Are you desperately seeking a side hustle? Then consider the perennial growth industry of astrology. Projected to reach $22.8 billion by 2031, prognosticators thrive in times of uncertainty. As I wrote back in 2022, their reach has never been wider, with social media platforms providing a new audience with the promise of few or no regulations regarding health claims or disinformation.

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So… I was planning on writing about an Autism scam that did the rounds on Australia news networks this month. Instead, Mark unintentionally sent me down a rabbit hole when he asked for an article about the approaching 100th anniversary of the Spiritualist Church Of New Zealand Act 1924 next month. It's branded a National Spiritual Day, which I'm anticipating may cause confusion and upset in other religious circles.

At the end of Part 1 of this article, I did gloss over a fair bit of Premie lore once the schism happened between Prem and his family, and that's due to the absence of surviving or available objective sources.

The Divine Light Mission (DLM) is something of an oldie as far as cults go, but it attracted its fair share of controversy in the 1970s and 1980s with notable followers such as respected kiwi composer Jenny McLeod and Billy TK Senior. For me this article has been on the backburner almost as long as the Colin Amery articles, as the DLM often received cursory mention in other cults I have researched. I recall first coming across the group in a folio of personal letters at the National Library. I was looking for mentions of Scientology, but instead came upon the type of family update letter that one receives from distant relatives and friends at Christmas; One year in the 1970s, an especially unfortunate family had adult children variously working with Scientology and living in a DLM ashram.

At the end of part 2 of this series (which was published a month ago), it seemed that Colin Amery had started to settle down. He met his future wife, poet Yvonne Gatton, in 1986. Gatton seems to have been a stabilising influence for Amery; so much so that he would follow her spiritual practices, and be initiated into the Sant Mat spiritual movement. While the couple were mum about who their specific guru was to a Stuff reporter, he did tell Dominion Post reporter Kimberley Rothwell that he practised Surat Shabd Yoga.

Let me preface this article by stating, mustering my best Dr McCoy impression, that I'm a midwife and am certainly not a sports nutritionist, dietician, food scientist, government bureaucrat, etc. I profess total ignorance on this topic, and welcome any of our readers who do have the appropriate expertise to write in or join us on this week's podcast to share their knowledge.

Our Skeptical Calendar, where we attempt to find at least one event of skeptical interest from New Zealand for each of the 366 days of the year, is nearly finished now, with just 20 or so days that we don't have an event for remaining. Here are the events that happened on this day in history for the next two weeks:

We last left the story of Colin Amery at the precipice of his 2nd attempt at immigration to the Pacific, this time following his pregnant girlfriend back to her home country of New Zealand. Before he departed the UK, he decided to stage a UFO 'talk-down' on Hampstead Heath. Amery fails to provide any further detail on what a UFO talk-down is exactly, but boy did it deliver.

In Wellington, the School of Practical Philosophy (SPP) is likely best known to most denizens by sight rather than by name or reputation. Situated midway up a steep hill in the neighbourhood of Te Aro, the SPP premises is quite impressive from the sidewalk; The facade is stately, and the ground floor chattels are well-maintained and tidy. However, there is a pervasive feeling of… well, not exactly a heyday long past, but maybe a heyday that was never fully realised.

We often connect satanic panic to the 1980s through to the early 1990s, but Australian brothers and screenwriting team Cameron and Colin Cairnes weave a tight narrative with a setting that feels authentic to its late 1970s setting, which teetered between occult curiosity and a fear of anything unseeable and unknowable. There is a sufficient commitment to the amount of brown in the costuming and set design, but the extent of their commitment to the bit is evident in the flairs of detail in both the exposition and side characters. There are the mundane references to sweeps week and more apropos callbacks (or should that be callouts…) to Anton LaVey and Ed and Lorraine Warren. If you want to know more about the deep-cut references, you can check out this article by Warped Perspective.

As best as I can ascertain, Colin Amery has passed. I mean, I'm certain the British architectural historian named Colin Amery is dead, as he warranted multiple obituaries and “In Memoriam”s in 2018.

Despite the ribbing I get from Craig on the podcast about telling listeners to “Watch this space!”, Skeptics know that I can at least be relied upon to share any interesting updates that come my way about past articles. And boy, do I have an update for you all!

The MLM Olive Tree People came to my attention a year ago, and I've been keeping my ears open for any news of expansion because the conceit of the entire MLM at present is something to behold. At the time, I was more interested in following a different MLM called Elomir. Elomir sold oral film strips that can apparently assist in mental clarity and weight management, but operations quickly flamed out due to poor stock management and poor stock in general. Some Elomir reps landed in The Olive Tree People MLM, just as some Monat reps are attracted to it now.

