Natural Vanity with Engineered Marble Top. The minute I saw that group, I knew I was in a cult. Copyright 1995-2023 eBay Inc. All Rights Reserved. "It is not working! "He would tell us how fabulous and beautiful and special we all were. Finally, on the night of July 3, 1999, I escaped for good. Overhead was costly, so the early gem prescriptions were for semiprecious stones. In Welcome to the Beyond, which premiered at Doc NYC on Tuesday, director Brent Huff deep-dives into Hoyts double life. "He kept saying, 'John is not working hard enough producing the tapes.' ''. Call the super!' ", For years, von Mierers had a television show of his own in New York. We all want the gems,'' I had heard a Princeton honors graduate and devotee of Eternal Values say on a cassette about the stones. "All the people here went to Harvard, Yale, and Princeton!'' He put me up in his house for almost 18 months. "I was always over there on East Fiftyfourth. They speak in New Age jargon and talk of "highly evolved" personalities and "ego renunciation." He exalted Germans and referred to the Aryan master race. He told his friends and Ruth Montgomery that Mrs. Williams had left him "millions and millions of dollars," an income of $150,000 a year, adjusted for inflation. The inner circle of Eternal Values calls itself "the group." They can uplift you, mentally and spiritually. They could help you. Although not a member of the group, the great New York arts patron Alice Tully reportedly had a life reading, as did Sylvester Stallone, the actress Rae Dawn Chong, and the daughter of an Iranian Cabinet minister close to the Shah. He told us to call him Freddy. "Ramakrishna said, 'When flowers open, bees come of themselves, " von Mierers used to tell his new young friends. "Frederick encouraged us to lie, to cheat, to say anything to our families. As unbelievable as it sounds, never once during my two decades with the group did I ever consider I might be a member of a cult. "I think he must have read that book a hundred times," Andreadis said. Her relationship with Andreadis shielded her from the burgeoning sexual atmosphere of Eternal Values. "I thought I was in love with Jacki," he told me. I just took that checkbook to the lawyer and told him, 'Do you know what this guy has been doing?' "No one is being kept here," he told me. "My gems help me to see things clearly," an IBM executive named Pete Olson told me. ", "My grandmother-godmother was an extraordinary archduchess of New York," von Mierers told me. As private-school teenagers found their way to East Fiftyfourth Street, von Mierers would talk to them about his "godmother" from the "famous Kress family" and his friends the Vanderbilts. Von Mierers invited him to his apartment, and Andreadis recalled, "It was Zen, it was so beautiful. The gem and its harmonic vibrations are in harmony with your body. Im making it. But when I got the ring, I could immediately tell they had switched the stones. .gemstones.". . Ruth Montgomery detailed von Mierers's relationship with Mrs. Williams in Aliens Among Us: "In company with his dowager godmother, Frederick traveled the high roads of Europe, meeting socially with the Queen of England and European aristocracy. He's saying, 'Don't hit me!'.. While I was at Fabios, I began doing a lot of reading. A decade ago, Montgomery was a Danielle Steel of New Age literature, a forerunner of Shirley MacLaine. Few wind up, as von Mierers did, a canny gem salesman who was easily able to win over a popular author named Ruth Montgomery, whose books on psychic phenomena have sold millions of copies. Frederick insisted on cash. Members of the Kress family, however, worried about the attention he paid to their relative. "It was like being in a meeting of Nazi storm troopers," Hartwell told me. 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", I was staring into the face of Frederick von Mierers. One tenant in the building had to stop a doorman from letting in a threateninglooking group of men on their way to 4N, von Mierers's apartment, at three A.M. "I said, 'Lock the doors! "The gems are God's thoughts condensed.. .the gateways into this dimension for the ether waves.. .. " When Douglas Wyatt was introduced to Eternal Values, Andreadis claims von Mierers told him, "Be nice to him. So Freddie became a prophet, so what?" . The hardest part, really, has been forgiving myself. I knew that I had come from Arcturus. Every few moments, the birds spread their wings. Id fly to Tokyo