A Civil War Veteran Created The Esoteric Fraternity and the Sex Cult of Solar Biology in 1890s California

Hiram Erastus Butler and 12 followers (natch.) left Boston to create a utopia near Sacramento

Paul Sorene
Flashbak
January 28, 2024


Some forty miles northeast of Sacramento, north California, off I-80 near the village of Applegate, is the remains of one of the States’s religious cults: the Esoteric Fraternity. Founded in 1887, the Fraternity was a pioneer in modern astrology, readied its followers to run a worldwide religious dictatorship, and faded from history after a murder (unsolved) claimed one of its members.

In 1891, the Fraternity’s founder, metaphysical scholar, Civil War Veteran, former member of Madame Blavatsky’s Theosophical Society and author Hiram Erastus Butler (July 29, 1841 – November 3, 1916) along with 12 followers (natch. – he’d once spent 40 days and 40 nights of meditation, receiving visions of the “unseen order ruling the chaos and sublime harmony pervading the discords of the universe”) relocated from Boston to Applegate, California, and settled on a 500-acre homestead overlooking the American River.

They’d left under a cloud, having fallen out with Blavatsky and her supporters and stood accused of ruining many of the infatuated young woman who’d joined the group. The nadir came when Butler’s leading associate Eli Clinton Ohmart (aka Vidya Nyaika) was confronted by a number of women in the presence of the law. A reporter for the Boston Globe then interviewed Butler, and if it were true that he lived in immorality with a woman named Flora Manning? Butler claimed it was pat of a conspiracy to discredit him and his organisation by Blavatsky and the Catholics, and he’d doubtless prove his innocence, stating:

“If arrests are made, I will, of course, face the music. It will not hurt me, but only retard the work of the college. Every great movement, has its enemies, but the truth will prevail in the end. You see, I am under the direction of higher intelligences, and only do their bidding.”

He never gave them much chance for the enemy move things on. Less than two weeks later (February 11, 1889) Butler left Boston with, what the paper called, “his deluded female neophytes fled to parts unknown,” and “also Miss Flora Manning, whose poor father is heartbroken in his home in North Adams, longing hopelessly for his daughter’s return.”

The paper went on to say of Manning:

“To her door is laid the charge of active participation in the conspiracy that led to the ruin of no less than seven of Boston’s daughters whose credulity led them to place themselves in Butler’s power in the vague hope of becoming mediums.”

Sex or spirituality? Surely not? It was Butler who’d opined: “A perfectly celibate or chaste life enables a person to create thought forms and send them out by his will to persons near of far, so as to bring about desired results in controlling mental faculties or even physical conditions.”

In California, the cult built an 18-room house, established a farm and gave lectures. Butler would show his audiences the Seven-Pointed Star of Vital Planetary Vibrations, circumscribing the Six-Pointed Star of the Masculine and Feminine, and labeled with the word “Logos” in both Greek and Hebrew, along with astrological symbols and the good and old Snake Eating His Own Tail, representing eternity.

To reach more minds, they set up a printing press to publish The Esoteric |(‘A magazine of advanced and practical Esoteic thought’) and books, to deliver is mission of “the study and unfoldment of the inner and true sense of divine inspiration, the interpretation of the Scriptures — all scriptures.”



Butler adopted the name Adhy-Apaka and created an “inner circle” to the Esoteric Society called the Genii of Nations, Knowledge, and Religions (G.N.K.R.) with a scheme for a proposed Esoteric College. Ohmart announced this development in the November 1888 issue of The Esoteric with an article, “[The Call] To The Awakened,” in which he stated:

Those whose lives are a constant battle for the “truth” and whose efforts are wholly directed towards the good of the world irrespective of race and creed; those who have heard the “silence speak” and have recognized the Master’s call:—to those there will be entrusted a work more sacred and important than all they have done during their previous life, and to them there will come a Promise from One who always fulfills according to merit and eternal justice. Those who have been illuminated and who have dedicated themselves and all they “are, and hope to be,” to the guidance, those who have manifested by their lives and actions that they are under the recognition of intelligences superior to their own (not elementals or “spirits”), to those there will be given a special revelation of a character more sacred than all the secrets of the Past ; to them there will be revealed the “kingly mystery” and unto them will be given a secret more precious than the Philosopher’s Stone, more important than Aladdin’s Lamp.

