Elizabeth Clare Prophet

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Elizabeth Clare Prophet, 1984

Elizabeth Clare Prophet , nee Wulf , also called Guru Ma (born April 8, 1939 in Long Branch, New Jersey ; † October 15, 2009 in Bozeman , Montana ), was an American preacher , writer and publisher of the New Age - Movement . In 1973 she took over the leadership of the international religious movement The Summit Lighthouse and its publisher Summit University Press from her husband Mark L. Prophet (1918–1973) . In the same year it expanded in Berkeley ( California ), the Summit University (formerly Ascended Master University ) as a training center of the movement. In 1975, she founded the Church Church Universal and Triumphant (CUT) , in which they movement The Summit Lighthouse built. She was chairman of the church until 1996 and spiritual leader ( guru ) until 1999 .

Life

Prophet was born as the daughter of the German couple Hans and Fridy Wulf in the American state of New Jersey . During World War II , she grew up in the Red Bank community, New Jersey . In her later memoirs, she described her middle-class home, which was burdened by her father's baptized Lutheran father's alcohol problems and marital tensions, as strictly and religiously indifferent. She received an early religious influence from her mother, baptized Catholic, and her social environment, which adhered to Christian Science teaching . Her mother's other areas of interest exerted an influence on her, such as her interest in the theosophical teachings of Alice Bailey and Guy Ballard on the Ascended Masters of a Great White Lodge ("Great White Brotherhood") and so-called "I AM" activity . Prophet took an early interest in Eastern religions, especially Buddhism , Hinduism , Confucianism and Daoism .

In 1957, she completed her education at Red Bank Regional High School. She then studied until March 1959 at Antioch College in Yellow Springs ( Ohio ), where she mainly attended courses in political science and economics . In the fall of 1958, during this time, she did an internship with the UN photographer Leo Rosenthal . At that time she met the "Christian Science practitioner" Charles M. Carr, who was said to have healing powers in the treatment of diseases. In August 1959 she applied for admission to his class in order to become a "practitioner" herself. In the fall of 1959, she moved to Tufts University in Boston . There she also took courses in psychology . She also took up a position at the Christian Science organization and its body, the Christian Science Monitor . It was in this milieu that she met Dag Ytreberg, five years her senior, the child of Norwegian immigrants, whom she married soon after. The marriage was short-lived.

In August 1961 she finished her studies in political science with a Bachelor of Arts degree . In the spring of that year, on 22 April 1961 she had at a esoteric event on the theme The Ascended Masters to himself as a prophet designating Mark L. met prophet, a preacher in the 1950s, the New Age Church The Bridge to Freedom . The next day she informed him that she wanted to become a member and student of his organization. In August 1961 she moved to live with him in Washington, DC , and they married in 1963 after divorcing their previous spouses. Together with her husband, she administered the New Age organization The Summit Lighthouse (formerly The Lighthouse of Freedom ), which he founded on August 7, 1958 and which moved its center to Colorado Springs in 1966 . In 1970/1971 they founded Montessori International , a school based on Montessori pedagogy . After the death of her husband, Elizabeth Clare Prophet incorporated the organization into the Church Universal and Triumphant, which she founded . The new name appeared as early as 1974 and was supposedly divine. In 1975 a church was formally founded under this name in order to be able to claim a tax exemption.

In the book Climb the Highest Mountain: The Path of the Higher Self , published in 1972 , they presented views of their new religious movement together. Their worldview is based on divine orders ("dictations"), which are sent to them as chosen messengers ("appointed messengers") were and are transmitted by the Masters of Wisdom ("Ascended Masters"). These masters included Jesus Christ , Buddha , Hercules , the Archangel Michael , the Count of Saint Germain and the figure of the Guru and Mahātmās El Morya , which goes back to Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and the Theosophical Society . Not only did the chosen messengers claim to have received the divine ordinances through inspiration, they also pretended to be the reincarnation of some Masters. The members of the church had to strictly obey the code of conduct they had set. These rules demanded a kind of monastic lifestyle from them. This included certain haircuts and ceremonies, sounding with spiritual music, unlimited time availability and unconditional obedience. In political terms, the chosen messengers wore their adepts the dangers of capitalist-communist world conspiracy ( "Capitalist Communist Conspiracy") and a sinister activities of secret groups like the Illuminati front, as the result of a takeover of the world economy and the outbreak of nuclear war in an end time disaster to be feared. As a measure against these dangers, Mark L. Prophet already established a concept in the early 1970s that he called "Operation Christ Command (OCC)". Under this concept, members were encouraged to buy survival equipment from the church and invest in gold and food supplies to be stored in bunkers. Future events were determined by the church by means of a cosmic clock ("Cosmic Clock") in an astrology , in which the "Ascended Masters" represent certain "houses".

