the Bridge to Freedom (now known as the Foundation for Higher Spiritual Learning in Virginia and South America), and smaller ones like the Church of the Ascension (a CUT spin-off launched in 1997 by a former CUT bishop, Monroe Shearer), and The Ruby Ray. The Lighthouse of Freedom was a 1950s I AM sect that influenced Mark Prophet to establish his Summit Lighthouse in 1958, the forerunner of CUT. Since the 1990s, a growing Hispanic CUT/I AM membership exists in South America.

[In the late 1990s, CUT was in demise as the living leader, Elizabeth C. Prophet, who took over from her husband, Mark who died in 1973, had "Alzheimer's" disease and could no longer function in public or as a "messenger" of the Ascended Masters. Elizabeth Prophet died in 2009. Hard core membership dropped from nearly seven thousand members at CUT's zenith to less than one thousand on 2001 by my estimate. As with the post-Ballards I AM, CUT or Summit Lighthouse is run by committee with no "messenger."]

Outside the Chicago I AM Temple door, the visitor approaches under two huge American flags jutting from the building. After all, this is George Washington's place. The storefront window displays religious pictures and some pithy, innocuous quotes from I AM teachings on posters and cards. Once inside you notice a trademark poster of the I AM's spiritual founder, the Comte de Saint-Germain (1708-84, give or take a year), in a militaristic, blue uniform and not in his characteristic white, powdered wig.

[The I AM images of Saint Germain look nothing like the known portraits of this real merchant-magician-spy who was neither Count nor Saint. He named himself after a French city--Saint-Germain. He impressed many gullible royals in the court of Louis XVI in France, but others regarded the Count as both braggart and charlatan. Paris in the eighteenth century was a popular haunt for magician-occultists. The Count was one of the more talented and entertaining mystery men. Comte de Saint-Germain often dropped hints that he was five hundred years old, belonged to a secret order of mystics resembling the Rosicrucians or Freemasons, and perhaps was an immortal. Non-apologetic sources I recommend on Saint-Germain are: Charles Mackay's 1852 account in Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. Harmony, 1980: pp 230-37; E.M. Butlers 1948 description in The Myth of the Magus, Cambridge, Canto edition, 1993: chapter 11; and if you are up to it, read Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum (Ballantine, 1988) for a rowdy, semiotic jaunt through occult territory. His fictional version of Saint Germain and the Great White Fraternity is fascinating. I recommend you ignore the Theosophical/occultic accounts as the latter believe that Madame Blavatsky channeled Saint Germain a century after he died--unless, of course, you are prone to believe in channeled spirits.]

In the main lobby wall of th I AM Temple to the right hangs a life-sized, black and white photo of Guy and Edna Ballard together, regally dressed and posed in white formal wear. Seated behind a neat, large desk, two middle-aged women greeted me with pleasant smiles. Hello. Can we help you, asked the one with brunette bangs.

"Yes," I said. "Im interested to know more about your temple. I read about the I AM many years ago. I have studied Theosophy. This is my first visit here." I said nothing that was untrue, yet I had to be cautious if I was to ingratiate myself to these aura-sensitive ladies. I could be perceived as harboring evil entities. I was dressed in a beige tee-shirt that sported a Celtic dragon design, white sneakers and jeans, but I did have a handsome leather briefcase with me. The ladies were in their finest I AM Sunday uniforms. Sunday is their day for white and these ladies each wore a pure white, lacy, ankle-length skirt with a purple cross brooch pinned at the neck of their equally frilly, white blouses. Had I visited them on Saturday they most likely would have worn something violet or purple. Every day has its color in the I AM excluding black, brown, red, orange and earthy tones. Blue is sacred power but blue jeans are definitely not favored. It was clear to them that I was not a devoted student of their teachings. These ladies had very plain hair styles and wore just enough makeup to appear anachronistic, like aging Catholic girls about to receive their first Holy Communion. I, on the other hand, appeared like any middle-aged, casual American tourist not going to church.

