Chris: All right, here we go.
Kayla: Are you recording?
Chris: We are recording.
Kayla: Where are we going, Chris? Where are we currently?
Chris: On the way to the source family. We're going to. We're headed to the source.
Kayla: We are going to the philosophical Research Society.
Chris: Wait, what?
Kayla: Or the university for Philosophical Research, which is.
Chris: Oh, is that weirdo thing you found the other day that has like, a bunch of different weirdo stuff?
Kayla: It is an occultist reference library in the lovely city of Los Angeles. And tonight they are hosting a screening of the documentary the Source family.
Chris: And we're going there because this is season five, and we decided that we're going to go places in season five. We're going to actually go to cults and experience all their culty goodness.
Kayla: There's going to be a lot of people who were members of this group there. They're going to be talking about the movie that they made. There's going to be book signing. There's going to be rituals. Apparently, there's going to be q and a. There's going to be a reception. So it's going to be opportunity for us to, like, mingle with folks who were actually a part of this thing back in the seventies. And, you know, hopefully we'll come away with some insight that we can then bring to you in the rest of the podcast.
Chris: I'm most excited for the rituals.
Kayla: I don't know how the hell I'm going to turn left here. What the hell?
Chris: Are we live?
Kayla: I just hit record on the recorder.
Chris: Are we. Fuck it, we're doing it live.
Kayla: Fuck it. We'll do it live.
Chris: Okay. This isn't live, though, because this is being recorded several days in advance.
Kayla: Well, we're live, you and I, currently.
Chris: Everything is. Everything that's currently happening is live. That doesn't mean that it's a live show. We're good at this. I'm excited to be back.
Kayla: I am so excited to be back. I will say, oh, man, it's hard to get back into the swing of things. I'm trying to write the script for this one and I was like, oh, my God, how do we do this? But now that we're sitting here in front of our microphones, I'm so happy to be back.
Chris: And I'm just back, baby.
Kayla: Before we get into anything, I just want to say so many of you reached out during our between seasons hiatus just to let us know that you were eagerly waiting the podcast return. And that was really nice. I really nice. Thank you so much.
Chris: What is wrong with you?
Kayla: I don't know. I don't know what's wrong with you, but I really.
Chris: I don't even like spending time with myself, so I don't know what you guys problem is, but thank you. And it's season five, cinco de season.
Kayla: Oh, how have we done so many?
Chris: That's a lot of. I don't know. It's a lot of seasons we've been doing it. That means it's our fifth year doing this. The world was a different place five years ago.
Kayla: The world was a different place five years ago. I was a different person five years ago.
Chris: We were all different people. I'm a tulpa of myself, truly, from five years ago.
Kayla: And the way I view groups, I would call cults now. Oh, my God. So different.
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: Like, just light years of difference.
Chris: I forget who I was talking to the other day. I think it was my, like, ultra nerd board game group that I play with. But, like, I think one of maybe my favorite part of doing this podcast is how much we've learned. Like, we've learned just scads.
Kayla: Scads.
Chris: Scads of information while doing this podcast. That part's been really rewarding and fun.
Kayla: This podcast, by the way, is called Cult or just weird.
Chris: It is.
Kayla: I'm Kayla.
Chris: I really feel like at this point, it's really just. Everything's just weird.
Kayla: It's all weird.
Chris: The podcast is just weirds that sometimes people call cults. And I'm Chris.
Kayla: Usually we give a little background on who we are. We should probably do it. Cause season five, I don't know. Maybe we have new listeners. Who knows? Like I said, I'm Kayla. I'm a television writer, an Internet addict.
Chris: I'm Chris, and I have been doing personal projects for a while, but before that, I was a data scientist and game designer. But, like, now I'm more of, like, an artist, I guess. What am I now?
Kayla: You're mister Art man.
Chris: How do I say something that doesn't make it sound like I'm an unemployed slob?
Kayla: You're a game designer and creative producer.
Chris: That's true. And actually, we are built. Well, this is okay. I don't want to pimp our other projects on here, but I am doing those things. I am making a game on the side.
Kayla: But we're here to talk about cults, right? And weirds. And as you may have heard from our intro, we've got a different thing. A little bit of a different than going this season. What do you want to say about that?
Chris: So, ever since the. Well, I guess since last season, maybe the end of season three, we've kind of been on this kick of, like, maybe our seasons should have a theme. I guess when you go long enough, it's like, man, we got to differentiate each season somehow. So last season, it was, look for the helpers, like, try to focus more on people doing good things and, you know, ways and techniques. We covered media literacy and ways to combat online disinformation. We brought people on to talk about self care. We even talked about suicidality in one of our episodes. So we. We tried to focus last season's theme on that. And then this season's theme is experiential. So this season's theme is we're gonna go do the thing kind of in.
Kayla: The same vein as, like, you know, going to the Etherea society or going to the self realization fellowship. We want to do more of those kinds of hands on, primary source topics that we have plentiful access to. We live in Los Angeles, which is.
Chris: Just, like, ground zero for this.
Kayla: Yeah. Cult hotbed. And, you know, we have access to these things. So why not go experience them for you, our listeners at home, and let you know what we think?
Chris: Yeah, it's kind of funny because I feel like at the end of season three, we had some stuff that was hinting at our theme for season four.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: And then at the end of season four, we had some stuff, ethereus specifically, I'm thinking of that hinted at what we're doing for season five. So. And then, like, a way to think of it, too, is if anybody's a fan of the Ono Ross and Carrie podcast, that's kind of what they do. Like, they pick a topic and then they go do the thing, and then.
Kayla: They talk about it, and they're wildly successful. So we're copying them.
Chris: Right, exactly. And I have a sub theme for the season where I'm going to try not to, like, mouth breathe into the microphone as much because I feel like there's a lot of. Just, like, when you're talking, you do.
Kayla: Kind of be with some butt heads.
Chris: Yeah, I don't think that I do it. And then I listen to the edit, and I'm like, oh, my God.
Kayla: The thing is, I will tell you this as an outside observer. It's not mouth breathing.
Chris: What is it?
Kayla: That's your nose breathing, man.
Chris: So I'm a nose breather somehow you're a nose breather. I don't know if that's better.
Kayla: I don't know either.
Chris: Oh, well. But, yeah, that's our theme for this season, we have another change. We are also changing the format this season. So all four previous seasons, we have done 20 episodes. We have done one episode every two weeks from April to December. We're still going to be doing April to December, but it's going to be ten episodes instead of 20, and we'll be doing it every four weeks instead of every two weeks. So the hope here is that this allows us to spend more time on individual episodes and make better content, and it's also better for our sanity. But we wouldn't do it if we didn't think it would also drive a quality improvement. Plus, there's, like, a glut of content out there that we don't want to, like, abuse. You guys. I know we've talked about this, like, since the beginning.
Kayla: I did a six hour episode on Cicada 3301 or however long it was.
Chris: Yeah. I did a three hour episode on Anti Vaxx, and then two weeks later, it was, like, another, like, two hour episode. And I think about, like, one of my favorite podcasters is Dan Carlin, and he has super long episodes. Right. He has, like, 15 hours long or whatever episodes.
Kayla: We won't do that.
Chris: But he only releases an episode, like, once every six months. When we're doing multiple hour episodes, and it's every two weeks, it kind of feels like that's a bit much. And we know you guys have other things to do, like watch streaming content. So that's the main thing. It's about the glut of content.
Kayla: It's mostly about the glut of content, actually, I do think it is mostly about. We want to make sure if we're going to these places and we're able to have that kind of access. This new format, this new schedule will hopefully allow us to where it's appropriate, develop relationships with the people that we're going to visit, talk to them in person, maybe have those kinds of interviews on the show. Not trying to predict what future episodes are going to be like, but having more time to spend on each individual episode will allow us to go deeper into each topic.
Chris: Exactly. So those are our two big ch ch changes. Kayla?
Kayla: Yes.
Chris: Do you have any, like, business or off season rants that you want to talk about or anything? I have a few rants. I have some ranting and raving. Do you want to rave?
Kayla: The Waco documentary on Netflix is not worth watching.
Chris: Oh, really? I thought one of my rants was to talk to you about that exact documentary.
Kayla: I don't think that was a nice thing for me to say. Of course it's worth watching. It just. I have this problem with cult related content. We run into this problem as well in our making our own episodes. It's a hard thing to do. I want cult related content to talk about the actual system of belief, and it's hard to do. But, like, that wasn't in the Waco documentary. I wanted that in the Waco documentary. Tell me what the hell they're actually believing. It's interesting. It's cool. It's interesting. It's interesting. I don't know. I tried to do that with this episode. So we'll see how it goes.
Chris: Well, what was interesting to you about that documentary? Like, we had a discussion earlier today about, like, jesus versus David. Correct. Because he said he was the second coming of Jesus.
Kayla: He did say this, right?
Chris: Yeah, we talked about that. Like one of the.
Kayla: Are you talking about the thing that I said where it's like, if Jesus actually. So, okay. One of the fundamental tenets of Christianity is that Jesus will return.
Chris: Right?
Kayla: He said that. He was like, I'm coming back. And since that time, there have been multiple. Multiples, not even the right word. Many, many, many people who have said, yep, that's me. I am Jesus. Come back. I'm the messiah. Let's go.
Chris: Yeah. They sort of left the door open for that kind of thing.
Kayla: Yeah, they did. Which, I don't know, is it a feature or is it a bug? I don't know. And base. You know, most times. A lot of times, I'm sure these people are ignored, but a lot of times, the person who claims to be Jesus is dealt with violently by society.
Chris: Right.
Kayla: They're either discredited or people don't go.
Chris: Like, oh, shit, it is.
Kayla: Yeah. Like, David Koresh was raided by ATF and, you know, 51 day standoff that resulted in the building getting burnt down with him and his followers inside. They died. Spoiler alert for Waco.
Chris: Yeah, in case you guys didn't remember.
Kayla: I don't think David Krush, Washington. Jesus come back personally.
Chris: What?
Kayla: But I was saying this while you and I were watching it. Like, if and when Jesus returns, we're going to kill him.
Chris: How do we know we haven't already?
Kayla: How do we know we haven't already? I mean, we did it the first time.
Chris: Actually, you know what? Now that we're talking through it again, like, we also killed him the first time. So, I mean, that wouldn't be, I don't know.
Kayla: Presumably he wouldn't be killable. The second time, because he's like, was.
Chris: He like he's got superpowers or whatever?
Kayla: Well, he's not. I'm assuming he would not be coming back as human Jesus. He'd be coming back as God Jesus.
Chris: Isn't he human?
Kayla: I don't know. I need a theologian.
Chris: This is not a religion podcast. I would say the official position of this podcast is more along the atheist line. So we don't actually think Jesus is coming back. But if he, for a large swath of society, the real belief is the actual belief is that he's coming back. And it's just weird. That doesn't seem like there's ever a case. What would it take for society at large to actually believe that?
Kayla: That's to go, this is him? It just seems like cults spring up around the people who say that they're Jesus and then it either dies out or that's dealt with violently. And yeah, it'd be really. I don't know what it would take for.
Chris: What's funny is I don't know what it would take. This brings up something that I've been thinking about a little more lately, which is it's about like, how can we agree with each other on the truth? Actually, I guess that's not lately, that's like what we talk about on the show all the time, like, what is true, how do we agree with each other? But the context in which I was thinking of it is about science. And we usually refer to science, scientific method as a means to discovering truths. But I actually think that it's not a means to discovering truths. I think that there are actually many means to discovering truths. You can intuitively arrive at a truth. You can arrive at truths via reading or listening to somebody else. You don't actually have to do the science yourself.
Chris: But what science is a means to agreeing on truths. It's not a means of discovering, it's a means of agreeing. Right? There's lots of things out there that are true. You may claim something that's true, and then I say, well, why should I believe you? And you say, because I did these experiments that have been independently verified. Here's the evidence. That's a reason for me to agree with you about a truth. It's less important to me. I think the less important part is that maybe you discovered something. The more important part, at least when we're talking about, like, scientific method, not necessarily like exploration, but scientific method, the more important thing is that it gives me a reason to believe. It's true. So the reason that made me think of that is, again, hundreds, maybe thousands of people have claimed to be Jesus, right?
Chris: And we sit here and go like, well, maybe one of them was, I don't know. How do we know?
Kayla: How do we know?
Chris: And we kind of come back to that point of like, just making that claim and saying, well, there was going to be a second coming. And trust me, it's me. Because I said so. That's legitimately why the rest of us don't say, oh, shit, it is. It is Jesus. Like, there's some underlying, even for, like, theists, even for like, non materialist, like, you know, quote unquote anti science. Like, theists, there's still this underlying, like, prove it. And I think that is kind of like where the rubber meets the road with these guys is like, they can't. They generally can't. Not generally. They have not been able to prove that they are Jesus. And I don't know what would consequence.
Kayla: You gotta turn that water into wine.
Chris: Yeah, I think maybe some miracles or something. I don't know. But it just made me think about that. Like, science is not a means to discovering truths. It's a means to agreeing on truths between each other.
Kayla: You should write that in a book.
Chris: I'm so. That was just a smart thing.
Kayla: We should get a book deal.
Chris: Ooh, yeah, we should.
Kayla: People need more of our thoughts.
Chris: I should buy a boat.
Kayla: I should buy a book. Good point. Great point. How can you use that to segue us into our topic for today?
Chris: I don't even own a segue.
Kayla: I wish I did.
Chris: Oh, I don't know. You're putting me on the spot.
Kayla: Well, well, we're talking about a group.
Chris: As you heard in our little, as you heard in the cold open. We are talking about the source family today. And the leader, the charismatic leader involved in said source family. One father. Yod.
Kayla: Yod.
Chris: Yod. I keep saying Yod. I keep getting, actually, I kept saying Father Zod.
Kayla: You did keep saying Father Zod.
Chris: I kept confusing him with General Zod from Superman. But anyway, I think that. So he had a period where there was some, like, it wasn't. He wasn't saying he was Jesus, but there was some. Oh, he said he was Jesus. He said, this is where your research comes in.
Kayla: He said, we're all Jesus.
Chris: Oh, man, that's a cop out. There was some claim of divinity that I doubt he was able to prove in a scientifically sound manner. That's my segue and I'm sticking to it.
Kayla: Love it. So how do we want to structure this? Do we want to kind of give just a brief explanation for the event that went to, or do we want to just dive right into what this group was?
Chris: Well, let's. I think let's just dive into the group. Let's talk about the research that you did, and then after that, we will talk about the thing that went to.
Kayla: I'm very excited.
Chris: It's the one two punch of research and experience.