for a shoot and have to be back by Monday to take an exam; I was proud I was able to graduate with my class, in1985. I called him in the middle of the night and he paid for a plane ticket to L.A. One afternoon, I dont even remember what I was reading, but it just hit me like a thunderbolt. Catherine Edelmann, the Princeton honors graduate, said of von Mierers on a widely distributed tape, "One of the things Frederick said was 'Do not want a position! Jacki Adams's parents divorced when she was a toddler; her father was killed in Vietnam. After a hard day's work, exhausted young models could be seen in the building spinning von Mierers's laundry and mopping halls. Subscribers have complete access to the archive. There were a lot of drugs and greed in the air, but we considered ourselves people who were seeking a greater understanding of the universe. . "About this time he had the idea of going into business," a friend told me. One appraiser on West Forty-seventh Street routinely gave von Mierers papers which showed that his stones were worth two or three times what he was charging for them. "He would hear about someone rich and say, 'Bring him in!' Writer Marie Brenner, who confirmed the now-dropped investigation by the Manhattan district attorney's office, compared the blank stares of von Mierers' minions to those of Jim Jones, who led his followers in a mass suicide in the jungles of Guyana in 1979. I bought an emerald. . Your parents have been horrible for you. "Freddie used to tell us all in those days that he had spent $20,000 to decorate it, which was a tremendous amount then!". Frederick von Mierers is one of the most complex characters I ever met. ' One cassette was sent all over the country. "How does Frederick know so much?" My relative attended only a few meetings of the group led by von Mierers, but he was intrigued by what he called von Mierers's "gem prescriptions." "I called my cousin to warn him that his mother was in terrible danger. ' "Ruth Montgomery really created Frederick," one Ford model told me. This guy is raking in millions! Plus, I was supporting them. Im a textbook cultvictim.. .. Frederick says that he realized 'even then' that Helen Williams had been his mother in several previous lifetimes, and they were almost inseparable. "My dear friend the great society decorator Billy Baldwin taught me everything about color,'' von Mierers told me. I said, 'Freddie, you can't put this out! Conversations on Vivekananda, the Bhagavad Gita, and the Hindu Vedas would stretch on till dawn. Even William Scranton III, the former lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania and son of the former governor William Scranton, once bought gems. Next, in the guise of psychic and oracle, von Mierers would tell his new friends how unhappy their lives really werea fairly safe assumption to make about young people seeking a psychic. A dozen of the group share apartments in von Mierers's building, at 405 East Fifty-fourth Street, where Noel Coward and Hermione Gingold once lived. "Tell her about the gems and how great they are! Part of many life readings was a "gem prescription." Suddenly, von Mierers noticed that a pillow had fallen on a spotlight on the floor. "She left less than $400,000," Williams told me, With access to Mrs. Williams severed, von Mierers retreated more and more into his spiritual pursuits. "When I first met Frederick, I was only sixteen years old, and I was so naive I still believed that anyone who said he was spiritual was holy," a young man named John Andreadis told me. von Mierers told Jacki Adams, the Ford model who had come to see me, on one cassette. The weird thing was, in this crazy screwed up way, I believed they were right to punish me. EVERY PAGE. "Interior decorator 28 years old . People don't even know themselves, do they? I would never have made it without the help of my old friend Fabio, the spokesmodel. Something went wrong. Von Mierers, like the leaders of the People's Temple, talked constantly of Satan's influence in the world, the dark forces, and viciously belittled the notion of family ties. . vanity fair: [noun] a scene or place characterized by frivolity and ostentation. She was impressed by the "hypnotic atmosphere" and the attractive young people; Andreadis did an astrological reading for her which, she said, "blew me away." I also got a lawyer and brought a civil suit against Eternal Values. About this time a Ford model named Susanne Gregard attended von Mierers's