I was interested in their bookstore that was not yet open. The ladies directed me to the reading room, a small but tidy area with two chairs. On one shelf were the entire ten or twelve hard bound collection of I AM scriptures in their familiar green bindings, familiar to me because I had read them all in 1976-77. On another shelf were small cubicles, each containing eight to twelve copies of The Voice of the I AM, the sect's magazines from the 1930s through 1997. As I entered the reading room I noticed two, young black girls in frilly, white dresses enter the lobby for one of the group activities upstairs.

I had been under the impression that the sect did not favor blacks for membership as they had a peculiar race karma, according to elderly I AMers I had interviewed in 1976. I was pleased to see this change though I felt mildly concerned for the girls. Did they have any idea of the history of the sect? Would they be embarrassed by it when they grew up? I could only guess as I sat down to find what the Voices had to say around 1940.

*In February of 1998 I was in Washington, DC when I learned that the I AM Activity centers there are segregated still. I interviewed a black member, a elderly woman, of the sect and she was only a little troubled by this segregation.

The I AM Voices feature dictation by Ascended Masters as well as current news and a catalogue of sacred I AM objects and music for sale. In their day, Guy and Edna Ballard were the Messengers for an Ascended Host of beings--over twenty-- that included Saint Germain, Jesus, K-17, Hercules, Mighty Victory and Morya. As Messengers they were mediums or channels in the Spiritualist and Theosophical traditions that stem from the nineteenth century. The 1940 issue included dictation from Beloved Jesus, Mighty Harmony and the Goddess of Music as well as an essay about Guy Ballards ascension by Edna (Mrs. G. W.) Ballard. It is unclear whether these dictations came through Guy or Edna, as Guy died early on the morning of December 29, 1939, of complications from heart and liver diseases. Edna announced that Guy or Daddy ascended at midnight December 31, 1939. His body was cremated.

"He is now our Beloved Ascended Master of Light who can give Limitless Help to all who will accept and apply the Ascended Masters Instruction of the I AM which He gave, under the Direction of our Beloved Ascended Master, Saint Germain. He is glorious, beyond words to describe! His Love and Light are Limitless and He pours them to all for the Freedom of America and all mankind....

In His Unlimited State, our Blessed Daddy can wield more Power of Light Rays, than he could through the physical body or than I can wield in this body. I want you to understand this clearly, so when the outer world has anything to say about it, make your statement with positive force; for I assure you I am telling the Truth and will never tell you anything but the Truth" (Mrs. G. W. Ballard, 1940. The Voice of the I AM. Saint Germain Press, pp. 26-27, 31).

In 1940 many I AMers did not accept the new Dispensation for ascension after the death of the body. The dispensation revelation came through Mama Ballard from the Great Divine Director speaking for the Great Central Sun (IBID p. 27). But in that same Voice, "Beloved Jesus" states, on November 30, 1939, that:

"There has been lurking in many the idea that one may make the Ascension after so-called death; but that cannot be accomplished because the call for the Ascension must be made to the I AM Presence and the Ascended masters from within the physical side of Life. You cannot do it otherwise, no one ever did in the world" (The Voice of the I AM, Saint Germain Press, 1940, p. 6).

If Jesus meant what he said, this dictation rejects all claims to ascension made for dead people by any messenger including Mrs. Ballard and Mrs. Prophet.

[Many deceased CUT members have also had their ascensions proclaimed by Mrs. Prophet. This includes her husband, Mark, who died in 1973. Mark is now Ascended Master Lanello, reflecting his claimed past lives as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Sir Lancelot. Mark was also Pharaoh Ikhnaton if you can believe it.]

