Cassiopaea Cult

Ouiji Alien Alert
By Vincent Bridges

My name is Vincent Bridges and I am a former member of the Cassiopaea Cult. This is the story of how I got sucked in, was brainwashed and, once I was no longer useful, ended up being the scapegoat for the cult and its leaders. I went from being the only other person who truly understood what the Cassiopaeans had to say to the anti-Christ himself in just six short months.

Why? Well that is the plot of my story…

Soon after I returned from France in the spring in 1999, a friend told me about this strange lady posting channelled material about Rennes-le-Chateau and its mysteries on an egroup discussion list. Seemed that she was onto some of the same threads, alchemists in the Pyrenees and what not, so I began an email exchange with her.

This was Laura Knight-Jadczyk and her channelled material came from a mysterious source: “We transmit “through” the opening that is presented in the locator that you represent as Cassiopaea, due to the strong radio pulses aligned from Cassiopaea, which are due to a pulsar from a neutron star 300 light years behind it, as seen from your locator. This facilitates a clear channel transmission from 6th density to 3rd density.”

These beings apparently communicated with Ms Knight-Jadczyk through the means of a Ouiji board and with the help of another individual, Fred Irland, whose name, curiously enough, can be found nowhere in the published Cassiopaean material. At first, the communications were the ordinary sort of thing expected from ouiji aliens. But as they got better at it, the answers began to take on a life of their own.

And then, the ouiji aliens provided a real miracle. Dr. Ark Jadczyk, theoretical and mathematical physicist, answered one of Laura’s posts on an egroup, and suddenly, they were soul mates. For a while, Laura and Fred kept track of Ark by means of the ouiji aliens, and then Ark made it to the USA, married Laura, and everything changed. Not overnight, but slowly and steadily.

What once was a fairly harmless hobby of two esoteric minded people became, with the addition of Ark, the beginning of a serious doomsday cult.

Now I don’t use this word “cult” lightly. Here’s a definition selected off the Internet, with comments on how it fits the Cassiopaeanists:

See http://www.xenu.net/cic/definit.html

Every cult can be defined as a group having all of the following 5 characteristics:

1. It uses psychological coercion to recruit, indoctrinate and retain its members

> The Cassiopaeanists use the leverage of the impending end of the world, The Wave’s arrival, and the come-on of secret insider information to coerce its recruits and indoctrinate them in the C-world mindset.

2. It forms an elitist totalitarian society

>The Cassiopaeanists are very elitist, only those with the right application of the Cassiopaeans’ secret knowledge will survive The Wave, and totalitarian in that there is one answer to all questions and no dissent is allowed.

3. Its founder leader is self-appointed, dogmatic, messianic, not accountable and has charisma

> The Cassiopaeanists are lead by Laura Knight-Jadcyzk, and her own history of her self appointed, dogmatic, messianic, definitely not accountable and charismatic happenings can be found in her on-going autohagiography, Amazing Grace.

4. It believes ‘the end justifies the means’ in order to solicit funds and recruit people

> The Cassiopaeanists are not beyond conning money out of wealthy investors for anti-gravity research, as well as soliciting money for legal funds when their lies, scams and frauds catch up with them.

5. Its wealth does not benefit its members or society

> This one does not apply at the moment to the Cassiopaeanists, as they have no wealth, but should a wealthy Finnish businessman really give them mega-bux, we can be fairly sure it will benefit no one but themselves.
And here are two more definitions:

http://la.essortment.com/whatisdefiniti_rjli.htm

A charismatic, self-appointed leader with complete authority -
Cult members are taught not to question the teachings, practices, or ideas of the leader. Many cult leaders truly are charismatic people, and are able to influence people to believe them. It is common that a cult member is not told everything up front when joining the group, but that they are taught increasingly controlling ideas and teachings as they go. In the case of some of the more well-publicized cults that have come and gone, it is also common that the leader’s ideas and demands evolve over time, becoming increasingly controlling and restrictive. One very clear identifying element dealing with the leader of a cult is that the leader will always focus the attention and veneration of the members upon himself or herself. At the heart of a cult usually lies a very self-centered and self-seeking person.

A focus on withholding truth from non-members – Many cults teach their followers to be completely open and truthful within the group, while at the same time they are encouraged to be secretive and evasive when questioned by people outside of the group. This is another form of mind control-instilling guilt in the members if they hold anything back within the group. The members are taught that outsiders wouldn’t understand or that they would only make fun of the ideas and practices and requirements for living within the group. Only specially-commissioned members are appointed to recruit members from outside. New members are usually encouraged to keep silent or even lie, especially to their families and close friends.

> This one could have been written with the Cassiopaeanists in mind it is so accurate. The only significant difference is that specially commissioned members in the Cassiopaea cult are those who actually perform the cyber stalking and character assassination by infiltrating egroups and spreading disinformation. Cult recruitment in C-world comes via the Internet and their website

And: http://www.ex-cult.org/General/cult.definition

An organization that uses intensive indoctrination techniques to recruit and maintain members into a totalist ideology.

Intensive indoctrination techniques include:
1) Subjection to stress and fatigue
2) Social disruption, isolation and pressure
3) Self criticism and humiliation
4) Fear, anxiety and paranoia
5) Control of information
6) Escalating commitment
7) Use of auto-hypnosis to induce ‘peak’ experiences

Totalism is defined by psychiatrist Robert Lifton as the tendency to view the world in terms of ‘all or nothing’ alignments.Lifton details 8 ‘psychological themes’ that can be found in totalist groups:
– A ’sacred science’ — an ideology that is held to be true for all people at all times. This ideology generally claims to be inspired and scientific at the same time.
– ‘Milieu control,’ the control of human communication, not only over our communications with others, but also with ourselves.
– ‘Mystical manipulation’ — including deception and ‘planned spontaneity’ which seeks limit self-expression and independent action.
– The demand for purity, the notion that absolute purity exists,
andthat anything done in the name of this purity is ultimately moral.
– ‘The cult of confession’ — “There is the demand that one confess to crimes one has not committed, to sinfulness that artificially induced, in the name of a cure that arbitrarily imposed.” (Lifton, Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism)
– ‘Loading the language’ — redefinition of language, with an emphasis on moral polarization, and thought terminating cliches.
– ‘Doctrine over person’ — the subordination of personal experiences to the doctrines of the sacred science.
– ‘Dispensing of existence’ — the doctrine that the group can decide who has the right to exist, and who does not. In other words, the cult manipulates the environment to ’set up’ the recruit to trap him or herself in a black and white mindset.

