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?