Gabriel of Urantia: 1946-2025

Death of the Cosmic Gatsby

Many words have been used to describe Gabriel of Urantia over the years — preacher, prophet, father, grifter, cult leader, con artist, "CosmoPop." On Friday, August 8th at 2:10 a.m., Gabriel of Urantia passed away at the age of 79. He was not doing well — there were difficulties related to diabetes and a 2010 kidney transplant, so in some ways this wasn’t a shock. Then again, he was a cult leader, and cult leaders don’t necessarily make it easy to know what’s going on with them health-wise, so we were all taken a little off-guard.

Gabriel of Urantia

• Gabriel of Urantia (born Anthony J. Delevin) died on August 8th, 2025

• His cult’s business model borrowed heavily from the discredited Synanon cult

• There is a succession plan in place, but as of this writing it hasn’t been addressed publicly

• Gabriel was preceded in death by his daughter Sanskrita in March of this year

• For more info, check out my book and podcast on the subject.

Gabriel was born in Pittsburgh on July 5, 1946, and would later become best known as the co-founder of the Global Community Communications Alliance, a religious cult based in Tubac, Arizona. He changed his name legally from Anthony J. Delevin to Van of Urantia in 2024. I'm half-convinced that this was done as a way to make it harder for me to conduct public records searches. And if it was, it succeeded; the folks at the coroner's office had no idea what to do when I asked them to look up his records. Was "Van" his first name? What was his middle name: “of”?

Gabriel’s trajectory reads like a masterclass in American reinvention. His father, Anthony Victor Delevin, worked in the furnaces at the J&L steel mill after serving as a Marine in World War II — not particularly “cosmic,” but honest work nonetheless. Growing up, Gabriel himself played in bands, went to the seminary for some time, got married and had his first child, Dina, who died tragically during surgery in 1977. With another wife, he started a street mission called Son Light Ministries in Tucson in 1979. After the failure of this faith community (and his second marriage), he moved back to Pittsburgh, where he recorded his first album Unicorn Love in 1985.

Following a convenient “vision” on Mount Washington, overlooking downtown Pittsburgh, Delevin reinvented himself as Gabriel, a cosmic middleman channeling celestial beings with names like Paladin and The Bright and Morning Star. He claimed to be the reincarnation of Moses, Mozart, George Washington, and basically every important figure in human history. Except, notably, Jesus Christ; sometimes even narcissists know the limits of their market.

Gabriel — more than anything, more than even a malignant narcissist — was an American success story. He understood that spiritual authority, like any other commodity, could be manufactured and sold to the highest bidder.

Tony Delevin’s split personality

Avalon Organic Gardens and EcoVillage, co-founded in Arizona in 1989 with Gabriel’s partner Niann (née Nancy) Chase, had a time-tested business model. Members surrendered their worldly possessions, worked for free, and submitted to psychological manipulation programs borrowed from the discredited Synanon cult. As the group grew, it moved from Sedona to Tubac, on the Mexican border. Around the same time, the group’s name was changed to the Global Community Communications Alliance. Members moved from relative freedom to a fenced-in ranch “compound,” complete with surveillance systems, thought policing, and the systematic isolation of followers from their families — all while maintaining the fiction of voluntary spiritual community.

Gabriel’s project attracted some media attention: a 1998 Dateline exposé, the 2011 documentary Kumaré, my podcast, and my book New Age Grifter in 2021. One notable attempt to silence his critics — a lawsuit against the Durango Herald newspaper — saw Gabriel’s church ordered to pay over $100,000 in legal fees.

Gabriel and two of his grandchildren

Perhaps the most damning indictment of Gabriel’s life wasn’t his exploitation of strangers, but his complete failure as a father to his own children. His twin daughters, Sanskrita and Sonta-An — both intelligent, thoughtful women who learned to see through his cosmic bullshit — loved him despite understanding exactly what he was. They couldn’t help themselves; he was their father. But they were also brutally realistic about the damage he inflicted on people seeking genuine spiritual community.

Here was the ultimate tragedy: Gabriel could extract love and devotion from countless followers, but he couldn’t simply be a loving father to his own daughters. His narcissism and claimed spiritual ascendancy always got in the way. When cosmic performance becomes more important than basic family relationships, you’ve lost something essential about what it means to be human.

Gabriel’s daughter Sanskrita escaped the compound in 2017, only to die tragically in a house fire this past March while listening to podcasts about recovering from narcissistic abuse. The cosmic messenger’s own child fled his “paradise” and spent her final years trying to heal from the damage he’d inflicted.

For those who escaped Gabriel’s web, his death brought only relief. Former member Laird Scott told me, when he heard the news: “I’m just relieved the shit is done. The low-level shit’s gonna continue for who knows how long, but the fucking jig is up.” Scott plans to celebrate with ”a shot of Jack Daniels,” because ”the world just became a better place.”

Another escapee, Joshua Lilly — whose mother Centria is a bigwig and will likely be running things for a while — was equally blunt: ”He lived like a coward, died like a coward. He got off way too easily.” The sentiment reflects years of pent-up rage from those who watched Gabriel monetize their faith while destroying their families.

Through sheer audacity, entrepreneurial vision, and the collaboration of some trusted elders, Anthony J. Delevin completely reinvented himself into a cosmic Gatsby. Like Fitzgerald’s character, who transformed from farm boy to mysterious millionaire through sheer force of will and elaborate reinvention, Gabriel grew up in a humble row house only to become the supreme leader of his own 185-acre desert compound, served by over 100 people (who have to be really freaking out right now). Here was someone who understood that in America, you can transform from steelworker's son to cosmic prophet simply by claiming the title and finding enough customers to believe it — a great American self-made man who built an empire from nothing but charisma, bullshit, and an acute understanding of the New Age market.

His transformation from Tony to Gabriel represents the dark genius of the American system: the recognition that there's nothing more fundamentally profitable than selling people escape from their circumstances, whether through honest opportunity or elaborate spiritual fraud. He took the classic American talent for self-reinvention and turned it into a business model, packaging cosmic transcendence for a nation perpetually hungry for transformation.

You have to admire the scale of the ambition, even as you despise the execution.

The American West is littered with the bones of failed prophets, snake oil salesmen, and cosmic hucksters who promised transcendence and delivered exploitation. Anthony Delevin was just another figure in that grand tradition, but a notable one. He understood that in America, spiritual authority is just another product to be bought and sold.

He leaves behind no lasting spiritual legacy, no profound teachings, no enlightened community — just a cautionary tale about American entrepreneurship taken to its logical extreme, and the simple human love he was never able to give his own children.