> This one fits the best of all. Totalism, as a mental perspective, appears to be at the root of all fundamentalisms. The Cassiopaeanists can be considered a form of scientific/materialist fundamentalism with spiritualist leanings. All “Knowledge” of value comes through the Cassiopaeans, as interpreted by Laura Knight-Jadcyzk with no dissent and no alternative interpretations allowed. Totalism, pure and simple…

***
And what about that doomsday business? The ouiji aliens have announced something called the Wave at the arrival of which catastrophic things will happen to our planet. Publicly it has not been announced what the ouiji aliens have in mind for their followers to do to make that transition, but how far off base is it, really, to expect orders for clean Nikes and Kool-Aid? What exactly is the difference between this ouiji alien cult and say Heaven’s Gate or the Solar Temple for example?

So what is the difference?

The Cassiopaeanists are still alive, purely and solely because the wave of the cult’s development has yet to crest. When it does, with the inevitable announcement that The Wave is at hand, then we might reasonably expect them to go the same way and help speed up the process of transition to 4th density by mass suicide.

As we wind our way through the tangled web of scams, deceit, deceptions and real flashes of spirituality that comprise this sordid saga, keep in mind the definitions of a cult listed above. Pay close attention to the idea of Totalism, and the eight psychological themes associated with this all or nothing, us versus them, posture as the story unfolds. Cults don’t just happen. People who need to control the very soul and existence of other people create cults. This kind of person is known to psychology as a charismatic psychopath, and, as we will see, they do not change their ways and they can be very, very dangerous to everyone who becomes involved with them or their cult.

#3 – Its founder leader is self-appointed, dogmatic, messianic, not accountable and has charisma
http://www.xenu.net/cic/definit.html

On Sunday, February 13th, 2000, the St. Petersburg Times published a pull out, magazine size section of an article, The Exorcist in Love written by Pulitzer Prize winner Thomas French, devoted to the story of Laura Knight’s struggle to understand the universe, communicate with alien life forms, find a new husband and save the world. It was the longest single feature ever published by the St. Pete Times. It was also extremely positive and complimentary to Ms. Knight, in ways that are almost never found in mainstream media articles on esoteric subjects such as ouiji board channelling. And in this single article can be found the genesis of the future Cassiopaea Cult.

I had been in touch with Laura, via email, for just over nine months when the article appeared. For weeks prior to its publication, Laura had barraged me with emails and articles attacking the proposed St. Pete Times article and endlessly moaning about how bad it was going to be. Having been sideswiped by journalists with hidden agendas a few times myself, I knew how she felt.

But when the story came out, I was shocked to see that it was overwhelmingly positive. So much so that I emailed Laura and told her she was very lucky that all her fears had been groundless. She however was sure it was all bad, so bad she wanted to go out and raid the corner news boxes and destroy as many copies a she could.

That was my first warning that Laura didn’t exactly live in the same reality most of us inhabit. I had several other warnings at that same time, and so I broke off contact for over five months. In the intervening months, Laura had developed her own nascent cult of personality, although it would be another year before I realized it. And by then, I would be an integral part of it all.

So, let us start with that seminal article, and see what it really tells us about Laura, her life and her origins.
Laura Knight was born on February 12, 1952 in Tampa, Florida. Her father left the family before she was born and her mother, Alice Knight, would marry and divorce four times during Laura’s childhood. Alice would attest many times over the years to Laura’s precociousness, telling Tom French she could read and write at age 3. Often, in the same sentence, Alice could be found telling the world how hard it was for Laura to fit in. This, along with the frequent moves and changes of father, seems to have left its mark on Laura’s developing psyche.

Tom French’s article leaves those early years in shadow, except for a few intriguing points that we will get to later, and focuses instead on Laura’s tall tale of riding out hurricane Alma in a tree at age 14. (Hurricane Alma was a category 2 and 3 hurricane with sustained winds, when it was off shore from west central Florida, of over 110 mph. It is unlikely that anyone could have survived in a tree in conditions anywhere close to those of Hurricane Alma.) From there, the article jumps ahead to 1989, when Laura was 37. The intervening 23 years receive very scant mention. We are told for instance that Laura met her first husband Lewis Martin at Hillsborough Community College, but not what year this took place. We are also told that she had four children in 1989, the fifth was on the way, but not how long she had been married.

But 1989 is important, because it was the first time she used the ouiji board, and according to her, the results were phenomenal. She was given instructions on selling her grandparents’ property and told that she was moving to Montana. Having lived all her life in Florida, moving to the state of Montana was simply out of the question. But the town of New Port Richey, as Laura well knew from living most of her life in the region, had streets named for states. On the corner of Montana and Harrison, Laura found a tumbled down old house for sale cheap, little more than the value of the lot, and persuaded Lewis to buy it.

Laura had her first genuine miracle.

Next, the St. Pete Times article focuses on Laura’s hypnotherapy session with a supposed abduction survivor on April 15, 1993. From that, the article moves through Laura’s dreams of a husband killed by Nazis in WWII, her home schooling of her children and finally touches, ever so briefly, on what passed for Laura’s credentials as a hypnotherapist: “…she had read extensively on the subject and had taken classes.” No mention of where those classes were or what they consisted of, yet Laura in the same paragraph is described as performing “spirit detachments” using hypnosis.

But, however vague the abduction information received by hypnosis that April evening, the event was cast in stone as a genuine mystery by the reports of strange boomerang shaped craft hovering over Pasco County. The sightings began the night of the hypnosis session. The UFO was first seen only a few blocks from Laura’s house at just about the time the hypnosis session was going on. For Laura this was confirmation of a kind that led, a few months later, to a personal UFO sighting of her own.

