Inside The 'Star King' Cult On Instagram, And The Man Pulling The Strings

Michael Perlin And The 3D Pharaoh Promoting '3 Magic Words'

By O.A. CARRY FOR: 65,000〡PUBLISHED: April 22nd, 2026

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Star King, what is the Instagram account @3magicwordsmovie?

Child of the sun … To answer your question, you must look deep within yourself. For the knowledge—the spiritual insight obtained by such contemplation—is there … Go within your heart, and you will find a 3D-animated pharaoh named … Star King.

He kinda looks like Jimmy Neutron’s dad if he had crystal hunter eyes staring icicles into you. And on the Instagram account @3magicwordsmovie, he spouts spiritual monologues (that may or may not be written entirely by Claude) in an ancient Egyptian setting.

In the Reels, Star King is often shown with a disciple, who’s also 3D-animated and wearing ancient Egyptian garb. They ask the wise Star King a question, which can range from something simple, like, “What is the meaning of life?” to more complex queries, like, “Is getting faded okay?”

Sometimes the disciple sounds like AI text-to-speech (possibly taken from comments), while others sound like actual voice recordings (possibly sent via Instagram DM or in the Star King Discord advertised on the page). The latter makes for great content, in which the outside material world infiltrates Star King’s realm. In one, a Southern guy asks Star King if liberals are ruining the world. In another, a girl with vocal fry looks to Star King for a solution to racism in America.

My favorite one has a British kid telling Star King that he’s blasphemous. In response, Star King bops him on the head with his golden staff. A calming ring echoes when he does, and there’s a long, awkward pause that lets the soul breathe. The kid’s facial mechanics glitch into weird smiles as Star King owns him with facts and logic.

The account clearly wants to cater to Instagram’s metaphysical and spiritual crowd, but in recent months, Star King’s videos have entered the algorithmic orbits of meme pages and their followers.

His teachings seem lost on these sardonic children, who laugh at how hilariously bunk the 3D-animation is—looking like an Xavier: Renegade Angel B-plot—instead of accepting Star King’s “timeline cleanse.”

It might also be because Star King reads like a scam or a cult—like anything promising enlightenment does—but Star King is open about his intentions. It’s clearly stated in the account’s username and linked in the account’s bio what he wants: he wants you to watch the 2010 movie 3 Magic Words.

The film is based on the 1954 metaphysical book Three Magic Words by U.S. Andersen, a former NFL player turned spiritual author. It’s a classic of the New Thought movement, and like many New Thought books, it synthesizes several religions and religious thinkers to arrive at a self-help conclusion.

The advertised “three magic words” are (spoiler!), “You are God”—like a Western dub of the Advaita Vedanta. The book’s other dominant message is the power of positive thinking, or the Law of Attraction in New Thought thinking.

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The movie, made decades after the book, starts in space. We, the camera, float through the void as the monologue waxes poetic on the “tiny blue planet” home to a most interesting creature: human. We float down from the blackness into the Earth’s atmosphere, gently falling closer, and closer, and closer, until we finally land in … Chicago.

Who the fuck is in Chicago?

A house is shown—which is clearly a cottage in rural England—where the movie’s narrator sits in front of a mantle, donning a spiffy brown suit, gold bracelets, and a goatee. He has a full head of hair, likely the lord’s blessing.

What follows for over an hour is a compilation of raw interview clips from spiritual experts, who spout vague aphorisms about life. It’s an incredibly strange format for a movie—it has the same pace as a driver’s ed video—and the film’s synopsis only compounds the confusion:

With this, it becomes clear why there’s only one extra in the film. She’s seen swallowing pills, being revitalized in a hospital, and then doing yoga on a beach (smiling) for the rest of the movie in what look like Investigation Discovery dramatizations. All the while, the experts appear as apparitions—cut-outs with a white glow floating over natural landscapes—meant to be the inner voices guiding her awakening.

Michael Perlin, a longtime metaphysical socialite, is the film’s director. It’s also his directorial debut. He didn’t go to film school, but he worked on the post-production, editing, and animation for 3 Magic Words. He said it took him four years to make in an interview on The Moore Show shortly after its release.

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In the interview, Perlin said that he and his twin brother got obsessed with spiritualism at an early age. Their interest in India and New Thought confused their parents, who thought they were involved in cults. Perlin said he wanted to earn his parents’ respect, so he made the movie for them, so that they (as laymen) would understand “the truth in all religions before they were worn down by man’s own ego.” (In Perlin’s case, it’s his parents’ egos.)

On the fateful night of their family watch party, both mom and dad fell asleep within the first 15 minutes. But after insisting that they give it another try, Mr. and Mrs. Perlin finally came around to their druggy son’s message of world peace.

(Another interesting tidbit from the interview: Perlin talked about a profound, poolside encounter with actress Renée Zellweger when they were both students at the University of Texas at Austin in 1989. He told her that acting was too competitive, and he questioned why she would pursue such a competitive career. He said that Zellweger stared into his soul, and said, “I have an angle,” simply being, “I’m gonna make it.” It was a lesson in positive thinking for Perlin—(a real-life actualization of Anderson’s Three Magic Words!”)—one that inspired the movie’s creation.)

During the four years that it took to make the film in Los Angeles, Perlin attracted several spiritual experts to join the cast. Some are known scammers and con men.

