Reviving the violet flame: The new age conspiratorial journey of Canada’s Queen Romana Didulo

• Published in: Studies in religion Vol. 53; no. 3; pp. 366 - 389
• Main Authors: Celestini, Carmen, Amarasingam, Amarnath
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London, England SAGE Publications 01.09.2024; Canadian Corporation for Studies in Religion
• Subjects: Canada; nouveaux mouvements religieux; theosophy; new religious movements; Conspiracy theory; Théorie du complot; QAnon; théosophie; mouvement pseudo-juridique; pseudolaw movement
• ISSN: 0008-4298; 2042-0587
• DOI: 10.1177/00084298231209700

Romano Didulo, the self-proclaimed Queen of Canada, gained notoriety as an influencer online within the QAnon conspiracy movement. Taking advantage of both the pandemic and the silence of Q (the anonymous online persona behind what became the QAnon movement), Didulo has created a movement of her own. Didulo relies on a religious movement from the theosophical traditions of the 1930s and 1940s: the I AM movement, which was started by Guy Ballard and his wife Edna Anne Wheeler Ballard after Guy Ballard had a mystical encounter with Saint Germain on Mount Shasta in California. The movement’s title comes from God’s words to Moses in Exodus 3:14 – ‘I am who I am’ – and encompasses Christian dogma, occultism, eastern religions and New Age mysticism. While there is much to examine about Queen Didulo – her conspiracism, her anti-government agitation, and so on – the authors argue here that there is something at the core of all of this that has yet to be fully articulated: Didulo’s religious pedigree.