Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
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MatlxUortj 171chard H
faiths, cults, and. sects or
teerlca; from atheism to Een
Ir)dply a> Bobbs-Merrlll T1960]
6 1974
NOR SEP 1 -^
by
RICHARD R. MATHISON
First Edition
12 New 72
Thought .
1 3 The Mormons 77
16 Baha'i 104
17 Dr. Robinson and Psychiana 107
8 The Rosicrucians 11 1
1
20 California? 125
Why
21 William 136
Money
22 Madame 142
Blavatsky
23 Annie Besant, Katherine Tingley and Krishnamurti 148
24 Sister Aimee 16
25 The Mighty I Am 176
26 Vedanta: "The Perennial Philosophy" 184
27 The Self-Realization Fellowship 1 88
28 Mankind United V .
196
29 Joe Jeffers 203
30 Krishna Venta 212
THEIR IMPORTANCE,
SCOPE AND MEANING TODAY
mankind's ills but can't gain an audience with the cynical news-
papermen.
These happenings, more or less accurate, are bound to come
about. If they reach the public, they will amuse
and bemuse it
for a day.
But there will be more.
^Widows of oil company executives will achieve a state of
sit in saris in the lotus position.
super-consciousness as they
An angry atheist will commit suicide, despondent over man-
kind's refusal to be savedby doctrine of godlessnessrun-
his
12
IMPORTANCE, SCOPE AND MEANING TODAY
who are the objects of scorn, ridicule and sometimes fear
from more staid neighbors.
*-
Estimates vary today. Just how many millions of people
find spiritual refreshment within the borderline cults and fringe
sects seems to vary depending on the statistician who compiles
the figures.
v^The National Council of Churches has announced that two
thirds of the people in the
United States about 104 million in
268 recognized religious bodies follow some creed or faith
with reasonable persistence. Of these a fraction, an estimated
six to seven million, belong to the cults and sects which include
a wide variety of beliefs but have in common a recognizable
deviation from "normal" Protestantism or Catholicism. Some
fundamentalists are assured the world will end any day and
have a phrase in the Old Testament to prove it. Others are
willing to test the solidity of their faith against the bite of a
rattlesnakefStill others seek by ecstatic excitement the immedi-
ate,transforming religious experience which will give them a
glimpse of True Reality.
Reaching past the Pentecostals and those who hold in com-
mon a fundamental belief in the literal translation of Scripture,
are other mysterious and esoteric groups which blossom usually
for a time, then fade with the death of a prophet or perhaps
some quaint scandal.
So, the word itself, "cult," remains a slur, a derogatory term
in theology as the new
has always been. Yet, by definition,
"true" religion cannot be described to everyone's satisfaction.
The theologian Allport perhaps came closest with his definition
of maturity. It involves, he says, an extension of interest beyond
self, objectivity in regard to self, a coherent philosophy of life.
From such a credo of personal characteristics only "sound re-
ligion" can develop, some say. Added to this, others include a
reference to the durability of historic faith as opposed to cultish
innovations.
H> A cult itself has been variously described as "great devotion
13
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
to some person, idea or thing, especially such devotion viewed
as an intellectual fad," or, simply, as "a group of admirers."
Still another more pedantic definition claims a cult is ""that
that has deviated from
group, secular or religious or both,
what our American society considers normative forms of re-
ligion, economics or politics and
has substituted a new and
often unique view of the individual, his world and how this
5
15
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
mated eighty new churches and synagogues are being built each
week. Billy Graham's evangelistic rallies draw larger crowds
than most major football games, and Norman Vincent Peale's
in thousands of
philosophy is the foundation for daily life
homes. Religious books and recordings are best-sellers and
16
IMPORTANCE, SCOPE AND MEANING TODAY
"BIG NEWS! GUARANTEED 48-HOUR BLESSING! GOD WILL
EASE ALL ACHES AND PAINS OF LIFE! YOU CAN END YOUR PROB-
LEMS NOW! BE THEY LOVE, MONEY OR SICKNESS! ENCLOSE
SELF-ADDRESSED, STAMPED ENVELOPE AND A FIVE DOLLAR
DONATION, AND I WILL SEND YOU A GUARANTEED BLESS-
ING!"
The racketeers know, meanwhile, that they are striking at
the very heart of Protestantism, the evangelistic effort. As many
clerics explain it: Suppose the man has a message and can
17
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
and start his own church. The big buy, however, for $49.50,
made the purchaser a bishop and carried the further induce-
ment that, as a bishop, he need not report collections to anyone
and could declare that all revenue garnered was tax free.
One housewife an undercover agent for the state testified
that she bought the $30.20 certificate and was sent a booklet of
instructions in faith-healing, and her scroll.
But this, as the hearing developed, was gross extravagance.
18
IMPORTANCE, SCOPE AND MEANING TODAY
One investigator bought the same rights for $2 in Los Angeles.
A witness in this hearing suggested the method tried in Mis-
sissippi, where lawmakers hoped to stop the religious debacle
with a bill which made it a retroactive misdemeanor for the
bearer of a doctor of theology degree not to have signed it him-
self. Their logic: The hundreds of such degrees signed with a
19
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
fairgame. One operator has achieved something of a coup with
a "meditation group." He sells tracts for contemplation to his
gullible parishioners at a dollar a copy, and rents a hall each
Sunday where With proper lighting, some rented
his flock meet.
bronze statues and a few coy words about his "world-encom-
passing, non-denominational" theology, he allows them to
brood on his tracts for an hour, takes up a collection and sends
them out for another week. For this simple effort, he nets a
modest but steady $300 a week.
Many religious bunco men use twists on age-old rackets.
Typical was a bold operator who gambled $1500 in fresh one-
dollar bills, assured that the average American churchgoer was
honest and kind. Using church membership lists, he mailed out
the dollar bills along with a picture of a starving child and some
tearful literature. "It takes only this dollar to feed this child for
a week," the plea went. "Return it with a dollar of your own to
20
IMPORTANCE, SCOPE AND MEANING TODAY
age and sealed She ordered him to go throw the bundle into
it.
explained in court later, his curiosity got the better of him. Be-
fore tossing the bundle overboard he unwrapped it and peeked,
It contained a neat pile of currency-size paper.
Two con men were Midwest for soliciting
picked up in the
donations for a youth organization. One wore the turned collar
and suit of a Protestant minister, and the other, a priest's robes.
All had gone well and they had been making about $100 a day
until the Protestant minister, flushed with a minor victory, got
drunk.
The devices to raise money with fake charities are beyond
recording. Suffice it to say that one New York State legislative
committee estimated that in 1956 the state's citizens had given
away $22 million to crooked religious and charity promoters.
One nabbed operator in New York, who worked the tele-
phone list pitch, proudly demonstrated to police the fact that
people never really listen to what the con artist tells them. He
stood on a street corner and collected $ 1 5 in a half hour "to
aid the widow of the Unknown Soldier,"
21
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
Such contemporary aberrations are but passing moments,
however, in the timeless parade of the cultists.
Those eager to lure the gullible remain a fixture in all faiths
and all times. But many more are dedicated idealists, intent
only on perfecting their own uniquely devised views of God and
universe and saving man.
It allbegan when the world was green when, perhaps,
some forgotten ruler announced that the sun was God, and one
heretic walked away quietly, assured that God was the moon.
22
Chapter
24
THE CULTS OF ANTIQUITY
being cold and naked in the next plane. He called a public feast
and despite the outrage of orthodox believers ordered the
Corinthian women to throw their garments into a burning pit
so that his dead wife would receive them. The deceased wife
soon replied that she was warm and comfortable.
Plato roundly denounced such goings-on, even though other
sophisticates welcomed these events. As today, they were meat
for intellectual speculation by those bored and jaded by dull
worldly doings.
Plato was antagonistic to extra-terrestrial faddism through-
out his life, even if he did believe the results. In Laws he states
his views: "He who seems to be such a man as injures others
25
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
initiates. The cult developed into a vastly complicated system
of beliefs. But there remained St. Paul's warning that the cult
u 1
only simulation. They remain what they are. They show, when
in the company of true Christians, their new religious feelings.
They seem to swell the numbers of worshipers of Christ with
26
THE CULTS OF ANTIQUITY
27
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
gathered a following with the belief that all Holy Writ was
based on the movement of the stars.
28
THE CULTS OF ANTIQUITY
in theirodd dreams. Their old gods driven underground by
the Christian God of the rich and powerful were gnomes.
Like the serfs, they were stunted, brown and kindly, ready to
lead the peasants in revolt against the overlords. This myth of
the serfs was to be modified and used centuries later
11
by "Man-
kind United in California.
Transformation was every peasant's dream, as we can recog-
nize in the fairy stories of Cinderella and others. The old Druid-
ess of pagan times, living in a forest temple and performing
human sacrifice while devotees brought her food, became the
old witch who lived in the forest house of candy and ate chil-
dren.
The happy orgies and sexual rites of harvest time again
and again to reappear in cultic efforts which the Church said
were evil and showed carnal lust, found continuation in witch-
craft cults. For at the witches' sabbath the same joys of the
old pagan harvest festival could go on,
We must remember that even in the Middle Ages Chris-
tianity was still a new religion while the ancient deep stream of
these peasant customs was everywhere. And, not to be forgot-
ten, was other ancient lore seeping from other areas as it
does today to form new cults.
The old cabala of the Jews attracted many Christians. It
dealt with a bewildering array of magic squares, anagrams and
weird mathematics. Robert Fludd (1574-1637) was to try to
form a by reconciling the ten spheres of Aristotle with the
cult
ten Sefirots of the cabala. Still others were to devise meta-
physical systems from the cabala. It was the basis of cults which
held that only the elect could know God and the Universe and
that the ancient writings had hidden meaning, clothed in sub-
lime revelations. The trained believer could solve these riddles
and find the hidden meanings through methods handed down
through the ages.
Divination was to find its way into religious groups. Man's
29 .
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
his work" (Job 37:7), and a line from Proverbs 3:16, Long
"
left are riches and honor.
life is given in her right hand, in her
The ancient Egyptian belief that a rod placed in a temple could
opher's Stone.
The Classical Idealwas to be the roots for modern spiritual-
ism. Jansenism came into France about 1620, founded by the
Bishop of Ypres, who wrote that men could not purely love
God because of sinful influences. Starting out as a mild theo-
logical debate on the matter of heavenly grace it led to a half-
century of argument on free will between Jesuits and Jansenists.
It was still only a theological debate, however, until a Jansenist
died and some strange events near his tomb were publicized.
Hordes started arriving to be cured. It was to be the beginning
of today's modern television faith healer. Voltaire, writing of
the epoch, remarks: "There is apparently little advantage in
30
THE CULTS OF ANTIQUITY
31
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
cult of fortunetelling. D'Olivet tried to revive Pythagoras' re-
ligion and created a flurry until he was found dead at the foot
of the altar he had built to his gods.
A former artillery officer with Napoleon's army, Wronkie,
gathered followers with his theories of the secrets of the cabala;
and Charles Fourier tried to start a social reform by semi-
magical means. With her tales of visions, Madame d'Eldir be-
came the pet of wealthy Frenchmen in 1814; and a vicar at
Notre Dame, William Oegger, gathered a flock of true believers
after he told of meeting Judas Iscariot in England. The former
deacon of St. Sulpicius in Paris, bored with historic theology,
revived occult doctrines and tried with his flock to fuse science
and religion. The Baron Guldenstubbe received the illustrious
dead and told his followers of his conversations with Plato and
Caesar and of their views on current affairs.
"Nothing can be denied as long as it is not disproved," was
the battle cry down through the resounding centuries.
Cultures came and went. But man's desire to believe in the
strange and miraculous remained constant. All sought escape
from the traps of uniformity and routine.
The and oppressive prospect that the world might
cheerless
32
Chapter
33
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
faith for "something better." He is nearly always resentful of,
or even hostile to, other more orthodox religions. And he is
spiritual or worldly
which the cult
eager to taste the power
leader offers.
The journeyman cultist is often well versed in the shortcom-
of Protestant and Catholic theology. He will point them
ings
out with kind indulgence, mild contempt or actual hatred. Most
friends and relatives for his new beliefs and will not easily ad-
mit he has erred. A cult leader knows that the more incredible
near future place them above the rich and powerful. The im-
mediate destruction of the world or the second coming are par-
ticularly attractive prospects.
34
THE TRUE BELIEVER AND WHY
Paradoxically, new cults, which scorn orthodox Protestant-
ism, often draw strength from the traditional Puritan morality.
Austerity, humility and denial are counted as virtues. Most
cultsemphasize the need to leave not only conventional "vices"
but also those luxuries enjoyed by the elite, worldly sinner.
The potential cultist is emotionally hungry and usually can-
not afford expensive recreations. While conventional churches
tend to discourage emotional display and escape, most cults
deliberately plan devices to stir excitement and excessive zeal.
Many, indeed, contend that the quality of excited reaction by
the worshiper constitutes his religiosity and faith.
Cults, too, offer an answer to the craving for objectivity.
Protestantism calls for belief in the final authority of personal
experience. Catholicism is based on faith and acceptance of
the authority of the Church. Many people are incapable of
these. They mustreally participate physically, not just spirit-
They also want to have their say in formulat-
ually, in the rites.
ing theological concepts. Simple argument over the trivia of
theology is usually encouraged by cult leaders. Blind accept-
ance of historic beliefs based on authority has no part in most
cultic efforts.
Cult leaders, paradoxically, too, usually appeal to conserv-
atism. They stress the ancient and the commonplace in theology
and practice, denouncing "modernism" and science. David
Starr Jordan defined this process as "sciosophy" or "systematic
35
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
The old saw that patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel
findsmeaning in cultic activity. Eric Hoffer in his study on mass
movements, The True Believer, says: "The less justified a man
isin claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready he
is
to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race, or
his holy cause. A man is likely to mind his business when it is
worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own
meaningless affairs by minding other people's business/'
The man who has the least difficulty deceiving himself is, of
course, the most vulnerable to deception by others. There are
"good" and "bad" But conversion to any usually depends
cults.
this rebirth and attract those who feel their lives are spoiled be-
ing new roots, they often become dependent upon the cult. This
is why both recently retired spinsters and new widows are .prime
growth?
To begin, we need a set of taboos. These will draw the cult
37
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
38
THE TRUE BELIEVER AND WHY
the present is a vale of tears, the cult member looks ahead only
to the glorious future. Within the commune are pride, sorrows,
confessions in
joys and self-sacrifice. There are testimonies,
some form, a leader to direct brotherhood in the common
Cause, and active participation in the work to accomplish the
promised end.
Meanwhile, the doctrines must appeal to the "heart" rather
than the "mind." Pascal stated this general rule when he said:
u
An effective religion must be contrary to nature, to common
sense and to pleasure." A creed which calls for intellect alone
and, hence, can be understood, soon loses its power. It must
be
once again
away from him he is in trouble. For he will become
a lonely and homeless hitchhiker on the highway of eternity,
which
thumbing a ride on the first new cultic vehicle passes by.
39
Chapter
apart from the world and other men. William James in his
classic Varieties of Religious Experience explains this over-
40
UNION WITH THE ABSOLUTE
41
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
42
UNION WITH THE ABSOLUTE
stasy there is still another reason for cultic foment. One pundit
stated it with a question: "If there were no death, would there
be a God?"
Death and the fear of it is a composite. It is inescapable
and the final realism of all the dreads of life. It is, as Freud
pointed out, a kind of pattern which must be completed and
which touches every living being. It is the transition from a hu-
u
man personality to a thing." With cultists of any time it seems
to be of more outward concern and interest than with most
of mankind.
Quite obviously, all men must adjust to this destruction of
themselves in some way. In the Psalms of David we find a clear
explanation of how most people in their subconscious face this
ultimate reality. "A thousand shall fall on thy right hand and
ten thousand at thy left, but it shall not come nigh thee."
Clearly, modern man expects death death for everyone else
except himself.
This is a
change from the Middle Ages. Then death was ac-
cepted and expected by every man. Life then was really a tem-
porary vale of tears before one's "real life" began. Today, this
43
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
Book of Daniel, set 1848 as the deadline. Thousands sold
May
everything, donned and climbed to hilltops, awaiting in
sheets
the dark the midnight when Gabriel would blow his horn. They
returned, unhappily, that memorable night to try to sort out
again their hurried business transactions and the recent havoc
of earthly affairs embittered because escape had been denied.
Today, Jehovah's Witnesses still await momentarily the climax
cape, a way out. Primitive Irish, facing chaos and early death,
reacted with what we know today as the "wake," a time of re-
joicing and feasting for the individual who was gone an as-
suaging of the harrowing life they led.
Eskimos, too, reacted with such a social device. Life was
bitter, each member of the village had set chores to keep the
44
PART II
Established Cults
of Today
Chapter
47
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
inheritance of savings and theology to the next. But, by now,
the needs of the members and the world about them have
1
of it.
48
CULTS WHICH HAVE BECOME DENOMINATIONS
versalism of the gospel. Members mix freely with other sects
and denominations which their fathers or grandfathers had
scorned as sinful. "I don't happen to believe what Harry does
about a lot of things. But he's the best golfing partner in the
world," explains the third-generation member. "And, besides,
he can throw some busin6ss my way. ..."
The denomination, made up of educated, intelligent, middle-
class people, is and powerful now. Its early history has
rich
been expurgated, its more radical and uncomfortable beliefs
swept quietly under the rug. It has found its place under God's
sun.
emerges again and again in all faiths and all times. Today in
America there are various denominations of cultic origin. Since
the eighteenth century they've gone their separate ways, break-
49
Chapter
SPIRITISM
the dead body of a loved one. For its promise is eternal and
50
SPIRITISM
52
SPIRITISM
53
Chapter
SWEDENBORGIANS
54
SWEDENBORGIANS
tures and misadventures in the spirit world, as well as present
his ownpeculiar version of the Scriptures. He told of conversa-
tions with St. Paul, Luther, infidels, angels, popes and Moslems.
He rejected the doctrine of justification by faith alone as his
father, a Lutheran bishop^ had done before him, He discounted
the Trinity and claimed to have witnessed the Last Judgment
which, he wrote, actually took place in 1757.
His writings were filled with symbolism. Stones represented
truth, cities meant religious systems, snakes were evil and
houses indicated intelligence.
Man awakened in the spirit world right after death, he ex-
plained, and continued to live much as on earth. Eventually,
however, each person goes to a realm where he seems most at
home. These realms include heaven, hell and a spirit area, sim-
ilar tothe traditional Purgatory. Marriage, he wrote, continues
in the spirit world with some re-shuffling of partners. (Sweden-
and seer was well established locally before his death in 1772.
For example, neighbors were amazed when he reported in de-
tail a fire in Stockholm, three hundred miles from where he was
astounding predictions.
Despite his interest in spiritual matters, Swedenborg did not
form a sect or cult. In fact, his work created little attention in
his lifetime. A London printer and some Anglican clerics were
55
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
to arouse interest in 1783, eleven years after the prophet's
death. The "New Church" started in London
in 1787. It grew
ond, smaller body was formed. Today, there are only some
12,000 Swedenborgians in the world, of which some 6000 are
on the Atlantic seaboard.
No one was aware that the Day of Judgment had come years
before, except Swedenborg. Restless thousands were still look-
ing forward to the event. Further, they wanted a part in it. A
few decades after his death, a new movement stressing the
perennial promise of the Second Coming was once again to
sweep England and the United States the Adventists.
56
Chapter
SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTISTS
ing in 1831 that he knew the exact time between March 21,
1843, and March 21, 1844.
Hundreds gathered to hear the lively prophet Miller, and his
followers, the Millerites, gathered new disciples with threats
of the coming Day of Judgment. Solid Methodist and Baptist
57
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
nounced to the bewildered converts that there had been a
minor error in calculation. The true date was set at October 22,
1844, they explained. Now thousands prepared again for the
end of the world. They sold farms and homes, stitched gowns in
preparation for meeting their Savior and being taken into
Heaven.
On the night of October 22, some 50,000 faithful gathered
in their homemade gowns on hilltops, looking into the starlit
skies. The night passed. Dawn came. Embittered, impoverished
from goods and lands before the great
selling their earthly
event, they trudged away, denouncing Miller as a fraud and
faker, trying to rebuild their disordered lives. A year later the
unhappy prophet died.
Still a few faithful would not give up. They reopened their
58
SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTISTS
The
sect grew, adopting its present name in 1860. Today it
is a respected and powerful denomination. Its rules, many
reaching back to the rustic fundamentalism of a century ago,
are stanch.
No Adventist drinks, smokes, plays cards, dances, attends
movies or the theatre, wears costly or immodest clothing or
jewelry, or holds any lodge membership. Using coffee, tea or
pepper is discouraged and good Adventists are vegetarians. The
Sabbath is observed from sundown Friday to sundown Satur-
day. Adventists attend church most of Saturday morning and
refrain from all buying, selling or unnecessary labor. Food is
They claim that the soul sleeps unconscious after death and
59
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
that the wicked will not suffer for their sins after death, for
there no literal conscious suffering in hell. No one can be
is
60
Chapter
JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES
61
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
tween Christ and Satan is due any time. They rejected such
common Christian concepts as original sin, Christ's resurrec-
He is
president today.
Only a fraction of today's Jehovah's Witnesses can hope
to
reach heaven, for doctrine holds that the limit is 1 44,000. These
select members of the "bride's class" join in the annual spring
observance of the Lord's Supper in local Kingdom Halls. They
will attain heaven and reign with Christ. The wicked will be
annihilated. The
righteous will live on earth forever. Other re-
62
JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES
63
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
All this persecution has worn well. For the more the group
has been attacked, the more it has appealed to the downtrodden
and uneducated. And, perhaps, the sternly conventional have
a lesson to learn from the unyielding courage of this persecuted
64
Chapter
10
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE
Three days later the patient, Mary Baker Eddy, was well
enough to ask for a Bible. She turned to the passage which tells
65
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
66
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE
reading rooms.
