Elizabeth Clare Prophet (April 8, 1939 - October 15, 2009) was an American who was the leader of The Summit Lighthouse and Church Universal and Triumphant, a New Age religious movement which gained media attention in the late 1980s and early 1990s while preparing for potential nuclear disaster.During this time, Prophet appeared on Larry King Live, Donahue and Nightline, among other television programs. She was also featured in 1994 on NBC's Ancient Prophecies.
Prophet was born Elizabeth Clare Wulf in Red Bank, New Jersey to Hans and Fridy Wulf. She spent her junior year studying French in Switzerland, and graduated from Red Bank Regional High School second in her class. She attended Antioch College in Ohio from September 1957 to March 1959, transferring to Boston University in September, 1959. She received a bachelor of arts degree in political science in approximately August 1961. From the age of nine, Prophet suffered from absence seizures, a form of epilepsy, which worsened to include tonic-clonic seizures in 1988.
After visits to the Catholic Church, the Jewish synagogue and every Protestant church in Red Bank, she attended Methodist Sunday School before finally settling on Christian Science at age 9, attracted in part by its emphasis on healing and her desire to overcome her epilepsy. She eventually expressed ambition to become a Practitioner.
In 1960, while volunteering as a Sunday school teacher in the Christian Science Church in Boston, she met and married Dag Ytreberg; the marriage lasted about ten months.
Mark Prophet
On April 22, 1961, her group invited Mark Prophet, who claimed to be a messenger for the Ascended masters, to speak in Boston. She attended this meeting at which Mark claimed to give a message, from the Archangel Michael; afterwards, she asked Mark to train her to be a "messenger". Mark and Elizabeth were married in 1963, had four children, and together administered The Summit Lighthouse, which Mark had founded in 1958.
On July 5, 1964, Prophet delivered her first public dictation, purportedly as a messenger for the ascended masters.
In 1965, the Prophet family relocated to Fairfax, Virginia, and in 1966 to Colorado Springs, Colorado.
In 1970, the Prophet family founded Montessori International, a school based on the principles of the acclaimed educator Dr. Maria Montessori. "Montessori International" was used by the Prophets for their church/community school, which at various times offered classes for students ranging from preschool age to high school. Although their preschool teachers were trained at official Montessori organizations such as the Association Montessori Internationale and the Pan-American Montessori Society, they were not officially associated with the Montessori umbrella organizations. In the elementary and high school levels, teachers were not Montessori certified.
In 1970, the Prophets went to India with several dozen church members. They toured the country, meeting with Indira Gandhi as well as the Dalai Lama.
In 1972, the first volume of Climb the Highest Mountain was published, a projected five-volume work, which the Prophets intended to become their central scripture.
On February 26, 1973, Mark Prophet died of a stroke. Elizabeth assumed leadership of their organization, which then began its first foray into survivalism, based on instructions she said Mark gave her the night before his stroke. She organized survival training on a property outside of Colorado Springs, which they had purchased with the intention of using for a headquarters. In May 1973, the organization entered into a partnership with a member who owned a property near Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, and attempted to establish a community there.
Ministry and expansion
Prophet married Randall King, a staff member, on October 17, 1973. This marriage lasted seven years. King later sued Prophet for $16 million, alleging involuntary servitude, among other causes of action. The suit was settled out of court for an undisclosed amount.
In 1974, the headquarters of the Church was moved to Santa Barbara, California, where Elizabeth Prophet founded Summit University, a 12 week program of instruction in her teachings. In 1975, she founded Summit University Press.
On May 1, 1975, Prophet established Church Universal and Triumphant as the religious arm of the organization. She believed her church to be the rightful successor to the Catholic Church and using the title Vicar of Christ for the highest spiritual office in the church. (She was the first holder of that office; the church articles and bylaws define processes for future appointments to the office).
The church eventually became the umbrella organization for Prophet's work, with The Summit Lighthouse becoming the publishing arm of the church.
In the summer of 1976, church headquarters were again relocated to the campus of Pasadena College, in Pasadena. Summit University, Montessori International, and quarterly church conferences were held there. About 300 staff members were then in residence.
In September 1976 and again in January 1978, Prophet returned to Africa. She conducted a conference at the Kwame Nkrumah conference center in Accra which was attended by thousands. She also met with the heads of state of Ghana (Ignatius Kutu Acheampong) and Liberia (William Richard Tolbert, Jr.).
In 1977, the church purchased a former Claretian seminary in Calabasas, a campus near Los Angeles, and moved its operations there in 1978. Due to opposition from various governmental agencies, including the California Coastal Commission, the church was never able to build its planned headquarters there. The church sold the property in 1986 to Soka University.
In October 1981, Prophet married Edward Francis, who was at that time a vice-president of the church. Their marriage lasted 16 years, and they had a son in 1994.
Also in 1981, the church purchased the Forbes Ranch, just outside of Yellowstone Park, near Gardiner, Montana.
Final years in the ministry
In 1986, Prophet relocated her headquarters to the Forbes Ranch, which she had renamed the Royal Teton Ranch. It was here that she made her more dire prophecies including the possibility of a nuclear war between the superpowers.
Beginning in 1986, as she was leaving Los Angeles, Prophet began predicting a possible first-strike nuclear attack by the Soviet Union and urged followers to prepare for this possibility by building fallout shelters and storing food and other necessities for survival.
She was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in November 1998. The leadership of her church subsequently passed to a board of directors.
Retirement and death
In 1999, deteriorating health led Prophet to retire from the church. In 2000, she entered full-time nursing care for Alzheimer's disease in Bozeman, Montana. She died October 15, 2009 at the age of 70.
