In October, 2000, I came across a poster advertising an Esoteric Psychology course.  I was undertaking a degree in Psychology at the time and had always been interested in spirituality so I thought it would be interesting. The course taught techniques for self-knowledge such as awareness as self-observation which I found helpful and insightful so I decided to pursue the courses further working my way through TGM’s other courses including OBE’s, meditation and esoteric studies. I started to gain experiences from the various practices and noticed benefits in my everyday life and I enjoyed the weekend get together’s where we would practice as a group, go for walks in nature etc. so I began to take the courses more seriously, eventually training to be a teacher.

The move from being a student to a teacher was taken quite seriously and with that step came certain responsibilities as well as expectations of how you would act and behave in everyday life. This seemed reasonable enough to me so I took the commitment along with its various requirements which were tough but manageable. However, only 2 months after becoming a teacher the current teachers decided to start a new centre abroad and requested that I take over the running of the centre (along with my partner who was also a teacher and who I later married).  I was a bit daunted by the prospect, I was 21 years old, in my final year at university, working part-time and the centre had 5 courses running about 4-5 times a week.  

Still, I felt that it would be good experience and besides that I had little choice as there was no one else who could take it on.

I moved in with my fiancé who was living in the centre but with this move came further difficulties. I was told that my friends and family could not come and visit me since they were not part of the courses and that it would affect the energies of the premises to have outside visitors. This was challenging and it caused difficulty with relationships but I felt that all the benefits I had experienced made it worth it.

Soon after becoming a teacher I was made a member, which is the highest level of responsibility in the organisation. I was told that once you become a member you can also have contact with the leader and ‘Master’, Mark Pritchard, who would only deal with members. I had never met or spoken to Mark but a week after becoming a member I had a call from him to say, nice to meet you and I need you to close down two centres because I’ve expelled the teachers. This was my first shock. One of the teachers had been my own teacher and mentor and I respected and looked up to him. I had a feeling of dread about the whole thing but I had learned enough to know that the Master is the highest authority and one that you wouldn’t question, so I did it.

From this moment many things changed, it turned out the entire board of members had been expelled, 7 of them in one go, and I was told I had to become the Treasurer of the organisation to replace one of the expelled members and to take on the management of several online courses.  I began working extremely long hours to manage all the tasks, typically staying up to past 1am in the morning each night and up again at 6am to get ready for work.  Still, I was compelled by a sense of responsibility to my students. I was told that every forum post needed an answer within 48 hours and with up to 2000 people in a course, the postings came streaming in.  I could see the students had the same spark I had when I first started and while my own practices were suffering from the workload, I was encouraged by their enthusiasm. Besides that, I didn’t want to let ‘the Master’ down and was driven by a sense of ‘sacrifice’ – taught to be one of the three key components to walk the path.

By this stage, my family and friends began protesting at my seclusion from them and the amount of time I was giving to gnosis. But I was convinced by the Gnostic teachings that the spiritual path is the most important thing in your lifetime and that everything else must came second, so I did my best to maintain relationships but ploughed ahead at full steam with my ‘gnostic work’.

More and more tasks piled on top of me as Mark saw that I would do things efficiently so he gave me more and more until one day my body decided it would take no more and my whole immune system crashed.  I barely got out of bed for 5 weeks and was diagnosed with post-viral fatigue syndrome. It took me almost two years to recover. I reduced my workload but some of the other members tried to make me feel guilty about that, implying that I wasn’t pulling my weight and their burden was also great. There was almost an air of competition between teachers about whose workload was the greatest, almost as though the bigger the workload the more responsibilities one had and therefore the greater ones progress must be. None of the teachers would dare to admit this of themselves but it was very widespread and any teacher reading this will know exactly what I am talking about.  At some point, my husband, also a member, was driven to exhaustion and suffered the same immune system crash. He couldn’t work and I was still recovering from my illness so we had to go on benefits for a short time. I knew of several other members who were suffering from a form of chronic fatigue syndrome, while others lost extreme amounts of weight, particularly some of the male teachers. One member told me that he knew how hard he had been working by the notches on his belt…

