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Retreat
From Zaca This article is copyright 2001 Perseus Foundation, Inc. It may be freely copied and shared only if the original text is retained in its totality, and this copyright notice is displayed. UPDATE! July 20, 2003: Maynerd Most - Alvin Wiley Scam Alert! UPDATE: An Open Letter From Alvin Wiley A report by a member of the Cassiopaea E-group. Some misconceptions have arisen concerning the Zaca Retreat planned in Santa Barbara for September 21-23, 200l. As visitors to this site know, Ark and Laura were scheduled to appear at this conference and concelled on August 5, 2001 due to fundamental differences between them and the sponsors, Fifth Way Mystery School, San Graal School of Sacred Geometry, and Aethyrea Books. They were told at that time by the conference organizer that all other speakers had cancelled. However, members of the Cassiopaea e-group who tried to verify these claims received different information. E-mails sent to Laura and Ark from the two conference organizers seemed to contradict each other. This report is to help readers of this website understand what has taken place in the past few weeks. Laura and Ark Jadczyk were invited to appear as speakers for the retreat and billed, on the magicjourney website of one of the organizers as follows:
Ark and Laura tentatively accepted the invitation and announced the conference on their own webpage with a link to the conference details maintained by the owner and representative of Fifth Way Mystery School, one of the conference sponsors. It should be clearly understood from the outset that this was an invitation, not a contract. Ark and Laura were only two of half a dozen or more scheduled presentations. In the world of conferences, if an invited speaker cancels, for whatever reason, it is the responsibility of the organizers to find an acceptable replacement, if such is needed. Laura and Ark have worked diligently to combine both science and mysticism in their writing. They are scrupulous in maintaining a professional, scientific standard of work which requires full documentation of all work quoted or sourced. As a result of a discussion on the Cassiopaea egroup, it was brought to their attention that Fifth Way Mystery School was not just interested in "Enochian Magick" as an intellectual and/or historical study, but that it is open towards teaching and advocating practice of same. Being alerted to this factor, Laura undertook to study the writings and presentations of the Fifth Way Mystery School more carefully. As a result, she became acutely aware that the organizers of the conference were publishing and advocating the very things that she and Ark had found to be barriers to a scientific approach to the mystical and paranormal. Laura and Ark realized that such an association was contrary to their personal philosophy, as well as the essence of their public work. It was thought that they could simply answer the questions of any readers by posting a disclaimer so that visitors to their site would have no question that there was any personal connection. The disclaimer read as follows:
Within two weeks of the posting of the disclaimer, Ark and Laura came to the personal decision that a disclaimer was not enough. They elected to cancel their appearance. This announcement was made to one of the organizers and the Cassiopaea E-group simultaneously. In
an email to this person, Laura remarked:
Following that, the organizers took issue with the cancellation telling Ark and Laura that because of their disclaimer, all of the other speakers had canceled and the Fifth Way Mystery School was withdrawing their support from the conference. Ark and Laura received the following private e-mail from one of the organizers, who was also at that time a member of the Cassiopaea e-group, on August 6: (Please note that we would not publish the private e-mail here, but the sender has already chosen to e-mail parts of it and other private e-mails to at least 180 people, and in that e-mail wrote that he hoped that someone would be "brave enough to re-post [it] on the list.") The August 6 message, which became part of the larger spam message on August 7, read:
And
then later, on August 7,the same organizer e-mailed us that:
Which was followed by the same person's comments that:
So, the claim of the organizers is that the other conference speakers had canceled their appearances because of the disclaimer posted on the Cassiopaea web site and Laura and Ark were the only remaining speakers. Thus, the organizers were proposing that they turn the conference center over to Ark and Laura and their group and they could hold a private conference. Of course this was not acceptable for the same reason given above. Laura and Ark had announced their decision not to attend the conference to the Cassiopaea discussion list members so that those who had signed up to attend mainly to meet Ark and Laura would have time to decide whether to apply for refunds if they so wished. However,
one of the organizers wrote:
At this point, an email was received from another of the organizers who had been presented to Ark and Laura as the "manager" of the conference center. He wrote:
All in all, it seems that the organizers are seeking excuses so as not to refund the money of those attendees who wish to cancel. Additionally, one member wrote to one of the invited speakers to see just what was so distasteful to them in the disclaimer that they felt they had to pull out of the conference, as the organizers were claiming. This speaker/author said the following”
This statement explicitly contradicts the claims made by the organizers:
And, that’s where it stands at present. Laura's Comments Added on 8/11/01 First I want to thank all of you who have written letters of support and encouragement. As we have said to those of you who were disappointed that we would not be at Zaca Lake, we will be setting up a conference or symposium of our own in the very near future. So, those of you who want to save your money to attend the planned meeting here in Florida, do need to take whatever actions are necessary to obtain your refunds from the organizers of the Zaca Lake conference. Several people have written to tell us that it is a simple matter of calling your credit card bank and asking for an immediate charge back. This may be what you wish to do. The report above, put together by a member of our E-group, was our attempt to answer the questions of the readers. Our only concern was that those who wanted refunds should know that they had been promised by said organizer. We also wanted to make clear that we had been informed by the organizer that the conference was cancelled in its entirety. The morning after the posting of the above information, we received the following post from one of the organizers:
