The Creation of the Summit Lighthouse

The Heart of the Inner Retreat, Montana

Mark Prophet
The Summit Lighthouse begins with Mark Prophet, their first messenger, who was born on Christmas Eve in 1918. Like Blavatsky, he was psychic from his early years of life, claiming he swam with water elementals, and traveled into the earth with them. He said he frolicked with angelic beings and discoursed with the ascended masters at age four. He could see auras and would tell people what he saw, as well as read their minds. He said he prayed a lot and would go into the attic and pray to Jesus for hours while on his knees. Mark said he attended all the fundamentalist churches in town looking for truth. He would also witness at prayer meetings, but he was not well received and they did not want him coming to their worship services. After being rejected by traditional Christianity, he embarked on several avant-garde spiritual quests.

Born in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, Mark lost his father, a Canadian logger, to tuberculosis when he was nine. He was raised by his mother during the Great Depression. The master El Morya (same as Blavatsky's master Morya) first appeared to Mark when he was a teenager sometime in the 1930s, he claimed. Mark told the story that El Morya appeared to him while he was in mid-swing of driving a railroad spike when he worked for the railroad. El Morya was calling him to be his disciple and he said El Morya said he would be trained every day by the masters to prepare him for a mission. He said the next day a telegram was received from them and so he accepted the training—for a few months, then he told El Morya to leave because he was unable to reconcile a turbaned Eastern adept and the teachings he was receiving, which were not in the Bible. It was years later Mark changed his mind and called El Morya back.

After serving in the Air Force in World War II as a radio operator, Mark began pursuing different avenues to start presenting his ideas he said came from these masters of wisdom. By 1950 Mark was actively writing, working on a book called, Madonna, which was later published by Erin Prophet as A Prophet in Wisconsin, about an Indian miracle worker who brings controversy to a small Wisconsin town. In 1951 he tried to start a movement called the "The Order of the Holy Child". Nothing came of that. He began that same year to tour some of the United States lecturing on Christian and Eastern mysticism, and sent out monthly messages (dictations) from El Morya, called Ashram Notes, to the small groups formed from his touring. That same year he came across dictated messages from ascended masters to the Bridge to Freedom organization, which had been founded by former members of the I AM Activity.

In 1952 Mark briefly became a disciple of Yogananda of the Self-Realization Fellowship founded by Paramahansa Yogananda and started giving lectures to that group. In 1954 he started a group called, "The Brotherhood of the Ark of the Covenant". He was for a time associated with the Rosicrucian Order. In 1956, he met Frances Ekey, who was one of the leaders in the Bridge to Freedom. Mark began providing Ekey with typed dictations which were read at their services but not told their source. When Ekey became discontented with the Bridge leaders she explored the idea of starting a new group with Mark who would continue his channeling with the masters with her. She claimed that under her influence she guided him to move his budding family to or near Washington, D.C. to seek a new life free from creditors, as they had little money in those days and were often hounded by creditors. It is unclear how much he was working all the years from the early 50's through the inauguration of the Summit. At some time he was a traveling salesman and sold vacuum cleaners as well as other things, like insurance, and while traveled selling his wares he presented his teachings simultaneously. Together Mark and Ekey then founded two organizations: The Lighthouse of Freedom, based in Philadelphia, and the Summit Lighthouse based in Washington D.C.  Mark said he was called by El Morya to start this worldwide movement to publish the teachings of the ascended masters.

As mentioned in an earlier on the Bridge to Freedom, Mrs. Ekey was told through the Bridge that she was the embodiment of the Apostle Peter. Mark Prophet and the Summit Lighthouse continued to believe that was true and believed that Peter had received the mantle from Jesus to be the outer leader of the Christian church. As I explained elsewhere, this point has been refuted by non catholics, although the Catholic Church believes their apostolic succession goes all the way back to Peter as "the rock" Jesus would build His church on. Mark also claimed Ekey was the reembodiment of Helena Blavatsky. He said she had the greatest spiritual potential of anyone he had ever met.