In 1973, shortly after the death of her second husband, Elizabeth Clare Prophet married in a private ceremony Randall Kosp, a church member twelve years her junior who later changed his surname to King . After King fell out with Prophet in 1980, he left and sued his group. He was awarded a severance payment in 1987. In 1977 the church moved its center to Pasadena, California . In the following year, she built a center called Camelot in Calabasas (California) , which was sold to the new religious movement Sōka Gakkai in 1986 and relocated after critical articles and television reports had appeared about the church, they had been refused building permits at the old location and they had 12,000 in 1981 Acre had bought the publisher Malcolm Forbes estate in Montana. In order to raise the purchase price of around seven million dollars, church members were urged to save and donate as much as possible. During this time, Prophet had married one more time, Edward Francis, a minister of her church. In 1982, following an inspiration she wanted from Archangel Michael, the Prophet urged church members to arm themselves and gather in Montana in preparation for a threatening event that was scheduled for January 1, 1987.

Since the late 1980s, Elizabeth Clare Prophet and her followers began preparing for a nuclear attack by the Soviet Union on the United States. To survive this attack, which in their anti-communist and spiritual- patriotic view appeared as a decisive battle in the cosmic struggle of the forces of light and darkness, several thousand supporters of the Church Universal and Triumphant from the United States and abroad withdrew to the conditioning Royal Teton Ranch on the edge of Yellowstone National park back near Corwin Springs (Montana). There they began to hoard weapons, food and clothing in underground bunkers. Some of them gave up their jobs and put all their fortune into this endeavor. On March 15, 1990, the church supporters went to the bunker amid lively reports from the national media. When the nuclear attack by the Soviet Union and Armageddon , which was expected by April 23, 1990, did not materialize, disputes grew among the church supporters, whose reputation had been badly damaged, as well as between them and locals, for whom the strange cult and the armament of the church had long been questionable and unsettled was. Many disappointed members left the Church. Under the name The Temple of the Presence , some of them founded a new, ideologically similar movement around 1996 that settled in Chelsea (Vermont) . The unrest gradually subsided; In 1993, however, it swelled again when news of a siege and storming of a building belonging to the Branch Davidians religious community raised fears again. The church was able to settle a dispute with the US government by refraining from stockpiling weapons. In return, the church was given back tax exemption status. In 1996 Prophet handed over the church leadership, which she had exercised with the participation of her closest family members, to a board with Gilbert Cleirbaut as chairman and director, in order to limit herself to the role of a spiritual leader. Under the new leadership, approximately $ 13 million worth of land and real estate was sold, workers laid off, and facilities abandoned to help consolidate the Church financially. In November 1996, Prophet announced the divorce from Edward Francis. The news disaffected a number of church members who had been told that marriage was divinely inspired. In 1999 Prophet withdrew further for health reasons after being diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in November 1998 . When she passed away ten years later, she had five children.

For her prophecy that the world would end in 1990, she received the Ig Nobel Prize in the mathematics category in 2011 .

Publications (selection)

Elizabeth Clare Prophet, 1980
  • 1972: Climb the Highest Mountain: The Path of the Higher Self (with Mark L. Prophet)
  • 1984: The Lost Years of Jesus
  • 1988: Pearls of Wisdom
  • 1990: St. Germain: Prophecy to the Nations
  • 1996: The Human Aura
  • 1997: Reincarnation: The Missing Link in Christianity . German (translated by Manfred Miethe ): Reinkarnation. The suppressed mystery of Christianity
  • 1997: Violet Flame to Heal Body, Mind and Soul
  • 1998: How to Work with Angels
  • 2001: Karma and Reincarnation: Transcending Your Past, Transforming Your Future (with Patricia R. Spadaro)
  • 2002: Community: A Journey Into the Heart of Community
  • 2004: Predict Your Future
  • 2009: In My Own Words: Memoirs of a Twentieth-Century Mystic (Memoirs)