Other than the magazines, Butler’s most famous work was Solar Biology, illustrations from which you can see here. First published in 1887, Solar Biology simplified astrology by basing horoscopes on sun and moon signs, rather than on complex planetary movements. Today’s newspaper horoscopes are said to be modelled largely on Butler’s formulas.

https://flashbak.com/a-civil-war-vateran-created-the-esoteric-fraternity-and-the-cult-of-solar-biology-in-1890s-california-465946/

The rise and rise of Wicca

The astonishing growth of witchcraft in the U is a little-understood phenomenon

Massimo Introvigne
Mercatornet

December 5, 2018


By one count, there are now more self-identifying witches in the United States than practicing members of the Presbyterian Church of the USA or the Episcopalian Church.

When Supreme Court judge Ruth Bader Ginsberg fell and broke three ribs recently, witches on Twitter were concerned. “@LanaDelRey needs to get her coven together to cast spells protecting RBG ... Hey, @jk_rowling, we're gonna need a protection spell for #RBG stat ... Stop everything. Start praying and doing every known form of witchcraft to protect RBG.”

Other witches have publicly cast “hexes” on Donald Trump and Brett Kavanaugh. It’s unlikely that anyone would have done that a decade ago. What is going on?

For answers, MercatorNet contacted Massimo Introvigne, an Italian sociologist who is a world expert in new religious movements. He is the head of the Center for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR), in Turin.

* * * * * * *

MercatorNet. Witchcraft seem to be on the rise. Recent articles mention figures: 12,000 wiccans in England and Wales; 80 covens and pagan groups in New York Metropolitan area; 734,000 Americans identifying as pagan or Wicca; an Instagram personality, The Hoodwitch, with 329,000 followers – and so on. Is this happening in Europe too? Is it a significant trend?

A. Wicca today has most of its followers in the US and those who believe it is an American phenomenon may be forgiven.

However, Wicca was actually born in England, not in the US, thanks to the creative genius of Gerald Brosseau Gardner (1884-1964) and other pioneers. Nowhere in the world are numbers comparable to the US but Wicca is a globalized phenomenon. There are Wiccans in Europe, and even in Israel—and in Iraq.

In our last CESNUR conference in Taiwan, Japanese scholar Eriko Kawanishi presented a fascinating paper on Wicca in Japan. The key point is that what exists today in Japan has little to do with the traditional witches found in Japanese mythology. Wiccans there mostly follow the post-Gardnerian, Western tradition. It is a fascinating example of globalization.

But then it is also true that I was in Vietnam before Halloween and shops sold appropriate costumes for children wanting to go trick or treat -- in a Socialist country of Buddhist tradition...

Q. What was witchcraft historically? How is modern Wicca different? Is it correct to call it a religion?

A. There is a very large debate about what mediaeval and early modern witchcraft in the West (something different from phenomena also called witchcraft in Africa or Asia) exactly was.

The idea dominant in the early 20th Century that there were no witches except in the imagination of Inquisitors has become a minority theory after the studies of the Italian historian Carlo Ginzburg and a number of British historians who wrote in the 1990s. They demonstrated that the witches suppressed by the authorities really did practice folk rituals with ecstatic experiences unacceptable to dominant Christianity.

However, these historians have not rehabilitated the theories of American folklorist Charles Godfrey Leland (1824-1903) and British Egyptologist Margaret Alice Murray (1863-1963), who believed that the witches secretly continued the pre-Christian pagan religion as it had existed before Christianity. Leland’s and Murray’s theories belong to a rejected consensus. The folklore of European witches in fact included several elements from popular Christianity.

Contemporary Wicca would not have existed without Leland and Murray. Gardner and other early Wiccans believed that, by recreating witchcraft, they were restoring the pre-Christian European “old religion.” This was not the case for two reasons.