But a scant 21 pages later, Jesus is conveniently superseded. So much for Ascended Master consistency. The early I AM followers were told repeatedly that Beloved Daddy could ascend in his physical body as they would also if they made the call. Members also believed that there was an ascension chair in a mysterious temple that could assist them to reach the necessary vibratory levels to attain ascension. They only had to be good students, do their decrees or calls (high-speed chanting several hours daily), and follow the rules. The rules included vegetarian diets, no alcohol or drugs, no sex for 100% students and no sex save for procreation for all others. Students also were required to renounce affiliation with any other religion.

When the Messenger, Guy Ballard, died in worse condition than most mortals do, many shocked I AMers spiraled away in doubt. In early autobiographical books, Ballard claimed to have attained an indestructible body.

[ In Guy Ballard's spiritual autobiographies, autobiographies in which he plagiarized from fictional works like Phylos the Tibetan and Brother of the Third Degree to find his personal experience, (see Bryan, 1940. Psychic Dictatorship in America), he wrote that he was taken into Chananda's retreat in India where he emerged unscathed after remaining two days and two nights in the white heat of a great furnace. Godfre Ray King, 1932. The Magic Presence Saint Germain Press, p. 390. The Magic Presence is a sequel to Unveiled Mysteries.]

Those I AMers who remained would believe any correction that came through the remaining Messenger, who they called Beloved Mama. According to eyewitnesses, Mrs. Ballard tried to disguise Guy's illness at an I AM Shrine Class in December, stating that Beloved Daddy was away on a mission with Saint Germain. Since the morning newspapers in Los Angeles and Chicago reported his death immediately, Mrs. Ballard had to respond quickly. This assuaged the believers until the federal courts in California indicted Mrs. Ballard, her son, Donald, and many I AM leaders on nineteen counts of fraud later in 1940. Many more would defect thereafter.

The United States verses Ballard case in California (1940-44) is a twentieth century landmark in cult crime litigation. I AM leaders received fines and suspended sentences. The sect was not permitted to use the US postal service again until 1954. The convictions were eventually overturned by a Supreme Court decision on a technicality involving the original Grand Jury selection. The government did not pursue the case again, but a judge ruled that religious beliefs, no matter how bizarre, could not be tried, and perhaps not even discussed, in court. Plaintiffs had little to say in court about how they were duped by promises that the dynamic decrees to Ascended Masters could cure any ill and change any life, family, or nation. But they did convince the court that I AM leaders had unduly manipulated them to send large sums of money for the dubious cause and promises of the Messengers.

[See: C. S. Braden, 1949. These Also Believe. MacMillan Co. for an extensive report on the I AM and its legal difficulties.] Today there are no Messengers in the original I AM Activity. Older, unpublished messages from Masters appear in current Voices for the faithful. The ladies at the desk assured me that there were plenty more. The sect calls for the appearance of the Masters themselves in their visible, tangible bodies to come guide and rule the planet for the coming New Age. But messengers and channelers abound in our New Age. In 1988 one survey stated that Los Angeles alone had over one thousand channelers. [As reported on West 57th Street, a television news program.]

The I AM rejects all rival channelers as inauthentic, including Elizabeth Clare Prophet, the most successful, self-appointed messenger of the same Great White Brotherhood of Ascended Masters claimed by the I AM. Prophet channeled messages from the Masters from the early 1960s. Many disenchanted I AMers crossed over to Prophet's group and to others that based their teachings on the old I AM. For the believer, there is little in life more exciting than to hear a message from the Great White Brotherhood at the moment of delivery. They call it progressive revelation.