I bring a shorter contribution this week, inspired by a couple of requests I have received courtesy of the Culty Conversations Facebook page. One was a DM which notified me that archived versions of Ohad Pele's website, kabalove.org, were removed from the Wayback Machine, and asked if I could advocate for the website to be reinstated. Flattered though I am that others think I have that much sway with an American non-profit, I wasn't surprised that this happened. It's an easy enough process, and there are several websites and blog posts about how to have your website removed. I mean, even the Internet Archive itself provides instructions on how to submit such a request, albeit with the caveat that there are no guarantees.

Publisher: Te Herenga Waka University Press

In this long-awaited, and likely anti-climatic, final instalment, we'll look at the other business dealings of Yasmeen Clark and Jono Spark. Given that their “silent” partner is an alleged and non-existent Persian court bureaucrat, their non-Pascha branded ventures are unexpectantly… mundane?

Last week we received a request from the editor of the Katikati Advertiser asking for our response to a story that was being written about a psychic:

In December 2020, a patient at the Mobile Infirmary Medical Centre in Alabama accessed or wandered into the hospital's fertility clinic through an unsecured door. Said patient then also accessed the cryogenic nursery, and removed several frozen embryos from containment.

Over the last couple of weeks we've received a few emails from members about our membership system, specifically the renewals process. We're happy to report that, if you see a charge on your card from the NZ Skeptics, it's not a scam - it's simply that your account is set to auto-renew each year.

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 sadly mean a non-zero number. While they won't use the word, they are modern day mediums, a paranormal practice/belief that has failed to provide any empirical evidence for its efficacy.

Master DK and Bruce Lyon: Hopefully, the final instalment of a three part series

A significant update came about this week, as ISTA and the Safer Sex-Positive & Spiritual Communities (3SC) issued a joint statement about the completion of the mediation process they had been working through.

Following up on my MMS piece in September 2023, and Lousie Richardson's update two weeks ago, it appears that this living man can't help but make the headlines.

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 has failed to provide any empirical evidence for its efficacy.

Publisher: Massey University Press

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 has failed to provide any empirical evidence for its efficacy.

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.

In honour of our upcoming conference, rather than giving a day-by-day recount of skeptical history, I pulled some Dunedin-specific events to share. While I wouldn't say Dunedin is the strangest place in New Zealand (that crown is currently held by Canterbury), its denizens are certainly trying their damnedest to convince us all about how haunted they are.

If you follow NZ Skeptics or the Yeah…Nah! podcast on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, then you obviously know that we are still using that particular hellsite for promotional purposes. And every now and then, it springs a surprise on us. This time, it was an article by Dr. Saul Newman linking the existence of Supercentarians (who are over the age of 110 years) to pension fraud and administrative errors rather than other oft-touted markers of longevity such as social connections and diet (although both of these hopefully contribute to a better quality of life).

As a major fan of Fall and Hallowe'en, the sudden absence of the holiday from my calendar was one of the few points of culture shock I had when I migrated to New Zealand. I soon found out that nothing could unite the members of this fine nation more than a chorus of tut-tutting about how corporate and how American Hallowe'en was, how tacky it was to send your kids out begging for treats, how much the holiday glorified chocolate, and so on and so forth. It can get a little grinchy sometimes, especially in the comments section of the NZ Herald website.

In my newsletter article last week, one of the dates referred to the 2018 trial of Zholia Alemi, a former Auckland University medical student who was able to practise psychiatry across the NHS and evade discovery for two decades before being undone by her own greed. I was reminded about two other, peculiar cases of fraudster doctors in NZ and thought that it would make a good article and segment in the most recent episode of the Yeah...Nah podcast.

2021: A group called Doctors Stand Up For Vaccination releases an open letter to the New Zealand public stressing the importance of vaccination. The letter is signed by 6535 registered doctors.

1980: Colin Gardener and his neighbour Helena Bradley see a lioness near Gardener's home in Wellington. Which is notable because New Zealand has no indigenous big cats. A police search around the Meadowcrofts property turns up nothing. A few days later, Gardener and another neighbour, Maurice Bradley, catch another glimpse of the creature and determine that it is not a lioness but just an unusually big ex-domestic cat.

Part 2 - GcMAF (Group specific component protein Macrophage-activating factor)

September has been an interesting month in ISTA land and its adjacent islands. Motivated by reports that the neo-tantric NGO was resuming activity in Israel and holding a workshop in an undisclosed location, the Israeli Centre for Cult Victims issued an official statement (available in Hebrew and English) on September 8th. The statement outlines, in explicit detail, the content of the first two levels of the ISTA programme and the multiple conduits for exploitative activity, in particular the lack of detailed information that students receive about the workshops (which was also indicated by Morgan Penn in the Sex.Life podcast). While it stops short of outright declaring ISTA a cult, the centre does state that it has taken an interest in ISTA activities and notes that in Israeli penal law, spiritual teachers are forbidden from having sexual relations with students.

