Family Denies Sedona Guru Kaia Ra's Bizarre Claims
Kaia Ra says she was raised in a QAnon-like satanic cabal and claims to be a “world-renowned divine oracle.” She sells jewelry she says removes suicidal thoughts and trauma and her followers think she rules over a tribe of cosmic “Sophia Dragons.” Now she’s building a temple in Sedona to “reconsecrate the vortexes.”
[Lire en français: Read this article in French.]
Be Scofield is the author of the new book Hunting Lucifer: One Reporter's Search for Cults and Demons. Her reporting is mentioned in the NY Times, Rolling Stone, People, and more.
By BE SCOFIELD
March 17th, 2021
David Santoro recalls fond memories growing up in small-town Medway, Massachusetts, in the 1990s with his sister Colleen. “We enjoyed being kids,” he told me during an interview. “We took the train to Boston to skateboard and shop for records. We went to hardcore punk shows and hung out constantly.” They even shared a bedroom for several years when younger. During the summers, he and Colleen would travel to their grandmother’s beach house in Plymouth. “We’d go nearly every weekend for three or four days,” he told me. “We’d have bonfires on the beach…cousin Eric and Jamie would be there. It was a blast.”
“Colleen had a normal, happy childhood,” David assured me. She sang in chorus, played on the Medway Valley High Volleyball team, and was in an Amnesty International-type club. They shared the same art teacher, Mrs. Seidler, whom they both loved.
During a phone call, Colleen’s mother told me she had a “good upbringing.” Her younger sister, who grew up in the same house, also confirmed during an interview Colleen was raised in a relatively normal middle-class home.
Nowadays, Colleen has cut off contact with David and the entire family. “The last thing I heard from her, and this was years ago, was ‘Fuck you and fuck your unborn son,'” David told me. He had sent a few pictures of his kids to her thinking she might enjoy them. She responded with a 14-page cease and desist order, but he didn’t recognize the name on the form. It said Kaia Ra.
I asked David about Colleen’s past because under her new identity as a self-proclaimed “world-renowned divine oracle” Kaia has made shocking allegations about her upbringing to her tens of thousands of spiritual followers on social media.
“For the first 18 years of my life, I was systematically tortured and raped on a daily basis,” she said in a video published on YouTube. In several videos and posts, she claims to have been inducted into a military-run satanic pedophile cabal where she witnessed “innumerable” children murdered. While there she died 13 times, experienced many comas, and underwent surgeries. She claims this satanic cabal was run out of Medway Village Church in her hometown. She survived “through her direct relationship with the Ascended Masters, angelic orders, and the Star Nations,” who kept her in the vibration of Christ consciousness.
In the preface to her book The Sophia Code, she describes the ordeal. “I was groomed to be inducted at the age of three into a child rape slave trade for an elite ruling class whose network crossed six state lines…This slave trade exchanged child trafficking for political power, real estate, and millions of dollars, as well as supplying child slaves for the highest tiers of Masonic ceremonies of Satanic ritual rape and torture in the United States…This elite network included politicians, military officials, wealthy businessmen, as well as an entire system of medical professionals, who believed that raping children provided them with a vital life force for achieving immortality, remaining in power, and ensuring the future of their generational rule.”
“For the first 18 years of my life, I was systematically tortured and raped on a daily basis. I saw many children die.”
Colleen, now Kaia Ra, also claims that her parents were installed by this military-run cabal and that her birth mother was named Constance. “I never met my mother,” Kai writes in a Facebook post. “I was taken from Constance and sent to military ‘handlers’ that were my ‘family’ as soon as I was born. She was murdered shortly thereafter in the military programs that I survived through the grace of Sophia.”
“We have her birth certificate,” David told me. “There is no Constance. There was never any satanism or abuse. Our parents are awesome. My mother is the sweetest woman I’ve ever met. Everyone loved her growing up. She was a high school nurse.”
Kaia’s father has run a popular general contracting and home remodeling business in the area for the last 40 years.
