Erin Prophet - Profile on Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Books by Erin Prophet
"New Religion" in Religion: Sources, Perspectives, and Methodologies
Jeffrey J. Kripal, ed. Religion: Sources, Perspectives, and Methodologies. Part of the Macmillan ... more Jeffrey J. Kripal, ed. Religion: Sources, Perspectives, and Methodologies. Part of the Macmillan Interdisciplinary Handbooks: Religion series. Farmington Hills, MI: Macmillan Reference USA, 2016.
Comparing Religions: Coming to Terms
Prophet's Daughter: My Life with Elizabeth Clare Prophet Inside the Church Universal and Triumphant
In early 1990, in response to the apocalyptic prophecies of her mother, elizabeth Clare Prophet, ... more In early 1990, in response to the apocalyptic prophecies of her mother, elizabeth Clare Prophet, erin Prophet entered a network of underground bunkers in Montana along with members of her mother's Church Universal and Triumphant, a controversial new Age sect much of ...
Comparing Religions: Coming to Terms by Jeffrey Kripal
Papers by Erin Prophet
Elizabeth Clare Prophet: Gender, Sexuality, and the Divine Feminine
The life and legacy of the controversial and influential new age leader Elizabeth Clare Prophet (... more The life and legacy of the controversial and influential new age leader Elizabeth Clare Prophet (1939–2009) are reviewed by her daughter Erin Prophet from the perspective of gender. A brief biographical sketch introduces Prophet’s major accomplishments and the controversy that surrounded her, beginning with her early spiritual life and the influence of her husband and teacher, Mark Prophet, her past-life beliefs, and including the ‘shelter episode’ of 1989–1990, when followers built underground shelters in response to her predictions of nuclear war. Major topics include her exercise of power as a woman, assuming control of The Summit Lighthouse (later Church Universal and Triumphant) after Mark’s death, her theological innovations, particularly those related to the divine feminine, the liberation from original sin, gender in the relationship between soul and body, and the destiny of both men and women to symbolically give birth to the Christ. Her teachings on sexuality, including he...
Gnosis: Journal of Gnostic Studies, 2018
Helena Blavatsky (1831–1891) developed a program of salvation that she called “double evolution,”... more Helena Blavatsky (1831–1891) developed a program of salvation that she called “double evolution,” which was elaborated in a system known as root race theory. Human souls were seen as traversing through progressive reincarnation a series of seven “races,” or body types, ranging from gigantic amorphous and ethereal bodies and transitioning through hermaphroditic into gigantic gendered ape-like humans, modern humans, and thereafter adepts and divine beings. Although root race theory drew from the scientific racism of its day, it did not equate root races with human races, but to stages of human emanation from and return to divinity. The sources of root race theory have been sought in Eastern contexts due to its use of Hindu and Buddhist terminology, though scholars have noted its Western esoteric influences. This article argues that the primary structure of root race theory is based in the Corpus Hermeticum. It identifies some of Blavatsky’s Hermetic sources, showing that she referred ...
Religious Studies Review, 2015
This volume seeks "to remedy a scholarly lacuna by investigating the cultural products of new rel... more This volume seeks "to remedy a scholarly lacuna by investigating the cultural products of new religions," an area which has largely excluded new religious movements (NRMs) from analysis. The book is composed of twenty-nine chapters written by thirty-three contributors-a mixture of new and established scholars within their specific areas of expertise-organized into nine thematic parts, covering the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints (LDS), the Theosophical Society, Anthroposophy, the Gurdjieff currents, contemporary paganism, Afro-Caribbean NRMs, techniques and technologies in NRMs, universal NRMs, and Christian NRMs. The quality of the contributions is high, in keeping with the standard set by previous entries into this series. Standout chapters of particularly high quality
Evolution Esotericized: Conceptual Blending and the Emergence of Secular, Therapeutic Salvation b... more Evolution Esotericized: Conceptual Blending and the Emergence of Secular, Therapeutic Salvation by Erin Prophet The esoteric appropriation of evolution in the sense of self-improvement or personal transformation can be better understood by combining a historical approach with conceptual metaphor theory. The dissertation first evaluates the esoteric appropriation historically as a type of religious response to Darwin. It works backwards from the twentieth-century counterculture (as identified by Theodore Roszak in 1975), to show that esoteric “evolution” had its roots in the late nineteenth-century intersection of spiritualism, Theosophy, and psychical research, with particular emphasis on Hermetic traditions. The historical analysis centers on a fine-grained evaluation of the evolutionary thought of Helena Blavatsky, founder of the Theosophical Society, and a comparison of her system with that of Frederic W.H. Myers, an important contributor to both psychical research and early psyc...
