Subscribers have complete access to the archive. . His Nantucket house guests recall being sent out to scour the beach for good-looking recruits, handing out invitations to the finest physical specimens they could find. Go deeper. "Let me tell you something! The leader was a man named Frederick Von Mierers. Later, in therapy, I would figure out I was repeating a pattern from my childhood. He is trying to alienate him from all of us!" "Maybe Freddie von Mierers is taking people for millions! von Mierers told a TV talkshow host named Richard Bey in 1988 to characterize the followers he had with him on the show. "You will all be dead within ten years. That's $3 million. Eileen Ford said "As far as I'm concerned, he's a crumbum.". Every movement was a tremendous effort. In clips from these extremely 80s appearances, the former model shills mail-order cassettes and spouts new-age gibberish, his eyes getting impossibly larger and more urgent with each nonsense aphorism. On the weekends I would bring up a couple friends with me from school. "How could an obvious phony like this convince so many smart, attractive young people in New York that he was for real?" You have to do all the therapy and the research. They quickly annulled their marriage, but they have remained friends. You see everything like it is. 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Von Mierers had learned what it took to glide through New York's best drawing rooms. He had us change the locks on the door. When they returned to New York, they told Eileen Ford's husband and Hunter what had happened to them. Von Mierers would wax eloquent on the legendary Hindu belief in the healing properties of certain precious gems. Although not a member of the group, the great New York arts patron Alice Tully reportedly had a life reading, as did Sylvester Stallone, the actress Rae Dawn Chong, and the daughter of an Iranian Cabinet minister close to the Shah. "Interior decorator 28 years old . "I was represented by Ford," he told me. Through a series of visions, the "new" Frederick suddenly recollected his life as "a mathematician and astrologer involved in building the Egyptian pyramid at Giza, and another incarnation at the time of Buddha in India." "There are really two kinds of Jews," a friend remembers him saying. Von Mierers would often warn his New Age leaders to beware of Jews. "I thought I was in love with Jacki," he told me. However, word began to spread through the Upper East Side of New York that von Mierers had genuine psychic ability. I had a Life Reading done by Frederick von Miers in the late 1980's. Although I did not get to meet him, I believe he was honest in the concept he passed on to some of us and that he was a Walk-In. The gem business has always been predicated on the notion of caveat emptor; a stone is worth what the customer is willing to pay. Rich kids with troubled psyches took themselves off to Tibet to see the Dalai Lama or invited plump Indian swamis to move in. As private-school teenagers found their way to East Fiftyfourth Street, von Mierers would talk to them about his "godmother" from the "famous Kress family" and his friends the Vanderbilts. "All the people here went to Harvard, Yale, and Princeton!'' . Did it matter? Frederick told me that my deficiencies were so horrendous that I needed a stone that was at least two to three and a half carats. A male supermodel on surviving an apocalyptic, vegetarian cult. He has a lot of good traits and a lot of bad ones. "Think about the white light and the violet light!" Seaman was at the house when von Mierers died, Fritts said. It's real bottom-line. Pay the money or you're out.' RAP-B-238U 1'' Ball Composite Ram Mount Diamond Base Plate 2.43"x131" AMPS Hole, Legion 5 Pro 16" Gaming Laptop QHD 165Hz R9-6900HX 16GB RAM 1TB SSD RTX 3070 Ti, Samsung Galaxy Active 2 R825U Smartwatch 44mm Bluetooth GPS & LTE - Very Good, Lenovo IdeaPad 3 14" FHD Laptop Intel Core i7-1165G7 8GB RAM 512GB SSD, Citizen Eco-Drive Women's Rose-Gold Accent Mesh Bracelet 34mm Watch FE6081-51A, Intel Core i9-13900KF Unlocked Desktop Processor - 24 Cores (8P+16E) & 32 Thread, DEWALT DCCS620B 20V MAX Cordless Li-Ion 12 in. The only thing that mattered was loyalty to the group." "Frederick was only trying to help him." Cults have always attracted those with deficiency needsmissing pieces of psychological makeup that family, religion, or education did not supply. Im a textbook cultvictim.. And that is all I am going to say.". ", When asked later about his reaction to the departure of Adams and Andreadis, von Mierers lapsed into a long silence and then, speaking with difficulty, said, "I don't know who such people are." I have been in journalism a lot longer than you, young lady! Many of her fifteen books are still in print, filling the psychic-phenomena sections of the paperback racks. She was impressed by the "hypnotic atmosphere" and the attractive young people; Andreadis did an astrological reading for her which, she said, "blew me away." It was Christmas this past year at the Ford agency, and Eileen Ford was frantic. When I look around, I see that, to a greater or lesser extent, we all have cultic relationships with peoplerelationships where the person we love, the