First, as mentioned earlier, pace Leland and Murray, witchcraft was not a continuation of the pre-Christian European religions.

Second, all Wiccan pioneers, including Gardner, told the story that they had been initiated by a mentor or grandmother or grandfather who continued an hereditary tradition of witchcraft since time immemorial.

However, it has been persuasively demonstrated that everything in their rituals comes from more recent Western esotericism—Theosophy, the Golden Dawn, Freemasonry, and the ideas of British magus Aleister Crowley (1875-1947)—, or from what Leland described in his books as rituals he found in Italy, which were probably of a comparatively recent origin too, unless they had been simply invented by the American folklorist.

In sociological terms, Gardner and others created and invented tradition. Invented traditions are not to be dismissed lightly, as they may have powerful social effects, but historically speaking they are imaginary traditions.

I believe what they created is a religion, although the boundaries of the concept of religion are notoriously controversial and porous.

Q. The burning and hanging of witches at different times in history are frequently cited by Wiccan and feminist sources as examples of patriarchal misogyny against women. Could you give these episodes a bit of context?

A. Feminists are right in arguing that marginal women practicing folk rituals were suspicious and unpopular in different cultures, which often led them to be killed.

Missing in their reconstructions, however, are two points. First, “witch” is a word that identifies both male and female practitioners of witchcraft. In some areas, male witches were at least as numerous as their female counterparts.

Second, they make some confusion about the Inquisition. There were different courts called Inquisition. With some exceptions (notably in Germany, where the notorious anti-witchcraft manual Malleus Maleficarum was published in 1487 by two Dominican friars), the Inquisition was, or quickly became, more sceptical about witches than secular courts.

A classic treatment of this matter is The Witches’ Advocate by Danish historian Gustav Henningsen. The “witches’ advocate” in the title was the notorious Spanish Inquisition. While the Spanish Inquisitors believed that Jews and Muslims were very real threats, and exhibited a notable anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, they did not believe in witches. When Spanish secular courts started prosecuting witches, the Inquisition came and prosecuted the judges rather than the witches, accusing the secular magistrates of believing in superstition.

Q. Feminism has played a large part in reviving witchcraft. To quote one writer, the witch is “one of the few models of independent female power.” Is there a risk of coming under Satanic influence?

A. I see a risk first of all of forgetting male witches. Gerald Gardner was a man. His main collaborator and, in a way, successor was a woman, Doreen Valiente (1922–1999), although Gardner and Valiente quarrelled and parted company in 1957. Historians regard the story that Gardner had been initiated by a woman, one “Old Dorothy,” as largely a figment of Gardner’s imagination (the Dorothy he hinted at, Dorothy Clutterbuck, 1880–1951, was a pious rich Anglican lady and had nothing to do with witchcraft). It is on the other hand true that the feminist wing is very important in American Wicca.

Wicca and Satanism are different. Wiccans believe that Satanist practice an inverted version of the “new religion,” Christianity, since in order to be a Satanist you should believe in the biblical stories about Satan. Wiccans claim to believe in the “old religion,” i.e. in pre-Christian European religions, be they Greek, Roman, or Celtic-Nordic, where Satan was nowhere to be seen.

Q. Much of female witchcraft today seems to consist of rituals for self-realisation and belonging, with a few rhetorical “spells” and “hexes” thrown in, so is there any real harm in it?

A. In part, this is a consequence of the work of scholars systematically debunking the Leland-Murray-Gardner theory that witchcraft, and as a consequence, Wicca as a revival of witchcraft, were really the old pre-Christian European religions.

While some Wiccans insist that academic scholars are wrong, others accept their findings but their reaction is, “So what? It doesn’t matter whether a tradition is real or invented, if it works for me and if I feel better that is enough.”

Having interviewed quite a few Wiccans, I do not doubt they feel better. This is true for most beliefs. They normally “work” for the believers, otherwise they would simply change their beliefs.

