Silliness: The Underrated Ingredient in Lasting Religions — episode transcript
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Silliness: The Underrated Ingredient in Lasting Religions — episode transcript
Speaker 1 :
You’ve chosen to mirror your Yeah. Always mirror. Oh, for yourself. But I guess in StreamYard, it doesn’t do it how do I put this? It doesn’t do it
Speaker 2 :
For you or the user?
Speaker 1 :
For the yeah. For other people in the room. So in this recording thing, it does it for me and, I guess, for the final take.
Speaker 2 :
And you don’t like the mirror?
Speaker 1 :
It’s just strange. It’s strange.
Speaker 2 :
Although, it’s okay. Move the direction you think you’re moving. That’s that’s the point of mirror. Okay.
Speaker 1 :
Oh, I guess I it doesn’t matter to me because as soon as I know that we’re set up and everything’s working well, I don’t look at us talking. I I mean, they’re looking at the notes or just looking at anything but camera footage of me. So I I don’t need to, like why do you why do you need to see your face when you’re on camera?
Speaker 2 :
Because I need to see you and react and all of that.
Speaker 1 :
My god. People really do read faces.
Speaker 2 :
You’re shocked by the normies?
Speaker 1 :
Yeah. I guess I’m starting to realize that, like, this is why people want their AI companions to, like, emote and, oh, like, you know, way way all these words of description of their their posture and facial expression is needed because, apparently, those details matter to people, which is bizarre. Anyway, now that I’ve been thoroughly freaked out by that reality
Speaker 2 :
I get started.
Speaker 1 :
Yes.
Speaker 2 :
Hello, Simone. I am so excited to be here with you today. Today’s two weekend episodes are quite special because they are sort of add ons for an upcoming track, and we’ll include a link to the research that we did for this. But what we did is we created the world’s most comprehensive to date database of every religion founded from from, the seventeen hundreds to today, broke them down by region, broke them down by belief system, broke them down by founder motivation, and then looked at what led to religions thriving and surviving and what led to religions dying out. And we’ll go into the full breakdown on the the next tracked episode. But in this episode, what I wanted to do is do a deep dive into a cluster of a few of these religious traditions. and what we’re gonna focus on today is some of the sillier ones. One of the things that we looked at by the way, if you’re wondering what the big finding that we found is from this, it’s that of religions that that started with a full corpus, like a full list of written works, like, you know, techno puritanism has, a one in three live to see at least a 100,000 followers and live at least a hundred years on average. Is so insane. Yes. And of the ones of our category, e. G, not explicitly antinatal, not explicitly naturalist and atheistic, these ones have a two in three survival rate, a a of getting to a 100,000 people.
Speaker 1 :
It makes me think, like, I guess just no one’s trying. Like, do you think more people would try if they knew this?
Speaker 2 :
Maybe. I mean, like, if you consider the the thing is that if you look at the academic research on this, it’ll say one in a thousand. But academic research counts every small schism as a new religion, which it isn’t. Right? Like, that’s that’s not the same thing as, like, Mormonism or something.
Speaker 1 :
Definitely not.
Speaker 2 :
Yeah. The the question as to why more people don’t try, I guess we’ll talk about that in the main episode, but people can leave their thoughts here. It well, actually, I can I can give you the answer pretty plainly, actually? There’s so to to start one that actually works, you have to go out there and say, I have this new belief system about how the world works. So that isn’t like a belief system anyone else says. I believe it’s existentially true. And the problem is is there’s not a lot of motivations for doing this. Motivation one is you’re just schizophrenic or something. And that one, typically, what you say isn’t coherent enough to really build even the beginnings, and we excluded just schizophrenic ramblings.
Speaker 1 :
This Oh, like, cube man?
Speaker 2 :
Yeah. Like, cube theory wouldn’t be included in this. Aw. The the second is you want to start a scam. You know, you’re the nation of Islam, Scientology, something like that. And and typically Those are listed. Those are listed, and they typically work, is is the thing. Yeah.
Speaker 1 :
I mean, MLMs work too. and probably, I bet if you made a similar list of MLMs, they would become you would see they’d be quite similar in size. So I also wonder if the scam ones have an upper limit that matches an upper limit of MLMs.
Speaker 2 :
Like But then outside of that, there just isn’t there’s a bunch of people who, like, want to make the world a better place, but they typically start either Baha’i like phase that are like, everything is existentially true, or they start faiths that are more what’s the word I’m looking for here? Like like, very naturalistic and and very, well, we worship humanity. We you know, that sort of stuff. And that’s the one category of faith that dies the fastest when they don’t have a religious backing, like like a a religious framing to them.
Speaker 1 :
Uh-huh.
Speaker 2 :
And what we’re gonna be going over tomorrow, for you very soon, the next recording that we do, is going to be faith systems that were intentionally constructed, but were also still religious in nature, because there’s been a number of them, and they’ve done pretty well. So we’ll go deeper into that as well. But today, what I wanted to focus on is one of the the metrics that we made was a silliness metric. and what we found is that actually sillier face tend to do slightly better than less silly face.
Speaker 1 :
This is good news.
