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 just under 1,200 source documents regarding Pencovic/Venta, in order to create the definitive biography. 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, CA 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, without offering supporting evidence, KV had mishandled cult funds and alientated them from their wives and families.

A branch of the Fountain was established in Homer, Alaska in the 1950s. Membership at both sites declined rapidly, though, following KV's death, and by the mid-1970s both were history.

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

Commonalities in their visions of the future have inspired some - not completely without cause - to draw comparisons between KV and Charles (Helter Skelter) Manson.

Earth's Order of Melchizedek (www.eoom.org), with which no former Fountain members are involved, insists KV - who claimed to be a Melchizedek Priest - is none other than the "Machiventa Melchizedek" found in "The Urantia Book"...hmmm...Venta...Machiventa...hmmm...gee...get it?