“I know all this satanic cabal stuff isn’t true,” Kaia’s sister told me. She grew up in the same house with Kaia for 15 years. “I wanted to be on her side,” she said. “But when we tried to get to the truth she didn’t want to.” That’s when Kaia cut her off, which is 14 years ago now.
“There was nothing that made logical sense about how I was brutally raised.”
– Kaia Ra speaking about her parents
Kaia Ra’s uncle was a foster parent and trained to recognize signs of abuse. “I never saw bruises or black eyes or her being withdrawn, typical signs of abuse,” he told me during an interview. He said her parents were regular people and that Colleen was a “happy kid.” After seeing the video of Kaia claiming abuse he said it looked like “bad acting.”
Why did Kaia move back in with her parents after leaving her first college if things were so bad David asked rhetorically. “She lived at home for four years while attending Emerson College, and our parents supported her the entire time.”
“We have her birth certificate…There was never any satanism or abuse. Our parents are awesome.”
– Kaia’s Brother
Kaia has yet to substantiate or verify her shocking allegations of satanic ritual abuse. “It is simply too dangerous for people who are not ready to read this data in such a bleak format,” she recently posted. Instead, she is choosing a “creative approach” or perhaps a convenient approach, to dealing with the trauma by writing a novel. “This novel is for the children that were there with me but did not survive,” she writes. It will also help her with the immense survivor’s guilt she suffers from, she says.
Kaia Ra Describes QAnon-Like Satanic Pedophile Cabal. Her uncle calls it “bad acting.”
“We’re in a golden age of online charismatic influence,” author and cult researcher Matthew Remski told me. He’s the co-host of the Conspirituality podcast that explores the intersection of spirituality and conspiracies. “Lockdowns have trapped vulnerable people in front of their screens, and would-be Messiahs like Kaia Ra use inflammatory QAnon related content in a competition for followers.”
The outlandish story has served to garner Kaia immense sympathy from her followers and bolster her claims of being a divine oracle.
One afternoon he got a call from an Oakland detective saying Kaia was being investigated.
“We were best friends until she started acting crazy,” David said. “Something happened.” She was in her early twenties when he first noticed the shift. “She robbed my apartment and was doing a bunch of drugs.” One afternoon he got a call from an Oakland detective saying Kaia was being investigated. David recalled it was about her convincing old people on their deathbeds to sign over their property and take their money as she treated them with reiki. Kaia’s sister also received a call from the same detective. The police had received several complaints, he said.
“I feel bad for her, but I feel worse for the people she’s hurting,” Kaia’s sister told me. “It’s destroyed the family,” she said. “We are all wondering what really happened to Colleen and why did it have to go to this extent. She’s a very smart person; she could have made a lot of money without all this.”
“Our personal relationships with her have been so hurt,” David told me. “She has soiled our name and our parents, and she’s taking people’s money that she shouldn’t be taking. I think she is a dangerous person.”
It was a snowy December evening in 2009 on Mt. Shasta. Kaia Ra had been living at the famed energy vortex in order to escape the hustle and bustle of the Bay Area. In the eight years since graduating from Emerson, she had worked a series of graphic design and branding jobs, mostly around the Boston area. Since moving to the West Coast in 2007, her evolution from digital designer to a trance channel and reiki healer was in full swing.
As Kaia sat in her Lake Tahoe-style lodge with high vaulted ceilings that snowy evening, she noticed the wooden beams start to “dematerialize into an underlying atomic structure.” She says she was staring at “orbiting electrons.” The walls then began to vibrate, and then the entire house too. The house felt like it was “shaking from its foundation” and could “lift-off,” she writes in the preface to her book The Sophia Code. She describes what happened next:
“A great white light filled the living room and then the entire house…A voice now boomed…’I am Sophia, the One Divine Mother Creatrix of All Life! Are you listening to me?’…”
Sophia’s golden-white light then arranged itself to appear as a temple in which I beheld thousands of faces, Ascended Masters from across the cosmos… such as Jesus, Mother Mary, and Mahavatar Babaji…
I realized that Sophia was asking for me to plainly relay who She was through Her own words, in a sacred text that would reconcile humanity with the Divine Feminine Christ energies that had been secreted away and oppressed for ages.”