Kayla: We're good at that.
Chris: Kick ass.
Kayla: I'm really excited to talk about this group because it is such a. It's such a template or like a prototype or like a platonic ideal of what mainstream society pictures when faced with the word cult. Like, this is the kind of thing that we're thinking about. We're thinking about a group with a leader, and they're all walking around with hippie hair and white robes and preaching about free love and having belief in aliens and weird spiritual shit. Right?
Chris: New age mysticism, vegan joints in LA.
Kayla: That's exactly what we're talking about today. The source family sprang up in the 1970s in Los Angeles, had a bearded leader. The members were all beautiful flower children, types with flowing robes, extensive meditators, health food advocates believed in the dawning of the age of Aquarius. They were basically the musical hair personified cult hair, and they had some far out beliefs and practices. And their timeline is brief but wild. Again, this is what we're thinking of when we think of classic cults. Let's get into it, starting at the beginning. James Edward Baker was born on July 4, 1922, in Cincinnati, Ohio. 40 years later, he would be known as Father Yode by his 140 followers at his wildly successful restaurant, the source, on the sunset Strip in West Hollywood. So how the fuck did he get there?
Chris: I think that he came from Krypton. Oh, wait, sorry. I keep confusing with Zod.
Kayla: Zod.
Chris: Sorry. Yeah.
Kayla: According to Baker and his followers, as a child, he was awarded the title of, quote, world's strongest boy.
Chris: Wait, hold on. Is that a real title?
Kayla: I have no idea what that means. I could not really find anything on it. There might be some old newspaper articles about it, but again, I don't know who's awarding world's strongest boy? I don't know how they're measuring that. Yeah.
Chris: Can I just tell you that just sends my bullshit detector way into the red.
Kayla: World's strongest boy. Also an accomplished archer, which I think is true. He was an expert in jiu jitsu and eventually had to register his hands as lethal weapons. Again, there are newspaper articles about this. I cannot speak to the veracity of them, but there's literally newspaper articles of, like, this guy judo chops people to death. Stay away.
Chris: Oh, man. It's like Austin Powers.
Kayla: Oh, he did say judo chop, didn't he?
Chris: Yeah, he says judo chop, and then he does a really deadly judo chop.
Kayla: That might have been, like, not unrelated to this, maybe.
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: Jim Baker. This is also not Jim Baker, the televangelist. This is a different Jim Baker.
Chris: I was very briefly confused about that when were at the same compound. Same.
Kayla: He served in the Marine Corps in World War two and claimed to have been awarded the Silver Star, which is the third highest military decoration for valor in combat. However, I don't think the corps actually has a record of this. So take that as you will. After serving in the military, he turned to a life of crime and began robbing banks.
Chris: Ooh, robbing vets.
Kayla: He was a robber and, like, got rich off of this?
Chris: Hell, yeah.
Kayla: But he also got in trouble, and with his lethal weapon hands, he actually did kill two men on two separate occasions that were occasions of self defense. I will note that the second of these occasions was a combination of judochop and bullet to the head.
Chris: Okay, okay, hold on. I think the cause of death there is clear.
Kayla: Judo chop was what you're saying.
Chris: Yeah, obviously. So these guys, you said self defense.
Kayla: These were occasions of self defense or.
Chris: Like, air quote self defense. Like, did they have it come? Like, how much should I hate him for killing people?
Kayla: I think that I can't answer that question for you. He did serve jail time for the second murder or the second killing. I won't say murder. So he spent time in prison for it. So he served as debt to society in that way.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: He was legally married four times and eventually moved to Los Angeles with hopes of becoming a stuntman. I think he would have killed it.
Chris: Yeah, that sounds like what he was actually meant for.
Kayla: Instead, he opened two instantly popular restaurants in weho.
Chris: That's very related to stunt work.
Kayla: You know, it was the sixties, man. It was a weird time. The two restaurants were called the Aware Inn and the old world, and they were frequented by celebrities and featured healthy, natural foods. Like, this was a passion of Baker's. He had relationships or supposedly had personal relationships with people like Paul Bragg, who you might know from Bragg's foods. I don't know.
Chris: No.
Kayla: Paul Bragg is, like, a big name in the natural foods movement. He has, like, the apple cider vinegar we have in our fridge is Bragg's amino acids. Amino. We could do an entire episode on Paul Bragg. He is also a charlatan, and like, said, you should be.
Chris: What we have is vinegar.
Kayla: Whatever. We have his vinegar. Anyway, he was a big health food guru, charlatan. Maybe had a relationship with. With Jim Baker. So this guy was also into the healthy food kind of movement that was springing up at the time.
Chris: So is the thought that he was kind of, like, riding that wave of health food popularity? Like, is that why his voice was.
Kayla: I think he was more popular? He was an early buy in to this. It wasn't mainstream popular at the time. He was cutting edge of introducing it.
Chris: To, like, right as that wave was starting to swell.
Kayla: Yeah, he was. He was surfing. Soon one of his divorces led him on a spiritual journey, and he eventually became a student of someone named Manly P. Hall. Remember that name. It will come back.
Chris: Ooh, I will remember it.
Kayla: Manly P. Hall was a prolific esoteric philosopher and writer, and he also became a student of someone named Yogi Bhajan, who was a prominent Sikh spiritual leader who really focused on KUndalini yoga teachings. We've talked about KUndaliNi yoga before. It's an ethereus. It's in self realization fellowship. You might smell a pattern.
Chris: Now, just to be clear, that's the meditative kind of yoga versus the stretchy kind of yoga.
Kayla: And I have a very lay understanding of Kundalini yoga, but it is about the idea that there is a type of energy that rests the bottom of your spine called kundalini. And Kundalini Yoga is about using meditative practices to bring that energy up your spine, essentially up through your chakras. And the higher you can get your Kundalini, the more enlightened you are. So if you remember, with etherea society, George King was supposedly able to get his kundalini up into his crown chakra lightning fast, naturally.
Chris: Yeah, I call that the bottom of my spine. I call it my butt energy.
Kayla: His butt energy. Side note, Yogi Bhajan was wildly popular with american hippies at the time due to his teachings on vegetarianism, keeping your hair long, contributing to world peace through meditation and belief in the coming aquarian age. And he would posthumously be accused of sexual abuse by hundreds of his female followers.
Chris: Okay, so just like the usual suite of things.
Kayla: And again, that's Yogi Bajan, not Jim Baker. At this time, Jim Baker also got really into LSD and speed.
Chris: Ooh, that's a combo.
Kayla: It is a combo. I think it probably had a hand in him losing the old world restaurant. He lost it as part of one of his divorce settlements. And so he opened a new restaurant. And this is when he opened the source on Sunset Boulevard, the hippest of all his endeavors so far. The natural foods vibes from his other restaurants. Like, they turned it up to eleven here, okay? And patrons ranged from, like, Marlon Brando to John Lennon to Julie Christie. Like, celebrities instantly. Like, the who's who of hip Hollywood was like, yeah, this is our restaurant. Let's go here.
Chris: And again, just so I'm clear, like, the celebrities flocked here. Why? Because it became instantly popular. Because he was on this bleeding.
Kayla: There were no other restaurants like this. Health food restaurants were not really a thing at the time. Like, now, especially in Los Angeles, every other fucking restaurant is like, come eat our salads. Cafe gratitude. I am blah, blah. At the time, this wasn't really a thing. Yeah, Cafe gratitude definitely has some DNA of the. Yet another relationship ended for him. And he had, like, an epic midlife crisis from which the source family was born. So he has this midlife crisis. He's had these teachings from a western, esoteric master. He's had these teachings from an eastern, esoteric master. He kind of brought all of his experiences together. He had these crazy experiences of robbing banks and killing men. Brought everything together. And created his own spiritual belief system.
Chris: Based around bank robbery.
Kayla: Based solely around bank robbery, which he shared with others. And created his own, quote, unquote, spiritual family. The source family.
Chris: It wasn't based on bank robbery.
Kayla: It was not based on bank robbery. It was based out of this restaurant, essentially. The restaurant and the group were essentially synonymous for most of its life. Like other spiritual gurus of the time, Baker's teachings consciously melded western esotericism with eastern spirituality. He was specifically influenced by a theosophist writer from the victorian era named Mabel Collins, who he studied this writer under, Manley P. Hall, who we mentioned up top. Mabel contributed greatly to Madame Blavatsky's body of work. So, like, we've talked.
Chris: Oh, I know that name.
Kayla: We've never done an episode on her, but we've talked about Madame Blavatsky, basically the mother of modern theosophy. That's as much as we'll get into theosophy.
Chris: We talked about this in the aetherius episode, right? Theosophy is like new age. It's like proto new age.
Kayla: Yeah. It's the basis of all new age thought, specifically in America. But Mabel Collins was this specific writer who he studied, and she was known to the source family as their spiritual grandmother. I think I say this later when I say it here. Father Yod said that he had, in a past life, he had an intimate relationship with a version of Mabel columns, one of her past lives as well. So this is why he had such a connection to her. Mm.
Chris: That's a good sort of appeal to authority there. I like that.
Kayla: I also want to describe how Jim Baker looked at this time and how he kind of looked as he cultivated this group. He was very tall. I forget how tall exactly, but I think, like, between six foot and six'three. So tall. He was a tall man.
Chris: Nobody's gonna get that. Nobody's gonna get. He was. I almost said it.
Kayla: He was a tall man. And if anybody knows what that's from, email us cultorjustweird@gmail.com, and we'll give you something. We'll give you.
Chris: Yeah, you get a prize for sure.
Kayla: He had a big, bushy beard. He had big, long hair. He had piercing eyes. He wore, like, white suits and eventually would graduate to, like, robes. He would, like, wrap his hair up sometimes. Like, he looked like a cult leader. Yeah, he looked like a big Jesus guy.
Chris: He's a striking figure. We will definitely be putting photos of him on our instagram.
Kayla: It really wasn't difficult for Baker to begin building his spiritual following. Like, he had this business with an audience already built in. So this is when he began calling himself father Yode, and he started to host meditations and classes.
Chris: Where did Yod come from?
Kayla: I don't know. Hold that thought. I kind of know.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: So he starts holding these meditation classes, basically free to the public anybody could attend. And these classes are where father Yod began sharing his specific brand of teachings and where he cultivated this spiritual family. The folks who began following Yod's teachings cultivated the people who began following his teachings also began working at the restaurant. And these were often young men and women of the hippie persuasion. Not everybody, but most people were young. Like, the women were working as servers, the men were working as cooks. And a lot of the media at the time and even today, talk about this group by describing them as attractive or beautiful. They're really focused on how these people looked and presented. My God, they were just so gorgeous.
Chris: Because they all had long hair.
Kayla: It's because they all had long hair. They were deeply hip. They had long, uncut hair. There wasn't a lot of makeup. It was very like, oh, we're such natural beauties. They wore flowing dresses, flowing robes, and this kind of forward, this kind of like, front facing presentation of, like, look how hot and cool we are. That attracted even more.
Chris: Yeah, I was gonna say that I'm.
Kayla: Like, patronage to these.
Chris: Like, do you want to join us? I'd be like, shit.
Kayla: Oh, I don't even mean join the cult or join the group. Obviously that did, but brought people to the restaurant.
Chris: To the restaurant as well, which brought.
Kayla: People into the group.
Chris: Kind of like a hooters, but instead.
Kayla: Of the hippie hooters.
Chris: Okay, so before you said, like, the source family and the source restaurant are kind of inextricable. And it sounds like the reason for the. For you saying that is that a lot of the people working there were students of his.
Kayla: Correct.
Chris: And now, did they all. Did they all live together?
Kayla: We'll get to that.
Chris: I see.
Kayla: Almost immediately.
Chris: Right.
Kayla: Right now, I just want to say before we get to that, it's noted in a lot of places. I did not verify this number, but it is repeated over and over, not just by the group, that at the height of its popularity, the restaurant brought in about $10,000 a day.
Chris: A day. It was very $10,000 1970 money.
Kayla: I don't know if it's $10,000 1970 money or $10,000 adjusted for inflation, shysa or whatever that means. What am I saying?
Chris: I don't know.
Kayla: I don't know if it's $10,000 today dollars or seventies dollars. If you don't feel comfortable about accepting a number that's just randomly pulled out of the air, just know that this was a very popular restaurant to the point that lucrative father Yode became very wealthy and needed a place to house his growing FACA followers. So he reached out to his old teacher, manly P. Hall, put him in touch with a real estate agent, and that led him to be able to purchase a literal mansion. He purchased something that's called the Chandler Mansion, which is in Los Feliz in Los Angeles. And this is a 24 room estate with, like, a pool and, like, stuff.
Chris: I wish that I was so wealthy that I could, like, collect human beings and, like, buy them a house and stick them there.
Kayla: And this is, like. It looked beautiful. It was, like, built in the 1910s, and it was owned by Harry Chandler. I think it was built by Harry Chandler, who was, like, a former owner of the Los Angeles Times. Like, it was a. Oh, so it.
Chris: Was like a famous house, kind of, yeah.
Kayla: And it's still around. I think it might be for sale right now. I don't know.
Chris: Ooh, let's get it.
Kayla: Manly p. Hall. Also culture.
Chris: Just weird, man.
Kayla: Oh, my God. If you want to come live with us in a mansion, I'll pool our dollars. This is how we're gonna make our cult. Manly P. Hall also gave names to father Yode of individuals, like, who might be good additions to the family because.
Chris: So they were like, back and forth for a while.
Kayla: Manly P. Hall. Should I spoil it?
Chris: No.
Kayla: Okay, I won't spoil it. Manly P. Hall was a very extensive, prolific teacher as well. So he had a lot of followers. And he knew, like, oh, you'd be interested in this thing. So he was able to funnel people over there.
Chris: I see.
Kayla: According to the source family, there were other living areas for father Yode, his current wife Robin, and their followers. And this included there was a living space above the source restaurant. It was like they converted the attic into a living space, the source loft. There was like a pyramid teepee that was in the backyard of the source family. I think there's a certain point there was, like, people living in vans outside, and eventually they were also able to purchase a second house for the group. So the Chandler mansion was known as the mother house, and then the second house they bought was known as the father house.
Chris: I see. And the vans, I assume, were vw because they were all flower children.
Kayla: In my heart, they were okay. As father Yod continued to amass followers and thus new workers at his restaurant, the family grew to about 100, 4150 people.
Chris: Actually, can I ask you a question?
Kayla: Yes.
Chris: When you say workers and followers, were they paid for their labor?
