That article is good, the only major problem that I have with it the positive attitude that the writer keeps with Teachings of "Samael Aun Weor" written by Victor Gomez. Her guess that Edith is pro-communist is probably unfounded as far as I can tell.Most likely their dishonest translations and attempt to keep people away form Gomez's earliar writings are an attempt to make him seem as sane and acceptable as possible. The earlier writings contain most of the lies, racism, sexism, pseudoscience and just outright psychopathy.

Here is a website that descibes the history of this nonsense pretty well. [www.nationmaster.com]

This is a discussion from Oprah.com where someone was trying to claim that Eckhart Tolle was ripping off Mark Pritchard. The problem with that is that Tolle published first, or at least published his first book first. [www.oprah.com]

Here is another person speaking about their bad experiences with the Gnostic Movement and Gnosticweb.

[www.belowtopsecret.com]

Not the most revealing article but it does show the change of organization and believe that is so typical of cults.

Anyone who is interest their own site Gnosticweb is full of posts where they have to explain to students about why they are not a cult. Truthfully I think the only reason why the teachers don't think it is a cult is because they think Mark Pritchard ( who lives in a fantasy world where he is Bezlebuub) is right and they make up excuses or just repeat them when needed. They often also have to explain how the teachings of Samael aun Weor is not just a plagiarism of other peoples work. When you look at the material you will also see that Mark has contributed nothing to the discussion other then simplifying other peoples ideas and making them more marketable.

Another interesting note if you are on their website and see Anonymous where their should be someones name, that means they have quite the site and asked to be removed. It is really telling how often that appears.

Hello again,

As promised, I would like to give you my observations about Gnosticweb based on what I have seen so far and to show that this is a cult that in my opinion, has the potential to be quite damaging. First up, I’ll give you some background on myself, so you can see where I’m coming from.

I am not a religious person and have never subscribed to any form of organised religion. I enjoy creative pursuits (I study music) and I am always on the look out for new ideas or outlooks that might inspire or enhance my own sense of creativity. From my point of view, I see creativity and spirituality as being pretty much the same thing.

I am not an atheist as I believe in the human soul. In short, I am just a guy that occasionally likes reading books of a psychological and spiritual nature and I am forward thinking enough to be willing to try new ideas if I think they may have a long term positive effect on me or provide me with a new outlook on life in general.

Up until a few weeks ago, I had never heard of Belzebuub or SAW and I knew nothing about the concept of Gnosis. I was not interested or actively searching for anything resembling this kind of ideology, rather it found me when I decided to go “window-shopping” on Amazon.

I have to admit, I do have a passing interest in OOBE’s based on a positive experience I had from reading a book by Robert Monroe. This led me to look on Amazon for more material as I was looking for something with a little more methodology to it. I looked on Amazon for other books and I chose Belzebuub’s book because it had 22 reviews and most of those customer’s had given it five-stars based on the fact that it was an easy to understand method that had apparently worked for them.

Whilst I was on Amazon, I saw a link to this guy’s other book “the peace of the spirit within” which offered nine glowing reviews and a lovely video by a nice chap called Justin who said how the book was easy to understand, with easy to follow exercises that could transform one’s life. Well the book was cheap enough so I ordered both books and thought nothing more of it – that is until I received the books and saw what was in them.

I received the books and an initial glance at the astral book left me unimpressed as it was nothing like the Monroe book and seemed to be full of mantras, conjurations, mythology and religious clap-trap. As mentioned on Amazon, both books came with a free on-line course and this is emblazoned across the covers of both books. Before I read any further, I decided to check out the website Gnosticweb to see what was involved and if they had a forum that would help me to gauge the opinions and experiences of those people who had done the courses.

This site, to my surprise was not the typical new age style of site that I was expecting. It was a creepy looking Christian site and the forums seemed to be full of deeply religious young people and most of them, based on the ideas they were expressing, seemed to me to be just plain nuts. In case you are wondering here are some links to those forums so you can see for yourself the nature of their beliefs

[www.gnosticweb.com]

[www.gnosticweb.com]

[www.gnosticweb.com]

[www.gnosticweb.com]

[www.gnosticweb.com]

Those links represent a small sample of what I read on those forums and alarm bells began to ring at that point. I noticed that Gnosticweb actively encourage people to attend their “Study Centres” which can be found in major cities of the Australia, Canada, The U.S. and my own country – the U.K.

So, as an ordinary Amazon customer with nothing more than a passing interest in astral, I have been led from the purchase of a book – to an on-line interactive course -through to the opportunity of joining their community by attending one of their study centres.

The point of this post is to show another way in which these Gnosticweb people can get through to ordinary, unsuspecting people. This experience alone has left me angry by the way it can draw people in – anyone can be vulnerable to it. Because I was so annoyed, I decided to do my own search to see what else I could find out and I have lost many hours in doing so. I am glad that I have found this site as it gives me somewhere to post my findings and without, it the hours I spent looking for answers would have been wasted.

My next post will appear in the next few days or so and in it, I want to show you that most (not all) of the people that posted glowing reviews on Amazon are not what they seem, i.e. they are not genuine customers – they have vested interests in Gnosticweb.