If the old I AM remains stuck in past teachings, the newer Ascended Master sects with living messengers can change with each new day. The channeled gods can justify any inconsistency and modify failed doctrines as well as any politician. Elizabeth Clare Prophet's church has weathered and continues to weather many internal and external difficulties. When Mark Prophet, the group's founder, and Elizabeth's second husband, died unexpectedly in 1973, Elizabeth soon remarried and took charge. Riding the cultural wave of the swelling New Age Movement, she guided her newly named Church Universal and Triumphant to the Malibu hills. There, the annual conferences that I attended in 1979-80 attracted over three thousand members, tripling what she and Mark Prophet had attracted together. By 1979 she was divorced again. In the early 1980s, CUT sold the Malibu property for seventeen million dollars (to the controversial Nichiren Shoshu Society or Soka Gakkai of Japan) and reinvested it by buying the Forbes Ranch in Montana on the northern border of Yellowstone Park. By 1983, the church had moved its headquarters to Montana and Elizabeth had married once more. That marriage to a much younger but wealthy man lasted until 1997, after she had her fifth child (his first) with an egg from a donor [possiby one of her daughters] in 1994. Mrs. Prophet was a new mother at fifty-five.

CUT had lived on the edge of fear since its inception. Dire warnings from the Masters about economic collapse and international war brought on by hated groups like the Tri-lateral Commission and fallen ones compelled members to buy survivalist supplies and weapons. In 1972, Mark Prophet named the secret survivalist plan Operation Christ Command or OCC. By the mid to late-eighties Elizabeth Prophet, relying on her eldest daughter's acumen and the CUT astrologer, prophesied a dark cycle commencing around 1988 through 2001. According to Prophet, thousands of years of bad karma have accumulated and will come back to haunt us...big time. CUT began a monster excavation program digging deep into the earth to construct huge bomb and survival shelters. One reportedly held seven hundred or more.

Repeating an old pattern that extends back to the I AM prophesies in 1939, when the I AM Masters declared that the War Entity over Europe was dissolved, Prophets doom prophecy was and is badly timed. CUTs fearsome enemy, the communist regimes in Russia and elsewhere, began collapsing like dominos about the time the shelters were near completion. Prophet named a couple of specific dates when the members might have to go underground. When they finally did one day in 1990, nothing happened outside, but inside the shelters it became clear that the panicky group was not ready for that kind of occultation. Nor were the shelters. They never descended again except to play bingo in the largest area.

[On the night of March 15th [1990] in the best shelter of them all (Guru Mas), kids were screaming as they were strapped into their shelter bunks. Men were hauling out human waste in five gallon buckets for lack of proper toilet facilities. Armed guards patroled the topside. Similar scenarios of this nightmare repeated itself in every other shelter Peter Arnone. October, 1996. Focus (an ex-CUT member newsletter). The information about bingo came from a conversation with Murray Steinman, CUT's media representative, in 1993.]

When the Branch Davidian tragedy at Waco occurred in 1993, CUT was in the news again as a potential Waco-like disaster. The ingredients were there: An illegally armed camp suspicious of the government, a charismatic leader with paranoid prophecies, and thousands of devotees so loyal they would believe and do nearly anything she asked.

[In July, 1989 CUT's chief security officer, Vernon Hamilton, and Elizabeth Prophets husband, Edward Francis, were caught and arrested for illegally purchasing weapons for church use (see Scott McMillion, February 27, 1995. Church members gun-buying outlined: Justice Department documents released to the Chronicle, Bozeman Daily Chronicle, Bozeman, Montana. Mrs. Prophet claimed she knew nothing about the plans for purchase. Her daughter, Moira, claimed her mother did know when interviewed by Australia's A Current Affair on TV.]

CUT had it out with the IRS over their non-profit status at that time as well. The IRS reinstated the status when CUT agreed, on one count, to relinquish control over weapons, including the return of an armored vehicle to the Tanks-A-Lot company in New Jersey. It is legal for you and I to own a tank in America, but not for a church. With the dramatic decrease of the communist menace on one hand, and the concern over militia groups rising on the other, CUT had little choice but to change its image. They were losing staff members and recruitment was down. Staff could not live well on $75 to $125 per month with no benefits save some food and rudimentary shelter, if they had no support of their own. The bomb shelter cult was now transforming into the friendly little church down the street.

