Love Has Won: The Cautionary Tale of a Modern UFO Cult
In May 1976, while traveling southbound from Oregon to California, a young Orthodox monk decided to make a quick stop at Mount Shasta to sing Paschal chants and likely reflect on his spiritual past. Having once been a Bay Area beatnik and a student of the spiritual guru Alan Watts, he was acutely aware that this mountain had become a popular site for occult and neo-pagan rituals. At the time, the then 41-year-old Seraphim Rose was returning home to a newly established monastic brotherhood in Platina after picking up the third printing of his book, Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future, an exposé of the "new religious consciousness" he saw gradually captivating the nihilistic West. In it, he cautioned his readers not to heedlessly seek out spiritual phenomena – including UFO encounters – solely for the sake of experiencing something, lest they compromise their souls or wind up in a cult. It was a warning he continued to propound throughout his entire life.
"The physical world is morally neutral and may be known relatively well by an objective observer," wrote Fr. Seraphim, "but the invisible spiritual realm comprises beings both good and evil, and the 'objective' observer has no means of distinguishing one from the other unless he accepts the revelation which the invisible God has made of them to man."
Years later, after being ordained a priest, Fr. Seraphim returned to that same spot on Mount Shasta to bless the mountain with holy water. Little did he know then, but in almost 50 years, this mountain would be the last place Amy Carlson, the leader of a New Age cult called Love Has Won, would be seen alive.
Amy Carlson and Love Has Won
The story of Carlson and Love Has Won is one the most bizarre cult accounts I've ever seen. Over the course of roughly 15 years, she went from being a mother of three and an ambitious McDonald's manager to the "Mother of All Creation." But unless you happened to catch her appearance on Dr. Phil in September 2020, it's unlikely that you would have heard of her until this past November with the release of the HBO docuseries, Love Has Won: The Cult of Mother God. Since then, the New Age guru and her devotees have become a source of public curiosity, even garnering attention from Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, and People Magazine.
Like all cult documentaries, it has left its viewers wondering, "How could anyone possibly believe these things?"
Despite the director's best effort to show audiences how a middle-aged woman from McPherson, Kansas, could convince a group of people – let alone herself – that she was a 19 billion-year-old reincarnated God who created the universe and had returned to Earth to guide exactly 144,000 "human angels" out of the 3D world and into the fifth dimension, its primary outcome was inspiring pity on those caught in Carlson's orbit. No matter how many chances her former and current followers (yes, her cult is fractured but still active) were given to explain themselves, clear answers always seemed out of reach. Even the more rational interpretation provided by her family, law enforcement and local journalists, that Carlson's rise and demise might have resulted from surrounding herself with yes-men and bad actors, still doesn't explain everything.
However, it is my opinion that the critical insight into this strange religion lies in their belief in "starships," "galactics," and angels (aka non-human intelligence or NHI). Unfortunately, to the untrained or materialist eye, this is just another absurd component of an already overwhelmingly nonsensical theology. But, given that Love Has Won was started in the San Luis Valley of Colorado, a notorious UFO hot spot and ground zero for horse and cattle mutilations, it cannot be emphasized enough.
Thanks to the recent emergence of artificial intelligence, the UFO disclosure movement and scholarship from academics like Diana Walsh Pasulka, the notion of contact with NHI is no longer considered to be illegitimate. In fact, as Pasulka has shown, it is, and has been, a belief commonly held by many successful scientists, inventors, entrepreneurs and intelligence community members, whether the public was aware of this or not.
Keeping this contemporary understanding of encounters with NHI in mind, let us reexamine Love Has Won with a fresh perspective.
NHIs and Carlson's 'Galactic A-Team'
Breaking down and thoroughly analyzing what Amy Carlson believed about her role in the universe would take a lifetime and could fill several books. Before her death, her followers wrote down her every word and action, while she smoked marijuana and drank enough alcohol to put down a large horse. Since her passing, some of her remaining followers have set up a website devoted to her memory, which is also home to her many vlogs, writings, audio recordings, and even her inebriated group chat messages. 5D Full Disclosure, as one of her remaining factions refers to themselves, has countless free PDFs (some nearly 100 pages long), several books for adults and children, multiple hour-long YouTube seminars, a podcast and a radio show, most of which is unintelligible even if you speak their New Age lingo.
Despite all of the murky details surrounding what the members of Love Has Won actually believe(d), one thing is certain: Carlson believed that her divinity was revealed to her and continuously affirmed by angels or "galactics." And though this critical detail was only quickly mentioned in the docuseries, the impetus for Carlson's public ministry was actually an encounter with a being, who she believed to be the Archangel Michael. According to Carlson, he appeared before her as she was putting her son down for a nap, telling her, "It's time," before quickly vanishing. Only then did she abandon her family and career to spread her message about love, the ethereal realm, and the fate of humanity.