I was hoping to keep this post short and will end here for now. Incidentally, I have gone through both books and using a marker pen, have highlighted everything that I found to be disturbing and cultish. I will be happy to post what I have highlighted from those books and will be happy to discuss those things here if you so wish.

All the best

Heron

Hi

I have just noticed that I have received a private message dated 06th March from someone wanting me to outline my experiences with Gnosticweb and to ask if I have done any of the courses. I was surprised to get this as I am new and only have one post to my name.

The person has a forum name of "2bdellusioned" and a search shows that this person has never posted here before.
I would like to make it clear that I will not respond to any private messages from anyone unless they have a proven history of having posted on this site.

I have already seen someone from Gnosticweb trying to infiltrate this site (referring to a post by the member known as Jordan). I would say to that person that my last post should answer any questions you may have and if you want to discuss these matters further, then I would advise you to post your opinions and experiences here. If you have been hurt or disillusioned by these people then that is all the more reason for you to post here.

regards

Heron

Hi

I have just seen the interesting links posted by notanantiGnostic. I've just found this one in which a person has goen onto a Gnostic forum to give his own opinions of the SAW cults that have sprung up mainly in Spanish speaking countries.

Will talk again soon.

[ritualmagick.tribe.net]

Quote
notanantiGnostic
.... The earlier writings contain most of the lies, racism, sexism, pseudoscience and just outright psychopathy.

I have to agree. You know Weor actually believe "The Beetles" were evil. I kid you not.
Of course many supporters wont talk about these sort of things.

Hi Keir,
Most of the supporters of the Weor teachings are intentionally ignorant of most of what he or any teachers has to to say. This is the only way they could follow his teaching and not live on a compound somewhere. I remember when I was leaving and I wanted friends who I had met during my time with the Gnostic movement to see the problems, all of them simply misinterpreted the information or made up excuses related to loyalty which they had learned in another activity from events in their live before they fell in with the cult.

I thought I would repost a post you had created and I just discovered that deals with how the Samael Aun Weor groups use language to manipulate their followers. Mark Pritchard, with his fantasy about being a god, likes to say nonsense like real objectivity comes from the essence which is clearly a contradiction of terms.

[forum.culteducation.com]

Good stuff by the way Keir. Understanding language and its nature is really important for breaking the spell of these fanatics.

So the Beetles were evil, according to Weor? Wow talk about a black and white way of looking a the world.

Hi Heron,

Thanks for all your work, I would love to here about all your highlights from reading the books. I was going to go through that process but It was too much of a contradiction with my need to move away from the "teachings". I am also not a dogmatically religious person, quite open to good ideas, but I really wanted to find a group of Gnostics to study with. I would define true Gnosticism as being open to everything and any good idea but based on certain key spiritual ideas around our existence being about spirit and matter coming together, the true meaning of the cross. Also most religious stories, including that of Jesus should be looked at metaphorically and of course in their historic context. Perhaps a Gnostic group is actually a contradiction of terms, but I am still open to the idea.

I would define my experience with the Gnostic Movement, although I did loose my head for a bit there, as being one of an open mindedness and tolerance. Now I understand that people who don't understand or practice tolerance and open mindedness will not know it when they see. The teachers of the Gnostic Movement confused my tolerance for acceptance and submission.

Remember thou that the teachings of Samael Aun Weor or anything that is a prodigy of it are not Gnosticism. Currently I am reading a book called the Pagan Christ by Tom Harpur which for me seems to highlight the core values of human spirituality in a way that didn't expect. If you can't get his book over there the work of Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy are also quite good from what I hear.

If you are still searching for help on OBEs or Astral projection there is also Robert Bruce and if you are interested in general dream work I would suggest Robert Moss. Lots of good non authoritarian writers out there. If you do a googlebooks search you will find lots of book available online by using the keywords Out of body experiences, Astral travel or Astral projection. You should also find lots of good websites that way too.

The last book Secret Knowledge, Hidden Wisdom is the worst of Pritchards books and after reading that book is when I could no longer deny I was involved with a cult. Within a few days, after some internal struggle I had to start my move away from the organization, leaving the friends I had made. In this book you really see Marks two face, which can also be seen if you watch some of his videos. In the first two books he is trying to be nice, understanding and encouraging but in the final book he becomes quite harsh, because he thinks that the only people reading it are his victims. One comments that was quite striking was in the question and answer section, where someone asks if they can feel good about themselves for what they have achieve in doing "the work". His response is to say "what have you achieved and something about how they hadn't done anything compared to what he had gone through. How does he know how spiritually developed that person is?

I look forward to seeing hearing more of your comments when you get chance.

I would like to highlight a few significant posts from [www.belzebuub.com].

You can read his story in his own words about how he became to the position he is in. I think if you read it with a critical eye it can be quite tell.

[www.belzebuub.com]

I would also like to highlight a video where he is speaking to teachers and trainiees. You will notice that he is really quite nasty and authoritarian towards them, not as all the way he talks when is talking to beginners.

Sorry I think the video I wanted to show is no longer available perhaps because of criticism that has been made of it. Which is quite telling. If you can find any videos from Quebec 2004 that will show you what I am talking about.

[www.belzebuub.com]