There was a huge emphasis on making ‘sacrifices’ for one’s Gnostic work  - the greater one’s sacrifices the more one was encouraged and praised, often accompanied by a boost to their pride.  I remember there was a student who had a wife not interested in gnosis and three young children. He travelled 3 hours in each direction to attend the courses. He was of course given great praise for this and he moved quickly through the courses to the trainee teachers course. After a while, his marriage began to suffer. He loved his wife and family dearly and was not prepared to let it break down so he decided to do the courses online instead of in the centre. He was sat down and told that he could not be a trainee teacher if that was the case and that he also had a responsibility to the centre. He eventually ended up leaving and many shook their head with a distasteful ‘sorrow’ at his failure to ‘sacrifice’ for the work.

By this point in the story many would probably wonder why someone would stay in an organisation like this, particularly since were very ‘normal’ usually intelligent people - parents, grandparents, businessmen and women, graduates and people from all walks of life. There are really many factors that explain this point and I could write another whole article in itself on the psychology behind it all. But one very important factor comes down to the absolute faith and loyalty that students and teachers have to Mark Pritchard (aka Master Belzebuub) and to a lesser extent but also significant, his wife Edith. A complement from the Master would give a great ‘boost’ and a condemnation from him would be very demoralising. Thus members and teachers would switch between pride and fear constantly, two powerful forces that would keep one locked within a very narrow framework of thinking and acting.

Mark would assure people that it was very easy for them to prove his Mastery. They just needed to call him by his Master’s name i.e. Belzebuub, during an out-of-body / astral experience (one of the techniques taught in the courses) and if Mark, as he looks in the physical, turns up you know he is the Master. Many have managed to do this, including myself, but interestingly, there are an equal number who claim they have proved the opposite, or that nothing happened at all. This is not surprising considering that it is very well known that such experiences are very susceptible to what is in one’s own subconscious. If you set your mind hard enough to the task of invoking Mark (i.e. Belzebuub) you can be sure that that’s who you will see when you wake up in a dream or have an out-of-body experience.

But back to the story, in 2006, after six years in the movement, Mark and his wife Edith were in Wales and spending time working on his house which had damp problems. My husband and I were asked to go there to help and the way we saw it, as faithful and devoted students, was that the more we could help him with this, the more time he would have to write his books and give his teachings. So we sold everything we had in Australia and quit our jobs and moved to the UK. We spent 3 months living with Mark and Edith, where we saw certain behaviours which we considered surprising at times, but I will leave those details for now… We worked 7 days a week and very long days scraping paint of walls, plastering, etc. Mark suddenly developed some kind of mystery stomach injury which meant he couldn’t do the work himself. We worked tirelessly on his house for their benefit after sacrificing everything to get there, yet behind our backs Mark told other members we were like ‘squatters’ living in his home. (He would also make similar negative and derogatory comments to us about other members). Mark would rest three times a day after every meal, apparently due to an illness, but when I was exhausted from the late nights and early mornings and hard work and said one day that I needed to rest for 1 hour after lunch I was told I was being lazy. Still, in my mind, this was all part and parcel of ‘the great work’ - one must bear hardship and criticisms and become a better person for it and who knows when we might be tested or be facing an initiation. Interestingly, it is this argument which is used time and again by members of the organisation to justify actions and circumstances which are wrong, unjust, or immoral – it is all just a test!