That was and is not an easy task. In 1993 a group of scholars headed by James R. Lewis and J. Gordon Melton did a quick survey and study of CUT members in Montana. Published as Church Universal and Triumphant in Scholarly Perspective (Center for Academic Publication), the study has been soundly criticized by peer review. (See: Robert W. Balch & Stephan Langdon: "How the Problem of Malfeasance Gets Overlooked in Studies of New Religions: An Examination of the AWARE Study of [CUT]," included in Anson Shupe, Ed., 1998. Wolves within the Fold. Rutgers). The study was financially supported by CUT, and the result is more a propaganda piece than an accurate appraisal.

In any case, CUT was only too happy to use it as "proof" that they are not a destructive cult, but a new "denomination." Radical down-sizing cut seven hundred or so staff in Montana at CUT's peak down to nearly two hundred in 1997. CUT managers prefer to call it right-sizing. Right or wrong, the new attitude is expressed in CUT's Business Plan Annual Report, Portrait of An Organization in Transition, spearheaded by Gilbert Cleirbaut, then the new president. I quote his title because he is a Canadian citizen who cannot easily function as CUT's president-in-residence. On July 7, 1997 Montana newspapers announced that Cleirbaut resigned. His visa was revoked. The Annual Report looks like any slick business reorganization plan, complete with mission statement and impressive charts. Charts always look great on paper. A few things caught my jaded eyes, however.

[Jaded because I used to be a member of CUT around 1979-80. I attended 3 large conferences near LA and became a Keeper of the Flame for several months. I rejected CUT in the fall of 1980 and began exiting members (who wanted to know why I quit CUT) out of the group at that time.]

1. CUT wants to make Ascended Masters a household word. No comment. 2. CUT wants to shift its organizational culture (a nice twist on that nasty word, cult) from Fear to love and Crisis management to planning. One wonders why it took these brilliant Ascended Masters over sixty years, if we count the I AM as the beginning--over one hundred if we accept CUTs proclaimed Master lineage back to Blavatsky--to discover love. Helena Blavatsky was no stranger to crises either--her entire life biography reads like one, God rest her soul. 3. CUT's revenues are plainly spelled out with fiscal projections. They intend to pay staff a living wage with adequate benefits. This means that they will spend as much or more on a radically down-sized staff. Makes you think how little they valued their workers until now, does it not? It is not clear how much Elizabeth has accumulated in her private accounts. Will we ever know?

4. CUT published a Handbook for members called Building a New Future based on a Second Life Cycle paradigm charted on the back flap. Saint Germain (channeled by Elizabeth Prophet, of course) is quoted on the first page: Let this church upon the mountain of God be known universally as the church of Divine Love. So let it be. You each one is the living church (April 4, 1997). Odd language for a man who CUT believes wrote the Shakespeare plays. *[Saint Germain may or may not be aware of the already established, Spiritualist Divine Love Ministry, a branch of the Foundation Church of Divine Truth, based on the automatic writings of James Padgett. Other spirits may have already copyrighted Divine Love]. In the Handbook Cleirbaut is featured as president, so this was released before his resignation. The Handbook contains many pithy slogans and rules for members. Membership remains at three levels with escalating expectations. At bottom is Keeper of the Flame, next are Communicants, and highest are Community Members who are eligible to be employed and live in the church’s community. Communicants are chided to follow all the moral and ethical laws of the nation (p.20), but my jaded eyes smiled slightly when I read the next paragraph:

We also pledge to shun the black arts including the practice of Satanism, witchcraft, and black magic. Further, we pledge to avoid deliberate association with discarnate spirits through such activities as psychic channeling, automatic writing, and spiritualism, et al. (p. 21).

