In 2021, police raided the headquarters of the new age cult that called themselves Love Has Won. What they found was the group’s leader, mummified on a bed, wrapped in Christmas lights. It was a bizarre end to the bizarre life of one of the first internet cult leaders. Today I’m joined by author Leah Sotille as we unravel where it all went wrong.
Why Cult?
2 years ago I put out a video about why recruitment for cults is skyrocketing. An epidemic of loneliness and isolation have folks looking for community. And sometimes, they find it in all the wrong places.
Usually those who are most vulnerable to cults 1. Seek to improve themselves or connect to a higher purpose 2. Need a community and 3. Have just suffered a crisis event like death of a loved one, or job loss.
Therapist Rachel Bernstein said “Sometimes people are just wanting to connect with people they think they have something in common with, and a cult provides instant community and love bombing and a language that suddenly you all speak.”
It’s easier to find these communities now more than ever thanks to the internet. There is an answer for every possible search… Potato production by country, the history of shampoo, cat penis bone? So it would make sense that spiritual answers can also be found by people asking the more existential questions. Today we’re looking at the cult Love Has Won which was founded by cult leader Amy Carlson. We were able to interview an expert on the subject, an author of the book Blazing Eye Sees All. Leah Sottile said the online component of Love Has Won is what separates this cult from a long lineage of religious extremism. “You can be in a cult and never leave your home office.”
In the documentary Love Has Won, Hannah Olson highlights Amy’s ability to recruit followers online using social media, Youtube, forums, and constant streaming.
“The introduction of the algorithm on social media drastically changed her reach. It made it much easier to find Amy because as Andrew says, when people would type in search terms like ‘healing’ and ‘spirituality,’ there were ways to link Love Has Won to those searches, so it was like pouring kerosene on the operation.”
Once Amy was able to streamline posting across platforms and ramp up the clicks with SEOs, she could connect with lonely souls looking for answers. With one hand, she made promises to empower them to achieve their purpose, with the other, she exploited them. One way was by convincing followers to donate money… that she would use to buy a four wheeler.
The internet can be an echo chamber of our own inner thoughts. We search and read up on topics that interest us and the algorithm feeds us more of what we crave. We can create our own loop of information, or misinformation, without a voice to challenge our views.
And who doesn’t feel isolated? Modern conveniences ensure we don’t have to interact with other humans which frankly can take a lot of effort. 25 million American and Canadians used Instacart in 2025. In 1999 around 1 million American kids were homeschooled. Now it’s about 3.5 million, largely due to the pandemic. With one click on Amazon I can have doggie treats delivered to my door the same day. With an uptick on consumer efficiency, we don’t even have to leave our houses anymore.
The frustration with modern systems and the anxious feeling that the world has failed us have paved the way for cults to scoop up the disillusioned.
Who wouldn’t an alternate reality to a system that requires two factor authentication just to make an appointment with my dentist? Anything to keep me from downloading an app and entering my credit card just to park and buy a cup of coffee.
Love Has Won told it’s followers to “Exit the Matrix.” Who wouldn’t consider answering that call?
Amy Carlson
Have you ever looked at the manager at your local McDonald’s and thought maybe — just maybe — they’re the reincarnation of Jesus Christ? Or Joan of Arc? Or that Robin Williams is speaking through them?
The fast food chain is exactly where the woman later known as Mother God got started.
In the early 2000s, the Mother of All Creation was still known as Amy Carlson, a bubbly McDonald’s manager in Texas. She was blonde, small-framed, and loved to sing. Her family said she had a remarkable voice, and Amy had hoped to find fame one day as a singer. By all appearances, she was a pretty normal young adult.
Amy was born in Kansas and moved to Houston after her parents divorced. According to her younger sisters, she endured years of abuse from her stepmother. She was locked closets, covered in bruises, until one day her mother noticed and brought her home.
She was bright, a straight A student. She loved music. And eventually, she ran a McDonald’s.
In the documentary, her mother described her as vibrant and ambitious. At McDonald’s, employees loved her. “She knew their personalities. She knew what to say to them. To make them feel good. Amy had that gift.”
Amy had that gift. So maybe there were some signs– other than the golden arches– that Amy had a knack to be able to read and manipulate those around her. You don’t become a cult leader by being bad with people.