Kayla: That's a very good question. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. My speculation would be that considering these folks thought of themselves as a very close knit family, a community, a communal living together group, I'm assuming the money that was made all went into a.
Chris: Shared pot side eye.
Kayla: One thing that is that I do know about the group is that whether or not at the restaurant, Father yeoh did encourage, particularly the men who he called his sons suns to work.
Chris: That's cute.
Kayla: To work elsewhere.
Chris: Oh, really?
Kayla: Working was a big part of being in this group. Like, you kind of had to have a job. And I don't get the sense that it was like, you men are having job to give me money. It was part of the teachings of, like, being productive and, like, contributing productive.
Chris: This is starting to sound really normy. I don't care for it.
Kayla: We'll get into it. So I don't know. I think that people probably had to have access to some of their own funds, just given that, like, people were buying musical instruments and had to clothe themselves and things like that. But it also probably went into communal pots as well. Like, these guys were literally. They had a commune, right?
Chris: Yeah. Okay. I guess a little bit blurry there, but I was just wondering if it was. I was just hoping it could also.
Kayla: Be a cult situation where he's taking all their money. I don't know.
Chris: Yeah, I almost feel like for, like, weirdly, it feels more okay if he pays them at the restaurant for the job that they do at the restaurant, and then separately he takes all their money as their cult leader. That almost feels like okay to me.
Kayla: It's not okay.
Chris: But, like, compared to the situation of, like, what I'm wondering is it. Was it like they had to basically be, like, working for free at the restaurant? Like, that would be.
Kayla: It would be working for room and board, which I don't think is necessarily good or. Right. I think that what you're getting at is that it can be complicated or problematic if your spiritual leader is also your employer.
Chris: Yeah, actually, I didn't realize that's what I was getting at, but it totally is.
Kayla: We don't know the details of that, but, you know, keep that in mind as we discuss. So, like I said, during this time, the group grew to be about 100 and 4150 people, all living in the same house. And granted, it's a 24 room estate still, though, 24. But this was, like a functioning family of 140 people.
Chris: That's like more than five people per room. And I'm assuming some of those are, like, kitchen and living room, not like all bedrooms, I guess.
Kayla: I don't know. A lot of folks who were in this group look back on these times fondly.
Chris: Well, to be fair, like, dorm living is pretty crowded, and I look back on that pretty fondly. So, yeah.
Kayla: The group continued to hold meditation classes for the public to join and also had other services, such as, like astrology readings and tarot and things like that. They would form a number of psychedelic jam bands with members playing instruments while father Yoj sang. And all of the music was performed spontaneously. All of the singing was performed spontaneously.
Chris: Ooh, is that what the shrooms and speed were for?
Kayla: They did not take drugs in this group, except for one thing.
Chris: Weed.
Kayla: Weed. But it was called the Sacred Herb, and it was not abused. It was used very specifically. We're gonna, I think, get into some specific beliefs, but from what I remember, it was like you would take, essentially a ritualized drag toque of the weed part of your morning routine or whatever.
Chris: It was ritualized where, like, the ritualized.
Kayla: Waken bay, father yode lit it for you, or another person lit it for you, and you would have one inhale. And that was your intake of the sacred herb. It wasn't like, oh, we're on drugs all the time. You weren't on. One of the tenants of this group was like, no drugs, no drinking.
Chris: Again, very normie.
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: But I guess the weed, I don't know.
Kayla: And it was like 1970s weed, too. So, like, was it even good? I don't know.
Chris: Barely weed.
Kayla: The most well known iteration of the family's band is called the Yahuwah 13, and Yahuwah was the family's name for God. Kind of sounds like Yahweh.
Chris: Sounds like Yahweh, yeah.
Kayla: This band performed around Los Angeles. They put out some of their own albums, and, like, those are collectors items for vinyl enthusiasts today. With this and other endeavors, the family maintained its connections to Hollywood and the entertainment industry. So Yode kept up his friendships with Marlon Brando, with Steve McQueen, Jack Lalanne, if you remember him. He was like the. He was like a bodybuilder, right? He was like a health food, healthy living guy. Familiar Paul Bragg we talked about.
Chris: I have heard of the other guys, though.
Kayla: Yeah. The graphic designers who worked on the flyers the group used to advertise its meditation classes were a couple who designed albums for artists like Neil diamond. They used a gong during their meditations that had been used on the Doctor Zhivago soundtrack.
Chris: Wow. I thought you were gonna say it was from the gong show, not from the gong. Was the gong show sixties or seventies?
Kayla: No idea. Not sure.
Chris: I feel like we should have interviewed our parents again for this one.
Kayla: Yeah. The second of their houses, the father house, would eventually be sold to the band Abba. What? Yeah.
Chris: You didn't tell me that.
Kayla: According to the group, they were like, oh, yeah, that house got sold to Abba and P's. Abba, in some middle eastern language means father, so it's all connected.
Chris: And also, they kind of dressed like the cult members.
Kayla: They kind of did. One of the members of Yahuwah 13 had previously been known as Sky Saxon of the semi well known band the Seeds. And the restaurant continued bringing in crowds that wanted to see and be seen. It was seen scenei am very sad.
Chris: That I lived at a time when I did not get to go to the source restaurant. Cause it sounds awesome.
Kayla: I know.
Chris: The whole time I'm just like, God damn it. Is this still around? It's not still around. Is it? Damn.
Kayla: No, the source is, I was just looking at it on Google maps to the gas station. Now, it might be a coffee bean. I could be wrong. I could be wrong. It's either a coffee bean or it's, like, a mexican restaurant called Cabo Cantina. I'm not sure.
Chris: Okay. Not quite as funny as if it was like an exxonMobil, but still pretty funny.
Kayla: I think it might be a coffee bean.
Chris: I mean, the thing is, though, like, even if it were still there, like, you couldn't.
Kayla: It's not gonna be the same vibe. Yeah, it's not gonna be the same vibe.
Chris: You, like, order on an app and everything. Oh, God.
Kayla: So that's the restaurant. That's how this group came to be. But what about the actual beliefs of the group? We talked about the sacred herb. We talked about some of the stuff. But what exactly was father yod teaching his followers that kept them so enamored that they left their regular lives? These people were leaving their lives behind to become 24 7365 a day, part of this spiritual family where they all lived together. Every single day was like being with father, being with each other, doing the spiritual stuff, working in the restaurant, very different from what standard regular life was at the time.
Chris: That's pretty intense. I don't know if I could handle having 150 other friends. I don't know.
Kayla: I can't even handle the amount of friends that I do have, and I love them all.
Chris: Well, I mean, what about our parasocial friends? Cause if that's the case, we have thousands.
Kayla: That's true. Hey, friends.
Chris: Hey, everyone.
Kayla: Some knowledge. Some knowledge of the beliefs of the source family was shared with the public at their open meditation classes, as well as in a documentary that was made about the group and a book that was published by the group.
Chris: Oh, a book, you said?
Kayla: I do say those things, but a lot of the knowledge was also closed, like, only available to members of the family. So you would only get to learn certain things if you joined.
Chris: Okay, that's fair.
Kayla: It's safe to say that, like other groups we've talked about, this belief system was a bit of a grab bag. Again, drawing from western occultism, drawing from eastern traditions, Kundalini energy, Kundalini yoga is very prominent. This belief in the age of Aquarius, which is. I don't think I've said that before, but that is the belief that humanity is entering a new psychic age that is a time of great spiritual change and enlightenment.
Chris: This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius.
Kayla: Just think about what we learned in ethereus episode Srf and Teal Swan and Ramtha. Like, you've got a decent idea of the kinds of beliefs we're dealing with here. But I do want to dive in the yuge. I do want to dive into the specific beliefs that I was able to glean from some primary resources.
Chris: So were coming out. At which age are we coming out of Pisces. Right.
Kayla: Bitch ass. I don't know.
Chris: Well, no wonder the age of Aquarius is better than bitch ass.
Kayla: Probably Pisces. Pisces is. I think it was Pisces.
Chris: Cause, like, something. Something. Jesus, fish. I don't know. Oh, like, I don't quote me on that. I think I got that from something on the Internet that is probably.
Kayla: Don't listen to the Internet.
Chris: Don't actually. Just don't listen to the show. We haven't said that yet. Don't listen to this show. I think before that it was the age of air. Aries. You know what?
Kayla: Why would Aries before Pisces? Wouldn't it be Sagittarius? It's the last. So it goes, oh, wait, what's before Pisces?
Chris: I don't know.
Kayla: Pisces might be the first in the.
Chris: Maybe he goes backwards. Pisces, then. Aries.
Kayla: No, it doesn't go Pisces in Aries.
Chris: Pisces. Aries. Yeah, it is. Because I'm a Pisces. Aries. Cusp. Well, I don't know if I'm wrong.
Kayla: Oh, does Pisces come after me, then? Pisces is not before Aquarius. Then it would be something else. All right, this conversation is dumb. So the book I just mentioned opens with something called the birth litany, and I will read it for you.
Chris: Now, how are you gonna read it for us, Kayla?
Kayla: Because we have the book.
Chris: Oh, my goodness.
Kayla: Oh, my God.
Chris: Is that part of the experiential? I mean, we can definitely expense this, right?
Kayla: Yeah. I mean, it's a primary source.
Chris: Primaries.
Kayla: Oh, right. Primaries. It was put. This is a book, and we'll get more into it later, but the book that we're about to read from is put together by the source family, specifically.
Chris: One of the members. Right. One of the.
Kayla: One of the members who was the documentarian of the group.
Chris: And this documentary, this historian. Cult historian, whatever her name was. Isis. Aquarian. Right.
Kayla: And we'll get into those names and their meaning a little bit more. A little bit later.
Chris: Yeah. That wasn't her birth name. That was her. That was her cult given name.
Kayla: So let me crack into this.
Chris: Oh, are you going to do some ASMR sounds of the book?
Kayla: Probably not, because it's really heavy here, I'll do it.
Chris: I'll do it.
Kayla: Sounds terrible.
Chris: Oh, God, that's horrible.
Kayla: Let me do it.
Chris: Okay. That's proof that we actually are holding onto a book. We are actually. That's the learning of the pages.
Kayla: The birth litany. One, I desire birth. Two, I am.
Chris: Good job. You already did that.
Kayla: Two, I am ready to be burned and consumed, for that is what birth is. Three, I am ready to be naked and unprotected and to suffer from my nakedness, for that is what life is. Four, I am ready to make the pilgrimage through matter, in darkness and in fire, so that the circle of the uncreate shall become one with the circle of the create.
Chris: Okay, you lost me on that one. I had you at the naked part.
Kayla: I mean, I had everybody at the naked part.
Chris: Yeah. But then after that, I just. I couldn't keep up.
Kayla: Well, I'll explain it to you as best I can. This litany was written by Mabel Collins, who we identified as the spiritual grandmother of the group.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: This litany is part of, or was part of annual event in the family called the Rebirth Initiation, which took place in December's, which also included teachings from something called the Emerald tablets of thoth, a quintessential occultist text that we don't have time to get into today.
Chris: Oh, no. Okay, so who's thoth again, though?
Kayla: Oh, my God. Get out of here. It is referring to Thoth, the egyptian God, but I think that the egyptian God of lisping. Yeah, I think that the idea is that he was actually an atlantean. And then also, in some circles, it's known as the emerald tablets of Hermes. And it's like, maybe Hermes and Thoth were, like, maybe the same guy. I don't know. Alchemy?
Chris: Get your dogma straight, please.
Kayla: It's, again, too much for us to go into. But this ceremony, this ritual that the group has is based on teachings in that text, as well as this birth litany from Mabel Collins.
Chris: And that text was allegedly written onto emerald tablets by this thoth God?
Kayla: Yes.
Chris: Tens of thousands of years ago. Okay.
Kayla: Along with insight into this specific holiday or ritual in the source family, the book also provides a guide to their daily practices. There are 40 of them, so I won't.
Chris: That is way too many.
Kayla: I won't read you all of them, but I will pick out a representative few to read to you.
Chris: Okay? Unless it's like nap 40 times. I don't think I can do it.
Kayla: Okay, so the first thing.
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: This is called Yehoah's daily menu.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: And the quote at the top is, the reason Thoth became great is because he used the keys. And that quote is attributed to father.
Chris: I'm sorry, what does that have to do with the menu? I thought Yehoah was God. So why is it I. Thoth? Is thoth the one true God or.
Kayla: No, no, I think it's just thoth. I don't even think he's just an atlantean who got revered as a God. Eventually he became great because he used the keys. Presumably. The keys are these like steps in Yehoah's daily menu. Then this is like, this is menu.
Chris: Of things to do.
Kayla: Yes.
Chris: Not like menu of the source family where you can get like a salad or a wrap.
Kayla: Number one, as you awaken, exhale yehowah for your first breathe.
Chris: I will not do that.
Kayla: Nope. That's what you have to do. After exhaling, say either aloud or to yourself. Be still and know I am God. Then it wants you to go for a swim, either in the ocean or swimming pool. Follow the physical exercise program every morning.
Chris: That's a very privileged thing to recommend.
Kayla: People to do, to go swim in the ocean or a pool. Yeah, it wants you to do the star exercise to tune yourself into the universal life energy currents of the morning. And I will say, remember that one? Because it comes back.
Chris: Okay, I'm gonna call that the just call me angel of the morning rule.
Kayla: Practice the pineal wave to eliminate any trace of negativity within.
Chris: Okay, so again, in the smorgasbord of things that weirdos believe, pineal gland is on that menu too.
Kayla: Instruct the fire of the sacred herb, pumping your stomach seven times and exhaling. Yehowah. Roll your neck.
Chris: And that'll give you like, what? Like a better high.
Kayla: Visualize your vehicle for your next lifetime. See it in perfect equilibrium.
Chris: Ferrari.
Kayla: I like this one. Never react to any situation. Always act or speak consciously after reflecting for 3 seconds, saying yahooah. I like the idea of like.
Chris: I do like that.
Kayla: Take 3 seconds to figure out what. How you want to act in response to something and then do it. Rather than compulsively reacting in a compulsive way, impulsive way. I don't know.
Chris: No, yeah, I do too. It's like giving your executive function a chance to respond versus just reacting emotionally. Yeah, a broken clock is right twice a day.
Kayla: Here's number two. Because I like this one, if there is a thought you do not want to have, exhale forcefully and say, go. Get out. And that's all in exclamation points. And that is actually resembles a therapy technique called thought stopping, in which if you're having, like, intrusive thoughts or negative thoughts or thoughts that you. That are not. I don't say not serving you, but, like, are unhealthy in some way. Like the technique this uses called thought stopping, in which you, like, you know, yell fuck off to the thought in your head or you picture a stop sign or something to, like, literally stop the thought. This is kind of thought stopping.
