Sylvia Browne

[struggle4progress]

22. The website isn't entirely consistent in its claims:

... in 1974 .. Sylvia incorporated The Nirvana Foundation for Psychic Research, a nonprofit organization (now known as Society of Novus Spiritus) ... To further her goals, Sylvia formed another organization in 1986, Society of Novus Spiritus .. based upon a Christian Gnostic theology... She is training ministers to actively help spread her philosophy. Her goals are to prove that the soul survives death ... P.S. Sylvia does not endorse any "psychic hot lines" ... Any claim to the contrary is a fraudulent misuse of Sylvia's name

The final warning not to be fooled by frauds is a nice touch

Overall such texts seem to me evidence merely of marketing decisions. Despite the name, I doubt the Nirvana Foundation had much to do with Buddhist teachings, though babble incorporating some Buddhist language was popular in the 1970s. And babble referencing the Gnostics similarly was popular in the 1980s.

"Gnostic" is a vague catch-all term. It may describe: second century persons who followed traditional Judaic law and regarded Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah but denied his divinity; dualists who believed in two supreme divinities, one good and one evil, locked in eternal struggle, Jesus of Nazareth being the son of the good one; a movement that accepted various of Paul's epistles but only Luke's gospel; followers of Philumena's supposed revelations from some angel; a second century sect that held, apparently from a reference to Jesus of Nazareth as alpha and omega, that all truth could be inferred from the Greek alphabet; a group that erected an elaborate cosmology from a Deuteronomic reference to G-d as a devouring fire; and any of a number of other movements

So I'd guess the name change from Nirvana Foundation to the "Christian Gnostic" Novus Spiritus was driven by a desire to appeal to a wider demographic

I don't see any reason to change the view I expressed in #18 that the "church" is a conduit to her products and "services"