Now, the curious thing about this is the fact that it seems that these conference organizers do not seem to be communicating with one another. Because the fact is, we received an email from the other organizer telling us that, because of our "disclaimer," all the other participants had "backed out." Another email was then sent, by this same conference organizer, to a list of over 150 people, saying the same thing. Here is the first of these emails:
This email to us was then followed by the email sent to a hundred and fifty or so other individuals culled from our egroup and mailing list, as well as individuals who had signed up to attend the conference for the exclusive reason that they wanted to meet us. This lengthy email was composed of a series of emails and comments, many of which were slanderous and libelous. More importantly, they included emails from the private, moderated Cassiopaea egroup. The list rules of this egroup include the following statment:
It should be noted that the above conference organizer "responded" to the message, by clicking the link to join the Egroup. He was, therefore, agreeing to this policy. So it was that this organizer of the conference, who shared emails that were part of the private egroup with non-members of the egroup, was in direct violation of the privacy policy of the group. He violated not only our personal privacy, he violated the group's privacy. Nevertheless, as a result of this email, some of the group members began to have serious questions about the background and motivations of the organizers of this conference. Some questions had already been discussed between some of them, and many speculations and personal interactions with one or the other of the organizers were being shared with the group. The picture that began to emerge was not a very favorable one, to say the least. First of all, in his slanderous and libelous email, which included posts and information that were violations of privacy and confidentiality at numerous levels, the organizer of Zaca lake conference made this claim about his credentials:
Regarding such "traditions," immediately after we announced our decision to not be a part of the Zaca lake conference, we received an email from the other organizer as follows:
The most interesting things in all of the above are the claims to "traditions," as when this individual says:
The question we need to ask here is: what kind of "tradition" produces "initiates" of this kind? Most definitely NOT any tradition that I would want to know or follow. What is even more bizarre about this than anything else is the fact that it stems purely and simply from the fact that we made a choice NOT to be associated with, and in fact distance ourselves from, certain practices in terms of sponsorship and business. It was that simple. Yet, this decision has generated such expressions of vicious and vile slander and libel as quoted above, that it is utterly incomprehensible. What is even more beyond our bviously limited understanding is how such people can make so many claims about their "initiatory status," on the one hand, and act and write as they do in the above examples on the other? Well, we come to that most interesting part of our account here. As I noted above, certain members of the E-group decided that this was a perfect opportunity to exercise the Cassiopaean principle that Knowledge protects, so they went looking for knowledge. And in the interests of that principle, we are sharing it with the reader. On the Laura Lee website, you will find a "bio" of one of the conference organizers as follows:
Now, that all sounds very impressive, doesn't it? But is it true? Fom a long series of emails telling his "life story," we glean the following:
The remainder of this very long and most interesting account we will withhold for the present, since our interest is primarily in facts that we can verify. And above, we have the presentation of a fact that [Conference organizer] claims to have been doing graduate work. Now, graduate work explicitly includes the idea of having graduated with a Bachelor's degree at the very least - to be doing work to obtain a higher degree, such as a Master's or a Ph.D. However, as it turns out, one of the members of our E-group, who is faculty at a university, undertook to consult various databases that would reveal if, in fact, [Conference organizer] ever did obtain any degrees or do any work at the claimed university. He had no dissertation listed. But, of course, he never claimed to have his Ph.D. Nevertheless, he was asked about this, and he said he had no degrees, and he had never said he had any degrees. Yet, in point of fact, from the email quoted above, he did say that he had a degree in the statement that he was doing "grad studies." And he is listed as doing "graduate" work on the Laura Lee site as well. That is pretty much a claim to at least an undergraduate degree. We await further verification in these matters. What about the book he claims to have authored, both on the Laura Lee site as well as in the above email account of his life? The title of the book is claimed to be Walpurgisnacht. Published by DAW books. Numerous book databases and card catalogs of libraries were checked, and there was no reference. It also does not appear on DAW books list of publications. They have an online list of all the paperbacks they have ever published, and it just isn't there. Curiously, however, in 1981 a sci fi writer named Roger Zelazny did publish a short story called "Walpurgisnacht," which came out in a book of his called Rhapsody in Amber, then was reprinted in Terry Carr's "Best SF of the Year" series in 1982, and reprinted again in 1983 in an anthology of Zelazny's called "The Unicorn Variations." We await further verification. Searches of databases for the articles [Conference organizer] claims to have had published is underway. We will update you on these investigations. Regarding the associates of [Conference organizer], investigations into their backgrounds are underway as well. Expect a full report with citations of sources at some point in the future. Our final comment is this: if those things that are stated as fact, which can be checked, do not result in confirmation from the "real world," what are we to make of those things that cannot be checked, such as the claims to high initiatory status in the various "traditions" named? We await further verification from the named organizations. We welcome input and/or additional data from our readers. Knowledge Protects. Open letter from Alvin Wiley:
May 2, 2002: This spot was formerly occupied by an "open letter from Alvin Wiley" written on December 15, 2001, approximately two weeks after Mr. Wiley became aware of Maynerd Most "shady background" as a result of our investigative report. Mr. Wiley seemed to be sincerely anxious to "make amends" for having been manipulated by Most to think that we had "shafted" him in regards to the Zaca Lake conference. He was also apologizing for several vicious emails he had sent us which he stated had been as a result of being misinformed about the conference by Maynerd Most. He also seemed to be sincerely interested in getting to the truth and assisting in revealing Maynerd Most history of conning others so as to make the information available to others who might be similarly targeted by Most in the future. Alvin wrote to us telling us that he was under the impression that the event at Zaca Lake was "sponsored" by Ark and Laura in conjuction with Maynerd Most - obviously, what Most wanted him to believe. As we have stated elsewhere, Most presented this conference as a big affair for which he already had a large audience. It was only when we cancelled that he informed us that WE were the "main attraction" and that most of the attendees were being drawn from our readers. We then realized that we were being used to attract the attendees, that he really did not have a large audience already. In short, the whole affair took on the appearance of a con job for the purpose of making money using us. Mr. Wiley then stated that he was so irate because he thought we had "screwed Zaca Lake Charity out of $8,000.00." We are uncertain as to how this was possible since we don't think that there were enough attendees signed up for the conference that, after deducting expenses, there would be eight grand left. Also, Maynerd Most had clearly stated that any monies left over after expenses would accrue to himself, and he would see to it that we received an "honorarium." We didn't really expect any money from the conference since we were mostly doing it as a favor to Maynerd to help him get his "publishing company" off the ground, which would have been advantageous to us as well, since he was going to publish our books. Nevertheless, Mr. Wiley informed us that there was a charity involved, and that funds from the conference had been slated to go to this charity, and the figure was $8,000.00. Mr. Wiley continued his letter by informing us that Maynerd Most claims about the book they wrote together were "out and out lies." He then informed us that Maynerd Most owed him thousands of dollars since he financed their research trips. (The figure was later give as $3000.00) Mr. Wiley concluded his letter with a heartfelt plea to Maynerd Most to "set his career, and life, back in order." He had the idea that this could be accomplished if Most would just apologize to everyone publicly for his misrepresentations. Now, coming forward to the present: We have just received a letter from Mr. Wiley telling us that our posting of his letters has essentially served his purpose. He informs us that he has now entered into a legal agreement with Maynerd Most that he finds "satisfactory to me [Alvin Wiley]." He then states that Most has paid him back the $3,000.00 he owed, and that he has "apologized for his mistakes." Next, he tells us that the copyright problem has been straightened out as well as the ownership of Aethyrea Books. This last issue relates to the fact that we discovered through the tax collector's office as well as the Secretary of State's office in North Carolina, that Maynerd Most did not own a legally registered company and therefore, any of his representations as being a publisher were fraudulent and misleading. Alvin Wiley later filed the corporation papers on Aethyrea Books LLC, and this was the first time that it had existed as a legal corporation. At some later point, Maynerd Most posted on the internet in numerous places that Ark and Laura had "blackmailed" Alvin Wiley into writing the letters that we posted on our site at Alvin's request. Alvin then provided a letter declaring that Maynerd was an "out and out liar." The fact is, Alvin Wiley contacted us, not the other way around. Several other letters were published by us, on behalf of Alvin Wiley, in our ongoing effort to expose a serious internet predator who has a history of theft, lies and fraud. Mr. Wiley has now informed us that he wishes to just let the whole thing drop because he is satisfied; he got his money back, he got an apology, and "the many things said in those letters is no longer true." As a certain member of the research team pointed out regarding such a position: "Since when does truth become 'no longer true?' Who decides, and who's truth was it in the first place? Does something become not true, which once was true?" What concerns us here, of course, is that there is nothing in Mr. Wiley's attitude that suggests concern for other people Maynerd Most has, or will con in the future. So, the bottom line is: even though Mr. Wiley has a price - and rather low, at that - I don't think that Mr. Most will be able to "persuade" any of the other contributors to the documentation of his fraudulent life to retract what they have said. And so, at his request, we are removing Alvin Wiley's letters.
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