Speaker 2 :
Yeah. There’s a lot of reasons for it. It’s a very fascinating thing. And for people who are offended, if the if you go to the list and it marks your religion as one of the silly ones, gotta look at it like an outsider to an outsider. Like, for example, Mormonism is quite silly. It it makes people laugh when they just hear the story. And I know this because the South Park that did the dumb dumb dumb song in the cartoon of the actual Mormon founding story, there’s Mormons watching it. There’s there’s some videos, and they just think that it’s like they’re like, yeah. You know, this is know, they got this thing wrong, but otherwise and they don’t realize that when a secular person watches it or, like, a non Mormon Christian watches it, they’re just laughing the entire time. They’re like, you think he can look in a hat? What are you talking about? It’s not even Yeah. It’s so funny.
Speaker 1 :
Yeah. They’re they’re just delivering the church beliefs straight, and people watching it are like yeah. Yeah. That’s so true. That’s so true. All they have to do is just literally read it off, and and it sounds like a joke. Yeah. Beautiful.
Speaker 2 :
Yep. So we’re gonna start with just going through the the life and teachings of a number of the sillier face that did get some significant traction. We’re gonna start with Cauchy and Unity. These are the people who thought that we lived on the inside of a hollow earth. Oh, well Founded by Cyrus Teed in the eighteen seventies.
Speaker 1 :
In The United States?
Speaker 2 :
Yes. It’s an American utopian religious commune, who took the name Quresh, the Hebrew form of Cyrus, meaning shepherd. It combined hollow earth cosmology and indigenous theology. They they thought that god was genderless, celibate communism, and claimed that Teed was the final messiah. At its peak, it had a few 100 residents in Florida plus scattered believers elsewhere, and it lingered until it died in 1982. So it was founded in the eighteen seventies and lived till 1982, over a hundred years. So what we’re gonna go over, like, how how little you have to put in to found a religion that lives a hundred years.
Speaker 1 :
Okay. Honestly, like, being on the if we’re inside the middle of the earth, how does that change anything?
Speaker 2 :
Well, they thought the sun was in in the very center, and we’ll we’ll get into
Speaker 1 :
it. Okay.
Speaker 2 :
So he was born in New York, a part of the Burned Out District, a region famous for producing intense religious movements. He left school young and worked on the Erie Canal, served briefly in The US Army during the civil war, discharged for disability, then trained in electric herbal natriopathic medicine. He practiced as a doctor in Ulta and surrounding areas and experimented with alchemy and electrochemistry in a laboratory. In 1869, while working late in a laboratory, accounts vary between trying to transmute metals and conducting electricity experiments, he experienced what he later called his illumination. He claimed a divine figure, I’m sorry, female figure, sometimes described as an angel, the Virgin Mary or a beautiful woman representing the divine feminine appeared and revealed two core truths. One, that he was the messiah destined to redeem humanity, and two, the structure of the universe, the cellular cosmology. He adapted the name Koresh and began preaching and gradually attracted a small following. Early efforts in New York, New York City, and Morveya produced a short lived group. In 1886, he moved to Chicago where he gained more traction among mental science and metaphysical circles. He co opted existing association, founded the communal home best opera, started publications, the guiding star and the flaming sword, and built a following that was disproportionately educated and female. smaller study groups and just short lived communes appeared in other cities, including San Francisco, as you can probably guess. Local hostility and limited growth in Chicago eventually pushed the core group south. In 1893 to 1894, Tied and a group of followers moved to Southwest Florida. They purchased roughly 300 acres along the Eastern River from German homesteader, Gier or something, for $200 and began building what Tied envisioned to be a utopian city of millions. New Jerusalem. Over the next decade, the community expanding its expanded its holdings, eventually several thousand acres, and constructed self sufficient settlements with a sawmill, machine shop, bakery, general store, publishing house, art hall, power plant, one of the first sources of electricity in the region, and the planetary court, a resident for the seven will women who helped administer the group. A okay. So that was, like, their
Speaker 1 :
equivalent of a convent, presumably?
Speaker 2 :
Yeah. Communist convent sort of thing. they Convents
Speaker 1 :
are inherently communist. I mean, pretty much.
Speaker 2 :
They got up to 250 residents in the early nineteen hundreds, with claims of several thousand additional believers elsewhere in the country. the Careshians incorporated the town of Estaro, briefly one of the larger municipal areas in The United States by land size, and ran their own economic and cultural institutions. Life mixed hard physical labor with lectures at musical theater, scientific demonstrations of their cosmology. So the core metaphysics of their theology. They’re teaching FUSE religion, science, and social reform under the banner of Caritian universology or cellular cosmology. They believe that the universe is a finite hollow cellular sphere. Humanity lives on the concave inner circuit of the Earth, not the outer convex surface of conventional astronomy. The Earth’s circumference is about 25,000 miles. The sun, actually a more complex central nucleus, dark on one side, sits roughly at the center. Stars and planets and the moon are phenomenon inside the shell. Day and night seasons and celestial motions are produced by the rotations of the heavens within the cell and by optical effects. Gravity is explained in electromagnetic and centrifugal terms.
Speaker 1 :
Conversation fun house or or that that carnival ride that’s just, like, holding us to the wall. What do they call that? A tilt a whirl? No.
Speaker 2 :
Yeah. Tilt a whirl. I mean, I I kinda like that you immediately hear it, you’re like, I I can see where they were going.
Speaker 1 :
I can see how if you if you just squint your eyes and don’t think too much. It’s like, okay. I guess.