Mary Baker Eddy was constantly attacked by critics during
her first days, and today retribution against anyone who com-
ments adversely against the Mother Church is a common oc-
currence. Foes accused her of everything from "Yankee witch-
craft" to her own brand -of spiritualism. She was attacked on a
personal level, too, because she had been married three times
and because her denomination prospered. Medical interests
were also outspoken in their condemnation.
Yet, the cult thrived. It became a vast denomination. Today,
no exact estimate can be made of membership because the
Church has a taboo against such statistics. There are, however,
more than 3,100 branches in the United States alone.
Its greatest growth has been in urban areas, with women of
67
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
middle age seemingly forming about seventy-five per cent of
the membership. Members tend to be better educated and
wealthier than the general population and certainly more so
than most cultic groups.
There are certain paradoxes which confuse the observer. For
example, Christian Science is not opposed to dentistry, glasses,
bone-setting, obstetrics or other such mechanical medical aids.
Yet it opposes fluoridation, compulsory vaccination, x-rays.
No marriages, which Mrs. Eddy termed "realized lust," are
performed in the churches. Members are asked to overcome
their "depraved appetite" for alcohol, tobacco, coffee and tea.
There is no baptism, and the Church rejects the Trinity, a per-
sonal God, the devil, atonement, the Resurrection, heaven and
hell.
68
Chapter
11
UNITY
preachments.
But the Fillmores soon found that they had ideas of their
own and the authoritarian nature of the Eddy movement
rubbed them. They found their own group, dubbing it Unity,
By 1889 it was a thriving enterprise. They used the mails as
their pulpit and unlike Mrs. Eddy's practitioners charged
nothing. Their cause was different in a number of respects. Un-
like Christian Science they claimed that sickness and death
were real, but added that both could be overcome by mind.
Chief doctrines included the views that God is a "Principle,"
69
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
that the Trinity means "The Father is the Principle" and that
the Son is the Principle "revealed in a creative plan." The Holy
70
UNITY
71
Chapter
12
NEW THOUGHT
72
NEW THOUGHT
refer to all this as "the health, wealth and success game."
Branches of the movement do, however, have certain common
characteristics, best summed up in the simple idea: "keep a
happy thought." The New Thought sects all proclaim the im-
mediate availability of God, and hold that there is a conscious,
simple and practical way to apply spiritual thought to all
human problems. They hold that it is inevitable that good will
come to every human soul and that through the stream of con-
sciousness each human personality will survive forever. There
is also common belief in the constant, external
expansion of the
individual life in this
do-it-yourself metaphysical movement.
Traditionalists quarrel with many of New Thought's prom-
ises. Preoccupation with one's self as the ultimate value is
73
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
74
NEW THOUGHT
Warren F. Evans, continued to try to heal by the Quimby
method. And a Julius Dresser, who had gone to California after
being healed by Quimby, returned to New England in 1 882 and
promoted the Quimby dogma, engaging in violent controversy
with Christian Scientists over the hypnotist's influence on Mrs.
Eddy.
then, Quimby 's fans were claiming
By that his doctrines
were much more than a treatment method. Indeed, they made
up a whole philosophy of positive idealism. Followers started
to apply the Quimby concepts to traditional Christianity.
Within a few decades the movement had spread to England and
Europe and, by 1916, followers gathered to write a "Declara-
tion of Purpose." It stated the mission of New Thought: "To
teach the infinitude of the Supreme One, the Divinity of Man
and through the creative power of con-
his infinite possibilities
structive thinking and obedience to the voice of the Indwelling
Presence which is our Source of Inspiration, Power, Health and
Prosperity."
Today, New Thought is metaphysical, though in a strictly
"philosophical sense," leaders say, distinct from orthodox
Christianity in that does not believe in the Trinity. Also, un-
it
like Christian Science, it does not deny the reality of the ma-
terial world. Rather, it declares, "the physical world is Mind
in Form."
God is good, and evil is "a term used to imply the opposite
of good." It is "not a thing in itself but an absence of what is
75
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
time."
76
Chapter
13
THE MORMONS
77
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
Smith with
appeared then, Urim and Thummim, and presented
a pair of magic spectacles.
He could understand the writing now. But, alas, young
Smith could not write. He called on friends to help. They came
to the historic spot and while Smith hidden from sight behind
a blanket which masked the plates translated, they took notes
of what was to become the fabulous document The Book of
Mormon. It told the history of the original inhabitants of North
America.
North and South America had been peopled by Jews from
600 B.C. to A.D. 421, the Smith revelation explained. Two
nations, the Lamanites and Nephites, emerged. (Cotton
Mather, Roger Smith and William Penn had likewise specu-
lated whether the Indians were not the lost tribes of Israel
78
THE MORMONS
1836.
And now? The persecuted, valiant band of Saints waited.
80
THE MORMONS
forty-fifth state.
people grow up, live, marry and die within the programs and
rituals of the Church, and are content to know nothing else.
It is, as we shall see, one of the few cultic efforts which has
found roots and grown and fulfilled the dream of its founders.
The pious, industrious and zealous followers have only a
few faults today. One of them is
a furious contempt for crackpot
heretics who emerge with wild talk about visions and the like.
82
PART III
Cultism in
America
Chapter
14
86
THE AMERICAN TRADITION
87
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
He that
concepts. taught a system of reincarnation, claiming
man could achieve final, eternal life only through a series of re-
be no more death."
Of course, with such revolutionary concepts, Teed was
bound to have enemies. There were whispers that the three
women who rode with him in his fine auto were really all con-
cubines, and one critic even claimed he was a "braggart, fanatic
88
THE AMERICAN TRADITION
89
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
1200 A.D.) "their subconscious selves come to the surface just
as in psychoanalysis." She teaches, also alchemy and astrologi-
cal symbolism to some 1200 students on five continents.
Still another group in Los Angeles claims special knowledge.
The trueGarden of Eden was on Mu, which existed between
75,000 and 25,000 years ago, before it was inundated by the
Pacific Ocean. The church for this organization was started in
1946 when "the spiritual vibrations were favorable," says the
leader, the Reverend Howard John Zitko; and Los Angeles
was selected as headquarters because "it will be the birthplace
of a new race of mankind." Zitko became aware of the lost con-
tinents of Atlantis and Mu, he explains, through a previous in-
carnation. "I was born with the memory of them," he says.
Mu, older than Atlantis, had a population of several million
who came from the planet Venus. The inhabitants were blue-
skinned, he adds. When a volcanic upheaval destroyed Mu,
some inhabitants escaped to Atlantis and others to Asia. The
Atlantians were red-skinned, he goes on, and were ancestors of
the American Indian. Atlantis had airships, atomic energy,
autos and television. Zitko knows, he says, because he was a
"television personality" on Atlantis in a past life. When man
has achieved perfection (in the manner of Jesus Christ) a divine
,
90
THE AMERICAN TRADITION
the Civil War by Dr. John Thomas, thrives. First known as the
Brothers of Christ, this cult claims it alone has a true transla-
tion of the Scriptures. Followers reject the Trinity, believe in a
literal devil and in pre-millennialism and refuse to take part in
elections or hold civic office.
Another small sect, the Church of God, the Seventh Day,
observes Saturday as the Sabbath, abstains from pork and rec-
ognizes Jerusalem as the official headquarters. The Church of
Light, founded in Los Angeles, has 210 lessons which teach
"the religion of the stars." England offered still another unique
sect to the United States in 1916; the Liberal Catholic Church
of America. It claims to be neither Roman Catholic nor Prot-
estant and tracesorder of apostolic succession back to the
its
They inhabit the atmosphere all around us, watch our faces,
hear every word we say, know and
everything we have said
done since we were born.
"Who they are and whence they come no one knows, but the
Scriptures prove that demons are intelligent beings who recog-
nize Jesus Christ as the Son of God," Duncan says. "They have
power of speech. They use intelligent language. They have
sensibilities of fear, they have need of rest. They have strength.
91
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
There are all kinds
to convulse a person.
They have the power
of Spirits Jealousy, Hate, Lying and many others! These
demonic spirits are projecting their evil power to the world of
men and their affairs. Vast multitudes are becoming demon
possessed!"
in high places com-
Duncan says that this explains why men
mit suicide. These spirits also sometimes identify themselves
as a human being or say they are from outer space. Doc-
living
and are having hallucina-
tors psychiatrists tell patients they
tions, Duncan says. They try to explain these demon spirits in
medical should recognize them for what they
phraseology. They
are.
Duncan claims to have held extended conversation with evil
reach persons through any vibration even on
spirits. Demons
a telephone dial tone, Duncan explains. He claims to have
cured at least thirteen persons who were "infected by demons."
In Los Angeles there are other demonical analysts who will
analyze a particular demon infesting a person
and sell the
patient the magic formula to rid himself
of the demon.
The Dukhobors, who migrated to Canada from Russia about
1900, also make periodic headlines. After settling in Saskatche-
92
THE AMERICAN TRADITION
permits seeing both the past and the future." The lessons allow
one to learn how to "review your experiences on earth centuries
ago" and "removes all fear of so-called 'death' by showing you
proof of Eternal Existence."
93
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
In these, and scores of obscure groups like them, the search
for the godhead goes on.
94
Chapter
15
KING JAMES I
ONE
bright morning in May 1851, a strange
sight greeted fishermen near the Beaver Islands on the main
steamship route between Lake Huron and Lake Michigan.
As a steamer with flags flying made its way toward the main
island a crowd stood on the shore cheering wildly. On the deck
of the boat was a gnome-like figure in a flowing red robe with
a cotton collar spread over his shoulders in crude imitation of
the ceremonial vestments of a Catholic cardinal.
little man with the massive head, ruddy complexion and
The
long red hair and beard waved merrily, bobbing his towering
forehead to the cries of excitement. His penetrating, blue eyes
in deep sockets, however, were studying other things: the prog-
ress in building along the shore of Paradise Bay since he had
96
KING JAMES I
cluding prophets.
Within a week after being baptized, Strang was named an
elder. He returned to Wisconsin with the duty of finding a
97
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
As soon as the news reached him, Strang stepped forward.
He had been months, but now he announced
in the sect only five
that he was to inherit the Smith mantle.
Others questioned him. He was ready. A
Divine Messenger
"accompanied by a numerous heavenly train" had appeared at
the very moment Smith had been murdered, Strang said, and
anointed him with oil and told him of his mission. He had been
strolling in a Wisconsin field at the time, he added. Associates
were startled, as it had taken twelve days for news of the mur-
der to reach them and Strang had kept his secret of the heav-
enly meeting until the news came by earthly means. But Strang
produced 507 words that the heavenly host had addressed to
him, then moved on to claim his place in Nauvoo.
Strang had been an apt pupil of the group's history. It was es-
tablished that only Smith in touch with the heavens could
name his successor. Strang showed skeptics a letter, dated eight
days before Smith's death and purportedly written by the dead
founder, which named his successor and told him to "gather
the people" and start a new stake in Wisconsin. The city, the
"Garden of Peace," was to be named Vorhee.
Brigham Young and the twelve Mormon apostles listened
to Strang's story, then rejected it.
They said, further, that he
was a gross imposter and They ordered him
his letter a forgery.
98
KING JAMES I
tatorship.
He organized a secret society, "The Halcyon Order of the
Illuminati," and named himself as "Imperial Primate." Below
him were "Chevaliers, Earls, Marshals and Cardinals."
On New Year's Day, 1847, he invited 130 of the devoted to
a banquet. was a ludicrous sight. But, with Strang's hypnotic
It
100
KING JAMES I
mediately.
Within a few months, Strang was touring the East with
"Charlie," a "male secretary," who was amazingly full chested.
In Baltimore an outspoken matron accused the red-bearded
prophet of having a disguised wench in tow.
The massive head nodded politely as the charge was made.
"If you are so sure, madam," he said with a sly grin, "I'm
sure you'll be ready to accept Charlie as a bed partner tonight!"
On his return with his concubine, Strang broke the news of
the plates to his followers. He said he'd been on a divine honey-
moon to test the truth of it all before telling them. He added,
further, that the plates had announced that he should be pro-
claimed King, fitting ceremony included.
In a scarlet robe with a crimson cord and a crown made of
metal with clusters of glass stars, Strang was properly crowned.
The prime minister, a former actor, wore tights and doublet and
a tin sword graced his left hip. Some four hundred subjects
bowed low as the coronation rites were completed.
Now he announced more about the new plates. Girls were
ready for intercourse at fourteen; boys at sixteen. Marriage
was recommended, but betrothal was enough for reasonable
bed play.
101
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
Some thought this was morality which was
immoral. Yet it
Strang and his evil ilk who had stopped the Indians from
buying whiskey on the Beaver Islands out of the way. Strang
decided to plead his case at a higher tribunal. He went to the
Michigan legislature and argued his right to live as he saw fit.
More violence, incidents and political intrigues began to de-
velop each month. Strang, as escape, took another wife, then
still another, a seventeen-year-old, to amuse himself in the
growing tension.
His wives' most ardent efforts could not ease his worries. He
became a nervous martinet and started issuing more angry
edicts.
He decided that his boyhood hero, Rousseau, should be
given more thought, and started calling for naturalness. He
ordered the women not to wear any "form of dress which
pinches or compresses the body or limbs." Further, he said,
therewould be no more hoop skirts, bell-crowned hats or puffed
sleeves.
Then he made the fateful error of attacking every woman's
cultists took off for the mainland. Soon a drunken mob of Gen-
tiles with torches were bound for Mackinac.
Lake boats arrived to evacuate the 2500 cultists before the
mob arrived.
The leader lay paralyzed and dying. He watched as the
looters and invaders burned his colony and destroyed all that
had once been his mighty kingdom.
He hung on until there was nothing left. Then, on July 8,
1856, his work destroyed, his followers gone, his finish com-
plete, he died.
It was six years to the day since he had been crowned King
103
Chapter
16
BAHA'I
lieve in the good and true and beautiful? Then why? Why only
3000 faithful?
104
BAHA'I
105
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
"Ye are the fruits of one tree and the leaves of one branch.
Yield ye one with another with utmost love and harmony. So
powerful is the light of unity that it can illuminate the whole
earth!"
He and his followers were soon imprisoned again; first in
Constantinople, finally in Akka. Then in 1870 he was freed,
but to live as a prisoner in a comfortable apartment within the
prison Here he died in
city. 1892.
Other were to follow. In 1912, Abdu'l Baha, son
disciples
of BahaVllah, arrived in the United States with servants, sec-
retaries and devotees. He was sixty-four, a man with sorrowful
in this Baha'i is more truly the religion of peace than any other."
106
Chapter
17
107
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
hated me until I started taking your lessons. Now I am the most
popular girl in town ..."
So the happy confessions came, 1300 letters a day when
Psychiana was at its zenith. Meanwhile, hundreds of ads in
cheap detective and adventure magazines, in science fiction
and astrology publications, brought more of the frustrated
and lonely to the correspondence-school cult, lured by the now
famous boast, "I talked with God!" More than one million
people subscribed during the nearly two decades that Psychiana
thrived.
"Doc" Robinson, a drugstore clerk, began his unique effort
in 1929 in the little university town of Moscow, Idaho. As he
explained it all later, the idea for his first advertisement was the
natural culmination of a life of despair and failure until he
talked with God.
Robinson was born in 1886 and grew up in Canada. He had
held a variety of jobs and attended a Bible training school. But,
he recalled, rum had ruined his life. He tried once to save him-
self by playing a bass drum in the Salvation Army. Then, one
it
by any wordsin any language; they are spiritual moments and
108
DR. ROBINSON AND PSYCHIANA
saw the road I was to travel. I saw the home we now live in ...
It was undescribable. Let me just try to describe it by saying
the spirit of the Infinite God spoke to me. All I could do was lie
there and shout, 'Glory to God! Glory to God in the highest!'
And I did shout. The tears rolled down my cheeks, for God had
at last revealed himself to me, and had done it through methods
right."
Since, there have been scores of attempts to found other mail-
order cults. But none has ever touched the heartstrings and
pursestrings of the people like Psychiana. It was, just as its
110
Chapter
18
THE ROSICRUCIANS
magic figure of seven rules all things. In the desire world like
all other worlds there are seven subdivisions, called "regions."
The concepts of Rosicrucianism reach back into unrecorded
history, devotees will explain. Plato was an initiate and ex-
pressed, in writing, the doctrine that "the world soul is
crucified."
Rosicrucian doctrine also reaches into a misty occultism
which explains that the cross is symbolic of the "life currents"
which vitalize plant, animal and man. The cross represents
man's past evolution, present state and future aspirations, they
explain. Hence, it should not be interpreted as a symbol for
suffering and "shame" the conventional Christian standards.
The Rosicrucian symbol is the cross and star against a gar-
land of roses at the center. It once stood alone, without roses,
they'll explain. This was in early Atlantis. Even before, in the
Lemiirian epic, when man had only dense, vital and desirable
bodies, the upper limb of the cross was lacking. Man's constitu-
tion then was symbolized by "Ta," because it lacked mind and
was animal alone. There was, in a dim, forgotten era, the hyper-
borean time when the cross was a single shaft and man lacked
even the desire body.
112
THE ROSICRUCIANS
113
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
Moon Period,ordinary human beings have now become angels.
The fabulous lore of today's Rosicrucians reaches back to
the alchemistand physician, Paracelsus, who had predicted in
the mid-1500's that the world was soon to be reformed. Intel-
lectuals would take over, he explained. The magi waited. From
where would come the action which would lead to the world's
sages being united in common cause? Secret societies were
formed to discuss such things as the meaning of the Reforma-
tion, the transmutation of metals, the significance of the comet
of 1572.
Then, in 1614, a mysterious tract appeared, "The Reforma-
tion of the World." Apollo was the anonymous spokesman. To-
All wanted to learn the secret lore. All wanted to make gold.
A second pamphlet was published by the anonymous Brothers
of the secret cult. It was a warning not to hope for too much.
It went on to attack the Pope, Islam, philosophy. It boasted,
114
THE ROSICRUCIANS
115
Chapter
19
THE ATHEISTS
116
THE ATHEISTS
"For so-called Sacred History, we shall take the Bible (King
James Version), the paper idol of Christianity's millions. In the
third chapter of the Book of Genesis, we are told that Adam
and Eve were told to eat of the fruit of every tree except the
tree of knowledge, with death threatened as the penalty for dis-
obedience. Adam KNEW of God from personal conversation
with him, but proceeded to eat of the forbidden fruit. Belief in,
even personal contact with God, did not keep Cain from mur-
dering his brother, Abel, and arguing about it with God after-
wards.
"In Chapter 6, verses 1 and 2,we are told that the sons of
God saw that the daughters of men were fair, and took unto
themselves wives of flesh and blood. I can't say that I blame
nymentalists will not say that only eight people of that day
believed in, and worshiped the Ruler of the Universe. Methu-
selah was well acquainted with Adam, and must have passed his
information on to Lamech, the father of Noah. Since the ani-
mals had done nothing to merit their destruction, it is hard to
conceive a reason for God's action, except on the supposition
that the sin of one was the sin of all.
"When the late Adolf Hitler exterminated the inhabitants
of Lidice he was execrated by the civilized world, simply be-
cause he failed to differentiate between the guilty and the in-
nocent. Can man be more just than God?
"In Chapter 12 we see one of God's favorites (Abraham)
acting a little distrustful of God's promises.
'. Therefore it
. .
shall come to pass, when the Egyptians shall see thee, and they
117
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
shall say, This is his wife: they will kill me, but they will save
thee alive. Say, I pray thee, thou art my sister, that it may be
well with me for thy sake, and my soul shall live because of
thee (Gen. 12:8-18) ... He was willing to do anything, no
matter how infamous, if only he could save his own God-fearing
"
life.'
118
THE ATHEISTS
conscience of a crocodile. Cesare Borgia was not an Atheist,
but a good believer in God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Virgin.
It is said of him that before giving his victims a dagger in the
back or an aqua fortis highball he went to confession and re-
ceived holy communion. To say that those days were rough
and ready is to admit that the 'Glad tidings of great Joy' did
very little to the conscience of the master spirits of the time.
"Are things any different today? The many warring creeds
are like so many signboards, each pointing in a different direc-
tion each claiming to be the one repository of the true will
of the true God all united on only one tenet of the many in-
of those who rise above the common herd, and are not born
master They shrink from courting social ostracism,
spirits.
119
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
thrust into the water, and brought up a wriggling fish. 'I can see
God's providence so far as the crane is concerned,' said the
boy. 'But isn't it a tough on the fish?'
little
120
THE ATHEISTS
which the laity might glean a modicum of truth, let the state-
ment go unchallenged, or the newspapers dared not offend the
Hierarchy.
"That conspiracy of silence is worse than any direct censor-
ship such as is exercised by the Russian leaders. It lulls the
uninformed into a state of unresisting acquiescence, and the
many from which he has suffered in the past, are not the
ills
121
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
of progress and enlightenment. Odin no longer marshals his
122
PART IV
California:
Mecca for Cultists
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
But is because its winters are mild, thus luring the pale
this
people of thought to its sunny days, within which man can give
himself over to meditation without being compelled to inter-
rupt himself in this or that interesting occupation to put on his
overcoat or keep the fire going."
A variety of other pundits have had oversimplifications to
explain the phenomena. Julia M. Sloane, a visitor, wrote in
1925 that the city was "full of people with queer quirks. I
127
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
128
WHY CALIFORNIA?
129
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
saw the war fever as a natural foe and fought desperately to
church.
Emphasis is heavy on "the underlying truth to be found in
the study of all religions and faiths/' One old-time professional
cultist,looking back wistfully to his heyday when amazing
revelations were the vogue, views this latest trend with alarm.
theory. Most are not sects which have splintered off from some
established faith. They are original in theology and philosophy.