I almost hate to use the following, overused exclamation, but what the hell...Hello, Mrs. Prophet? What have you been doing all these years? And what have the Keepers of the Flame been doing if not associating with discarnate spirits? Helena Blavatsky, the original messenger of Morya (CUTs alleged founder) used automatic writing incessantly to produce her Theosophical tomes. Her close companion, Colonel Olcott, wrote about her psychic style in Old Diary Leaves. [cited in  Peter Washington, 1993. Madame Blavatsky’s Baboon, Secker & Warburg, p. 52. Washington’s book is useful but not the best on HPB] As to channeling, Prophet has denied that she is a trance medium or channel. Her explanation is that a Master takes over her “voice box” and speaks to us through it. Prophet’s denial is tantamount to Transcendental Meditators claiming that what they do is not self-hypnosis. If it quacks like a duck, and walks like a duck, and has feathers like a duck...well, you figure it out.

[If you need help, read Ernest R. Hilgard’s Divided Consciousness: Multiple Controls in Human Thought and Action John Wiley & Sons, 1986. You might also find The Neuropathology of Spiritual Possession by Barry L. Beyerstein, Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII, No. 3/ Spring 1988, useful.]

Quibbling over the obvious is not a useful pursuit, not to me. As to spiritualism, there is little or nothing to separate what Mrs. Prophet does with her voice box from what Estelle Roberts, Edgar Cayce, Jane Roberts or any other channel/medium did with theirs.

The pledge lacks all credibility regarding witchcraft and black magic, though I will give that CUT does not invoke anyone called Satan. Indeed, CUT decrees against Old Splitfoot. Witchcraft, in its neo-pagan form called Wicca, utilizes the same sympathetic magic technique in casting spells as CUT members and I AMers apply in what they call decrees. Show a decree to any self-respecting, intelligent witch or Wiccan and you will find recognition of a spell.

Spell: The mainstay of Folk Magic, spells are simply magical rites. They're usually non-religious and often include spoken words. (Scott Cunnigham, 1996. Living Wicca. Llewellyn Publications, p. 205)

Spells by Wiccans often invoke spirits, elementals, gods and goddesses for assistance. CUT calls its practice of decreeing (high speed chants and that include invocation of spirits, gods, elementals of fire, earth, water and air) the Science of the Spoken Word. Science, in this sense, does not refer to the natural sciences of an empirical, testable world. It refers to exactly what the definition above states, namely Folk Magic. The difference is, that in CUT and the I AM, Folk Magic becomes a central religious rite by any other name, but it is still Magic. Decrees are nothing more than spells. Granted, like Wiccans, CUT decreers wish to cast benign spells over the land and human masses according to the will of God. Wiccans follow The Law that exhorts them to harm none.

But who is God? In I AM/CUT theology, each person has a Mighty I AM Presence hovering above them, connected to their chakras by a silver cord of invisible light. Indistinguishable from the Atman/Brahman identity in Vedic philosophy, the I AM Presence is God and the same as God in the individual higher self. The circular logic goes something like this: Gods will is the will of my Mighty I AM Presence that is my true self. When Mrs. Prophets I AM Presence dictates who to decree for or against, it is Gods will. Yes, names are mentioned in decrees, and if you are a critic of CUT, yours could be included.

These powerful decrees (the most powerful force in the universe, according to CUT doctrine) aim to stop all evil energy directed at the CUT membership and goals. If you or I persist in holding onto our evil attitudes or practices after a spell or decree has been cast in "our name", well, too bad for us. In CUT belief, it is like holding onto a log that is being swept over Niagara Falls (my imagery, not theirs), and they cannot help it if we persist in holding onto our evil logs.

Early CUT decrees include words such as: Blaze, blaze blaze bolts of blue lightening; Burn right through, Burn right through, Burn right through; and Smash, Blast, Annihilate, Shatter, Dissolve and Consume (the latter decree also includes hand gestures in the sign of the "X" over a sign of the cross). In one decree the demand for judgment goes out against a hundred names or so that include Erasmus, Darwin, Winston Churchill, Hitler, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, Harriet Pilpel, and Nathaniel Rothschild. [Ruby Ray decree 83.31, CUT member decree book, 1981.] And what do they have so offensively in common? The decree calls them the Nephilim Manipulators of Population.

