There’s been a minor local scandal over a guru based in Yelm, Washington — a pleasant, rustic little prairie town near Mt. Rainier that also serves as the international headquarters of Ramtha channeler JZ Knight. Ms. Knight is an aging New Age mystic who was evidently entered by “Ramtha” in her kitchen via a cardboard pyramid she put atop her head while she was a Tacoma housewife back in 1977. Ramtha, for his part, is a Pleistocene warlord who conquered most of the earth about 35,000 years ago. He is also an enlightened being with much wisdom to impart to humanity.

The scandal arose because Knight, who has been giving quite a bit of money to the Democratic party, was filmed ranting about Mexicans and Catholics while apparently drunk. When the video came to light, some demanded that the Democrats refuse the money. First they hemmed and hawed a bit, but finally gave the money to the ADL and a gay marriage group. The primary targets of Ramtha’s ire appear to be Catholics and Mexicans, probably because he (rightly) perceives them to be the biggest demographic and ideological threat to the old hippie stronghold of California.

Some of my European and East Coast readers may find the circumstances of all this quite bizarre, but this is the West Coast, and we locals have long been familiar with these types, who are alternately sources of entertainment and annoyance.

The video:

That about sums up the scandal, but I found it pretty amusing that Yelm locals refer to Knight’s followers as “Ramsters,” and even more so when it came to light that they worship a giant wheel rotating in a pyramid, and believe that one can change physical reality through wishful thinking. It is as though Knight has literally created a religion out of the rationalization hamster, even giving him a name and supernatural powers.

Here are some quotes from Knight’s former followers:

Another former student, who asked that she be identified only as “Stephanie,” spent hours every day following the school’s disciplines–focused breathing, meditation, and concentrating on a list of positive thoughts, such as I am fabulously wealthy, I am radiantly healthy, I am 20 years younger, I never age.

What finally prompted one man to get out:

One day, McCarthy and other masters were working on “manifesting”–creating a physical object out of nothing by focusing on a mental image, like a gold coin, a rose, or a blue feather. “After several days, I’d not created anything solid,” he says.

Then, across the Great Hall, he heard people shouting. He saw a woman walking through the crowd holding a blue feather over her head. Pandemonium broke out. Over roars of appreciation, the woman took her place next to McCarthy. He leaned over and asked her how she did it.

“She says she went into the store and bought it. I said, ‘That’s not creating something out of nothing!’ And she said, ‘Yes it is!–I’ve created my own reality.’

Too funny.