Charisma in new religious movements
The ‘messenger’ as source of both stabilisation and revisionism in Church Universal and Triumphant and related groups
Radical Transformations in Minority Religions
Potential Influence on Clinical Trials of Long-term Survivors of Stage IV Non-small cell Lung Cancer
JNCI Cancer Spectrum, 2019
Abstract Background New, effective treatments have resulted in long-term survival for small subg... more Abstract
Background
New, effective treatments have resulted in long-term survival for small subgroups of metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients. However, knowledge of long-term survivor frequency and characteristics prior to modern therapies is lacking.
Methods
Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) patients with stage IV NSCLC diagnosed from 1991 to 2007 and followed through 2012 were dichotomized by survival time into the 10% who lived 21 months or longer (long-term survivors) vs the remaining 90% and compared with participants in a representative clinical trial of molecular profiling and targeted therapies (CUSTOM).
Results
Among the 44 387 SEER patients, the 10% identified as long-term survivors were distinguishable from the remaining 90% by younger age, female sex, Asian race, adenocarcinoma histology, tumor grade, tumor site, and surgery. From 1991–1994 to 2003–2007, median survival increased by 6 months from 30 to 36 months among long-term survivors but by only 1 month from 3 to 4 months among the remaining 90%. Among the 165 participants in the CUSTOM trial, 54% met our SEER criterion of long-term survival by living for 21 months or longer.
Conclusions
Among SEER patients with stage IV NSCLC, long-term survivors had a median survival approximately 10 times that of the remaining 90%. Long-term survivors accounted for more than one-half of the participants in a representative clinical trial. Caution is required when extrapolating the outcomes of participants in clinical trials to patients in routine clinical practice.
Hermetic Influences on the Evolutionary System of Helena Blavatsky's Theosophy
Helena Blavatsky (1831–1891) developed a program of salvation that she called “double evolution,”... more Helena Blavatsky (1831–1891) developed a program of salvation that she called “double evolution,” which was elaborated in a system known as root race theory. Human souls were seen as traversing through progressive reincarnation a series of seven “races,” or body types, ranging from gigantic amorphous and ethereal bodies and transitioning
through hermaphroditic into gigantic gendered ape-like humans, modern humans, and thereafter adepts and divine beings. Although root race theory drew from the scientific racism of its day, it did not equate root races with human races, but to stages of human emanation from and return to divinity. The sources of root race theory have been sought in Eastern contexts due to its use of Hindu and Buddhist terminology,
though scholars have noted its Western esoteric influences. This article argues that the primary structure of root race theory is based in the Corpus Hermeticum. It identifies some of Blavatsky’s Hermetic sources, showing that she referred not only generally to a perennialist “Hermetic philosophy” that incorporated Western esoteric tropes, but also to specific Hermetic texts. These texts provided the organizing matrix of root race theory, specifically its creation mythology, support for prior androgyne human existence, a “fall into matter,” and the initial ensoulment of humans with mind, or nous. It also provided a template for the future transformation of humans into divine beings. The article builds on the suggestions of Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke (2013) and Brendan French (2001) to elaborate on the role of Hermetic influence in Blavatsky’s reconfiguring of evolution as a novel form of salvation for an empirically-oriented nineteenth century audience.
New Religion
Evaluates the phenomenon of new religion from historical and sociological perspectives, using cas... more Evaluates the phenomenon of new religion from historical and sociological perspectives, using case studies of Scientology, Siddha Yoga, and Mormonism. Discusses why and how new religions form, the church-sect continuum, "cult" as a wounded word, the charismatic cycle, brainwashing and coercion, religious violence, and invented religions and the Internet. Includes film bibliography. An introductory-level chapter in "Religion: Sources, Perspectives, Methodologies," edited by Jeffrey Kripal, Macmillan 2015.