[Nephilim, CUT claims, were evil angels/aliens that embodied on earth, inseminated female humans to create a slave or fallen race.See E.C. Prophet, 1983. Forbidden Mysteries of Enoch: The untold story of men and angels, Summit University Press, in which the Prophets interpretations of Genesis 6:4 (There were giants [Nephilim] in the earth in those days) and related Scriptures are patently bizarre. G. Ernest Wright, 1962. Biblical Archaeology. Westminster, Chapter 11 sets the story straight: Nephilim, Rephaim, the descendants of Anak, the Emim, and the Zuzim or Zamzummim were believed to be giants... in Israelite tradition about the aborigines of their country. This had more to do with the size of the ancient buildings than the stature or angelic nature of the people. Compared to modern man, they were rather short.]

Other CUT decree hit lists include Rock stars, liberal congressmen, cult leaders like Werner Erhard, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Sun Myung Moon, competitor Alice A. Bailey and Lucis Trust, and deprogrammers like yours truly.

Now, I can understand why a CUT member (of old) might want to smash, blast, annihilate, shatter, dissolve and consume me, but Ted or Franklin D. Roosevelt? Or why would anyone want to demand the instantaneous final physical judgment of all fallen Atlanteans and rock groups like U2 [and] the Beatles?

[From a preamble insert to CUT decree 10.00, 1987, p. 10. Also, in a CUT Pearl of Wisdom (Vol. 31, No. 4, January 24, 1988) the god/master Sanat Kumara through Prophet condemns the following: And therefore, I say, Woe! Woe! Woe! Unto this Swami Rama [of Himalayan Institute of Pennsylvania] and all who are like him and with him, the false hierarchies out of India who have come as fallen angels, taken bodies of that blessed nation and therefore moved against her people...Let it come to pass, therefore, that they are exposed! They are exposed! They are exposed! As you name them now and demand the cutting free of all true Lightbearers who have been fastened to them by manipulation and, yes, black magic....even that Sun Myung Moon, go down! Woe! Woe! Woe! (Pp. 43-44).]

Talk about guru wars...Happily, I hold no grudges against CUT staff for allegedly inserting me in their decrees, though they mean to do only the will of God. Although I too believed in this sort of magic once, I know now that decrees (spells) do not work except to influence the beliefs and attitudes of the decreers. Now, if you are a witch, dont get mad at me for saying that. Remember, harm none! If CUT means what it says in its new Business Plan, the group should end this decree policy of inserting names, in secret or public, for judgment. It smacks of black magic and sorcery to outsiders and targets.

I left the I AM Sanctuary or Temple on that sunny day with a distinct feeling of peace. It is not easy to find those old Voices outside of I AM centers, and I found what I was looking for. That gave me peace as a researcher, but the peace I felt went further. As I left, the I AM ladies said God bless you in their sweetest voices. I returned the sacred request. I knew they meant it and I knew how they meant it. When I left I gave them no further thought. I was curious about the Picasso and how the light had changed around it. As I approached it again, the silhouetted sentinel loomed before me. This time I was alone with it.

In the steel dog’s flat face, I saw the admiration Picasso had for the African masks that so influenced his cubist period. Picasso's work, this time, lacked the magic that African masks held in the context of a tribal ritual. This mask, this steel dog-god, poses as an unmovable icon of the modern period in art, a period when art analyses itself as it appropriates from primitive forms. It is a symbol of our modern obsession with self-analysis in the twentieth century, with our search for a soul, but it stands at the heart of a business-oriented metropolis that has no time for rituals that might make this object come alive. This god has no devotees beyond students of aesthetics and collectors. It is quiet, a mute decoration, an object of art stuck in an outdoor, public museum. If I knelt down in front of it and chanted with hands upraised in praise, what would people think? What could happen?

This essay is autobiographical. The Theosophical sect in question, Church Universal and Triumphant, lately tends to revert to its older name of Summit Lighthouse that has been less newsworthy and has many offshoots by different names today. (2017)