Asurvey made last year in ten communities in the Los An-
geles area showed the summation of these scattered groups is
amazing. It was found that ten per cent of the population (in
each community) by their own admission belonged to a group
which could formally be classified as a cult.
In the vast lexicon of beliefs, these cults have ranged from
the sublime to the ridiculous.The world headquarters of the
American Association for the Advancement of Atheism had its
beginnings here. So did the Agabag Occult Church where the
130
WHY CALIFORNIA?
131
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
are no rules, no degrees, no diplomas," one of his followers
explains. "Life is a school and we are always learning."
One-man cults sometimes emerge. A Navy veteran named
Addison Broan launched one a few years ago. This thirty-year-
old cultist wrapped himself in a sheet, changed his name to
John Believer and staged a hunger strike before a Los Angeles
newspaper building. It was the opening effort in his campaign
to become the first president of the earth in a taxless society.
He called his religion, "Believerism" or "Balanced Life." His
political party, allied to the theology,
he dubbed the "World
Is Somebody."
Security Party" with the slogan, "Everybody
Soon after, he started out on a round-the-world tour which is
to end 1965 when the "united professions of the world
in will
he's
congregate to elect the first world government." Recently,
become affiliatedwith various theologians of flying-saucer per-
suasion who are busily associating Biblical happenings with the
flying-saucer sightings.
stout
Superet Light is still another cult established by small,
Dr. Josephine De Croix Trust. She preaches the "Atomic Re-
minds and feelings of heart so they could not be used for light
132
WHY CALIFORNIA?
or to become lovers for God, only sex lovers for their body's
lust."
Mother Trust has flourished. Some two hundred attend her
Holy Superet Light Church in Los Angeles and she claims
75,000 membership. Her followers try to eliminate "black
atoms" from their auras. This is accomplished at Tuesday night
"aura classes" where students learn to make their own aura
charts, how to earn the Superet Star and how to develop the
133
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
134
WHY CALIFORNIA?
Perhaps it is
fitting that California's first cultist was a howling
heretic whose singular dream was to banish Catholicism from
the earth forever.
135
Chapter
21
WILLIAM MONEY
136
WILLIAM MONEY
His first tasks in his new home were the chores. The City
Council hired him to repair the Plaza Church, focal center of
life in the pueblo. Records show he was paid $126 for the
work.
But menial labor was not for a famous healer and preacher.
Money was soon bragging of his knowledge of medicine, theol-
ogy, astrology, history and economics. Also, he was vociferous
in condemning all doctors in town and being cruelly outspoken
in criticizing the doctrines and beliefs of the powerful Catholic
137
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
as those of generations of cultists to come. But he did have
color. He announced, for example, that he would be able to
rise from the grave. He made this bold boast in many of the
cantinas when heavy with At last some drunken cronies
tequila.
picked up the "Bishop" and took him to the graveyard
to put
him to the test. They had him in a coffin and were shoveling on
the dirt before he finally howled, "For the love of God, let me
out!"
In 1847, American forces were attacking Los Angeles. With
a few possessions and livestock Money and his wife fled in panic
toward the Mexican border. They ran directly into a force of
United States dragoons.
His threats of God's vengeance went unheeded. Money and
his wife returned to Los Angeles. The Money ire was up, how-
ever, and, since he could not strike down the United States
138
WILLIAM MONEY
davits including one which he claimed to be from John Fre-
mont attesting the value of his losses at a minimum of a quar-
ter of a million dollars. He was never paid.
139
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
and priests alike. He retaliated with a bitter personal attack on a
general.
In the panic which followed, the Star announced it was
finished with printing remarks by "Bishop" Money.
It loses its heat and drifts off in two currents tabbed the "Kuro"
and "Siwo" and pours back to the North Pole to repeat the
process.
The eccentric finally saved enough money to build a
little
140
WILLIAM MONEY
The little eccentric was dead. Above his head hung an image
of the Blessed Virgin a gift he'd acquired from his much-
maligned benefactors, the padres, for his odd jobs. At his
feet
141
Chapter
22
MADAME BLAVATSKY
142
MADAME BLAVATSKY
the Sudan and, while there, translated Darwin's writings into
Russian.
Later, with another reporter, she substituted India for Africa
as the locale and added a trip to Tibet.
In 1858, she was converted to spiritualism in Paris. Shortly
after, she went back to Russia to exhibit the new fad, spirit-
143
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
seat of mystic wonders. She and Olcott arrived in Bombay in
1879 and sought out an Indian mystic, Dayananda Saraswati.
Within days they were denouncing the Hindu as a humbug and
he was calling them frauds.
The Madame started writing travel articles for income but
soon had gathered some adherents to her cause of theosophy.
She established a group in Ceylon and settled at the world head-
quarters at Adyar, a suburb of Madras, in a bungalow with an
occult room and shrine.
In the occult room she began receiving messages from two
Tibetan Mahatmas by astral telegraph. One such message from
these wondrous figures proved to be a spiritualist lecture given
in America some time before. This scandal led to mass resigna-
tions from the London branch. In 1884, the Madame and
Olcott hurried to Europe to try to stop the exodus. But now
another foe, the Madame's secretary in India, saw her chance
to strike. She circulated stories of wholesale frauds by the
Madame. The harassed lady and her partner hurried back to
India to stop the havoc. An investigator for the British Society
of Psychic Research came too. His study verified the secretary's
144
MADAME BLAVATSKY
and edit. Before her death in 1891, she was once again the
recognized head of a great religious movement. Although an
eccentric without doubt, she like many cult leaders before
and since advocated the highest ideals. With only a basic
knowledge of Oriental philosophy, she was able to appeal to
the childish love of magic and mystery. Like any fanatical cult
leader, she was able to hypnotize herself and believe whatever
she wanted to believe, and in the doing make the mob believe.
She was admired and venerated almost to the stage of idolatry
at the time of her death, despite the years of vicious attack and
scandal.
The accumulation of theosophic lore (based on the mys-
terious Mahatmas who had, as Adepts, reached a state of spir-
itual development where the body had become the controllable
from the simple basic thesis: "A man is born into a world he
has made."
To theosophists Heaven is a state of mental bliss, and hell
does not Theosophists favor both celibacy and vegetari-
exist.
anism, although they do not demand it. Christ is, like Buddha,
Confucius and Pythagoras, simply a great teacher.
Christian theologians scorn it as pantheistic that God is
145
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
The average theosophical "monad" goes through some eight
hundred incarnations and when a man dies he goes to devachan
where he rests until the urge arises in him to return to earth
again in a new body to work out his Karma. Potentially, every
man is a Christ and all will, someday, be a Christ.
Theosophists claim their cult is
inclusively a science, re-
ligion and philosophy. The proper history of man began
eighteen million years ago. Theosophists have published maps
showing the world aswas 800,000 years ago and 11,500
it
147
Chapter
23
148
BESANT, TINGLEY, KRISHNAMURTI
149
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
drifted into theosophy, inherited the crown of the Judge fac-
America.
tion in
She promptly claimed queenship and announced she was the
"Purple Mother" prophesied in theosophical writings. As
founder of the Point Loma Theosophical Community in San
Diego, she was to prove as indomitable as Annie and twice as
articulate.
The Community soon attracted scores of wealthy theoso-
phists. Starting with forty acres, she acquired 330 acres. Here,
on the tip of the most southwesterly point of the United States,
a citadel to escape the sadness and turmoil of the world began
to take shape.
The first building was a home for a caretaker. Next came a
sanitarium. Katherine was everywhere; overseeing construc-
tion; luring new members with tours; directing planting of the
firs and eucalyptus which was to make The Homestead, as it
was known, "the garden spot of all the world in physical beauty,
intelligence and spiritual wealth."
There were some forty buildings of "New Egyptian archi-
tecture*' including The Homestead with its ninety rooms and
ISO
BESANT, TINGLEY, KRISHNAMURTI
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FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
In Los Angeles, General Harrison Gray Otis, publisher of
the Times, prime organ of boosterism, fumed at the goings-on.
After all, his vision of California had nothing to do with crack-
pot cults.
Summed up, it was rather a picture which was to be sold to
America: orange blossoms against a backdrop of snowy moun-
tain peaks on a summer day. The reputation of The Homestead
152
BESANT, TINGLEY, KRISHNAMURTI
visited it and tried to unravel its significance but gave up in
despair.
Meanwhile, the cult of New Thought, using some of theos-
ophy's tenets, was blossoming. It had started as "The Boston
Craze" but had moved West accumulating lore on vegetarian-
ism, faith healing and mysticism as it burgeoned with new dis-
ciples. It was by now a tense and bitter battleground as prophet
denounced prophet in the fight for a flock. In the staid Presby-
terian and Methodist churches the pastors could only plead
with parishioners not to be swept into the maelstrom of theolog-
ical chaos. But their sermons were pretty dull fare
against the
thrills and adventures in the unknown offered
by the cultists.
Crisis was inevitable. The battle lines were drawn. Katherine
Tingley explained that she had not selected Point Loma for her
Utopian colony by accident. Indeed, the famed General John
C. Fremont had told her of it, she said, and when he had de-
scribed it she knew that this was the place, "The Golden Land
of the West," which she had seen visions of as a child in her
dreams. Sure enough, when she first saw it, she told rapt listen-
ers, it was the exact place she had dreamed of years before.
Now ominous sounds began to emanate from Europe. Annie
spoke of California as a "remarkable land," the likes of which
were uncomparable in the rest of the world. When a German
newspaper sneered at the fulsome praise, the Times, with a
154
BESANT, TINGLEY, KRISHNAMURTI
human form of the new type, he does not cease to exercise all
the functions of the World Master." He was, she said, like a
series of other World Masters who had come to the world from
time to time. Christ, she added, had lived in the body of one of
his disciples, just as the Gnostics had explained centuries ago.
If the explanation was a bit murky, the facts were clear.
Annie, had called on
after receiving the inspirational message,
Krishnamurti's father, Hindu civil servant,
a who had agreed to
allow Annie to adopt Krishna and his brother. No sooner was
this done, she said, than the father had discovered that the boys,
according to Hindu caste system, were automatically outcasts
and had sued for their return. But her guardianship was con-
firmed and she'd fled to England. As a child, she went on,
Krishna had written the document At the Feet of the Master,
which obviously had been dictated to him by the Master in
the Himalayas, as no youth could pen so complicated a theolog-
ical work.
And now the jigsaw puzzle fell in place rapidly as Krishna
started speaking before theosophy groups. Annie announced
155
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
nounced the popular idea that he was here to save the world
as "rubbish." He was twenty-nine by now, with coal black hair,
phists that his personality kept changing and that Christ had
told Annie he would be a "vehicle," with the Great Master using
his voice. "Ido not wish to be thought eccentric," he said, how-
ever. "I can no more explain the tenanting of my body by the
Great Teacher than an artist can explain what he feels or the
poet the inward ecstasy of purpose it is like a dream. ..."
He addressed the Chicago advertising club of the American
Legion, an obvious bit of wry humor by his booking agent. But
he captivated the boys with his wit and charm. When a local
booster asked what he thought of the city he told them that "the
streets arealmost as bad as New York." The meeting ended
with the boys singing "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow."
Annie was at the same time telling Chicago ladies that the
young prophet did not use alcohol, tobacco, or meat, and was
a declared celibate. Of
course, she spoke again of the superior
race being bred in California.
The 10,000 avowed American followers of the Order of the
Star, Annie's group, with 100,000 members in the world, were
at every way station during the great tour. The old lady spoke
with awe of Krishna's mission. He was, she said, "the spirit of
the Great Teacher which had touched Jesus, Prince Siddhartha
of India and Thoth of Egypt and Zoroaster of Persia ." . .
157
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
{Catherine Tingley was fighting back. In New York, shortly
after Krishnamurti had passed through, she called a press con-
ference. Her subject was her old foe, Annie. "Krishnamurti is
a fine chap who has been hypnotized by Mrs. Annie Besant,"
she announced, "and is really an unwilling follower." She was
as Annie. As
seventy-four by now, but still as ready for a fight
head of the Universal Brotherhood and Theosophical Society,
the true inheritors of the Blavatsky concept, she told reporters
that "Krishnamurti is conscious of feeling he is not up to the
mark Mrs. Besant has set for him and would like to be excused."
As for Annie,she dismissed her as a plain crank "commercializ-
the mouthpiece of
ing theosophy by utilizing Krishnamurti as
God."
Annie didn't dignify the Tingley barbs with a reply. With
Krishnamurti in tow she was getting lavish space in public
prints singing the glories of California, the super
race and the
159
Chapter
24
SISTER AIMEE
160
SISTER AIMEE
Beating her way home with the help of a little money cabled
by her mother, she moped around New York, helping in mis-
sions and Pentecostal churches, on the verge of starvation often.
She finally married a wholesale grocery clerk by the name of
Harold S. McPherson. This marriage was hopeless from the
start: Aimee vaguely wanted to preach, to get up before an
audience and shine, to live dramatically as she had with hell's-
fire-and-thunder preacher Semple. McPherson simply wanted
a quiet, inconspicious home. A son, Rolf Kennedy McPherson,
was born. Aimee left soon after and went home to her parents
in Canada.
Re-entering the Pentecostal fold, she was invited to hold a
revival in a nearby little town, Mount Forest, Ontario. Within
aweek she had the town on fire with religious fervor. Her appeal
was bucolic and hearty. She was vigorous and bristling with
energy, a born platform genius.
Little by little, with no teacher except day-to-day experience,
. 161
^FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
she mastered her business. She bought a cheap gospel tent (the
firstone a swindle, ragged, moth-eaten, mildewed, but she
grinned and made it do) and set out on a footloose career as
a wandering evangelist, without church connections except a
loose association with the least inhibited forms of Pentecostal-
ism. For two years, around New England in summer and in the
south in winter, she wandered.
The Pentecostals based their beliefs on four tenets, all of
which Aimee embraced and never discarded. These are the
baptism by fire and speaking in strange tongues (Acts 2:1-13),
divine healing through prayer, the imminent second coming of
Christ, and spiritual and physical redemption through Christ's
crucifixion and scourging ("By His stripes we are healed") .
162
SISTER AIMEE
Billy Sunday out of first place in the size of the crowds she drew
and the furor created by her healing practices, and began to
draw general attention in the West mainly. However, some of
her most sensational revivals during this period were in Wash-
ington, Baltimore, Montreal, Chicago, St. Louis, Dallas, San
Francisco and Denver. She held only one tent revival in Los
Angeles, and by 1923, when she opened Angelus Temple, she
really was known in the Los Angeles area. In Denver or
little
St. Louis she was a name to conjure with. At the close of her
rang and factory whistles blew for prayer with Sister Aimee for
the sick and sinning.
In 1922 she visited Australia for a revival, and arrived amid
organized hostility from churches and press. Within three weeks
she had completed her schedule and departed with kind testi-
163
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
monials from scores of her bitterest critics. In courage and in
cheerful willingness to face opposition of any sort, she was
amazing.
Meanwhile she and her mother had been shopping for a
164
SISTER AIMEE
165
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
heat, without water or proper clothing or shelter from the sun,
for eleven hours. She was put to bed in a Douglas hospital.
Then the real excitement began. It was established that she was
not sunburned, her clothing showed no signs of perspiration or
tears from cactus, her brand new kid slippers were barely
scuffed, and she had not even asked for a drink of water when
she collapsed in the front yard of the Mexican saloon keeper.
Aimee's story was under suspicion from the first. But, she
swore every word was true.
She returned to Los Angeles in triumph and was carried off
the train in a flower-festooned chair, while 100,000 persons
lined the route of the cavalcade to her temple.
public morals," the essential basis of his charges being the rev-
elations unearthed at Carmel, California, where evidence indi-
cated that Aimee and Ormiston had spent the first ten days of
her disappearance in a seaside honeymoon cottage.
In the longest preliminary hearing in the history of the state,
Aimee and her mother were held for trial. That was early in
November, 1926. Meanwhile, the entire case had become so
166
SISTER AIMEE
politically and financially. This she had not planned. But when
it arrived she loved it and openly reveled in the importance it
gave her.
During the thirties she became famous as "the world's most
169
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
of the Temple, Aimee succumbed to the fast talk of a succes-
sion of slick salesmen with quick-riches propositions and in-
volved herself in costly fiascoes. This was because of her in-
herent and incurable gullibility in worldly affairs. On the
platform she was never gullible, but in private she was a wretch-
edly poor judge of character or ability, and because of her
personality tortured by inner conflicts and frustrations, and
seeking new avenues of expression that would stamp her a
"success." She was inveigled into promoting a summer camp
meeting at Lake Tahoe, a resort in the San Bernardino Moun-
tains, acemetery in the San Fernando Valley, into real estate
promotions, lot-selling on commission. She invariably wound
up holding the bag for enormous sums in claims from outraged
investors, many of them Temple followers. She seemed in-
170
SISTER AIMEE
ter Roberta, who was suing Aimee's attorney for slander, and
won her case. About then, Aimee providentially acquired a
new business manager, the Reverend Giles N. Knight, who had
the force and skill to stop her public shenanigans and confine
her to preaching and organizing the widening branches of her
church. Publicity about her virtually ceased. Reporters were
denied access to her. Meanwhile her health became increas-
ingly uncertain, although she continued the grueling work of,
administering her church under a crushing schedule. Finally
171
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
she was able to burn the mortgages in a public spectacle wit-
nessed by tens of thousands standing in Echo Park. Aimee
climbed on the dome of the Temple and one by one burned the
mortgage notes, reading off the amount of each one over a
while girls in
loudspeaker before casting it into an urn of fire,
white robes with huge angel wings attached tripped across the
dome in an allegory depicting "The Triumph of Faith over
Gold." The church, from then on, was never in debt again.
Aimee's financial practices were frowned on by churches
of Angelus Temple
generally, because of the corporate set-up
and later of the Foursquare Gospel Church. In effect Aimee
owned everything outright.The holding corporation (the Echo
Park Evangelistic Association) which owned and controlled
172
SISTER AIMEE
173
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
The antics of Aimee's followers made her a cult in her own
time. Those who attacked her and those who praised her said
everything possible on every side of the question; but on one
point everybody was united; it was inconceivable, every ob-
server said, that her church could exist without her. She was
moved.
Aimee consistently contended and preached that hers was
not a cult, that she was an evangelist and pastor heading a
church like other churches, a branch of the Christian evangel-
ical faith that had its own vitality and was not dependent on
her once it had been firmly established. In the end, she was
proved correct. After her death her church did not disintegrate,
although no leader with glamour or strong personality was forth-
coming. (Rolf is pleasant and unassuming, entirely colorless.)
At her death the church holdings were reported at roughly four
Year by year they increased, with a steady
million dollars.
174
SISTER AIMEE
175
Chapter
25
THE MIGHTY I AM
176
THE MIGHTY I AM
It was none other than the legendary Count of St. Germain,
the man who in the eighteenth century was reported to be an
immortal.
The visitor offered the startled Ballard
a cup of "pure elec-
tronic essence" and a wafer of "concentrated energy."
Ballard explained that he was immediately "surrounded by
a White Flame which formed a circle about fifty feet in diam-
eter."
As he told it all in the cult's textbook, Unveiled Mysteries,
which sold for $2.50 to all members, he had just been ready to
have a drink of spring water at the time.
St. Germain had interrupted.
"My brother, if you will hand
me your cup I will give you a much more refreshing drink than
water," he had said. It was a creamy liquid, Ballard recalled,
and "much to my astonishment, while the taste was delicious,
the electrical vivifying effect on my mind and body made me
gasp with surprise."
Minutes later, he related, he and the mystic figure were tak-
ing a soaring trip through the stratosphere. They flew around
the world visiting "the buried cities of the Amazon, France,
Egypt, Karnak, Luxor, the Inca cities, the Royal Tetons, Yel-
lowstone National Park." Everywhere, he said, they saw jewels,
precious diamonds of great size and the fabled treasures of all
history.
After the trip, St. Germain told Ballard that he was now
living with ninety-eight Ascended Masters on Mt. Teton but
had, during the past, inhabited the bodies of Francis Bacon, the
prophet Samuel and "Uncle Sam." (In years to follow, St. Ger-
main was to send signed Christmas cards to the most generous
members of the cult.)
Ballard bought some pastel suits, colored shoes and "electric
violet" drapes and started preaching on the momentous meet-
ing. Before the fun ended he was to claim 350,000 followers
including 15,000 in Los Angeles, enroll more than seven hun-
177
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
dred in his "Walk of Life" school and weave a doctrine such as
the world had never heard before.
178
THE MIGHTY I AM
suite in the best hotel.He spoke at conferences called the
"Sacred Three Times Three." He never prayed to gods but,
rather, ordered them about like flunkies in the grand tradition
of the black magicians.
He moved on to Cleveland. Here he told a cheering one
thousand in 1939 that he had received important documents
about enemy subs which outlined plans to destroy the United
States. The Ascended Masters had also just destroyed a flight
of Jap planes over China, he added. As the awed flock filed out
into the foyer after the talk, they were greeted by hawkers
dressed in violet robes. Here was lore to please the fanciful. One
booklet, written by St. Germain himself, told how he really
wrote the works of Shakespeare. For $2.50 one could buy a
picture of Jesus and a tall Master from Venus posed happily on
the slope of a California mountain. Jesus had come down in
1935 to sit for the painting, Ballard explained blandly. There
were phonograph records and bound books for $5 each. There
were detailed instructions ordering the faithful to shun onions
and garlic because they offended the Ascended Masters. They
were ordered to avoid the color red because it gave off evil
vibrations. There was an explanation of K-17, the Adept who
was described as a "gaseous God Force." He had with him,
Ballard wrote, the Legions of Light to aid him.
Guy by then wore only white suits, the symbol of light,
graced by pink tie, the symbol of love. He had an easy stance
a
and a choice touch at invective for the Mighty I Am
enemies.
