Jeremiah will take over your body.' She reportedly paid von Mierers $75,000 for her gems. That's $3 million. by such friends and clients as Babe Paley, Averell Harriman, and Cole Porter. Von Mierers had learned what it took to glide through New York's best drawing rooms. "I was never paid," he said, "but I believed what Frederick said. "No one is being kept here," he told me. "You are fabulous! They're cheaper than you could get wholesale!' "You'll never be a Ted Koppel unless you have manners!" "Don't become a cock worshiper! They speak in New Age jargon and talk of "highly evolved" personalities and "ego renunciation." (''Only a clear understanding of how the Evil Forces work will enable people to make it through the precarious times that lie ahead. "I have been familiar with your work only since last summer, when I became aware that the message in your books is identical to the Hindu cycles of creation." It was an era in New York of crazy religions, cults, and odd self-help groupsest, Scientology, Synanon, and Arica. "We are not a cult," von Mierers told me angrily during the strange afternoon we spent together. Many people were convinced that the world was going to end in A.D. 999, 1013, 1844, and 1914, and the year 2000 has always kept the prophets in an uproar. A male supermodel on surviving an apocalyptic, vegetarian cult. Instead, they sent the body to Chapel Hill for autopsy by the state medical examiner. I am the chosen one. Von Mierers's conversation predictably dwelt on the fact that his new friends had never experienced proper sex. Often he had $30,000 or $40,000 in cash in his apartment. The idea was ultimately to destroy the ego and then rebuild it in a more malleable form. Ruth Montgomery detailed von Mierers's relationship with Mrs. Williams in Aliens Among Us: "In company with his dowager godmother, Frederick traveled the high roads of Europe, meeting socially with the Queen of England and European aristocracy. von Mierers would tell them. She seemed to have abdicated all responsibility, resigned to the vulnerabilities of young beauties who often come from troubled homes. "Frederick imparts information that normally you wouldn't have access to," a Princeton graduate and Ford model who is a member of Eternal Values told me. He looked at her emeralds and told her they were junk. It is materialized, objectified thoughts. "In ancient Egypt, I trained you to be a healer! There, he would later tell Ruth Montgomery, he was also treated for a streptococcal infection. .immaculate dresser. I think you have found some young, impressionable people who are on a quest for spiritual, moral values." He had us change the locks on the door. I recently asked Eileen Ford and Joe Hunter, the company president. Von Mierers would wax eloquent on the legendary Hindu belief in the healing properties of certain precious gems. A hydrogen-light body. The hardest part, really, has been forgiving myself. You are here to listen to 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. I looked over at the owner, Cipriani, and got the distinct impression he would have thrown him out if I hadn't been there. Then he opened his sweater and showed us all the gems he was wearing. 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. She has a huge audience. Studio Design Collection. I spread them out under a lamp. ' If anyone in the room argued with him, von Mierers would scream, "You either come to my way of thinking or the dark forces will destroy you.". He was a fringe player who appeared "to know everybody," as he might have said. We just have to get down and scrub the floors!' By 1987 von Mierers was wasting no time selling the healing stones. A decade ago, Montgomery was a Danielle Steel of New Age literature, a forerunner of Shirley MacLaine. A popular series called The Dark Forces sold as a complete set for twenty-five dollars. Often he would rage at his followers. Frederick would bring out the coral and the lapis and he would light up like a Christmas tree. And so, in 1984, Andreadis wrote to the best-selling author. A terrible man has been selling him gems! Even today, years after Charles Manson and the Jonestown mass suicides, more than two thousand cults continue to operate in America. I am here to train the leaders of the New Age. While I was at Fabios, I began doing a lot of reading. "How does Frederick know so much?" A few days later I called him and said, 'I don't want the ring!' There was a big Vanity Fair expos at one point in the early 90s; I was involved with them for more than 20 years, from 1978 through1999. one exclaimed. Von Mierers, who believed in a master race, courted attractive young people. .. protege of Billy Baldwin.. . He enlisted appraisers who worked on percentages of the stones they evaluated. Life after a cult has been challenging and terrifying and liberating. They all had striking similarities; they were young, mostly in their twenties and early thirties, and quite good-looking, with taut, muscular bodies. They can uplift you, mentally and spiritually. Artist: Frederick Von Mierers, John Andreadis, & IasosTitle: The Eternal Values: Karma & DestinyLabel: The Eternal Values Corporation & Inter-Dimensional Mus. . There, in 1979, he met Frederick von Mierers, who asked him his birth date and told him, he said, "startling things about my life." They could help you. Access everything Vanity Fair has ever published.Join Now Subscriber-Only Benefit The Complete Vanity Fair Archive EVERY ISSUE. Arietta 31 in. When I called Ruth Montgomery to discuss von Mierers with her, she was defensive and refused to speak for attribution. "He was never a good model," Eileen Ford recently told me. He could no longer walk; a Lucite cane rested by his side. Von Mierers was still strictly smalltime; his only platform was a regular stint on a call-in radio show. The minute I saw that group, I knew I was in a cult. He screamed at me, attacked my character, and told me I was being irresponsible and that the ring would fix all that.". One apartment, 6E, was used as the office, and had desks with computer screens, shelves of merchandise, and files containing thousands of letters and orders for von Mierers's services. "No one is recruiting here!" There, lessons of , "The