Speaker 2 :
Yeah. And they conducted experiments that they claimed could prove the world’s concavity. So the theology of god and humanity. God is endogenous, perfectly male and female. The ultimate destiny of humanity is a reunification of the sexes into an integral immortal biome. It’s like a frog. Jesus represented as an earlier archetype of this. Knowledge of the true cellular form of the universe is equated with knowledge of god, accepting the complex convex earth is treated as a form of denial of the divine. Past immortality and social order, celibacy, especially for the committed inner circle, is essential for purifying the body and preparing it for immortality. Private property and competitive capitalism are rejected in favor of communal ownership of cooperative labor. Sexy quality of is emphasized. Women helped with significant roles. The highest form of transmutation is the crisis, an incorruptible dissolution of the electromagnetic combustion of the physical body rather than ordinary death and decay. so I guess you, like, disappear in this magic thing if you’re religious enough.
Speaker 1 :
Uh-huh.
Speaker 2 :
That’s believe science and religion are presented as a unified thing. Decline. in October ‘6, Tied was severely beaten in a street altercation in Fort Myers involving local opponents of his organization. His health deteriorated afterwards, and he died at the age of 69. Followers expect Immediately
Speaker 1 :
following being beat up in the streets? Like, it was resulting from his injuries?
Speaker 2 :
Yeah. If you’re so. Oh, he
Speaker 1 :
was like Joseph Smith kind of.
Speaker 2 :
Yes. Like This guy didn’t seem like I mean, Joseph Smith was, like, genuinely doing stuff that pissed off local people.
Speaker 1 :
Yeah. Whereas people just, I don’t know, thought this what do you think is some more like bullying? Like, you freaking
Speaker 2 :
From what I’ve read of his stuff. It doesn’t sound like he he was No murder scandals. Yeah. He he he like, I I might disagree with him and think that they’re quirky, but it it it’s not like a sex cult. It it didn’t appear that he attempted to take people’s money and live a lavish life. He appears Yeah. To have just been a genuine, quirky guy. Thought we lived inside the
Speaker 1 :
earth and wanted people to be happy.
Speaker 2 :
Yeah. And you could you you ask, why don’t more people come out with this? Because when you come out with, like, a new cosmology and stuff like that, it’s very easy to sound retarded.
Speaker 1 :
And someone might beat you up in the streets and kill you in your early sixties.
Speaker 2 :
Yeah. So The body was interred so the body was interred in a mausoleum on Estero Island, now Fort Myers Beach. Believers continue to watch and wait until 1921 when a hurricane destroyed the tomb. They originally kept his body on ice, and police had to come and tell them to bury it because they thought that he was gonna, like, resurrect or something. Or yeah. No. In 1940, Hedwig Machel, a German Jewish refugee who had learned of the Coruscians while still living in Europe, arrived and was formally admitted. She became the practical and spiritual mainstay managing remaining businesses and editing publications, caring for aging members, and eventually serving as president. In 1961, she was one of the last few members who deeded the core 300 acres to the state of Florida, creating what it is now Carishion State Park, a historic site Aw. While retaining lifetime residency rights. She died at the age of 90 in 1982. She was the last official member. One, which is pretty cool, is what you’ll find out with a lot of these is they when they died, they’ve set up trusts for, like, academic research or starting state parks or start like this. And keep in mind, this one is paying on extreme hard mode because it was, also celibate. and the number one mode of growth that I learned when I was doing my research, and we had also learned when doing the private guide was just reaffirmed, is fertility. If you have a fertility driver in your religion, you’re likely to do well. If your religion is based around celibacy, that is the the number one thing that leads to them dying out, which is another one that means even with the one in three, we’re, like, already really good because we don’t have the celibacy.
Speaker 1 :
Yes. Yes.
Speaker 2 :
But yeah. Okay. We’re gonna go to the next one. Veil do Amacer is a Brazilian Christian spiritualist new religious movement founded by the medium Neevchazal, known as Taya Noiva or Ain’t Noiva. It is famous for its extremely colorful costumes, dense system of mediumistic rituals, and the claim that its initiates, jaguars, are reincarnated spirits originally from other worlds who were seated on Earth tens of thousands of years ago. It is one of the clear cases of movement that expanded dramatically after the death of its founder. And and this is actually a pretty big one with a number of major churches that follow it throughout Brazil.
Speaker 1 :
Woah. Still today?
Speaker 2 :
No. Still heavily practiced today. Wow.
Speaker 1 :
So So it’s it’s Christianity with reincarnation and colorful costumes?
Speaker 2 :
I don’t know. I don’t I’m I’m gonna get I’m learning about all these as you are. I haven’t gone into these. I thought this is something I wanna learn about, and then I was like, well, I bet our fans wanna learn about it at the same time, let’s so learn about it together and talk about it.
Speaker 1 :
I mean, sure.
Speaker 2 :
Yeah. Dude. I I think with the above one, if I’m gonna have any takeaways, one, don’t be celibate. But two, it might actually make sense to, at some point, go out and buy land and attempt to create a community, both settlement, but more important than that yearly gathering place, where we can hold, like, yearly camps for kids that wanna come, you know, maybe, like, markets and stuff like that. So you come once a year for, like, the season, and you can meet people and stuff.
Speaker 1 :
I like the idea of build buying then a resort. You know? A beautiful resort.
Speaker 2 :
You want a resort? Where would you put it?