In Chicago, the authorities gave him difficulties. Ballard, an-
gered, shouted to his flock that he was putting down a curse on
all Chicagoans. And he did! He sent down the "cows and pigs
179
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
again, of how Jesus came to pose for twenty-one days for the
painting that could be purchased in the lobby. He
would ex-
plain that blood was red because of impurities,
and would "be
like gold" if clean.
Asthe audience gasped, he would show magic lantern slides
of the "gaseous belt" in the atmosphere sketches which looked
He would tell of new wonders
suspiciously like weather maps.
now in the current issue of the group's magazine, The Voice, on
sale in the lobby too. His enemies weremany, he would explain
bitterly. Right now, he was being sued by infidels who claimed
his great tome Unveiled Mysteries was really a rewrite of a book,
Dweller on Two Planets, written fifty years before. But he was
safe! For he was protected by a bullet-proof Wall of Light and
had and blue flames and "thought octaves" to use as
his violet
out a new painting. It
protection. Now Ballard would bring
would be a Siamese twin, a double man known to ancient meta-
of more blast-
physicians. The meeting would end on high key
a
182
THE MIGHTY I AM
Edna, her son and twenty-two others were indicted on six-
teen counts of mail fraud.
Suits began to come. Two followers entered into a suicide
pact which failed. They told police that the Army was Roose-
velt's personal army and the true army was the Minute Men of
183
Chapter
26
byterian clerics spoke from the pulpit about the golden calf
and newspaper editorials grumbled about the "rag heads" from
India who were encouraging Mesmerism and other evils.
The brilliant Swami Vivekananda arrived in Chicago in
1893 to attend the World's Fair Parliament of Religions. His
184
VEDANTA: "THE PERENNIAL PHILOSOPHY"
185
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
Philosophy."
186
VEDANTA: "THE PERENNIAL PHILOSOPHY"
187
Chapter
27
THE SELF-REALIZATION
FELLOWSHIP
188
THE SELF-REALIZATION FELLOWSHIP
upon a spiritual life and went on to study under the famed guru,
SriYukteswar, and to join the monastic Swami Order in 1914.
Here he absorbed the wisdom of the ancients. In Los Angeles,
he announced that he was founding the world headquarters
of the Self -Realization Fellowship and that his mission was "to
lead people to God by expounding the truths of original yoga
and original Christianity and to show the underlying unity of all
religions."
He bought a once fashionable hotel atop Mt. Washington.
It had sixty rooms, landscaped grounds and tennis courts. Soon,
attracted by the now-famed Yogananda wit, charm and urban-
189
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
Self a Reflection of God, exponents explain can consciously
realize the experience of blissful union with the Omnipresent
190
THE SELF-REALIZATION FELLOWSHIP
minders of his incorporeity. Just as electricity does not die
when it is withdrawn from a light bulb, so man's life energy is
stance, in Revelation 3 : 1 2 we
'Him that overcometh will
read :
192
THE SELF-REALIZATION FELLOWSHIP
fast friends were to decide that they'd been "disciple and guru"
in previous lives.
The farm boy from Louisiana with the Horatio Alger busi-
ness career behind him now set out to become a millionaire of
plains today.
He had already helped the organization become secure finan-
193
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
had lacked. In 1953 he gave the Fellowship a million dollars.
He had retired by then to a simple home in the California desert
where he spent the days meditating in seclusion. In 1955 he
died leaving another million dollars to the Fellowship as well
as securities which would assure revenue for years ahead.
century, B.C. Only shoots of the tree now survive. In the third
195
Chapter
28
MANKIND UNITED
196
MANKIND UNITED
had been perfecting "inventions" to prevent war and promote
productivity.
To set the vast change in motion, however, the organization
first needed two million dedicated members. When this
hap-
pened, Bell said, each member would be provided with a $25,-
000 home, have a four-day work week with a four-hour day
and all of mankind would be assured of a permanent income.
"Get friends, join now!" he ordered. "Prosperity is yours
now!"
In the weeks which followed, hundreds of the hopeful
poor started contributing their scarce dollars toward Bell's
vision and the new day in the future when world Utopia
would arrive. Bell, meanwhile, had scoured the history of every
Utopian commune and selected elements from each to dress up
his flaming speeches about the great future ahead. Within a
197
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
homes would have special news and telephone recording equip-
ment, automatic air-conditioning and "outside fruit trees." Sur-
rounding each area of fine homes would be hot houses, vege-
table gardens, athletic courts, swimming pools, fountains and
shrubbery. And, for hot summer days, each home was to have
a rock grotto with a waterfall where the old folks could pause
of an afternoon to think the deep, long thoughts of the sunset
years.
The picture was all very nice, said some of the followers, but
who was going to do all the yard work?
Bureau had located "ten mil-
Bell replied that his Research
lion gardeners in China, Japan and certain countries in Europe"
who were waiting and anxious to come to America and spend
gardening for Mankind United.
their lives
Within a few years, some 14,000 Californians all but a
own churches and bring new members, those who also wanted
to hurry the day of world Utopia.
As membership grew, Bell began to organize a maze of affili-
ated organizations. The Universal Service Corporation, the In-
ternational Institute of Universal Research and the Interna-
Legion of Vigilantes came into being. Dimes and dollars
tional
came in each mail to help build these organizations toward the
magic day when two million members would automatically
bring eternal peace and plenty.
Bell told his flock of inventions his secret research teams had
perfected. There was a ray machine so powerful that if its
198
MANKIND UNITED
Authorities began to investigate as disenchanted members
started pleading to get their money back. Bell was called be-
fore a state legislative committee. The debonair cult leader was
199
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
Whenever there was a decline in interest, Bell would make
new promises. At one time he assured all new members that
they'd receive $30,000 within ten years. At other meetings he
also outlined plans for free education, free training in the new
universal language Mankind United's "inventors" were con-
it was
triving and free world travel to use the language once
learned.
Crisis came for the handsome entrepreneur with the begin-
nings of World War II when he was classified 1-A in the draft.
Bell took to the platform in a wild fury. President Roosevelt
was an international banker, he said, and a "fathead" to boot.
He explained that the hidden rulers sat around a table in Lon-
don planning tricks, so Germany would lose one day and
Britain the next.
When asked the name of his employer on his draft papers he
wrote "God." He advised his followers to give him their money
rather than buy war bonds.
Now the government struck out, claiming Bell owed $267,-
198 in back taxes. He was found guilty and in April 1943 was
charged again, along with fifteen of his bureau managers, with
conspiracy to violate the wartime espionage statutes. Witnesses
told of his drinking a toast on the day of Pearl Harbor.
Slow decay began to set in. An elderly woman filed suit ask-
ing for the return of $6500 she said she'd given Bell. He had
promised her a four-hour-a-day job, she said, and also a ride in
his secret airplane.Now he had told her that the plane was cruis-
ing in the stratosphere, she sobbed, and that she would starve if
she insisted on wanting her money back when Mankind United
took over the world for a thirty-day "re-evaluation and educa-
tion" program in the near future. When
the disenchanted lady
said she'd heard such threats before, he replied that he now had
a machine which could "stop all the electricity in the world."
Others came with tales. For years they'd been paying two
dollars weekly dues and a series of special twenty-dollar as-
200
MANKIND UNITED
sessments to hasten the day of prosperity. They'd also been
promised special attachments for their radios, they said, which
would warn them when their D-Day was to come and "the mys-
terious forces ofMankind United were to be put into motion."
But the money had been collected and spent. In February
1 944 an
investigation showed that Bell's wife had bought more
than one million dollars' worth of property in Los Angeles alone.
It was claimed, too, that some three million dollars had been
201
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
nated from the jury and, hence, it was not truly representative
of the community.
In August 1949 the cult was officially dissolved.
Mankind United was a unique experiment in cultism. While
itdwelt on the theme of the supernatural, it avoided challeng-
ing established theology. It had elements of Fabian socialism,
technocracy, and the idealistic attempts at philosophical com-
munes. The little men with the metal heads, who had passed
on their secret knowledge, must have been most disappointed.
And so were the cultists even the ones who eventualy got their
television sets on easy payment plans.
202
Chapter
29
JOE JEFFERS
203
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
A hurried conference was held by his parishioners. They
didn't have enough money. But they agreed to sign pledges and
get together within the next twenty-four hours.
it
204
JOE JEFFERS
cated and boyish, kind and angry, he was their hero, their lover,
their guide.
Jeffers' great crisis came in the spring of 1939. Rumors had
205
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
there were recordings to hear the goings-on! The investigator
on the stand shyly admitted he was "just a schoolboy" about
what he'd seen that fateful eve.
206
JOE JEFFERS
207
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
208
JOE JEFFERS
and a large observatory on the grounds. "Our belief is related
to the stars in a biblical connection," he told reporters. "We
believe the stars foretell future events. Orion is of particular
interest to us that's where I keep the Yahweh fortune and
it the constellation Taurus, which
is is the headquarters of
Yahweh, the Creator."
In new pastel flannel suits, Jeffers lolled about his new re-
treat with his flock of chirping ladies and week
spoke each to
thousands in a downtown auditorium.
But he was just beginning. He announced plans for an atom-
bomb refuge in the desert near Palm Springs. Los Angeles, he
said, would be bombed within two years and the British Isles
the $5000, asked another, for the A-bomb haven he had prom-
ised to build just for her? A plumber wanted $5000 for the
repairs at the mansion.
The Temple followers still remaining filed bankruptcy,
claiming a debt total of $100,000. More suits deluged in
against the onetime prophet.
Joe started to serve his sentence. But the old mansion was
no sooner vacant than a new buyer moved in. She was a bosomy
woman who wore green eyeshadow and had bright-green dyed
hair. An eccentric, perhaps, sighed neighbors, but at least we're
rid of those cultists.
A few days later she called in reporters. "I am the Green
Virgin," she announced. "And I have come to save mankind!"
But still Jeffers was not through.
210
JOE JEFFERS
He moved on to Arizona after being released from federal
prison in Florida.
Today, his "Kingdom of Yahweh" is still alive in Phoenix.
twice as bad as the night clubs, the dance halls and the motion
pictures."
211
Chapter
30
KRISHNA VENTA
212
KRISHNA VENTA
was too busy to see me," he said curtly. But he did go on to
mention that this was not his first trip to the Eternal City. About
600 A.D. he had been the honored guest of Pope Leona, he
said, hinting that papal manners had declined in the last 1400
years.
The reporters began to bait him. How
had he obtained a
birth certificate for a passport if he were that old?
porters also told him that Caltech technicians said that there
was a possibility of an earthquake. Did he have any views on
this? He leered knowingly. "You don't have to be a prophet to
know that," he said.
As he walked away that day, the little girlpointed an accus-
ing finger at him and said, "Mama says to be careful of him.
He's got a bad case of athlete's foot!"
In the months to come, Krishna Venta made a series of head-
lines. He claimed 145,000 followers at this time. Within a few
213
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
were too damned expensive there and saying the Chicagoans
were "cool" to him.
The first annual convention of the Fountain of the World
group was held March 29, 1953. Members celebrated Easter,
Christmas and the New Year in one three-day service and also
initiated members into the Aaronic priesthood. Meanwhile the
cultists themselves had become figures in many a scene of
trees, a clutter of small houses had been built. Behind the area
was a huge cliff. The colonists raised goats and poultry, al-
though they seldom ate meat. The branch in Alaska was thriv-
ing by now. There were 120 cultists hard at work and they
were known as "The Barefoot People."
Here, as in California, they were noted for their good works
and respected, odd as they were, by other settlers in the isolated
area.
Then at 2 A.M. on the morning of December 7, 1958, tragedy
struck in California. A mighty explosion ripped the main build-
216
KRISHNA VENTA
ing of the tiny colony and fires rent the area. The force of the
explosion was so terrific that buildings in the entire colony were
demolished. As the smoke cleared, was found that the beloved
it
stranger than some other mystical cult doings. The trouble was,
many of Venta's followers denied the whole affair. There was
even talk that Venta had not died in the blast but was still alive.
Identification of the dead was based mainly on dental records.
Some said that he had left his bridgework near his bed and fled
217
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
before the blast took place. There was also the charge that $ 1 0,-
000 belonging to the organization vanished at the time of the
blast and nobody seems to know what happened to it. The two
murderers had told the district attorney that whenever they had
gone to fight forest fires, Krishna had picked one of his sister
disciples to sleep with him in an auto. Venta had a simple, non-
religious explanation for this behavior, they added. He said he
was cold-blooded and therefore needed someone to keep him
warm. Meanwhile Mother Ruth, his wife, came to his defense
when she claimed that sixty cult members were ready to swear
with her that he was "a misunderstood man of high moral
value." Then one of Venta's six children, an eleven-year-old
boy, insisted that he had seen the Master in the nearby hills,
badly injured, after the blast. The boy was quickly shushed by
Mother Ruth before he could give any of the details of this
encounter, or vision, as the case may be.
In the days following, the remaining colonists knelt in the
charred ruins to pray. His wife told investigators that Krishna
himself had predicted eighteen years ago that he would be cre-
mated in 1958. "Do not use the word dead," she cautioned. "He
is the Christ and we do not believe in death." She went on to
218
KRISHNA VENTA
And so, today, the cultists await their beloved Krishna, man
of mystery. Charlatan or prophet, he had left behind a group
of devoted and sincere followers, this tall, Christ-like figure
who had, at one time, handed out dollar bills on Broadway
marked "Money is the root of all evil." Who had been thrown
219
PART V
Racial Cultism
Chapter
31
NEGRO CULTS
Slave Coast after 1724 brought back with them not only car-
culture and
goes of human energy for the fields but a primitive
a magic faith.
They brought, too, a gnawing frustration which, more than
two hundred years later, survives.
Voodoo in the West Indies was to serve as the base which
was to blend with Roman Catholicism and, later, Protestant
223
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
meet once again with various ethnic movements and give dis-
tinct flavor to Negro cultism.
224
NEGRO CULTS
lack of race consciousness. Elizah Mohammed and his Muslims
preach what isbasically the white supremacists' viewpoint.
They are racists who consider themselves superior to whites,
fear "mongrelization," want separate facilities in America
where they can live alone and achieve their destiny. "If I get a
million followers," says the diminutive spellbinder Elizah, 'Til
go to Washington and say, 'Give me eight states right now for
the Negroes!' And they'd have to do it!" Still other Negro cults
preach that only consecrated Negro followers are elite and
above all other men or that sanctification through fulfillment
with the holy spirit will set them apart in heaven. For still other
baffled Negro followers, prophets offer common cultic prizes
of escape from the white-dominated tawdry world, into a black
Utopian colony.
All Negro something which the "mixed" church
cults offer
cannot offer. In an atmosphere free from tension and apology,
they can experiment with their own ideas, finding crude an-
swers in political and social expressions.
They can savor the Pentecostal ecstasy under their own
unique terms. They can inhibit sex or encourage free love under
sanctified conditions.
It all started long ago this quaint blending of primitive
snake worship and magic rite, of Roman Catholic dogma and
Reformation doctrine. Although little survives today, its roots
were in the dank jungles of Africa. And the first God was Vodu,
a vengeful, all-powerful ruler.
225
Chapter
32
VOODOO
deed, it was a problem at all. But with the coming of the Santo
226
VOODOO
appears that there was also concern. One old report tells of
police breaking up a voodoo session in an abandoned brickyard
in New Orleans. After that the rites seem to have been held at
isolated spots along the shores of nearby Lake Ponchartrain.
No specific records exist as to the exact pattern of these rites.
227
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
He would cavort before the fire in a red loincloth, carrying
in his hands a coffin about two feet long. "Le Grande Zombie!"
the faithful would shout in ecstasy as he placed the small coffin
before the queen and whirled about until he dropped with ex-
haustion. Now the cultists would begin the dance anew about
the fire. Each would pause to sip from the witches' brew in the
of tafia, a cane sugar
boiling pot and to take great swallows
alcoholic drink. Pigeons and chickens would appear from bas-
kets to be torn apart alive between the teeth of excited dancers.
There were other special rites. Sometimes a young initiate
would be welcomed. He would stand in a chalked circle, hold-
ing various voodoo talismans such as
waxen images and magic
feathers attached to human bones. The king would chant while
the excited followers repeated magic words in African dialect.
Suddenly the neophyte would begin to twitch, meaning that
he was getting the "power." It was an evil omen if in his hysteria
he ranged past the chalked magic circle. After the twitching
and jerking, he would go into a wild, whirling dance, leaping
into the air and finally collapsing. He was then aroused and
ments were added, the hard world of the slave and his frustra-
228
VOODOO
The great day of the voodoos was St. John's Eve, reaching
back into the forgotten times when sun worshipers rolled blaz-
ing wheels down hills to signify the descent of the sun.
As with all cults, women predominated, making up an esti-
mated seventy-five per cent of the cultists. The queen was the
leader, the king usually her "man" of the moment. Christianity
particularly Roman
Catholicism, the predominant faith of
New Orleans, was absorbed into the vast and complicated lore.
Out of it all came a curious admixture of magic, theology,
simple merchandising of charms, medical prescriptions, social
doctrine and, of course, colorful and flamboyant leaders.
Doctor John, a massive "free" Negro in New Orleans, was
one of the most important of these about 1810. He owned
slaves and claimed to be a Senegalese prince. His face was cov-
ered with witchcraft scarifications in an elaborate design
made by cutting the skin and rubbing mud into the wound
which he claimed had been done by the king, his father, in his
African village as was the traditional tribal custom. He had
been captured by the Spanish, taken to Cuba and eventually
freed by his owner, he said. He had returned briefly to Africa
and then come back to America where he became a cotton
pusher on the New Orleans docks. He claimed here that he had
the "power" and soon was a leader among the workers.
Local fame soon brought voodoo fans to Doctor John and he
began to sell advice and charms. He bought land and built a
cottage and boasted of having fifteen wives and fifty children.
The house itself was filled with snakes, toads and jars of gris-
gris. Here he told fortunes, placed and took off curses and "put
down" hexes for a fee. He claimed to have aphrodisiacs for
aging swains and love potions for lonely spinsters. He advised
rich planters on how to correct wayward sons and seemed to
know everything about the rich and powerful. Undoubtedly
like other voodoo leaders to follow he had under his com-
mand or hire servants in the leading homes.
229
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
He was rich by now. But his money was a problem. He feared
banks and couldn't read or write. He not only invested foolishly
but as his various children grew up they'd disappear one by one
with some of the fortune he had hidden in his cottage. At eighty,
it is claimed, he set out to learn to read and write. He hired a
young Negro who taught him to sign his name. One day he
over to his tutor
signed a paper. Later he found that he'd signed
the home and all he owned.
Before the old scar-faced giant died, however, he left a major
mark on American voodoo. For he brought Catholicism into
the African magic religion. He read the future before a statue
of the Virgin Mary which graced his parlor and alternately
toyed with his crucifix or dried toads as he felt the problem
required.
Even while he attracted scores of voodoos to his home, an-
other leader was thriving.
This fabulous figure in American voodoo was the legendary
Marie Laveau, who reigned as a queen in New Orleans from
about 1830 on. She remains even today a subject of debate in
the city. Old newspaper reports blandly tell of her death in 1 88 1
and voodoos for eighty years.
state that she ruled over the
230
VOODOO
skin. She was a free woman of color, married to a free quadroon
carpenter named Paris, and a daily visitor to the Roman Catho-
lic Church in New Orleans. But about 1824 her husband died.
Known now as the Widow Paris, it seems that Marie became a
hairdresser for fashionable Creole ladies. Undoubtedly, as she
stood behind the gentlewomen at the mirror listening to gush-
ing stories of love affairs and gossip among the rich and well-
born, she collected stories of intrigue and scandal which later
would help her establish her voodoo dynasty.
Meanwhile at Marie's simple cottage a man named Chris-
tophe Duminy de Glapion, a quadroon from Santo Domingo,
moved in and Marie was to bear him fifteen children before
his death.
There were many such queens in the city, but none like
Marie. She had a business head and a ruthless sense of destiny.
Her little cult of voodoo had all the mystic props: black cats,
snakes, blood-drinking and an orgy of sex at the conclusion of
the rites. But she picked up where Doctor John had left off. She
added holy water, sacred statues, incense. And she organized
like a Chicago gangster. She eliminated rival queens method-
charged fees to watch the fun and, for those rich whites who
would pay more, there were "secret" ceremonies with beautiful
Negro girls.
The legends about Marie Laveau grew and she encouraged
them. She was constantly charged with various crimes but
shrugged them off and defeated the few that reached court. At
her cottage on St. Ann Street she sold gris-gris, hexes and curses
231
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
and told fortunes as Doctor John had done before. She had a
network of household servant spies, no doubt, for she knew
family secrets and had a strange business insight which added
to the tales of her wondrous abilities. She soon had politicians
and business leaders coming to her and paying to learn what
steps they should take for success. By 1850
she was absolute
ruler of the Negroes of New Orleans.
Her rites at the lake were more colorful than any conducted
before. There was the snake in the box, the whirl-
sacrifice, the
ing Zombies, the drinking of blood and the crude alcohol, tafia.
There was the screams of ecstasy and the spasms of jerking.
Visitors usually departed, or paid an added fee to watch the
mass sex orgy which terminated her ceremony.
At other Laveau rites closed to the public the old ways of
Voodoo went on, to keep the traditionalists among her fol-
lowers happy. Live fowl were torn apart by blood-smeared
mouths and gris-gris and snakes presented to the queen, and
ancient oaths taken after wild initiation ceremonies.
There was still strange woman who sup-
another facet to this
posedly consorted with the Devil and crocodiles and could kill
with a look. She seems to have visited the local jails and hos-
tending unfortunates. During a yellow fever
pitals regularly,
epidemic in the 1850's she deserted her voodoo followers and
business completely and spent weeks nursing the sick.