Despite the difficult circumstances during those 3 months in Wales and all the years prior, I actually had a good relationship with Mark and Edith, and although there were the obvious ‘hierarchical differences’ I even considered them to be friends. It became apparent though, that amongst the teachers and members would be those who were ‘in favour’ and those who were ‘out of favour’ and it was of course very easy to switch from one side to the other. I was fortunate enough to be ‘in favour’ for many years. It is not surprising considering that I was 100% loyal to both of them and would do anything they needed quickly and efficiently. In fact, in the course of my time in the Movement I took on all manner of roles. It didn’t matter what it was, I would do it – International Treasurer, Legal Manager, Publicity Manager, Web Manager, Course Administrator, Moderator, Centre Instructor, are just some of the roles I took on. I was therefore a very useful ‘asset’ to Mark, Edith and the Movement so they kept me encouraged and motivated and our ‘friendship’ was nothing more than superficial way to keep me working for ‘the greater good’. Mark made no attempt to hide the fact that people would be encouraged in order to serve him and the movement well. He told me on one occasion that the members of the organisation were like tools and that even if a member was not making any spiritual progress, he would keep them as a member so long as they continue to be a useful tool for him. And just like a farmer who tosses away a faulty tool, the same happens to members who fail to prove their utility to him or the movement.

Unfortunately, while I was ‘in favour’ my husband was very much ‘out of favour’ and during our time in Wales he was pushed to the very limit. Mark and Edith hounded him round the clock, gave him misleading instructions then reprimanded him when he got it wrong and on many occasions they intentionally set him up to make a mistake, I saw them do it with my own eyes. But of course, as it is taught, this was the Master guiding and testing his student and providing the ‘psychological gymnasium’ that one must go through in order to progress. My husband was exhausted and demoralised and as the bullying continued he began to give up, eventually resulting in him being sanctioned from a member back to the early courses (all the while we were still living with them). I made the big ‘mistake’ of supporting my husband and sticking up for him to Mark and Edith, saying how tired he was and that’s why he made a mistake. For that, I was sanctioned too. I was to remain a teacher but I had to relinquish my membership until I had proven myself again.

Sanctions were not too uncommon in the movement. It’s what kept members and teachers in check and as useful subjects. Fear of sanctions kept people working hard. The ultimate sanction was of course expulsion, the most severe of all. Cast out sometimes never to return. Once expelled, members, teachers and even students were forbidden to have contact with the former member so as not to be influenced by their ‘bad ways’. Expelled members are viewed either as a failure or as a traitor. Mark would talk of how the conscience of ex-members would hammer them for the rest of their lives, grate on them every day and that their life was a waste now that they could no longer use it to walk the path to awakening. (I will come back to explain more on this point later). It was always the case that a sanctioned member would either sink or swim. They would either be too demoralised to continue and leave the work altogether or they would fight even harder, struggle their way back, doing everything possible to return to their ‘former glory’. For the time being, my husband and I managed to swim…

My husband and I eventually moved from Wales to London and after a settling in period we decided to start running gnostic movement classes there. My husband was still sanctioned so it was only me teaching while he helped with arrangements. I registered the organisation and the interest in the classes started to build. At the same time, I worked hard on publicity for Mark, writing press releases and arranging radio interviews all through the UK. As a result of that work, I had the ‘privilege’ of being reinstated as a member and I resumed various roles of responsibility in the organisation. At that time I was made legal manager.

One of the duties I was assigned was to coordinate a team of internet moderators to scan the web for any negative postings or articles about Mark or the Movement and to write legal emails to site owners and ISPs to get the offending material removed. Mark and Edith’s stance on outside criticism eventually became much more aggressive and included having student’s sign up with alias accounts and post in forums of ‘attacking websites’, even using deception to get to know who the people were that were making criticisms. It is interesting that Mark writes in one of his books: “One common tendency of a fanatical approach is the aim of destroying or disposing of that which one thinks is the external problem to their ideal.” Yet the approach of the Movement had become exactly that. I raised this concern at a later time but was met with a wall…

Mark and Edith moved from Wales and I continued to speak to them on a regular basis, until the stage that I was having almost daily meetings with Mark. This was a strain physically as well on my personal life as I was working full-time, coming home, doing tasks, then starting meetings that could go for hours with barely any chance for personal time. Then, one evening I had a meeting that would change things dramatically.