Chris: Okay. Is it thoth thought stopping?
Kayla: Get out of here. Number 36, hang upside down.
Chris: Okay. I'm pretty sure the Michael Keaton Batman did that.
Kayla: Number 37, sneeze through your nose with your mouth shut.
Chris: That does not sound safe.
Kayla: That's how you get aneurysm. Drink no coffee. Afternoon. I like this one too. Respect.
Chris: I fail at that every day.
Kayla: Respect time. Always be 15 minutes early.
Chris: Late. Can I be late?
Kayla: Eat twice a day and chew until liquid, consciously directing every bite.
Chris: Absolutely not.
Kayla: Never snack between meals.
Chris: Oh, I guess they were all vegetarians, right? Yeah. There's no way I'm, like, chewing a piece of steak until it's liquid, but I guess I could do that with some fucking beans.
Kayla: Program your subconscious mind before going to sleep. The mystic road of the day. Exhale. Yehowah. Your last breath before falling asleep, you get kind of what we're going. There's like, some actionable advice here as well as, like, visualize your bing bong ling long.
Chris: Right? That's. Yeah, yeah, that was my favorite rule, actually.
Kayla: Visualize your meal wave to eliminate cold showers and instruct your find health.
Chris: Yeah, there's a couple good things. There's some weird things, and then there's like, the, like, prescribe how you live your life as, like, a means of control things.
Kayla: Yeah, so those are some specifics. This book that we're talking about also notes that the rules that they have often evolved and were pointedly, decidedly dynamic. So the rules we just read are not even hard and fast rules.
Chris: What?
Kayla: They're rules that they came up with. What rule is that? At one point, and then it was like, oh, now we're growing and changing. The aquarian age was the idea was that's also growing and changing and evolving. So the group wanted their beliefs and practices to do the same. The name of the group would often change to reflect this. So the source family or sometimes it was called the religion of ten or the religion of now. And they would write up other edicts and rules. And we're going to share some of this stuff on Instagram because there's a ton of content that came out from this group, so we'll share stuff on Instagram.
Chris: It sounds like a really elaborate larP.
Kayla: Isn't that anything? Isn't that anything?
Chris: Yeah, it's like a company.
Kayla: Yeah. As you can probably guess, there were other greatest hits of new age beliefs in here. So, like, natural medicine, specific teachings to prohibit the use of modern medicine unless absolutely necessary.
Chris: They weren't allowed to go to the hospital unless it was, like, a broken bone or something.
Kayla: Yeah. They practiced home births, which was actually illegal at the time, and they even filmed their births that took place within the family. This included the first child to be born, who was named Solomon. And he was born with his umbilical cord around his neck, which is a birth injury that can happen. And everyone believed him to be stillborn when he was first. When he first arrived. And father Yod prayed over the baby. This is a story that is told, like, very mythologized within the group that they did actually capture on video, but, you know, this is their interpretation. Father Yod prayed over the baby, who began to breathe. So the group saw this as a miracle. Like, oh, the baby was dead, and now he's alive.
Kayla: I'm gonna go out on a limb and say what is likely to happen is that he came out injured and.
Chris: The umbilical cord loosened and he was.
Kayla: Able to uninjured, then breathe. So, yeah, this was seen as a miracle that further cemented the group's beliefs in their father and in the idea that all of us are destined for godhood if we just pray hard enough. Father Yod preached that we are all Jesus, like I mentioned, and we are all destined to reach the state of God or goddess again, a belief that we have seen elsewhere.
Chris: Jesus is already complicated enough. Like, is he a dude? Is he a God? Is he a God? Dude? A dude God. And now he's also me.
Kayla: Yeah, he's all of us.
Chris: No, no, no. I'm sorry. I can't handle it.
Kayla: This Goddess destiny was also reflected in the belief that the family had lived previous lives, specifically on Sirius, or, like, by Sirius, the star.
Chris: That sounds very serious.
Kayla: And they were destined to return there, I think, after death, Yod would often talk about his destiny to go to Sirius first to prepare the family's next spiritual home there. So take that as you will. In addition to home births, the family also practiced homeschooling, which was also illegal at the time.
Chris: Ooh, really?
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: I thought homeschooling.
Kayla: It wasn't technically legal till 1993.
Chris: No way.
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: I thought that was just, like, something people did.
Kayla: I thought you could do that. Yeah, but it was like some bill that Bill Clinton signed into law. Like a religious freedom act kind of thing.
Chris: Okay, so when we do our inevitable episode on homeschooling and, like, it's the terrors of homeschooling, we blame Bill Clinton for that.
Kayla: I'm fine with that.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: Just keeping in the domesticity realm here, there were many couples that came into the group together. There were couples that formed wall in the group, and there were couples that were decreed by Yode himself. So that means that there were times where he would tell certain people to get together, and this would sometimes break up existing couples.
Chris: I've seen that before. It sounds like twin flames universe stuff.
Kayla: A lot like twin flames universe stuff. There were a lot of ideas about men and women needing one another and fulfilling specific roles together. This was very prevalent. And while they were couched in this spirituality, they did reflect what we would call patriarchal or heteronormative beliefs, or, like, in the modern spiritual equivalent of belief in the divine feminine and divine masculine roles.
Chris: Yeah, it's funny how those, like, it's always come up. It's this revolutionary belief system that is so outsider. But then the men go to work.
Kayla: And the women stay.
Chris: Yeah. Somehow I've heard this before, though.
Kayla: Yode, who I said had four marriages prior to forming the source family, was married to a woman named Robin, who was 30 years younger than him. They guided the group. I think she was 19, and he was 43 when they got married. Cause that's not 30.
Chris: No, that's 24.
Kayla: Sorry.
Chris: Oh, that's totally normal, then.
Kayla: Forgive me. Robin was 20 plus years younger than him, not 30 plus. They viewed themselves as guiding the group, kind of as a partnership, like a mother father type thing. Obviously, Yode was the leader. Leader. But eventually he decided that this was not his destiny, and he was to actually have 14 wives.
Chris: You don't say.
Kayla: So, despite Robin's protests, who he was legally married to, he symbolically married 13 other young women from the group.
Chris: I mean, when we say symbolically, we just mean not. It's not a legal marriage.
Kayla: No, there was not a legal contract, but it was. But it was, for them, legitimate in the eyes of their group. Yes. It was an actual marriage for them. It just was not legal in the eyes of Uncle Sam.
Chris: Fucking Uncle Sam. So that. Yeah, now we're starting to get into more like. Actually not starting. Here's yet another. Oh, I've seen this in other groups before.
Kayla: The women were mostly young, and there are some, again, accusations of. There may have been women that he had relationships with or other. Okay. There may have been girls that he had relationships with or other men in the group had relationships with that were minors. I don't think it was a frequent practice, but I do think it happened.
Chris: That was. They did cover that in the documentary.
Kayla: What documentary?
Chris: Oh, sorry. Allegedly.
Kayla: That is something.
Chris: Allegedly that has been something that was covered.
Kayla: These women were generally with him, kind of like, picture an entourage. They were with him a lot of the time. They liked to be seen out and about, and they helped him guide the group. So they were spiritual advisors in some way, even while Father Yod was kind of the godhead. The figurehead, the leader.
Chris: Right. So my understanding. I mean, we can get more into this in a minute. But Robin didn't care for this turn of events.
Kayla: No.
Chris: And basically said that he was just, like, being a dirty old lewd man.
Kayla: He was deeply hurt by this and eventually grew to see him as, quote, a dirty old man on a lust trip.
Chris: Yeah. And when you kind of look at history, too, like, later on, he keeps going for younger and younger women. He kind of has this cycle. He was married before the source family, and then he had discarded that wife for Robin, and then Robin was sort of discarded for these other younger women, who then even later on had other replacements. So he just kind of seems to have a cycle there.
Kayla: Maybe as a pattern, these 13 wives would eventually establish a formal council so that the leadership of the group was balanced with a patriarchal father and a matriarchal council. The father always maintained more power than anyone, I will say.
Chris: Right. Like, the women were in charge, except when they disagree with what the man wants.
Kayla: But I don't want to denigrate with the system that they think worked, that they say worked for them. Sure, it worked for them. Great. But I detect issues.
Chris: It worked for them, and I don't judge them for that. But I'm going to maybe not agree if they say were super balanced, totally equal.
Kayla: No, that's not what I'm calling one of his wives. Macushla, was called his mother angel, and was more of a mother figure to him than a lover figure, despite her much younger age.
Chris: Yeah, I was gonna say, wasn't she super young?
Kayla: Yeah. But spiritually, they had.
Chris: That's weird.
Kayla: Spiritual lives in a past life, she was his maternal spiritual counsel. There's a great image in this book of the two of them recreating the image of the Pieta together. And, like, she was very much close to him in that way that the, you know, a different relationship than the other wives.
Chris: Like you do you. But I'm just. When, like, a 50 something year old dude has, like, a mothery relationship with.
Kayla: A 50 year old man, comes up to you and says, you're my mom, and you're, like, 19, go away from him.
Chris: Yeah, it's just. I don't know. I don't like it.
Kayla: I don't like it either.
Chris: It's even weirder than just the regular sort of weirdness of that age gap. I don't know.
Kayla: I do like this part. Sex magic was also a prominent feature of the group, which they called dianism. I don't know too much about the explicit practices, but essentially, members would engage in tantric sex with each other or with Yode to cultivate spiritual energy. Like the idea of when they were having sex in this ritualistic way, it was to cultivate spiritual energy, and that is sex magic.
Chris: Great pickup line.
Kayla: Absolutely. It's also an idea that's found in many occultist belief systems. I think it is a legitimate belief. I also think it can be very easily abused.
Chris: Yeah. I came up in the Koresh documentary where one of the people they were.
Kayla: Interviewing talking about slightly different in Koresh. Sorry to jump in.
Chris: Oh, no, yeah, go ahead.
Kayla: They weren't all fucking each other. They were only fucking him.
Chris: They were only fucking him. Right. But the. The, like, the mode of fucking was. Was similar. Right. It was like, the way she described it was like it was a spiritual experience. It wasn't like a sexual thing. I was. I was basically having sex with God. And it was like this. Yeah. Like this spiritual growth thing, closeness.
Kayla: Good for me.
Chris: He was doing me a favor.
Kayla: This idea also really, it fit right in with the hippie ideal of free love at the time. So, like, that's true. It worked for them.
Chris: Fair enough.
Kayla: As I mentioned before, the group was very into the idea of the age of Aquarius. They had aquarian names for all the planets, including the sun, which they called Omni. They also created aquarian names for themselves, which they legally changed. So you mentioned IsiS. Aquarian before. That is not her birth name. That is a name that she legally changed to.
Chris: Okay, so it wasn't just like they called each other. It wasn't a nickname.
Kayla: No, it was legal.
Chris: It was a legal name change. Okay.
Kayla: Everyone in the family had a first name. I think it was bestowed upon them by Father Yode. Their middle name became the. And the last name became Aquarian. So blank, the Aquarian. Okay, so it's actually IsiS, the Aquarian galaxy, the Aquarian, Venus electricity. Abraham ra, Damian. Aquariana. Jinn Octavia.
Chris: Aquariana.
Kayla: The aquarium, I think, is a great name.
Chris: Get out of here.
Kayla: So many more. But those are. Those are just a little taste.
Chris: That sounds like that one you just kind of, like, just gave up, ran out of ideas.
Kayla: Yeah. They had a strong belief in the power of the words I am and believed they could manifest various things internally and in the world. I think you have more to talk about on that later, so I'll save it for you.
Chris: I am going to talk more about that.
Kayla: I will save that for you. This is all just the tip of the iceberg. This group existed from 1969 to 1977. Constantly expanded or changed. Their beliefs drew on massive existing belief systems. So it's impossible to get into every detail and nuanced. But I will end this section with my favorite belief that we will talk about a little later. During one's lifetime, each breath you take implants a spiritual picture of that moment of your life into your life force or bloodstream. When the body dies, your soul spends three and a half days traveling that river of memories and viewing those moments. This viewing allows you to see how your actions influenced others and gives you the chance to learn from your life so that you can take that knowledge and grow from it in your next life.
Kayla: It's important to leave a body undisturbed after death for three and a half days in their belief system so that this process can take place. And that number is drawn from other spiritual traditions. I think it might be present in Sikhism. I think it might be present elsewhere. Remember this for later.
Chris: That is a pretty cool idea.
Kayla: Yeah, I love it. Leave me alone for three and a half days. I'm tired. I need to take my journey.
Chris: My dead body is tired.
Kayla: Sleepy.
Chris: I need to have my dead body shitting or whatever it is that your dead body does. You shit when you die, right?
Kayla: I think so.
Chris: I don't know.
Kayla: I hope so. I don't want to get buried with poop. Hope it all comes out. One of Father Yode's wives said that the members of the source family don't have a fear of death. Father Yod's teachings gave them that gift and IsIS Aquarian said that he made spirit fun. So kind of like this idea of really leaning into the hippie lifestyle and having a band and having a restaurant and not being afraid to court Hollywood coolness and be hip. But it was still very spiritual. He made the spiritual very fun. It wasn't stoic and keep your head down. It was fun. You're having sex, you're smoking a little bit of weed, you're eating good food, you're swimming in the ocean, you're meeting celebrities, you're hanging out altogether, banging each other. Yeah, yeah.
Chris: It's like the hedonistic spiritualism, not the.
Kayla: Like, ascetic spiritualism without being like, we're drinking and doing drugs and partying, going out all night. Like, it interestingly, had a little. Like, it had restraint, but was okay.
Chris: So there were squares in a couple ways, but most of the ways, they were far out, man.
Kayla: So how did this all end? Or did it end? I guess.
Chris: I don't know. Is it around today?
Kayla: The group existed in a formal way until 1977.
Chris: Oh, you said that.
Kayla: Did not exist formally after that. So let's talk about the events that led up to its disbanding. After a few years in Hollywood, growing in notoriety, the group began to feel unsafe in their home. So they got a lot of attention. Attention sometimes starts to turn, especially when you get bigger and weirder, which they were getting bigger and weirder. Father Yod also held some, like, apocalyptic beliefs, believe it or not, things like, oh, the world is on the brink of a nuclear war, which it was. Yeah, that part's similar disasters, which it was. And they also felt this edge of disaster, specifically in the way that their family was treated in Los Angeles.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: So authorities were being called on them more and more often because the group was continuing their illegal practices of home birth and homeschooling. There were already existing fears over spiritual families after the 1969 Tate LaBianca murders carried out in Hollywood by the Manson family. And those fears continued to grow. And at a certain point, Yode decided the group needed to move and establish a self sustaining compound that could support all 140 of them, as well as any new members that came to them. So during this search for a new home, Yod floated the idea of disbanding the family several times. He was kind of like, maybe we've reached our end. Maybe I've taught you everything I have to teach you.