A “DNA helix of two magnificent pearlescent white Sophia Dragons,” then appeared and God ordained her leader of The Sophia Dragon Tribe, a powerful group of ascended masters.
Every self-made guru needs a dramatic origin story. Kaia has three.
“From the moment my life began, I was identified as an Oracle by both light and dark polarities of reality,” she states. Kaia was born “clairvoyant” with a “magnetic creative intelligence that both captivated and infuriated adults,” she claims. “By the age of three, I was conversing with the guardian angels and masters of light.”
Surviving 18 years in the satanic cabal was also an initiation. “This extremity of torture left me without any boundaries to the spirit world,” she claims. “The circumstances of my early life created a perfect mystery school of training.”
And then in 2009, God revealed herself to Kaia in spectacular fashion commissioning her to write a sacred text and ordaining her leader of the Sophia Dragons.
Over the last ten years, Kaia has used these stories to prop herself up as the embodiment of God, sent on a critical mission to restore Sophia Christ consciousness on the planet. She now has tens of thousands of followers around the world that she reaches through Instagram and social media. And she’s appeared alongside notable spiritual teachers such as Matt Khan, Andrew Harvey, Jean Houston and scholar Riane Eisler.
“From the moment my life began, I was identified as an Oracle by both light and dark polarities of reality.”
“I am only here for the revolution,” Kaia states in a Youtube video. “I wouldn’t have sacrificed my entire life to just come here and do something that was sort of cool.”
She also tells her followers that her “high council orchestrates miracles” so they can achieve “ascension” in this lifetime.
“For all of us here at the [Sedona] headquarters,” her devotees write, “there is no question that Kaia Ra is the ordained Oracle for the Sophia Dragon Tribe.” They believe she is regularly making “life and death sacrifices” in order to carry out the “oracular duties” of the “ministry and birth a codex of this magnitude.”
Guru-wary readers will see the cult-like jargon in her follower’s proclamations. It’s unlikely they’d believe Kaia’s life is in danger without having undergone some form of indoctrination. She mostly posts videos and memes about spiritual growth.
“Cults begin with a charismatic leader who claims some supreme knowledge,” the experts say. “They may call themselves a prophet, messiah, messenger, or an enlightened teacher.”
Kaia refers to critics as “stalkers” and “attackers” who attempt to “silence” her, another example of cult-like behavior.
“I have the ability to regenerate myself very quickly,” Kaia says during an event. Claims like these of magical powers are also a red flag. “Many of the bones in my body are broken, I don’t know how I’m walking. I was able to very quickly regenerate my body.”
“I see concerning signs of cult-like behavior with Kaia,” Dr. Steven Hassan told me. He’s a prominent cult expert and author of Combating Cult Mind Control. “For example, the name change, the claim of extraordinary healing powers, the selling of inexpensive trinkets purportedly blessed or imbued with divine energy and setting herself as a messenger for Ascended Masters, which reflects some of the QAnon beliefs of the I Am movement.”
When not regenerating bones Kaia is traveling inter-dimensionally through spirit world.
“I spent the evening helping the Ascended Masters guide the grieving souls of genocide from one of my favorite canyons back into the light source,” she writes in a Facebook post. “I tended to the ceremonial rights needed to properly release their souls.” It’s unclear if her feather headdress and Native American drum seen in her videos were used.
In a recent video, Kaia describes “dropping in” to the world beneath Sedona where she met powerful beings who told her they were called the Oboua. “They’re not like cosmic dragons, divine mother dragons, but they’re earth-based dragons that are protecting the water tablets under the surface of the earth. Because of my work with dragons, that’s why they accepted me.”
Kaia’s claims sound similar to new age guru Teal Swan claiming to spend most of her nights “consciously out of body working as a kind of universal tool for consciousness.” Swan also has a fanciful story of satanic ritual abuse.
