Ramtha Riled | Southern Poverty Law Center

Knight is fiercely protective of her kingdom. When a woman in Berlin, Germany, Judith Ravell, claimed that she was also channeling Ramtha, Knight took her to court and won the copyright to Ramtha’s teachings. Later, after another woman, Whitewind Weaver, who had attended a dozen events at RSE, imparted Ramtha’s teachings in an event of her own, Knight sued her as well, and was awarded $10,000 in 2008.

Currently, Knight is involved in legal action against those who released the hate-filled video clips to the Internet in 2012. The efforts of both Coverdale of Yelm and McCarthy of New Zealand to expose the darker side of the Enlightened One have landed them in a courtroom facing Knight. They are supported by a growing online community of ex-RSE students critical of Knight, who they describe as a dangerous cult leader. Coverdale is appealing a $600,000 judgment against her for releasing the videos, while McCarthy has a court date in May.

 “The whole idea of Ramtha seemed absolute nonsense. But the RSE students I met were idealistic, intelligent, well educated and very caring, hardly the sort cult members typify, and besides I could just walk away anytime. I was convinced to just give it a try,” says McCarthy, who left the school in 1995 after seven years.

“Fuck God’s chosen people! I think they have earned enough cash to have paid their way out of the goddamned gas chambers by now,” she says as members of the audience snicker. There are also titters when she declares Mexicans “breed like rabbits” and are “poison,” that all gay men were once Catholic priests, and that organic farmers have questionable hygiene.

These are not the kind of cosmic revelations that have drawn students to Knight for 38 years. For the most part, RSE students are thoughtful and well-educated, not apt to embrace a bigoted guru. For decades, the message had been more about finding the god within than disparaging minorities, and the blend of science and New Age Gnosticism made J.Z. Knight millions well before the drunken homophobic, anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic racist rants began to make their way into her preachings.

What happened at RSE would have stayed at RSE had it not been for the Internet. In 2012, livestreamed videos of Ramtha’s hate speech were posted to the Web, first by ex-students Virginia Coverdale and David McCarthy, then by a libertarian-leaning think tank called the Freedom Foundation that is based in Olympia. The excerpts from that wine ceremony left Thurston County residents shocked and wondering if there was a more sinister side to their kooky neighborhood cult.

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Unlike her staff, Knight maintains that the offending videos were heavily edited. “We have a very sophisticated videography streaming department. We know what edited looks like,” she says, claiming she would never go through a “multimillion dollar lawsuit” if there were any truth to the clips. Her litigiousness, she explains, stems from trying to protect her business and company secrets. “We are a revered school around the world, I was part of the president’s re-election committee, we are proactive in education, and this is not who we are.”

Knight dismisses Coverdale as a woman who “couldn’t keep the man she was after for more than three weeks and hated me for it for the rest of her life. I never had a conversation with her. She’s somebody who wants to be famous and is a very jealous and envious, controlling person that thought they could make some money off of me,” she claims. “People who say those things, we are taught by the Ram, are really speaking about themselves, it’s the Jung concept of the shadow.”

Knight vehemently objects to her school being labeled as a cult, which she considers another four-letter word. She says she’s tired after 38 years of channeling Ramtha, and plans to retire from the business side of things and write books.

Ramtha Riled | Southern Poverty Law Center

PS::  I learned something new,,,

In 2004, RSE students produced an infomercial for the school disguised as a documentary called “What the Bleep do we Know!?” The film grossed $10 million in the United States but was panned by critics. “New Age hooey disguised as a scientific documentary about quantum physics,” is how Jack Garner of the Rochester [N.Y.] Democrat and Chronicle summed it up.

See also: 

JZ Knight Yells “Put It On YouTube!”-Then Sues Using Fake Contract, Phony Businesses The gist of the article, JZ in a stupor tells the audience to record and post. Some did. Using some legal trickery (for lack of better wording) she is now suing for copyright infringement and breach of contract. Coverdale and McCarthy are discussed.