Speaker 1 :
I don’t know. Not somewhere, like, outside DC. You know, Dialogue allegedly is gonna buy land somewhere near DC, and that that is expensive land. Why would you do that? So somewhere, like, in, I don’t know, Canada. Right? We’ve always been looking at
Speaker 2 :
The problem with Canada is it costs a fortune to get there.
Speaker 1 :
That’s true. So remember when we were doing our search fund and we were looking at these adorable hiking lodges Yeah. And resorts, like, something like that. Look. You know? Been around for a while. Yeah.
Speaker 2 :
There’s some Like, in the Poconos or, like, in rural Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1 :
Like, in the Poconos or outside New York that, like, used to be huge in the fifties, had, like, little houses and cabins, and families in New York would just go there and then spend the summer there if they had the money to do so. We just live there all summer. And if they had to drive into the city, they’d drive into the city for something, but they would have a cabin all summer, and they would have, like, like, a main house where everyone would gather. And in in the there’s even one features heavily in the show, the marvelous miss missus Maisel or Maisel, where it’s like the the whole Jewish community of New York City kind of convenes at this one camp and has for years. And that would be so good for a religious community to have a a one, like, one place where they convene seasonally for stuff. The Bohemian Grove, I think, is a lot like that, but only for, like, you know, super rich men who are very, very old. But, you know, they have these permanent cabins and camps that are really cool plus, like, main gathering areas. Something like that. Look. The Bohemian Grove, I don’t know how long it’s got. Maybe we’ll just buy that someday. You know? Its days are numbered.
Speaker 2 :
Well, I mean, the key is you have somebody, you know, grant you in their will or there’s this maybe one of our followers out of the property they’d wanna use for this as a as, like, a starting location would probably be the best way to do it.
Speaker 1 :
Yeah. Yeah. I feel like the LDS church has a leg up because of the Marriott Association.
Speaker 2 :
By the way, this is a for future track that you guys will probably be interested in getting the down on. And I’ve been doing more research into how tithing is actually supposed to work in the bible.
Speaker 1 :
Oh, you didn’t tell me this. Oh. Yeah. Because I
Speaker 2 :
was like, well, like because that’s a topic we do have to eventually get to if the bible says that you need to tithe.
Speaker 1 :
I mean, do they? I’m still in the old testament, but it was just kind of understood that you would give choice cuts of meat or animals to
Speaker 2 :
So, actually, it’s really good, like, the the way that it’s actually laid out in the bible. Oh, yeah. It works like this. You are supposed to tithe, but, like, the 10% tithing number that you often hear from groups and stuff like that, what you’re supposed to do with that money is set it aside for your children. That’s what tithing originally was, was setting aside money for your children. And it’s it’s talked about in multiple places Oh my gosh. As a religious duty to invest in, also, like, projects and stuff like that, like, not bury it underground. Obviously, Jesus even has a parable about this. Uh-huh. And then actual tithing for the church is only supposed to be on gains. And I don’t know what we do with that, but, like, if we did have money, we could do cool stuff like put this together. We might not even mini need it soon if RFAB keeps growing at the rate it’s growing.
Speaker 1 :
Like a capital gains tax for your church? So the way I Presumably, were talking about agricultural yields in the bible.
Speaker 2 :
No. No. So the bible, it only so, actually, tithing only in the bible, like, in the Jewish tradition, is only on increase in the size of your agricultural land. Nothing else. So that would, to me, correlate in our modern society with any sort of significant windfall to your overall net worth, like, the money you’re saving. Right? So, like, the I I basically, because your agricultural land produced more money every year. Right? So increasing your agricultural land is, like, increasing the amount that you and I have invested in the S and P. So it’s more like a tax when you make an investment in the S and P, when you categorize wealth as permanent wealth. And it’s also voluntary, and you choose how much is how it’s written. We’re gonna get more into obviously, I need to do more research to have it exactly down. But I really like the idea of an enforced tithing system around saving money for kids. I think that would be a really, like, ethical way to to build the system.
Speaker 1 :
Yeah. I really like that.
Speaker 2 :
Yeah. Anyway One second.
Speaker 1 :
Hold on. Hi, Stacy. Are you guys heading outside? Oh, okay. Let me, yeah, let me call his phone and see where he is. One moment. I’ll look for him.
Speaker 2 :
he might have gone with Eric. That’s just who he said he was waiting on.
Speaker 1 :
Oh, yeah? He might have gone with Eric. Oh, I’ll call him. Hi. I think he’s with Eric. He might be with Eric. So yeah. I’m I’m trying to reach him now. If he’s not in the kitchen, then he’s with Eric. Alright. Yeah. Alright. If he gets back, I’ll let you know,
Speaker 2 :
though. Okay.
Speaker 1 :
Yeah. Yep. Thank you. Have fun out there. It’s good to see you again. Welcome back. Yeah. Thank you. Okay. We’re back. Sorry, Malcolm.