The first group in D.C. started with just two or three people. Christel Anderson was one of that group. He met in the 1940's and then in the 1950's Christel began assisting Mark to publish the Ashram Notes. After Mark founded the Summit, Christel continued to be his secretary and help him mail out the new Pearls of Wisdom (the new name) that Mark changed from calling them Ashram Notes of El Morya. Ekey was the second person with the group, and if there was a third there is no mention of another name. Within a year or two Ekey (or Mark) decided to separate from the other. Mark found she was “editing” his dictations and they parted ways. Blavatsky was said to soon be reincarnated into a family of Keepers and resume the Summit path.

The Summit taught that Helena Blavatsky (reincarnated Ekey) was also embodied as King Henry the II and Henry the VIII as well as the Apostle Peter. They also taught that El Morya was in a previous embodiment Sir Thomas More, a devout Catholic, who was found guilty of treason by King Henry VIII, which led to an execution sentence carried out in the form of a beheading. Thomas More's crime was that he would not sign an oath declaring King Henry the supreme ruler of the earth, which would make him above the pope. This information on Blavatsky/Ekey is not propagated anywhere in Theosophy, the I AM Movement and the Bridge to Freedom, only from Mark Prophet and the Summit Lighthouse. Elizabeth later told staff that Ekey was reborn into the Summit community in 1994.

Elizabeth Clare Prophet
Elizabeth Clare Wulf was born in 1939 to a World War I German U-boat captain and his Swiss wife. Elizabeth also indirectly claims she was psychic, starting with the story of her playing in a sandbox when she was taken back to a lifetime in Egypt. She also claimed she could communicate with Jesus. At eight years old she developed a seizure disorder. She continued to experience “absence,” or “petit mal” seizures throughout her life and was attracted to Christian Science to find a way to heal herself. That never occurred.

Elizabeth's mother studied occult teachings. She had read The Secret Doctrine by Madame Blavatsky, the The I AM Discourses of the "I AM Movement" and the founder of Christian Science's book, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy, but Elizabeth did not discover the ascended masters until just before she was leaving for college. Elizabeth went to a Methodist church, as well as other Protestant churches, because she said as a child she was not satisfied with the answers they gave her to her questions about God and Jesus. Then later she would ask Jesus directly what the ministers were saying and he would tell her the meaning. He also told her that in this age the lost teachings would have to be restored and Elizabeth was to take part in that restoration. At age nine Elizabeth started to attend the Christian Science Sunday School and became a fervent student of Christian Science during her youth. She studied all of Mary Baker Eddy's writings and believed the concept as Eddy taught that matter is not real.

By 1951, hardship was entering her father's life and he turned to alcohol and subsequently became an alcoholic. Home life became difficult as Elizabeth and her mother suffered under his alcoholism, where he then became violent and at times destructive. Elizabeth believed he was tormented by demons. She not only had to live under the fear of what her father would do, but also what her mother became. While her father had his angry bouts her mother was tormented living in constant fear of what could happen from her father's actions. Her father also began have extramarital affairs.

After graduating from high school Elizabeth found her mother's "I AM" Discourse books. After seeing the picture of St. Germain in them she believed she had to find St. Germain and it became one of her goals over the next years. She read all the "I AM" Discourses and started to let go of Christian Science and began to adhere to the "I AM" Presence teachings on affirmations, decrees and the idea of ascending and other concepts taught in the "I AM" books, like the importance of the United States and how the nation was destined to play a unique role in world history. Elizabeth went to college and continued to read, study and apply the "I AM" teachings and became galvanized to find St. Germain, who by then she said she had fallen in love with. In her pursuit of St. Germain, she eventually wrote Mr. Ballard via his pen name Mr. King, not knowing he had passed on, or his real name, and eventually the letter was returned, "addressee unknown".

