Crossed Lines: Ascended Masters and the Kiwis who channel them

Bronwyn Rideout - 11 December 2023

Part 1: Blair Styra and Tabaash

For an island nation with a population of 5.3 million, I would hazard that we have more than our fair share of pākehā with a hotline to millenia-long dead Asians. And by more I mean a non-zero number, because mediumship is a paranormal practice/belief that so far has failed to provide any empirical evidence for its efficacy, other than the ability to make money disappear out of the pockets of those seeking confirmation of the afterlife, or one last chance to speak with their loved one.

Mediumship is the practice of mediating communication between spirits and living humans. The spirits in question are often those familiar to a particular target but, as seen in the case of Aotearoa’s own Priscilla and James Hackett, it wasn’t unusual for Mediums to call upon the spirits of their own family members to join proceedings with strangers. Or to simply fabricate people who just happened to have lived in another country when they died, and thus able to escape attempts to verify their existence. This is what Sue Nicholson and Kevin Cruickshank do when they aren’t in a stoush and sniping at each other.

Channeling, on the other hand, is similar to mediumship, but rather than talking smack about your uncle’s new wife with late Aunt Mildred, you could find yourself talking about the weather with a far loftier entity such an Archangel, Jesus, or even a God. Already this places the power and influence of the channeler far above that of a medium, let alone us mere humans - since the entity in question is a higher consciousness from a different realm, something that requires more power and energy to translate for our simple 3D minds to understand. As the Wikipedia article states, Channeling comes in two forms: Clairaudience, where the channeler claims to hear the spirits and just relays the information; or the far more entertaining (and therefore money-makeable) Trance, whereby the channeler allows an entity to take over their body, as indicated by a complete change in personality or voice. A channeler may appear cataleptic while in a trace, or they walk around and interact as they would normally.

In her published chapter, Spiritual Channeling: An Ethnographic Account, Heather Kavan notes another difference between mediums and channelers is that mediumship is more closely associated with the Spiritualist Church (and the broader Spiritualism movement), which has spiritual healing and mediumship as core practices of their belief system. However, modern mediums are less likely to acknowledge that association, and tend to use the term medium to signal a particular part of their performance, which is talking to dead humans. Channelers, springing mainly from the New Age movement, are largely individualists, but may collaborate with others in the rapidly changing social media landscape.

Given the elevated connections one can make through channeling, compared to mere mediumship, it is unsurprising that there is a particular genre of channeling based on the Ascended Masters.

Ascended Masters as a concept appears to have originated from the Theosophy movement and their beliefs around reincarnation. An ascended master is an ordinary human who has undergone a series of lifetimes and transformations to become an enlightened being. Examples of Ascended Masters from the early history of Theosophy (this is by no means an exhaustive list) include Buddha, Jesus, Confucius, and Comte St. Germain. Despite their ascension from the earthly plane, ascended masters still find the time to communicate to mankind with directions on how to evolve.

If you are interested in New Age or Occult lore, prominent figures like Guy Ballard, Paul Foster Case, and George King claim to either channel or have been visited by a physical manifestation of an Ascended Master. This heavy reliance on Theosophy was likely deliberate, in an attempt to garner some credibility and authority in the eyes of their respective audiences.

While Theosophy may seem to be a faded religious movement today, belief in ascended masters continues on social media platforms which target younger demographics, like TikTok.

Not everyone posting about ascended masters explicitly refers to Theosophy, or the offshoot work of Alice Bailey or others, but the influence is clearly there. Whether the influencers are aware of the theosophical origins of their beliefs, or if it was something they had plucked from the general New Age milieu, is not clear.

To claim that you are channeling an ascended master (or thereabouts) is a level of braggadocio that needs to be explored and, luckily, New Zealand is lousy with them. Over the next couple of months, I’ll be looking at a selection of individuals and how they have advertised and commercialised their relationships with the Gods (or near to).

Blair Styra

Simon Collins wrote about Blair Styra in 1996 for the now defunct Wellington newspaper, City Voice. The NZ Skeptics committee at the time bestowed Collins with a Bravo award for his article and, thankfully, through the Wellington City Council, you can still read the original article here.

According to his biography, Blair was born in New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada on October 12th, 1960, and lived there until he immigrated to New Zealand with his family to Auckland, NZ in 1971. In his semi-autobiography, Don’t Change the Channel, it’s said that Styra had a brush with influence when a letter written to Prime Minister Muldoon to complain about being underpaid at an afterschool job turned out to be effective. As an older teen/young adult Styra did some modelling. He met his future wife, Kay McCallum, when he was 18 and she was 42.They married in 1995 and remained together until her death in 2020 from Alzheimer’s.

