Monastery Icons - Heads Up!

This is a repost just so more people see it. If any of my readers have bought from, or are thinking of buying from, this outfit, here's some info from both a Catholic and an Orthodox source that you might take into account.

From  Aquinas and More

Updated 6/9/2014:

In April of 2012 the Sacred Arts Foundation was reinstated in MO with a home address of… Cedar Crest, NM. Cedar Crest is where the Ashram moved 2007. The secretary is still John Weber who has been associated with the organization for many years back.

Updated 11/21/2009:

Someone commented below that the website for the Sacred Art Foundation is sacredartsfoundation.org, not sacredartsfoundation.com. The contact information for the group is in Missouri so I did a search for the Foundation on the MO Secretary of State website. The Foundation was dissolved in 2007. So where did they go? My guess is Cedar Crest, NM.

Several weeks ago I called Monastery Icons and asked for contact information for the Sacred Arts Foundation. They were unable to provide it so I sent a request through their website. I'm still waiting for a reply.

Updated 9/23:

We have had a visitor say that he called the Sacred Arts Foundation website owners and that they denied any connection with Monastery Icons. The strange thing is that the website doesn't provide any phone contact information, Monastery Icons won't provide contact information and both Sacred Arts Foundations, if separate entities, are located within two miles of each other in New Mexico.

While trying to prove concretely that sacredartsfoundation.com is the website of the Sacred Arts Foundation that owns Monastery Icons, we ran across another interesting connection that directly ties the Sacred Arts Foundation in New Mexico (but not the website) to Monastery Icons.

When you do a Google maps search for Monastery Icons you get an address of 88 Snowline Rd, Cedar Crest, NM. This address is the same address as used by the Registered Agent, John Weber to register the Sacred Arts Foundation in New Mexico. Google maps also provides the phone number (505) 281-2555‎ which when called, goes to a Monastery Icon answering machine.

Original Post

Bear with me, this post is going to get a little convoluted.

I am sure that you are familiar with the work of Monastery Icons. They make the western/eastern-looking “icons” of saints. They have been popular because they give a Byzantine flavor to a lot of western saints that have never been written in a real icon.

Back in the 70's an “Abbot Bishop” George Burke showed up in Oklahoma City and founded a Hindu community. That community became “Christian” and changed its name to “Holy Protection Old Catholic Benedictine Monastery of the Primitive Observance.” In the early 80's the community “converted” to Orthodoxy and changed its name to Holy Protection Orthodox Monastery. A few years later they decided they were really Coptic Christians. Eventually they left Oklahoma, moved to Nebraska and then to California where they formed the Light of Christ Monastery at 1482 Rango Way, Borrego Springs, CA.  Light of Christ Monastery is the original organization behind Monastery Icons. (source)

On the Monastery Icons website you will find the following information:

Sacred Arts Foundation is a non-profit foundation created to strengthen faith and encourage Christian devotion in churches, schools, and individuals through a ministry of traditional Christian art. As the contemporary iconographer Photios Kontoglou expressed so well, “Icons raise the soul and mind to the realm of the spirit.” Our foundation is a cooperative effort of artisans and craftsmen throughout the United States and the world who strive to make our Monastery Icons products the highest quality available.

The Sacred Arts Foundation acquired Monastery Icons in 2004. This wouldn't seem very odd except that the Sacred Arts Foundation had  the exact same California address as the Light of Christ Monastery, Monastery Icons and as you will see below, the Atma Jyoti Ashram.

If you look at the address on the Monastery Icons catalog you will find an Ohio address. This is the distribution center that handles fulfillment for their “icons.” Doing a search of the Ohio Secretary of State website shows that Monastery Icons is actually the Sacred Arts Foundation, a foreign (out-of-state) non-profit located at 1482 Rango Way, Borrego Springs, CA. The Sacred Arts Foundation was dissolved in Ohio in August of 2008 for failing to update their records.

The Sacred Arts Foundation filed its 2007 annual registration report in Missouri with a primary business address of 1482 Rango Way, Borrego Springs, CA. The contact email at the bottom of the form is someone at Monastery Icons. The Sacred Arts Foundation was dissolved by the State of Missouri in December of 2008 for failing to file a current registration.

The California address at that time in 2007 was also the home to the Atma Jyoti Ashram, “a spiritual institution devoted to the practice and teaching of Sanatana Dharma, the Eternal Religion, as found in the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, and the Sankhya Karika.”

The same California address is also listed as the mailing address for Monastery Icons back in 1999.

Sometime between August and September of 2007 the Ashram moved to  PO Box 1370 Cedar Crest, NM.  If you look at the Q&A on the new Ashram site, the Swami bears a striking resemblance to Abbot George, the founder of the Hindu community and the Light of Christ Monastery back at the beginning of this post.