To begin with I was talking to Edith. We dealt with various admin tasks and then she began talking in a very cryptic way about ‘spiritual matters’. She was hinting at something that I couldn’t quite believe so I asked her to be straight with me with what she wanted to say. She told me that Mark had reached a particular stage on the spiritual path which requires him to take a new alchemy partner (alchemy being a sexual practice between husband and wife), and that the new partner needed to be me! I was told I should see this as a quest and a great privilege to allow the Master to complete his work and awaken. Mark then joined the call and confirmed that what Edith said was correct. He asked whether I had any spiritual experiences or dreams about this and I said no. He said this was strange because both he and Edith had experiences to show that I was the ‘chosen one’ to be his partner.

He continued on to say that he knows it sounds ridiculous since I was married, but that there was a “small door open for this to happen”. As if this wasn’t enough, he then continued on to tell me that ‘my book of marriage’ in the higher dimensions was blank and he mentioned various things about my relationship to my husband, that it was a failure etc.. I did not respond with what Mark told me and we ended the call. I felt that the carpet had been ripped from beneath my feet.

When I walked out of the room and my husband asked if I had seen a ghost as every bit of colour had drained from my face. Mark had sworn me to secrecy so I didn’t say what had happened, only that I had been shocked by something I was told.

The following evening I spoke again to Mark. He told me it was all a mistake, that he hadn’t meant to tell me those things and had not given Edith permission to tell them to me. He brushed of his so-called experiences, saying that they were just dreams anyway. I couldn’t believe this at all and I did not feel that he was being honest with me. I felt that he underestimated the impact this scenario would have on me, and he realised he was in a vulnerable situation so he retracted everything, but I still believed the decision was there for me to make and that he had wanted to put the ball into my court. I therefore felt trapped between two terrible options – in my mind, either I was to end my marriage and become his sex partner (something I had no desire to do!) or I would be doomed to hell for preventing the ‘Master’ from completing his spiritual path. You would have thought that such a ridiculous scenario would have lifted the blinds over my eyes, but not yet…

In the weeks that followed the shocking conversation in which Mark and Edith Pritchard asked me to leave my husband to become Mark’s sex partner, I was in a world of confusion and I began to doubt and question everything. I decided that if this is what the spiritual work was all about it I didn’t want it. So I wrote a long email to all the members of the movement and to Mark and Edith to say I quit. Unfortunately, I never pressed the send button... I had been 8 years in the Movement and had given every ounce of my energy and efforts into it, I had given up jobs, moved across the world and sacrificed many things. I had developed complete loyalty to ‘the Master’, and the ‘teachings’ were completely ingrained into my everyday way of living. The thought of all this being wrong was too much to contemplate. Despite everything inside telling me to walk away, I kept asking myself,

What if I am wrong to doubt? What if he is a Master of the ‘White Lodge’ and I turn my back on him? What will my fate be? Since I was not clear one way or the other what I should do, I stayed…

I didn’t raise the subject of the conversation with Mark and Edith again. I tried to put the issue to the side with the hope that I would eventually gain some deeper understanding of that situation. I carried on teaching classes and carrying out my tasks and responsibilities. My husband had regained his status as a teacher and activities in London became more active. However, my husband knew something was wrong and he was right. I had a terrible conflict within. Not a day passed that I didn’t think back to that conversation and why it happened and what will happen next. I was under a lot of stress and strain and I developed a heart arrhythmia. In the months that followed, for a number of reasons, my husband and I made the decision to separate and 3 weeks later he had left London and was back in Australia. In the space of about 4 months, my life had turn upside down and I didn’t know which direction to turn.

