After the explosive heyday of new sects, cults and alternative forms of spiritualism that was the 1920s and early 1930s, particularly in the Western United States, things calmed down a bit WWII rolled around and everyone was kept busy slaughtering each other.
In Christianity, Pentacostalism kept raging strongly, but for more alternative forms of spirituality it wasn’t until the 50s that things saw a new boom. As the post war western world settled down, the 50s produced a new wave of groups and movements the vast majority of whom took various precepts of Theosophy left over from the original Victorian movement and all added a brand new twist: Aliens.
Aliens were the rage. If you were in a new, alternative spiritual movement in the 50s, there were aliens involved in your theology, and that was certainly true for today’s group: The Unarius Academy of Science.
The Unarius Academy of Science is quite vehement they are not a religion, but are in fact Interdimensional Science, the precepts of which have been delivered by higher energy beings (from Venus as well as others) and channeled by their founder Ernest Norman. Unarius is an acronym which stands for UNiversal ARticulate Interdimensional Understanding of Science.
Ernest Norman was a traveling psychic medium who put grieving WWII widows in touch with their dead husbands. In the early 50s he met a woman named Ruth whose dead husband had left her a restaurant chain. Their pairing changed their lives. They married within weeks of meeting each other. Ruth loved Ernest’s alien theosophy shtick and soon he had at his disposal the means to self publish some books written while channeling the aliens who were giving him advanced knowledge about the seven planes of Shamballa, which exist outside the conventional atomic spectrum and are spiritual or non-physical worlds. Each plane has a specialty in the teaching of advanced principles, for the betterment of an individual’s progressive evolution from life to life.
The planes’ specialties are:
- Venus – Healing
- Eros – Science
- Orion – Education
- Hermes – Philosophy
- Muse – The Arts
- Unarius – Leadership
- Elysium – Devotion
The first book, The Book of Venus, describes communication from Mal-Var of Venus who gives a tour of the Venusian capital. In the work, Venusians are described as having “energy bodies” and living in a higher vibratory plane that would be invisible to a human were he to stand in the middle of the capital city known as Azure. The planet Venus and its culture are said to be more spiritual than that of the Earth and that more advanced Earth-dwellers visit and study on Venus when they sleep. Healing wards for human suicides, alcoholics, the mentally impaired and similar human wreckage exist in Azure and these souls are treated with positive energy and light to help them reincarnate with greater integration.
The books began to attract interested people and soon the movement was off on its way.
The great part about all these groups formed in the 50s and beyond is that sooner or later they got around to filming various self promotional videos. These are of course gold.
Here is the Unarius worldview in self funded video form. You are welcome.:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDFGLynLAas
When Ernest died in 1971 his wife Ruth took over and things got even wackier. The theosophical back pinnings of the movement got replaced with more and more aliens and more and more alien channeling stories. Ruth began publishing books describing her channeling of alien beings. She changed her name to Uriel after a channeling revealed a lifetime lived in ancient Atlantis with the name Uriel and began dressing… in a bizarrely lavish fashion. Alex Heard, in Apocalypse Pretty Soon: Travels In End-Time America quipped of her that she was, “a true American original who combined the couture sensibilities of a drag queen with the joie de vivre of a Frisbee-chasing Irish Setter.”
Her channeled messages referred to “33 worlds of an interplanetary confederation”. These worlds all had various problems and by communicating with Uriel, many of their hang-ups were solved or on the way to resolution.
The group also came up with the idea that trauma inflicted during a past life was causing you suffering in this one and thus would enact Psychodramas, acted out plays by which you could relive the event and over come it. The events would be seen by Ruth (Ioshnna).
For instance, Uriel might decide that a certain Unarian had been a murderous space captain or an evil sea serpent in a past life. So the group would do these semi-improvised and somewhat elaborate plays, that were designed to “drastically relive” these past lives, so that the Unarian follower would be freed from their karma (more or less). In the one with the sea serpent, they literally videotaped it next to a swimming pool and several people got into a crappy aquatic dragon suit fashioned from floating pool furniture and innertubes and swam around as the rest of them held a trial and passed judgement on the “creature.” A lot of their psychodramas had the trial by jury aspect to them
In the mid 70s, a notable Unariun named Louis Spiegel first channeled a message predicting a landing of spacecraft to greet Uriel in 1976. The other sub-channel, Thomas Miller, disagreed with this channeling and a schism opened up between the two. When the landing failed to materialize it was explained that this scenario was a negative “past life reliving” and the channeling was contaminated by Spiegel’s lower sub-conscious self.
As a result, a number of Unariuns were skeptical about the future predictions of a spacefleet landing, also channeled by Louis Spiegel. Many Unariuns felt that these predictions undermined the original mission of Ernest Norman and a falling out occurred. Circa 1980 Thomas Miller, the primary sub-channel, left the organization, leaving Louis Spiegel as the only sub-channel. From this point forward, ever more activities revolved around these predictions. Ruth Norman, now 80, participated less and less in the goings on at the center and so Unariuns turned primarily to Louis Spiegel (aka “Antares”, “Vaughn” and “Charles”) for guidance and instruction.
The group has built landing sites for the variety of spaceships that have promised to land and deliver them, but it has never occured. The group is still in existence today and can be found right here.
