An Ascended Master Movement in the Theosophical Line

The Church Universal and Triumphant stands in the lineage of Theosophy and the "I AM" Activity, part of the broader family of movements built on the idea of the Ascended Masters, spiritually advanced beings (including figures such as "Saint Germain" and "El Morya") held to guide humanity from a higher plane. It was developed by Mark Prophet, who founded a predecessor organization (Summit Lighthouse) in 1958, and after his death in 1973 by his wife Elizabeth Clare Prophet, who led the church as its "messenger," delivering teachings understood as dictations from the Masters. The church's practice centers on decrees, rhythmic, spoken affirmations and invocations, especially of the "violet flame", for spiritual transformation and protection.

In the late 1980s the movement, then headquartered on a large ranch in Montana near Yellowstone, drew significant public and media attention over its teaching about a possible period of global catastrophe and its construction of extensive fallout shelters, a period the church has since moved past. Elizabeth Clare Prophet withdrew from leadership in the 1990s owing to illness and died in 2009; the organization continues in a more decentralized form. Scholars treat it as a significant example of the twentieth-century Ascended-Master tradition and of how millennial expectation within such groups is managed over time.