regular Wednesday-night "family dinner" for the inner circle of the group. They quickly annulled their marriage, but they have remained friends. Early on, he felt the strong need to camouflage the fact that he had grown up in Brooklyn. I was appalled by Frederick. We were supposed to be renouncing vanity and worldly possessions and living in a monastic community. ''I was told I would have to wait a year to get my cassette, maybe eighteen months," a painter named Glenna Hartwell told me, ''but all the money had to be paid in advance.". one exclaimed. LAKE LURE MANSION HOUSED STAR PROPHET LEADER SOUGHT REFUGE BEFORE DYING OF AIDS. . "All they ever talked about was money," Andreadis told me. "I wanted to get married and I wanted out!" "Hasn't it always been part of the reputation of the Ford modeling agency that you protect your young kids from being taken advantage of?" By now Andreadis had seen and heard enough. His actual childhood remains a mystery. There was a big Vanity Fair expos at one point . He was a "sprite," as one acquaintance phrased it, "cute, cute, cute," the toast of the beaches at Cherry Grove on Fire Island in the 1960s. and that was the end of that.". Sitting in the apartment near Sutton Place, I thought of the German word Maskenfreiheit: the freedom conferred by masks. Why don't we call ourselves Eternal Values? "Frederick never trusted me," Adams told me. A popular series called The Dark Forces sold as a complete set for twenty-five dollars. Devastated by illness, he twisted on his tiny lavender slipper-chair perch and clapped his hands for one of his followers to open his bedroom vault. Her success did little to affect her malaise, though; Adams often spent evenings reading spiritualism books, trying to make sense of her troubled childhood. Slowly, I became mesmerized by him." It was right at that time when models were becoming celebrities. How could I have been so stupid? I was sobbing. I am only interested in archduchesses and lords! For that offense they shaved my head. ", One of the voices on the tape was that of the lawyer Douglas Wyatt. As the leader of the group Eternal Values, it was Von Mierers responsibility to find the others, and teach them about their true origins and noble calling. As the years passed, we re-located to North Carolina. Frederick Von Miers Sciences Education Art Writing & UFO. It bears the signature of Unified Cosmogony's then-president, New York City TV producer Fritz Diekmann, who is featured in the 14-page Vanity Fair spread. I think you have found some young, impressionable people who are on a quest for spiritual, moral values." "Suddenly my son was talking like a robot.". To this day I owe him everything. Later, in therapy, I would figure out I was repeating a pattern from my childhood. Andreadis said. "Could you tell me what is spiritual about assaulting someone?" "It has been a disaster," Montgomery once wrote of von Mierers to an angry reader who had taken her book seriously, but the reader has yet to recover $17,000 he says he paid for stones. Andreadis would put a life reading on the tape machine, and Frederick's voice, like the Wizard of Oz, with harmonic music in the background, would engulf a client with tales of past lives. "I almost had a breakdown. ", Mind control inevitably follows a specific pattern. ''Cash would come in for the gems from all over the country," Andreadis told me. Von Mierers would wax eloquent on the legendary Hindu belief in the healing properties of certain precious gems. By his sixteenth birthday he had read volumes of metaphysics, and he often bought books at the Quest bookshop. A male supermodel on surviving an apocalyptic, vegetarian cult. No unity can be achieved here in the physical world. My mother was not that rich. He no longer needed to suffer the dreadful slights that often beset ambitious and aging pretty boys. You realize its kind of happening to everyone in a way. Montgomery speaks with the same bald hyperbole that she uses in her prose. "He cared so much about being with the rich and the prominent," a friend who knew him well fifteen years ago told me. . Von Mierers ordered Adams to write a letter to Ruth Montgomery. For a time, he supported himself handily as a model. The building is owned by a part owner of the Apple Bank for Savings in New York, and although apartments in it are rented, von Mierers seems to control the leases on five of them, all of which I visited. You must write that I am the reincarnation of Jeremiah from the Old Testament. Studio Design Collection. 