Esotericism Imagined: Major Ideas and Perspectives of Esotericists
An exploration of how esoteric ideas change over time through the transformation of conceptions o... more An exploration of how esoteric ideas change over time through the transformation of conceptions of the Pythagorean community and Rosicrucian order, both in established faith systems, as well as in Renaissance esotericism and the fiction of J.R.R. Tolkien and Michael Murphy. An introductory-level chapter in Secret Religion, a volume in Macmillan's new religion handbook series.
NEW religions, protean by nature, offer an opportunity to observe charisma in situations rare in ... more NEW religions, protean by nature, offer an opportunity to observe charisma in situations rare in established religions. Although most new religions have some connection to previous traditions, they serve as laboratories for development of religious authority. With Max Weber's sociological observations about charisma as a starting point, scholars have taken a multidisciplinary approach to developing working models of charisma and authority. Although some have argued that religious charisma and political charisma are fundamentally different, and that neither one is related to corporate leadership, most agree that there are similarities, and that insights from one field can inform another. Early work was driven by attempts to make sense of the twentieth century's disastrous experience of charismatic leadership in a political (but quasireligious) context, with Hitler and Mao, as well as a religious context (with political overtones), as in the 1978 Jonestown murder-suicides and the 1999 Awn Shinrikyo subway gas attacks (Bromley and Melton 2002). In the twenty-first century, the line between political and religious charisma has become further blurred by terrorist attacks widely seen as religiously inspired.
Opinion surveys and media representations demonstrate the unpopularity of the Church of Scientolo... more Opinion surveys and media representations demonstrate the unpopularity of the Church of Scientology and its members, which is out of proportion to the group’s size or influence. Members have been persecuted and shunned in the United States and Europe. Monster theory, a form of critical theory that proposes that our monsters describe and circumscribe us, is used as a framework to evaluate the irrational side of this unpopularity. Monster theory identifies hybridity and boundary-crossing as hallmarks of monstrosity. While not arguing that members of these groups are in fact monsters, it is proposed that both hallmarks are found in New Religions Movements (NRMs) in general, but in Scientology to a greater degree. Scientology transgresses not only the borders of established religion, but also science, medicine, and psychiatry, foundation of the modern legal system and the secular state. While actual legal transgressions by the group’s leadership are acknowledged, it is argued that these are largely in the past and that residual antipathy has more to do with the group’s perceived “monstrosity” than with actual acts.
Book Reviews by Erin Prophet
Book Chapters by Erin Prophet
Elizabeth Clare Prophet: Gender, Sexuality, and the Divine Feminine
In the fourth chapter of the 2017 volume Female Leaders in New Religious Movements, edited by Ing... more In the fourth chapter of the 2017 volume Female Leaders in New Religious Movements, edited by Inga Bårdsen Tøllefsen and Christian Giudice. (Palgrave Macmillan), the life and legacy of the controversial and influential new age leader Elizabeth Clare Prophet (1939-2009) are reviewed by her daughter Erin Prophet from the perspective of gender. A brief biographical sketch introduces Elizabeth Prophet’s major accomplishments, beginning with her early spiritual life and the influence of her husband and teacher, Mark Prophet, her past-life beliefs, and including the ‘shelter episode’ of 1989 to 1990, when followers built underground shelters in response to her predictions of nuclear war. Major topics include her exercise of power as a woman, assuming control of The Summit Lighthouse (later Church Universal and Triumphant) after Mark’s death, her theological innovations, particularly those related to the divine feminine, the liberation from original sin, gender in the relationship of soul and body, and the destiny of both men and women to symbolically give birth to the Christ. Her teachings on sexuality, including her use of Hindu terminology and metaphors of spiritual “energy” to restrict and guide sexual behavior and also to justify her anti-feminist stance, and the roots of her opposition to abortion and homosexuality are also explored. Allegations of sexual hypocrisy are also reviewed, along with four alternative approaches to evaluating sexual behavior of religious leaders.