Wall Street Journal just so happened to have a supportive op-ed ready to publish within hours of the meeting. On a black January night just six days after American jets began bombing Iraq, Oscar S. Wyatt, Jr., the 66-year-old bad boy of the Texas oil and gas industry, faced more than 1,100 well-heeled . Insight is given as to the inner workings of the Universal Magnetic Field, as well as how the stones can help you tune in to higher intelligence.") The gems, he would say, are for ''special people, only the elite." Maybe you remember seeing it on late-night public-access cable TV. I gave them $28,000 in cash and traveler's checks. Meanwhile, after every job, people would be going off to parties at, like Madonnas, and I would fly back to my life in Eternal Values. In 1979, Andreadis was a private-school boy from a rich New York family; his father invented Man-Tan. The leader was a man named Frederick Von Mierers. "I almost had a nervous breakdown," she told me. 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. Eileen Ford then told me about another group operating in her agency, a cluster of bornagain Christians called Models for God. She told me they had her do things! (''This cassette describes how the one Principle of Cosmic Intelligence expresses itself. No unity can be achieved here in the physical world. I could give these kids almost a Harvard course in metaphysics." It is said that the chosen will be able to survive the apocalypse by being on something called the White Light Star Ship, or by owning property in certain mountain areas, or, in the case of Eternal Values, by wearing special jewels. I believe in the master race!". Now prosecutors in the office of the Manhattan district attorney are investigating the possibility that von Mierers was involved in a multimillion-dollar gem ring. I thought, This is crazy.". I am only interested in archduchesses and lords! You must write that I am the reincarnation of Jeremiah from the Old Testament. As unbelievable as it sounds, never once during my two decades with the group did I ever consider I might be a member of a cult. In the summers, von Mierers would return to Nantucket. The novel opens at Miss Pinkerton's Academy for young women, where readers are introduced to Amelia and Becky, the novel's female protagonists. From somewhere, I heard music which sounded like an organ on a Moog synthesizer. Although on the surface Eternal Values appears smalltime, former associates of von Mierers's speculate that so far he has sold close to $2 million worth of stones. After consulting with "the Guides," Montgomery explained gravely to her readers, she had decided that von Mierers's account of his past lives was correct. "These are the light lasers! "Her ideas are good," von Mierers said. "It is time to go big-time," Andreadis remembers von Mierers telling him a little later. And we are they!" Amelia is kind and innocent and comes from a family with money. Harper's Bazaar named him one of its "Playboys of the Eastern Coast." Her mother next married a man who, Jacki says, was hostile to her and her sister. You realize it didnt happen to me because Im especially flawed or have some defect. There wasn't much around the Lake Lure home of Frederick von Mierers to indicate a fast-paced lifestyle and the idea that he was a prophet from the star Arcturus. Rich kids with troubled psyches took themselves off to Tibet to see the Dalai Lama or invited plump Indian swamis to move in. "We must spread our message to help humanity." Hoyt is a big, big money-maker.". They are essential for every sincere seeker of the Truth. ") Frederick von Mierers told his elite followersamong them top models and yuppiesthat he was from the star Arcturus, here to neutralize "the dark forces." His actual childhood remains a mystery. He told us to call him Freddy. He seemed to enjoy titillating the group with talk of "chocolate lords." Like anyone suffering from Stockholm syndromewhere a hostage identifies with his captorsI had no ability to objectify my experience. A lot of it I think has to do with learning to find acceptance within yourself, and not relying on others for your self esteem. "I was making over $300,000 a year," she said. 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. "They eat such unhealthy food." We never would have signed him." It was Christmas this past year at the Ford agency, and Eileen Ford was frantic. von Mierers scolded. The gems are Gods thoughts condensed, he always told us. I could write three books about him. By then he had given up modeling and taken up with Billy Baldwin, the dean of American decorators, called "Billy B." "You will all be dead within ten years. As the leader of the group Eternal Values, it was Von Mierers responsibility to find the others, and teach them about their true origins and noble calling. Think of your body as a Lalique vase. They came after me and talked me into coming back. And Freddie just laughed." I had no sleep, ever. Deputies in Davidson County rushed to help a 69-year-old man they'd found unresponsive in his house following a welfare check. Her office was filled with poinsettias; she wore layers of red wool and plaid Christmas stockings. Frederick insisted on cash. Ask yourself, who am I? Eileen Ford asked me. You realize its kind of happening to everyone in a way. Of course, some conditions are more extreme than others. He told us about the personal tapes he would make for us that would cost $350, and he said he had eight thousand requests. "I was always over there on East Fiftyfourth. Evan 37 in. New members of the group, such as a model who had met John Hoyt on a photo shoot, were gradually told about the sexualinitiation practices, including the multiracial sex rite which members called "the treatment." During the spiritual seminars in the Park Avenue church, ugly shouting would break out. It was common knowledge in the inner group that von Mierers had a collection of Polaroids he had taken of black men endowed with huge organs. Only the elite will be saved. But I know one thing: If I do bring it up, nobody ever finds my story boring. I can get you these gems at cost!' He put me up in his house for almost 18 months. 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