Kayla: But each time, according to the group, each time the family members pushed back on this idea, they were like, no, we want you as our spiritual leader. We all want to be together. We want to continue following you, even if it's not easy. And so each time Yode would reluctantly agree.
Chris: That's kind of a bummer. I don't know. Relationships, especially teaching relationships, kind of feel like they have a natural endpoint, and it is a little bit pathological to desire it to be of infinite length.
Kayla: Yeah, that is asking a lot of. To teach me forever.
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: However, he did also at this time, change his name from father Yode to Yehowah. He began to call him Yehowah, so.
Chris: He thought he was God.
Kayla: I don't know who started calling him Yehoah. If he went and said, like, mmm, I'm Yehoah, or if they just started calling him yahuwah, or how that happened, but simultaneously he was going like, no, pushing the way. And also, yeah, but also, I am God, so I don't know.
Chris: Please don't call me that.
Kayla: But, like, I totally am. Eventually, I'm going to be paraphrasing. There's a lot, obviously, that happened with this group, but these are the big strokes. They eventually settled in Hawaii, but they thought, oh, this is gonna be great. We're gonna finally have our compound. We're gonna finally be able to live out all these dreams that we want to live peacefully. But it was actually rougher for them in Hawaii than in hollywood. So there had already been groups, spiritual groups like this that had settled in Hawaii that did not mesh with the local culture very well. So locals were extremely distrustful of new age hippies after bad experiences with communes and compounds on their islands.
Kayla: And also just like, you know, there's a lengthy history of groups coming to Hawaii and displacing people and utilizing the land in ways that the people who are from there, like, hey, maybe don't do that. Lengthy history there continues to this day. I don't begrudge any locals for being distrustful or hostile towards a group of 140 hippies rolling in, being like, we're here. The family felt like they were being greeted with hostility. The men had trouble finding jobs, so money became tighter. Eventually, the men would, I don't know if they ever did, but father goad was floating the idea of, maybe you should cut your hair if you're going out there to find jobs. He did ask.
Kayla: The men stopped wearing robes in public so that they would not be associated with the group outside of their home so they could get jobs and be in the family. Yode voiced concerns that he had failed his family. And again, like, I should step down again, this was met with, like, no way. You did not. There's no failure here. Like, you're our father, you're our teacher. Met with resistance. And then one morning, father yode announced that he wanted to go hang gliding, even though he had never gone hang gliding before.
Chris: I've never gone hang gliding before. I want to go hang gliding.
Kayla: This would be his first time, and he specifically wanted to hang glide off the nearby cliffs over the ocean.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: So, generally, I think when. I don't know what the learning rules were at the time, but nowadays, I know that if you go to learn to hang glide, you, like, you don't start by jumping off cliffs. You're like, you're basically running along the ground, getting a little bit of air. That's like your first sign. Yeah, this was. I'm gonna jump off these cliffs with a hang glider. And it was like, too small for him. He was not a small man, kayla. I've played too small for him, okay?
Chris: I can jump off a cliff.
Kayla: Many of his when he said this, and he was like, hey, let's go hang gliding. I'm gonna go hang gliding right now. Like, immediately, his followers and his wives started screaming and crying, like, no, no. This is very dangerous. We don't want you to do this. This is going to be unsafe. But he.
Chris: They were correct. Yeah.
Kayla: He refused to be swayed. He was like, this is. I get the sense that was kind of the dynamic. Like, once he got an idea in his head, especially about something he was going to do, it was going to happen. So a small group of his followers accompanied him to the cliffs with a hang glider. He gets into the hang glider, he says that he is going to tap into the memories from lemurian lifetimes, because apparently. Oh, yeah, there it is, lemurian lifetimes. Back then, men had wings to fly off of. So he's like, I'll just tap into that. You don't need to teach me. I'm good. I'll just remember.
Chris: Yeah. He has the wing memories.
Kayla: And they watched as he jumped into the air. Even though it was a windy day, at this exact moment, the wind abruptly stopped and he plummeted 900ft in front of them just before crashing into the ocean. Enough of a breeze kicked up to carry him onto the beach, where he crash landed.
Chris: Oh, he crashed. Oh, I thought he crashed into the water.
Kayla: He did not. He crashed on land.
Chris: Ugh. That's not as good. Although at that height, crashing on water is pretty bad, too.
Kayla: Just don't crash. Don't crash land. The group rushed to him. They found him unable to move, tangled in his hang glider. He had no obvious broken bones, there was no visible blood, but he was in great pain. He said he felt like he'd broken his back. The group, I think they carried him home. I think they put him in like a mercedes. Someone had a mercedes, put him in the carried him home, emergency vehicle, mercedes trying to decide what to do. At one point, Yod wondered, so he asked for the paramedics to come and bring him oxygen. So he had oxygen, and he contemplated like, should I go to the hospital?
Kayla: And he asked his counsel, and I believe it was Mechushla counseled him as it's up to you, if this is what you want to do, it would be going against your Own spiritual teachings, but whatever you want to do.
Chris: Oh, man. And he decided, hoisted by your own.
Kayla: Petard, decided to not go to the hospital.
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: Father Yod attributed the pain in his Back to his Kundalini energy rising through his chakras. He laid his head in Mkushla's lap, his mother angel's lap, and just a few hours after his accident, he died. The family describes this process as Yode consciously leaving his body and entering the next life. And many of them hold the belief that Yod had finished dispersing his teachings to his followers and needed to leave his body in this moment so that they would disperse into the world and lead their own lives.
Chris: You know, he tried to get them to do that, though. Before the death thing, I kind of.
Kayla: Feel like it seemed like this was, I mean, buying, you know, buying into mythology of the group. It seems like maybe this was the only way to actually, for his spiritual children to leave the nest, they had to no longer have physical access to their father.
Chris: That's, that's sad. Like, that's a sad part of that dynamic.
Kayla: Just had a weird, like, I'm gonna go hang gliding and had an accident. I don't know if this was a completed suicide. I don't know if that was his intent or if it was, like, not.
Chris: Quite suicide, but maybe a little death wish.
Kayla: Yeah, I don't know. Or, you know, or if it was what the group believes that he was like, I'm gonna peace out of this life so that you'll all, like, take my teachings and live your own lives. I don't know. But he jumped off a cliff and died.
Chris: Yeah, that'll do that.
Kayla: In accordance with their teachings, the family left his body undisturbed for three and a half days for him to complete his spiritual or soul, travel down his river of memories. And then they called the authorities it was a very uncertain time for this group to find themselves suddenly fatherless, like they didn't really have a plan for this. They were mourning their leader. There was no clear way forward. They were on a hostile island, thousands of miles from any other home they had known. The council of Women agreed that Mukushla would become the next spiritual leader of the group. And they tried to keep things going, but things were just never quite the same. It became clear that Yod was the spiritual glue holding everything together.
Kayla: And a little over a year, between a year or two years later, Mukushla formally disbanded the group and everyone went their own separate ways. And that is the story of how the source family officially ended. But according to Venus, the aquarian father Yode still reaches out to teach us today and continues to pull strings from beyond the grave, orchestrating events as he sees fit. According to her, you can connect to Yehowah anytime you want. You follow his exercises, follow his teachings, do the meditations, and you reach out to him like any other God. He'll be there.
Chris: There's another way. They're still around too, kinda.
Kayla: How is that?
Chris: Remember that documentary we mentioned?
Kayla: Oh, hold on. Let me put this book away.
Chris: So, yeah, the book, actually, the documentary is partially based on the book that you just put away. But we will get to that. We will get to the documentary. I have some words to say about it.
Kayla: Say some words.
Chris: The question, though, is where did we go to watch this documentary? And the answer is in the first part of this episode, we've already answered it, so I don't know why I'm being cagey. We drove to, we drove to a, let's call it a compound. Let's call it. It was called the Philosophical Research Society, PRs. And it did have a very, like, compoundy feeling to it. There was like a courtyard, there was a bookstore and a library. So they had, like you said, it's a lending library. So just based on my own casual browsing, it seemed like both the bookstore and the library had like a full. A full spectrum of books.
Chris: And when I say spectrum, I mean, like from one side where it's like total, like, you know, bullshit weirdo stuff to stuff that's sort of in between, you know, where it's like, maybe this is metaphor, maybe this is just like talking about, like, intuitive ways of living and doing things, all the way to legit academic research where there's scholarship and you're actually studying religion or theology or spiritualism from a neutral, third party point of view. So it had this full spectrum of.
Kayla: Books, I will correct you one thing.
Chris: Yes.
Kayla: It is not a lending library. It is a research library.
Chris: Excuse me.
Kayla: You can't go and check books out and read them at home, bring them back. Specifically, you go there, the book, because I think they have something like 50,000 rare books on the occult and esoterica and whatnot. And so in order to utilize this research library, one must go here and utilize the facilities.
Chris: It's like the old timey pre printing press libraries with chains attached to the books. Yeah, except there weren't chains attached to the books that we saw.
Kayla: I think there probably were in other parts of the compound that we did nothing visit while were there. Reasons to go back.
Chris: Yeah, well, and I'll talk about other places that we did visit. A lot of the books there, and I mean a lot, were by this guy named Manley P. Hall.
Kayla: Oh, I've heard that name before.
Chris: I feel like we've heard that name earlier in the episode. The reason, or one of the reasons. I mean, I guess you would probably have this guy on your bookshelves if you were just a regular old run of the mill esoteric bookshop. But this particular bookshop research library, part of the reason they have so much stuff with Manly P. Hall is because it is the organization that he founded.
Kayla: It's his.
Chris: It is his. So there is a direct link between the source family and the Philosophical research society via this relationship that Manley P. Hall and Jim Baker had.
Kayla: So, to clarify, we attended an event at the Philosophical Research Society, which is founded by esoteric philosopher Manley P. Hall, who was a teacher of Jim Baker, who had become father Yode.
Chris: Yes.
Kayla: Is that complicated enough for you?
Chris: And to further clarify, the philosophical research society doesn't only do stuff about the source family. They have all kinds of different events.
Kayla: And exhibitions and groups and things. Any kind of weird shit that's involved in spirituality, they've got baby, they've got classes. You should go on their website.
Chris: But on this particular day, they were screening the source family documentary that we talked about called. So it's called the Source family. The Source family. So if you want to go look up this doc, it's actually a pretty good documentary, which I'll talk about in a second. But first, I want to talk about the experience. So I told you that it feels a little bit like a cult compound. There is the bookstore and the library. There were other buildings that we didn't get to go into. There was a little reception area where they had delicious samosas and weird drinks for.
Kayla: Perfect combination.
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: If I'm going anywhere, give me a delicious samosa and a weird drink, and I'm happy as a clam.
Chris: And, like, why do all these cold places have the most delicious vegetarian food? I don't know. Like, what is it about? Like, because remember when went to, what was it called?
Kayla: Loving hut.
Chris: Loving hut. Loving hut was super tasty.
Kayla: And to clarify, further clarify, this was not food from the source family restaurant. No, unfortunately, it was from another indian food restaurant nearby. Delicious. But I don't know. These weirdos know where the best food is.
Chris: Yeah. Yeah. But the source restaurant itself was supposedly very delicious. So I don't know. Like, that. Maybe that's what. How they really get people is the delicious food.
Kayla: The food?
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: Do you talk about the kind of people that attended?
Chris: I was just gonna say they're weirdos. You want me to keep that or.
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: So then you kind of walk back from the reception area, and it's just like. I don't know. There's, like, a weird looking hall. We'll send a few pictures about this piece of it. Like, because we took pictures of the place. I don't know, it just had a weird vibe. But then, of course, there was a large auditorium with strange art on the wall. Like, very culty looking art with, like. Again, like, people in robes, like, in pastoral settings. Anyway, the auditorium is where we watched the source family documentary with, what would you say? It was, like, 200 people?
Kayla: It was a crowded, packed house.
Chris: Yeah, it was packed.
Kayla: Everybody looked exactly like you'd expect a person who was watching a documentary about cults at a cult compound in Los Angeles on a Thursday evening.
Chris: It was just, like, a bunch of interchangeable, like, white ladies.
Kayla: All of these people got their clothes. It was like they all stepped out of 1977. Impeccable dressers. Everyone looked like a witch. I'm very jealous. Lots of robes, lots of flowing, lots of head wraps, lots of long hair. Hipster hippies. My people.
Chris: Yeah. And there were some other people there. Interestingly enough, there were, which I will introduce that based on another story of our experience there. You were trying to, I think, redo my ponytail when were just, like, sitting out in this courtyard. You just, like, were redoing my ponytail.
Kayla: I got intimidated by the amount of beautiful hair that was going on. I was like, oh, shit, we gotta make ourselves presentable, right?
Chris: And some lady walked up and just, like, started talking to us about, like, how nice it is to be grooming each other's hair or something. And were just like. I mean, we made conversation, but it was just like, okay, that's weird. And then she mentions, like, yeah, I'm so excited. Like, is this you guys first time here? Yeah. Oh, yeah. This is. This is so cool. I think, like, a few of father Yod's wives are here, which turned out to be the case. So we watch. And not actually, not only the wives were there, but a few other members of the group were there as well, in the audience. They weren't his wives.
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: Venus Aquarian was there. She was doing tarot readings in the library, bookstore. I'm not sure which part of the compound that was, but she was doing tarot readings. I tried to get in, but it was like, the signup list was long.
Kayla: You were the last one.
Chris: I was like, the last one. Yeah, I know.
Kayla: That was like, if there had been ten more minutes, she would have finished up her one reading, and then it would have been you.
Chris: I know, I know. I was so disappointed. But we had to get into the auditorium to watch, wanted to see the documentary. Yeah. So anyway, so she was there. Isis Aquarian was there.
Kayla: And if you'll remember, Isis Aquarian is the one who was the designated documentarian of the source family. So a lot of. Yeah, every image in this book. So this book is basically a scrapbook of pictures of every facet of their lives throughout the years of the source family. So all of those came from her. And then in the documentary, I don't know if you say this be jumping you. The footage. A lot of the footage, the original footage was also captured by her.
Chris: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And galaxy. Did I say galaxy or did I say Venus? I said Venus. Okay, so it was Venus, ISis, and galaxy, all of which were a few others.
