Portfolio

Oberon Zell-Ravenheart’s Water Sharing Mystical Community end.

The Church Of All Worlds

Personally, I first encountered the “Church of All Worlds” some years ago, while reading ‘Stranger In A Strange Land’ by the great Robert Heinlein. The story of Michael Valentine Smith, an infant orphaned in a rocket crash, who is raised by Martian ‘Old Ones’ and instructed in their mysterious mental powers.

In this genuine SciFi classic, our protagonist Smith returns years later to earth, where he soon establishes a new church, teaching ‘Water Brothers’ an unorthodox form of Martian philosophy. Seems with acquiring strange psychic abilities, Smith has brought back a collection of rather blasphemous ideologies too. Among these provocative notions is the phrase “Thou art God” while encouraging his fellow nestlings to live in polyamorous relationships. This novel even introduced “grok” into our modern vocabulary, which is to know and appreciate something in complete fullness.

Not long after the book was published, a neopagan, semi-religious community was founded, which also went by the name of the Church Of All Worlds. Established by Oberon Zell-Ravenheart, he set about developing a global information network of mythology and mystical experience, while encouraging responsible earth stewardship and reawakening of the Gaia Earth Mother, reuniting her lost children through community, and evolving our collective human consciousness. Certainly no small ambitions there!

Oberon was so inspired after reading ‘Stranger in a Strange Land’ that in 1968 he established the first ‘Nest’ of fellow seekers, those who shared his desire for deeper personal understanding and oneness. The concept of “to grok” was included, as a way of empathetic sharing with their Water Brothers. Expressing their interconnectedness through the sacred rite of Watersharing, their self perception is both as congregation, and as intentional community. Their greeting remains “Thou art God” or “Thou art Goddess” along with recognition of immanent divinity in all persons. Not unlike Heinlein’s version, this Church of All Worlds also emphasized a non-possessive kind of free love, and joyous expression of sexuality through divine union. Within their religion, the only sin was hypocrisy, and the only crime in the eyes of the church is interfering with another person.

In more recent years, the Church of All Worlds, and ‘Renaissance Man’ Oberon Zell-Ravenheart himself, have changed along with the times. At last report, the wizard Oberon was operating his Academy of Arcana out of Santa Cruz, California, which houses an extensive library of science, history, myth and magick, with other rooms containing altars, a theater, arcane artifacts, assorted trinkets and curios. Modeled partly upon the popular Hogwart School from Harry Potter, there is also an online Grey School of Wizardry, where neophytes may seek profound instruction in the dark arts of Magick, Divination, and Alchemy, as well as assorted other esoteric mysteries.

So why does this most recent incarnation of the Church of All Worlds so fascinate me? Guess it must be how that tenaciousness old Oberon maintains his ideological principles against all outside detractors, sustaining a community of individuals, who unfold and grow to the best their mutual abilities. This may not be the largest, or by far the best known church out there, but I truly respect the vitality they’ve embraced in their own system of beliefs. I say… Kudos to them!