'I am Socrates, I am Plato. "Do you understand? What's the big deal? In those days, he would hold seminars for hundreds of people at a church on Park Avenue or at a downtown school. Sapphires and emeralds gleamed from their fingers and wrists. "Frederick was only trying to help him." One night, in a fit of insomnia, von Mierers thumbed through the book of Revelations. At two in the morning, Von Mierers would be beamed out into the universe courtesy of cable television. Karr said he had never heard of von Mierers until after his death. The life-reading tapes sell for $350 each. Von Mierers seemed to be disintegrating, and according to several former acolytes, increasing quantities of hallucinogens were being consumed by certain members of the group. We talked a lot about becoming highly evolved personalities. We did a lot of ego renunciation. Freddy talked a lot about the coming apocalypse, which made the need for personal wealth and relationships unnecessary. One weekend in the country, Adams says, von Mierers told her, " 'If you ever want to be around John again, you have to buy these stones.' Gunzenhausen (German pronunciation: [ntsnhazn] (); Bavarian: Gunzenhausn) is a town in the Weienburg-Gunzenhausen district, in Bavaria, Germany.It is situated on the river Altmhl, 19 kilometres (12 mi) northwest of Weienburg in Bayern, and 45 kilometres (28 mi) southwest of Nuremberg.Gunzenhausen is a nationally recognized recreation area. Just a few things that come to mind, working from memory of course. You must now break through the wretched values that you learned in the next reincarnations in France and England!" After Aliens Among Us came out, everyone wanted to come to dinner with us," a follower of von Mierers's named Monty Karp told me. Parrots sat on his shoulders. 1913 TO TODAY. summers in Nantucket and falls in Oyster Bay. Released in 2015, the film has been an official selection in over fifty film festivals and has won more than forty awards, including 15 for Best Picture and 10 for BestActor. "He showed me a pamphlet called something like 'The I Is Life' that he was going to sell. It is embarrassing to admit, but looking back, I didnt finally leave the group because I was being abused or because I was mad about giving them my money. .. . Like von Mierers, they were dressed in expensive clothes. He described Frederick as "an internationally renowned Hindu astrologer and lecturer in the underlying unity between science and religion. He was older and cool and unbelievably charismatic. Von Mierers called Andreadis his Jesus and allowed him to teach seminars at a Park Avenue church. "He's harmless," Hunter told me. He says he gave von Mierers $17,000 for a sapphire, a topaz, and a cat's-eye which von Mierers assured him he was getting for an astonishing bargain price, "way below wholesale." Hitler was divinely inspired," he has said. Please subscribe to keep reading. The cult was called Eternal Values. It is through such negative thoughts that the dark forces work. {{start_at_rate}} {{format_dollars}} {{start_price}} {{format_cents}} {{term}}, {{promotional_format_dollars}}{{promotional_price}}{{promotional_format_cents}} {{term}}, Nebraska cheerleader competes by herself at state competition, but crowd doesn't let her feel alone. "He and I went way back together. This is not phenomenalism and five-and-dimestore stupidities!" She reportedly paid von Mierers $75,000 for her gems. With an entire group of new friends who looked up to him as a spiritual guide, he could reject social New York as it had once rejected him. ''Every other check was made out to Freddie von Mierers. Like best-selling author Whitley Strieber (Communion, Transformation), who details his visitations from space people, Montgomery seems completely in the thrall of her vision. Rich kids with troubled psyches took themselves off to Tibet to see the Dalai Lama or invited plump Indian swamis to move in. The only thing that mattered was loyalty to the group." .. protege of Billy Baldwin.. . "You will all be dead within ten years. After consulting with "the Guides," Montgomery explained gravely to her readers, she had decided that von Mierers's account of his past lives was correct. "I think of him as a junior type. Eternal Values was by now big business, so successful that von Mierers had anointed Andreadis as his probable successor to run the organization. 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