This of course was her second genuine miracle. Only one more would be needed to make the magic three that would somehow awaken Laura’s latent talents. The UFO sighting is curious however. Laura’s description as reported in the St. Pete Times article matches that of the April sightings, but although she reports that it was flying very low over the neighborhood, no one other than her and her children seem to have spotted it. There are no reports of any other sightings of boomerang shaped craft on August 16th, 1993 anywhere in the area. It would appear to have been a private event.

A year and a half after this sighting, Tom French entered the story. By this time, Laura was speaking at local Mufon meetings. Here’s what he had to say about their first meeting:

“To say that Laura made an impression that day is an understatement. When it was her turn to speak, she instantly seized control of the room. She had so much presence, she was almost radioactive. And hers was no ordinary presence. She was not about to be mistaken for a movie star; she was overweight and slightly mussed, and her clothes were almost defiantly unfashionable. She wore leggings that, as I recall, were a little too tight and a tunic adorned with amber beads and painted gold spirals. I took one look at her and said to myself, “I bet she has a bust of Elvis in her living room.”

“Somehow, though, Laura used all these qualities to her advantage. She was too much, and knew it, and did not care; if anything, she reveled in her over-the-topness, which gave her tremendous freedom and power. Her eyes flashed; her hair flowed freely; her slightly crooked smile ignited the atmosphere around her.

“In a short talk, apparently delivered without any notes, Laura gave an overview of her life, telling a little about her childhood, her work as an exorcist, her hypnosis session with the woman with the missing time, the night she and the kids saw the two ships above their swimming pool. She also spoke about some recent experiences with a spirit board, which as I understood it was similar to a Ouija board but more elaborate. Using this spirit board, she said, she and Freddie and some other friends had begun communicating with what she called “sixth-density beings” from the stars that make up the Cassiopeia constellation. Laura’s story was easily the wildest I heard that day.”
(…)

“She was giving a performance, and I was not the only one in the audience who enjoyed it. Cherie Diez, a Times photographer with whom I’d worked for many years, had come with me to the MUFON meeting. The two of us were searching for someone unusual to follow for the newspaper. After seeing and listening to Laura that day, Cherie and I believed that we had found a subject who exceeded our every expectation.”

And so began Tom French’s five year odyssey through the developing mythos of the Cassiopaeanists. In the end, he would become a key component of that mythos, the award-winning journalist who wrote the article that started it all. Laura, when confronted with questions concerning her credibility, still trots out this St. Pete Times article as proof that she is what she says she is.

Indeed, reading Tom French’s excellent work it is hard not to be impressed, as he obviously was, with Laura’s sheer overpowering dynamism. He found her “a glorious amalgamation, a mixture of Bette Midler, Father Damien, Donna Reed, and Agent Scully.” And through his words, the reader sees her that way as well.

But, even though he found her charming and fascinating – that old charisma – Tom was still a journalist and took a somewhat sceptical view. He decided however that whatever she was, she wasn’t a hoax.

“From the start, we recognized the possibility that Laura could have lied to us about the exorcisms and many other things as well. She could have made up her memories of the reptilian face at the window, the dreams, the breaking glass. If she had wanted to do so – and it would have required the cooperation of not only her children, but many other people as well – she could have been staging an almost impossibly elaborate hoax on us for several years.

“Neither Cherie nor I saw anything to indicate such a hoax. After spending several years in her company, we never found any evidence to suggest that Laura was some con artist, faking her studies of the paranormal to gain money or attract publicity. Everything about her suggested someone who was trying her best to give a full and accurate account of her life.

“When I asked difficult questions, she did not hedge. On her own, she shared with me sensitive moments from her past, moments where she had made a mistake or done something she regretted, such as a suicide attempt in her early 20s when she was distraught over the breakup of a relationship and the death of her grandfather. It was not easy for her to talk about these things, but she did.”

And yet, being a journalist and not a psychologist, Tom French didn’t quite understand that the lack of a deliberate hoax didn’t mean honesty either. Laura believed in her mission without any hint of personal gain, but she did so out of a deep psychological need. An internal drive so deep and so powerful that she did truly experience it as Truth. Also, he missed other important clues, or deliberately chose to ignore them. Here’s one that he admits missing:

“I had missed it.

“In all the time I was spending with Laura, and all the time I was thinking about her and trying to put together the pieces of her, I had overlooked one simple detail that had been available from the very beginning. A detail that should have told me so much about what was happening inside her.
“The puppy books.

“With everything else that was already on Laura’s shelves, with all those science books and history books and volumes on the paranormal just waiting to be read, why on earth was she wasting a single second reading romance novels? Why were those books so important to her? What was she finding there that she could not get anywhere else?

“It was right in front of me. And I could not see it.”

If a trained observer such as Tom French could miss such an important detail, then we might ask what else did he take on face value? How much else did he miss? Or simply choose not to mention?

As Tom French became more involved with Laura, he sat in on a few Cassiopaean channelling sessions at the ouiji board. The Cassiopaeans even had a few things to say to Tom directly.

“On a couple of occasions, the Cs addressed themselves to Cherie or me directly. One night, just as I was putting away my notebook and getting ready to make an exit, they told me to sit myself back down. They were polite about it, but firm.

” “PLEASE DO NOT LEAVE JUST YET, MR. FRENCH,” said the stream of letters coming from the board. Laura paused. “Why?” she said. “WE MAY HAVE SOME THINGS TO SAY TO HIM.”

“I sat back down. When a sixth-density being tells you to do something, you tend to listen. Still, I could not help but laugh. What followed was encouraging, but not especially dramatic. The Cs told me that I had been through some hard times, but that I had finally opened “a doorway to my subconscious” and learned how to examine “the metamorphosis of my being.” Good things, they hinted, were just down the road. “THERE ARE MANY CHANGES YET TO COME.”

“This did not seem particularly prescient on the part of the Cs.”

But the Cs did reveal one curious and checkable fact. Laura’s son Jason, who was 12 at the time, had been having what Laura believed was a “bleed through” from another life since early childhood. The Cs supplied two ambiguous names and the search was on. Laura found an Air Force captain with a first and middle name that matched the Cs’ hint and who died in Viet Nam in April 1969. The captain had relatives close by and a meeting was arranged.

