This is a blog companion post to another video, link listed above in case you would rather watch it.
This is a really bizarre story of a small cult but it is really out there and I found it just fascinating. Today I’m going to talk about Amy Carlson and the Love Has Won cult. This cult was also recently in the news when the leader, who called herself Mother God, was found dead and mummified in April of 2021.
So how did Amy get to become Mother God, who was supposed to be god incarnate to her followers?
Amy was born on November 30th, 1975. She was described as having a normal childhood, raised by divorced parents, getting good jobs and singing in the school choir. Her family also said that she did not make great choices where it came to relationships and had several failed marriages in her twenties. She was married and had children when, in 2006, she left her husband, children and the job at McDonald’s she was working at in Texas and moved to Colorado to live with people she met online. She believed, or at least claimed to believe that she had a destiny to usher in a grand awakening in humanity.
Although she had three children and became known as “mother” to the group she led, Amy’s mother has stated that Amy was never a very maternal person. She got into this cult life when, after the birth of her third child, Amy met a man who called himself “Father Love” and convinced her that she was Mother Love. The relationship with this man didn’t last for long but the name did, and Amy had several men that were called “Father Love” over the course of the years she led the group but she was the only Mother Love.
When Amy left Dallas, Texas she moved to Crestone, Colorado and slowly amassed a following through posting daily videos online. While at most the cult only had 20 full time members living together, they extensively used the internet to reach a large audience who would donate money, buy products and watch the daily livestreams. The videos often got thousands of views.
The group had a kind of new-age spin to it, and many of the rules were some extreme or bizarre view of some of the new age ideas. For example, focusing on chakras and encouraging members to wear clothes that matched a chakra color for the day and eating foods that matched that color too. They could only eat food that had been donated, and not much of it at that. They were not allowed to snack ever and members were reportedly punished if they ever took naps. They also believed in planetary ascension and were proponents of some conspiracy theories. Terms that were commonly used within this cult were lightworks and twin flames, which are common terms but not always used in such a harmful way. However, especially during the pandemic, the message of Love Has Won really reached a lot of people who saw what they were projecting out into the world, a message of love for others, holistic medicine and a spiritual path. It also provided a place for people who felt down and out to feel better about themselves, since members looked down on the people who did not join them and were still part of the 3D world where they themselves had achieved 5D status. They were able to reach so many more people than a lot of other groups because of how astute they were in utilizing social media and the internet to spread their message.
Of all the messages that were sent out by the group, all of these beliefs were secondary to the idea that Amy was god. She herself claimed that she had lived through 534 lifetimes, including time as Jesus Christ, Cleopatra, Marilyn Monroe and Joan of Arc. She was also supposedly receiving messages from someone on her spiritual team, the deceased Robin Williams whom she said communicated with her from the other side. Members believed that ordinary people live in a 3D existence but members have ascended to a 5D existence, whatever that means.
Older videos are more tame, but as time went on Amy used a more alcohol and got increasingly loud, abrasive, and it seems downright abusive towards her members which were captured on livestreams. They are out there if you want to look them up. Amy at different times called her followers “whores”, regularly swore at them, appeared visibly drunk in the streams, and at one time berated a member for bringing her the wrong food when he made the grave misstep of bringing her meatballs when she wanted chicken parmesan. One video shows Amy locking a crying child in a closet. I read a description about that one but I didn’t watch it because I think that would just be too upsetting. Poor kid. In expletive filled rants she called herself God outright. Often livestreams were openly racist and anti-semetic, even defending Hitler and the holocaust.
The final Father Love was a man named Jason Castillo, who joined Amy in 2018. He was described as erratic, mean and abusive to members as well. Both of them reportedly would abuse their power to have sex with other members of the group.
Of course the Love Has Won members denied being a cult, but they fit many of the trademarks that define a cult.
Amy controlled many aspects of their lives. She did not believe that they should be sleeping so members reported being allowed to sleep at most four or five hours a night. She controlled what they ate, their sexual activity, and they had to turn their savings and income over to the group. Some of the more devoted members dispute these claims, saying that members freely turned over their money to the group and the ones who were complaining about lack of sleep just weren’t devoted enough to the group. A former member has said that while she wasn’t ordered to turn over control of her money, it was heavily implied and members who kept any personal funds were guilt tripped and berated, making them feel that they were disappointing god.
The mission of the group was supposed to be to spread love and to create a community but this really wasn’t the experience most members had. One man, Alex, left his wife and children to join the cult. He was found days later, dehydrated, wandering around the mountains naked with cactus thorns in his feet. He was told that he didn’t have the right energy for the group and so he was abandoned by them. It took a while for his family to be able to get through to him and kind of deprogram him from the influence of mother love. Love Has Won was known for selling what they claimed were medical supplies, expensive crystals, and Amy performed “etheric surgeries” that Amy would perform remotely. I don’t even understand how that would work, but Amy claimed that she had cured the people she treated of cancer, brain tumors, and helped in cases of autism. Ok…
Towards the end of her life Amy claimed often that she had stage 5 cancer, which doesn’t even exist, with cancer measured in stages 1 through 4. She also was not known to ever have received a cancer diagnosis. Amy’s health continued to decline and there were times that she asked to go to the hospital but the members refused to bring her to a “3D hospital”. They claimed to have done this because Amy had previously signed documents asking them to never take her to a hospital under any circumstances. The cult members claimed that Amy was suffering so much and was so explosive and abusive towards them because she was taking on all the pain and suffering for the world. When she finally died they called her death an ascension.
When the police discovered the corpse it was described as being displayed in a rather shocking way, with the eyes appearing to be missing through decomposition and there was heavy makeup on the face and glitter around the eye sockets. The mummified body was inside a sleeping bag and wrapped in Christmas lights. It looked like it was some kind of shrine to their Mother God. It’s unclear when exactly Amy had died, but it is estimated that she had been dead for a couple months when her body was found.
Amy died at 45 years old, but who was she before she became the controversial cult leader that we know her as and how did she die? Although she claimed to have cancer, that was disproven. In videos leading up to her death she appeared to be increasingly unwell, and eventually unable to walk. She also grew increasingly emaciated and had a graying complexion. An autopsy ended up revealing that Amy died from a combination of long term alcohol abuse, anorexia, and as a result of her habit of regularly consuming large amounts of colloidal silver, which the group sold and touted as having many healing benefits as a supplement. As an aside, the FDA says that colloidal silver is not safe or effective for any medical purposes. Not that that they are always right about everything, but really look into something before you use it as a supplement as the results can be unproven at best or dangerous at worst. 7 of the cult members ended up being arrested for abuse of a corpse.
The local law enforcement were very familiar with this group, having received numerous complaints from families across the country who accused the group of brainwashing people and stealing their money.
Unfortunately this cult didn’t end with the death of Amy Carlson. Spin off groups have continued with the mission of the cult and selling the products. There are two main ones which I won’t list here to avoid giving them more traffic or publicity, but they do continue the mission of the cult although I guess they don’t really get along with each other. There are ongoing efforts to deprogram members and former members. That’s so scary to me! It’s hard to process how someone gets so much influence over other people and ends up convincing them that she is literally a god and should be catered to.
Of course, I want to hear what you think about this case. Have you heard of Love Has Won? Do you think it’s a cult? What do you think of Mother Love?