By 1875, Marie was still thriving. She appeared now and
change. One day Marie would seem strangely young, the next
day old. In the fantastic eddy of years of legends, myths and
tales there was seemingly casual acceptance of this in New Or-
leans. Today, it appears that the transition was made over the
years. What was the young Marie and the old Marie became
the same slowly. Just when the daughter inherited the voodoo
crown from the mother no one knows. The new Marie looked
232
VOODOO
much like her mother bit lighter. She wore mas-
perhaps a
sive gold earrings, many rings and diamond clasps and heavy
bracelets. Like her mother, who had always found beautiful
Negro girls for powerful white men, young Marie built her
fame as a procuress for a new generation. She continued to
sell gris-gris and such good luck charms as small bags con-
233
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
"What they do with the stuff, I don't know," he says. "I just
supply it. If they buy bat blood and want to paint their noses
234
Chapter
33
FATHER DIVINE
"HE'S so sweet!"
"Ain't he cute!"
God a squat, bullet-headed Negro makes his way through
the cheering angels, smiling broadly, flashing gold teeth.
"Communion time, communion time, angels!" he shouts as
the faithful wave handkerchiefs and applaud and the band
beats out a lively tune.
Father Divine moves rapidly toward the head table of his
Heaven a large banquet room. His large body seems strangely
disproportionate with his short legs and arms. There is a shrewd
and humorous twinkle to his eyes as he begins the ritual of bless-
communion food.
ing the
The men in Sunday best and women in flowered frocks take
their places at the long tables separated from one another. God
235
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
236
FATHER DIVINE
Detroit is not his own, but inspired by the spiritual order from
God. This primitive mysticism would, of course, be too much
of a strain on an ordinary human. Father Divine handles it
all casually with a staff of secretaries. He visits the scores of
Peace Missions throughout the land, criticizing and instructing.
Routine work he delegates as he sees fit. But God remains the
arbiter on all matters he chooses to honor with attention.
cult's weekly publication, The New Day. Here are always God's
latest edicts and speeches. Here are the criticisms and the pro-
nouncements. In theological discussion, followers always refer
to the paper and keep back issues on file.
"
As the cult abhors racial references, the description "w
is used to designate a white person and a Negro is referred to
ironically as a "so-and-so." The titles of God's latest speeches
may be a headline writer's horror, but they adequately explain
237
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
come.
As in Christian Science, illness is suspect. It shows a lack of
spiritual understanding and faith in Father Divine. To get well,
the follower must repeat "Thank you, Father" until he is healed.
Evil must be avoided and overcome. Lust for the opposite
sex is evil. A
woman follower who conceives a child can have
but she
given birth "evangelically," meaning by spiritual union,
is suspected of violating the spiritual code until Father Divine
decides.
239
Chapter
34
240
SWEET DADDY GRACE
Daddy Grace, the "boy friend of the world," and his church
grew. And
so did the legends about him. It was said he had a
241
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
242
SWEET DADDY GRACE
The minister always told of Daddy Grace. He told how
Daddy was "God's Great Man." He explained that Daddy
Grace had given God a vacation. "If you sin against God,
Grace can save you; if you sin against Grace, God can't save
you," he explained.
He read from the Scriptures lines which mentioned the word
"grace."
Then came the peddlers with the creams and lotions, the
cult'smagazine, the miracle soap.
The meeting was over. And the faithful had given their all,
243
Chapter
35
244
OTHER NEGRO CULTS
in athletics, polish the fingernails,
chew gum or go to movies.
Divorce is taboo and marriage must be within the group.
Women must "dress holy," meaning plain dresses with long
skirts and white cotton
stockings. All men wear black neckties.
A typical service includes testimony of spirit possession and
communal singing. Elders lay heavy stress on the evils of adul-
tery and "looking at another with a lustful eye." There's a
communion service with grape juice and soda crackers and a
symbolic foot- washing most services. The church im-
rite at
245
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
volumes. The
by holy instruction and could all be found in the
Talmud, he went on, was the final source of reference on all
matters. And, unlike most Negro cults, he roundly denounced
visions and
spirit possession,talking in tongues, testimony of
dreams and any excessive emotional display by his followers.
Such goings-on were Christian hokum, he would say, and unfit
conduct for "true Jews."
And here was the base of his doctrine: that the Negro was
the true Jew mentioned in the Bible and the present "so-called
Jew" was an interloper and fraud.
"Jesus Christ was a black man," Prophet Cherry explained.
"And I'm offering fifteen hundred dollars cash to anyone who
can produce an authentic likeness of Jesus Christ and show
I'm wrong."
He then would wave a picture of Christ from his pulpit.
"Who the hell is this?" he'd demand. "Nobody knows! They
say it's Jesus! That's a damned lie! Jesus was
black!"
The quaint concepts come pouring out of the angry prophet.
black, too, made the world six thousand years ago and every
two thousand years there's a "great dispensation." Four thou-
sand years ago there was the Flood and 2000 years ago Christ
came. In a few years Christ will return and the millennium will
arrive,
The black man sprang from Jacob and his fate of slavery
246
OTHER NEGRO CULTS
"fun" is manufactured in the heart where the breath "catches"
the wall of the house of worship. The faithful arrive, men wear-
ing black skullcaps and women blue and white capes with red
and blue straw hats fringed with tassels. A
bass drum beats as
the followers take their places.
The prophet appears, sprinkling the temple with perfumed
water and washing his hands. Now he begins the attack. He de-
nounces the Pope. He vilifies the "so-called Jews" for denying
Jesus. People who eat pork are damned for all eternity, he
shouts. He
holds up the picture of Jesus and sneers at it while
denouncing the "dumb dog" preachers who claim it's authentic.
The Black Jews listen raptly. For just ahead is heaven, a
heaven where they will take their rightful place in the scheme
of things.
Even while Prophet Cherry cavorted behind the pulpit in
Philadelphia, a different sort of flamboyant Negro mystic was
being given instruction by St. Benedict while he lounged on a
couch in San Francisco.
King Narcise who
favors for his earthly mission a costume
of gold tunic, black pants, flowing crimson robe and velvet
headdress, touched off with two-inch fingernails and a score of
diamond rings on his two hands founded his church in Oak-
land, California, in 1945.
His motto simplicity itself. "It's nice to be nice," he says
is
247
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
massive local audi-
his "coronation," held in the
During
torium, the "King" covered himself with jewelry. "The beauty
lowers enjoy seeing their King have all these comforts," he ex-
plains. "I use this display
of worldliness to attract attention,
visit his and climbs into one of his fine, black chauffeur-
flock
driven limousines, one cannot fail to note the decal message on
the door. "Thank God!" it reads.
While such Christian cult movements burgeon, there were
also those who sought distant fields of theology to attract a
following. One such cultic effort was the Moorish Science
248
OTHER NEGRO CULTS
249
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
He ordered each member to attach "el" or "bey" to his name.
The sixty-four page Holy Koran written by the original Drew
Ali became the sacred text. This "reincarnated" Drew Ali is a
tall slender, dark Negro. His beliefs include the idea that one
?
250
Chapter
36
ISLAM
251
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
252
ISLAM
from the "devils" the white men. More than 70,000 are now
dedicated fanatics and police intelligence reports estimate that
the movement is growing at the rate of several hundred new
members each week. It's an ill-kept secret that
police in many
metropolitan are dusting off old manuals on handling
cities
today.
Poole, an unemployed poolroom sharper at the time, dropped
his "slave name," took the title of Mohammed and began to
Negroes. While his basic preachment was that the white devils
were the cause ofall earthly woe, he soon began to refine his
a room with a man who was not her husband, and she must
not wear lipstick.
His racist ideas took shape. The white man, he explained,
was transitory; he had been on the earth only six thousand
years, and "isn't going to be here much longer." The original
Oriental was black-skinned and would be black again some day
when the balance was returned and the original black people
ruled the world. Only the ebony black Negro was "pure."
At this point about 1939 the Islams, as they were called,
were viewed with jeering contempt by most Negroes. They
made up only one of the scores of tiny cults which flourish
briefly among the poor and disenfranchised. What was more,
it
required a discipline and dedication which was no lure to
254
ISLAM
most Negroes, might be toward the whites. But
bitter as they
the nucleus of the wild cult continued to meet and listen as
the fanatical little leader denounced the Bible as "the slave-
master doctrine" and promised pie~in-the-sky, when "the satis-
fied black man" would take over. Authorities who knew of it
there was nothing to verify these stories. "I'd feel better if one
255
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
of them would just get drunk or get in a fight or something,"
yoke! Every white man knows his time is up. We will unite all
the darker people of the earth. Then we will be masters of the
United States and we are going to treat the white men the way
they should be treated!"
Even as he peppers his speeches with references to the joyous
you personally. But all white men are beasts. The Jews are the
worst and they'll be the first. They are the prime beasts who
must be destroyed because they can't live in peace or let anyone
live in peace. The Jew is the buzzard that gobbles up everything
and leaves nothing."
He continues: "I don't guess you know how much the Mos-
lems hate the Jews. They are going to keep prodding you until
one of you the Russians or gentiles drop the bomb. And the
Moslems will be waiting!"
Elizah is less specific in his writings. "The white race is a
pale-skinned, blue eyed race of devils and are now in their last
of the white
days of judgment in America. America is the first
257
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
a luxurious eighteen-room home in Chicago. He owns a restau-
store and cafe
rant, butcher shop, grocery store, department
and demands that his followers trade only among themselves.
he cautions.
"Stay away from sweethearting with those devils,"
"The Negro deceived by the race of devils." To train leaders
is
258
ISLAM
dreds of new Those who praise Ralph Bunche
subscribers.
whom the Moslems and call the "George Washington of
detest
Israel" are "put down." Certain shops prosper and others are
forced to close down.
In the Negro communities the somber, black-tied young man
who says little, just looks and listens, is more feared than any-
one. "Man, you should see their eyes when they watch you,"
says one frightened non-Moslem. "They're playing for keeps.
They believe in a super race. And they're it!"
Unseen, the followers preach their doctrines and set back the
long, tedious, hard-won victories over prejudice and hate.
One colored matron expresses it this way: "I've started hear-
ing a word recently that I haven't heard in years. When a white
man or woman
approaches, someone will say 'Ofay!' This is a
word that I hadn't heard since I was a little girl in the South.
It means 'foe' in Pig Latin!"
259
PART VI
Cults of Sex
And Violence
Chapter
37
264
THE SATANIC MASS
well to remember, it was modeled upon an even harsher legal
code.
Torture was part of the process. Justice, as we know it, was
but one consideration. For example, the accused's confessor
functioned somewhat like an attorney today. He advised the
accused that if he was innocent but found guilty -he was to
regard himself as a martyr in the eyes of heaven. If he confessed
under the usual torture, he could withdraw his confession before
the judge. But the judge could decide which version was true.
There were sadists among the Inquisitors. But most were
reputable and honest men for their time and place in history.
They believed simply in what was known as "the Queen of
Proofs," meaning that a confession of the suspected person was
of prime importance. If it was made on the torture rack, it was
265
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
but the punishment
made against worship of idols and devils,
was a mild penance only. As late as the thirteenth century, a
The Sabbat was linked to the old pagan rites and witchcraft,
while the Black Mass was simply a perverted Christian rite.
At a held in
typical twelfth-century Sabbat, traditionally
"flat country," there were a choir, phallic symbols and a large
wooden image of Satan. The body was human, the head, hands
and feet goatlike, and it was stained black. It carried a small
with an
burning torch between the goat horns and was adorned
erect phallus, an inherited symbol from the Dionysian mys-
teries. The Sabbat began with a ceremonial entrance of sor-
cerers and witches. Paradoxically, the chief witch, called "An-
cient One," was usually a young girl. She began the ceremony
with the traditional kiss on the hindquarters of the image or, in
some cases, the phallus. She then offered herself to the god by
fondling the sex symbol with traditional gestures.
Next came the banquet. The two sexes attending were exactly
paired. While wine, beer or cider were given to the congrega-
supposedly mixed trance-inducing herbs with the
tion, officiants
alcohol. After the banquet, the Sabbat dance began. Dancers
turned back to back with hands clasped and heads turned so
that the partners could see each other. They then started whirl-
266
THE SATANIC MASS
"king of the serfs" shows this. For the Church, allied with the
nobility, was to a downtrodden peasant a part of that nobility.
His gods were the old allies gnomes and demons, brown and
stunted and bitter like himself, driven underground. There they
thrived, giving aid to their own kind, the poor, impoverished
rustic.As for the looming Christian God was He not the God
of the oppressors?
Also, the social and revolutionary meaning of the Sabbat
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FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
was only part of it. For the man of the Middle Ages knew noth-
or logic. He knew only that
ing of nineteenth-century rationalism
there were Good and Bad, that the whole earth was in conflict.
Itwas well to worship the good God and ask for aid. But what
was wrong with placating the evil gods at the same time?
to find meaning in
Slowly the peasants' ancient rites were
urban fads and fancies. With this blessing came a different
Black Mass and black magic, fused for evil intent.
The Queen of Poisoners, Catherine de Medici, who owned
such magic talismans as the skin of a child, human blood and
"sacred in a philtre of "crystallized gold" mixed by
ram" blood
her astrologer, Regnier, is said to have ordered a magic black
The sacramental elements were a mixture of black and
office.
white hosts. The chalice was filled with human blood. She
son. It was magic and
bought the rite to save the life of her ill
an example of aristocratic Satanism.
By the late sixteenth century, the Sabbat was underground,
the Reformers were chasing witches with a vengeance unknown
to the Medieval Papists. De Raemond in his volume, Antichrist,
tells of a Sabbat in 1597. The evil deity was a black goat. The
official, a dressed as a priest and followed by two women
man
attendants, approached the animal and, after the trio had ad-
ministered the traditional kiss to the hindquarters, the man
dropped money in a silver tray before the beast.
A new initiate, was now presented. After placing a
a girl,
lock of her hair before the goat, she led it to a thicket where,
in theory at least, she fornicated with the evil deity.
Now the communion began. Slices of black turnip were
passed out and the holy water was a mixture of feces and men-
strual blood. The black turnip is more than impious horseplay
even now; it signifies the times of peasant famine when turnips
had to be substituted for bread.
Still another form of the Black Mass was already developing.
268
THE SATANIC MASS
the black art underground. The lusty, earthy and irreverent
doings of the peasants had been one thing. But tales of the won-
drous tricks of the hidden witches gave them a new fascination
and reputation they'd never had in earlier days. Opportunists
began to hire renegade priests to say Black Masses, to hex
enemies by magic, or win supernatural favors.
A variety of impious rites were soon blossoming, each claim-
ing to have more evil power than the last. A mystery cult, the
Bogomils, children of the Satanael, was charged with slaugh-
tering children and practicing perverse sexual rites. Their the-
ology claimed that the Father had two sons. The elder expelled
from heaven, came to earth and seduced Eve, who gave birth
to the human race. Hence, mankind was the sperm of hell. The
cultistsused water instead of wine, and figs instead of bread,
and purposely spilled the eucharist cup while muttering blas-
phemous prayers.
In seventeenth-century France, another form of Black Mass
cult emerged and created a major scandal. The idol was a two-
faced Satan, a mother goddess named Astaroth. The cult's rites
were performed in isolated buildings near Paris. Its appeal was
to the jaded aristocracy,who paid to participate.
This new
concern, a female devil, was a natural result of the
social upheaval of France at the time. Sexual laxity was chic
and chastity derided.
An interesting character of the time, Madame Guyon, was to
emerge as a force with her doctrine of Quietism. She held that
one need only remain passive and divine power would "sat-
urate" a pious lady. She told of a vision in which she was trans-
ported to a room where Jesus Christ pointed out two beds to
her. One, he explained, was for his mother and the other for his
wife. The Bishop of Meaux, outraged, tried without success to
still the prophet of the fashionable drawing rooms. She went on
to claim semi-divine powers and claim that she was the woman
prophesied in the mystic Book of Revelation. Above all, how-
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FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
ever, she stresses that spiritwas everything and the body noth-
was of no concern
ing. Therefore, what one did with the body
to either heaven or hell.
Her theories fitted neatly with the sexual chaos going on,
the role of a she-devil in a Black Mass
became a
and playing
fashionable pastime. A vast lexicon of unholy images were
ing.
Rumors were that for a large fee an aristocratic lady could
of having her
buy a Black Mass at the house and be assured
wish fulfilled.
given large black candles made from human fat to hold in each
hand. She was led to the altar and laid naked upon it. The cele-
brant of the ritual, a man, now appeared.
Praying to the pine cones, associated with early Attic cult
rites, he now stepped between the woman's legs and placed a
chalice filled with human blood on her body, then kissed the
body. Next he took the host and inserted it into the woman's
vagina, committed the sexual act, removed the host and the
rites proceeded. It was later claimed that this particular client
of 1 667 was the mistress of the King and had paid for the rite to
insure her continued role and to secure victory over her rival, a
duchess.
The climax to the came when police traced a
house of evil
271
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
of its opposite and to a rationalized excuse for free sexual aban-
donment.
Even more important factor, however, ended the reign of
a
the Black Mass and its meaning. It came with the whole philo-
sophical shift away from ancient dualism. Dramatists brought
the Devil on stage as a sort of bungling oaf, and authors made
him the sly protaganist of their stories. A
profound distrust of
the existence of the Devil followed. Then came the question of
whether evil itself existed in this best of all possible worlds.
encing human events. It has fallen from its high state of disgrace.
272
Chapter
38
ready for the holy revelry. A wild orgy would follow, properly
sanctioned by the gods, and the satisfied and renewed wor-
shipers would return to their homes for another year
of routine
living.
273
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
274
THE SEX CULTS
time of isolated, sheer bliss. But with ordinary family ties put
276
Chapter
39
CROWLEYANITY
World," howled with rage. "I order it! The pain will kill me if
you don't! Give it to me or you will die within twenty-four
hours! I swear it by the Great Spirit Taphtatharath!"
The physician refused and Crowley died within a few hours.
Observers say it was sheer coincidence that the hexed doctor
also died eighteen hours later.
The incident was the crowning climax to the career of one
of the most extraordinary characters of contemporary cultism.
It was also a final testimony to the effects of unyielding funda-
mentalism on neurotics.
Crowley 's followers contended that he was a genius. Critics
called him at various times, a devil, fool, madman and the
world's greatest scoundrel. They were all right.
ing by four and, by the age of ten, was musing over obscure
Greek and Latin tracts and writing hymns as recreation.
He showed, too, at an early age, the paradoxical psycho-
pathology which was to mark his life. He delighted in ripping
apart small animals and birds, he was to recall later. But sadistic
traits were not all. Playmates later remembered his pleas dur-
spectability.
278
CROWLEYANITY
He soon rebelled, and his slashing wit which was also to
replied.
"Oh? And who is he?" asked the uncle.
Aleister told him. The shocked party broke up while the
uncle strapped the boy.
By the time he was twelve, Aleister was indoctrinated with
a driving hate for all things "decent" and religious.
About then, he discovered his role in life. It came when
he was called to the headmaster's office when an epidemic of
ders . and deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means
. .
279
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
The boy had found his niche! So, he was the Beast 666! He
started signing notes as "The Beast" or just "666."
was at
Later Crowley was to write that his first feat of magic
the age of eight when he put a curse on a schoolteacher and the
demons.
At twenty-one, he inherited $200,000 from his father's estate
280
CROWLEYANITY
Butler Yeats and the mystic writer, Arthur Machen. Soon, he
was part of the group and had quit school.
Crowley quickly found he knew more about magic than any
of the participants/ The Order's doctrine was a mishmash of the-
osophy, the mystery religions of Greece and Rome, the Cab-
ala, the Hermetic Mysteries, Rosier ucian lore and the Egyp-
tian Book of the Dead. Aleister had all but memorized them.
But he shocked the head of the group a martinet who
affected a kilt and dagger and claimed to be the son of a High-
land chief by demanding to see the results of magic rites. Like
most magicians, they weren't interested in actually see-
skilled
ing demons. It was satisfying enough to feel that one knew hor-
rible secrets ordinary men did not possess. For wasn't it true?
they ordered demons about and forced them to their will
while religionists only begged favors of their gods. It didn't
matter that one did not see the demons.
Soon Aleister had set up housekeeping in a lavish apartment
with another disenchanted youth in the group, and they were on
their own. They redecorated two rooms into "temples" with
altars, a human
skeleton, black drapes and magic signs on the
floor.They stocked up on such drugs as opium, cocaine and
morphine. They drank constantly and sniffed chloroform.
Aleister both used the friend, Allen Bennett, in bed and also
ordered up a steady stream of whores. One night, finally, after
drugging themselves and burning henbane and other narcotic
herbs in urns, they conjured up the demons within their magic
circle. Crowley wrote of it gleefully. "And the fun began!
Round and round tramped the devils, an endless procession;
3 1 6 of them we counted, described, named and put down in a
book. was the most awesome and ghastly experience I had
It
ever known."
Shortly after, Bennett left for Asia to become a Buddhist
monk.
The Beast, meanwhile, departed for Scotland and bought an
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FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
old castle near Loch Ness for $100,000. Soon he had things
humming. He took the title of Laird of Boleskinne and set up
a "temple room" with a magic circle. He started seeing visions,
with the aid of Indian
including witnessing the Crucifixion,
cocaine. Locals were
snakeroot, ergot and the usual opium and
and and running away.
the servants started drinking
aghast,
Back at the Order of the Golden Dawn, trouble was develop-
282
CROWLEYANITY
year-old who started rolling his own head up and down the
corridors.
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FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
bats. He led her on to Ceylon for a hunting trip and then, when
she became pregnant, for a triumphant entry into Cairo again.
The couple arrived dressed in turbans, silk robes and coats of
as Prince Chioa Kahn, a
gold. Crowley announced himself
Persian noble. While his wife rested in an apartment, Crowley
dabbled such street tricks as licking red-hot swords, eating
in
his cheek. He set up
scorpions and running a dagger through
a temple in his apartment and soon decided that his wife was a
psychic contact with the old Egyptian gods. She wasn't sure.
She thought she was a bat.