Exiled Sedona cult leader Bentinho Massaro never had a sacred text to unify his followers around but Kaia Ra does. The Sophia Code, a mix of divinely channeled messages and new age buzzwords, plays directly into the lore of her divine mission.
Like many spiritual authors before her, she uses scientific words to add credibility. DNA appears 110 times in her book while other words like genome, chromosomes, quantum, neurological pathways, and cellular appear dozens if not hundreds of times.
The “internationally best-selling” book, she claims, is the “divine feminine Bible of our times…given to us, word for word, by the Ascended Master High Council.” Merely reading the sacred text can have a profound impact. “You may experience a myriad of physical sensations as you rearrange your inner reality by reading this book,” she writes in the preface.
“I went into Samadhi several times,” while reading “this truly blessed and powerful book,” writes one follower. “This is an order of magnitude beyond any phenomena I have yet experienced.” Another states, “Each word is encoded with golden light.” One reviewer writes, “The magic and synchronicities that have been happening in my life since the book arrived have accelerated at such a speed, that I can’t seem to find the time to even finish reading it.”
One grandmother used the book to heal her grandson’s broken molar. “I wrapped my book in a ziplock bag, placed it with Lemurian crystals, Amethyst, and Rose Quartz on top of the harmonizer to broadcast healing energy.” She posted a photo of the book being used in a ritual under a bronze-framed triangle contraption with the crystals.
A woman shared her testimonial about how she sent her brother The Sophia Code while in prison. She says it “radically changed his life” to where he is a “newly awakened soul.” Now the “Sophia light is pouring through him,” she says.
“Countless reports of miracles, quantum leap awakenings, and spontaneous healings have poured in,” Kaia states. “We’ve received emails from around the world asking if it was OK that people were passing out as they tried to read the book.”
In a podcast episode called “Life in GirlBoss Hell,” Katya Weiss-Anderson examines Kaia Ra. “She’s giving mental health advice to vulnerable people,” she says. “She is not a mental health professional…She’s a businesswoman whose background is in graphic design and performance.”
Giving shoddy mental health advice and selling spiritual wisdom and miraculous jewelry is a lucrative business and one of the largest markets a savvy entrepreneur can tap into. Kaia has brought in over 1 million dollars doing so.
“This stunning amulet clears self-sabotage and supports you to make healthy choices,” Kaia writes in a recent email to her list. The amulet is one of many pieces in her Embody Your Sovereignty jewelry collection that ranges from $111 to $1,577. Wearing her jewelry treats a wide range of mental health and spiritual issues she claims:
● Hathor Ankh of Life Pendant ($233): “clears attachments to low self-esteem, depression, and suicidal thoughts.”
● The White Buffalo Woman Miracle Pendant ($288): “clears and lifts traumatic imprints, lack consciousness, and low self-worth.”
● The Mother Mary Pendant ($377): “clears patriarchal religious programming.”
● The Mary Magdalene Cross ($333): “helps regulate emotional swings” and “clears attachments to patterns of unworthiness, shame, self-denial, self-abandonment,” and “grief from unresolved trauma.”
● The Green Tara Mala Bead Necklace ($244): “clears patterns of addictive behavior, active self-sabotage, and unconscious self-hatred.”
● The Quan Yin Medallion ($244): “clears unconscious attachments to traumatic wounding, unresolved shame, negative self-talk, and self-destructive patterns.”
● The Isis Winged Prophecy Cuff ($1,577): “Angelic ascension technology.”
A search on her jewelry store for “trauma” returned seven products, while a search for “suicidal” returned eight products.
“It’s living encoded medicine that you can put on your body,” Kaia Ra states in a recent Instagram video. She continues by claiming as a divine oracle she can “hand-carve” the divine power of Jesus, Quan Yin, and White Buffalo Woman into her jewelry. Wearing the jewelry activates “Ascended Master keycodes” in one’s “divine genome” and “DNA.” For each keycode that God revealed to Kaia, she sells a corresponding piece of jewelry designed to activate it.