Remember the dissolved Sacred Arts Foundation from Missouri and Ohio? It pops up again in New Mexico, registered with the Secretary of State as a Missouri Non-Profit doing business in New Mexico at – wait for it – PO Box 1370 Cedar Crest, NM.

You can also see that the Sacred Arts Foundation is listed as a Corporation in California at the 1482 Rango Way, Borrego Springs address with a headquarters in Missouri. This record is current as of 9/2009. The question should be asked, how is it that a corporation can be listed both in California and New Mexico with a headquarters in Missouri when the corporation in Missouri was dissolved in 2008 for failure to file updated records?

The following paragraph may link to another Sacred Arts Foundation within two miles of the Sacred Arts Foundation that owns Monastery Icons. We have tried to verify this information with Monastery Icons through email and phone calls and never received a reply.

A quick perusal of the Sacred Arts Foundation website (the website is registered in the town of Tijeras, two miles from Cedar Crest) reveals:

• Workshops in “Transformational Movement”, Feng Shui, Yoga and Art of Aware Communication
• Tutorials on Astrology, Tarot and Feng Shui

It is clear both from the origins of Monastery Icons, its tangled web of corporate arrangements and its ongoing ownership by a completely anti-Christian new-age group that no Christian organization should be giving any financial support to this company by buying its art.

Much of the material for this post was mined from the Byzantine Forum.

If you are interested in purchasing icons from good sources (apart from the icons our site), here are some alternatives:

St. Isaac Skete www.skete.com

Conception Abbey www.printeryhouse.org

Lumen Mundi www.lumenmundi.com

Alexandra International www.alexandraint.net

From Orthodox Christian Information Center

By Fr Anthony Nelson

The following comments concern a business called Monastery Icons (http://www.monasteryicons.com). This company offers "icons" and other religious content that has a veneer of Orthdooxy, but which in fact is associated with Hinduism. Their products are spirituallly dangerous, and so Fr. Anthony Nelson, a Priest in the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, sent me these remarks.

The “Light of Christ Monastery” and the Convent of the Virgin Mary in Borrego Springs, CA., formerly the “Gnostic Orthodox” in Geneva, Nebraska (Holy Protection Gnostic Orthodox Monastery and the St. John of Kronstadt Gnostic Orthodox Convent) are “monastic communities” of self-styled monks and nuns. They began in Oklahoma City in the 70’s, when their current “Patriarch”—Abbot Bishop George Burke—showed up in town (newly run away in the dead of night from the Holy Transfiguration Orthodox Monastery in Boston, where he had attached himself) calling himself “Swami” something-or-other (I can’t begin to spell it).

He had been raised Church of God-Anderson, near Bloomington, Illinois, gravitated to Chicago and loosely affiliated himself with Roman Catholicism. After a while he began attending the Levitt Street OCA Cathedral, and later the Synod Cathedral, where he got himself baptized by Bishop Seraphim. He then migrated to California, where he joined with Yogananda, and worked P.R. for him. Then he went to Boston to Holy Transfiguration Monastery “to learn Orthodox monasticism”—according to him. In Oklahoma City he started a Hindu community that grew to about nine monks and three nuns. One day, in the late 70’s, he announced to the brethren that they had “outgrown” the spiritual possibilities of Hinduism, and were going to become Christian. They then constituted themselves as the “Holy Protection Old Catholic Benedictine Monastery of the Primitive Observance.” The Swami got himself consecrated a bishop by the self-styled “Old Catholic” bishop at St. Hilarion’s Center in Austin, Texas (although he—the former “Swami”—stated categorically that it was unnecessary, because he had been a Roman Catholic bishop during the Middle Ages in a previous life!).

Many may remember this group as having been featured on various prime-time news shows (P.M. Magazine and Real People) in the late 70’s/early 80’s as constituting the volunteer Fire Department in the little town of Forest Park, Oklahoma, and also as raising ostriches on the grounds of their property. I remember seeing them on television one night while I was living at St. Tikhon’s Seminary in Pennsylvania in about 1980, and wondering just what kind of “order” or “religion” they were. Little did I dream that I would come into intimate contact with them only a year or two later when I was assigned to Oklahoma City by the Antiochian Archdiocese.

In about 1981 “Bishop George” decided that they had outgrown Old Catholicism, and they became “Holy Protection Orthodox Monastery.” They dressed as Orthodox monks and did the services impeccably well, as George had learned in Boston. Then, in 1985 or so, they remodeled their chapel again and became “Coptic”—serving their own version of the Liturgy of St. James and dressing in a form of Coptic monastic garb. They even succeeded in having Indian and Egyptian Coptic Christian clergy concelebrate with them, falsely claiming various kinds of non-Chalcedonian “Apostolic Succession”—claims which those Coptic Christians accepted without investigation.