literature

  • Susan J. Palmer, Michael Abravanel: Church Universal and Triumphant: shelter, succession and schism . In: James A. Lewis, Sarah M. Lewis (Eds.): Sacred Schisms. How Religions Divide . Cambridge University Press, New York 2009, ISBN 978-0-521-88147-0 , pp. 171 ff.
  • Erin Prophet: Prophet's Daughter. My Life with Elizabeth Clare Prophet inside the Church Universal and Triumphant . The Globe Pequot Press, Guilford / CT 2009, ISBN 978-1-59921-425-2
  • Paul F. Starrs, John B. Wright: Utopia, Dystopia, and Sublime Apocalypse in Montana's Church Universal and Triumphant . In: Geographical Review , 95, No. 1 (January 2005), pp. 97-121
  • Bradley C. Whitsel: The Church Universal and Triumphant: Elizabeth Clare Prophet's Apocalyptic Movement . Syracuse University Press, Syracuse / NY 2003, ISBN 0-8156-2999-0
  • John B. Wright: The Church Lady in Paradise . In: John B. Wright (Ed.): Montana Ghost Dance: Essays on Land and Life . University of Texas Press, Austin 2008, pp. 157-177
  • Irene Gasde, Richard A. Block: Cult Experience: Psychological Abuse, Distress, Personality Characteristics, and Changes in Personal Relationships Reported by Former Members of the Church Universal and Triumphant . In: Cultic Studies Journal: Psychological Manipulation and Society , Vol. 15, No. 2, 1998, pp. 192–221 ( online in the portal csj.org )
  • James R. Lewis, J. Gordon Melton (Eds.): Church Universal and Triumphant in Scholary Perspective . Syzygy: Journal of Alternative Religion and Culture, Volume 3, ISSN  1059-6860 , Center for Academic Publication, Rowman & Littlefield, Stanford / CA 1994

See also

Web links

Commons : Elizabeth Clare Prophet  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See chapter The Demons of Alcohol . In: Elizabeth Clare Prophet: In My Own Words. Memoirs of a Twentieth-Century Mystic . Summit Publications, Inc., Gardiner / MT 2009, ISBN 978-1-932890-15-0 , pp. 70 ff.
  2. ↑ Elizabeth Clare Prophet (2009), pp. 92 ff.
  3. ^ Elizabeth Clare Prophet (2009), p. 135
  4. ↑ Joseph P. Szimhart: Denoument of the Prophets' Cult: The Church Universal and Triumphant in Decline , previous day text, Orlando / FL, 14./15. June 2002 ( website in the portal icsahome.com (International Cultic Studies Association) )
  5. ↑ See Joseph P. Szimhart, lecture text
  6. ↑ Patricia Ward Biederman: Guru Ma Nettles Montana Town: Residents Fear Takeover if Calabasas Sect Emigrates to 33,000 Acres Near Yellowstone . Article dated March 30, 1986, retrieved from articles.latimes.com portal on July 5, 2015
  7. ↑ Elizabeth Clare Prophet dies at 70; former leader of religious sect . Article from October 19, 2009 in the latimes.com portal , accessed July 4, 2015
  8. ↑ See Joseph P. Szimhart, lecture text
  9. ↑ Bradley C. Whitsel, p. 4
  10. ↑ Royal Teton Ranch of the Church Universal and Triumphant , website in the clui.org portal , accessed on July 4, 2015
  11. ^ Lorne L. Dawson, Bradley C. Whitsel: Leadership and the Impact of Failed Prophecies on New Religious Movements: The Case of the Church Universal and Triumphant . In: Diana G. Tumminia, William H. Swatos, Jr. (Eds.): How Prophecy Lives . Religion and the Social Order, 21, Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden 2011, ISBN 978-90-04-21560-3 , p. 115 ff.
  12. ^ Susan J. Palmer, Michael Abravanel, p. 176
  13. ↑ See also # 189 of the page. Les Fins Du Monde in the portal unterstein.net , accessed on July 4, 2015
  14. ↑ Sandi Dolbee, Philip J. Lavelle: New age church wants to go mainstream , article in the Union Tribune of November 12, 1997, accessed from the culteducation.com portal on July 4, 2015
  15. ↑ Bradley C. Whitsel, pp. 2 ff.
  16. ↑ Bradley C. Whitsel, p. 5
  17. ↑ Bradley C. Whitsel, p. 5
  18. ↑ With World Still Intact, Sect Draws More Critics , March 2, 1997 article in The New York Times , accessed July 4, 2015
personal data
SURNAME Prophet, Elizabeth Clare
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wulf, Elizabeth Clare (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American preacher, writer, and publisher
DATE OF BIRTH April 8, 1939
PLACE OF BIRTH Long Branch, New Jersey
DATE OF DEATH October 15, 2009
Place of death Bozeman , Montana