Here Crowley formulated the doctrine which was to be the
basis for his cult, Crowleyanity. It smacked of the edicts of the
King James idiom. It also stated the basic law of the cult: "Do
what thou be the whole of the Law." This rule, which
wilt shall
he'd plucked from an old satire by Rabelais on monastic life,
was to remain Crowley's favorite.
God, he said, was simply a "figure in Jewish mythology."
But another figure in Jewish mythology, Satan, was real enough.
The Crowleys soon departed for a walking tour through
China. Crowley out of his head most of the time with malaria
and opium deserted his wife and child in an isolated village
and went on to Shanghai. Rose somehow made it back to Ran-
goon. Crowley started back for Europe via America, acquiring
a few passing mistresses out of the scores he had during his life,
paused briefly in New York sporting a monocle to de-
nounce American culture again, and moved on to England,
where Rose, whom he had hoped he'd left forever, awaited him.
Crowley was by now busy launching his new religion. And
he had discovered a new' attraction, sex-magic, which he later
admitted stealing from the ancient text, the Panchatattva. Such
an idea quickly attracted a variety of jaded folk seeking new
284
CROWLEYANITY
thrills. But it was not common vulgar lust, he explained. It was
all fours with a chain around his neck. He told the awed natives
that he had captured a djinn or evil spirit. "The superstitious
Arabs were greatly impressed by this sight/' he wrote.
By 1914 war had come. Crowley deserted Rose and departed
for the United States with a lady violinist. He soon deserted her,
however, and announced that he was an Irishman. At the foot
of the Statue of Liberty he gave a wild speech calling for Irish
freedom, then settled in Greenwich Village as a German propa-
gandist. There were mistresses and homosexuals aplenty to
please the Great Beast here. He named
the girls after animals
The Dog, The Camel, etc. and offered casual lovers special
thrills. He would hire hunchbacks, dwarfs and others with de-
formities to disrobe in front of him and his lover while they lay
in bed naked. Then the couple would fondle the deformities.
Crowley took a realistic view of these acts. "Women's love for
286
CROWLEYANITY
a cross with three concentric circles on her breast for the Mark
of the Beast. She was
delighted.
When the United States entered the war authorities moved
inand stopped his pro-German writings. Crowley out to find
set
properly revered!"
Again, he started raising money for a shrine to house a sacred
relic. Collections were going well until someone asked at a
287
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
This the leader was free of police control and had his
way,
followers under his thumb. Other influences and distractions
would not disturb them. Also, one could acquire cheap land
and sell it back to followers at a respectable profit as well as
demand that they turn in all tawdry, earthly possessions
namely money before admission.
freedom and
Crowley decided Sicily offered the remoteness,
Back in England,
cheap land he sought, and he left for Europe.
he was outraged to find the British still annoyed by his pro-
German writings of some time before. It was all a joke, he ex-
contribute to his cult center. He
plained. Yet, no one would
picked up a new mistress to add to his Scarlet Woman and soon
had them both pregnant and fighting.
Just when he'd decided he couldn't raise the funds for his
rites, as well as the two women. Crowley, with new funds, was
288
CROWLEYANITY
Crowley would appear in red and black robes, chant and with
a dagger slice his chest with some symbols. Then he'd conse-
crate one of the Cakes of Light to Satan and put it against his
chest to soak up the blood. He would then baptize a rooster as
St. Peter while the Scarlet Woman lurched about the room do-
ing a dance which was to insult the Virgin Mary. She would
then demand the head of "St. Peter" and the rooster would be
beheaded by The Beast and its blood poured on the Cakes,
which the worshipers then ate. In another ceremony a goat was
brought in and its throat was cut so that the blood would pour
over the naked body of Leah. Others were less delicate and re-
fined. Narcotic herbs such as Jimson weed, henbane, foxglove,
squaw cabbage and others burned in urns about the room dur-
ing the rites. Meanwhile, jaded sophisticates (who thought they
had seen everything) came to pause briefly, then moved on.
What they saw was, indeed, enough to send anyone away:
Crowley doing dances with a razor-sharp sword; Leah wander-
ing through the village naked and drugged; Crowley's various
children, drunk and doped, torturing stray dogs and cats; crazed
rites all night with mass sex-magic.
shock and amaze. But by now, in 1924, the public just laughed
at his antics. And Crowley, was worn and tired. Luckily
at fifty,
them and hang their heads on pikes in the living room, where
cosmetics and displayed
they would be regularly painted with
to friends who were asked by de Rais to select the prettiest head.
exotic dishes. But the public, aware of his penchant for dung,
stayed away. He tried to run an advice-to-the-lovelorn column,
and then wrote the Rosicrucians, accusing them of stealing
some of his magic formulas.
He turned out lurid books, pamphlets and hymnals. But none
were commercial successes if they were allowed to be printed
at all He had published dozens of volumes of poetry and even
290
CROWLEYANITY
sneaked some of the less vulgar verses into anthologies. Indeed,
his book of ritual, The Equinox, was published in the United
States and won the questionable distinction of being denounced
291
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
theWorld" and his theatrical stunts looked pretty tawdry next
to Hitlerand Buchenwald. When he talked of desecrating sa-
cred objects with vile substances people were more likely to
chuckle than gasp.
Yet he had one last moment of glory if he had been alive
to know.
After his death his followers took his body to be cremated.
But before they did, there was a brief ceremony. His "Hymn to
Pan," one of his most sacrilegious and vulgar works was read.
It began:
292
Chapter
40
A few years later, the glib con man made the police blotters
in New Orleans. He had swindled, from a rich widow, $10,000
which she had been more than willing to give him. Her two
293
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
io wings.
Admusson's cult of Isis seemed doomed until, by happen-
stance, he heard of the ailing Lady Sabrina Blaykelocke, who at
her country home at Hampshire was suffering from a variety
of undiagnosed afflictions.
After dusting off his fez and polishing his charms, Admusson
called on the lady's husband, Lord Eustace. A
wealthy faddist
295
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
who raised prize swine, he was director of the "Neo-Theopneu-
stic League," an organization which had as its mission the study
of "the mysterious power which the divine spirit exercises in
making men recognize and communicate the Absolute Truth."
Lord Eustace a few years before had also financed a fruitless
or, more exactly, fungiless expedition to find hypnotic mush-
rooms.
Osiris Reborn stated his case quickly. He was versed in the
secret medical lore of the pharaohs, he explained. Since conven-
tional remedies had failed, he was ready to cure Lady Sabrina.
His remedies, consisting of incantations to Egyptian gods,
bedside
mysterious gestures, burnt offerings to Isis and a certain
manner, quickly had the lady up and about again. Fascinated
by his wife's speedy recovery, Lord Eustace turned over the
facilities of the Neo-Theopneustic League to the handsome
charmer. The cult of the Living Flame was soon a lively enter-
prise. There were tracts, booklets and
doctrines. Members
searched ancient writings for hidden messages and talked of
someday riding bareback on sacred Apis, the great white bull.
Admusson now contributed another ritual. Those who would
find the secrets of the ancients must exist on a special diet of
yogurt and sacred parched barley. Admusson himself, as Osiris
Reborn, would do the parching and take only a reasonable
profit when he sold it to followers.
He toured England, Holland and France with his message,
lecturing in tights of gold cloth and with oiled skin while Lord
Eustace and the Lady, garbed in flamboyant robes covered with
mystic symbols, sat on thrones behind him. A phonograph
played lute music during intermission, and strange incense
burned.
By February 1920, Admusson had two hundred devoted fol-
lowers and was ready for his next move.
The world was soon to be wiped out by "the sword of Set,"
the terrible destroyer, he announced. Only one place would be
296
EDVAARD ADMUSSON AND THE LIVING FLAME
saved. This was a small island on the other side of the glob
Admusson had in mind
the Isle of San Marcos, across tl
Gulf of Baja California from Guaymas. He had seen it in 191
when serving aboard a destroyer and had never forgotten i
beauty. It was uninhabited and used only by mainland ranche
from the nearby town of San Ignacio as grazing ground
Further, there was a magnificent volcano.
The Living Flamists had to leave for it immediately, he sai<
because there wasn't much time.
The first contingent prepared. Its leaders, in addition 1
298
EDVAARD ADMUSSON AND THE LIVING FLAME
He made several trips there, but found nothing to confirm the
tales.
bit, too. He died in 1922 during a visit to London and left the
299
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
dance to an Egyptian tom-tom, then unpacked his gold tights
and started lecturing.
He also went shopping for a yacht.
About then, the stock market crash made yachts a proverbial
drug on the market and Admusson and his lovely new High
Priestess were soon sailing back to Mexico aboard a sleek white
boat renamed the Sphinx.
The triumphant return to the island was slightly marred by
the cultists' reaction to the red-headed chorus girl. For a High
Priestess she seemed amazingly untutored in
Egyptology, they
complained, even if she did apparently have other special
training.
Tensions grew. People wanted their money back. The attrac-
tions ofEgyptian lore and love were wearing thin. Admusson
had probably anticipated as much when he bought the yacht.
Over the years, he had been swapping his followers' contribu-
tions for Mexican gold and hiding it. Now he quietly loaded it
300
Chapter
41
FRANZ CREFFIELD:
NAKED REFORMER
302
FRANZ CREFFIELD: NAKED REFORMER
of thenew church announced that it was time to find a haven
away from the wicked, evil world. He selected by revelation
Tiger Island on the Willamette River, a few miles from
Corvallis.
With hammers and saws, the ladies went to work building a
camp on the island, a refuge where the faithful could worship
as God intended. By snowfall, it was half completed and prayer
meetings started in the parlors again for the winter. But sud-
denly a photograph appeared in Corvallis. It had been taken
the summer before at Tiger Island. It showed the red-bearded
giant and his ladies at work at the island. And all of them were
stark naked!
It was the biggest scandal ever to hit the town. More than a
303
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
versation." Joshua made his getaway, but the husband swore
out a warrant for his arrest. When the news reached Corvallis,
Joshua's bride filed for divorce and her father posted a $400
reward for the capture of his erring son-in-law.
A few weeks later a boy fishing spotted a lank creature, naked
and with a flowing red beard, scurrying through the forest.
Joshua the Second was captured and sentenced to two years
in the state penitentiary.
Released after fifteen months, he went to San Francisco.
Here he wrote his former wife Maud, who had moved to Seattle.
Would she re-marry him? She agreed. Soon Joshua was with
Maud again, living with her relatives, a Seattle couple.
Joshua immediately set to converting them to his Church of
great prediction.
Joshua, too, was making capital with his prophecy. He
quickly acquired some land near Walport, Oregon, and sent
out a call to his erstwhile flock in Corvallis. "Come at once,"he
announced, "if you would be saved. Corvallis will soon perish
like San Francisco."
304
FRANZ CREFFIELD: NAKED REFORMER
There was panic in Corvallis. Wives deserted their husbands
and mothers left their children as the holy exodus began. Irate
husbands met to plot revenge.
One of the townsmen was selected as the community's assas-
sin. He arrived at Walport and was told that the prophet was at
305
Chapter
42
306
BEN PURNELL AND THE HOUSE OF DAVID
right. During the next twenty years she collected a fortune and
gained 100,000 followers.
Then she announced that she was going to bring forth the
Second Messenger by immaculate conception. She went into a
trance and died trying.
Now the schisms which were to mark the cult's history began.
A half-dozen people announced themselves as the Second Mes-
senger by divine revelation and denounced each other as here-
tics. A progression of a sort followed, with Richard Brothers,
simply meant that he had first choice of all virgins in the cult
and after he'd dallied with them to his satisfaction they were
formally for marriage.
fit
It took a time for word of this to get around and, in the mean-
307
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
308
BEN PURNELL AND THE HOUSE OF DAVID
After minutes' deliberation, the jury brought in a verdict
five
of guilty and the Prince went to prison for five years, where he
was to die.
Purnell, however, knew that he wasn't the new leader yet.
There was still a sticky problem. Since Prince Mike had pro-
claimed himself the final Messenger, Ben could hardly become
an eighth!
The showdown came at a prayer meeting in a rooming house
parlor in the spring of 1 895. As the bearded men and the women
in long dresses prayed for the release of their persecuted Mes-
senger, the young man with the shining red-gold beard suddenly
collapsed.
As frightened companions watched, he began to shake, and
trickles of saliva appeared on his lips. His eyes were glazed as
he spoke to the awed group.
"I am the Seventh Angelic Messenger," he said. "I am the
true Messenger. Fire and brimstone await those who doubt
me!"
The cultists gasped at such heretical raving. He continued to
shout: Anyone who doubted him would suffer eternal hellfire!
.But Eliza Courts, the ambitious queen of Prince Mike's
harem, was not about to lose her new power. She stood up and
denounced Ben as a fraud, opportunitist and impostor. She had
been ordered to rule the cult until Prince Mike was released,
she said.
By the time the stormy argument ended that night, Ben had
frightened a few members into joining him. But he was forth-
with banished from the organization.
However, Benjamin Franklin Purnell was not to be so easily
thwarted in his dream. Born in the mountains of Kentucky, he,
at the age of twenty, had started wandering the Midwest with
and baby daughter, making and selling brooms. During
his wife
thisnomadic period, before discovering in 1882 the Israelite
House of David in Detroit, he'd seen the advantages of being a
holy man. Claiming to be a wandering preacher, he'd been
309
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
minutes' talking, some-
given free food and shelter for a few
With of his own, he theo-
thing Ben enjoyed anyway. a flock
310
BEN PURNELL AND THE HOUSE OF DAVID
about to be stopping them," he drawled slowly.
that, I ain't
In the weeks that followed, rocks were thrown through the
windows of the church and Ben's home. Tensions increased.
Finally the authorities called on Purnell. If he didn't get out of
town and fast they couldn't be responsible for his safety,
they said.
Ben Purnell had no intention of losing his hard-won glory
and new life. He recalled that his group had been corresponding
and visiting with some two hundred Flying Rollers in Benton
Harbor, Michigan, who seemed ready to accept him as the true
Seventh Messenger.
Now Ben had another divine revelation. The lost tribe of
Israel was to migrate immediately to Benton Harbor, he de-
creed. Selling their homes and farms, the cultists moved to their
new spiritual home within a few weeks.
Here they were to find their destiny, although hardly the one
their Messiah had promised. But during the next twenty-three
311
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
sexual relations with Eve after she'd been seduced by the black
preacher.
of
Ben was an uneducated genius with an instinctive grasp
cultic psychology. Soon after he arrived at Benton Harbor, he
held a ceremony during which he was crowned himself King
Benjamin, King of the House of David. His position assured,
he told his followers to sell all property immediately and turn
their money overto him.
He bought land several miles from town and put the Flying
Rollers to work. Soon there were five buildings. Four were sim-
312
BEN PURNELL AND THE HOUSE OF DAVID .
313
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
cure. Even that wasn't the final step, however. Ben didn't want
to see the cultists forming emotional ties except with their
leader. He began a policy of divorcing and re-marrying couples,
shuffling them around and climaxed it all by for-
in confusion,
put the money to work. He bought some land near Lake Michi-
314
BEN PURNELL AND THE HOUSE OF DAVID
run by bearded cultists. Ben again happily collected both the
profits and their wages.
Entertaining and handling crowds was, self-evidently, not
only a good way to keep his followers in line, decided Ben, but
a way to get rich, besides.
His next venture was a baseball team. Starting out on the
local circuit, the bearded players were soon in the semi-pro
part-vaudeville and the money rolled in. Even when Ben was
315
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
lished a series of exposes in 1923 and called for the Michigan
attorney general to act.
Yet, no one could act. Because no one could find
Ben. For
four years the search went on. Some said he was in Canada,
others claimed it was Australia.
Then on November 16, 1926, a girl, Bessie Daniels, walked
into a police station.
He'd been liv-
King Ben had never left the colony, she said.
ing in secret, underground rooms
below his mansion.
A raiding party found the King in a secret chamber, appro-
priately enough in bed. Several
of his current harem in night-
was ignored while anxious followers sat around the ornate cof-
fin for ninety-six hours, praying and watching the wasted, thin
316
Chapter
43
JOHN BRIGGS:
SOUTHWEST MESSIAH
317
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
the blizzard.
Lesser men might havefrittered away the fortune on wine,
Now the wily Briggs paused. "He told me, too," he went on,
319
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
"that after we have found the secret, I am to lead you to the life
which we will find hidden here."
He opened the volume to 1 Esdras and read a marked pas-
that women have do-
sage to the hushed group. "Ye must know
minion over you: do ye not labor and toil and give and bring
all to the women?" He turned now to another passage and read
on: "Great is truth, and mighty above all things."
Here was the secret, Briggs said. And God had clinched it
with the final passage, which he read now: "Unto you is para-
dise opened."
God had
given Briggs the ultimate truth. It
was nothing more
than a matter of interpretation from now on. Briggs saw to that
quickly. As the study group pondered the divine revelation in
the weeks that followed, Briggs guided the talk to one conclu-
sion: Women were to have many husbands!
Within a few months, Briggs took the next obvious step. A
wife of one of the devoted members remained at the Briggs
test the practical appli-
apartment with the leader to put to the
cation of polyandry. another. With an obvious display of
Then
unselfish piety, they gave testimony that having several men
as bed partners rather than just one was indeed an unequaled
share their legal wives with spiritual brethren, found that being
selected as a proxy husband by another lady for a night was,
somehow, often adequate recompense.
Briggs, meanwhile, knew that the round robin sexual activity
under the guise of divine revelation would probably go unap-
preciated by police. His answer was the traditional one of
the
320
JOHN BRIGGS: SOUTHWEST MESSIAH
cult leader: isolation of his flock. Further, he'd already put
down the roots with his reference from Esdras. He was ready
for the next move. He must lead them to, and open, the "para-
dise," he said.
hallway. The main room was for the wife and her husband for
the night. The woman's eight extra husbands lived in the cubi-
cles and took their turns in order. The homes of the Devouts
were the same, only eight wives lived in the cubicles.
The Leader's home was distinctive. The main room was a
semicircle and the row of cubicles curled off from it, making
the house a mammoth figure "9."
With the houses up, it was time for the sacred marriages. The
Leader called the faithful together. For the occasion he was
wearing a black velvet cape with the figure 9 in white sewn on
the back.
He explained the ritual. The women would
line up on one
pleted.
The was to last seven months. Then the flaws
sexual Utopia
of the imbalance became evident. The Princesses found that the
casual lovemaking back in Chicago had been interesting. But
having a new husband who had been pacing his cubicle for
eight days as an eager bed partner each night was tiring.
The Devouts, too, found that tending to a harem night after
night was a wearing chore, not a delight. They took to sitting in
322
JOHN BRIGGS: SOUTHWEST MESSIAH
the desert and watching the sun with growing apprehension as
it sank below the western hills.
heavy.
The final crisis came when a disgruntled Devout, Jonas
Streete, set out for Fort Defiance, 175 miles away. He was going
to report the irreligious goings-on to authorities, he told com-
panions.
The Leader went on a rampage when he heard of the De-
vouf s treachery. But it was too late. Panicked cult members
packed and took off in all directions.
Streete, meanwhile, reached the town. But he met only
323
PART VII
Fads, Fancies and
Cultic Attachments
Chapter
44
gown, gloves and hat gets off a bus. She carries a worn violin
case and makes birdlike gestures as she hurries along to her
favorite street corner. Later in the day she will open her case. It
contains no violin, but bundles of tracts and her luncheon of
nuts and fresh fruit.
An old man with a massive gray beard comes ponderously
down the street. He is dressed in shabby cowboy clothes and
327
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
moves slowly under the load of silver ornaments which adorn
vest and jacket. He will sing gospel songs and strum his guitar to
find
attract a crowd. When he preach, listeners will
starts to
temple in the desert and will listen to his plea for a new crusade.
re-
By late morning, several hundred pensioners, laborers,
and are listening to the street
tired couples giggling teenagers
preachers.
There is a standard technique to draw a crowd. The would-
be-
be minister starts talking on some deserted street corner or
fore an isolated bench in the park. Soon the passers-by congre-
But if the sermon is not lively enough they
move on to
gate.
more lurid and amusing fare. Revolutionary ideas, wild ges-
to lure and hold sinners.
tures, rampant emotion are all devices
One woman has collected a score of listeners. The ubiqui-
tous guitar hangs from her neck. She wears a flowing, ancient
dress and talks in a lively staccato with waving gestures, punctu-
"Praise the Lord! Praise His
ating nearly every sentence with
Name!" She passing strollers.
calls to the "Fear
not, flock, little
fear not, for, yea, verily, I am here to tend thee!" As one pauses
to listen, it is discovered that this is no ordinary Christian but
a prophet sent
by God. She has talked with Christ personally.
She knows Mary and, she says sadly, was indeed once a fellow
worker with Mary Magdalen.
A bully, also in cowboy clothes, comes up. He is a journey-
man heckler known to all the street preachers.
crowd.
328
THE STREET PREACHERS
The woman turns to her mocker. "And you ain't no real cow-
boy, neither," she shouts back, pointing at his feet. "A real cow-
boy would have on boots, not muddy work shoes!"
The crowd cheers and the heckler slinks away like the Devil
in a Medieval morality play.
"The Devil's always with us Praise God! Always here!
Praise the Lord Wearing hoofs or dirty work shoes, he's
after us! Praise God! ..." She is off again with new enthusiasm.
Behind her a small man stands with Bible in hand. He has
large ears, peeling with sunburn. As she rambles on, he keeps
nodding wisely. Old-timers know him, too. He's a "parasite"
preacher, they'll tell you, bone lazy.
If the woman falters, he'll step in and start preaching, steal-
329
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
crowds, others cry their message to the sinful void. A tall old
man with a leonine mane of white hair and the face of a patri-
arch looms above a group, making dramatic gestures. We hear
him uttering disjointed pious phrases in Latin.
"Nuts! The whole town's filled with nuts!" exclaims a tourist
in amazement.