"New Religion" in Religion: Sources, Perspectives, and Methodologies
Jeffrey J. Kripal, ed. Religion: Sources, Perspectives, and Methodologies. Part of the Macmillan ... more Jeffrey J. Kripal, ed. Religion: Sources, Perspectives, and Methodologies. Part of the Macmillan Interdisciplinary Handbooks: Religion series. Farmington Hills, MI: Macmillan Reference USA, 2016.
Comparing Religions: Coming to Terms
Prophet's Daughter: My Life with Elizabeth Clare Prophet Inside the Church Universal and Triumphant
In early 1990, in response to the apocalyptic prophecies of her mother, elizabeth Clare Prophet, ... more In early 1990, in response to the apocalyptic prophecies of her mother, elizabeth Clare Prophet, erin Prophet entered a network of underground bunkers in Montana along with members of her mother's Church Universal and Triumphant, a controversial new Age sect much of ...
Comparing Religions: Coming to Terms by Jeffrey Kripal
Elizabeth Clare Prophet: Gender, Sexuality, and the Divine Feminine
The life and legacy of the controversial and influential new age leader Elizabeth Clare Prophet (... more The life and legacy of the controversial and influential new age leader Elizabeth Clare Prophet (1939–2009) are reviewed by her daughter Erin Prophet from the perspective of gender. A brief biographical sketch introduces Prophet’s major accomplishments and the controversy that surrounded her, beginning with her early spiritual life and the influence of her husband and teacher, Mark Prophet, her past-life beliefs, and including the ‘shelter episode’ of 1989–1990, when followers built underground shelters in response to her predictions of nuclear war. Major topics include her exercise of power as a woman, assuming control of The Summit Lighthouse (later Church Universal and Triumphant) after Mark’s death, her theological innovations, particularly those related to the divine feminine, the liberation from original sin, gender in the relationship between soul and body, and the destiny of both men and women to symbolically give birth to the Christ. Her teachings on sexuality, including he...
Gnosis: Journal of Gnostic Studies, 2018
Helena Blavatsky (1831–1891) developed a program of salvation that she called “double evolution,”... more Helena Blavatsky (1831–1891) developed a program of salvation that she called “double evolution,” which was elaborated in a system known as root race theory. Human souls were seen as traversing through progressive reincarnation a series of seven “races,” or body types, ranging from gigantic amorphous and ethereal bodies and transitioning through hermaphroditic into gigantic gendered ape-like humans, modern humans, and thereafter adepts and divine beings. Although root race theory drew from the scientific racism of its day, it did not equate root races with human races, but to stages of human emanation from and return to divinity. The sources of root race theory have been sought in Eastern contexts due to its use of Hindu and Buddhist terminology, though scholars have noted its Western esoteric influences. This article argues that the primary structure of root race theory is based in the Corpus Hermeticum. It identifies some of Blavatsky’s Hermetic sources, showing that she referred ...
Religious Studies Review, 2015
This volume seeks "to remedy a scholarly lacuna by investigating the cultural products of new rel... more This volume seeks "to remedy a scholarly lacuna by investigating the cultural products of new religions," an area which has largely excluded new religious movements (NRMs) from analysis. The book is composed of twenty-nine chapters written by thirty-three contributors-a mixture of new and established scholars within their specific areas of expertise-organized into nine thematic parts, covering the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints (LDS), the Theosophical Society, Anthroposophy, the Gurdjieff currents, contemporary paganism, Afro-Caribbean NRMs, techniques and technologies in NRMs, universal NRMs, and Christian NRMs. The quality of the contributions is high, in keeping with the standard set by previous entries into this series. Standout chapters of particularly high quality
Evolution Esotericized: Conceptual Blending and the Emergence of Secular, Therapeutic Salvation b... more Evolution Esotericized: Conceptual Blending and the Emergence of Secular, Therapeutic Salvation by Erin Prophet The esoteric appropriation of evolution in the sense of self-improvement or personal transformation can be better understood by combining a historical approach with conceptual metaphor theory. The dissertation first evaluates the esoteric appropriation historically as a type of religious response to Darwin. It works backwards from the twentieth-century counterculture (as identified by Theodore Roszak in 1975), to show that esoteric “evolution” had its roots in the late nineteenth-century intersection of spiritualism, Theosophy, and psychical research, with particular emphasis on Hermetic traditions. The historical analysis centers on a fine-grained evaluation of the evolutionary thought of Helena Blavatsky, founder of the Theosophical Society, and a comparison of her system with that of Frederic W.H. Myers, an important contributor to both psychical research and early psyc...