Amy also had a pattern of abusive boyfriends. Pregnant at 20. By 27, she had three children with three different men. She managed a McDonald’s by day and three kids by night. She was drowning.
At home she was becoming more and more interested in New Age spirituality, energy healing, and Alternative realities. She would search online with terms like “higher vibrations” and “awakening.”
That’s when she met Amerith Whiteeagle, real name Robert Saltsgaver. The two started chatting on Lightworkers.org, a forum for people seeking enlightenment outside of traditional religion. Amerith described it as “a spiritual community connecting into higher vibrational frequencies of nature. The higher self.”
The site was full of thoughts on “frequency,” “consciousness,” and “new Earth.” It attracted spiritual seekers — people disillusioned with organized religion, looking for meaning.
Amy and Amerith bonded over energy fields and an understanding that clouds were cloaking devices for starships. Your typical meet cute. They claimed to be “twin flames” — two bodies sharing one soul.
In one exchange, Amy wrote: “My current life situation is living in a world of illusion.” His answer? “We must be together in the physical.”
So she took him at his word. In 2007, at a family birthday dinner, Amy stood up, announced she was leaving, and walked out. She left behind her three children. She was 28.
She went to Crestone, Colorado, to join what she called her “mountain man.” She left her 3D family to take her first official step toward a higher purpose.
And just like that, the McDonald’s manager began her journey to Mother God.
Mother God
Crestone, Colorado is a remote town at the base of the Sangre de Cristo mountains— a magnet for spiritual seekers. UFO lore, Zen centers, and yoga retreats populate the land.
In Crestone, Amy let her blonde hair grow out and transitioned to a more bohemian look, complete with tie dye and sandals. Amerith and the new Amy started the group called The Galactic Federation of Light.
They created their own website, Galactic Free Press, where they could publish their revelations unfiltered. And on January 14, 2009, the first Love Has Won video went live.
In that first video, Amerith speaks calmly over “Closer to Heaven” by the Alan Parsons Project. Early uploads often feature them waving at the sky for hours and yelling, “Hey guys!” You know, to the aliens hiding in the clouds. They greeted viewers as “love beings” and urged them to ascend — to wake up from what they called the “3D world.”
This was the infancy of Love Has Won. Mother God simply would not exist without the internet.
…Seems like if you shout into the void long enough, with enough consistency, people will start to follow you online. Even if what you’re saying is a stream of megalomaniacal rants about different topics– Nevermind.
It’s difficult to find much from their earliest posts, but they went something like this:
It’s difficult to find much from their earliest posts, but they went something like this:
THE GIFT OF THE ALL IS AWAKENING WITHIN THE ONE, FOR THE DEPTHS OF THE ALL THE ONENESS IS FOUND, AS THIS PRESENT WE ALL HAVE ATTAINED, AS OUR REALITY OF SELF AWARENESS ONLY LOVE, REMAINS. WE ARE THE BIRTH OF ALL WE ARE GIVEN, TO BE.
This is actually from Amerith a couple months ago in February 2026. The two aren’t a couple anymore, but Amerith still faithfully publishes from his Facebook page with the same fervor that attracted Amy to him.
While together, Amerith and Amy preached that everyone is God. God lives within you. You are divine.
And then, gradually, the message narrowed. Amy was God. Specifically her. The more she absorbed that idea, the more “Amy Carlson” dissolved and “Mother God” took shape.
Amy and Amerith streamed constantly. Posted daily. Used search terms like “awakening,” “ascension,” and “fifth dimension.” The algorithm did the rest. People looking for meaning found a ready-made cosmology — and a community waiting to welcome them.
Online, she was rarely Amy. She was Mother God. The mother of all creation. And Amerith became Father God, at least for a while.
Amy would be the only Mother God but throughout the years the role of Father God was played by whoever was her partner of the time. A male counterpart. The first Father God was Amerith, but they split in 2014.
Then came Miguel Lamboy, later renamed Archangel Michael. At first, he was simply a man who claimed Amy cured his cancer. He was good with numbers. Skilled with finances and savvy when it came to organizing, he was the perfect business partner to support Amy’s creative pursuits.When Love Has Won established their cult, it was Lamboy who filed the 501cc. The right man had come along to launch Mother God from prophet to profiteer.