Speaker 2 :
Yeah. By the way, the reason I’ve been thinking about a lot of this recently is when I was building this document that analyzed, you know, failure points of new religious movements, it’s like the number one failure point that the techno Puritans are at risk for right now is they don’t build permanent community institutions. if you fail to build those within the founder’s lifetime, like we failed to build a marriage market, we failed to build regular summer camps for kids, stuff like that, you always go extinct or or generally go extinct. So it’s something I have to get more diligent on. Anyway, to continue here. okay. So the early life of this Brazilian guy, He was born in 1925 to a Catholic family. She married Raul something in 1943 and had four children. Widowed while still young, she supported the family by becoming one of Brazil’s first professional female truck drivers in the nineteen fifties, hauling materials during the construction of the new capital, Brasilia. She’s part of the Candigo, our pioneer workforce. Okay. Already sounds pretty cool. around 1958 while driving, she began experiencing intense clairvoyant and mediumistic phenomenon, seeing spirits on the side of the roads and receiving communications. And then about Catholic, she initially resisted and feared that she was going mad. She eventually sought explanations in spiritualism but found the standard cardistic framework insufficient for what she was experiencing. what’s fun about this is this one, she just appears to be somebody who developed schizophrenia. Yeah.
Speaker 1 :
And she kept seeing things, but she really, really, really wanted to understand, and she took it as a sign. It it really does sound, like, pretty clear for schizophrenia.
Speaker 2 :
Yeah. Which, again, is as sweet that a a truck worker with schizophrenia ended up becoming famous. So in 1959, guided by the spirit, Paya Seta Bayaka, father white arrow, she and a small group founded the Unite Espiritualis Santa Branca. I’m never gonna be able to pronounce that. The early community included mediums, a simple hospital, and an orphanage they form they farmed and took, odd jobs to survive. After a split in 1964, she established a another one, the social works of the Christian spiritual order in Tagayatta’s federal district. There, she met Mario Sassy, a former public relations officer and left leaning Catholic intellectual who became her companion and the main systematizer of her doctrine, turning her visions into coherent written teachings and organized the structure. In 1969, the group moved to a rural area near Plantaria, the federal district around 50, kilometers from Brasilia’s Plano Paleto. they named the place Don’t Care, after the luminous spiritual dawn or aura perceived there. The Naeva directed the construction of the mother temple, elliptical form, a pyramid, the s something glowing star, a complex lake with other ritual spaces. The community combined intensive mediumistic work with practice charity, including care for abandoned children. By the mid nineteen seventies, the veil was already drawing large weekly crowds and had thousands of active mediums. Tayanueva, despite declining in health from tuberculosis, interpreted by followers as the working, out of karmic debt, continued to receive people daily and to refine the elaborate system of costumes, ranks, and rituals.
Speaker 1 :
Good help.
Speaker 2 :
She got
Speaker 1 :
also really into costumes.
Speaker 2 :
Yes. We should probably you should probably look up these people.
Speaker 1 :
How do I spell? Because I I was trying
Speaker 2 :
to do
Speaker 1 :
this one and not getting the
Speaker 2 :
Look up the the valley of the dawn.
Speaker 1 :
Valley of the dawn religion, I guess. Yeah.
Speaker 2 :
To see what religion is associated with.
Speaker 1 :
Oh, wow. They’ve got veils. The veils are colorful. The veils are colorful and pink and purple with little upside down crowns a little bit at the top of your forehead with triangles on them. They look like yield sign triangles. And then I see oh, yeah. They’ve got big, cool, fun dresses with, like, capes that attach to your wrist.
Speaker 2 :
Yeah. It’s oh, that’s fun.
Speaker 1 :
Yeah. It’s, wow. No. This wins the the, flamboyant costumes. The problem is the Catholic church creates genuine couture. This looks like bad cosplay.
Speaker 2 :
Burning Man?
Speaker 1 :
No. No. Burning Man is good cosplay. This looks like this stuff’s glued on. Like, literally, there’s someone, like, tried to, like, decoupage. I’m looking at a girl now who looks like she has a crystal
Speaker 2 :
Okay. You’ve talked into it. Have to see
Speaker 1 :
her her chest on a a purple dress. The veils are very, very interesting. It looks like this is kind of a make your own costume kinda thing with that’s really heavy on hot glue. You know what I you see what I mean. Right?
Speaker 2 :
Yeah. I I see what you’re talking about. I see what
Speaker 1 :
you’re talking about. Yeah. So, like, I like I like the concept. The construction leaves a lot to be desired.
Speaker 2 :
So she left the movement after she died to two of her sons. Mhmm. Although Although there were later internal disputes about administrative splits, the core ritual system and hierarchy continue to function. Because their practices were highly structured, costume coded, and independent of any single prophet, the movement expanded rather than contracted. From only a handful of temples at the time of her death, the network grew to over 600 to 700 temples in Brazil, abroad.
Speaker 1 :
Joined for their costumes.
Speaker 2 :
Yes. Membership estimates vary, but there is around 600,000 to 800,000 members.
Speaker 1 :
The men have these like, the the the the traditional collar for the men’s capes is kind of like a supervillain insane cape collar that kinda, like, goes up, like, a little, I don’t know, Dracula style or, like there lots of supervillains have colors like this, especially if they have overlarge brains. This is to like So the the metaphysics? Oh my god. I’m seeing some some art. I’m seeing a a book on it. It it’s showing some of their religious art, and it’s showing, like, Jesus an altar with Jesus in the center, but it has these two eyes on the sides of, like, male and female eyes, except the eyes look like drag queen eyes
Speaker 2 :
with intensity. Jesus looks like a drag queen with two swords. I love it.
Speaker 1 :
But then, on oh, this is so good. This is so oh my god. Go. Go, guys. No. This is definitely feeding into the Brazilian
Speaker 2 :
Oh, no. This this feels like a thoroughly Brazilian religion.
