“God is within us, his stature and character are inherent in our lives. But there exists also the part of man which is anti-god, it is contrary to God’s character and is responsible for the conflicts and tensions of life, the uncertainties, fears and shortcomings that rob man of happiness. The way we can resolve this tension is by uniting ourselves through knowledge of him. But the problem comes because we cannot describe God; if we could describe God then we could define him and to define him would be to limit him to the level of the finite and mortal. We can only describe the parts of God. God is composed of three gods — Jehovah, Lucifer and Satan. Jehovah is the wrathful god of vengeance and retribution, demanding discipline and ruthlessness. Lucifer is the light-bearer who urges us to enjoy life to the fullest, to be kind and loving and live in peace and harmony. Satan, the receiver of transcendent souls and corrupted bodies, represents two opposites. First, to rise above all human and physical needs to become all soul and spirit; and, secondly, to sink beneath all human values and standards of morality to wallow in depravity.”
– Mother Mercedes, Process Church of the Final Judgement, 1971
The story of the Process Church of the Final Judgement, an end-of-days religious order, is a bit of a convoluted one, so I will offer an EXTREMELY abridged version here.
It’s a tale as old as time.
Boy meets girl
Girl audits boy
Boy and girl leave the Church of Scientology to create their own movement.
They recruit from around London and send their cloak-donning disciples into the streets to distribute the group’s magazine, recruit new members, and solicit donations.
In 1966, they move to the Bahamas, where they spend their time in discussion with non-corporeal beings.
Those non-corporeal beings told them to move to Mexico.
Here’s the aftermath as reported in an Associated Press report from November 1966 (click to enlarge):
You’ll notice Hugh Mountain in the last line. These days, he goes by Michael.
A simple search for “Process Church” on Google or YouTube will lead you to pages of material and hours of video about this doomsday church. Most of these materials, along with the Netflix series “Sons of Sam,” concentrate on the Church’s Satanic elements, weaving together conspiracy theories that attempt to tie either the Church itself or its offshoots with the Son of Sam and Manson Family murders.
There are also websites that attempt to discredit the Best Friends Animal Society by showing its origins as the Process Church. One of these is the website of the nonprofit Protect the Harvest.
It’s when you look at the backgrounds of these websites and organizations that strange connections begin to pop up. Strange not in an intentional way, but more like a karmic “I’ll be damned.”
Protect the Harvest was established in 2011 by automotive oil tycoon Forrest Lucas to battle the “radical animal rights movement.”
Separate from his nonprofit, Lucas paid $122 million in 2006 to the State of Indiana for his company’s name to adorn a new $720 million football stadium for the next 20 years.
And who plays in the Lucas Oil Stadium? Why, the Indianapolis Colts, owned by the patron of the now deceased Miami Seaquarium orca Tokitae, Jim Irsay.
Irsay was set to fund a proposed move of Tokitae to the waters of Washington state. Playing a key role in the rehabilitation of the whale and her proposed move was none other than Whale Sanctuary Project, co-founded by a former leader of the Satan-worshiping Process Church of the Final Judgement, Michael Mountain.
The most reliable source I’ve found on the Church is an academic paper by Carole Cusack of the University of Sydney, published in 2020 in the International Journal for the Study of New Religions.
Because Cusack argues that the Church abandoned its religious identity for an animal rights-based one, I won’t be addressing rumors that the Best Friends Animal Society is a front for the Church, which, according these rumors is alive and well and worshiping Satan in Kanab, Utah.
Because I won’t address rumors that the Church still operates out of the Best Friends compound, I will also not address rumors that Whale Sanctuary Project President Lori Marino was indoctrinated into the church when she moved in with Mountain on the Best Friends compound and turned it into the Whale Sanctuary Project headquarters.
I also refuse to address these rumors because I have seen absolutely no evidence of Dr. Marino’s fascination with anything that might slightly be related to something culturally and historically linked to the Devil and demonic entities.
You’ll notice that I call the movement a Church, not a cult. That’s because Mountain himself in 2004 told a reporter: “The definition of cult is something that follows a single charismatic leader telling everybody what to do, and that never happened with this. It’s just the opposite,” This statement is highly debatable, because it’s contradicted by both academic and law enforcement definitions of a cult and by the writings and statements of former Church members that clearly lay out an authoritarian hierarchy.