Love Has Won
One by one, followers began arriving at the Colorado cabin to meet Amy and Archangel Michael. The house grew to 12–20 people at any given time. They were operating under the name The First Contact Ground Crew Team. Before long, Amy found her next Father God: Andrew Profaci.
When he joined Andrew struggled with addiction to pain medication. Amy singled him out, told him he had a divine role in her plan. Once he landed in Colorado, they gave him mushrooms. He later said everyone there was high from the moment they woke up to when their heads hit the pillow. That’s is one way to experience enlightenment.
Videos show Amy introducing the new Father God to viewers — giggling, leaning into him, clearly smitten. Andrew’s real contribution wasn’t theology. It was branding. With a background in marketing and social media, he suggested that The First Contact Ground Crew Team was a mouthful. The group rebranded.
And with that, Love Has Won was born.
He streamlined the website. Synced platforms. Optimized posts. Understood algorithms. Boosted engagement. He did what every modern prophet needs: he built distribution.
Once repackaged, Love Has Won exploded — from hundreds of followers to tens of thousands. The internet wasn’t just outreach. It was revenue.
They sold essential oils, crystals, body butter, candles, LHS hoodies. They offered “Awakening Sessions” which were paid spiritual consultations over the phone. Encouraged donations in repeating digits: $44, $77. (Angel numbers according to some New Age beliefs). Inside the house, members signed over unemployment checks to “keep weed on the table,” as Andrew put it. Online, some people gave Amy their 401k. To them, they were just doing their part to support God on Earth.
With one hand, they livestreamed salvation. With the other, they passed the digital collection plate.
What exactly were they preaching? Well…
Amy claimed to be the 534th reincarnation of the divine being destined to move humanity from the 3D world into the 5D.
Her past lives allegedly included Cleopatra, Jesus, Joan of Arc, Harriet Tubman, and Marilyn Monroe. She was somehow both the mother of Elvis Presley and the daughter of Donald Trump.
She was the queen of the lost continent of Lemuria, now located inside Mount Shasta.
She reported directly to a council of angels called “The Galactics” — a spiritual advisory board made up of historical figures and celebrities. Among them were Saint Germain, Tupac, John Lennon, Gene Wilder, Prince, Carrie Fisher. Her number one adviser? Robin Williams.
And here’s the critical detail: She was often blackout drunk while receiving these transmissions. Or high. Usually both.
Many livestreams show her slurring words, screaming at followers for minor offenses like cooking her chicken parmesan when she really wanted meatballs. In one instance, she locked a follower’s toddler in a closet during a stream because the child wouldn’t stop crying.
The Mother of All Creation was not big on patience. Or love, for that matter.
A lot of their beliefs aligned with QAnon. Obsessed with conspiracies of the Cabal, they claimed Sandy Hook was a hoax. They often used racial slurs. They were wildly anti-Semitic and denied the holocaust.
The cult acted as if love was their guiding light to escape the Matrix, but their rantings grew more militant over time. The tone shifted from revolution into rage. Alcohol and drugs amplified their violence as Amy swung from euphoria to tantrums in a matter of seconds. In Leah’s book, Andrew Profaci later said: “Amy was a wonderful person. Mother God was a delusional alcoholic.”
And then came the final Father God: Jason Castillo.
He joined in 2018. Aggressive. Domineering. Openly using meth. After Amy passed out, members said he would blast death metal and bark orders at the house. Even for a group that was high sunrise to sunset, this was excessive.
The other members disliked him, but they were obedient to Mother God’s divine word. Jason was her partner, but they could see the negative effect he had on her. They took Amy out of the cabin for awhile and asked him to quit the meth, which he did. But even so, his alpha tendencies still fueled Mother God’s darker side.
Something had shifted. With Castillo’s arrival, Amy’s decline accelerated — mentally, physically, emotionally.…
Look, the woman turned blue.
The Ascension
After years of drinking and smoking, Amy’s body began to fail. Boils appeared along her back. The group framed them as spiritual warfare — proof she was absorbing the pain of humanity like a cosmic sponge.
As her condition worsened, she lost the use of her legs. Videos show Jason lifting her, carrying her from room to room. She told her followers she had stage five cancer.