person from whom were seeking approval, is also the one who is dishing out the abuse. I am the chosen one. Gunzenhausen (German pronunciation: [ntsnhazn] (); Bavarian: Gunzenhausn) is a town in the Weienburg-Gunzenhausen district, in Bavaria, Germany.It is situated on the river Altmhl, 19 kilometres (12 mi) northwest of Weienburg in Bayern, and 45 kilometres (28 mi) southwest of Nuremberg.Gunzenhausen is a nationally recognized recreation area. ``I think this place has been very quiet, and all the action was up in New York,' said Alex Karr, the mansion's only year-round neighbor and a member of the Lake Lure Town Council.But when von Mierers, devastated by AIDS, neared death, he left behind the frenetic pace of New York City and headed south to his group's $400,000, Xanadu-like home beside peaceful Lake Lure. It bears the signature of Unified Cosmogony's then-president, New York City TV producer Fritz Diekmann, who is featured in the 14-page Vanity Fair spread. Like von Mierers, they were dressed in expensive clothes. Got a tip? "As far as I'm concerned, he's a crumbum.". Freddys successors were even more extreme. "No one is recruiting here! ``They were rather reclusive,' Police Chief Frank Fritts said. We spoke what youd call New Age jargon. Lacking a sense of the past, the group is bound together by its loyalty to von Mierers and its belief in a dark futurethe possible triage resulting from the greenhouse effect, the shifting of the earth's poles, the melting ice caps. He had impeccable manners, if a bit too studied to be natural, and, more, he had mastered the art of making facile remarks at dinner parties. I couldnt seem to live up to the community standards. EVERY PAGE. "I was so highly evolved," he told me. (renews at {{format_dollars}}{{start_price}}{{format_cents}}/month + tax). "I had read everything. She retreated from her friends and family, and even her booker at Ford noticed something was wrong. In a new documentary, Welcome to the Beyond, Hoyt recalls his introduction to the cult leader who would alter the course of his life. He would tell prospective buyers that he was able to get stones at a tremendous discount, which the inflated appraisal papers would confirm. A decade ago, Montgomery was a Danielle Steel of New Age literature, a forerunner of Shirley MacLaine. If challenged about the Holocaust, von Mierers would repeat the most banal anti-Semitic propaganda: "The Holocaust has been exaggerated"; "Hitler was a misunderstood genius"; "Jews have to understand that their natures encourage pogroms. ' I could write three books about him. Control of diet was an important first step. "He would hear about someone rich and say, 'Bring him in!' She was saved by her intelligence and her astonishing beauty. "I heard they got money to Frederick by Federal Express." The dark forces controlling this world are working not only through the obvious avenues of bombs, chemicals, and drugs but also through New Age spirituality. My whole body was encompassed in a blazing white light. A Wall Street banker designed the computer system that charted the planets for von Mierers's readings; a Brooklyn woman kept his books. Richards most recent film is Intersection, a romantic thriller he produced and stars in. Since then, he has acted and started his own film and TV production company, Tortoise. Get up-to-the-minute news sent straight to your device. Each apartment had immense displays of pink azaleas and tiger lilies, arranged as if for a garden show. "I want her to write about me. Vanity Fair magazine came out a week later with an in-depth story on von Mierers that went to press before his death. "It was like being in a meeting of Nazi storm troopers," Hartwell told me. ". I recently asked Eileen Ford and Joe Hunter, the company president. We had four years of stored food and a whole lot of weapons by thispoint. From the mind, which is the ego. She bought the herbs for the Eternal Values diet and started the rigorous food-combining program. von Mierers told Jacki Adams, the Ford model who had come to see me, on one cassette. Within the group, the number of gems and carats possessed was treated as a sign of devoutness. And here I was, a male model, a symbol of all we were supposed to hate. A male supermodel on surviving an apocalyptic, vegetarian cult. In four months, she claims, she paid more than $100,000 to von Mierers and Eternal Values. We are sincere! He was a fringe player who appeared "to know everybody," as he might have said. They are, in the main, blessed with ample salaries from good jobs. Bey told him, "You know what I really think? Without Freddy to focus on, there were an increasing number of strict rules and codes of punishment. . "What could I do?" Your parents have been horrible for you. Within months, hundreds and then thousands of letters were forwarded to von Mierers from Ruth Montgomery, Andreadis remembered. "I was always over there on East Fiftyfourth. His accent, already familiar to me from the many videotapes he had merchandised, was obviously inauthentic; I could hear traces of the grandees of the Hudson Valley, the sibilation of Blanche DuBois, and the clipped o's of Mayfair. One of the women, Erika Wilson, a model with the Ford agency who has appeared