In 2003, the Church transformed itself into an animal welfare organization. A year later, rumors were being spread that the Church was still very much alive, was worshiping Satan, and was operating out of the Best Friends compound. Reporter Lou Kilzer of Rocky Mountain News set out to find the truth, and one of his interviewees was Mountain. Mountain approached the Church the same way he currently does with Whale Sanctuary Project – he completely redefined the history of the Church, transforming it from a spiritual or religious order to being more of a cosplay social club.
Then he told the lie.
The lie is not easy to see, unless you know where to look.
In 1967, the Church filed its articles of incorporation in New Orleans, Louisiana. Kilzer writes:
The papers declare: ‘The latter days are upon us for even now the Lord Christ is in the world and gods walk amongst men and there are signs and wonders foretold in prophecy in preparation for the final judgment of man.’
Mountain says the lawyer supplied most of the words, but the group didn’t particularly care in those days.
Mountain is lying in either one of two ways. He either lied to the reporter as he attempted to downplay the Church as a true religious order, or he lied by knowingly signing false legal documents filed with a state agency.
These are the actual articles of incorporation for the Process Church of the Final Judgement, obtained from the State of Utah. Mountain’s signature appears in a number of places – and remember at the time, he was known as Hugh Mountain – but it’s page 53 that interests me the most. Here we see his signature, under the moniker he used as a Church leader – Father Aaron. In neither the 1974 renaming of the Church, noted in this document that he signed, nor the 1971 revised articles of incorporation that immediately proceed it, is the statement about latter days and final judgement revoked or changed. They kept it in. So either the leadership really didn’t care, as Mountain told Kilzer, and continued to file falsified documents with the state, or they actually did believe the end days were upon us. Only one can be true, which means one way or another, someone lied.
Mountain, who is currently soliciting the public for an expedited fundraising campaign, titles himself as co-founder of Whale Sanctuary Project. He has, over the years, also appeared as co-founder of Best Friends Animal Society. But sometimes things may not be quite what they seem. Mountain’s name and biography is missing from the founders page on the Best Friends website, and thanks to the Internet Archive, we were able to look back a number of years and confirm that he just hasn’t been included.
Over the past five years, people have shared with me responses they’ve received from Whale Sanctuary Project regarding their inquiries. Some are interested members of the public. Others are donors, including individuals who have donated thousands of dollars, and were checking up on their investment.
On July 8 of this year, ThemedReality reader Liz Craig sent an inquiry to the Whale Sanctuary Project.
The response came the following day from Caroline Saxon, a Communications Associate at Whale Sanctuary Project, and I’m sharing it here with Craig’s permission. I’m going to break this down because the organization’s response illustrates the manipulative techniques that Mountain began mastering while a mid-tier leader of the Church.
Here are the answers to all your questions.
Regarding WSP sharing data from environmental work, this question was answered directly in the Spring Update webinar in May.
It was also addressed in the blog series; https://whalesanctuaryproject.org/site-geography-environment-analyses/ that includes the clip from the webinar.
All you have to do is watch the video clip and two minutes in, you will find your question directly answered.
The most direct way to answer would have been a direct answer: “Our expert consultants are currently analyzing the data.” The second most direct way would have been to guide Craig directly to the video. Instead, she directed Craig to a blog post that had the video embedded. This is akin to asking a representative of a religious order a question and being told it’s in a pamphlet full of extraneous information that’s doesn’t pertain to your question. It’s a very old sales tactic that even car dealers and timeshare brokers often utilize. On a side note, the blog entry Craig was guided to was marketed on Whale Sanctuary Project social media accounts as a “highly technical report.” It is not. Much like how the summary that was issued on Tokitae’s necropsy was not an actual detailed necropsy report, this is simply a summary written by the head of Whale Sanctuary Project’s communications team. The difference is that the veterinarian who wrote Toki’s necropsy summary had the experience and education to properly convey what she was writing.
Essentially, Vinick stated that the common person would not understand the raw data. It must be interpreted by Whale Sanctuary Project’s expert consultants, who will then prepare a report with their recommendations.