Q. It’s no coincidence that witchcraft has boomed at the same time as social media -- especially Instagram, it seems, where the visuals are exciting and commercial products (crystals, Tarot cards, herbal concoctions…) along with more mainstream practices like yoga and mindfulness classes can be marketed. Millennials are the biggest market, some writers say. Perhaps most are dabblers who will quickly pass on to some other fad, but should we be concerned about young people being enticed in this direction?

A. As you know, I have written a very comprehensive survey of Satanism. There are very few cases of Wiccans who moved to Satanism. As mentioned earlier, Wiccans are taught that Satanism is a misguided inverted Christianity, and they look at Satanism as an inferior tradition.

On the other hand, it is true that Wicca has become commercialized. This is something many Wiccans themselves do not like. The risk that young (and not so young) people may be milked of their money is very real. I am much more sceptical when I see Christian activists confusing Wicca and Satanism. Although they are not wrong if they detect in Wicca an anti-Christian substratum.

Q. Fantasy fiction has also boosted the profile of the (largely pagan) supernatural world among young people: the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the Harry Potter books and movies, Twilight series, Game of Thrones, Phillip Pullman’s Dark Materials trilogy, even Lord of The Rings… Is there a problem with this genre? Can one separate the wheat from the chaff when it comes to wholesome or malign influences?

A. I would put The Lord of the Rings in a separate category, as Tolkien was undoubtedly a Christian and the book has a deep Christian message. Magic, good and bad, has been a raw material for building tales in the Western literary tradition for centuries. If we want to ban The Lord of the Rings or the Harry Potter novels because they call for a suspension of disbelief about magic, we should ban also Cinderella, Snow White, and Sleeping Beauty. And in fact some fundamentalist Protestants and Catholics propose precisely to do so.

It is a different story with Buffy, where Willow, a lesbian witch, is a positive character, and even more with the TV series “Charmed”. These characters and series are based on a positive image of contemporary Wicca.

Q. What’s the message for Christians in the rise of witches and witchcraft?

A. I believe there are two different phenomena. Classic, organized Wicca is part of Western Esotericism, a current in Western history and thought. Christian should learn to take this seriously because of its cultural relevance, although from the 19th century on it developed mostly outside of, and often against, Christianity.

Self-styled young witches who spend money in buying paraphernalia without a real knowledge of the Wiccan tradition are more an example of how fashions are created, imposed, and followed. The risk is more superficiality and a lukewarm approach to the sacred than demonic influence.

Massimo Introvigne is one of the leading international scholars of new religious movements. He is the managing director of CESNUR (Center for Studies on New Religions) in Turin, and the author of 71 books on religious minorities (at last count). His most recent books are The Plymouth Brethren and Satanism: A Social History. He is also the editor-in-chief of Bitter Winter, an online magazine on religious liberty and human rights in China.

https://www.mercatornet.com/above/view/the-rise-and-rise-of-wicca/22002

CultNEWS101 Articles: 9/7-8/2019

Word of Life, Anti-Vaccination, conspiracy theories, Cult-characteristics, flat-earth, Neo-Nazi, neo-pagans, Satanism, Theosophy, Radicalization, Vaccinations, Hasidic Jewish 

 

Utica Observer Dispatch: Word of Life's Ferguson appeals 2016 ruling

"Oral arguments in the appeal of "People v. Sarah Ferguson" — a case that began with the 2015 fatal beating at a Chadwicks church — were held Wednesday [September 4th] morning in state appellate court in Rochester.

Ferguson seeks to appeal her sentence issued in 2016 by Oneida County Court Judge Michael Dwyer after a bench trial that led to her conviction for first-degree manslaughter, two counts of first-degree assault, and two counts of first-degree gang assault.

Ferguson was sentenced to 25 years in state prison for her role in the 14-hour round of beatings that killed her 19-year-old half brother Lucas Leonard and severely injured his brother Christopher Leonard, then 17, in October 2015 at Word of Life Church in Chadwicks."

" ... The beatings took place during what was called a "counseling session" that included whipping of their genitals and other body parts using a power cord.

The Leonard brothers had been accused by their attackers — a group of nine people including Ferguson — of allegedly watching pornography, practicing witchcraft and plotting to murder their parents. Other accusations by the attackers included sexual abuse of nieces and nephews."  