in Glamour and Self, had a bland, sweet expression and an allAmerican beauty. He had sold thousands of cassettes with titles such as Space People, Karma and Destiny, and Gems and Crystals. Oh. You come in with nothing and you go out with nothing. Von Mierers would stare at the camera with his cold blue eyes and talk about Satan and "the dark forces." "It is time to go big-time," Andreadis remembers von Mierers telling him a little later. He told us about the personal tapes he would make for us that would cost $350, and he said he had eight thousand requests. The ring had twelve of my own diamonds in it, and I was shocked when I learned that the whole ring was worth at most $15,000, because Frederick had told me that the stone was worth $23,000. The house was on a lake. In fear, Andreadis and Adams went to Jamaica. John was saying, 'Don't hit me, Frederick. Sitting in the apartment near Sutton Place, I thought of the German word Maskenfreiheit: the freedom conferred by masks. "I thought John Andreadis was spiritual," she told me. Maybe you remember seeing it on late-night public-access cable TV. Scarlet and turquoise feathers drifted by. "I decided not to let the moment pass," Adams told me, ''and I introduced myself to John.". Frederick said to me, 'Susanne, what is $50,000 to you? The former V.F. Years ago, if he said he worked ten days on a modeling job, I knew that meant he worked two days! by such friends and clients as Babe Paley, Averell Harriman, and Cole Porter. We are not a cult.". Always, he was immaculate; he combed his hair, which was dark then, straight back like an heir to Morgan Stanley. he would say. The message was simple: Adams and Andreadis were evil; their egos would have to be ' 'destroyed. ' Soon he was attempting to find work as a society decorator and furniture restorer, living in a tiny apartment on East Forty-ninth Street which he had decorated in Baldwin style. "These are the only people in New York who count," he would say. Call the super!' . .From where do these thoughts arise? Splintered family relationships of the type familiar to anyone who has had experience with cults. He chose to come back because of an urgent need to reach the young people who will be founding the new society after the shift of the earth on its axis.". Artist: Frederick Von Mierers, John Andreadis, & IasosTitle: The Eternal Values: Karma & DestinyLabel: The Eternal Values Corporation & Inter-Dimensional Mus. "That always sounded suspicious to me," a friend of von Mierers's told me, "but he was always around with Mrs. Williams, and she was such a sweet old lady." Von Mierers believed in impending doomthat he and his fellow aliens had been sent here to help earthlings, an intergalactic team of emergency responders. There, he would later tell Ruth Montgomery, he was also treated for a streptococcal infection. Andreadis dismisses this as pure invention. I said, 'You can't take $11,000 out of the bank without filling out a form.' "I have every gem under the sun! We were on earth to help people. "Frederick immediately began to tell me that it was my job to manipulate John," she told me. Pulsating ionization machines cleansed the air, and billowing clouds were painted on the walls. David Seaman was a New York chiropractor. Access everything Vanity Fair has ever published.Join Now Subscriber-Only Benefit The Complete Vanity Fair Archive EVERY ISSUE. Von Mierers had espoused the ways of his mysterious group ``Eternal Values' through mail-order cassettes, at a Park Avenue church and on talk shows, including a cable television show for which he was host. "Freddie used to say to me, 'With these gems, they hold you close to their heart. "He's harmless," Hunter told me. Frederick would talk about their mission and explain the need to eat grains and vegetables; he would place them on rigorous diets, which involved an elaborate system of eating known as food-combining. Frederick would bring out the coral and the lapis and he would light up like a Christmas tree. "Of course, he was never a spiritual person.". At times, his anti-Semitic remarks were almost comical. Writer Marie Brenner, who confirmed the now-dropped investigation by the . ''Every other check was made out to Freddie von Mierers. Hitler was divinely inspired," he has said. A few people in the room were buzzing about her: Who is that beautiful woman? These are the ones that I prescribe. Von Mierers himself had two large rings on his middle finger. One client tried to force me to hire him. He says he gave von Mierers $17,000 for a sapphire, a topaz, and a cat's-eye which von Mierers assured him he was getting for an astonishing bargain price, "way below wholesale." He even let me drive one of his Porches. They all had striking similarities; they were young, mostly in their twenties and early thirties, and quite good-looking, with taut, muscular bodies. John comes back down here and Frederick starts smashing him across the face, and just saying, 'You fucking liar!' "John was out for position," Wyatt told me after a long pause. These cults attract mostly the Less than Zero generation, born in the 1960s, reared on fashionable doomsday prophecies about the millennium. 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