Kayla: One were his. One of his 13 wives.
Chris: Yeah, exactly. So there were a few others, but the three of them were his. Not legal wives, but wives. Wives. Wives.
Kayla: You could absolutely tell who was there from the cult. You could just tell. There was probably, honestly, maximum ten people that were from the cult. And it was like, yeah, from the group, I will say from the source family, where you were like, yeah, you were a source family person. From the weird source family person. You were a source family person. It was amazing.
Chris: Yeah. And it's funny because we just said, like, everybody looked the same there. They looked the same, but more so.
Kayla: The most. They looked the most.
Chris: They looked the most that you could.
Kayla: Tell that they had been part of a new age spiritual family in the 1970s.
Chris: Yes.
Kayla: Amazing.
Chris: So there were with all these folks, all these weirdos in this giant auditorium about to watch this documentary. But first, the master of ceremonies informed us that were going to participate in a little pre documentary ritual.
Kayla: Ooh.
Chris: So this is actually something we mentioned earlier in the show. Caleb, you mentioned it. It's called the star exercise. So basically what this was we stood up. Everybody stood up from their seats, reached your arms out side to side, which actually made it quite difficult because the chairs were right next to each other, so you kind of had to stagger. It was really weird. And then we basically just did like this rapid breathing thing.
Kayla: One palm up, one palm down.
Chris: Right. One palm up, one palm down.
Kayla: You stood kind of like with your legs apartheid, almost as if you made a five pointed star, right.
Chris: And there was like some stuff you're supposed to say, like in your head or whatever, but I don't remember exactly what it was. But the main part of the ritual was this, like rapid, in, out breathing. It was like nose.
Kayla: It was nose.
Chris: Baby nose. Yeah. I was like, I don't even know. Yeah, yeah. It was what you're doing, to be honest. It was like, pretty fucking tiring.
Kayla: Excuse me. It made me cough. We did that 108 times in a row.
Chris: That was the rituals.
Kayla: Like, you get in this position, you say whatever ritual y thingies you say, and then you started breathing slowly and then escalated to the.
Chris: You're supposed to do 108 times in a row. Which was like, I think I made it to like 50 before I had to take some normal breaths. It was.
Kayla: I'm still not affected by pretending to do it.
Chris: And it was all led by one of the cult members. Do you remember his name?
Kayla: I don't remember his name, but he.
Chris: He was like an Og.
Kayla: He introduced this ritual basically by saying, like, this is one of the most powerful tools that father gave me. Like, I got the impression that he still did this every day. If you remember when I was reading from the, like 40 point Yahuwah's menu, doing the star exercise was on their daily menu. So I think this was something that. And in the book there's pictures of them doing this exercise. This was a very prominent ritual in their day to day lives. And it seemed like he said, this is something that changed my life. It was the most powerful thing ever. Blah, blah.
Chris: It is crazy.
Kayla: It was a big deal because I.
Chris: Feel like all it did.
Kayla: And he also said it was ancient ritual.
Chris: Oh, yeah, he did.
Kayla: They were talking about how this wasn't something that they created. This was ancient ritual, like something from you know, Lemurians or Atlanteans or something that'd been around for thousands and thousands of years as a.
Chris: Spiritual practice for me. Like, I don't know, it just felt like it was just gonna give me a panic attack. Like, I don't know. Like, it's very different from other breathing exercises, to be fair.
Kayla: We also had our Covid masks on, which did not make. You and I did not make.
Chris: We were in a giant room full of weirdos.
Kayla: Yeah. Nobody else had a mask on. That's probably weirdos.
Chris: We were pre vaccinated people in that whole room. Anyway, it was very. It was tiring. It was very different from other breath exercises I've done where, like, it's slow, deliberate, like, you count on the inhale, you count at the top, and you count on the exhale. No, no. This was. It was just. I don't know, it was. It was very high energy.
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: So that was interesting. And then we watched the movie. The movie was good. It was. I was actually expecting. I didn't know what to expect, except I thought that it was gonna be more of like a. Like a sycophantic type thing.
Kayla: It's not made by the cult. It's not. Sorry. It's not made by the group.
Chris: The weird. The weird.
Kayla: It's not made by the source family, but it does heavily, obviously, interviews them and pulls from their archives. So they had a heavy involvement in its creation. So, yeah, I was expecting, like a. I was expecting more of a what? The bleep kind of situation.
Chris: Yeah, same. And, I mean, also, I'm talking about the, like, the fact that this was being showed at the philosophical research society, which has a lot of credulity.
Kayla: When they introduced the documentary, the master of ceremonies said, this is kind of. Or maybe they said it after. I don't know. But it was said that the philosophical research society is essentially the spiritual home of the source family. That's how interlinked these things are.
Chris: Right. And the source family had members there, and. And. And so there's, like, a lot of reasons for us to sort of think, like, okay, this is going to be, like, a very biased presentation of this group. And it wasn't. It was very, like, actively neutral. Right. Like, it presented two sides. It felt very. Basically, it felt very like Netflix documentary, where, you know, it did the thing where it interviewed different people and presented both sides and was edited.
Kayla: Well, members of the group, as well as, like, reporters from the time and academics. So, like, getting different sides of things and it also had members that had differing takeaways from the group.
Chris: So they interviewed, for example, ISIS was in the documentary as well, but then they also talked to Robin Popper. So Robin was his first wife in the group.
Kayla: Robin was his wife that he started the source family with.
Chris: Right. So she was in the documentary as well as the daughter that I think they had together. Right, Tao?
Kayla: Yeah, that was their daughter.
Chris: Yeah. So it was a daughter they had together was also in the documentary. And, you know, they. When they were talking about some of the earlier times together, it was, you know, she was very pro. She was like, this was what he was like, and it was wonderful. And when they were talking about the later part of the relationship and how she views him now.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: It wasn't very pro. Right. It was very critical.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: And the daughter was as well. Like the daughter has seen, sort of like how her mother has, like, some of the fallout of this relationship she had. And the daughter talked a bit about how she hopes maybe even doing this documentary is healing for her and blah, blah.
Kayla: Right. We need to talk a little bit louder.
Chris: Okay. So I thought it was really interesting, and I felt like they presented sort of like this empirical. I mean, obviously, every documentary has some editorial point of view, but for the most part, it felt like an empirical, neutral thing.
Kayla: This measured approach included discussing the less seemly aspects of the group, like we mentioned. Such as, was father Yodes approach to having 13 wives spiritually pure? Or was this his way to have access to other women, younger women? It did not shy away from his involvement with girls who were underage and the group's involvement with girls who were underage. Those things were talked about and discussed and reckoned with, which I was not expecting.
Chris: Me either. I appreciated that. Yeah, I was definitely much more expecting, like. Yeah, like a. What? The bleep was supportive.
Kayla: Yeah, it was a weird experience.
Chris: Propaganda piece.
Kayla: There were a couple times early on when it was like, it would talk about, like, well, and, you know, and then they got involved with these, like, 13 year old girls or got involved with the 16 year old girl. Turned out she was only 16. There were, like, laughs from the audience, like, dirty old man kind of thing.
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: And it felt uncomfortable at the time because I was like, that doesn't seem like something to laugh at. Yeah, I don't understand why we're laughing here. This is not my take on this at all. And then later on, the documentary went back and was like, that was fucked up. And I kind of was like, yeah, everybody in here, you shouldn't have laughed. You should have laughed.
Chris: Although, to be fair, I feel like half the time I'm watching a movie be, like, with an audience, there's weird laughter. Yeah, like, half the time, like, the laughter I don't get. I'm like, why are you laughing at this? You shouldn't be laughing at this part of Schindler's list. What are you doing?
Kayla: Maybe it's just uncomfortable. I don't know.
Chris: Yeah. So, I don't know. I just feel like that's frequently, like. Yeah, yeah, maybe it's, like, nervous laughter.
Kayla: I guess it's an uncomfortable thing to talk about how a spiritual leader was abusing children.
Chris: Right, right. That's true. So the documentary was good. I mean, as far as the contents of it's basically what. What you went over, except I think you went into a little more detail about a few things. That being said, obviously, the documentary is still great to watch because you get a lot of the visuals, and it probably covered some stuff that you didn't cover, so totally recommend it. After the documentary, there was a Q and a with the three wives that I mentioned. So it was actually with the director of the documentary, her ad, and then ISIS, Venus, and Galaxy Aquarian. So they all participated in this Q.
Kayla: And A, and that's what were all there.
Chris: I mean, yeah, that was the main event, basically. So, yeah, as you mentioned, you could definitely tell that these were the cult people. They were definitely pretty weird.
Kayla: I mean, they were wearing. Two of them were wearing robes, like, still wearing the robes, which I'm not judging. I'm just saying one was in jeans, and I went, okay, that gives me a signifier as to your stance on this group now. And two of them were wearing robes. And I go, okay, that gives me a signifier on your stance to this now.
Chris: Right. So there are a bunch of different questions. A few of the questions involved, like, their relationship with father Yod. So ISIS, for example, said that she felt like he was talking directly to her whenever he was speaking, whenever he was teaching or interacting with her directly. Right. Like, he was focused in on her, and he felt like a powerful alpha male. He had, like, powerful alpha male energy.
Kayla: Do you remember how she joined the cult?
Chris: No.
Kayla: She was, like, working as a photographer, and she got an assignment to, like, they needed to find Jesus looking dudes. And so she's like, oh, I've heard about this restaurant where there's, like, long haired hippie guys. I'll go there. And so she was, like, just going there to, like, take pictures and then she saw him and she was just like, then she joined the cult.
Chris: Yeah. And it feels like there were a few different stories in the doc where she saw him and I was like, men and women. Yeah, right. Where they were. Like, I went to this place and I was curious and then I saw this guy and I just immediately like, so his charisma is just apparently is just through the fucking roof. But, yeah, I mean, that's basically what she said, is that he had that energy, how she found everything that she was looking for with him. That was another sentiment that kept coming up. But that energy also has a, I don't know if we want to call it dark side, but. So ISIS and in fact, everyone's names were given to them by father Yode. So he was the one that actually. That might have gave them names.
Kayla: I'm sorry. I actually, I'm going to stop you here because I may have misspoken earlier. I said that manly people hall gave lists of names to father Yoda folks to recruit. It wasn't that he gave him lists of names to change people's names to. He helped come up with the spiritual names to give people. So Isis, Venus, Aquariana, Jyn, Manley, P. Hall. I believe Manly P. Hall may have helped brainstorm those names.
Chris: You really needed help. Actually, now that I think about it, the hardest part of starting any, like, customizable character like RPG.
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: Is picking a goddamn name.
Kayla: And this is 150 of them.
Chris: So, yeah, I could see where you'd need help with that. Okay. Anyway, so you didn't get a choice as to what your own name was. He would give it to you. And ISIS specified that she did not like the name that was given to.
Kayla: Her for a long time.
Chris: She is. Yeah. It's not that she didn't like it for a day. It was for a very long time she didn't like it. And then she didn't get to the point where she liked it. She got to the point where she was like, fine, I guess.
Kayla: I guess this is my name.
Chris: And the way she put it was, you know, kind of like, haha, you just can't say no to him. Which is like, it kind of, I don't know, it's a very interesting thing to say. Right?
Kayla: There's a lot of weight in that statement.
Chris: Yeah. The part of it is like, okay, he has a very forceful way of being. Part of it is, yeah. What he says goes, whether you like it or not. Right. There's like, there's a few different things bubbling in that word to unpack. But that was. It was interesting that she didn't like her name for. That's something pretty fundamental about your person, right? Like, that's very personal. And for somebody to dislike it that much and like, not have a choice and go with it, I don't know.
Kayla: I just tells you a lot. I would say that is the relationship we have to our birth names, however. And if the way that these folks are viewing this is like, I am being born. I am spiritually being born into this new spiritual family and I am given a name by my spiritual father and that becomes part of my new identity that's not totally dissimilar from when we're born as babies and we're given a name by our parents.
Chris: That's true.
Kayla: Maybe you like it, maybe you don't. You can change it if you want. It's just the. The idea of like, you can't say no is really the issue there.
Chris: Yeah, I was. My parents named me after nothing. They were like, we just thought the name sounded cool. I've asked them this question. They're like, yeah, it sounded like a cool name. And I'm just like, oh, okay, that's meaningful.
Kayla: But your name could have been picked from a listen curated by Manly P. Hall.
Chris: I know. If they had asked manly P. Hall, I would have gotten a cool name like Galaxy. Or I guess that's a girl name. I don't know. Are there girl names and boy names in this thing? Or is this.
Kayla: I don't think a boy would have been named Aquariana. Just going out on a limb.
Chris: Okay, maybe you're Aquariano.
Kayla: Aquariano for sure.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: There was a boy named electricity.
Chris: Ooh, that's a good one.
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: Okay, see, this is what I'm talking about. I could have had the name electricity or like Comet. That would be cool.
Kayla: That would be cool.
Chris: Meteorite. I don't know. Anyway, a few other things that were sort of mentioned during the course of the Q and A. These lasted a pretty long time. They did go to audience questions. They mentioned that they were all like sisters in the compound before they were. Like all the wives felt like they were sisters before they were his wives.
Kayla: That makes sense.
Chris: Which is kind of interesting if you've ever watched big love, right? The polygamists there to call each other sister wives. And they, you know, they talked about being the source family so that, you know, that comports with that. They talked about the compound living as being like this one sort of giant experiment. One of them offhanded comment, which you said was supported. You looked about, looked this up in the scrapbook, but was this whole thing just kind of germinated from being a cover for draft dodging? Because this was the time of the Vietnam War, and there were several people who were dodging who dodged the draft that were part of this group.
Kayla: One of the ways to avoid being drafted at the time was to cite religious reasons. And so that may be a reason why there were so many spiritual groups at the time, is that it helped give young men the opportunity, young men who did not want to go to war, the opportunity to not. I don't know if it worked every single time. I don't know if you had to be, like, a 501 c ten or whatever.
Chris: 501 c ten.
Kayla: I don't know what the religion one is. 501 c, 4501. C three is a nonprofit. I don't know what a religion is. Okay, 501 c five, I have no idea whatever it is.
Chris: 501 cult ten.
Kayla: But in the scrapbook put together by ISIS, there are numerous members where she pointed out this person was AWOL from the military. This person was Awol from the military. This person was Awol from the military. So it. Even if it wasn't a cover for, quote, unquote, draft dodging, it was a safe space for men who did not want to participate in our military actions at the time.
Chris: That sounds more attractive to me now. I kind of get it.