Both Mark and Elizabeth taught the Path of Personal Christhood, the way of the Soul's one-on-one relationship with the God Within. Through the practice of the path of "karma yoga" (the path of balancing each and every one of the untoward acts, which one has committed in this and previous lifetimes), and the use of the Science of the Spoken Word, a form of Mantra combined with Meditation, Prayer and Visualization, individual Souls seek reunion with God, desiring to "Ascend into Oneness with that God", even as Jesus did at the end of his lifetime. They taught that this divine gift (The Ascension) could be earned after many lifetimes, upon balancing 51% or more of the negative karma of the soul." . The key to a more rapid balancing of Karma is the invocation of the Violet Flame, a spiritual light that is closest in its frequency or vibration to the physical octave. The teachings state that the Violet Flame, invoked by specific mantras called "decrees," actually transmutes negative karma, changing it into positive spiritual treasures, which accrue to an individual's heavenly "bank account."The doctrine brought forth by Mark L. Prophet and Elizabeth Clare Prophet combines both Eastern and Western religious teachings, and came from divine messages transmitted by the "Ascended Masters", heavenly beings ranging from Gautama Buddha and Jesus Christ to the Ascended Master K-17, the Head of the Cosmic Secret Service.
Dictations
Both Elizabeth and Mark Prophet took more than 3,000 "dictations" from Ascended Masters. The messages, which often quoted the Bible or other scriptures, were published as "Pearls of Wisdom," which were mailed to weekly subscribers and later compiled into annual hardcover volumes. Mrs. Prophet described her taking of dictations as a raising of her consciousness to the level of her Higher Self, or Holy Christ Self, whereupon the Ascended Master who wished to communicate would then lower his or her Consciousness from the level of the God-Consciousness, to that level of the Christ Self of Mrs. Prophet. She stated that she was fully conscious and not in a trance when she took dictation.
Previous incarnations
Ms. Prophet said that she was previously incarnated as Nefertiti, Queen Guinevere of Camelot, and Marie Antoinette.
UFOs
One feature of the Prophets' beliefs was UFOs. However, Prophet did not see them as a benign presence (as did many New Agers) but generally having malevolent intent.
Some of Prophet's theories are published in her book Fallen Angels and the Origins of Evil and in Paths of Light and Darkness, the sixth book in her Climb the Highest Mountain series.
Prophet has four adult children: Sean Prophet, Erin Prophet, Moira Prophet, and Tatiana Prophet. All four worked for the group at one time or another, but left the Church in the 1990s. Erin Prophet is a project manager at a Boston hospital, and was her mother's co-guardian for many years. She also ran a website that raised funds for her mother's medical care. Sean Prophet is a creative director in Los Angeles, and also runs a prominent atheist website, Black Sun Journal. He has publicly repudiated the teachings of the Ascended Masters and recounted his mother's admission to him of her abuses of power. He has also expressed regret for his role in promoting the organization as minister and vice-president, and his desire to right past wrongs by exposing what he now views as transparent fraud throughout organized religion and the New Age movement. Moira Prophet was the first of Prophet's four children to become publicly antagonistic, speaking out against the church on the Oprah Winfrey show in 1989.
Tatiana Prophet was a reporter for the Victorville Daily Press.
Prophet's grandson Chris Prophet is the former drummer for the post-hardcore group Horse The Band.
Additional references
Roth, Chris (1995) A Prophet in Her Own Compound: The Millennial Angst of Elizabeth Clare Prophet, Secretary to the GodsSteamshovel Press, no. 14, pp. 13—19
Lewis, James R., and J. Gordon Melton, eds (1994) Church Universal and Triumphant in Scholarly Perspective, Stanford, Calif. Center for Academic Publication
Whitsel, Bradley C. (2003) The Church Universal and Triumphant, Elizabeth Clare Prophet's Apocalyptic Movement, Syracuse University Press
Erin Prophet (2008) Prophet's Daughter: My Life with Elizabeth Clare Prophet Inside the Church Universal and Triumphant, Lyons Press
Kenneth Paolini, Talita Paolini (2000) 400 Years of Imaginary Friends: A Journey Into the World of Adepts, Masters, Ascended Masters, and Their Messengers, Paolini International
Works by Mark and Elizabeth Prophet (See full list of books published by Summit University Press, Corwin Springs, Montana):
(1965, reprinted 1974, 1983, 1991, 2004) The Science of the Spoken Word ISBN 0-916766-07-1
(1965, reprinted 2005) The Soulless One: Cloning a Counterfeit Creation ISBN 0-916766-43-8
(1984, reprinted 1986, 1987) Prayers, Meditations, Dynamic Decrees for the Coming Revolution in Higher Consciousness, Loose-leaf Sections I, II, and III, informally known among followers as "The Decree Book"
(1984) The Lost Years of Jesus"
(1986) The Path of the Higher Self, book 1 of the Climb the Highest Mountain series ISBN 0-916766-26-8
(1993) Saint Germain on Alchemy ISBN 0-916766-68-3
(1999) Saint Germain's Prophecy for the New Millennium ISBN 0-922729-45-X
(2000) Fallen Angels and the Origins of Evil: Why Church Fathers Suppressed the Book of Enoch and Its Startling Revelations ISBN 0-922729-43-3
(2005) Paths of Light and Darkness, book 6 of the Climb the Highest Mountain series ISBN 1-932890-00-9
(2006) The Path to Immortality ISBN 1-932890-09-2
(2009) In My Own Words, Memoirs of a Twentieth Century Mystic ISBN 978-1-932890-15-0
By Elizabeth Clare Prophet (published independently)
(2008) Preparation for My Mission: Childhood Recollections Edited by Tatiana and Erin Prophet ISBN 978-0-578-00357-3
By Alex and Margaret Reichardt
(2009) On Fire for God: Adventures on the Mystical Path with Elizabeth Clare Prophet ISBN 978-1-60530-955-2