And then came the most startling change: she turned blue. A metallic, silvery blue.
This happens when someone ingests too much colloidal silver, which is tiny silver particles suspended in liquid. Some people like to take it like a mineral. They believe it has antibiotic properties or use it like a dietary supplement. The FDA does not endorse it and actually warns against its harmful effects in excess.
Love Has Won didn’t just use it. They manufactured it in bulk and sold it online, calling it an act against Big Pharma. Of course the authorities didn’t want you to have it. That’s what they would say.
Amy took multiple doses daily, and toward the end of her life when she was unable to move, her inner circle would faithfully open her mouth and pour it down her throat. One of the side effects of chronic silver ingestion is argyria — permanent blue-gray skin discoloration.
By 2020, she was paralyzed from the waist down. Her weight dropped to nearly 100 pounds. Her followers understood she was preparing for ascension. They believed the Galactics — yes, including Robin Williams — would arrive in a spacecraft to carry her home. They even discussed how her lighter weight will make her easier to transport.
Meanwhile, deprivation inside the house was normalized. Food and sleep were framed as indulgences — attachments to the 3D illusion. When people wanted groceries Lamboy would regularly deny them the money they needed. Truth is, people who have brain fog from lack of sleep and nutrients are easier to control. It was a form of abuse. One that Amy, Jason, and Archangel Michael practiced regularly.
One of the members mom’s was watching a livestream said she could see her daughter’s bones pressing out from under her skin. Those in the house were wasting away in the service of Mother God.
As her body began to shut down, Amy asked to be taken to a hospital. Her followers refused.
At this point, she needed medical help. She was going to die without it. But she had surrounded herself with an inner circle of people who were the most indoctrinated conspiracists of them all. they believed that a “3D Hospital” would kill her, and that she was in the process of ascending, as she had foretold for years. So they not only refused to take her, they seemed to enable her downslide. She had created the monster that ultimately killed her.
In her final months, she reached out to the children she had left behind fourteen years earlier. She called her biological mother and asked her to come get her. “Mom, can you pick me up? Yeah, I accidentally started a cult and turned blue.”
It was said she had some moments of clarity, or at least questioned if she really was God. If it was all made up. It seems as though a young Amy was trying to break through some of the cracks of Mother God. But ultimately the damage was done and her followers just thought these thoughts were proof of her divinity.
The inner circle wanted her to be near water for the ascension as part of the plan, so Jason brought her to Hawaii. While on island of Kauai Amy announced she was Pele, the Hawaiian goddess of fire. This was a big mistake.
The locals didn’t take to kindly to that. It was highly offensive and the Hawaiians showed up to protest for days outside their house. They yelled at her through the windows with a megaphone “How can you call yourself a mother to all creation when you abandoned your own children?” They threw eggs. They smashed car windows with rocks. Eventually the mayor intervened and escorted the cult off the island before things really escalated.
In April 2010 Jason and a couple members took Amy up to a mountain lodge in Ashland, Oregon. By then she had lost all motor skills. In the hotel room, they moved her from the hot tub to the shower to the hot tub, always in preparation her for ascension. She was surrounded by the three when she took her last breath.
They celebrated her transition and waited for the Galactic to come pick up her body. But… it never came. They were confused. After all that…
Jason transported her body across state lines and brought her home to Colorado. It was there Lamboy discovered her corpse and realized the was dead. And in his bed. Not exactly a Goldilocks story.
This did not sit well with Lamboy. He informed on the group to the police and 12 days after her death, officers found her body as part of a shrine in the cabin. There she was, blue, snug in a sleeping bag, wrapped up in Christmas lights under a painted ceiling of swirling New Age imagery.
Lamboy was clearly unsettled by the dead body in his house but he was part of Love Has Won from early days. No one would have guessed that he would be the one to turn on them. Or that he would clear out all the money in their accounts totaling $330,00 before disappearing.
After officials seized Amy’s remains, arrests were made but eventually everyone was released. It was clear that she ended up here from her own free will— years of online videos proved that. The Love Has Won website has since been taken down but the diehard followers are still out there. They believe Mother God accomplished her mission and some of them even continue to spread the word under the names of different organizations. Jason is still Father God in his world, still keeping one hand extended to welcome spiritual seekers.
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