Jason had some details correct from his childhood experiences, but the details added by hypnosis and the Cs proved to be completely inaccurate. Naturally, the relatives, two sisters, wanted nothing to do with such strangeness. “I just don’t believe a word of it,” the sister told Tom French.

It was time for that third miracle, if the Cs, and Laura’s self image, were to survive.

In April, 1996, Laura decided it was time for a change and announced that she was divorcing her husband, Lewis Martin. The reason: “Laura said that Lewis did not support her channeling and other paranormal pursuits. She said he seemed to have changed in ways that startled her, to have become more cold and distant. She wondered, aloud, if the Lizzies had somehow replaced him or transformed him into one of the zombie-like creatures, as part of the campaign to keep track of her movements.”

Tom of course took this as a metaphor, but to Laura it was a reality. Lewis later commented to Tom: “He (Lewis) acknowledged that he had worried that some of the entities Laura was channeling might not be benevolent. He was not surprised to learn that Laura had wondered if the Lizzies were manipulating him; he had already heard as much. He didn’t appreciate that she had suggested such a possibility. It hurt his feelings, he said.”

And then Tom continues with some interesting observations: “I was not particularly surprised by Laura’s suspicions that Lewis had been changed into some kind of zombie. Those were the terms under which she had come to see the world; that was her prism. In the past, I had heard born-again Christians who were having marital problems talk about how Satan had entered their spouses and was manipulating them. Was this so different? I took this to be simply Laura’s way of saying that Lewis had become a stranger to her and that she no longer trusted him.”

Indeed, the fundamentalist Christian comparison is very apt. That is also a totalist, black/white, mind set. Laura was acting on the belief that she is correct and those who do not share her views are somehow manipulated by the forces of darkness. This theme would become paramount in the Cassiopaean mythos as the cult developed.

It is also an indication of a much deeper pathology. To give Tom French his due, from very early on in their relationship he realized the depth of the psychological problems, and then decided that they were irrelevant. His interest was not whether Laura was in fact a case of pathology, but how she lived and coped with that mind-set and the world she had created for herself. And, as long as her fantasies remained personal and private, that would have been enough.

Here’s Tom’s point of view on the subject:

“As she once wondered about other people who believe they have been abducted, I thought it conceivable that Laura had suffered some sort of traumatic abuse as a girl and was inventing these alien episodes to cover up her memories of the abuse. Some details from her early history might fit with this theory. A succession of men did move through Laura’s childhood. After Laura’s parents divorced, her mother had remarried four times; once, Laura says, one of her stepfathers kidnapped her for several days.

“I asked Laura if she had ever been abused by that stepfather or anyone else. She said no, absolutely not. When I asked for details of the kidnapping, she said she did not know. She had almost no memory of it, she said; it was all a blank.

“Other possibilities occurred to me. I wondered if maybe Laura had imagined the face at the window and all the other strange episodes as a way of injecting drama into her life. Was it possible that she was bored, or lonely, or simply so desperate to find something to occupy her mind that she had created this huge fantasy? What if all of it – the exorcisms, the spirit detachments, the channeling with the Cs – was just some massive, unruly play that her subconscious was constantly staging to keep things interesting?
“Then, of course, there was the simplest explanation. What if Laura was a victim of some psychosis?
“This was a possibility Laura repeatedly raised herself. “Sometimes I think I’m losing my mind,” she said to me. “Is this what being mad is like? Because, you know, some really crazy people can really seem sane.”

“Every time she brought up this possibility, Laura dismissed it. She said that she had occasionally been to counselors and psychologists, as many of us have. But to her knowledge, she told me, she has never been diagnosed with any mental illness.

“Early on, I considered asking Laura to be evaluated by a psychiatrist, at the newspaper’s expense. What if a doctor could put a name on whatever was happening with her? What if he or she told us that Laura was manic-depressive, delusional, even schizophrenic?

“Ultimately, though, I never asked Laura to put herself under the microscope. It didn’t feel right. The more time I spent with her, the less I wanted to try to force her into another box. Whatever was happening with her, there was something remarkable about the way it was playing itself out. She was raising her children, enjoying her friendships with Freddie and others, reading and learning all the time, exploring the reaches of her imagination.

“The woman was leading a life. It wasn’t a perfect life, not even close. But it was hers, and it was extraordinary, and I was not about to interfere.”

As Laura went through the months of depression around her decision to divorce Lewis, she apparently sought professional help. “At one point, she went to see a psychiatrist. Afterward, she told me what had happened. She had given the psychiatrist her life history, told him about the face at window and the other disturbing childhood episodes. She said that he had suggested she consider the possibility that she was traumatized as a child. She did not agree; she said her recollections of the incidents were too vivid and real for her to have imagined them. Laura pressed the doctor for help. What should she do? How was she supposed to handle these memories that haunted her? He said she should try to stop thinking about them, learn to cordon off those areas of her mind. Laura didn’t think it was possible.

How could she cordon off something so important?

“Laura went to see the psychiatrist only a few times. She said he’d told her she was healthy and did not need to come back.”

It boggles the imagination that any competent mental health professional, given that Laura reported anywhere near the truth of her situation and inner mental state, would have declared her healthy and turned her loose. It is much more likely that the psychiatrist told her that her problem was complex and costly to treat and that determined Laura’s own opinion of her mental health. Depression would have been the least of the myriad of diagnoses.

Before we move on to the arrival of Ark, the third miracle, it might be helpful to stop and look back at what the St. Pete Times article, Laura’s main credibility crutch, has actually told us about Laura so far.

First – Her childhood was anything but normal, with Lizard-man faces peering in windows, a stepfather kidnapping and four-day disappearance and a sense of unique-ness that comes from feeling different. We may see the hurricane incident at 14 as a suicide attempt, if true, and a compensatory fantasy if not. Either way, the picture emerges of a child with many deep-rooted emotional problems.