Eventually, a friend of the family found the Bridge to Freedom group's location and Elizabeth went to New York to visit their sanctuary. There, after sharing her Christian Science teachings with an elderly member, she was told that Mary Baker Eddy was wrong and that matter is real. Elizabeth said this rocked her to the core, as it was one of the foundational teachings to Christian Science, and something she had believed for thirteen years. Later after writing the Bridge to tell them about her association with Christian Science, Geraldine Innocente wrote back and further put down Christian Science, so Elizabeth lost interest in Geraldine's movement. From her visit to the Bridge to Freedom she had found out they knew of other messengers, one called Mark Prophet, and a man in her town that had a sanctuary and held services with decrees, although he was not affiliated with any movement in particular, but practiced teachings from Mark Prophet and the Bridge. Most of the group members were elderly and had earlier been in the "I AM" Movement.

Then in April 1961 Mark Prophet came to town and Elizabeth attended that meeting. There she had a mystical experience connected with Mark and where she also saw the role they would play together. Yet by that time Elizabeth was married. After a string of boyfriends and almost marrying two of them, she met a Norwegian law student named Dag Ytreberg at a gathering for Christian Scientists in 1959 and they were married a year later. After a year of marriage it was basically finished when her husband said she would have to choose between him and St. Germain, after he refused to go to Mark's meetings with her.

Mark Prophet came back to Boston in May and after that visit Elizabeth told Mark, “I’m supposed to be a messenger.” Mark invited her to move to Washington D.C. so that he could train her. It was only later, after she said El Morya appeared before her and told her he had need of a feminine messenger and she was to go to Washington, that she made the decision to move. Moving would mean ending her marriage, and she and Mark both had already become to have strong feelings toward one another and that they were supposed to be more than messengers together, but married as well. Shortly after that visitation from El Morya Elizabeth found out that Geraldine Innocente had committed suicide. (June 21, 1961)

Elizabeth told several stories where she said she saw clairvoyantly Mother Mary, angels, and of course, her encounters with El Morya, which happened again on another occasion when he appeared in her apartment. Thus, just like Mark Prophet, Geraldine Innocente, and Blavatsky before her who had said the masters or mahatmas had appeared to them, Elizabeth believed in these masters and believed they were real. Whether these encounters were with a real being or master, or from some impostor, as Padre Pio witnessed happened to him, there is no way of proving. The Catholic Church can take decades to decide if an apparition of Mother Mary or Jesus is really them or some psychic phenomena, which is more common than we realize. Yet they do so after many interviews and studies to learn everything about those apparitions. We do not have the luxury of eye-witnesses to these events, only the testimony of individuals.

Mark and Elizabeth both received personal dictations from the masters, through Mark, endorsing their union and marriage. Mark was 21 years older than Elizabeth, and married to a woman he met just after World War II. They had five children together. The personal messages stated there would be criticisms and hardships in their togetherness, but to basically take no heed as their mission together was of absolute importance. Elizabeth's divorce was final in 1963, after she moved to D.C. In order to get a divorce she had to plead desertion and abandonment, which was not the case, but on those grounds she got her divorce. Mark divorced his wife at the same time and he and Elizabeth were married on March 16, 1963.

Sean Prophet says on his website: "After running from creditors for years, even changing his name twice, my father left his first family of five children to start his church, and refused to provide them anything but paltry support. He sent them $100 per month for a while, a pittance even in the 1960’s, while our family lived in relative luxury. He drove brand-new Cadillacs, had a series of expensive motor homes, and we lived in a huge mansion in Colorado Springs. We wanted for nothing, had servants and tutors galore, and traveled the world. My oldest [step] sister Becky told me that after awhile, even the $100 per month he had been sending them stopped."

Summit Lighthouse Teachings
For the next ten years Mark and Elizabeth developed a community around their teachings. They incorporated the "I AM" teachings where everyone has an I AM Presence, which they taught is the higher, changeless aspect of yourself. They also taught we have a "holy Christ Self", which self is known as we balance the threefold flame in our heart. Reincarnation was an essential core belief, and thus the balancing of karma. Mark and Elizabeth both strongly felt the call to change the world, and they were focused on teaching personal and world transformation. In the personal transformation one's goal is to balance all their karma, balance their threefold flame (to become one with the Christ), fulfill their dharma and take their ascension. The world transformation goal was to help the planet balance karma and move her people into a Golden Age. This move in the Golden Age was believed would occur when 50 percent of world karma was balanced.

