Tapping the Source

The way they lived: Excerpts from Isis Aquarian's cult chronicle

Comments (0) By Isis Aquarian Wednesday, Aug 29 2007

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Makushla would fill this “Mother Angel” role with a special grace until Father left his body. She became the one woman who accompanied Father constantly. As he continued to accept other women, Makushla had to handle the same anguish of sharing him. But while Jim Baker ended up leaving and divorcing all of his wives, in his later manifestation, YaHoWha, he kept all 14.

Life at the Mother House had been a utopian dream come true for most of us, but after a year, the Chandlers decided not to renew our lease, and we had to leave. The house was located just a few blocks away from the site of the Manson Family’s La Bianca murders, which had paralyzed Los Angeles only a few years earlier.

Bliss: Father Yod marrying a couple at the Source restaurant.

one of Yod's wives, Ahom, with Tau and Buttercup

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I imagine the sight of a hundred young people living in one house, all wearing white and following around a man who looked like Moses, might have made some neighbors nervous. We were kind to everyone and kept the house immaculate, but we were up at 3:30 a.m. every morning for meditation, played music, and liked to walk around nude, among other things. Sometimes we would see men on the hill peering down at us with binoculars, and police helicopters occasionally hovered over the compound.

In March of 1973, we found a hillside home overlooking the Sunset Strip close to the Source restaurant. We called it the “Father House” and rented it for $1,000 a month, just as we had the Chandler mansion, although it was less than half the size. The lot was large and very private, with the house built on a knoll below an arid, scrubby hilltop, accessible only by a long, steep driveway. Stands of cypress trees gave further privacy on either side of the house. We had a beautiful view of Hollywood and, in the distance, the smoggy skyline of Los Angeles. To us it felt like being on a higher plane, looking down onto the Earth from an exalted spot. I remember seeing lots of spaceships at the Father House. Father would point them out to us.

For us, these were the best of times and the most carefree, as the Source lived up to its name and destiny by taking care of all our material needs, providing us with such a level of peace and clarity while we witnessed the meteoric, almost overwhelming, rise of our Father’s consciousness.

Father and Makushla had the master bedroom with Ahom, and eventually Ahom and all the pregnant women were moved into a side room off his bedroom. Ahom was about six months pregnant when Aquariana and Prism (who had also become Father’s women) also became pregnant by Father.

Everyone always made sure Father got the best of everything — robes, food, homemade belts and occasional gifts from the outside. He would give away his robes and belts to his sons if he saw they were in need. And if we made his food first, and he saw that others were not getting the same, he would turn and hand it to the nearest son.

We all held Father in such reverence, and the wisdom and love that he gave to us all was so profound, that our perspective was to look up to him as an exalted being. Although he warned us not to accept what he said as gospel and to figure out the truth for ourselves, we tended to unquestioningly accept what he said and did, and focused on him as a literal manifestation of God. Because he spoke truth, I have not regretted that belief.

On Sundays, the Source was closed and all of us would spend the day together as a Family. We occasionally went on outings together, to Santa Monica Beach or Griffith Park. At the beach, everyone would wear homemade bathing suits and go into the water together, then sit in the sand and Father would teach while passersby gathered round.

When we went hiking in Griffith Park or walking back and forth to the Source from our home in Nichols Canyon, what a show it was! One would see this colorful band of beautiful, confident, serene young people in long, flowing robes with their long hair streaming — all completely focused on this one, awe-inspiring being.

But with such a large group and so much going on within it, things outside of our “circumvent force” did not hold our interest for long. We most enjoyed making music or doing creative arts and crafts projects. Once in a while a group would go to a movie. But Father’s consciousness was such that he could barely put up with most of them, and we often walked out after only a few minutes. Paul Mazursky, famous for directing the film Bob and Ted and Carol and Alice, would lend us his movie projector and 16 mm films, which we viewed at home. Father loved old movies from the ’30s, especially musicals with Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald. Mazursky would feature Father and the Source restaurant in his 1973 film Alex in Wonderland. A few years after that, Woody Allen would film the famous breakup scene in Annie Hall at the Source.