Speaker 1 :
Yeah. Very very but also in terms of your silliness hypothesis, because this is this is insanely silly. But also They’ve they’ve got
Speaker 2 :
they’ve got almost a million believers around the world, and they they also the around the original site, now a city has been built dedicated to their religion.
Speaker 1 :
Well, can you look at these costumes and not wanna, like who’s that? You’re in it. You’re like, that looks fun. They’re having
Speaker 2 :
read the whole thing, and they never there’s no sexual abuse cases. They appear to be a sincere believer. It appears that everyone around this sincerely believed what was happening. Like, she appeared to just develop schizophrenia at around the age when people do. Doing what causes it, like long periods of driving and stuff like that can cause certain types of well known can cause hallucinations. And blended, I think, Catholicism with the ancestral culture of the region in a way that is is is fun and funky. You know? You you go, girl. Yeah. Absolutely. The korg a single mother of four. You know? So the doctrine is eccentric Christian spiritualism with strong spiritualist cardistic foundations plus Afro Brazilian, indigenous Egyptian, classical Mediterranean, theosophic, and extraterrestrial elements. Yes. They believe in God and Jesus Christ. The three practical pillars are unconditional love, humanity sorry, humility and tolerance. All mediumistic work is free, understood as a charitable service in the service of the gospel. reincarnation and the law of karma cause cause and effect, are central to their beliefs. Initiates, often the mediums, belong to a spiritual family called the jaguars. These are a group of advanced spirits, often numbered to be around 30,000, who originated from the star Capella or the planet Capella beginning roughly thirty two thousand years ago in successive waves. They were sent or chose to incarnate on Earth to accelerate human spiritual and civilizational evolution. They are linked to doctrine to earlier advanced groups, Ecuitamins, Tumachians, and later incarnated along among or inspired by the great builders of civilization, ancient Greek, Roman, Maya, Inca, and others, as well as the colonial Brazil. in their past lives, they accumulated heavy karmic debts through the misuse of their power. They present Oh. Incarnation is oh, sorry. The present incarnation is a redemptive mission by performing free mediumistic healing and living according to the principles of love, humility, and tolerance. Like that. Off that collective set.
Speaker 1 :
To sell narrative. Like, look. You may be a nobody now, but in a past life, you were just so powerful that you’re just paying for it now. And here this is your redemption arc. I like this
Speaker 2 :
so much more than Buddhism. Buddhism sounds so arrogant when they’re like
Speaker 1 :
It’s very arrogant. It is very arrogant. Yeah.
Speaker 2 :
Oh, I’ve I I trained for this position for a thousand lifetimes, and now I get to live off of everyone else. And I just just dedicate my entire life to trying to reach salvation. You know? Whereas she’s like she could literally say anything about herself. And, apparently, she was a a a nice, somewhat blameless person, and she’s like, no. No. I’m I’m living for the sins of my past lives. I was a terrible monster in my past life. In fact, everyone who achieves a position of spiritual power in our community must live a life of atonement for their last lives.
Speaker 1 :
I love that. I love that. Yeah.
Speaker 2 :
That’s that’s pretty cool. I it it keeps the
Speaker 1 :
Talk about, like, internal locus of control and a radical responsibility. They’re not only taking responsibility for their lives now. They’re taking their responsibility for their past lives. That is next level.
Speaker 2 :
Yeah. Well and the community thought this is why she died and got sick. That that’s also that she she’s just taking responsibility for all those past lives where she misused her power. the principal of spiritual guide or mentor of the doctrine in the most recent, earthly life, he is presented this is Piraeus Satabenka. This is the one who, like, helped her. As a, Tubayan indigenous leader earlier identifies as Saint Francis of Assisi. and earlier, the jaguar leader formed with extraterrestrial connections. He is a central figure. Oh, this is the guy who looks like a native American who’s in some of their art. Okay. They have a richly populated spirit world mediums work with and incorporate a wide range of mentors and forces. A bunch of words here for, like, medical spirits, Egyptian deities, Greek figures, Tibetan messengers Wow. Spirits for Kabbalah, princesses, gypsies, sirens, and more, co coheros, debt collectors are suffering or obsessive spirits often linked to people harmed by a jaguar in the past life who must be doctrined and released. Practices, dozens of distinct rules focus on dispossession, removing obsessive spirits, healing, and energy manipulation. Mediums are trained in categories, notably a bunch of stuff I can’t how do I have to, like, dialogue with spirits, Elaborate color coded costumes and accessories to present specific spiritual failings or forces. The visual spectacle is one of the movement’s most distinctive features. the system is designed so that the rituals can be performed by trained by teams without requiring the continuous presence of a single charismatic leader. In short, Veil presents itself as a practical spiritual it sort of seems like Catholicism mixed with Brazilian indigenous beliefs.
Speaker 1 :
Yeah. Sort of what I’m getting here.
Speaker 2 :
Stylistic flair. And, yeah, and some traditional spiritualism, which which works fun. And we’re gonna go to the next one here, Simone. Okay.
Speaker 1 :
I’m ready. I’m so ready now.
Speaker 2 :
Are you getting any inspiration from any of these? You think you think we the techno person should dress
Speaker 1 :
up in some outfit? Getting a lot of reinforcement for silliness and weird clothes.
Speaker 2 :
Yeah. I mean, this is where I think leaning into concepts like the future police is you know, it it sounds silly, the basilisk. Like, our kids really have internalized the concept of the basilisk. Right?