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: There was one part that I felt like a little. I don't know. I mentioned this to you after I felt a little awkward about it. The moderator asked galaxy about being underage when she joined.
Kayla: Right. Was she underage when she married?
Chris: I don't remember. I think so.
Kayla: I think she might have been.
Chris: I think she was, like, 16 or something.
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: And I don't know. I just. The reason I felt awkward about it is because she kind of, like, pressed her. Like, she asked her multiple times.
Kayla: The moderator, the director, whoever was asking the question framed it as, like, in a post metoo era.
Chris: No, that was a different thing.
Kayla: There was definitely in a post me two era. Do you look at your experience differently?
Chris: Yeah, but then there was also as.
Kayla: A child or as a 16 year old, and then there were more questions following.
Chris: There were two different things, though. There was the post me two. What do you guys think? And that was, like, a more broad question for the three of them.
Kayla: And then she pointed it.
Chris: And then there was also, separately, a question directed at Galaxy about, how do you feel about this yada, having been only 16 at the time.
Kayla: Right, right.
Chris: So that's what I mean by there was, like, a couple. Like, one of them was. Yeah, broader. And it was like, about this sort of, like, post me two thing. And they all answered that, and that's when they started talking a little bit about the, like. So there was answer about, like, well, it was a matriarchy, right?
Kayla: Like, we had a council.
Chris: We had a council. And it was, like, very equal. And whether it was or not is to be debated. But that was their answer to that.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: And then there was separately, there was this question to galaxy about her, very specifically, her underage thing. I just felt awkward about it because, like, it's not a one one interview. It's not like a Barbara Walters thing. It's. There's, you know, I don't know. She's in front of everybody. She's the victim here, not the perpetrator. I wouldn't mind anybody grilling father yod about that topic.
Kayla: It was also kind of like the multiple attempts to get answer. I think if I remember correctly, it was this pointed question galaxy gave, not a brush off answer, but maybe a less vulnerable response than the moderator wanted. And the moderator asked again, and it's like, maybe don't re victimize somebody that you think is a victim.
Chris: That's all I'm saying. Yeah, yeah, exactly. But she did have, like, an interesting response. It was one of the times that was at. She talked about, like, her childhood. Like, she was like a bit of a wild child. Right?
Kayla: She's self described as that.
Chris: Self described? Yeah, like, getting into trouble and stuff. And then, you know, she went to go find herself in California. She found this source family thing, and she loved it and got involved with it. Right. And then her mother visited, and she recalls her mother's reaction being like, well, look, I know that you're young, but you're here eating healthy. You're meditating every day. You have a stable job. You're not out all night getting into trouble, which is something you used to do. You seem happy.
Kayla: You're not on drugs. You're not on drugs.
Chris: Yeah. So it's like, this is abnormal, but also, it maybe seems good in a way. So, like, you do you.
Kayla: She said, galaxy quoted her mom as saying, you're better off here.
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: Then, you know, which is like home, man.
Chris: I don't know. It's just so weird because it's, like.
Kayla: On one side, in some ways she probably was. In some ways she probably wasn't. Who the fuck knows?
Chris: Like, you're too young to make these kinds of decisions. But on the other hand, like, all of those things that she said are pretty good points.
Kayla: Yeah, it's probably. I mean, you know, there are lots of ways parents, quote unquote, handle out of, quote unquote, out of control teens. And some of those out of control teens, some of those ways, can be very abusive. So who's to say what is the right thing to do here? I don't know.
Chris: Yeah. Yeah. I really, in this case, I think I. I don't know if I would have done that, but I appreciate the mothering that was done right there. Like, counseling the daughter to, like, not be in this group, especially at her age, I think, also would have been okay.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: But the points that she raised and the support that she showed for her daughter, I think, is also a good way to handle it.
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: I mean, you know what it comes back to? Everything else always comes back to this.
Kayla: What is it, Chris?
Chris: You cannot save people. You can only love them.
Kayla: End of episode.
Chris: Bye. Sign off. Holy shit. No, there's more. There's more. Because they did have a few good takeaways. So the final question was, like, hey, is there anything that you want to say that we didn't ask? Just a sign off sort of statement. And so the three of them had really interesting things to say. So Venus talked about the thing that you said, like, the river of memories that sort of courses through your blood, and you experience that as sort of like a three day movie film when you die.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: ISIS didn't really have, like, a pithy quote, but she said that, like, the stories are so wild that you'd, like, scarcely believe them. I believe that. I'd scarcely believe the stories that some.
Kayla: Their spiritual leader jumped off a cliff and, like, flew away and then died. The stories were wild.
Chris: Yeah. And then galaxy. I liked what Galaxy said. So she said that one of the things that stuck with her is this idea that saying the words I am is a really powerful thing. So you should always be careful about the word that comes after I am, because then that's something that you are essentially programming yourself to become. So it's not that you can't say it's just that when you. It carries a lot of weight, and you shouldn't say it lightly. You should be very deliberate with whatever word you put after the words I am. And I actually really thought that was kind of a neat takeaway.
Kayla: The book has documents that get into this, describes the I am practice, and it even talks about how Father Yode had his followers at certain points where rubber bands were on their wrists that they would snap every time they said, I am. To kind of help bring awareness to, like, the frequency with which they were saying I am statements, and then to, like, really think about the content of those I am statements. Because whether or not you believe saying like, I am blank manifests it spiritually, or whether you believe saying I am blank teaches your subconscious something about yourself. Like, those are. It's worth looking at. It's worth thinking about the ways we're talking to ourselves. About ourselves.
Chris: That's right. That's right. Instead of the rubber bands, they should have done the thing where you get a wet towel and you twirl it up, and then you snap somebody with a towel. With a wet towel, and you give them, like, a little welt.
Kayla: That sounds awful.
Chris: You've never done that?
Kayla: I think I wouldn't want to do that in this circumstance.
Chris: I guess that's kind of like a guy's locker room kind of thing. So that concluded the Q and A. And then after the Q and A, if you are somebody who purchased this book we've been talking about all episode, then ISIS was there to sign it. So we trundle up with our book to ISIS and hand it to her. And then she looks at me and says, I think I know you. I think I've been. No, she said. She said, I've been looking at you all night.
Kayla: She said, I've been looking at you all night, trying to figure out who you are.
Chris: That's what it is. Right? Right.
Kayla: I will never forget it. Because this woman did not look at you, and I were standing next to each other. She did not look at me. She did not address me. I would talk to her. She'd look back. She did not like me. Something about you wasn't me.
Chris: The cult wife was into me. Sorry. I was jealous. Yeah. And then I said, I'm not anybody. And what I meant was, like, I'm not related to the cult. Like, I'm not part of this.
Kayla: I'm not a child of galaxies or.
Chris: A friend of so and so.
Kayla: Sorry.
Chris: Yeah, but she was like, no, you are someone. Like, she took that as, like a. Like, sort of like an existential. I'm nobody. And. And then I think she said that she had known me in a past life.
Kayla: She was like, even if I didn't know you in this life.
Chris: That's right.
Kayla: We probably knew each other in a past life. It's probably something like that.
Chris: Right? And then we just sort of like, smiled and nodded, and you said, no.
Kayla: I need to clarify. You said, I'm nobody. I'm just Chris.
Chris: Just Chris.
Kayla: And I said, yeah, this is Chris. We both said your name and the reason why I am bringing this up.
Chris: I do need to clarify that we said our name multiple times.
Kayla: After you had this exchange of, like, I knew you in a past life. She bowed her head to write the message in the book. Sign the book. To Chris. Gotta love a good cult. Love Isis. And then were like, it's weird.
Chris: That she wrote that.
Kayla: Yeah. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. And then you and I hightailed it.
Chris: Out of there, right? And then by. And then we get home and we look at the signature, and I forget what she said. Like, no, no. Actually, let's read it out.
Kayla: I'm gonna read it.
Chris: Yeah, let's just read it out.
Kayla: Opening the book again to Fred, in kindness. Love, Isis, aquarian.
Chris: Oh, in kindness.
Kayla: To Fred.
Chris: Yeah, to Fred.
Kayla: You and I both said, chris.
Chris: So we will never know.
Kayla: Maybe Fred was who you were in the past.
Chris: That's right. So we will never know whether she was merely confused. Cause these. I mean, let's be real, you know, the seventies is a long time ago. These are rather old people by now. And sometimes old people, they don't hear quite right.
Kayla: He was also really loud in there.
Chris: He was loud. So it could have been a mistake. It also could have been her saying, like, no, you're Fred.
Kayla: I think you were Fred.
Chris: You're Fred in a past life. Or maybe it was she was doing the father yode thing and she was just bestowing a name upon me.
Kayla: Yeah, maybe she misspelled friend.
Chris: I don't know what it is, but. But it's immortally captured ink now to Fred. So that was probably the best part about the night. And then we peaced out and got.
Kayla: Some in and out.
Chris: And then we got in and out.
Kayla: Even though we had delicious samosas, I was hungry.
Chris: Speaking of in n Out, I think before we get into the criteria, I wanna talk a little bit about secret sauce. Do you like that segue?
Kayla: That was fantastic.
Chris: That Segway was as good as an in n out burger. So we mentioned several times in this episode how the source family has, like, a lot of different beliefs that are all the same as everybody else. And we find this a lot in this podcast where we're like. We talk about Teal Swan and it's like, oh, yeah, you know, they got the akashic records and something. Something and Quantum and Lemurian and Atlantean and aquarium and, like, they all just sort of have, like, the same hodgepodge of beliefs. But we always do try to find, like, well, what's your edge, though? Like, what's your differentiating factor? And for example, for Teal Swan, the position of this podcast is that it's her approach to suicidality. Right, right. For Jay Z Knight, it's actually. I'm not sure what it is for Jay Z Knight.
Chris: I was gonna say, like, quantum stuff, but I think Quantum flap Doodle is, like, pretty ubiquitous now.
Kayla: I think with that film, it might be the film, but I think it's specifically romtha. I think it's just the presence of.
Chris: Romtha, the character that she created. Yeah, that's pretty baller then, because that's. I mean, that's. Yeah, all right. That's very charismatic.
Kayla: Maybe it's just Jay Z herself. I don't know, but that's what it is. Very cares addict by her with a single thought. Yeah.
Chris: So what is it about the source family? What is the differentiating factor for the source family?
Kayla: Right. Like, with a theories, it was like the aliens. What is it with this?
Chris: I would say it's that they're nice.
Kayla: Ethereus.
Chris: Yeah, yeah. Was that they're nice. There's other aliens done abuse.
Kayla: Yeah, I think I had. I think we talked about this earlier, and I had a really good answer. I don't remember what it is anymore. What did I say?
Chris: You. Oh, I highlighted. You highlight. Yeah. You highlighted how, at the time, there was a sort of societal need for fatherhood. And particularly for these people that were joining this group, they had experiences in their childhood that were either the father was absent or literally absent or metaphorically absent because. Fifties.
Kayla: Well, think about this time in history. Their dads had probably undergone unspeakable trauma.
Chris: Yeah. Yeah.
Kayla: World War two, lived through World War two, or participated in unspeakable trauma. Probably didn't talk about it. Probably. I mean, had untreated PTSD, that doesn't necessarily lead to a vulnerable, intimate, close relationship with your father. And it was also the 1950s where fathers were nothing necessarily encouraged to have close, intimate, emotional relationships with their children in the way that maybe mothers were encouraged a little bit more to do.
Chris: So one of the people, it was either the documentary or afterwards mentioned how their dad never basically, I don't think, ever told them that they loved them. Whereas father Yod, that was something that he would say every day. It's literally for that person, maybe have just been that right.
Kayla: It was like he represented not just a, like, spiritual teaching, like, Jesus type father. It was literally like a reparenting type father. Like, here is a father that I never had.
Chris: Right. A father that is willing to say, I love you. He only has to say it once. And I'm in.
Kayla: Right?
Chris: Yep.
Kayla: And then I think the other, I guess, the secret. Okay, the real secret sauce, if we're really gonna be honest, the real, like, the pithy thing.
Chris: The real secret sauce is the gimmick dressing.
Kayla: It's the gimmick of the restaurant. That's what it is. It's the source restaurant.
Chris: I think it's both.
Kayla: And, you know, I think that's, like, the. If there's one takeaway from this cult, this is the. This is the restaurant cult. Like, Aetherius is the UFO cult. Self civilization fellowship is the, like, the yoga cult. This is the restaurant cult.
Chris: Well, then what's loving? Hot.
Kayla: That's another restaurant cult.
Chris: Restaurant cult, part two. Electric boo.
Kayla: That's the restaurant cult that had franchised opportunities.
Chris: Got it.
Kayla: That's the one that doesn't got it. And then I think the other, like, secret sauce was their relationship to the age of Aquarius. It feels like that was very quintessential for them in the way that there's, like, there's plenty of age of Aquarius cults. There's plenty of UFO cults, but this was, like, kind of their thing. I think they got a really good handle on it, and it just was like. Again, I joked up front, like, this was hair personified. It's not really a joke. Like, this was capturing the sentiment of a momentous.
Chris: Yeah. I think for me, though, the two most powerful things are the sort of, like, the fatherhood thing.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: And the source restaurant thing. And when I think about it, the answer is in their name. Source family.
Kayla: Yeah, right.
Chris: Source is the restaurant family is what they were looking for.
Kayla: They were also hot and had celebrities.
Chris: Right. Hot Cele. That's true. But, I mean, that's like, celebrities in a cult now is like. That's.
Kayla: Yeah, it's always been.
Chris: All right, so time for our secret sauce. The criteria.
Kayla: Now, what are we criteria? Because we essentially went to a cult. Ter duckan.
Chris: Cult Duckin.
Kayla: Cult Duckin. Where it was, like, a thing about, like, an event with the source family, but it was at the philosophical research society, which was created by Manly P. Hall, which helped create the source family. Like, it's like an ouroboros of cults here.
Chris: Why don't we just do source family on theory that maybe we'll go back to PRS at some point.
Kayla: Good point.
Chris: And then we'll either do that episode on them or there'll be some, like, meta analysis of prs at the end of this. Something like that.
Kayla: Okay.
Chris: Also, not as much work right now.
Kayla: Let's do it.
Chris: Number one, charismatic leader. Bada bing, bada boom. Just through the gut. Probably the highest it's ever been.
Kayla: The most on the show.
Chris: And I know we've said that before, but I think this supersedes whatever the hell were talking about.
Kayla: This is, like, even more than teal Swan. This is, like, the most.
Chris: Yeah. This is, like, people meet this guy.
