Ruth E. Norman (born Ruth Nields; August 18, 1900 – July 12, 1993), also known as Uriel, was an American religious leader who co-founded the Unarius Academy of Science, based in Southern California. Raised in California, Norman received little education and worked from an early age in a variety of jobs. In the 1940s, she developed an interest in psychic phenomena and past-life regression. These pursuits led to her introduction to Ernest Norman, a self-described psychic, in 1954. He engaged in channeling, past-life regression, and attempts at communication with extraterrestrials. She married Ernest, her fourth husband, in the mid-1950s. Together they published several books about his revelations and formed Unarius, an organization which later became known as the Unarius Academy of Science, to popularize his teachings. The couple discussed numerous details about their alleged past lives and spiritual visits to other planets, forming a mythology from these accounts.
After Ernest died in 1971, Ruth succeeded him as their group's leader and primary channeler. She subsequently began publishing accounts of her experiences and revelations. In early 1974, she predicted that a space fleet of benevolent extraterrestrials, the Space Brothers, would land on Earth later that year, which led the Unarius Academy to purchase a property to serve as the landing site. After the extraterrestrials failed to appear, Norman said that trauma she had suffered in a past life had caused her to make an inaccurate prediction. Undaunted, she rented a building for Unarius' meetings and sought publicity for the movement, claiming to have united the Earth with an interplanetary confederation. She revised the Space Brothers' expected landing date several times, before finally settling on 2001. Her health declined in the late 1980s, prompting her students to try to heal her with rituals of past-life regression. Despite predicting that she would live to see the extraterrestrials land, Norman died in 1993. Unarius has continued to operate after her death, and formed a board of directors. Since the 2000s, leaders have concentrated on individual transformation leading to spiritual change in humankind.
Ruth Nields was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, on August 18, 1900. Three years later, her family moved to Pasadena, California, where her father worked as an upholsterer. She and her five siblings were reared there, receiving little education and working from a young age. As a teenager, she labored as a fruit packer and a maid. Most of her income went to her father, whom she later described as abusive.
In 1918, she married a man named Frank R. De Silvas and they had a daughter two years later. The couple divorced in the early 1920s; Frank gained custody of their daughter, although Ruth had access as well. Little is known for certain about Ruth's life from the mid-1920s to the 1940s, but she worked in a variety of jobs. She held positions in several restaurants and also worked as a model, real-estate broker, resort manager, and nanny. In the 1940s, she enrolled at the Church of Religious Science, where she studied New Thought under Ernest Holmes, and was separately introduced to psychic healing in that decade. Over time, she also became interested in spiritualism, channeling, and past-life regression. She married Benjamin Arnold in the 1940s; the marriage lasted until his death in 1951. Two years later, she remarried and settled in Lancaster, California. Her third husband, George Marian, owned a milk-delivery business which Ruth helped him to manage. In the mid-1950s, she became interested in acting and earned the starring role in a local play.
In 1954, at a psychic event in California, Ruth was introduced to Ernest Norman, who told her that in a past life she had been the daughter of an Egyptian Pharaoh and had protected Moses. Members of the organization they later established, the Unarius Academy of Science, affirm that Ernest and Ruth married on the day they met, and the group celebrates their anniversary as February 14, 1954. However, Diana Tumminia of California State University, Sacramento, notes in her 2005 study of the group that Ruth was probably still married to George Marian in early 1954 and speculates that their divorce was a lengthy process; Tumminia posits that Ernest and Ruth married in 1956.
Ernest believed he could communicate with both extraterrestrials and historical figures, channeling messages from them. In 1954, seeking to popularize his channeling, Ernest and Ruth formed an organization known as Unarius, operating from their home in California. After their marriage, Ruth served as Ernest's typist, later claiming to have learned the skill while sleeping. She recorded the information he channeled, writing books about psychic healing and trips into the Solar System. In the 1950s and 1960s, they attracted several followers, including two students whom they later taught to channel. One early trainee was Charles Spiegel, who later led the group. Many converts had previous involvement with New Age or mystic groups, making it easy for the Normans to convert them.
Converts were provided with elaborate details of Ernest and Ruth Norman's purported spiritual visits to other planets. The couple believed that humans could learn from great teachers on these journeys; Ernest said that this contact held the potential to educate and heal humanity. Ernest also spoke of the scientific advancements of other worlds. The couple also discussed revelations about their past lives, including Jesus and Mary of Bethany among their past identities. Ruth stated that she had lived about 50 lives over several million years; she recalled being several well-known and a few obscure people on Earth, as well as beings from other planets and an archangel. Their group developed a mythology from the accounts that Ernest and Ruth gave of these lives, including tales from their past incarnations in Atlantis and Lemuria. Some of their stories were similar to the plots of contemporary books and films, prompting Tumminia to cast their beliefs as a pastiche or bricolage of the surrounding culture.
Ernest and Ruth promoted millennialist teachings, holding that higher beings were to transform the Earth and bring devotees to a new level of existence; the couple held that this growth would allow people to travel through space. Zeller compares their millennialist doctrines to those of Christian dispensationalism, noting their shared utopian views.
Leadership and death of Ernest
Ernest died in 1971; thereafter, Ruth led their organization and served as its primary channeler. Spiegel moved to San Diego to assist her. After Ernest died, Spiegel affirmed Ruth's nascent belief that she was an archangel named Uriel from the "fourth dimension".
In 1972, Ruth Norman began publishing Tesla Speaks, a series of messages that she said were given to her by the American inventor and engineer Nikola Tesla from his dwelling in outer space; she stated that he also relayed messages from scientists Albert Einstein and Louis Pasteur to her. Norman asserted that the Tesla Tower held secrets which were to be recovered by Unarius. The American journalist Alexander S. Heard argues that Tesla's rumored interests in death rays and free energy drew the group to him. In 1973, Norman recounted an experience in which she spiritually married the archangel Michiel at a lavishly decorated temple on another planet; the event was said to have culminated with her being crowned the Queen of Archangels, Uriel, by the Archangel Raphiel. She and Spiegel envisioned the events of the ceremony over several days, and she published their recollections later that year. Her students subsequently referred to her as Uriel, an acronym of "universal, radiant, infinite, eternal light". She and Spiegel re-enacted the ceremony for her followers, and the group celebrated the anniversary of the event annually. After her spiritual marriage, Norman increased her channeling of historical figures, including Plato, Tesla, and John F. Kennedy.