On February 8, 2022, Vinick signed a letter to NOAA asking for an independent party to assess Tokitae. I’m therefore asking Vinick (again) to release the raw data so that it may be assessed by independent third-party toxicologists and soil engineers that I and others have at the ready. Selectivity and lack of transparency appear to have become SOP at the WSP.
Regarding salaries (nobody receives bonuses), WSP’s annual IRS Form 990 can be viewed, along with other information about the organization and our work, at Candid/Guidestar, which recognizes the Whale Sanctuary Project with a Platinum Seal of Transparency, Go to our page on Guidestar. You simply have to create a free profile to log in.
One would hope nobody at Whale Sanctuary Project receives bonuses. Bonuses should only be granted when significant milestones are reached. However, there are ways to provide bonuses without direct financial contribution, such as first class airfare and accommodations and leases on luxury vehicles.
The only value from Guidestar is for publicity purposes. Transparency on Guidestar is not full transparency. This is all that is required to obtain Platinum level transparency on Guidestar:
- Basic financial information
- Name of the board chair
- Demographics of the leadership
- The strategic plan or a list of goals
- Metrics – and only one is required
There is no vetting by Guidestar of the entries. For example, Goodwill of Sacramento Valley and Northern Nevada has Silver transparency. It’s not because Guidestar determined the organization didn’t meet the same high standards as Whale Sanctuary Project, but because applying for Silver status has fewer requirements than applying for Gold or Platinum. For Goodwill of Sacramento, this is very beneficial because it helps hide the fact that Goodwill of Sacramento’s former CEO was just indicted by federal authorities for embezzling $1.4 million from the nonprofit. Data handed over to Guidestar, even with Platinum tier organizations, gives no indication of improper or unethical movement of funds or spending. Another nonprofit monitor, Charity Navigator, gives Whale Sanctuary Project an 81% rating, based on two factors – the organization sends the public to a third-party site for tax returns, rather than making them available on its own website, and it does not provide any financial statements (considered financial reports other than IRS filings) at all, something I and my colleagues have been requesting for some time.
The Whale Sanctuary Project did not contribute any funds toward the work of Friends of Toki (or for any other aspect of Toki’s rehab). Any members of the Whale Sanctuary team who assisted in Toki’s rehab were paid for that work by Friends of Toki and not by the Whale Sanctuary Project. Nor did the Whale Sanctuary Project solicit funds for the work with Toki. Friends of Toki was funded originally by millionaire Pritam Singh and soon after that billionaire Jim Irsay.
Let me share with you what happened. During Friends of Toki’s first year of operation and the first year the organization was working with Tokiae, 2022, Pritam Singh made a number of donations to Whale Sanctuary Project. Those donations were used by Whale Sanctuary Project to pay members of its team that worked on the Toki project. Additional funds from Singh’s donations were used for unspecified services provided by Whale Sanctuary Project to Friends of Toki. Whale Sanctuary Project was cutting the checks, so yes, the statement about Whale Sanctuary Project not contributing any funds is highly inaccurate, and it’s one the Lori Marino has repeated numerous times, and since it contradicts what was filed with the IRS, it may also constitute tax fraud. This tactic is characteristic of Mountain’s policy of redefining and rewriting the story.
I didn’t get this information from an insider. Nobody told me about this or slipped me a confidential document. I pulled Whale Sanctuary Project’s tax filings directly off its Guidestar page and it’s all there in black and white.
When reviewing the 2022 filing, things get really confusing. Because the organization is not fully transparent, we can see in the tax filing that Singh made a series of donations, but there’s no indication of how much he donated. Further, the program services for both Friends of Toki and the Nova Scotia sanctuary are merged into a single entry. It is impossible to determine if any funds from Singh were rerouted to the Canadian sanctuary project or if funds from other donors intended for the sanctuary were rerouted, without donors’ knowledge, to the Miami project.
And there are even more irregularities with the 2022 tax filing, but I won’t go into them now.
In 2004, Mountain told Kilzer, the reporter from Rocky Mountain news: “Mahatma Gandhi had a saying: A society can be judged by the way it treats its old people, its young people and its animals.’
In response, I ask Mountain to keep in mind the elderly and children who donated to his charity and all the whales that died waiting for those milestones to be reached.
Next: We join Whale Sanctuary Project as it eradicates Native American heritage.