Back Sunday theologians 'are discussing
at the bench, the
Genesis and what "a day really means" in the Old Testament.
One angry theologian strikes at another, but the fight is over
religion.
"You stink!" shouts a squat, shapeless woman in a shawl.
A young Negro girl waves her Bible. "It is impossible to
please God without Christ," she announces to no one.
But the atheist moves in. He has removed his sweater. "In
other words, to deal with God you got to get a lawyer," he
sneers. "I'm no criminal. I don't need no lawyer."
The girl points at him with the fury of an avenging angel.
"You are worse than a criminal," she warns. "You better get a
lawyer. Or you'll end being up shit creek! A sinner needs a
lawyer. Jesus is a tremendous lawyer! He's the Great Mouth-
piece!"
A thin, pale young man stands alone. He wears a blue serge
suit and a strange which has an imitation of a clerical col-
shirt
lar. He opens the Bible. In a soft voice he says, "We shall now
330
THE STREET PREACHERS
"Don't sign nothing," a workingman cautions his wife. "It
may be communistic."
With darkening shadows, a trio arrives, two boys and a girl.
They all wear red, white and blue ties. The girl in the man's
uniform strums her banjo. They begin to sing, their voices stri-
dent in thesoft, gathering night:
"Lift up! Lift up! Lift up, up, up your hearts to Jesus!"
But even as dusk closes in on this Sunday evening, the lights
go on in blighted areas across the city.
For the "store-front churches," a bare cut above street
ing minister to get ahead. This is no place for the large denomi-
nations with their ever-increasing needs for the helpless else-
forms. The most modest talent here is both used and admired.
There is also almost inevitably faith healing and a sure answer
to the chaotic social world.
One major influence among store-front church leaders claims
millions of followers in his 24,000 "branches" throughout the
331
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
world. He is Bishop Homer Tomilson of the Church of God.
The Bishop has had himself proclaimed and crowned "King
of the World" in various South American, European and Afri-
can cities. In I960, he has announced, he will be a candidate
for the presidency of the United States.
The Bishop, a smiling, rotund man with a heavily scarred
nose, visits his followers in pink silk royal robes and a gold
crown. He takes with him a portable collapsible aluminum
throne which carries the title: "King of All Nations of Men."
Hepublishes, too, a newspaper from the World Head-
quarters in Queens, New York.
"I carry the world on my shoulders," he explains, blowing
plains. "I will depend upon miracles of peace to elect me! If one
man, Hitler, could declare war, one man, even so humble as I,
332
THE STREET PREACHERS
"New Revelations of Righteousness to be Classified Yearly."
Bishop Tomilson, a Pentecostal despite his cultic character-
istics, isn't just sure how many
votes he can muster for presi-
dent. About thirty million, he figures. But in the store-front
churches, most of them followers of the Latter Rain Movement
(characterized by the speaking in tongues), all the members
will vote for him, he says.
Who else, after all, will help them?
333
Chapter
45
HOLY CITY
the Comforter, the New Jerusalem." Others: "If you are con-
templating marriage, suicide or crime see us first!" And, "Dis-
pel the idea that you are different from God or the other fellow
334
HOLY CITY
when sifted down." And "$1000 reward if you can find a flaw
in the new Holy City system of government and prove it will not
work."
There was also an information booth, always empty, which
carried the enticing promise: "All Mysteries Answered."
There were penny peepshows which showed in crude cartoons
"The Fall of Man" and "Man's Temptations of the Flesh and
the Devil." Beneath a classic figure of a pensive woman hung
the strange sign: "The Bible Was Not Made for Women, nor
forGod."
There was pamphlets on "White Man's
literature galore:
Father Riker was that man. He was the ruler and the philoso-
pher. Today he's old and ailing. But during his day of glory, he
rode in a fine auto, he'll tell you, just as he pleased.
"I'm a self-made man," he says. "Holy City? I saw it in my
dreams, a city among the mountains, and I traveled and looked
and waited for it until I found this place." He talks proudly of
thelittle booths, now fallen, which cost a penny to look into.
explains.
He was a showman once, he says proudly, and still knows
the tricks. "I was a teacher, too. But I'm not a bookish man.
Haven't read more than three books in my whole life. If I be-
lieved I could find what I was looking for in a book I'd go
straight to it. But books can't do that for me."
He had hoped come to his city. He can't
for thousands to
understand it. "Nothing but damned ignorant tourists and their
cameras," he says, shaking his head.
He even practiced faith healing once. Just for members of the
335
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
every one of our wise old Santas. You'd think people would
have got that and wanted to join up."
During the war, Riker was seized by the FBI on six counts
of sedition. He had run for governor of California twice on his
336
HOLY CITY
mankind were destined to serve the white under Riker's plan.
Holy City has changed hands now. The signs and booths and
theological peepshows and Queen Elizabeth's legs are gone.
Fires have destroyed many of the wonders, and curio-seekers
have carried off others. "Sacrilege," grumbles the old man, now
in a rest home. "Stealing all those religious relics like them
Santa Clauses."
337
Chapter
46
PENITENTITES
338
PENITENTITES
In the twentieth century, the horror which has run through
the warp and woof of the tapestry of Christianity meets with
the birthright of the Aztec sacrificial altar and become one.
For many days the young men who are candidates for the
sacred role of today's Cristo have been vying for the honor.
With stinging whips made of cacti, they have scarred their
backs and legs with criss-crossed slices. They have prayed and
fasted.
shipers and grisly actors of the sacred roles toil up through the
freezing darkness.
Dawn is icy and cold. They are at the site. The cultists
339
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
340
Chapter
47
FLYING SAUCERS
341
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
for centuries
(unidentified flying objects) have been reported
in times of public stress. There has been a quasi-religious be-
lief in UFOs by many cultural groups in different ages. They
There are picturiza-
appear in paintings and other art objects.
tions identical with or symbolically comparable to the vast
342
FLYING SAUCERS
343
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
such space people as Monka of Mars, Mentar of Venus, Crae-
ton of Jupiter, and Gregorno of an unknown planet. There was
a watercolorist who exhibited paintings of space people.
How are contacts made with the Space People? Mind-to-
mind in many instances the phenomenon common to theoso-
phists in reaching the Adepts of the Himalayas. There are eso-
tericmessages received by phone and radio, also.
One speaker told delegates of flying beneath the northern ice
pack in a spaceship from Saturn in 1957. He announced that
Russian subs were mapping the floor to build underwater mis-
sile bases and said that the Saturians have promised to take him
proach to God.
344
Chapter
48
MORAL RE -ARMAMENT
345
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
wth any creed or religion. With such a loose yet unchanging
standard it is difficult for MRA to explain it interms of com-
parison.
Since its early beginnings in 1921, MRA has shown its full
is no easy matter.
problem."
This outstanding example of unrealism, political naivete and
wishful thinking was later lifted out of context. Buchman was
branded as pro-Nazi. The accusation was not fully dispelled
end of World War II.
until the
In 1938 the group took the present name, MRA. Aims re-
mained as unspecific as before. The simple explanation: "You
don't pay anything, you don't join anything, the idea is that you
begin living MRA standards." But if the rules were vague, the
astute showmanship never lacked punch. Groups of MRA
fol-
347
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
And it did not miss the obvious fact that big names
names
attracted more attention than enthusiastic youths. Ministers
of state, politicians and educators took part in activities. What
would seem to the sophisticated "corny," attracted flocks of
people. Such devices as amateur musical shows, plays propa-
gandizing "God-control," combining Swiss yodelers, Joan of
Arc and Abe Lincoln, attracted crowds.
MRA then had roots in England, Canada and the United
States; but its strength gradually was felt through Europe and
Asia.
348
MORAL RE-ARMAMENT
Holy Spirit." Members must spend at least fifteen minutes each
day in meditation, known as the "Quiet Time." During this
pause they write down the promptings of the Holy Spirit and
note their inspirations and the replies they receive.
MR A has grown in prestige over the decades. It has attracted
rich and powerful patrons, seemingly always a target for MRA
promotional has been active in effecting settlements
efforts. It
349
Chapter
49
GERALD L. K. SMITH
350
GERALD L. K. SMITH
preaches his racist doctrines, sells his booklets and collects his
"love offerings" awaiting the day when the world will be made
anew for the pure, white Protestant blood of the Midwest.
It's not like the old days. In the early 1930's Smith was pastor
ing rantings of Huey P. Long were too much. Smith joined up.
He learned his trade as a rabble-rouser well. When Long was
shot and killed, Smith announced his heavenly so-called re-
ligious mission: to save "good, old, go-to-meeting, Bible-read-
ing, children-having, God-fearing, ice-cream-making common
people" from the enemy within.
For a time Smith joined with the pro-Fascist spellbinder
Father Gerald Coughlin. But soon he was launched on his own
with his movement, the "Committee of One Million." Soon, at
his headquarters in strife-ridden Detroit his take was $1500 a
week. And he was in the news almost daily. When he issued
statements criticizing the Chicago arrest of a cohort, an un-
frocked Catholic priest, for disorderly conduct,
he was sen-
tenced to contempt of court. He announced grandly: "My ap-
peal will be as important as the Dred Scott decision."
Smith was, indeed, riding high. "I promised my mother never
to a speech without mentioning the name of Christ," he
make
would shout. "We only put our faith in Christ above America
First."
And was the name of the new group, America First. Its
this
351
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
laxation of immigration laws and protective tariffs and urged
"saving the American farmer."
Smith was flaying in all directions by now. He was regularly
attacking Franklin D. Roosevelt, Wallace,
Wendell Willkie,
Felix Frankfurter, Harry Hopkins and "that Jew, Walter Lip-
shitz WinchelL" He contended Wallace should be made a milk-
man in China, Willkie sent to Moscow, and all Roosevelts
thrown out of office.
"It's getting to be if you love Christ and love America, you've
claiming three million followers. Most were past middle age and
as Smith told of
unsophisticated. They applauded nervously
arguments with the great and near great and what he'd told the
352
GERALD L. K. SMITH
Last year he listed total income for the cause at about $ 170,-
000 with the House Clerk in Washington, D.C., as required by
the Corrupt Practices Act. He also named, as required by law,
about two hundred contributors who had given more than one
hundred dollars during the year. Most were from the West and
their total donations were $36,000. He preaches against segre-
353
Chapter
50
354
VEGETABLE, SUN AND HEALTH WORSHIP
World War II caused a joyous field day for such diet cultists.
Shortly after the war, the International Vegetarian Union even
petitioned for membership in UNESCO, asserting that meat-
eating made man and caused wars.
belligerent
Contemporary on food is so vast as to defy
cultic folklore
355
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
Saxon population in Southern California would eventually be-
come a "Moorish type" due to the climate and fruit diet. An-
other pundit claimed that the atmosphere would result in "a
Race of Singers" and the area would be "the land of song for
the Western Hemisphere." Still other authorities on tubercu-
losis, anxious to found sanitariums, sounded like quacks claim-
ing miraculous cures in their exposition of the Southern Calif-
ornia climate.
sun, of course, played a major part. At one time
The health
East, every faddist and fanatic who was seeking that miracle
which would change his life. Tales were publicized of Indians
who lived to be 140 years old. Resorts flourished and advertised
in the Eastern newspapers health testimonials of their regular
visitors. Santa Barbara and San Diego and Los Angeles were
alltouted as leading centers of health seekers.
to the lure, fresh food containing strange and fasci-
To add
nating "mineral contents" was cheap and available for the
health seeker, the ads promised.
Outdoor camps for those suffering from respiratory ailments
blossomed. Each week invalids arrived in Pasadena by the
dozens, filling hotels and guest homes. Bicycling was publicized
as a prescription for consumption. There was talk about ozone,
356
VEGETABLE, SUN AND HEALTH WORSHIP
with patent medicine ads. Drugs and nostrums were the main
topics of conversation.
The local bigwigs were worried. Los Angeles existed only on
climate, Eastern financial circles believed. It had no solid base
of growth for real estate or other investments. Yet the sickly
tide came on, followed by undertakers and embalmers who set
357
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
business for survival. A new health prophet could bring swarms
one town, creating havoc in another.
of eager invalids into
The medicine of Southern California was primitive still and
not keeping pace with the turmoil. This was a lure for quacks
and charlatans. They made the most of it. In Santa Barbara in
1883 a particular lady, "Queen of Magnetism," won a group of
health cultist followers. She offered electropathic and allopathic
treatments "for all diseases no matter what name or nature with
was also a clairvoyant and
never-failing success." She spirit-
ualist.
had taken to rural ways and found a new life and health. Citrus
358
VEGETABLE, SUN AND HEALTH WORSHIP
growing, some said, was a sure cure for lung trouble. The
"fumes" from the were an absolute remedy.
fruit
359
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
large mess halls. There were cows to supply milk, and chickens,
and the price was to be only three to four dollars a week. It
lasted a few months, then disappeared.
Others came and went. Health as a leading Southern Cali-
fornia industry began to disappear about a half century ago.
Yet the health faddist is still much a part of the scene. The
sun-worshiper, fruitarian or vegetarian continues to preach his
quaint doctrine. Within the various cultic efforts, he is sure to
emerge, striving to make his dietary doctrine a part of the
dogma. But he is likely to face a rival these days. For another
exotic remedy for ill health has bloomed in the last few decades
yoga.
360
Chapter
51
YOGA
tion or slow down other bodily processes. Only the skilled yogi
begin . . ."
obey health laws. A cat for instance stretches its muscles be-
fore demanding activity from them.
362
YOGA
is anyone's guess,'
shrugs one physician.
Yet yoga has attracted thousands of American practitioners
who claim wondrous results. Celebrities such as Marilyn Mon-
roe, Greta Garbo, Ruth St. Denis, Leopold Stokowsky, Gary
363
Chapter
52
364
ZEN AND THE BEATNIKS
Zen is
brusque in its teachings, aimed at the roots of incon-
demands action of a curious sort. This can only be
sistency. It
achieved when it is simple, natural and totally correct. It finds
truth through shrinking away from error, not discovering a
way to truth.
Such heady concepts find their ideal in a perfect Zen person-
ality. Such a person is serene, untouched by the chaos and il-
lusion about him. He is understanding, even humorous. Yet
there is an untouched dynamic tranquility. He is in a constant
state of poise without pretense. He does not sacrifice work of
the hands for meditation nor theoretical dreams for practical
pleasures.He seeks the full experience and the universal pur-
pose.He knows how to experience activity in a mystical sense
and recognize it in others. A properly lived now also- assures
him of a proper future. Now is the "Time of all becoming."
Such a mystic philosophy, oddly enough, bears a kinship to
primitive Christianity. Like the ardent fundamentalist awaiting
the second coming which will bring heaven to earth, the Zen
ideal is to achieve a Nirvanic state and a saintly condition on
this earth.
365
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
social "anything goes," just as there is a perversion of the Zen
now which becomes with beats, "Let's live it up tonight."
The typical beat Zen has only fluttered about the compli-
cated concept. He is versed really only in a cliche common to
other beats who have touched on the hoary Oriental philosophy,
which was first popularized in the United States in 956 during
1
Christian saints.
It also scorns comparisons. There are no "good" and "bad"
or pieces of sand. Like Raja yoga, Zen recognizes
stars, diseases
that the deeper one goes into himself through meditation, the
more one finds that he is "it," not "he." But if he does not medi-
tate, he is "it," also, Zen says.
Zen teaches that one need not justify himself, as opposed to
the Christian world. He just is.
366
ZEN AND THE BEATNIKS
This simple thesis has infinite involvements. For it can ex-
plain away disinterest, striving. Yet,
lassitude, if a Zen of
bohemia is to be credible, he must be cautious. For to revolt
too ardently smacks only of conventional reaction to other ob-
serving Zens. He must stay listless. But much as a beat Zen will
use marijuana and claim he's reached the mystic state of safari,
he will usually react to convention by showing his hate or fear
of it. In this way the Zen cultist in a bohemia of today loses his
Zen identity as clearly as if he had never left the choir loft of the
Presbyterian Church.
While Americans go through the Zen fad, Zen is declining
in its homeland, Japan, where it grew for eight hundred years.
Some five million followers there still claim it, a belief which
has had a major cultural effect on everything from flower ar-
ranging to war decisions. Yet, few care any longer about Zen's
mystical implications. It is conventional, old, worn and, hence,
no longer attracts the ardent seeker. The koan, which goes back
to the twelfth century, when it was devised to test the students'
understanding of the Zen spirit and shake his mind from con-
ventional thinking, leaves most professed Zen followers in
Japan uninterested today. And, of course, one can never
achieve satori the nonrational, clear and intuitive understand-
original nature?"
The accepted answers to such questions, when they come,
are supposed to reflect one's entire life.
Zen is a paradox within a paradox, a mystical doctrine which
367
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
368
Chapter
53
QUO VADIS?
and cannot stand still. The cult of Christianity itself met its
first great need at its For Judaism, which had met
birth site.
with success the attack of Greek thought and Roman power,
could not offer an answer to a growing human desire a uni-
versal spirit for the widening world. Christ's message filled that
vacuum. His alien doctrine of gentleness and love, too, met the
strength of mighty Rome. Within a few years this new
belief
369
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
satisfied traditionalists that they are not perfect. For these tiny
outgrowths will be living critiques to the claim that the church
has the answer for all men of all times.