Kayla: And, like, you could parody this. Like, if someone's gonna parody a cult leader, this is the guy that they're either parodying him or Jim Jones or David Koresh. Like, this is the parody guy.
Chris: Yeah. And just the stories of people just being converted as soon as they are in his presence, it just was like.
Kayla: God, I would give anything for an.
Chris: Ounce of that charisma, and, I mean, I would give anything to experience an ounce of that from that person.
Kayla: Yeah. I don't think I've ever seen somebody and been like, I'ma follow you. I want that.
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: I mean, you just see if I could resist it.
Chris: You like teal?
Kayla: Yeah, but I'm not gonna. I don't see her and go, like, I'm leaving my life.
Chris: What about me? You can't resist me.
Kayla: I did not.
Chris: Mm.
Kayla: I did.
Chris: Well, you did for a while. My charisma.
Kayla: You couldn't resist me.
Chris: My charisma is persistence, so that's where I get mine from. Okay. Expected harm. Toughy.
Kayla: I don't really know how to answer.
Chris: That one, because, well, you need to know how, because you are the expert. I mean, I think that there is.
Kayla: I think it's medium because it's clearly there. Some girls who joined this group were abused, and that's horrifying and should never happen to anyone.
Chris: Robin came to harm. Like, she was pretty explicit about that in the document.
Kayla: Also, I will say we didn't talk about this in the brunch of the episode, but this is a very sad story. There was one member of the group who was super into hang gliding. He was the hang gliding guy. He was a part of a hang gliding clubs and stuff. And he's the one who father Yode was like, okay, you help me do this hang gliding thing. And his name was Mercury. I believe. Mercury was like, I don't think you should do this. This hang glider is not big enough for you, but your father Yode. So I'll do what you say. He's the one who launched him.
Chris: Oh, man, that is fucked up.
Kayla: According to ISiS, he was just never the same.
Chris: Yeah, of course.
Kayla: He's horrible. And may have completed suicide based on these events by hang gliding off of the same cliffs in the night and crashing into them.
Chris: Oh, so he died the same way.
Kayla: He died the same way. And.
Chris: God.
Kayla: Sorry. And then, like, the. The group tried to do the same thing where, like, they keep his body for three and a half days, but, like, the authorities were notified, and so they, like, arrested a whole, like, they came and took the body and arrested a whole bunch of them and, like, it was a big deal. So, like, I did kind of, because there's so much here I didn't dwell on the pains that they went through after father, like, in Hawaii and after Father Yode passed. It was not a. It was not a good time during those years.
Chris: No, it was not sound a good time. Okay. That really ups my estimation of expected harm, because you've made me very sad.
Kayla: Sorry.
Chris: I am. I feel harmed by this now, so. But then a lot of them were.
Kayla: Like, this was great, and it's better.
Chris: I don't know.
Kayla: I wasn't drinking, I wasn't smoking. I mean, that one guy we. The one guy that did the ritual was like, this changed my life. This has been the most powerful spiritual tool I've ever experienced. I'm still doing it, you know, 40 years later.
Chris: Yeah. And they did talk about how they, like, still feel like they have benefit or they still, like, you know, they like the time that they spend.
Kayla: I think it's medium. I think it's medium.
Chris: All right, medium. But it made me sad. All right. Presence of ritual as high as it's ever been. You think so? Like, I mean, it's definitely doing the stars.
Kayla: I don't know if it's high.
Chris: It's so high. I don't know if I'm like, if I'm stack ranking, though, if this is number one.
Kayla: No, it's so high. It's. There was a 40 point system, and it was like, stretch your sciatic nerve every day. Jump in the ocean now. Jump in the ocean again. Do this meditation. Do that meditation. Do your star thing. Every morning you wake up, you say, yehoah. Then you say something else every time when you go to sleep.
Chris: So let's agree that it's high. Let's agree that it's high. And then we can have an offline discussion about whether it is the highest ever on the show.
Kayla: It is one of the highest ever on the show.
Chris: Niche within society.
Kayla: Yes.
Chris: Yeah. I think this is, like, why the niche criteria exists is because this was a group of 140 people with, like, sort of an outsider religion, not like a mainstream million person religion.
Kayla: And I will say it's not super easy to find a ton of information on the group. Like, there's old newspapers and stuff, but they don't even have a Wikipedia page. The Wikipedia page is just for Father Yode or the documentary about the family. So that's why a lot of.
Chris: If you don't have an Wikipedia page, that's it. Niche is very high.
Kayla: That's why a lot of the. A lot of what you and I are talking about here literally comes from the primary resource of the book and the secondary resource of the documentary, which is, like, primary, secondary, depending on how.
Chris: You look at it, depending on who would be.
Kayla: There are articles out there, but, like, a lot of articles are a little more surface y or it's like, it doesn't really dive into it.
Chris: The articles are about the documentary.
Kayla: Yeah, there's a lot of articles about the documentary. So that also feels a little niche to me.
Chris: Yeah, for sure. Hi. Okay. Antifactuality.
Kayla: I mean, again, I take issue with this criteria only because there's a difference between believing in weird shit and being anti science. Yeah, they are a little anti science in the, like, western? Like, no, western.
Chris: I think it has elements. Yeah, I think, like, the don't go to a hospital I would call, but.
Kayla: I don't know if believing in the emerald totems of thoth or whatever is necessarily anti. Is that anti factuality?
Chris: Like, I would definitely give that, like, a six out of ten, but it wouldn't be a nine out of ten. The way anti vaxx or the closed logical loop stuff is just believing in weird stuff isn't the same as anybody that tells you that we're wrong is evidence of the conspiracy. It's not the same sort of conspiracy in that sense.
Kayla: They have weird beliefs. They were into home birth, which is a controversial thing. They're into homeschooling, which is a controversial thing. But I think this is more. I'm gonna say medium. Six out of ten.
Chris: I would even say, like, yeah, maybe six out of ten. Yeah, medium. Okay. I like that. Life consumption. Hi. They lived on the compound. This is, like, why they all lived together again.
Kayla: They all moved around together. They all married each other. They all had babies together. It was 24, 65. Yeah.
Chris: I mean, you mentioned this at the top of the episode. This is part of why you said they're sort of the platonic ideal for a cult is because when you think about life consumption, you think about people living in a compound. When you think about niche, you think about 140 wiros that call themselves aquarian dogmatic beliefs. Did you get the impression that there was, we're right and everybody else is wrong?
Kayla: It was a little bit more like, we're right. Not even think about you. It's like, we're right. Not even think about if you're wrong. It was just, this is our thing.
Chris: I didn't get the impression of strong dogma.
Kayla: Yeah. It was less like they didn't even need to worry about preventing people from having other beliefs because they were so attractive. They were so whatever. Whatever formula they had for getting people involved, it was like they got 140 people. And those 140 people were dedicated and loved it and didn't want their father to stop being their spiritual leader. They didn't want to disband. It was less about got to prevent people from having other thoughts or other beliefs and more about, these are our beliefs. This is what they are. They're great. Right? You like them, right?
Chris: Yeah. I'd say dogma's low.
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: Chain of victims.
Kayla: There were a lot of children born into this. Not like 700, but there were quite a few children born into this. But I think that's kind of where. That's kind of where the chain stops. I don't. You know, there probably was a lot of, like, lateral recruiting of, like, I got involved in this and I'm gonna tell my friend about it, and they're gonna tell their friend about it, but it just kind of feels like. Like this was a single generation. This was essentially a single generation thing. The guy was a cult leader from 1969 to 1975, and then it kind of was around until 77. Like, it's a one.
Chris: And then it generated. Okay, so present but low. Safe or unsafe exit. Our last criterion.
Kayla: I don't have a lot of information about this because, again, a lot of people who got involved were involved the whole time. I don't get the sense that there was, like a.
Chris: Wasn't there like a guy or two or somebody in the documentary, I thought, mentioned that he bailed and he didn't say that it was hard or anything.
Kayla: Yeah, I don't get the sense that if you left, you're gonna be excommunicated. And I also didn't get the sense that the group destroyed your other relationships so that you couldn't go back to them. Just kind of, like, go back to their family if they needed to, rather than like, oh, you have to cut off everybody in your life. It was less about that and more just about the group.
Chris: So I'd say mostly safe exit.
Kayla: And I will say again, a lot. Again, we're gleaning from primary resources, so our information may be biased. Maybe it was terrible, but that's not the information we have.
Chris: Yeah, well, I mean, we also have to put some trust in the documentarian that she was trying to present. Unbiased.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: But you're right that, like, obviously, the. The group produced scrapbook is gonna have some, you know, its own point of view. Okay, so charismatic leader, not only high, but maybe the highest ever. Probably the highest ever. Expected harm. We said medium. Presence of ritual, sky high. Niche, very high. Antifactual, medium. Life consumption, very high. But dogma, chain of victims and unsafe exit, low.
Kayla: I mean, it.
Chris: So was it a cult? Just weird.
Kayla: Is cult. Is cult. It's a cult.
Chris: But, Kayla, we said that several of these were, like, one was medium and three were low. And, like, the ones that are low. Okay. Expected harm.
Kayla: Okay.
Chris: Yeah, medium.
Kayla: So it's just. It's just weird. You're saying that the source family is just weird, or they are religion.
Chris: Well, they can't be a religion, because that's what the niche one is for. Niche is if they score, like, high and everything else, but they're not niche, then they're a religion. Right. That's how that works.
Kayla: So you think it's just weird? It might just be weird.
Chris: I mean, I think this is. I think this is part of what this show is about, right? Is, like, here we have an example of a group that's, like, a new religious movement, right? That is not really that harmful. I mean, what did we call a theorist? Didn't we call a theories just weird? Or do we call them.
Kayla: We might have called them a religion. I don't know.
Chris: No.
Kayla: They're not copped out.
Chris: Are they big enough?
Kayla: I don't know.
Chris: Who knows? Who knows? Those three months ago. I remember yesterday. Jesus. I don't know. I don't know. It's definitely on the cusp because the places that it scores high are very high.
Kayla: My inclination to call it a cult is extremely biased by its aesthetics.
Chris: Yeah, I was just gonna say that. Right? Like, if they. If they didn't wear flowing jeans, they just, like, wore jeans and a t shirt.
Kayla: Yeah. So I think that if.
Chris: But they were on a compound that, like, moved around.
Kayla: It wasn't a compound. It was a house.
Chris: What? That's what a compound is.
Kayla: It wasn't a compound. A compound is like where Scientology is, where it's like multiple buildings and a hole that they put people in and a cafeteria. This is a mansion that they all lived in. This is just communal.
Chris: Does the whole have a cafeteria?
Kayla: Not every commune is a compound. It may have been a compound in Hawaii.
Chris: I think this one's, like, really on the cusp.
Kayla: For me, either answer is correct.
Chris: No, that is not the come on fault.
Kayla: And just weird on this show, new name of the show.
Chris: On this show, we fucking pigeonhole things, okay? That's what we do.
Kayla: What do you think?
Chris: I am gonna say cult because of the robes? I agree with you. It's just cause of the robes.
Kayla: But do you think we should be doing that? Do you think we should be, like, the inclination to want to call this a cult based on aesthetics is like. That's kind of why we have this podcast, is to get away from defining something as a cult based on the, like, oh, it looks like a cult.
Chris: Okay. Yeah, I think that's the point of the show. But I also feel like it's the type of thing where I'd be, like, I would join it, but then feel comfortable calling myself a cult. Like, yeah, man, wear weird robes. We're a cult. But this sort of tongue in cheek version of admitting that where I don't actually think it's harmful.
Kayla: The word cult is not used in the book. They actually. Let me read you something. My help to Fred. So the book has an introduction by Jodie Weil, who I think was either the director also involved in the documentary.
Chris: Okay. And the intro is in the front of the book.
Kayla: The introduction is in the back of the book.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: All of the pictures and then the introduction at the end. Like when I was reading, when I was going through the book, and I'm like, I'm just looking at all these pretty pictures. I don't have any context. And I got to the end, and all the contexts at the end, I was like, okay, that's. That's a way to do a book.
Chris: This word, I don't think it means what you think it means.
Kayla: So while the word cult is not used here, different descriptors are used. So I just want to read this paragraph. And it's talking about the time in the. In the early seventies. Like the seventies America was in crisis, upheaval, Vietnam War, everything's crazy, blah. Literally thousands of intentional communities mushroomed across America. Micro societies of like minded people who rejected the authority of corrupt institutions and long, sanctioned narratives and began to create their own. The variations were endless. Some moved to the countryside and started open land communes. Others launched psychedelic or art communes. There were yoga communities, crafter collectives, service communes, urban and political collectives, science cooperatives, gay and group marriage communes. Many of these new groups were spiritual communities, and quite a few new religions formed around charismatic leaders. The source family was one of these communities born in this fraught yet fertile time.
Chris: Okay, so what I'm hearing is that we have content forever.
Kayla: Yeah, but it's intentional communities, micro societies, communes, collectives.
Chris: There are plenty of other words we can use. That's true. All right, fine. The new name of our show is collective or just weird. Commune or just weird. Or we can just put them all in the cult or commune or intentional.
Kayla: Or just weird spiritual community where you break your blows.
Chris: Let's call this a spiritual pseudo family. Let's call it.
Kayla: Is it a cult or is it just weird? We're gonna be here forever.
Chris: The premise of our show, it's breaking down before my eyes.
Kayla: You know, we could do something here. We could do something here.
Chris: What we renaming the show?
Kayla: We could leave it open to the audience. We could ask.
Chris: I hate that.
Kayla: I'm saying we could ask them to, like, tell us what they think, and then we'll, like, see how many people say cult versus just weird and then declare it on the next episode.
Chris: All right, let's do that. All right, but where are we gonna do it? Like a Twitter poll, I guess, because I don't want to have, like, 100 emails.
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: So we are gonna make a poll on our Twitter. Go to our Twitter account. We're just alter. Just weird on Twitter, which maybe we'll have to change because we're just getting really tied up with the nomenclature here. But we'll make a poll, and you can vote, and we will tell you what the results are on the show. I think that for the purposes of. I don't want this to be, like, you decide. Cause I hate this.
Kayla: An ambiguous top spinning.
Chris: I am going to call it a cult.
Kayla: I think I am, too, but I.
Chris: Feel bad about it.
Kayla: But I can be persuaded by a passionate audience. So if you have an opinion, let us know.
Chris: Yeah. All right, well, with that, this is our first episode of the fifth season of whatever the fuck or just weird. And I'm Chris.
Kayla: And I'm Kayla.
Chris: And we usually say culture just weird.
Kayla: At this point, but we don't know who we are anymore. So we'll see you in four weeks.