Autism is a lifelong neurodevelopmental condition that impacts behaviour, communication, and socialisation. The exact cause of Autism is unknown, and there is no single gene that is Autisticassociated with the condition. Almost 200 genes can increase the likelihood of Autism due to mutation or possible epigenetic causes. Autism presentation varies widely, and that ranges from Autistics who live independent lives with minimal support to Autistics who require significant support with communication and day-to-day living. It is not unusual for an Autistic to move along that spectrum depending on what emotional, societal, economic, or health pressures are placed on them.

The Skeptical Calendar is 90% done and far be it for the Editors of this illustrious newsletter to even suggest its readers go out and be newsworthy, we might have a few days you want to aim for.

Back in June I wrote about the sojourn Mark and I took to Prayers @ Parliament. With election season in full swing, I thought it would be a good time to return to the topic of Naisi Chen, Labour List MP. In my original editorial, it was clear Chen made an impression of sorts on us. Mark and I were both surprised and impressed with Chen's careful phrasing regarding the responsibility of religious leaders and representatives to repent on behalf of Christian brothers and sisters who harmed children; a positively ballsy move that appeared to be received well by the crowd.

Country of Origin: Las Vegas, Nevada, United States; now headquartered in Utah.

After some false starts over the past three years, I finally had the opportunity to attend a Gnostic Mass. As far as Occult/Esoteric groups go, the Gnostic Mass is one of, if not THE, most accessible occult ritual for an outsider to observe and partake in. To understand why attending a Gnostic mass in New Zealand was on my to-do list, it's pertinent to understand what it is and who it was written for.

In part 2 of this study into the secretive group most commonly known as the Two-by-Twos (TBT), I'll give an overview of the current state of the sect and the numerous controversies it has faced in recent years.

The TL;DR version of this story is that the Two-by-Twos (TBT) is an international Christian home church movement of the protestant kind founded in Ireland in 1897. Their name is inspired by their ministers, celibate and single men and women, who travel in same-sex pairs and stay for weeks or months at a time with members who live in their jurisdiction; they commonly refer to themselves as The Truth. The TBT is nontrinitarian, meaning that they eschew the Christian doctrine that the holy trinity (Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit) are coequal, coeternal, and united in a single being; readers will be familiar with larger nontrinitarian groups like the Jehovah Witnesses, Christian Scientists, Unitarian and Unitarian Universalists Christians, and the Mormons. However, not all flavours of nontrinitarianism are the same, as the wikipedia page outlines and the TBT are unitarian in their outlook - The holy spirit is a force from God while Jesus is God's fully human son. Amongst other beliefs are that the TBT knows the true path to salvation while other churches and religions are false; salvation is not attainable through the bible alone but through "works" as well.

In no way was I properly attired for a prolonged counter protest.

The goings on of the late “Bishop” Douglas Metcalf and the Full Gospel Mission/God Squad/Camp David have been on my list to profile for awhile. When I'm able to steer the conversation to my special interest (MLMs, Cults, New Religious Movements etc.,) it is truly touch-and-go whether my unsuspecting audience has even heard of this group. It isn't as if the shenanigans of The God Squad were ever under the radar or have fully faded from public consciousness; Christchurch newspaper The Press has always kept their finger on that pulse and publish updates on former members while ex-followers Serafina Tané and Rosina Claxton/Ngapaki Rose have made their stories available for Australasian news outlets in recent decades. Metcalf's group also draws comparison to a far better known Branch Davidian's and, albeit less frequently, is a topic for American podcasts.

It's been a couple of weeks since the final episode of this season's (!!) Sex.Life podcast aired with a less than revealing Q&A. The poor folks at the Culty Conversations facebook page have had to endure my stream of consciousness written but you, lucky skeptics, get to benefit from the cliff notes.

For every Bill Gothard who terrorises his followers into believing that music with a fast beat will bring them closer to the devil, there is a Sri Chinmoy who is driven to play music, albeit atonally, in order to get closer to god.

After the legal troubles and tabloid journalism of the 1980s, as I documented in my last article about ZAP, the furor around ZAP died down to barely a whisper. While the group claimed membership in the thousands, it's estimated that true numbers were much lower and, if it is still even running, it is likely limited to just the most hardcore believers these days.

Amazon Prime released a 4-part docu series titled Shiny Happy People on June 2nd, 2023.

In last week's newsletter, I set as best of a scene as I could with regards to who John Dalhoff/Ultimate was up to the early years of ZAP. In short, Dalhoff was the only son in a very wealthy immigrant family. He went to Massey University in Palmerston North, and did a lot of work with their student publication Chaff. In his 20s Dalhoff joined Scientology, and allegedly was involved in coordinating the gathering of information against enemies of Scientology until 1972, when he himself was kicked out for “ethics violations”.