Over the next decade, Carlson would allegedly have the memory of her past lives returned to her by an entire collection of ascended beings, which she dubbed her "Galactic A-Team." This ascension team included the spirits of several infamous beings and celebrities such as Robin Williams, Count St. Germain, Kryon of Magnetic Service, John Lennon (Ashtar Command), Christopher Reeve (Sananda), Kobe Bryant, Michael Jackson, Tupac and Gene Wilder, to name a few. Again, while most of this sounds like nonsense, a well-read ufologist or researcher of channeling and mediumship should recognize the names Ashtar, Sananda and Kryon.
Ashtar has been leading UFO contactees astray since George Van Tassel claimed to channel messages from the being at his UFO center in the Mojave Desert in 1952. Much like Carlson, he started his own UFO religion (one of the first) called the Ministry of Universal Wisdom and claimed to receive transmissions from famous dead individuals such as Nikola Tesla. Since Van Tassel, Ashtar has continued to make its presence known to contactees, spreading an array of warnings and prophecies about everything from nuclear weapons to the environment. Ashtar's presence amongst UFO groups is so common that historians and religious studies scholars often refer to its followers as the "Ashtar Movement."
"The internet gave Ashtar Command new life," according to leading UFO historian Richard Dolan. "It appears that no matter how many failed predictions exist in one's track record, there are always people who will find a way to believe the next one."
Sananda, on the other hand, has been associated with Ashtar Command since the 1990s, when the Ascended Masters teacher Joshua David Stone began educating his students about "Ashtar Galactic Command's" flying saucer fleet during his gatherings at – you guessed it – Mount Shasta.
As for Kryon, this being is reportedly responsible for supplying the New Age author Lee Carroll with enough channeled information to write thirteen books. According to him, Kryon is the spiritual being accountable for "reconstructing Earth's magnetic grid" and is a member of the same angelic family as Archangel Michael. Together, Kryon and Carroll have made concepts such as synchronicities and ascension popular among New Age communities like Love Has Won.
A Warning to UFO Enthusiasts
The unfortunate result of Carlson's encounter with the UFO phenomenon and NHI, as is so often the case with other contactees, was a life upended and, eventually, her death. It is a fate constantly ignored by UFO enthusiasts, who willfully discard any evidence that might contradict their theories about (or hope for) an advanced savior race of beings who are here to deliver us a semblance of purpose. To modern contactees stuck in office cubicles, oscillating between boredom and the dread caused by apocalyptic news headlines about climate change and war, messages from outer space have never been more appealing or believable. It is why people like Fr. Seraphim Rose and ufologist John Keel, who took it upon themselves to research the phenomenon, constantly warned their readers not to involve themselves with it.
"Dabbling with UFOs can be as dangerous as dabbling with black magic," said Keel in his classic investigation of UFOs, Operation Trojan Horse. "The phenomenon preys upon the neurotic, the gullible, and the immature. Paranoid-schizophrenia, demonomania, and even suicide can result – and has resulted in a number of cases. A mild curiosity about UFOs can turn into a destructive obsession."
As for Carlson, her destructive obsession with the phenomenon resulted in a death akin to being buried alive. Due to her bizarre form of asceticism, which included sleep deprivation, starvation, alcohol abuse, and the chronic ingestion of colloidal silver (a popular New Age supplement ruled unsafe by the FDA), her body completely shut down, turning her face blue and leaving her paralyzed. Instead of recognizing that something was wrong or that perhaps they were being duped by their supposed angels, Carlson and her followers embraced the prophecies of the galactics and accepted her martyrdom and subsequent ascension with great anticipation. Shortly before dying, Carlson requested to be taken to the hospital, but her disciples refused.
Following her death, several of Carlson's followers went camping with her corpse, fully anticipating either her Christ-like resurrection or the arrival of Robin Williams's starship to assume her body into the fifth dimension. When neither happened, they returned to their home base in Crestone, Colorado, where they mummified her body in an REI sleeping bag, wrapped it with Christmas lights, applied glitter to her blue face and waited for a sign. It remained in this makeshift sarcophagus until law enforcement officers executed a search warrant on their property and removed her body.
Ultimately, Carlson's demise is a travesty that has sadly become a laughing matter for cult documentary enthusiasts. In reality, it should serve as both a stark warning about what can happen to you if you get mixed up with the UFO phenomenon, as well as a sign of things to come. Carlson and Love Has Won is not the first UFO cult to meet an unpleasant ending, and it would be unwise to assume it will be the last. Who knows how many people would have joined Love Has Won had Carlson been churning out scientific advancements with her New Age teachings?