Second – Between the ages of 14 and 37, we are told nothing of Laura’s history except that she was suicidal again in her 20s and that she met Lewis at the local community college. The implication is that she met Lewis, fell in love and started a family. The “truth,” as Laura herself has revealed in her voluminous and on-going autobiography Amazing Grace, is quite different.

Third – Between 1989 and 1993, Laura had several experiences that convinced her that she was even more special, culminating in the second of the three “miracles” in her life, her UFO sighting.

Four – From these events came the core of the Cassiopaean experience. Laura had made the ouiji board work for her in the Montana affair, so naturally she would prefer that as a way to “channel.” And of course, the whole issue of UFOs and so on would be at the center of the developing belief system. Hence, her coming out party, so to speak, at the local Mufon meeting where Tom French met her can be seen as a very significant event.

In his article, Tom French does address the trauma in Laura’s childhood and the possible pathology arising from it. However much we might wish that he had insisted on that psychological examination, given the events of the past few months, it was his choice and ultimately he was right. The St. Pete Times article was not meant as an expose on the pathology of talking to aliens on a ouiji board.

However, it is less understandable why he ignored an entire 23-year period of her life. We can be sure that if there had been anything in those years that was of value to Tom French’s main thesis – how well Laura coped with her belief system and fantasy world – he would have mentioned it. Since these years are lightly glossed over even though Tom informs us that he questioned her about them, we can only suppose that the details are such that, if they had been brought to light, the focus of the article would have inevitably become the pathology of someone who believes they talk to aliens via a ouiji board.

Indeed, from her autobiography, which spares no one any of the details that Laura can make seem significant, we can see that there are many truly pathological episodes indicative of a very unusual personality, to say the least, in those missing years. Even with Laura’s attempts to spin-doctor and put the best light on everything by constantly blaming everyone else for her mistakes, there were apparently things so bizarre and pathological that even “Amazing Grace” couldn’t explain them away.

On one such incident Laura herself has recently seen fit to supply the long suppressed details. In an article curiously titled “What is Laura Hiding? The Cassiopaeans Answer,” found at cassiopaea.org/cass/tallahassee.htm, Laura reveals what may be the pivotal moment in her development.

Since the reader will quickly note that in addition to her usual slanderous comments about me, Laura has now decided that I somehow am blackmailing her, because her guilty conscience determined that my “sordid saga” comment could only mean that I had discovered her deepest (?) darkest secret and was going to use it against her. Never mind that the sordid saga referred to was the complete unedited transcripts, or that the story of my own involvement with her is sordid enough a saga in and of itself, in Laura’s mind, it could only be the “secret.”

Yes, I had indeed heard a rumour through a source that wishes to remain anonymous that Laura had such an incident in her past. When I located Mr. Irland and asked him about it, he confirmed only that Laura had told him a version of the story. He added that he didn’t really believe it because of her long record of inflating the facts and confusing them with her own fantasies.

And there the matter rested until one of Laura’s intelligence sources informed her that I was asking questions on the subject. She immediately produced the article, complete with comments from the now omniscient Cassiopaeans, and her version of the story, supposedly the very one she emailed to Ark early in their email romance. However, as there have now been at least three versions that original email – each version adds just a touch here or there – one must wonder just how honest she is really being. A story that changes, three times over the course of two days, in response to reader comments and a need to appear even more sympathetic, simply can not be considered credible.

Here’s the latest version, as of 3 pm EST, Sunday, January 13, 2002:

“As I noted, my mother was a bookkeeper who had contracted with several local businesses to do their books. One of these businesses was owned by a man who was also something of a local politician. He ran for a State office and was elected so spent much of his time in Tallahassee, the State Capitol. Mother ran his business for him.

“He was sort of like a local “big wig” who had a home in the county, and an apartment in Tallahassee. When he was in residence here, he would come to the house and discuss the business with mother and drop off and pick up the accounting and checks and deposits and so forth.

“During this time, I was spending many hours a day practicing the piano. I would practice in one room while they would spread out papers on the table in the other room.

“One day mother announced that this man had expressed an interest in me and wanted to send me to school in Tallahassee where he could oversee my care. She thought this was wonderful and a great opportunity!”

< This is very curious, but most bizarre is the third paragraph. This is an image taken directly from Doctor Zhivago, a movie that was popular a few years earlier whose main character was another "Laura.">

“It was agreed that this plan would be put into action, but I had to finish school first. So, I attended locally from September 1969 to December 1969. At that point, the plan was that I would go to Tallahassee and finish high school there in an accelerated class, and then be enrolled at the University. So, in January I went.

“An apartment had been reserved for me in the same building this man lived in when he was there doing his legislative duties, whatever they were. Everything had been arranged. So, I went to school, met new people, and things were fine for a few months – through April. The apartment building had a nice pool, and I enjoyed studying by the pool… or, for me, at least reading. A friend of mine came to stay with me because I was lonely and her mother knew this man also and thought this would be fine for her as well.”

< This is the spring of 1970, and two high school girls are living alone in an apartment hundreds of miles from home under the care of an older man and no one notices anything unusual? I just don’t believe it as presented. There must be more to the story than that. >

“One night he came to our apartment and asked me to come down so he could talk to me privately since he had something very special to tell me and it was a surprise.

“So, in an hour, when I was done with my homework, I walked down the outside walkway and knocked on the door. He answered wearing a robe and smoking a cigar and with a glass of liquor in his hand.

“To make a long story short, it became clear that the man expected “payment” for his help. I was so dumb that I actually thought that he was just being a nice guy with a “fatherly” interest in me. But that wasn’t the case.”

< This scenario is at least possible. But - and here we must try to remember back 30 years - well brought up young ladies, who have just finished their homework upstairs, didn’t enter a gentlemen’s apartment if he was drinking and only partially clothed. However, such things do happen…>

“When I said “no,” he got rough. When he got rough, I fought back. When I fought back, he became enraged and started choking me. Since we happened to be standing in the kitchen, and I was being pressed back against the counter and was starting to lose consciousness, I threw my hands back to grab the counter to keep from falling. When I did, my hand landed on a heavy object with a handle. I grabbed it and hit him with it. He loosened his hold momentarily, but then started squeezing again and I hit him again, only harder this time since I had been able to get a breath. I hit him again in the head, and it was sort of a nightmare where he was totally enraged and I was totally determined to hit him until he let go of me.”