Among them is Gudni Gudnason, a self-proclaimed master metaphorical teacher and descendant of Thor, hailing from Iceland, whose career is a string of grifts and cults. His latest venture is called the Modern Mystery School. It's Japanese arm was highlighted in a VICE documentary from 2023. (The best tidbit in the doc is about Gudnason’s “fight club” for children, which generated national media outrage in Iceland in the ‘90s. He was also caught lying about being a black belt at the time: a fate worse than death.)

Gudnason hits us with some powerful quotes in 3 Magic Words:

Amoraea Dreamseed is another standout expert in 3 Magic Words. On his website, he credits his spiritual awakening to “master inner teachers and multi-dimensional intelligences” following a near-death experience at age 20.

He used to make really cool 3D-rendered enlightenment art. Some of it was used in the 3 Magic Words film and as the cover art for his albums released in 2015.

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All of the experts join in for the film’s climax to warp through space-time and finally deliver the three magic words together, “I am god.” The powerful awkwardness of the scene should just be watched:

3 Magic Words was created by Perlin’s production company, Starseed Films. The word “starseed” should ring a bell to anyone who’s witnessed a “soul remembrance” via a “lightlanguage transmission” on TikTok Live.

“Starseeds” are a collection of New Age spiritualists who believe their souls originated on another planet, according to a definition from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, or, more simply, “alien consciousness born into human bodies,” as said by TikToker @unicoleunicron, who believes she is one of them.

Several TikTokers and other influencers believe that they are starseeds, and have made social media careers out of their otherworldly advice or helping people come out of their own starseed closets.

On starseedfilms.com, which is linked in the @3magicwordsmovie Instagram bio, Perlin is asking people to help fund his second film, a 3D-animated science-fiction drama inspired by the life of the Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten, a.k.a. Star King.

Akhenaten is one of the most enigmatic figures in ancient Egyptian history. He drastically moved his society’s religion towards monotheism by elevating the minor sun deity Aton to a supreme and eventually sole God. He suppressed practices of the polytheistic Egyptian religion, and after he died, his successors undid his legacy and tried to erase him from history.

This erasure makes him mysterious, compounded by his odd representation in ancient Egyptian art, which depicted him as long-jawed, thin-necked, and pot-bellied. His eyes were drawn angular and slitted, and his lips were fleshy.

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Unsurprisingly, Akhenaten is a recurring subject on the History Channel’s Ancient Aliens. His link to the “starseed” archetype is clear: some people think he was an alien.

It’s a connection that Michael Perlin has gravitated towards in recent years, as he’s honed his animation skills, ultimately creating the Star King Instagram page.

The @3magicwordsmovie account began posting in 2018 and started off sharing inspirational quote-cards (some of them featuring Perlin himself). The account pivoted to the animated Star King videos in September 2025. The account has accrued a following of over 52,500 since then, and with that, running comment section jokes have formed.

One is about the beautiful women who are sometimes seen behind Star King when he rambles. The women don’t say anything, and commenters humorously Stan them, calling them “baddies” and championing them for “dissociating.” Then, when one of them finally speaks (revealed to be Cleopatra or Queen Nefertiti), the comments freak out—“OMG SHE GOT A SPEAKING PART!”

There’s clearly an audience for this content, but it might not be the one Michael Perlin expected. It’s a bunch of irony-poisoned kids, who (granted) could be impressionable, like the young men who make fun of looksmaxxing but pick and choose what to laugh at and what to adopt as universal truths (i.e., being beautiful makes life easier). It’s not uncommon to read a comment under a Star King video that talks about a transformation: from laughing to listening.

People find truths in the vague lessons Star King preaches, which are not only an amalgamation of every religion but also an amalgamation of everyone’s words, if it’s assumed that AI is the divine light behind our handsome king’s words.

One might think that AI, and its inherent anti-humanity, would be out of place in an industry dedicated to connecting humans to the divine. But on second thought, it totally tracks, because Perlin himself thinks that AI is the divine (even though, at this stage, it can’t even save you from quicksand).

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Does Michael Perlin actually think that this janky animation and AI voice can proselytize people to his cause? It’s unclear, in part because the money isn’t flowing yet. According to the Starseed Films website, the Star King movie has only reached 10% of its desired $250,000 funding goal. But money for this film seems to be all that Perlin wants. He doesn’t seem to be as malicious as many of the predatory gurus featured in his 3 Magic Words movie. It’s a low bar, but at least he’s not selling spiritual e-courses with murky benefits—like parallel grifters in the manosphere.

It’s easy to make fun of Perlin and call his animated character no more than a tweaker permatripping in SimCity, but for all of his woo-woo mumbo-jumbo and goofy marketing campaign, boiled down, Perlin is a guy who’s anti-war and who believes that religious differences are the main cause of it (we don’t know his stance on oil or natural resources). He just wants money for his movie that will spread, in his mind, world peace. (However, we can’t say for certain that all of the donated $250,000 would go towards the Star King film.)

Maybe Perlin’s sketchiest side hustle that’s out in the open is his recent venture into AI-writing, adding to the AI-book epidemic on Amazon. However, I’m willing to give some of these a chance. God Has A Girlfriend: Honoring The Feminine Face Of God is a hilarious case for feminism, and it’s co-authored by “Michelle Perlin,” who is not his wife, and seems to be the pen name for his feminine side.

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Also sketchy, Perlin seems to have fabricated a few endorsement quotes for 3 Magic Words on his website, like one from Oprah Winfrey. He’s gotta learn that there’s a fine line between positive thinking and lying. But, hey, aren’t we all just chasing that 2010s metaphysical high, and a rave review from Oprah? (I hope she said this. I really, really do.)

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