I knew that many people in the Movement would judge us for the separation of our marriage. Marriage is looked at as something fundamental for the ‘spiritual path’ since the practice of alchemy between husband and wife is taught as one of the three essential keys to walking the path. It was therefore encouraged to be with someone who is part of the gnostic movement since the practice of alchemy would be impossible if one partner was not agreeable to it. Unfortunately, this resulted in many divorces and broken marriages and families as those who ‘progressed’ through the courses became more and more distanced from spouses who were not ‘in the work’. But for couples who were both within the Movement, it was always taught that no issue is insurmountable and that if both individuals are working to eliminate their ‘egos’ (negative inner states) there would be no reason for a marriage not to work. And as I had predicted, this was the view I was met with when my husband and I separated. None of the teachers or members showed any kind of support for either of us, it was only our friends and family outside of gnosis that were there for us and helped us through such a difficult time.

Interestingly, there was one person who showed support and encouragement for my decision and that was Mark Pritchard. I asked him if he thought our decision to separate was wrong and he said ‘no’. We still had not spoken again of that fateful conversation and it is quite possible that Mark thought our separation was so that I would be with him. This was certainly not what was on my mind.

With my husband back in Australia, I was now the only teacher in London. I was working full time and trying to run the centre on my own on top of all the other extra administrative roles I had for the organisation. So Mark asked one of the teachers in Greece to move to London to help to run the centre. A couple of months later he arrived and the UK activities carried on.

I should mention at this point, that by now another unfortunate development had occurred. A young single woman who was also a teacher and member of the organisation and who was also heavily involved in roles and responsibilities, was asked by Mark to move from Australia and to go to the US to live with him and Edith. Within a short space of time, she packed her bags and was there. She has been living with Mark and Edith ever since…

Over the following year there was a sharp decline in the moral standards of the organisation and a number of changes occurred which started to unravel the foundations of the Movement. To begin with, Mark Pritchard (aka Belzebuub) renounced his position as International Coordinator of The Gnostic Movement. He made a public statement saying that the reason for this was so he wasn’t tied up with administrative duties and could focus more on giving the teachings, but behind the scenes he had told me the real reason was so he could not be legally tied to any actions of the Movement. Therefore, whatever actions the Movement made that could get it into legal trouble would not affect him. He gave the instruction that in his absence as International Coordinator, the running of the Movement would go to the members and that it must function under a democracy.

In practice, however, the dictatorship passed from Mark Pritchard to Edith Pritchard. Edith handed out directives and orders on all matters affecting The Gnostic Movement and despite Mark’s orders to run as a democracy, the Members followed Edith’s instructions blindly. The directives themselves were also questionable. Members were instructed to eliminate all negative comments about Mark or The Gnostic Movement that appeared anywhere on the web. This included sending legal threats to site owners and instructing students, teachers and members to take alias names and infiltrate the sites. The number of students attending courses in centres and online had dwindled markedly from what it had been in the past and the forums of the websites were lifeless with rote, mechanical answers. There were more and more students leaving the Movement and beginning to post their negative experiences, accusing The Gnostic Movement of being a cult. Meanwhile, members were exhausted, run-down, sickly, driven to the ground with administrative tasks and all I spoke to complained of never having time to practice the spiritual exercises that were supposed to be at the heart of gnosis. It was very clear to me that numbers were dropping because the very people running it were some of the poorest representations of spirituality you could find. Who is going to be inspired by an exhausted, sickly looking person speaking of spirituality when their own experience of anything spiritual was just a distant memory?

By this time, I had begun to form a relationship with the teacher who had been sent to London by Mark to help me run the centre, someone who was always a great support to me during that whole difficult period and who was actually the only one to show any degree of care or friendship. In fact, it was more like a close friendship since according to the Gnostic Teachings, if you begin a sexual relationship within one year of a previous partner it is considered to be adultery. For this reasons, relationships are treated very carefully and seriously in Gnosis. In fact, for any teacher it is forbidden to live in the same house as someone of the opposite sex unless you are married or engaged to be married. However, it seems that Mark had ‘special privileges’ in this respect since he had asked me to be his sex-partner while he was still married, and now has a young woman living with him and his wife.

