Discussion group/document archive regarding Krishna Venta (Francis Herman Pencovic), March 29, 1911 - December 10, 1958, founder of the WKFL (Wisdom, Knowledge, Faith, Love) Fountain of the World "cult."

Moderator has spent four years interviewing surviving members of both the Fountain and Pencovic's family, as well as collecting nearly 900 primary source documents regarding Pencovic/Venta, in order to create the definitive biography. (No, the 900 docs. are not stored here!) Drafting of the book was undertaken just under two years ago. (Completion of the manuscript has been delayed by the moderator's requisite full-time job!)

Born in San Francisco, KV founded his cult in Box Canyon, Simi Valley, California in the late 1940s. The group, which attracted attention by wearing robes, discarding footwear, and cutting neither hair nor beard, was responsible for numerous positives, e.g., fighting wildfires, sheltering battered women, and feeding the homeless.

KV died in Chatsworth, California in 1958 in a suicide bombing - that took ten lives in all - instigated by two disgruntled former followers determined to prove KV was mortal; they alleged KV had mishandled cult funds and alientated them from the affection of their wives and families.

A branch of the Fountain was established in Homer, Alaska in the 1950s, but membership at both the AK and CA sites declined rapidly following KV's death. It was history by the mid-1970s.

KV is also remembered because of the 1955 child support case Pencovic v. Pencovic, 45 C2d 97.

Common language and themes in their cosmologies has inspired some writers - not completely without cause - to draw comparisons between KV and Charles (Helter Skelter) Manson, e.g., but not limited to Nikolas Schreck's "The Manson File."

Earth's Order of Melchizedek (http://www.eoom.org) believes KV - who claimed to be a Melchizedek Priest - is the "Machiventa Melchizedek" found in "The Urantia Book"...Venta...Machiventa...gee...get it?