'Psychic Dictatorship': The New Age Cult That Worships The American Flag (Audio)

Skeptic Spirit

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'Psychic Dictatorship': The New Age Cult That Worships The American Flag (Audio)

An essay on the origins of UFO belief

Jul 18, 2024

Transcript

This is the audio version of my latest essay on the history of the belief in extraterrestrials. Guy and Edna Ballard led the ‘I AM Activity,’ a Christian Theosophy cult, during the Great Depression. Their strange spirituality has shaped many subsequent New Age religions, especially the UFO cults.

Skeptic Spirit

'Psychic Dictatorship': The New Age Cult That Worships The American Flag

Matt Osborne

Jul 4

'Psychic Dictatorship': The New Age Cult That Worships The American Flag

Guy Ballard, “a man dressed in dazzling white,” and his wife Edna, always similarly immaculate, abhorred the colors black, which represented evil, and also red, which was the color of communism. Ardent patriots, they saw no contradiction whatosever in making Old Glory an object of religious worship. When the Comte de Saint Germain came into his destined glory as spiritual and temporal master of the United States through the mediumship of the Ballards, they assured their followers, he would change the red stripes on the American flag into gold. The Ballards liked gold, and also diamonds, wearing a great deal of both in a show of prosperity every time they appeared in public. Gold was quite important to Guy, who had sold many shares in a “Gold Lake” that he claimed to have found in Colorado. Indeed, during the time he was dodging those Chicago creditors, Guy Ballard claimed the Comte de Saint Germain had appeared to him on Mount Shasta in California. The mystic Asended Master then produced a gold coin out of thin air before whisking Guy Ballard away, via teleportation, to view subterranean chambers filled with gold.

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