Historically, the church has met such infidels with scorn and
even hate, refusing to look to itself to explain the reason for
this tiny revolution. For the thousands who demand answers
and hope and come circling around the traditional Church with
unpleasant questions, the theologian slams the door. "There
will always be a lunatic fringe," seems to grumble the tradi-
tionalist. "There's nothing to be done about it." And so the dis-
370
INDEX
Angclus Temple, 163, 165-168, 170, 172-
175
Aaron ic Pnesthood, 214 Anglicans, 55, 57, 148, 295
Abel, 7
1 1
Animism, 52
A-bomb, 127, 21W-2IO, 350 Ann Arbor, Mich., 308
Abraham, 17 1
Anthroposophical Society, 90
Absolute, 40-41 Antichrist^ 268
Acts,Book of, 162 Anti-Saloon League, 352
Adam, 89, 117, 275, M2, 342 Anti-vivesectiomsts, 86
Adepts, 145-146, 178-179, 184, 344 Aphrodite, 274
"Adestc Fideles/' 180 Apis, 296
Adkins, I-dwaid, 300 Apocrypha, 319
l
Adler, Felix, >3 Apostles, 21, 86
Admusson, F.dvaard, 293-300 Apostolic Brotherhood, 91
Adventism, 57-60, 31 1
Applied Christianity, 72
Adventists, 56-61 Aquarius School of the Masters, 93
Adyar, 144 Arabs, 28, 268, 328
Aeschylus, 151 Arcturus, God of Liberty, 180
Africa, 63, 143, 225, 228-229 Aristotle, 29, 151, 274
Agabag Occult Church, 130 Arizona, 69, 211, 359
Agasha, 131 Ark of the Covenant, 99
Agasha, Reverend,.stv/enor, Di. Richard Arkansas, 273
Agasha Temple of Wisdom, Inc., 131 Armageddon, 11, 294, 344
"Age of Reason," 96 Army- McCarthy Hearings, 214
Agua Prieta, 165 Aryan Scriptures, 185
Ahmadiyat Sect, 86 Aryan Temple, 501
371
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
Babylonia, 31 Bombay, 144
Babylonians, 23 Book of Mormon, The, 78
Bachell,Horace A 357 ,
Book of the Dead, 294
Bacon, Francis, 177, 317 Borgia, Cesare, 119
Bacon, Roger, 28 Boston, 66-67, 189
Baha Abdu'l, 106 Boston Craze, 74, 109, 153
Baha'i, 104-106 Box Canyon, 213, 215-216
Baha'u'llah, 104, 106 "Boy Phenomenon, The," 358
Baker, George, see Father Divine Brace, Charles Loin, 355
Bakersfield, Calif., 214 Bradlaugh, Charles, 119
Ballard, Edna, 176-183 Briggs, John, 317-323
British Psychic Research Society, 53, 144
Ballard, Guy, 176-183
Baltimore, 56, 101, 163, 236 Broan, Addison, 132
Bancroft, Hubert Howe, 140-141 Brooklyn, N. Y., 61, 63, 87, 343
Baptism, 238, 265
Brotherhood of Teachers, 146
Baptists, 57, 224, 350
Brotherhood of the White Temple, 89
Barefoot People, 216 Brothers, Richard, 306
Barrow, Lucy, 87 Brothers of Christ, 91
Basilides, 26
Brothers of the Golden Cross, 30
Brothers of Luxor, 143
Bates, Joseph, 58
Battle Creek Institute, 357 Bryan, William Jennings, 332
Bayer, Alfred, 297 Bryant, William Cullen, 51
Bazard, Armand, 275 Buchanan, President James, 80
"Beast 666," 280, 285, 288 Buchenwald, 292
Beatniks, 364-368 Buchman, Dr. Frank, 346-349
Beat Zen, 265 Buchmanites, 347
Beaver Islands, 95, 102 Buchner, Ludwig, 120
Behemoth, 270 Buckingham Palace, 87
Beissel, Johann Conrad, 275 Buddha, 74, 113, 145, 194, 341
Believerism, or Balanced Life, 132 Buddhism, 194, 366
Bell, Arthur, 196-202 Buddhists, 42, 186, 281-282
Bellamy, Edward, 317 Builders of Adytum, 89
Belur Math, 185 Bunche, Ralph, 259
Benares, India, 149 Burbank, Luther, 106
Benares, University of, 149 Burkmar, Lucius, 74
Benedict, St., 247 Burlington, Iowa, 97
Bennett, Allen, 281-282 Butler, Samuel, 317
Benton Harbor, Mich., 311-312, 314
Bernard, St., 37
Besant, Annie, 148-160
Bhatka Yoga, 362 Cabala, 29, 31-32, 145, 280-281
Bible, 38, 48, 51, 58, 61-62, 65, 75, 96, Caesar, 32
117, 130, 132, 164, 206, 237, 244, 246, Cagliostro, 31
279, 311, 327, 330, 332, 341, 344 Cain, 117, 311-312
Bill of Rights, 16 Cairo, Egypt, 283-284
Birth Control, 82 Calcutta, India, 185
Bla'ck Jews, 245-247 California, 11, 18, 29, 75, 80, 125-135,
Black Magic, 135, 268, 280 138, 142, 147, 153-157, 159, 162, 176,
Black Mass, 263-272, 277, 288-289 179, 194, 196, 198, 214, 216, 258, 336
Blavatsky, General Nikifor, 142 California Institute of Technology (Cal-
Blavatsky, Helena Petrovna Hahn, 142- tech), 213
147, 149, 158 California Positive and Negative Electric
Blavatsky Lodge, 144 Cough and Consumption Cure, 357
Blaykelocke, Lady Sabrina, 295-298 Calles, President Elias, 299
Blaykelocke, Lord Eustace, 295-299 Calvin, John, 190
Bliven, Bruce, 126 Calvinists, 268
"Blood on the Tail of a Pig," 1 10 Cambridge University, 280
Bloomer, Amelia, 102 Campbellites, 78
Bloomington, 111., 81 Canada, 63, 87, 92, 108, 165, 174, 307,
BodhiTree, 194 315-316, 319, 348
Boehme, Jacob, 145 cantinas > 138
Bogomils, 269 Cape Verde Islands, 240
Boleskinne, Laird of, 282 Carmel, Calif., 166
Bolsheviks, 297 Case, Dr. Paul Foster, 89
372
INDEX
Catacombs, 43 Clark, Mose, 315
Catalina Island, 21 Classical Ideal, 30
Catholicism, 13, 35, 53, 62, 82, 135, 139, Clay County, Mo., 79
166, 184, 207, 223, 229-230, 295, 343 Cleveland, Ohio, 179
Celestial Vehicle Investigation Commit- Coconino County, Ariz., 321
tee, 343 Cold War, 332
Celibacy, 275 Colorado, 340
Cerberus, 122 Columbian Exposition, 105
Ceylon, 144, 195, 284 Comet of 1572, 114
Chaldea, 23, 26 Committee of One Million, 351
Charlemagne, 28 Communism, 63, 64, 347
Charlotte, N. C, 241 Communists, 63, 64, 347, 352
Charon, 122 Conestoga Wagons, 80
"Chemical Wedding," 115 Coney Island, 244
Cherry, F, S., 245-247 Confucius, 74, 145
Chicago, 12, 80, 105, 156-157, 163, 176, Congregationalism, 86
179, 183-184, 204, 213, 231, 233, 249, Congregationalists, 364
254-256, 258, 293, 314, 318-319, 322- Connecticut, 16
323, 327, 351 conquistador es 339
y
373
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
Denver, Colo., 89, 163 Emancipation, 51
Depression, 129, 170, 196-197, 236 Emerson, "Pontiff" Harold Davis, 89
De Raemond, 268 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 73-74
Deshayes, Catherine, 270-271 Enfantm, Bartelemy-Prosper, 275
Detroit, 96, 178, 253-254, 258, 307-309, Engels, Friedrich, 317
327, 351 England, 32, 56, 63, 75, 85-86, 91, 133,
Detroit Free Press, 3 1 5 149 155, 284, 286, 289-290, 296, 306-
devachan, 146 307, 343, 347-348
De Vere, Edward, 52 Ephrata Colonv, 275
Devil, 62, 91, 101, 199, 232, 264-265, 267, Equinox* The, 29 1
374
INDEX
Florence, Ital>, 28 Golden Calf, 184
Florida, 161/211 Golden State, 153
Fludd, Robert, 29 Good Friday, 338
Flying Roll, The, 307 Goofer Dust, 233
Flying Rollers, 307, 311-312 Gorakhpur, 189
Flying Saucers, 211, 341-344 Goths, 27
Flying Saucers' A Modern Myth of Things Graca, Marcel no, see Grace,
i
Daddy
Seen in the Skies, 341 Grace, Daddy, 240-244
Food Faddists, 135 Graham, Billy, 16, 120
Forest lawn Memorial Park, 173, 188 Grand Canyon, 321
Forras, 270 Great Beast, 279, 281, 286, 289-290
Fort Den' a nee, 323 Great Britain, 91, 152, 165, 200, 292
Fosdick, Di. Harry Emerson, 14 Great Pyramid, 11, 283, 294, 344
Fosloria, Ohio, 310 Great White Brotherhood, 131
Fountain of the World, 213-214 Great White Lodge, 146
Fourier, Charles, 32, 317 Greece, 25, 281, 318
Fox, John D., 52 Greek Thought, 369
Fox, Katie, 52-53 Greeks, 154, 274, 285
Fox, Margaret, 52-53 Greeley, Horace, 51, 81
France, 30-31, 152, 177, 269, 275, 290, 296 Green Virgin, 210
Francis, Third Order of St., 339 Greenwich Village, 286, 364
Frankenstein, 275 Gregorno, 344
Frankfurter, Felix, 352 Gregory VII, Pope, 28
Frazer, J. G., 295 Gris-gris, 223, 226, 229, 231-233
Frederick the Great, 31 Guazzo, 264
Ftederickshall, 54 Guaymas, 297-298
Freemasonry, Fgvptian Lodge of, 31 Guldenstubbe, Baron, 32
Fremont, John C., 139, 153 Gulf of Baja California, 297
French Revolution, 25 Kuril, 189, 192
French West Africa, 240 Guyon, Madame, 269
Freud, Sigmund, 43
Fruitarians, 359 H
Fruits of Islam, 258
Fulton, Mo., 332 Hades, 122
Fundamentalism, 38, 48, 129, 164, 204, Haeckel, Ernst, 120
278, 302, 354, 370 Haifa, Israel, 106
Fundamentalists, II, 13 117, 162, 342, Halcyon Order of the IHuminati, 100
365 Haley's Comet, 336
Ham, 81
Hampshire, England, 295
Hansel, Mr. and Mrs. John W., 315-316
Gandhi, Mohandas K., 194 Happy Valley Foundation, 158
Gandhi Woild Peace Memorial, 194 Hard-shell Baptists, 1 1
375
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
Hindu Thought, 72-73 Internal Revenue, Department of, 1 8
Hinduism, 185, 194 International Bible Students, 61
Hindus, 42, 70, 72-73, 87, 93, 144, 186, International Church of Holy Trinity, 133
189, 191-192, 195, 282, 361 Internation Congress of Religious Lib-
Hitler, Adolf, 12, 117, 292-293, 332, 347 erals, 189
Hitlerian Racist Ideas, 253 International Institute of Universal Re-
Hitlerism, 347 search, 198
Hoffer, Eric, 36 International Legion of Vigilantes, 198
Holland, 149, 152, 155, 296-297 International Theosophical Society, 157
Hollywood, 11, 108, 127, 152, 185, 195, International Vegetarian Union, 356
204-205, 207 Interplanetary Study Groups, 134
Holy City, Calif., 334-335, 337 Iris Temple of Art, Music and Drama, 151
Holy Ghost, 162 Iron Curtain, 120, 332
Holy Koran, 249-250 Isaiah, 210
Holy Land, 165 Ishtar, 121
Holy Rollerism, 162 Isis, 15, 24-25, 27, 121, 282, 294-295
Holy Rollers, 161-162 Isis Unveiled , 143
Holy Spirit, 70, 162, 349 Islam, 86, 114, 194
Holy Superet Light Church, 133 "Islam," 250-259
Holy Writ, 28 Isleof San Marcos, 297
Homeopathy, 68 Isolationism, 351
Homestead, 150, 152, 159 Israel, 78, 259
Homosexuality, 279, 282, 286 Israelite House of David, see House of
Hong Kong, 161,282 David
Hopkins, Harry, 352
Horton, Dr., 131
Hottentots, 351
Houdini, 53 Jackson, Andrew, 52
House of David, 306-316 Jacob, 246
House of Prayer for All People, 240-241 "James I, King," 95-103
How to Prophecy, Predict and Speak, 21 1 James, St., 95
Howard, Dana, 343 James, William, 40-41, 76
Humanism, 92-93 Jansen, Cornells, 30
Humfry, John, see Briggs, John Jansenism, 30-31
Hunt, Maud, 303-305 Jansenists, 30
Huron, Lake, 95 Japan, 198, 282, 336, 343, 363
Husayn All, Mirza, 105 Japanese, 179
Hussites, 118 Jaredites, 78
Hutton, David, Jr., 169, 171 Jeffers, Joe, 203-211
Huxley, Aldous, 186 Jeffers, Mrs. Joe, 206, 208
Huxley, Julian, 93 Jehovah's Witnesses, 44, 49, 60-64, 278
Hydesville, N. Y M 52 Jerusalem, 91
"Hymn to Pan," 292 Jesuits, 30-31
Hypnotism, 74 Jesus Christ, 11, 14, 21, 23, 25-26, 28, 37,
50, 58, 62, 65, 67, 70, 74, 78-79, 85-87,
I 89-91, 98, 105-106, 113, 118-119, 126,
Idealism, 73 132, 139, 145-146, 154-155, 157, 162,
Illinois, 79, 97 179, 182, 194, 211-212, 214, 218, 246-
Incas, 177 248, 263, 269, 278, 310-311, 316, 328-
Independence, Mo., 79, 81 332, 338-339, 341, 351-352, 369
India, 11, 86-87, 143-144, 149, 152, 155, Jewish mythology, 263, 284
157, 159, 185, 189, 192, 195, 274, 282, Jews, 29, 78, 87, 157, 205, 207, 246, 253-
318 254, 256-257, 350, 353
Indian mystics, 190, 295 Jnana Yoga, 362
Indian seers, 135 Joan of Arc, 178, 348
Indianapolis, Ind., 12 Job, Book of, 30
Indians, American, 78, 89-90, 100, 102, John, Doctor, 229, 231, 232
135-136, 138, 178, 338, 340, 356 John, St., 11, 87,339-340
Indio, Calif., 360 John Believer, see Broan, Addison
Ingersol, Ont., 161 John of the Cross, St., 188
Ingersoll, Robert G., 120 Jordan, David Starr, 35
Inquisition, 264-265 Joshua the Second, 301-305
Institute of Mentalphysics, 133 Judah, 24
Institute of Thought Control, 134 Judaism, 14, 24, 369
376
INDEX
Judas, 21, 32 Latter Rain Movement, 333
Judge, William 0., 149 Laurel Canyon, 208
Judgment Day, 201 Laveau, Marie, 230-233
Judo, 258 Laws, 25
Julian the Apostate, 26 Leadbeater, Charles W., 91
Jung, Dr. Carl, 341-342 Leamington, England, 278
Jupiter, 55, 344 Lecky, William, 120
Lee, Mother Ann, 275
K Lee County, Fla., 87
Left Bank, 283
K-2, 283 Legions of Light, 179
K-17, 179, 182 Lemuna, 344
Kamenoft, Peter, 217 Lemunan Epic, 1 12
Kansas City, 70-71, 87, 192-193 Lemurians, 178
Kansas City Athenaeum, 192 Lenormand, Mademoiselle, 31
Karma, concept of, 112 Leona, Pope, 213
Karma, law of, 145-146, 159 Lesbianism, 168
Karma Yoga, 362 Libanius, 26
Karnak, 177 Liberal Catholic Church of America, 91
Kashmir, India, 87 Lidice, 117
Kearney, General, 138 Lighthouse of International Four-square
Kcble, John, 347 Evangelism, 174
Kellogg, Dr. J. H., 357 Lincoln, Abraham, 51, 348
Kenai Peninsula, 215 Little Egypt, 185
Kennedy, Minnie, 160, 164-167, 169, 172 Little, Malcolm, 258
Kentucky, 11, 309 Liverpool, 345
Kepple, Judge Gerald O, 251 Living Flame, 293-300
King, John, 143 Loch Ness, 282
King, Dr. William, 134 Logic, 268
King James Bible, 117 Loki, 121
Kingdom Hall, 62-63 Loma Linda, Calif., 59
Kingdom Temple, 203, 208, 210 London, 55, 143-144, 154, 156, 219, 280,
"Kingdom of Yahweh," 208, 21 1 282, 289, 293, 295, 298-299
King's Chamber, 283 Long, Huey P., 351
King's Cottage, 95 Long Beach, Calif., 1 1 1
Kings, Book of, 264 Long Island, 89
Kirkland, Ohio, 79 Lord's Supper, 62, 106
Knight, Reverend Giles N., 171 Los Angeles, 19, 59, 89-92, 125-126, 128-
Knorr, Nathan, 62 130, 132-133, 135-136, 138-139, 141-
koan, 365, 367 142, 152-153, 158, 163, 164-167, 169,
Koran, 33, 38, 130, 253, 256 172, 174, 176-177, 183, 186, 188-190,
Kore, 274 193, 196, 203, 208-209, 212-213, 217,
Korean War, 64 240-241, 253, 257-258, 327, 343, 352,
koresh, 88 355-357, 359
Kranikov, Casimir, 297, 299 Los Angeles County, 171
Kremlin, 21 1 Los Angeles Municipal Court, 251
kri, 190 Los Angeles Star, 138-140
Krishnamurti, 148-160 Los Angeles Times, 125, 152-153
Kriya, 190 "Lost Generation" of the Twenties, 131,
Kriya Yoga, 189 323
Krotana, 152 Lost Tribes of Israel, 310-311
Ku Klux Klan, 251, 352 Lotus position, 195, 263
Kullgren, William, 355 Louisiana, 193, 226
Love with Understanding, 343
LSD, 41-42
Lucifer, 265
Lafayette, Marquis de, 178, 230 Luciferians, 28
Laguna Beach, Calif,, 186 Luke, St., 1 1
377
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
M Michigan, 316
Michigan, Lake, 95, 104, 314-315
Machen, Arthur, 28 1 Michigan Legislature, 102
Mackinac, 96, 102-103 Middle Ages, 27, 29, 43, 65, 264, 274, 338
1
378
INDEX
Mt. Shasta, 176, 178 North Carolina, 249
Mt. Sinai, 122 North Pole, 140
Mt. Sinai Holy Church of America, 244- Northwest Trust Company of Chicago.
245 318
Mt. Teton, 177, 182 Nothing Impossible Group, 131
Mt. Washington, 189, 194 Notre Dame, 32
Mu, 90, 178 Noyes, John Humphrey, 318
Muhlcnhcig College, 346 Nucr, 270
Mullcr, Ralph, 217 Nucstra Senora La Rema de Los Angeles
Municipal Auditorium (Denvet), 163 de Poiciuncula, 136
Muiphy, Fiancis, 291 Numerology, 318
Muscovites, 286
Muslims, 225 O
Mysore Province, 318
Mysteries of Lleusis, 274 Oakland, Calif, 18, 167, 173, 215, 247
Mystics, ^5
1 Oakland (Cal.) Auditorium, 173
Mystics, Medieval Christian, 4] Obregon, President Alvero, 299
Occult Hierarchy, 146
N Ocean Park, 165
Odin, 122
Naga, Goddess of I
ove, 180 Oeggcr, William, 32
Naples, 144 Ohio, 20
Napoleon, 32 Ojai, Calif., 158-159
Narcisse, King, 247-248 Olcott, Colonel Henry Steel, 143-144
Nashville, Term 315
, Old Catholic Church, 91
National Association for the Advance- Old Nick, 327
ment of Colored People, 253, 256 Old Testament, 13, 51-52, 118, 211, 319,
National Council of Churches, 13 330, 338
Nauvoo, II!., 79, 97-98 Olivet, Pierre-Joseph d', 32
Nauvpo Legion, 79 Olson, Nelson, 360
Navajo Indian Reservation, 321 Olympus, 122
Navajos, 321 Oneida, N. Y., 318, 321
Nazism, 205, 207 "Onward, Christian Soldiers," 205, 207
Nebuchadne//ar, 24 OPA, 207
Negro cults, 223-259 Order of the Cross, 86
Neo-Gnostie Mass, 291 Order of the Golden Dawn, 280, 282, 284
Neo-Platonists, 26 Order of the Silvei Star, 287
Neo-Theopneustic League, 296 Order of the Star, 157
Nepal, 194 Order of the Stai of the East, 159
Nephrites, 78 Orient, 21 1
379
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
paguSy 27 Portland, Me., 74
Paine, Thomas, 96, 120 Portland, Ore., 110, 303
Palestine, 133, 157 Positive Thinking, 72-73
Palm Springs, 209 Potomac, 16, 51
380
INDEX
Reincarnation mediums, 127 San Jose, Calif., 334
Remsberg, Charles E., 120 San Luis Valley, 340
Reorgani/cd Church of Jesus Christ of Sanctuary of Thought, 343
Latter-dav Saints, 81 Sangre del Cristo, 339-340
Republic, 275, 317 Sanskrit, 363
Revelation, Book of, 11, 35, 43, 47, 49, Santa Barbara, 186, 356, 358
57, 191, 269, 279,286, 306, 313 Santa Claus, 334, 336-337. See also Holy
Rigdon, Mr., 78 City, Calif.
Riker, "Father" W. E., 334-337 Santa Cruz, Calif., 334
Rio Grande, 338, 340 Santo Domingo, 226-227
Rites of Isis, 282 Santa Fe, N. M., 183
Robespierre, 25 Santa Paula, 214
Robinson, Ina, 244-245 Santa Ysabel, Calif., 93
Robinson, Dr. Frank B., 107-110 Saracens, 33
Robinson, Jackie, 258 Saras wati, Dayananda, 144
Rochester, N. Y., 52 Saratov, 142
Rockefeller, John D., 241 Saskatchewan, 92
Rome, 26, 212, 281, 369 Satan, 62, 91, 98, 165, 264, 266, 269, 284
Roman Empire, 118 Satanael, 269
Romans, 26, 274 Satanic Gnosticism, 272, 291
Roosevelt, Franklin D., 181, 183, 200, Satanic Masses, 270
214, 239, 352 Satanism, 268, 272
Rose Chapel Psychic Center, 134 satori, 366-367
Roscncreuz, Christian, 111, 114 Saturians, 344
Rosicrucian lore, 281 Saturn, 344
Rosicrucianism, 111-115, 290 Saturn Period, 113
Rosicrucians, 111-115, 295 Sayville, L. I., 236
Rousseau, Jean-jacques, 96, 102 Scarlet Woman, 279, 286, 288-289. See
Royal Family (British), 87 also Faesi, Leah
Royal Fraternity of Master Metaphysi- School of Antiquity, 151
cians, 89 Science and Health with Key to the Scrip-
Royal Geographical Society, 133 tures, 66
Royal Tctons, 177 Science of Mind, 1 1
381
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
Shreveport, La., 351 Street Preachers, 327-333
Sicily, 288 Streete, Jonas, 323
Siddhartha, Prince, 157 Styx, 122
Sinatra, Frank, 204 Sudan, 143
Sioux City, Iowa, 12, 111, 115 Suffolk County, N Y., 236
Sinus, 295 Sulpicius, St., 32
Siskiyou County, 178 Sumcnans, 23
Slave Coast, 223 "Sun Cult of the Ancients, The," 299
Slaves, 226-227 Sun Period, 131
382
INDEX
Theresa, St., 189
Theurgy, 26
Thog, 341
Thomas, Dr. John, 91 Valens, Emperor, 27
Valentinus, 26
Thor, 122
Thoreau, Henry, 36, 73 Valhalla, 122
Thoth, 157 Valkyries, 122
Thummim, 78 Valley Forge, 160
Thy Kingdom Come, 343 Valley of Survival, 89
Vampires, 31
Tibet, 89, 143, 146, 184, 344 40
Varieties of Religious Experience,
Tibetan Mahatmas, 144
Tibetan monasteries, 133 Vedanta, 42, 184-187
Tiger Island, 303
Vedas, 185
Vedic Scriptures, 130
Tigris, 23
Vegetable, Sun and Health Worship, 354-
Tingley, Katherme, 148-159
360
Tithing, 82
Tojo, 215 Vegetarian societies, 359
Tomilson, "Bishop" Homer, 332-333 Vegetarianism, 190, 354
Vegetarians, 86, 190, 354
Torquemada, Tomas de, 118
Torture, 265
Venta, Krishna, 212-219
Tower of Babel, 24, 78 Ventura, Calif., 214-215
Venus, 11, 90, 343
Toynbee, Arnold, 195
Trabuco Canyon, 186 Victoria, Queen, 280
Victorian morality, 184
Traditionalists, 73, 370
Victorian respectability, 278, 280
Trinity, 55, 62, 68, 70, 75, 91
Vinci, Leonardo da, 354
Trotsky, Leon, 290 "Violet Flame, The," 180
True Believer, The, 36
Truman, President Harry S., 348 Virgin Mary, 50, 119-120, 141, 230, 289,
295, 328, 340, 343
Trust, Dr. Josephine De Croix, 132-133
Truth Realization, 93 Virginia, 152
Tunis, 290 Vivekananda, Swami, 184-185
Vivekananda Home, 186
Turner, George, 307
Twain, Mark, 66 Vodu, 223, 225-226
"Twelvefold Humiliation of God, The," Voice, The, 182
277 Voisin, La, see Deshayes, Catherine
Volney, Count, 120
Voltaire, 30
U Voodoo, 12, 27, 223, 226-234
Vorhee, 98-100
Vulgate, 319
UFOs, 341-342
Ulrika Eleanora, Queen, 54
UN, 63 W
UNESCO, 355
Union Theological Seminary, 332 Wakes, 44
Unitarianism, 49 Waldenses, 1 8 1
383
FAITHS, CULTS AND SECTS OF AMERICA
Wesley, John, 190 Wright, Faye, 194
West Germany, 63 Wroe, John, 307
West Indies, 12, 223,226 Wronkie, 32
Wheel of Law, 194
"Where Did Cam Get His Wife?" 31 1
384
5m
1 30 384 il