When Mark and Edith became aware of our developing relationship it was clear they were not happy about it and they did everything they could to intervene. They tried to convince, let’s call him John, that the climate in Greece was better for him because of his asthma and he should go back there. Mark then sent out a document to all centres and members around the world called ‘clarifications about marriage’. In this document, he announced that any member who went from a relationship with one member to a relationship with another member would be doomed to failure with their spiritual work, unless there is an overriding esoteric reason for doing so. It was very clear that this was directed at me, since I was the only person in this situation. It seemed to be saying that if I pursue this relationship I would fail and that I should have chosen him, ‘an esoteric reason’. It would also be a way for him to justify any future relationship he would have with another member.

I had already lost a marriage, which Mark had his hand in, and I was not about to cave into public humiliations or to give up another relationship with one I loved because of another instruction from Mark. After our ‘one year period’ was over, John and I moved in together (John had emailed Mark to let him know this) and a few days later we received an email to say we were banished from the Movement. Within an hour of receiving the email, our access to all gnostic websites and forums was blocked, our email accounts deleted, every photograph or mention of our name on gnostic websites removed, we were deleted from skype accounts and, later on, deleted from every facebook page of any student, teacher or member of The Gnostic Movement and any student or teacher who retained any manner of contact with either of us, including business colleagues and friends (in some cases of more than 20 years), were threatened with expulsion also. And so began a campaign of ostracism, lies, gossip and rumours, some truly bizarre, supported and in some cases instigated by Mark and Edith. It was a very long way indeed from the ‘brotherhood’, love, compassion, and spirituality that attracted me to gnosis all those years ago…

After I was expelled from the Movement and despite everything that happened and after everyone had turned against me, my only thought was how I could return to it. John and I continued to support the London centre financially, and we gave the new teachers everything they needed to take over the running of the centre. The students and teachers in the London and Greece centres were confused and couldn’t understand why we had been asked to leave. They asked for answers, anything to understand the situation, yet I remained faithful to ‘the Master’, not speaking a word of the circumstances that had occurred. Psychologically, the teachings of the organisation still affected the way I thought, the way I felt and the way I perceived situations. I had left The Gnostic Movement but it hadn’t left me…

Both John and I thought that as time passed the situation would settle. We used the time to do many spiritual practices, reflecting on our situation and how we got into it and why. We ate well, slept well and exercised regularly. We became healthy again and started to recover from the exhaustion of all those years of being driven to the ground. My family and colleagues began making comments about how much healthier and vibrant and relaxed I looked. Things were looking more positive.

But behind the scenes, the situation with the Movement was becoming worse. Students would tell us of emails Mark had sent to everyone which referred to our situation, and we heard more and more accounts of gossip spreading around about us, including false accusations that we committed adultery and absurd rumours such as that John thought he was a spiritual Master and was going through an initiation and all manner of ridiculous things. We could not believe what we were hearing. We had been out of the movement more than 8 months, and still this was going on, even reaching people who were outside of the Movement and that was when we decided enough was enough. We could not let the situation affect our reputation in ‘the real world’ – our families, our jobs etc. I sent Mark an email telling him we were aware of those rumours and gossip which teachers and members were also engaging in and asking him to do something to stop it. He replied to say he was not aware of any such rumours…

Next came the matter of the signature fraud conducted by the member of The Gnostic Movement centre in Athens and supported by the board of The Gnostic Movement as well as Mark and Edith Pritchard. This is another long and twisted story, which resulted in the Greek centres being legally forced to close. You can read more about that situation here.