Speaker 1 :
Like 100%.
Speaker 2 :
They’re like when one of the kids is asking bad, Octavian comes to me and goes, dad, I think Torsten’s been fully possessed by the basilisk right now. He’s like, we’re gonna have to talk to him later. But, like, this idea that they’re not themselves when they’re acting bad, it’s it’s some other force that they need to learn to shake off. But how do I the dev that’s basically our kid being like, well, the devil’s got toasty right now, Malcolm. There’s nothing you could do, which sounds pretty like. But, yeah, silliness, you will see, is not the enemy of a a of of, like, a a good religious system.
Speaker 1 :
Truly.
Speaker 2 :
Alright. So, the Uniris Academy of Science, is a small American UFO spiritual science group founded in 1954. It teaches interdimensional science of life centered on past life therapy, energy physics, and the eventual landing of a benevolent interplanetary fleet that will help Earth join a galactic confederation. The highly publicized 2001 landing date failed, but a small remnant continues in El Cajon, California. So a guy from nineteen o four to 1971 was a self taught electric engineer, poet, and clairvoyant with a background in spiritualism. He gave psychic readings and claimed contact with higher intelligences and extraterrestrials, including visits via travel or channeling to advance civilizations on Mars and Venus. Ruth e Norman, who lived for nineteen hundred nineteen ninety three and worked various jobs, developed an interest in psychic phenomenon and past life regression in 1940, and she met this guy at a spiritualist psychic convention in Los Angeles. In February 1954, they quickly formed a partnership. They married, and at a conventional clairvoyant, repeatedly saw three white bearded figures identified as Elsdra, Eshra, and Enoch following Ernest with massive books he was destined to write. Okay. So first of all, I love how nerdy this starts. It’s founded by a couple who met at a convention, and then the founding hallucination happened at another clairvoyant convention. Yep. Enoch hangs out at clairvoyant conventions.
Speaker 1 :
Well, I mean, if you need to reach someone and you’re you’re a spirit, I think that’s probably a good place to go.
Speaker 2 :
Don’t you think? They began giving, the Pathway to the Stars series, performing psychic readings and channeling material. In 1954, they established what became the Uniris Educational Foundation. It was formerly incorporated as a nonprofit in California in 1957. Early activity centered on books, classes, and a small circle of students interested in psychic healing and past lives. Ernest was known as the moderator and later identified as the archangel Raphael. Oh, we’re we’re gonna get some arrogant ones here. Mhmm. Ernest died in 1971, Reese assumed full leadership, and became a far more flamboyant public figure. She took up the spiritual identity of Uriel, the archangel, goddess of love and healing, and archangel from the planet Ares, appeared in elaborate costumes with a tiara and scepter. Oh. You should look up this woman to see what you can find of her.
Speaker 1 :
How do we spell her name properly?
Speaker 2 :
Okay. Let’s see. Her name is Ruth Niels, n I e l d s.
Speaker 1 :
Oh, she had a wand, ladies and gentlemen. She had a wand. God bless her. And a crown. And a crown. Okay. I’m I’m here for it.
Speaker 2 :
She coauthored dozens of additional books, over 80 in total are attributed to her period, and expanded the mythology of past lives at Atlantic, Lemuria, and extraterrestrial contact. In 1974 to 1975, the group’s public profile rose sharply with the prophecy of an imminent landing by the space brothers. Unarius purchased roughly 67 acres in the Jamal Mountains near San Diego as a landing site. Headquarters moved to a storefront center in El Cacayan, still the home base featuring classrooms, a library, a print shop, and the Star Center decorated with large murals of Atlantis at its height. Roose claimed numerous past incarnations, including Isis Socrates, Mona Lisa, Hashetut, Quetzalcoatl, Mary of Bethany, and many others. Wow. She died in 1993. Leadership passed to Charles Spiegel until his death in 1999, after which the council or bore broader of long term students guided the group. So from the mid nineteen seventies onwards, Eunice taught that 33 spaceships from the planets of the Interplanetary Confederation would land on Earth and would carry 1,000 advanced scientist healers, a total of 33,000 eventually, I guess. The ships would stack in towering star center or university. The Space Brothers would recover the lost libraries of Atlantis and Lemuria, said to be on thin metal plates in the ocean debris, introduce free non polluting energy and technology, including a power tower, end war and disease, and usher in the golden age of logic and reason slash renaissance spirits. Earth would become the thirty third member of the confederation. Early predictions pointed to the mid nineteen seventies. The date was, repeatedly revised and eventually fixed on 2001. When the fleet never arrived, the explanation was that Earth’s collective warlike negative consciousness was not yet ready. The space feathers remained nearby in the atmosphere waiting for sufficient spiritual progress. The failed prophecy caused some attrition but did not destroy the group. Activity continued with a stronger emphasis on personal past life therapy, while retaining the future landing hope. its present stand is it remains a small nonprofit foundation headquartered at 145 South Megala Avenue in El Cajon, a core of dedicated local students, typically in the range of a few dozen active participant hold classes, workshops, and past life sessions, some streamed online. The center is open to visitors on Sundays. And by appointment, it features colorful murals, a light can you look up their their center here, the star center or whatever it’s called? So what what’s their metaphysics? Yeah. An infinite creative intelligence god, a hierarchy of higher beings and archangels over a cosmic development from higher spiritual worlds. They believe everything is energy vibrating at different frequencies. Humans are energy beings with a psychic anatomy that records the harmonic frequency of all past lives. Physical and psychological problems originate in unresolved trauma, negative acts, psychic asthma, from previous Psychic asthma. Psychic Healing occurs through awareness or reliving past lives often through psychodrama workshops in which members reenact scenes and realigning one’s energy with higher frequencies. Reincarnation is central and extensive. Members frequently report and heal lives in ancient Egypt, Greek, and Rome, especially the lost continents of Lemuria and Atlantis. Lemuria is said to have been founded by extraterrestrials who crash landed one hundred and sixty thousand to one hundred and sixty five thousand years ago. It sank sixty eight thousand BCE. Atlantis was a highly advanced electronic crystal civilization that flourished later and was destroyed around January and oh, sorry. December on some accounts, partially through the misuse of power. Many current students believe they participated in those civilizations rise and fall. So the Space Brothers and Interplanetary Confederation, benevolent, highly evolved human beings from 32 advanced planets. Earth will be 33 from a confederation. They have contacted Earth for millennia and continue communicating, and telepathically channeling, with Earth. The purpose, individual spirits evolution through past life therapy, and the application of Eunice’s principles leads to personal mastery collectively. It prepares humanity, blah blah blah. Yes. Very fun. I I like a lot of the silly ones. They seem to have less scandal, except I I guess I would put, like, the nation of Islam in the silliness category, and
Speaker 1 :
they Yeah.
