Sylvia Browne and Novus Spiritus

Sylvia Browne (1936–2013) was a well-known author and TV artist that made a lot of money on claiming to be a medium with psychic abilities, abilities that was hardly criticised for being worse than random guesses regarding known cases of disappearances, such as Amanda Berry (the Ariel Castro case) who was "predicted" to be dead, despite being alive. One could (unnecessarily generously) maintain that Browne had learnt cold reading and believed herself to be a medium, but that she "boldly expanded" her sphere of application of the techniques to where it shouldn't work according to socio-psychological common sense.

Sylvia Browne founded a church called Novus Spiritus (new spirit) in 1986, that describe itself as "Gnostic". The adherents are called "Browneites" among the Hoellerite Gnostics, and the earlier are reputed for their arrogance against everybody not accepting their own dogmatics, indicating a slightly cultic culture. From the traits I write about below, it is reasonable to believe that such a cultic tendency will soon disappear. The church in question maintains some standing points:

• Novus Spiritus describe God in a way that can be interpreted as a modern way to say "ineffable"[1];
• they claim that there are at least two gods, the Father Om and the Mother Azna, which could certainly fit in a polytheistic Gnostic system; this Azna is partaking in the world in a similar way that a Providence saves people from trouble at prayer – Azna is vaguely similar to Sophia Achamot but not just the guiding angel of the Gnostic community, but to anyone praying to God; the existence of this Om and this Azna was revealed by Brownes's spirit guide Francine[2];
• they assert that Christ lived on earth as non-unique Son of God, meaning that the son/daughter-hood is universal, but that his uniqueness rested in his teachings which are the only way to come to God; however our son/daughter-hood doesn't imply that we are gods[3];
• on the other hand, they deny the Godhood of Christ[3];
• they believe in the Neo-Theosophical (non-Gnostic) concept of all religions being equal and valuable and their own beliefs being more equal than anyone else [3];
• they regard knowledge more important than faith, which certainly is a Gnostic attitude[4];
• there is no Satan, but this planet is a Hell, which we leave for an eternal life in Heaven[5];
• every soul reincarnates until perfection is reached, after which we can enter Heaven [6];

The main deviations from Gnosticism are the lack of Aeons and a lack of a theory of the freedom in intellect versus imprisonment in passions. Formerly I regarded Novus Spiritus as not Gnostic, but rather Marcionite in design, but from their current material, one can actually maintain that they are Gnostics with their own (deceased) prophet.

Their website novus.org also refers to lots of external material, some of it really fringy, such as The Tomb of God (Andrews & Schellenberger) and Holy Blood, Holy Grail (Baigent), and on the other hand serious works as The Gnostic Gospels (Pagels) and The Nag Hammadi Library (ed. Robinson). This means that Novus Spiritus is open to the outside, and not a cult proper.

Novus Spiritus otherwise share many traits with New-Ageish Spiritualism, and makes some profit from dubious practices such as hypnosis and "past life" examination, and also less dubious practices such as dream analysis and meditation.