In order to help balance and transmute personal and world karma, students should decree, meditate, and abstain from certain worldly practices. Especially, students should not consume any alcohol, recreational drugs, all forms of sugar, and caffeine, and instead eat a balanced healthy diet and work on their personal psychologies. Evil was believed to be rampant upon the planet and stemmed from fallen angels, demons, entities and dark forces who moved within and without embodied man. These dark forces were behind the creation and consumption of all addictive substances such as sugar and caffeine, thus partaking of these substances tied you to them and their evil. The Summit messengers and the masters through them taught that other activities connected with evil were jazz, rock music and similar types of music with a syncopated beat, certain sexual practices and a whole host of negative thoughts and emotions, such as expressing anger.

During its prime, the community had special services almost every day of the week. These services included a mixture of decreeing, prayers, affirmations and some meditation (visualizations). Decrees were often spoken rapidly, and in an increasing higher pitch, until sometimes you could not discern the words at all. There are different decrees for each of the seven major rays of light and there are different ascended master chohans for each of the rays. One of the special decrees was the violet flame, and it was expected that a faithful "chela" of the ascended masters would give at least fifteen minutes of violet flame daily. Other daily decrees included protection decrees and decrees to fight evil. Rosaries to Mother Mary were given, although not required. Decreeing could easily take up two hours a day, and with attending services another couple of hours would be spent decreeing and making calls and affirmations.

The violet flame is called the cosmic eraser. It was first introduced by the Ballards and their St. Germain in the 1930's. The violet flame is said to have been secret prior to the twentieth century and St. Germain's dispensation, which was releasing it to all of mankind in this age. Prior to then it was only known in secret by the Eastern and Western adepts. Since the color violet is the highest frequency within the spectrum of visible light, the Summit students were taught that it is also the highest frequency that one can evoke to cause the atoms and electrons to spin at a higher vibratory rate and thus "spin off" effluvia, effectively transmuting all darkness into light. Using the violet flame is deemed essential to winning one's ascension, along with living a proper lifestyle. Once the ascension takes place, the soul—the corruptible aspect of being—becomes the incorruptible one, a permanent atom in the body of God, where it is reunited with the “I AM” Presence and free from the round of karma and rebirth.

While Madame Blavatsky did not teach the ascension, nor mention an I AM Presence in her writings, and in fact was against the idea of Jesus or any mahatma ascending, the Ballards, in the I AM Movement, made the ascension, the I AM Presence and giving the violet flame the center of their teachings. It was Baird T. Spalding that talked about I AM, the ascension and the ascended masters before the Ballards did, introducing them in his book series, The Life and Teachings of the Masters of the Far East.

While the Summit Lighthouse continued the focus on the I AM Presence and the ascension, the focus on evil also became a great part of its attention in the decades after Mark Prophet's passing. After the headquarters moved to large mansion called La Tourelle (meaning "The Tower") in Colorado in 1966, Elizabeth was appointed “Mother of the Flame,” an office in the Keepers of the Flame fraternity that Mark had founded. Staff and members of the group began calling her Mother. Members who wanted to support the new movement were called “staff” and moved into the headquarters where they worked for small a stipend. Their primary work was to publish Summit Lighthouse teachings.

From 1963 until 1973 the organization continued to build a small following. Printing presses were bought and publishing was thriving. In 1972, Mark and Elizabeth published their first book together, Climb the Highest Mountain. Mark's Sunday sermons were dynamic and many people spoke of how much they loved those lectures long after Mark's passing. He appeared intelligent and wise, caring and gifted in the art of engaging his audience. He was a great story teller and brought in humor and laughter to his sermons. Elizabeth, on the other hand, was much more serious and focused on the woes of the world and mankind. There were lectures, slide shows and videos on every imaginable threat to the establishment of the kingdom of God on earth, and sometimes "experts" would be called to deliver lectures on some of those threats, as well as alternative means of healing one's body, mind and soul.