At long last, two years after the situation in which Mark and Edith asked me to become Mark’s partner, the penny finally dropped and I realised that I had been blind for nearly 10 years. This realisation was the biggest shake-up of them all as I realised I had lost a decade of my life to nothing more than a cult. While I felt a huge sense of relief, like a weight more than I could bear falling from my shoulders, it brought its own anguish as I realised how much I lost during those years – a marriage, friendships, jobs, money… you name it, I lost it!

It was not quite over yet though, I had some unfinished business to take care of…

I will return to the part that was brought up in the third part of my story about Mark Pritchard talking of how the conscience of ex-members would hammer them for the rest of their lives if they were to leave his Movement. I pondered this one day when I realised it has been nearly one year that I was out of the Movement and I reflected on whether my conscience was indeed hammering me. I realised that in fact it was. It was hammering me for sitting back and doing nothing while people’s lives were being destroyed. It was hammering me for all the students that I brought into the Movement and taught who were now misled and deceived as I had been, for all the marriages lost, for all the children whose parents in the movement don’t have time for them, for all the members driving themselves to illness and exhaustion, for the young woman who is now living with Mark and Edith.

I decided that people had a right to know the truth of my circumstances. After all, they had been fed only lies and rumours about my expulsion. So I sent an email to every teacher and member and a select group of students who I knew well and I told them the chronology of events over the previous two years, including most notably Mark and Edith’s request for me to leave my marriage to partner-up with Mark.

When Mark became aware of this, he issued an immediate instruction for nobody to reply or have contact with me, he ordered all email addresses to be changed, he closed down the public forums of the websites and he arranged meetings with all teachers and members where he told them all that we are negative and bad, and yet he failed to address the actual facts and circumstances surrounding his actions. No doubt those present in the meeting had too much fear to confront Mark or Edith about these actions. However, I pass no blame to them for that, as I was once as they were and know and understand the way in which they are misled.

A few students contacted me to share their thinking about the situation in an open and honest way. They raised the following points: perhaps it could be part of Mark’s test and that he may have been forced by the ‘white lodge’ to take a new partner for whatever reason. Or perhaps all of this was just a test I was going through along the spiritual path – tested on my faith to see if I would say yes to ‘the Master’ when in fact he had no intention of wanting me as his partner, tested on my obedience to keep quiet about his secret, tested on unfairness by being cast out and having gossip and lies spread about me, tested by being falsely accused (of adultery), tested by having a ‘Master’ go against me etc. It would of course be a happy explanation if that were true, it is always nice to think that you may have underestimated your own spiritual progress, but unfortunately it was not the case, and certainly illegal behaviours such as fraud, cannot be explained or justified by a test or initiation.

These responses made me realise how easy it is to lead people in the wrong direction once you have their faith. Once you are believed to be a Master, which is equivalent to an angel or God, then any action conducted by that ‘Master’ must be correct since who are we to question the actions of a God? Almost any action can be explained through the justification of a test, initiation or simply the fact that the wisdom of a ‘Master’ is far greater than our own and therefore they must know best.

Mark has succeeded in convincing people of his Mastery because, I believe, he himself is convinced. It seems clear to me that Mark and Edith believe in the righteousness of their actions and that what they do is for the ‘good of humanity’. But this type of story is not a new one, it has happened a thousand times over – harmful, dishonest, illegal acts carried out in the name of a spiritual or religious purpose.

Two days ago, someone sent me this extract from the study of sects:

“A matter of honor. The woman is told that a sexual encounter with the leader is an honor, a special gift, a way of achieving further growth… She may be led to believe that her increasing intimacy with the leader is crucial to his ongoing spiritual work, and is certainly necessary for her own path to enlightenment or salvation. In this way, sexual activities with the leader are interpreted and rationalized as spiritually beneficial.”

As I mentioned, this type of behaviour is not something new…

I know that by writing this, I will be accused by those within The Gnostic Movement of being vengeful, spiteful or of wanting to take revenge. But that is not my purpose. I will continue to speak of my experience until I am satisfied that I have done everything in my power to prevent more lives being destroyed as mine almost was.