Charisma in new religious movements
The ‘messenger’ as source of both stabilisation and revisionism in Church Universal and Triumphant and related groups
Radical Transformations in Minority Religions
Potential Influence on Clinical Trials of Long-term Survivors of Stage IV Non-small cell Lung Cancer
JNCI Cancer Spectrum, 2019
Abstract Background New, effective treatments have resulted in long-term survival for small subg... more Abstract
Background
New, effective treatments have resulted in long-term survival for small subgroups of metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients. However, knowledge of long-term survivor frequency and characteristics prior to modern therapies is lacking.
Methods
Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) patients with stage IV NSCLC diagnosed from 1991 to 2007 and followed through 2012 were dichotomized by survival time into the 10% who lived 21 months or longer (long-term survivors) vs the remaining 90% and compared with participants in a representative clinical trial of molecular profiling and targeted therapies (CUSTOM).
Results
Among the 44 387 SEER patients, the 10% identified as long-term survivors were distinguishable from the remaining 90% by younger age, female sex, Asian race, adenocarcinoma histology, tumor grade, tumor site, and surgery. From 1991–1994 to 2003–2007, median survival increased by 6 months from 30 to 36 months among long-term survivors but by only 1 month from 3 to 4 months among the remaining 90%. Among the 165 participants in the CUSTOM trial, 54% met our SEER criterion of long-term survival by living for 21 months or longer.
Conclusions
Among SEER patients with stage IV NSCLC, long-term survivors had a median survival approximately 10 times that of the remaining 90%. Long-term survivors accounted for more than one-half of the participants in a representative clinical trial. Caution is required when extrapolating the outcomes of participants in clinical trials to patients in routine clinical practice.
Hermetic Influences on the Evolutionary System of Helena Blavatsky's Theosophy
Helena Blavatsky (1831–1891) developed a program of salvation that she called “double evolution,”... more Helena Blavatsky (1831–1891) developed a program of salvation that she called “double evolution,” which was elaborated in a system known as root race theory. Human souls were seen as traversing through progressive reincarnation a series of seven “races,” or body types, ranging from gigantic amorphous and ethereal bodies and transitioning
through hermaphroditic into gigantic gendered ape-like humans, modern humans, and thereafter adepts and divine beings. Although root race theory drew from the scientific racism of its day, it did not equate root races with human races, but to stages of human emanation from and return to divinity. The sources of root race theory have been sought in Eastern contexts due to its use of Hindu and Buddhist terminology,
though scholars have noted its Western esoteric influences. This article argues that the primary structure of root race theory is based in the Corpus Hermeticum. It identifies some of Blavatsky’s Hermetic sources, showing that she referred not only generally to a perennialist “Hermetic philosophy” that incorporated Western esoteric tropes, but also to specific Hermetic texts. These texts provided the organizing matrix of root race theory, specifically its creation mythology, support for prior androgyne human existence, a “fall into matter,” and the initial ensoulment of humans with mind, or nous. It also provided a template for the future transformation of humans into divine beings. The article builds on the suggestions of Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke (2013) and Brendan French (2001) to elaborate on the role of Hermetic influence in Blavatsky’s reconfiguring of evolution as a novel form of salvation for an empirically-oriented nineteenth century audience.
New Religion
Evaluates the phenomenon of new religion from historical and sociological perspectives, using cas... more Evaluates the phenomenon of new religion from historical and sociological perspectives, using case studies of Scientology, Siddha Yoga, and Mormonism. Discusses why and how new religions form, the church-sect continuum, "cult" as a wounded word, the charismatic cycle, brainwashing and coercion, religious violence, and invented religions and the Internet. Includes film bibliography. An introductory-level chapter in "Religion: Sources, Perspectives, Methodologies," edited by Jeffrey Kripal, Macmillan 2015.