Mark and Elizabeth had four children together, who supposedly all had famous lives. Mark, claiming he had all the gifts of the Holy Spirit, could read minds and read the akashic records and one's past life. According to the Summit Lighthouse, all that occurs in an individual’s lifetimes are recorded in akasha. Akasha is a Sanskrit word for "space" or "ether". The term akasha was used by Blavatsky in The Secret Doctrine, but not the term akashic records. She wrote in her book about akasha, "It is the cause of existence; it fills all the infinite Space; is Space itself...” When Edgar Cayce was asked where he obtained the information he delivered in psychic readings, he revealed two main sources: one was from the subconscious mind of the individual and the other was from a place he called "The Hall of Records" or akashic records. Leadbeater, Besant and Bailey all used the term "akashic records". This term is not to be confused with "Book of Life" from scriptures, which is the book in which God records the names of every person who is destined for Heaven.

Mark not only revealed the past lives of his family and of himself, but also many of the staff members and even those outside the Summit. He claimed his son Sean lived as Solomon; their daughter Erin, as the Prophet Gideon and Gandhi; their daughter Moira, as John F. Kennedy; and their daughter Tatiana, as Czar Peter the Great and the “messenger” Helena Roerich.

Mark’s self-proclaimed list of past embodiments included: the biblical Lot, Noah, Gideon, and Uriah, the Hittite, the Pharaoh Akhnaton, Aesop, St. Mark the Evangelist, Origen of Alexandria, Lancelot, Marco Polo, Hiawatha, King Clovis of France, Saladin, Saint Bonaventure, King Louis XIV of France, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and the young Russian Tsarevitch Alexei—son of Nicholas II.

Elizabeth's lives were no less important with her lives including queens and saints. She supposedly was: Lot’s wife, Egypt’s Queen Nefertiti, Arabia’s Queen of Sheba, Saint Martha, sister of Lazarus, Queen Guinevere, St. Catherine of Siena, St. Clare, Queen Marie Antoinette, Empress Elisabeth of Austria, the Tibetan mystic Yeshe Tsogyal, and the murdered Czarevna Tatiana Romanova of Russia, France’s Queen Clotilda, Austria’s Empress Elizabeth, Bathsheba, consort of King David, Christian martyr, Hypatia, Helen of Troy, Indian maiden Minnehaha; and Empress Mumtez Mahal, the wife of Shah Jahan who built the Taj Mahal.

The Prophets opened a second teaching center in Santa Barbara, California in 1970. In Santa Barbara they began the Ascended Master University, which would later be renamed Summit University. Back in Colorado Springs in that same year they founded Montessori International for grade school through 12th grade. The school was later shut down by Elizabeth after the shelter cycle because all her children were grown, apparently not considering the children left in Glastonbury, or for other reasons we may never know. They also opened a health food store and an organic restaurant in Colorado Springs.

Mark and Elizabeth claimed they were "twin flames" and the Two Witnesses prophesied in the Bible. After Mark's passing from a stroke on February 26, 1973, Elizabeth claimed he had ascended and was now an ascended master called Lanello, possibly assigning him that name "Lanello" from his past. She explains in the book published by Erin Prophet, "In My Own Words" that Mark, in personal letters to her before they were married, would "sign himself “L,” for “Lanello,” which was a pen name he had taken up, composed of his names from two past lives he had remembered as Sir Lancelot and the poet Longfellow".

All Is Not Roses Behind the Scenes
Appearances can be deceiving, sometimes intentionally and sometimes not. There were hidden aspects of Mark and Elizabeth's lives that were not pleasant to hear in the public domain, but when one becomes a religious leader and does not walk the talk of their doctrine and teachings, it is bound to come out by those who witness "behind the scenes".