Speaker 2 :
Have a lot of scandal.
Speaker 1 :
I don’t know how scandalous the nation of Islam has been.
Speaker 2 :
Just, like, the founder was clearly a con artist and constantly changed face.
Speaker 1 :
Yes. No. I forgot that he was, like, by trade, a con artist.
Speaker 2 :
He was like yeah. I Yeah. So much so that the the the when his kid took over, he just converted it to a mainstream Islamic sect.
Speaker 1 :
Which is kind of the bro move. You know? It’s nice. Yeah.
Speaker 2 :
If you accidentally take over a religious scam, I guess just convert to a mainstream religion. Right?
Speaker 1 :
Yeah. Be like, let’s let’s reduce harm here. I appreciate him. But
Speaker 2 :
what I wanna emphasize with Ziz is, were you able to look up what their facilities look like?
Speaker 1 :
Because there’s so many things called STAR Center. And I even tried, El Cajon, but that didn’t seem to help.
Speaker 2 :
Oh, come on. I’ll I’ll I’ll I’ll find one.
Speaker 1 :
Yeah. You you have notes in front of you. You can
Speaker 2 :
just copy and paste.
Speaker 1 :
Uniris Star Center. Uniris. Uniris.
Speaker 2 :
Yeah. If you look up Uniris Star Center oh, that’s interesting artistic choices. Like a big empty hall that’s, like, carpeted and has, like, a bunch of stuff in it, and their art is out there.
Speaker 1 :
Nothing comes close to the her her her particular personal styling choices, which were delightful.
Speaker 2 :
Well, hold on. Have you seen the woman who used to run it? I I’m sorry.
Speaker 1 :
With her crown and her wand. And she’s covered in sparkles? Nope. That’s them. The sparkles. Yeah. Yeah. It it it looks like what you’d see a mentally ill older person post online. The problem is just now everybody seems to be, you know, using these stupid filters and stuff and, like, you know, themed themed filters to post images of themselves like that. So it doesn’t look as weird as I think it did at the time.
Speaker 2 :
Hold on, Sibone. They’re they’re sillier than you say. Hold on. I’ll send you a good picture of this this woman.
Speaker 1 :
I was just looking at them. They’re they’re insane.
Speaker 2 :
I think I think she has better style.
Speaker 1 :
Lot of people use, like, Snapchat filters, so I think that’s why you Here. You you gotta you gotta check her out. Okay. Where are you sending a link? On WhatsApp. K.
Speaker 2 :
And they they made a
Speaker 1 :
link on IMDb. Okay. Yeah. A movie about it. Beautiful. Yeah. I I like the little turbans. They oh, and they so the guys have turbans, and they also They dress
Speaker 2 :
like characters from nineteen eighties science fiction. Cute. And, like Again but, again, with the Reflective outfits
Speaker 1 :
and everything. It makes me really grateful for modern cosplay culture because it’s so good. Like, people have been able to learn amazing clothing construction. Because what we’re looking at in this picture of Ruth Norman’s IMDb page, the costumes are not there. The the craftsmanship is not there. It’s not good.
Speaker 2 :
You’re a very judgy woman, Simone.
Speaker 1 :
Right? About clothing, yes. So
Speaker 2 :
if we have silly outfits, if we go in direction just in case anyone’s worried, we’ll just go with, like, trad medieval outfits, which we basically already do. We
Speaker 1 :
I we need to find we just need we’re we’re we need to find a good shirt for you. There’s I’m trying to I’m waiting for French Meadows pirate shirt to come back in black. Let’s see. Shop shirt men’s clothing. The Darcy shirt. It’s all in white right now, but I I need to try the Darcy shirt. Uh-oh. No. It’s not in black yet. Can get it in white.
Speaker 2 :
Yeah. Alright. I feel like it
Speaker 1 :
could work for you. It gives vampire slash pirate. I love you too, Malcolm. You are special.