“At this point, he was bleeding on me, still refusing to let go, so I hit him again. I think I must have landed about 4 or five good ones before he let go to try to protect his head from another, and when he did I ran like hell. I was sure that he was after me, and I made it to my apartment, banged wildly on the door for my friend to let me in. She did and was utterly horrified. We were both just hysterical.”

< That makes seven or eight good solid shots, hard enough to lacerate the scalp, with a heavy object. He let go because he was probably unconscious. Note however what happened next: >

“She was hysterical at the blood all over me and we didn’t know what to do… so she made me take off my clothes and go take a shower… then, while I was in the shower, still shaking with the thought that the man could force his way into the apartment, she told me that police cars and an ambulance were in the parking lot outside. Apparently the man had gone out to the balcony and yelled “rape” or some such nonsense, and someone heard him and called the police. I was dressed and shaking violently when the knock came at the door. He had made a statement to the emergency crew that I had attacked him for no reason after coming on to him sexually!!”

< Now, Laura has left the guy for dead, run to her apartment, taken a shower and changed clothes, all before the cops track her down. And of course, her roommate made her do it… Never once, although she has been attacked, almost raped perhaps, and has almost killed her attacker, does she make that 911 call. The police have to come to her door to question her. Note also that in her original version of this paragraph, the man "crawled to the balcony and called ‘help,’ " not rape, and the last sentence is missing. This changes the tone of the paragraph. >

“I told them what really happened, and they were satisfied but told me not to go anywhere for a while until they investigated further.”

“And, seemingly the incident was closed. But, three days later, I was called out of my English class to find a message that the police department wished to ask me a few more questions. So, after school, I took the bus to the police headquarters. When I walked in, expecting to answer questions, handcuffs were immediately place on me and I was arrested for “Assault with a Deadly Weapon With Intent to Commit Murder.” The guy had created a fantastic story in which he was the “innocent” victim of a crazed teenager.”

“And I was taken and locked in a cell.

“There is no way to describe such a transition. None. If a person is of a nature that they deliberately break laws, there is some idea in their mind that this could be a result. But, for a person who has, essentially, done nothing wrong but be stupid and naive, someone who has been betrayed by someone she trusted, who has been viciously attacked, and then, instead of anyone realizing that I was the VICTIM, I was put in jail on the word of a psychopath and charged with trying to murder him! All women who have suffered this way understand that such an event is in a class by itself especially when the realization comes that grandfather cannot fix it, mother cannot fix it, no one can fix it. And, when the realization came that this was a “capital crime” and just having someone come and pay money to get one out of jail was not possible, well… just imagine it.”

“A week later I was taken, in handcuffs, to court and stood before a judge who read the formal charges. I was just 18 years old, and I had to walk down a public street, between two policmen, in chains.

“The judge asked me if I had legal counsel. I started to cry and said no. But, a man sitting in the row of attorneys jumped to his feet and came forward and said: “Yes she does, your honor! I am offering my services!” He then asked me if I would accept him as my attorney and I said yes. So that was settled. I had an attorney. His name was Brian T. Hayes. He was assisted by a cracker jack Private Investigator, Joseph Aloi, and both of them were literally Knights in Shining Armor.”

< Mr. Haynes was hired by Laura’s maternal grandfather, according to my original sources, and was well paid for his services. >

“What they discovered about my “benefactor” was shocking. It seems that I had been the prey of a very sharp operator who had been trying to gradually draw me into a very ugly operation. [Sounds a lot like the situation with Vincent Bridges, eh?] And only my instinctive refusal to be used had saved me. Indeed, my resistance had plunged me into a somewhat serious problem, as it has repeatedly in my life. The Powers of Darkness don’t like it when you resist their attempts to control you or draw you into their plans. It is the same now as it was then.”

< She reveals just a glimpse of her pathology here, as she confuses me with the Komerovsky figure in her past. >

“You see, as a minor government official, my “benefactor” had a little side-line: he made home movies used for blackmail. Apparently, he had plans for me. He wanted to use me as the “star” in movies that would be filmed by a secret camera set up in an A/C vent. These movies would then be used to extort money, favors, and probably even for a special brand of “lobbying.”

“All of the evidence of this little “business” was discovered while the guy was in the hospital, desperately trying to lie his way out of the mess he was in. He even tried to change his claims that I had assaulted him for no reason, he was so desperate to avoid scrutiny. But it was no go. Once the State decides to prosecute, it doesn’t matter if someone who formerly claimed to be a victim has now changed his mind. The State is a juggernaut, and the trial DID take place.

“Well, the bloodbath in the courtroom was actually worse than the one at the time of the incident. The guy, like all true psychopaths, lied himself black in the face, even when confronted with hard evidence of his intentions, his actions, his perfidy – in his own writing – and the end result was a resounding return of the verdict of “Not Guilty By Reason of Self Defense.” And the only reason he wasn’t proscuted for his own crimes was that he was so pitiful and swore he had learned his lesson, and also because he still had a few people in government offices who would go to bat for him (probably because he was blackmailing them.)”

< A verdict of not guilty by reason of self-defence means that the charge is true, she did try to kill her attacker, but that the person was justified in that action. In other words, she got away with it. Her attacker was not prosecuted because she did not, ever it seems, file any charges against him. This, in and of itself, is very curious.

And so, we are left with a story of a very disturbed young woman in very serious trouble. This pivotal incident in Laura’s life was apparently researched by Tom French and then glossed over in the article: “moments where she had made a mistake or done something she regretted.” But, as Mr. French must surely have realized, this one event so coloured Laura’s reality that much of what happened in the following years is directly attributable to the beliefs she formed from it.

Most obvious perhaps is the fact that this disrupted her senior year of high school and she in all likelihood didn’t graduate. From this slight would come a burning desire to continually prove herself smarter, better read, than anyone else around her. Eventually, this knee-jerk reaction would lead her to attempt to re-write history, geology, physics and so on to match the received knowledge, so much better than an education anyway, of the Cassiopaeans.