Esotericism Imagined: Major Ideas and Perspectives of Esotericists
An exploration of how esoteric ideas change over time through the transformation of conceptions o... more An exploration of how esoteric ideas change over time through the transformation of conceptions of the Pythagorean community and Rosicrucian order, both in established faith systems, as well as in Renaissance esotericism and the fiction of J.R.R. Tolkien and Michael Murphy. An introductory-level chapter in Secret Religion, a volume in Macmillan's new religion handbook series.
NEW religions, protean by nature, offer an opportunity to observe charisma in situations rare in ... more NEW religions, protean by nature, offer an opportunity to observe charisma in situations rare in established religions. Although most new religions have some connection to previous traditions, they serve as laboratories for development of religious authority. With Max Weber's sociological observations about charisma as a starting point, scholars have taken a multidisciplinary approach to developing working models of charisma and authority. Although some have argued that religious charisma and political charisma are fundamentally different, and that neither one is related to corporate leadership, most agree that there are similarities, and that insights from one field can inform another. Early work was driven by attempts to make sense of the twentieth century's disastrous experience of charismatic leadership in a political (but quasireligious) context, with Hitler and Mao, as well as a religious context (with political overtones), as in the 1978 Jonestown murder-suicides and the 1999 Awn Shinrikyo subway gas attacks (Bromley and Melton 2002). In the twenty-first century, the line between political and religious charisma has become further blurred by terrorist attacks widely seen as religiously inspired.
Opinion surveys and media representations demonstrate the unpopularity of the Church of Scientolo... more Opinion surveys and media representations demonstrate the unpopularity of the Church of Scientology and its members, which is out of proportion to the group’s size or influence. Members have been persecuted and shunned in the United States and Europe. Monster theory, a form of critical theory that proposes that our monsters describe and circumscribe us, is used as a framework to evaluate the irrational side of this unpopularity. Monster theory identifies hybridity and boundary-crossing as hallmarks of monstrosity. While not arguing that members of these groups are in fact monsters, it is proposed that both hallmarks are found in New Religions Movements (NRMs) in general, but in Scientology to a greater degree. Scientology transgresses not only the borders of established religion, but also science, medicine, and psychiatry, foundation of the modern legal system and the secular state. While actual legal transgressions by the group’s leadership are acknowledged, it is argued that these are largely in the past and that residual antipathy has more to do with the group’s perceived “monstrosity” than with actual acts.
Elizabeth Clare Prophet: Gender, Sexuality, and the Divine Feminine
In the fourth chapter of the 2017 volume Female Leaders in New Religious Movements, edited by Ing... more In the fourth chapter of the 2017 volume Female Leaders in New Religious Movements, edited by Inga Bårdsen Tøllefsen and Christian Giudice. (Palgrave Macmillan), the life and legacy of the controversial and influential new age leader Elizabeth Clare Prophet (1939-2009) are reviewed by her daughter Erin Prophet from the perspective of gender. A brief biographical sketch introduces Elizabeth Prophet’s major accomplishments, beginning with her early spiritual life and the influence of her husband and teacher, Mark Prophet, her past-life beliefs, and including the ‘shelter episode’ of 1989 to 1990, when followers built underground shelters in response to her predictions of nuclear war. Major topics include her exercise of power as a woman, assuming control of The Summit Lighthouse (later Church Universal and Triumphant) after Mark’s death, her theological innovations, particularly those related to the divine feminine, the liberation from original sin, gender in the relationship of soul and body, and the destiny of both men and women to symbolically give birth to the Christ. Her teachings on sexuality, including her use of Hindu terminology and metaphors of spiritual “energy” to restrict and guide sexual behavior and also to justify her anti-feminist stance, and the roots of her opposition to abortion and homosexuality are also explored. Allegations of sexual hypocrisy are also reviewed, along with four alternative approaches to evaluating sexual behavior of religious leaders.