The Herd of God's revenue does not come, mostly, from its congregation. It comes from a travel agency.
Astral Spaceways Incorporated, the group's commercial arm, sells what it calls flights: guided sessions of astral projection marketed as trips to one's own past lifetimes, to "parallel dimensions," and — at the higher fare classes — to deities and transcendent states. The tagline, printed on everything, is "If you find Earth boring!" The service is administered by two of the group's members, the sisters the Herd calls the Handmaidens, and overseen by its oracle, a woman who goes by Magnetic Rose.
The model is old. Scholars of new religious movements point to a long tradition of mystical service businesses — the modern-mummification providers, the past-life clinics — that fund a church while doing its recruiting. "The brochure is the altar," one scholar said. "A person books a novelty. What they attend is a rite. What they leave as is a prospect."
The Herd is unusually candid about this. Its own materials describe the same navigation used to sell a novelty flight as the navigation its clergy use to ascend toward the first god. The company's fares are styled as "love offerings," and its highest tier — an audience with the god itself — is not sold at all, but extended "by invitation of the Oracle." Cult News was unable to book that one.