Less obvious, but even more powerful, is the sense of entitlement and invulnerability this close call gave her. She got away with it, she was not held accountable. The jury decided she was justified in her actions, which is an even stronger reinforcement of a sense of entitlement. So not only did she get away with it, but in her mind, it felt as if it were a gift of complete invulnerability, a get out of jail free card that was meant to last her the entire length of the game, perhaps even for life.

And, at the deepest level of all, it convinced her that there was something very confusing and wrong about herself. Even now, more than thirty years later, the guilty pleasures and confusions of the episode rise to the surface in her ever-changing description of the incident. Her title says it all “What is Laura Hiding?”

Well, it isn’t just that she prefers not to discuss this event. No, Laura is hiding the deep dark secret of herself, the wounded and abused child who has finally created a fantasy big enough and all encompassing enough to subsume all the lesser dramas of a life rich with such emotional feasts. The Cassiopaeans, and the cult arising from the material, are in a way an artistic expression of Laura’s deeply repressed fantasies of power, revenge on the abuser, and the titillation of psychic exhibitionism laced with the adoration of the faithful.

It is this heady psychological brew that is threatened by any objective appraisal, even one as positive as Tom French’s, of Laura’s life or work. No wonder she wanted to go out and raid news boxes. Any depiction of her life, but her own, is absolutely forbidden.

The Truth about Cassiopaea: Update 11/15/02

In the six months or so since the “Don’t Feed the Demon” policy took hold, I have refrained from making any further comments. That policy still seems wise, but several things have come up that seem to require another round.

One of these is the fact that lots of folks are passing through the website, and looking at this page, that haven’t a clue what it’s all about. For these, an overview is necessary. They want to know what the dispute is about, really. Why are these two people calling each other such nasty names? Is there any point to it at all?

Interestingly enough, the answer to that question is the second reason why further comment seems required. Since we closed down all the discussion groups, I have had a steady stream of emails from people wanting to tell me about their experiences with Laura Knight Jadczyk and the Cassiopaean Cult. Most of these are just congratulatory for presenting the other side of the story. A few want to know more about the whole thing, and a few need some help understanding why they had the reaction to the Cassiopaeans that they did. I have yet to receive a single email from someone whose experience with the Cassiopaeans was positive. The most common emotional reaction on even the outer fringes of the cult is one of fear, bordering on acute paranoia. What it must be like on the inside is simply beyond imagining…

Which brings me to the third reason why further comments seem necessary. This atmosphere of fear and extreme paranoia, which the Cassiopaeans seem to generate, has attracted some unusual followers. One of them began to email me over the evening of October 10th, and I posted his emails on the sacredmysteries.com forum that morning under the heading “Death Threats from the Cassiopaeans.” Here’s a sample:

“Greetings from David Padalino leader of the human resistance and lead vocalist of the band going by the same name.

“Hey vinnie your constant harassment of people, threats, lies, theft, and UNJUST actions will be tolerated no longer. I hear you are a magician of some power and you claim to be some kind of expert in many fields. You go by the name of doctor strange and hide behind lawyers as you have no courage, valor or honour. You are a joke, i have been kinda busy to be honest, but i have kept up to date as much as possible with your actions. Well they say you reap what you sow, and you my friend have been a very naughty little vincent. You think you have power, you think you can scare people, you think you can bully people…”

(…)

“Looks like ive found you bitch boy hey fancy a chat? Listen faggot my telephone number is England (44) 0113 2567312, Give me a call vinny and we can discuss the possibilty of you stayin alive to see christmass. Laters you pathetic whimpering, lying, slandering, shit disturbing, cowardly, ugly, unintelligent, skinny, sad, lonley, boring, walter mitty livin magician wanna be. You wanna push some one around? Try me, u think you are fucking tough? I will give you a thousand deaths worse than you can possibly imagine, the clock is ticking bitch, as ICE T said “My lethal weapons my mind” ”

I did give him a call, and verified that it was indeed a real person named David Padalino. And then of course, I reported him to various authorities… After a few more salvoes, he grew tired of the game and went away.

And that seemed to be that. Until a few days ago when someone inside the cult emailed me about the new “Death Threats” page on the website. The emailer, whose identity remains unknown, wanted to know if I was in fact the source of the threat, which they found incredible, or if it was final proof that Laura had gone completely nuts. Needless to say, this got my attention.

Since I am banned from even reading the Cassiopaean site, it took some doing to find the page my email correspondent mentioned. I hadn’t seen the Cassiopaean website since last winter and I found the changes to be more than disturbing. Even more than the slickness of the new approach, including the glaring ad for the raffle of the millennium, I was disturbed by the tone of cultic superiority. As I searched for the Death Threats article, I read through much of what Laura has been up to for the last few months.

Appalling is too kind a word…

Let us ignore the crass insanity of trying to solve your financial problems by raffling off your house, and pass over without further mention the badly written and overpriced tomes of autohagiography and self-aggrandizement (anyone wonder what happened to The Noah Syndrome? I’ll bet those folks who pre-ordered it do…). Let us also just note in passing her new obsession with Boris Mouravieff, a curious figure who plagiarized both Gurjdieff and Ouspensky to give Eastern Orthodox Christianity a spuriously metaphysical background, and the adoption of his curiously skewed Fourth Way teaching as the new mystical core of the Cassiopaean cult, and get straight to the heart of the problem: Paranoid delusion.