American Institute for Economic Research: The Cultic Milieu and the Rise of Violent Fringe

"For economists and individualists there are several valuable insights to be gained from the sister discipline of sociology. (In a previous column I discussed one of these, the notion of a 'moral panic'). One such idea, which is both powerful and very useful in understanding many contemporary phenomena, is that of the "cultic milieu." This sociological concept is also strengthened when combined with certain economic insights. The result is a better understanding of a phenomenon that has always existed but has become much more extensive and significant recently.

The concept of the cultic milieu (hereafter CM) was formulated by a British sociologist called Colin Campbell, in an article published in 1972 entitled "The Cult, the Cultic Milieu, and Secularisation". His interest was in the sociology of religion and he was particularly interested in the phenomenon of radical and heterodox religious cults. In his studies he noticed that cultic groups that were very different in other ways tended to share certain beliefs that put them radically at odds with conventional society in general but which were not overtly religious (e.g. opposition to conventional medical science). In addition some csgroups that were not at first sight religious (radical political groups for example or lifestyle movements) would often subscribe to ideas about some kind of transcendent truth that was at first sight religious. One example was the way extreme right political groups would also espouse things such as neo-paganism or occultism.

The explanation for this was the idea of the cultic milieu. This is a kind of subterranean world or counterculture with a whole range of ideas that are strongly opposed to conventional beliefs and knowledge. These included highly heterodox and unusual religious systems (such as neo-paganism or Theosophy or Satanism), marginalised political ideologies such as neo-Nazism, conspiracy theories, and theories that rejected central elements of orthodox science, such as rejection of vaccination and modern medicine or flat and hollow earth theories.

Campbell's insight was that these fringe beliefs did not exist in isolation from each other. They rather all mingled in a social space in which accepted and dominant ways of thinking about the world were rejected. Frequently people who started holding just one of these countercultural beliefs would come into contact with and pick up other ones with no apparent connection to the original belief – so for example a believer in the Moon landings being a hoax might also come to be a sceptic about vaccination. People who dipped into the CM through following one idea would then find themselves exposed to and becoming interested in other heterodox notions. They would also make many personal contacts and this was one way that organised groups combining several of these ideas would come into being as the cults Campbell was interested in."

 

CBC News: Montreal renews funding for anti-radicalization centre

"The City of Montreal announced Wednesday [September 4th] morning that it will be providing an additional $975,000 in funding to the Centre for the Prevention of Radicalization Leading to Violence.

"The City of Montreal is reiterating its confidence toward the Centre," said Rosannie Filato, the city's executive committee member responsible for public safety.

The centre has a province-wide mandate of preventing radicalization leading to violence and reducing hate crimes and other hate-related incidents.

Filato said she hopes the centre will work in a way complementary to other services, like health-care providers and the police, to prevent radicalization."

New York Times:  Get Vaccinated or Leave School: 26,000 N.Y. Children Face a Choice

"Jacquelynn Vance-Pauls, a real-estate lawyer in upstate New York, has a 14-year-old son with autism who was recently kicked out of his private special needs school. Her 9-year-old twins and her high-school senior are also on the verge of being expelled from their public schools.

The children did not do anything wrong, nor are they sick. Instead, Ms. Vance-Pauls has resisted complying with a new state law, enacted amid a measles outbreak, that ended religious exemptions to vaccinations for children in all schools and child care centers.

Ms. Vance-Pauls said she believed vaccines contributed to her son's autism, despite more than a dozen peer-reviewed studiesshowing no such link. The Bible, she said, barred her as a Christian from "desecrating the body," which is what she says vaccines do.

"If you have a child who you gave peanut butter to and he almost died, why would you give it to your next child?" she said during an interview in August, trying to explain her fears. "How do we turn our backs against what we have believed all these years because we have a gun to our heads?"

With the start of school this week, Ms. Vance-Pauls, along with the parents of about 26,000 other New York children who previously had obtained religious exemptions to vaccinations, are facing a moment of reckoning.