Such was the case for several staff members who were part of the organization from the early years. While everyone makes mistakes, and sins, being two-faced is ungodly and we would expect the representatives of God to be honest and straightforward. St. Paul wrote a letter to Timothy where he stated: "Deacons likewise must be dignified, not double-tongued, not addicted to much wine, not greedy for dishonest gain. They must hold the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience. And let them also be tested first; then let them serve as deacons if they prove themselves blameless" (1 Timothy 3:8-10).

Family and close staff members who witnessed the "other" side of these messengers were often caught between love, conscience and common sense. They loved these two individuals, but some of the behavior they witnessed went against what their conscience was telling them, that it was not right. For staff members, the question was always, "Is this my test?" The test could be whether you would tell someone else, complain or leave behind the teachings, or respond in humbleness and withstand being treated ungodly—or what to do when witnessing someone else being treated ungodly. In other words, the messengers could do whatever they wanted and you had no right to judge or complain because they just might be the instrument of the ascended masters testing you, or returning karma to you from similar acts you had done to others in your past. You also were taught the messengers were reflecting back to you inner child issues from your past and thus the messenger in that role might reflect back your tyrannical parent, or play up your fears.

The messengers also berated individuals who did complain or innocently made a mistake. Witnessing such public displays of disciplining a chela and sometimes kicking them out of the community was enough to keep other members silent. One never wanted to be the brunt of such berating. Countless times in staff meetings, information released included recounting the past lives of individuals who had stepped "out of line" and had to be dismissed, or how they were "tools of the force" and it would take thousands of years before they would ever have an opportunity to be so close to the ascended masters again. And of course, they had foregone their ascensions.

Elizabeth took her training from Mark, and it was tough training. Elizabeth has said that Mark always got his way and so she learned not to disobey or object to anything he did or said. Likewise, Elizabeth became that type of leader herself after she took over the organization. Sometimes there was a tribunal where certain department leaders would gather to discipline the chela under the messenger's direction. Usually your testimony was not wanted or needed because you were already judged guilty from the onset. Speaking out in one's own defense with such a tribunal seemed pointless, as you were already placed off guard by having no previous warning that the tribunal and judgment were coming, and were intimidated by such authority figures who were supposed to be representatives of the Guru (Elizabeth) and thus representatives of God's will.

I personally experienced one of those in the 80's and another in the 90s. One of my children at four years old was kicked out of Montessori with no warning notice to help the parent help the child stop the behavior, or be aware that the child was having any problems, so as to be able to help the child adjust to the school and a new environment. I was completely shocked at such treatment. It was also an extremely difficult situation to resolve what to do next. I had two other children in the school and as a single mother I could not manage two schools, a job and the strict pickup time with fines per the minute if one was late. Again, in the 90s the discipline that time involved not one child, but this time four children that were dismissed from the school.

My personal experiences were many that correlated with some of the reports of former students in the organization. Some of the former students may have been bitter and angry due to their own faulty nature (which may have been part of the cause of the discipline to begin with), but some of them were treated as worthless individuals that could be discarded at a moment's notice, some after serving the organization for decades, and apparently their discipline did not see justified or warranted such discipline.

I joined the organization in 1980, ran a study group out of my home for four years, went to Summit University, lived near Camelot for six months and worked on staff for a year. I had four children in their Montessori school and worked in the community at a business run by a prominent member of the Church. I lived in the Glastonbury community for eight years. I lived there during the shelter cycle and built a shelter on our property. I never judged the messengers, Elizabeth's disciplining of me, my husband, or my children, or the shelter cycle fiasco as "someone's fault". I obeyed their rules to the best of my ability and common sense. I never left the Church officially, but I was excommunicated when I claimed to be a messenger myself. I continued to respect Elizabeth's messengership, even after hearing rumors after her retirement that I at that time could not believe were true. Yet every one of those rumors later were proven to be true, some through her children's testimonies and some by staff member's testimony.

In part II of the Summit Lighthouse discourse I will share these experiences from my own testimony, as well as compiling the testimony of others, and personal insights I gained from being intimately a part of the community for so many years, and the relationship to the unreality of the ascended masters.

____________________________________________

Continued in The Summit Lighthouse - Camelot Years