Kaia and her staff hard sell this jewelry to the many women who regularly share survivor stories of sexual abuse, trauma, and depression. In one post in her private Facebook group, Kaia claims wearing her jewelry can “heal lifelong wounds.” One of Kaia’s staff members known as a “jewelry angel” posted that the Isis Pendant will “complete your divine purpose” and “complete everything else that’s unfinished in your life.” Her staff regularly posts testimonials in comments about how magical the jewelry is to help sell it.
Telling traumatized women with mental health issues that wearing jewelry can stop suicidal thoughts could easily lead to tragedy. Sedona residents won’t forget the suicide of Brent Wilkins, one of Bentinho Massaro’s students who jumped off a cliff during one of his retreats. “Wake up to something important, otherwise, kill yourself,” Massaro told his followers.
A search for “suicidal” returned eight products.
Kaia can pull off her scheme because she combines the authority of top-notch branding with the authority of her legendary origin stories.
Rhonda Byrne, the creator of The Secret, was an accomplished infomercial producer before creating the flashy new age blockbuster film.
Kaia Ra was a high-level graphic designer with deep knowledge of an agency’s branding process before creating The Sophia Code.
“Your brand is the single most important investment you can make in your business,” says Steve Forbes. Kaia hired former Amazon visual brander and lead designer of their in-person stores to build her website and do her branding. Knowing this field intimately, it would have cost upwards of $10,000.
Lewis Howes advises that the most important thing when it comes to branding is to “know your audience.” Kaia targets wealthy women who can afford her high ticket jewelry and online programs. Her marketing imagery and websites convey luxury with ornate golden trim, heavenly-looking clouds, Roman columns, white doves, angel wings, mala beads, candles, and glossy airbrushed photos. She also employs a plethora of new-age buzzwords. The user is transported to a different world upon entering her site.
“Selling sacred merchandise goes back decades in cult history from Ramtha to Aum Shinrikyo,” Dr. Hassan told me. “It not only makes money for the cult but connects the believer to the cult.”
The deeper Kaia’s followers go into her marketing funnel, Weiss-Anderson says, the more they are “surrounded by countless other women who fully drank the Sophia Code Kool-Aid” and “encourage you to take that next expensive step.”
A follower may start by purchasing her book for $14 and then buy a webinar like “Activate Your Angel Wings” for $33. They may then purchase a piece of jewelry for around $300 or book a private one-hour session with Kaia for $1,300. They may progress to her longer online programs like “Transforming Trauma Into Power” which sells for $1,333 or the Stargate 1 & 2 programs.
“You’re made to feel special,” with love-bombing Weiss-Anderson says. “Like you specifically are a star seed lightworker destined to be a Sophia code angel helping the world. And you’re promised big returns on your investments.”
“You’re promised big returns on your investments.”
Kaia’s private Facebook group is an echo chamber of her divine greatness where women bond in cult-like fashion sharing their testimonies about The Sophia Code and traumatic experiences. Just as one example of many, a woman who shared in-depth about being raped repeatedly at the age of three was told by many members in an insular fashion that she was in the right spot. “You are now where you are supposed to be for your healing,” wrote one woman. “Working with the Ascended Masters and the Sophia Code is life-changing.”
After a young woman posted about her struggles with narcissistic parents and an alcoholic boyfriend, Kaia’s staff promoted their $444 program to her in a comment. “The Stargate 1 Curriculum is a great place to start!” she wrote, linking to the sales page.
It’s unclear how The Sophia Code or the many offshoot programs are relevant to treating childhood sexual abuse or trauma. A passage from the text reveals its typical content: “The pearlescent white ray of Her Holy Spirit is the light-water of your Divine Mother’s milk—filled with the manna of stardust and the Breath of Life—it flows through your crown chakra to nourish your entire body, heart, and soul. In this descent, the seraphim wings of Sophia’s Holy Spirit spiral open and illuminate the direct path to your own Sacred Heart with flaming tongues of Her unconditional love for you.”
