The Cosmic Masters Press for Peace
The Aetherius Society is a seminal New Age religion (registered, with status as a nonprofit) very much in tune with latter-day exemplars that share its interests in yoga, spiritual healing, Mother Earth as life goddess, psychic powers, and karma and reincarnation. However, Aetherius is guided, in large part, by peace-loving extraterrestrials known as Cosmic Masters; and by the teachings of Buddha and Jesus Christ—both of whom, Aetherius Society literature tells us, are Cosmic Masters, whose journeys to Earth began on Venus. As the aforementioned karma and reincarnation might suggest, Hindu philosophy has a place in Aetherius thought; much of the Society’s activity revolves around the Hindu notion of Prana, the life force that dominates the universe.
The Society takes its name from another Venus-based Cosmic Master, Aetherius, who audibly (but invisibly) contacted a London cabbie named George King (1919–97) in 1954. Aetherius’s message to King was this: “Prepare yourself, you are about to become the voice of Interplanetary Parliament.” Although King held no interest in extraterrestrials or UFOs, he had already developed a sophisticated interest in yoga, and taught himself the tenets of spiritual healing. Inspired by Aetherius’s stated desire for world peace, and by later meetings with an Indian yogi master (who told King to expect “mental rapport with higher intelligences”), King founded the Aetherius Society in 1955, and soon established it in a space above a London health food shop.
Because of the tense Cold War climate of the mid-1950s, George King grew particularly concerned about the dangers posed by atomic weapons, and guided his new organization toward active support of nuclear disarmament. As in Christian doctrine, forgiveness is a virtue; Society literature emphasizes “Oneness and the Divine Spark within all life; God is all.” A newsletter, The Cosmic Voice, appeared in 1956. It was followed by a quarterly, the Journal of Spiritual and Natural Healing, which metamorphosed into The Aetherius Society Newsletter. Today, the Society maintains an Internet presence, with a sophisticated Web site that directs visitors to podcasts and Internet radio programs.
Active mainly in Britain, the United States, New Zealand, and Nigeria, the Society claims a membership of ten thousand; that figure is probably exaggerated upward, with the true number likely to be somewhere in the low four figures. A pair of Temple headquarters, in London and Los Angeles, are handsome but unostentatious. Parallel leadership exists in Britain and America, with newspaper journalist Richard Lawrence working as executive secretary from London and forty-year Aetherius member Brian Keneipp holding the same title in Los Angeles.
Members are activists in the sense that acceptance of Society tenets, and a devotion to the Cosmic Masters, are required for personal salvation. Because the Society neither proselytizes nor actively recruits, Aetherius is unusual among small-membership religious groups. Still, members have faced some rigorous demands. During 1958–61, for instance, the Society held group meetings around the world, on nineteen peaks christened “the Holy Mountains.” Pilgrimages and retreats still occur with regularity.
Besides the Masters, important players in human affairs are peace-loving extraterrestrials called Pleiadians; and another, quite different alliance (dubbed the Silence Group by persons other than King), which manipulates influential human beings, multinationally, to obfuscate the truth about UFOs. In August 1958, as a corrective to the latter group, King organized one of the earliest public rallies to demand full government disclosure about UFOs. That rally, mounted in Trafalgar Square, was infiltrated by undercover police, working on an assumption that King’s Society functioned as a Communist-front organization. (Scotland Yard’s Special Branch, in fact, infiltrated Society meetings and rallies for five years, beginning in the late 1950s, before finally concluding that further investigation would yield nothing.) During Mars and Venus Speak to Earth, a widely recalled live-TV broadcast from BBC2 in 1959, King intrigued home audiences when he went into a trance and channeled a hopeful message from Mars Sector 6—which is not a place but a “Cosmic Adept,” a Master.
Rather in the manner Christians await the Second Coming of Christ, the Aetherius Society anticipates the “next Master,” who will arrive in a spacecraft to usher in a new millennial age of peace. People that make war will not be destroyed, but transported from Earth to another planet, where they will have opportunities to evolve and develop peaceful spirits.
The Society’s main initiative, a “cosmic mission” called Operation Prayer Power, kicked off in the early 1970s. It encourages members to summon positive spiritual energy, for storage in boxlike devices George King called “spiritual energy batteries.” Once captured, the energy can be released and sent into the world when needed, as during a hurricane or a civilian crisis in a war-torn nation.
Very little public criticism of the Aetherius Society exists, even on the wide- open Web, though an oppositional blog, pastaetheriussocietymembers.blogspot.com, expresses unhappiness with the “egos” of current Society leadership, and the willingness of those people to welcome “initiates,” rather than encourage the spiritually advanced persons favored by King.
Although King passed away in 1997, his videotaped sermons are staples of Aetherius Sunday services.