Dr. Nola Van Valer

An elderly Illuminated woman, wheelchair-bound, with white hair and bright blue eyes. During the Great Depression, she and her husband lived in San Jose, where he worked as a mechanic and she dabbled in Christian Science. As the story goes, she was one day visited by a strange man dressed in a long robe who taught her “many things.” In the wake of that visitation, she started journeying to Mount Shasta, sometimes alone, sometimes with companions. Some of these trips lasted a month or longer.

In 1963, Dr. Van Valer and a small contingent of friends and followers permanently relocated to Mount Shasta, where she founded the Radiant School of Seekers and Servers. This group eventually organized the “Friendly Letter Service,” an international esoterica correspondence ring. The formation of the Radiant School and the Friendly Letter Service were quietly encouraged by SANDMAN, which saw Dr. Van Valer’s work as a way to spread memes, influence the emerging occult underground, and monitor dangerous ontological activities.

Dr. Van Valer met Mitch when he visited Mount Shasta with Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder. She immediately recognized him as a fellow Illuminated, a “Lord of Light,” and imparted a good deal of wisdom upon him about the so-called “Ascended Masters.” In a subsequent visit, she revealed to Mitch that there is a History B artifact buried in her backyard.