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In 1961 the Holy Order of MANS was organiz … In 1961 the Holy Order of MANS was organized initially as the non-sectarian Science of Man Church in San Francisco by Reverend Earl W. Blighton. Classes and meetings on the Ancient Mystery Teachings were held by Dr. Blighton on a regular monthly basis and a church structure began to grow. As interest in the classes grew Father Paul, as Dr. Blighton was known by his students, and his wife Helen Blighton, known as Mother Ruth, incorporated in the State of California a monastic seminary with a specific curriculum of study and called it the Holy Order of MANS (HOOM). This was in 1968. It continued to be non-sectarian, and therefore not affiliated with any religion. It became an international organization with Order Houses of members in almost every state of the United States and several were abroad. In 1974 Father Paul went through transition and the Order continued to function until the mid-1980’s. By that time a large number of the members had begun to leave. Some of the members who left created organizations based on the Order curriculum (click on the arrow) and its initiations. During that time the Science of Man Church (SOM) was reactivated by Mother Ruth and attracted a small number of Order members. SOM has a website called ScienceofMan.org where you may purchase some of the Order books. By 1988 the HOOM structure had evolved into an Orthodox Christian organization. The name Holy Order of MANS, its curriculum, and its initiations were discontinued. Over time the Orthodox Christian organization ceased to function and then dissolved its corporate structure. In February 2012 the Holy Order of MANS was incorporated in the State of California. The Order was assisted in its corporate filing at the California Secretary of State’s Business Programs by Ernesto Resurreccion, Corporate Documents Examiner. The Order continues to actively teach the original Order curriculum on the website HolyOrderofMANS.org and also in person and on Zoom on the website HolyOrderofMANS.com. The Order books are now available for sale by the Holy Order of MANS through Amazon. The Holy Sacraments, Vows, Initiations of Baptism, Illumination, Self-Realization, Ordination of Priests, and Master Teachers with the Power to Ordain are performed by the Holy Order of MANS. Over the years former Order members have continued the Work of the Order in locations across America. [1] (click on the arrow) Raphael House of San Francisco exists today thanks to the hard-work and dedication of our founders. Co-founder Ella Hoffman Rigney was an accomplished philanthropist, fundraiser, and volunteer before coming to Raphael House. In 1927, she took hold of the struggling American Cancer Society and turned it into the educational and fundraising juggernaut it became by the time she retired in 1957. Her second career was building the Raphael House homeless family shelter in San Francisco. Mrs. Rigney was intrigued by the first Raphael House—located on Gough and McAllister Streets in San Francisco—started by the Holy Order of MANS, a non-sectarian group of volunteers dedicated to service to the community. The first iteration of Raphael House served homeless women and children. Inspired by their work in the community, Ella joined the Holy Order of MANS at the age of 82, taking life vows at the age of 83 in 1975. Ella retained her membership at St. Mary the Virgin Episcopal Church in San Francisco. Recognizing there was no homeless shelter for whole families in Northern California before Raphael House, she said, “I felt we had to do something to keep families together to help them as a whole.” Her vision was to build a social service agency that she and other volunteers from the Order would be willing to live in, which she did. Ella led 47 Order members in building a “working household” where families ate and lived together as a community. Needing more space to house families together, they moved to our current location at 1065 Sutter Street, formerly a private hospital. [2] (click on the arrow) The Holy Order of MANS was a religious order grounded in what it viewed as the esoteric teachings of "The Great Christ" through "The Master Jesus", which identifies it as New Age. The order was founded in the 1960s "in the culturally innovative milieu of San Francisco", USA. The founder was Earl Wilbur Blighton, a retired electrical engineer and minister, who used the honorific Rt. Rev. and was also known as Master Paul. A number of his previous religious associations included the Roman Catholic Church, Spiritualism, New Thought and the Rosicrucian Order. The stated mission and purpose of the Holy Order of MANS was to guide all mankind and the churches of Christ to union with the Divine Self of God within, the Divine Spark. According to Blighton, the Christ is returning now. The Golden Force—the vibration of the atmosphere of the entire planet is rising, and this action will cause some reactions in those who do not know the God Self. A willing intellectual and emotional assent to religious doctrine was not enough. Full experiential knowledge (gnosis) of God beyond merely intuitive spiritual insight was true redemption. The principal means of effecting this was by the praxis of theurgy and bhakti. The Holy Order of MANS was described as "apostolic catholic", and some used the term "Pauline catholic or Paulean catholic", in its claim of possessing received esoteric apostolic doctrine without the necessity of canonical ordination in the line of Orthodox Catholic apostolic succession. Several years after the death of its founder in 1974 (and subsequent to the 1980s), beginning in 1984 the HOOM gradually changed, through adoption of spiritual practices common in Orthodox Christianity, which prompted the departure of most members. Father Andrew Rossi became Blighton's successor. Then in 1988, after little more than two decades of existence, the HOOM curriculum was discontinued. Since 1988 the HOOM curriculum continued to be followed in many groups formed by members of the HOOM who had left the CSB, including the Science of Man in Oregon, which was led by Blighton's wife Mother Ruth until her death in 2005, and the , founded by HOOM "Master Timothy" Delbert Harris. In 1988, the remaining members and hierarchy of the HOOM joined the Eastern Orthodox Church under the new name Christ the Savior Brotherhood (abbreviated CSB). While the leader of the archdiocese which CSB joined does not belong to the Standing Conference of the Canonical Orthodox Bishops in the Americas, Rossi argued that "doesn't mean that CSB has not moved into Christian orthodoxy". Under the terms of the merger, the group continued to have a great deal of autonomy. Members who took second vows within the group still wore robes and clerical collars. Legal ownership of HOOM property and assets was retained by the CSB but remained incorporated under the name Holy Order of MANS. In the mid-1980's HOOM became a more traditional Eastern Orthodox sect, finally renaming itself in 1988 "Christ the Savior Brotherhood" (CSB);. The few remaining CSB members converted to a non canonical form of orthodox christianity and moved into a monastery associated with this group. In 1991, Rossi resigned as director-general of the CSB under pressure from the hierarchy within the brotherhood. The CSB agreed under the terms of his resignation to fund the departure of himself and his family, and with them he travelled to England with sufficient CSB financial support to pursue a doctoral degree in Orthodox studies at the University of Oxford under Kallistos Ware. During the 1990s to about 2000, a few members of the CSB individually joined of the Orthodox Church. In 1992 Orthodox church leaders said the Christ the Savior Brotherhood had dwindled to about 500 members. In 2000, after removing itself from non-canonical autocephalous Orthodox affiliation, the CSB with its people, parishes and monasteries, having aligned itself with mainline Orthodox doctrine and practice, was fully received into canonical Orthodox jurisdictions. In 2002 the CSB officially changed its corporation name from Holy Order of MANS to Christ the Saviour Brotherhood, and changed its by-laws to newly worded corporate by-laws that reflect Orthodoxy. Many former members of the original Holy Order of MANS who had departed in the 1980s, who did not become Orthodox Christian, and were not associated with the CSB, have preserved the original teachings and practices of the Order and made them available through development of internet sites and teaching classes in person throughout the United States. In 2012 the Holy Order of MANS was incorporated as a religious non-profit in California and maintains two websites HolyOrderofMANS.org and HolyOrderofMANS.com where the original Order curriculum of study, a calendar of classes, including on Zoom, and events, and literature for sale on Amazon may be found.iterature for sale on Amazon may be found.
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