I walked in on them one day and found them doing a curious service modeled after Hindu worship, in which they were offering fruit and flowers to the icons of Christ and the Theotokos in their chapel. The prayers were an interesting (although sacrilegious and blasphemous) blend of the Trisagion prayers and Hindu worship. During all of this, they maintained a second, secret chapel on the premises. Here they practiced magical evocation and demonolatry. I received into Orthodoxy several lay persons who were a part of their “secret Order”—coming from various Protestant backgrounds. These particular individuals finally began to wonder if they were really “Orthodox” and “Christian” when, on a trip to Texas with the monks, they saw the monks and nuns bow down before the idol in the Hare Krishna temple in Dallas, and Abbot Bishop George refused to bless the food served in the Krishna restaurant because “it was already blessed, having been offered to the idol.” These former members of their cult and one former monk brought to me all of their secret rituals,vestments, history, and associated blasphemous and really frightening materials. It took me well over a year of working with these individuals to get them over their fear of the psychic and spiritual retaliation with which the Abbot had threatened them if they ever revealed the group’s secrets. I still have these materials, and they would be laughable in their sophomoric secret-society silliness if they were not so seriously believed and practiced.

The group left Oklahoma under difficult circumstances in regard to legal problems concerning the estate of a novice (son of a powerful state politician) who died in India. All novices were required to make a pilgrimage to India to interview with, and receive the blessing of, one “Mother Anandamoy”—a Hindu holy woman—who must approve them for membership in the Community.

One of their former monks who had left the group and took a job in Oklahoma City (and personally continued their occult practices privately) once made the statement: “Orthodox Priests are like camels. They carry a cargo of immeasurable worth, with no comprehension of its value.” The Daily Oklahoman, the largest circulation newspaper in the state, once carried a color picture on the front page of one of it’s secondary sections depicting one of their “priests.” He was shown sitting at a table during a regional “Psychic Fair” doing a Tarot Card reading.

On another occasion, after I had learned their secrets and forbade my parishioners to have anything to do with them, Abbot George announced during one of his sermons that he, in a previous life, had been one of the Christian Martyrs who suffered under Diocletian, and I (Fr. Anthony) was the Roman who led him to his martyrdom. He also claims that, during a pilgrimage to visit Mother Anandamoy in India, he was killed in a car accident in New Delhi, but because his “work” here was incomplete, was immediately reincarnated in his body and survived.

“Patriarch George” of the “Gnostic Orthodox Church” admitted in an interview in the Omaha World Herald that his “Patriarchate” covered only 5 or 6 acres. By the way, why they chose Nebraska is a mystery: Abbot Bishop George announced, following a visit to Hawaii for an international peace conference in approximately 1985, that the Goddess of one of the volcanos appeared to him and promised to give him the island if he would relocate his community there.

Apparently that offer was not good enough because, after first relocating in Nebraska, today they are the “Light of Christ Monastery” in California. They claim to be the exclusive remnant of a spurious so-called “Western Orthodox Church” descended from, the Syrian Jacobite (Monophysite) Church of the East.

They have one “iconographer” there who paints all their pictures (please, not icons). All are “blessed” with one of their occult rituals before being shipped, and they support themselves to the tune of several hundred thousand dollars per year selling the demonic things. Many Roman Catholic bookstores sell them but, happily, most Orthodox sellers of religious items have discovered who and what they are and no longer do business with them.

Please don’t buy their pictures—they are spiritually very dangerous.
+ + +

The following additional information was found on the Catholic Answers forum. Links are omitted because they would improve Google search engine rankings.

“Some books by the abbot of Light of Christ Monastery.Magnetic Therapy: Healing in Your Hands
An Eagle’s Flight: Autobiography of a Gnostic Orthodox Christian
An excerpt from the above book can be read here: http://www.kalimandir.org/library/l...em=07_imeet.xml
There is a conversation with the Abbot (audio) available here: http://www.aaple.com/bookstore/

“A quote from this conversation:

“Abbot George is the founder and guiding spiritual source for the Light of Christ Monastery in Borrego Springs, Ca. He and Dr. Netherton sat together to discuss the Abbot’s views and beliefs with regards to the many faiths and religions that exist on the planet today. Abbot George is widely held to be one of the leading authorities on theology, philosophy, and spiritual constructs in today’s spiritual community. Among other dynamics, he discusses reincarnation as an established fact within the Christian faith and the presence of spiritual guidance as defined by the teachings of St. Thomas, one of the founders of the eastern Christian churches. His knowledge is extensive and deep and his presentation is inspiring.”

Another person sent me the following information about the alleged connection with ashram:

“My guess is that the folks selling the so-called “icons” don’t really want to advertise the connection between that and the ashram, for understandable business reasons. When I posted about the group at http://catholiclight.org, a reader explained that the “icon” biz had been taken over by a supporter in Ohio.

“At a Hindu forum, a member says he found out about the sect’s name change from “Abbot” Burke himself: http://p203.ezboard.com/fsrfwalrusfrm33.showMessageRange?topicid=50.topic&start=21&stop=40 (see bottom of page, a post dated 4/9/04).”