It was Kay’s cancer diagnosis in 1984 that fully ignited Styra’s spiritual journey, and the two of them would eventually attend a medium development circle through the Spiritualist church. In 1991 he began channeling the spirit of a 5,000 year old Sumerian merchant named Tabaash Salaam Mayhem.

Oops…wrong Sumerian.

Portrait of Tabaash, courtesy of Paul Hunt.

In Blair and Tabaash the association is explicitly stronger with the Spiritualists than it is with the Theosophists. While Styra has never called Tabaash an ascended master, others have, and Styra’s own description of Tabaash echoes that of other ascended masters.

Between 1991 and 1996, Styra had given personal consultations to 2,800 people for a cool $90 (approximately $170 adjusted for inflation) each for 90 minutes. Since it was the 90s, Styra had a decent media reach as well, with a two-hour show on Access Radio called Talking with Tabaash, and a series of cassette tapes of his channeling sessions.

Things threatened to take a turn for Styra in 1996 when Collins exposed Styra for fraudulent behaviour. Juliana Brøns and her daughter Kirsten were solid clients for Styra from 1994 to 1995/6. At her first session in 1994, Juliana was informed by Blair that in a past life she was Lady Catherine Winthrop, had an estate in Worcester, was friends with the Prince and Princess of Wales, and died in 1927. Even better, she was best buds with Blair in that past life; but Blair was Lavinia, Duchess of Westmoreland. For some reason, Tabaash thought it important to mention that Catherine was a lesbian and made frequent trips to Italy with Lavinia.

From that first session, Juliana and her daughter had several more sessions, and then paid an extra $5 to attend Tabaash’s teaching and meditation evenings at the Museum Theatrette. The duo even attended Styra and McCallum’s 1995 wedding.

According to Brøns, it all came to an end when personal enquiries to the Hereford and Worcester Archivist were returned with a letter stating that there were no records of Catherine or Lavinia. When Juliana attempted to confront Blair, McCallum was alleged to have been the one to shout Juliana down and disinvite them from Christmas Dinner. Brøns then sought legal action against Styra, seeking $420 in refunds. Styra responded that the money would only be paid if the tapes were destroyed and Brøns promised not to pursue further action, and she in turn upped the damages demanded to $2,500. On February 6, 1996, Brøns received her initial sum of $420, plus the $100 that was given as a wedding gift, on the condition that no further legal action was taken or complaint to the commerce commission made. Then spokesperson for Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Kim Morton, mused that they didn’t know how someone could prove that they did or didn’t receive a service from a medium or spirit.

Styra would later claim that the incorrect information was given deliberately in order to break Brøns’ dependency on Tabaash, but Brøns countered that the information in question was given at their first meeting, before any relationship was formed with Styra and Kay.

A fairly camp depiction of the Wellington property where Styra did his channeling.

After the events of the Brøns case, Collins interviewed several former customers of Styra and Tabaash. Most said they would go back to Styra even after knowing about Brøns; they already took what Styra said with a pinch of salt, and claimed that it was fun. One participant who did say they wouldn’t go back noticed that Styra dropped his Tabaash character over the course of the channeling, and also gave them inaccurate information about their family.

The subsequent letters to the editor section were spritely.

So, did Strya fall into obscurity after this humiliating episode?

No.

Styra and Tabaash are still in business, offering talks, consultations, and being a guest on many spiritual podcasts and YouTube videos. In the early 2000s, Styra gained a champion in Dolores Cannon, hypnotist, past-life therapist, and UFO abduction researcher. Cannon was a character in her own right. She reported that she channeled an entity that claimed to be Nostradamus, and published these experiences in her 1979 book, Conversations with Nostradamus. Cannon also developed the “Quantum Healing Hypnosis Technique” for past life regression.

Styra still works in New Zealand, and occasionally has a platform with the New Zealand Spiritualist Church circuit. His published claims of his abilities can trend on the ghoulish. In Don’t Change the Channel, Styra describes what he does when he goes into a trance: His disembodied spirit is given a mission to help others. During one such mission, he sent waves of peace and love to a young man in New York that he visualised was about to attempt suicide, and kept vigil until the man’s friend passed by and distracted him.

Styra is clear on his website that Tabaash does not act as a conduit to communicate with the dead. Consultations are an hour long, and are offered in person and by Skype, but the cost of such a session is unknown.

Probably more than $90.