Here’s a woman who claims to communicate with disincarnate beings via a ouiji board. This could be considered a major pathological delusion in and of itself, but combined with the aggressive cultic behavior of the last few years, we might suspect a more serious psychosis. Charismatic and psychopathic leaders create cultic climates as a kind of hothouse in which their delusions can flower. As the Cassiopaean Cult developed, Laura’s delusions of persecution and self-importance inflated and grew into the curious dogma of the group. This paranoid delusion has now coalesced into the Doctrine of the Organic Portal.

http://www.cassiopaea.org/cass/organic_portals.htm

Although the metaphysics of this Doctrine are as arcane as any a Scholastic churchman could wish for, simply put it is a dualistic belief that separates the world into those who have souls, or could have souls, and those who are hopelessly without souls, and therefore completely dehumanized. Here’s how the Cult puts it:

“The DNA of these two races is so mixed that both can be found within the same families. Your brother, sister, mother, father, daughter or son. Not somebody “other” across the world or across the street worshipping a different god or with a different skin colour. It may be somebody you live with every day of your life, and if so, they have but one reason to be here, to drain, distract and deflect souled beings from evolving. ”

Therefore soulless beings are evil, or can be easily used by evil, and their sole purpose is to keep those with the potential to have souls from evolving them. Here’s how another Cultist put it:

1. OPs collect soul energy from souled individuals.
2. This energy is transmitted to 4D STS.
3. OPs are intermixed in families with souled individuals.
4. When a souled individual makes the commitment to the “work,” he or she needs to learn to conserve the soul energy for without it the work cannot be done.
5. When one makes a commitment to the “work,” one comes under attack.
6. This “attack” comes from those closest to you: family and friends. “BUT, when someone is in the process of ‘growing’ and strengthening the soul, the Control System will seek to insert even more ‘units’ into that person’s life.”

Hard to imagine, even with all our modern psychiatric knowledge, a more paranoid belief system than the one presented above. Half of humanity are soulless animals bent on the destruction of the other half. They could be anyone, at any time, anywhere, even those we love most. And if we do find out the truth, as provided by the semi-omniscient Cassioapeans, then we come under even greater attack, and can trust no one but those already in the cult. A perfect paranoid Catch 22…

Suppose for instance that an individual found the Cult, joined their discussion groups and began to spend all his free time and energy discussing what the Cassiopaeans had to say about everything. As his friends and family grew concerned about this behavior, the cultists could point to the situation as proof of the contention that commitment to the work causes further attacks. See, they say, they – your family, friends, associates – are all now revealed as unhuman, soulless monsters trying to stop your growth as a souled being.

Dehumanizing half the human race, and especially those who oppose you, results in the kind of behavior and expression Mr. Padalino demonstrated in his emails above. To him, I am clearly just an Organic Portal, feeding energy to the “Lizzies” on the astral plane, and therefore deserve anything, including death, that he, as a true human, cares to dish out. “Not by their leaves or their blossoms shall ye judge them, but their fruits…” In this case, the fruit hasn’t fallen very far from the tree, as both Laura and Mr Padalino share the same core beliefs and dysfunctions.

And so, I wasn’t surprised when I finally tracked down the “Death Threats” page and found that somehow, Laura’s super deductive powers had determined that I was the culprit in this heinous and anonymous attack. After all, I was the chief soulless Organic Portal in her worldview. For her system to remain intact, it had to be me…

Her proof is an anonymous email and an anonymous letter from New York. Since I have seen her pull the fake email routine before, the email is suspect. But the letter mailed from New York City could be more interesting. The postmark could tell us where in the City it was mailed and when it was processed. As I have been nowhere near New York City in quite a while, this should help clarify matters. At least one prominent Cult member lives in Brooklyn and works in Manhattan, and it would interesting to see if the letter was mailed from either of those locations.

Needless to say, I had nothing to do with either one of these communications. I am however fairly certain that Laura herself faked the second letter. The devil, as they like to say, is in the details, and the detail here is the timing.

I posted the emails from Mr. Padalino, who may in fact be in their inner group, on October 10th. On October 28th, two and a half weeks later, Laura posted her Death Threats article. This is more than enough time to read the emails posted on sacredmysteries.com’s forum and then concoct a reply that diverts attention back on the evil OPs behind it all.

Here’s the letter:

You StupiD, STupid, StupiD, STupiD, STupid, pieces of SHIT!
You Are Channeling with Satan himSELF

StupiD!!! Oh, Miss knighT, you FEEL Like A chess piece when your life was FAlling Apart. You IdioT! Satan is telling you the truth right to your FACE! The biggest SECret is you Are being controlled by him! You are a Chess piece you idiot! The Lord Jesus Christ is going to release him on your hEad!
Prepare to be destroyed along with your Entire organization. This whole world was A gifT To Satan, promisED to him IN Eternity past while he was StiLL LuciFer

JEsus Keeps his promises. SAtan is AllowEd to run this ENtire planET AND EVEry human being on it. To A CErtain ExtEnt to WAge war Against thE Lord, Whom you havE bLAsphEMED For the last time.

Prepare to be destroyEd by SAtANS hanD

http://www.cassiopaea.org/cass/deaththreats.htm

The letter clearly reveals Laura’s authorship. It is full of the kind of emotional shadow projection and self-referencing layers of meaning used by someone trying to indirectly communicate their worst fears. By objectifying her fears about her self onto a phantom nemesis, the anonymous letter writer, her unconscious is freed to give full range to its darkest and most repressed feelings. The “Miss Knight/Chesspiece” reference shows her sensations of helplessness and fear of being under the control of anonymous forces, an obvious reference to the Cassiopaeans. Within this pun is a secret, that Laura is “controlled” by Satan.

This is a most striking example of repressed guilt, and could only have come from Laura herself. No anonymous Christian whacko in New York City could have been so precise in his denunciation. Her secret fear of course is that her contact with the Cassiopaeans is in fact demonic, as her childhood religion and the experiences of her own psyche insist is the case. No one likes to feel like a chess piece, even a knight, on someone else’s game board. Especially if the player moving you around has a whiff of hellfire clinging to its robes…

Laura, in her need to create something like Mr Padalino’s comments, allowed her deepest fear a means of expression. This is what she imagines her nemesis would say to her, and therefore, since she is her own nemesis, she says it to herself. We can only imagine that something like this plays in her head all day every day. And only by pursuing the evil doers, proving that she is right about everything in every case, on every topic, and constantly channelling the Cassiopaeans, can she gain even a slight amount of peace from the voices shouting; “Stupid, Stupid, stupid…”

This is truly sad, pathetic even. But we should not let our compassion blind us to the danger this cult presents to those who wander into its webs unaware. For that reason, and that reason alone, I will keep this website up as long as it is necessary.

Thanks,

Vincent Bridges