“In my opinion, Kaia’s dangerous appeal to traumatized people targets those vulnerable and desperate for their pain to end.”
– Colleen Russell, LMFT
Somer readers can’t see the magical brilliance that others do. “Horrible book, it was torture trying to get through it,” writes one reviewer. “I literally could not stomach listening to this woman’s fake-ness one minute more.” Another thinks they discovered Kaia’s true intentions. “Ego, slick marketing, obvious goal of making money by preying on souls who buy into her ‘exclusive’ system.” One reviewer states that after reading only 20 pages it sounded “a bit like a cult.”
In 2019, the BBC reported that new age guru Teal Swan’s private Facebook group was shut down by the company over concerns surrounding mental health issues and suicide. Now that the precedent has been set, teachers like Kaia Ra could risk losing their Facebook groups as well.
There is also a growing public awareness of the dangers of self-made gurus and conspiracies. A recent dialogue called “The Dark Side of Spirituality” featured a fascinating back and forth with new age critic Jules Evans, Rebel Wisdom founder David Fuller and Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros lead singer Alex Ebert.
“In my opinion, Kaia’s dangerous appeal to traumatized people targets those vulnerable and desperate for their pain to end,” said Colleen Russell a licensed psychotherapist of 29 years. “Sadly, the allure of magical thinking and quick-fix solutions to complex issues is a common ploy of unethical people who will do anything to exploit and manipulate others, all for money and power.” When the jewelry fails to cure someone’s mental illness, they may perceive “something inherently wrong or bad about them, magnifying self-loathing and, ultimately driving people away from the help they desperately need,” she said.
One of the supposedly lucrative investments Kaia promotes is to become a Sophia Circle Journey facilitator. The training costs as much as $5,000. “The sooner you submit, the sooner you can be certified and making income from your spiritual leadership with The Sophia Code,” the sales page states.
“One of the most powerful blueprints available on the planet for the full activation of this treasure within you is the Sophia Code® from Kaia Ra,” writes a graduate of the program in a post attempting to sell spots in her own group. She parrots in zeal-like fashion Kaia’s teachings. “A purging of thousands of years of corrupted code is currently being deleted from our DNA,” she writes. “Like a dragon awakening from hibernation. A new code is coming online.”
During an interview, I asked Kaia Ra’s sister what she thinks led to all this. “I hate to say it but she started doing yoga and then all of a sudden it was ‘I learned Reiki’ and then ‘I’ve started the Lotus healing.'” She said Kaia slowly evolved from performer to healer to channeler, who would speak in tongues. An old flyer of Kaia’s advertises channeling unicorns for spiritual guidance. She performed at popular gatherings like Burning Man, Symbiosis, and Decompression for a period around 2007, but it was “more of a ritual thing rather than a culty thing” her sister said.
Her sister was concerned hearing Kaia had a “headquarters” with followers and that she is building a temple. “It seems like a money make scheme at this point,” she said. She doesn’t understand why Kaia needs to charge thousands of dollars to help people spiritually. Kaia’s stated goal with the temple is to “reconsecrate Sedona to the divine feminine” so she can program the sacred vortex energy sites for the “highest good.” Five more temples will follow in Mt. Shasta, Malibu, Glastonbury, Australia, and Hawaii.
Kaia Ra: Airbrushed vs Reality
Everything about Kaia Ra is designed to convey I will not deceive you; the gorgeous branding, angel wings, golden jewels, glossy airbrushed photos, her divine status, the promise of miracles and healing. It seems suspiciously perfect and reminds me of a quote that offers poetic insight: “The devil doesn’t come dressed in a red cape and pointy horns. He comes as everything you’ve ever wished for.”
“The devil doesn’t come dressed in a red cape and pointy horns. He comes as everything you’ve ever wished for.”
Since relocating to Sedona in 2019, Kaia has already spoken to packed audiences at the iconic Creative Life Center. Undoubtedly the pandemic has altered her temple building and plans for live events, but it won’t be long before spiritual acolytes are flocking to Sedona to study with her again.