Under the new law, all children must begin getting their vaccines within the first two weeks of classes and complete them by the end of the school year. Otherwise, their parents must home school them or move out of the state.

The measles outbreak that prompted the new law is actually easing. On Tuesday, Mayor Bill de Blasio declared an end to the measles outbreak in New York City, its epicenter. Since the start of the outbreak in October 2018, there have been 654 measles cases in the city and 414 in other parts of the state, where transmission has also slowed.

The large majority of cases have involved unvaccinated children in Hasidic Jewish communities, where immunization rates were sometimes far lower than the state average of 96 percent. Wide-scale vaccination campaigns have helped lift those rates."

News, Education, Intervention, Recovery

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The Cultic Milieu and the Rise of Violent Fringe

Stephen Davies
American Institute for Economic Research
AUGUST 7, 2019

For economists and individualists there are several valuable insights to be gained from the sister discipline of sociology. (In a previous column I discussed one of these, the notion of a ‘moral panic’). One such idea, which is both powerful and very useful in understanding many contemporary phenomena, is that of the “cultic milieu.” This sociological concept is also strengthened when combined with certain economic insights. The result is a better understanding of a phenomenon that has always existed but has become much more extensive and significant recently.

The concept of the cultic milieu (hereafter CM) was formulated by a British sociologist called Colin Campbell, in an article published in 1972 entitled “The Cult, the Cultic Milieu, and Secularisation”. His interest was in the sociology of religion and he was particularly interested in the phenomenon of radical and heterodox religious cults. In his studies he noticed that cultic groups that were very different in other ways tended to share certain beliefs that put them radically at odds with conventional society in general but which were not overtly religious (e.g. opposition to conventional medical science). In addition some csgroups that were not at first sight religious (radical political groups for example or lifestyle movements) would often subscribe to ideas about some kind of transcendent truth that was at first sight religious. One example was the way extreme right political groups would also espouse things such as neo-paganism or occultism.

The explanation for this was the idea of the cultic milieu. This is a kind of subterranean world or counterculture with a whole range of ideas that are strongly opposed to conventional beliefs and knowledge. These included highly heterodox and unusual religious systems (such as neo-paganism or Theosophy or Satanism), marginalised political ideologies such as neo-Nazism, conspiracy theories, and theories that rejected central elements of orthodox science, such as rejection of vaccination and modern medicine or flat and hollow earth theories.

Campbell’s insight was that these fringe beliefs did not exist in isolation from each other. They rather all mingled in a social space in which accepted and dominant ways of thinking about the world were rejected. Frequently people who started holding just one of these countercultural beliefs would come into contact with and pick up other ones with no apparent connection to the original belief – so for example a believer in the Moon landings being a hoax might also come to be a sceptic about vaccination. People who dipped into the CM through following one idea would then find themselves exposed to and becoming interested in other heterodox notions. They would also make many personal contacts and this was one way that organised groups combining several of these ideas would come into being as the cults Campbell was interested in.

In concrete terms the CM is the people who hold the heterodox beliefs (or are interested in them) plus the physical spaces and means of communication through which they interact with each other and through which the ideas are spread and diffused. At one time that meant things like obscure small press or specialist press books, pamphlets, and magazines or journals, bookstores and other meeting places, organisations, clubs, and meetings or events (often informal). Today it means also or primarily online media such as discussion boards, video sharing sites and channels, social media, and personal or group connections through the internet.

Why though does this matter? A common explanation for the phenomenon described is that the actual people involved are simply nuts. In other words, in every society there are a number of people who are predisposed to believe and accept things that the majority regard as bizarre or even insane.

The evidence however does not support this. People who are part of the CM (i.e. people who hold the beliefs) do not have a distinctive psychological profile. Moreover, the size of the CM (in terms of the number of people who are involved in it and its geographical and institutional reach) varies considerably over time which would not be true if it reflects nothing more than a specific psychological predisposition. So we are dealing with an important and variable social phenomenon.

One reason why it matters is that the boundaries of the CM are permeable - it is not clearly distinct from the orthodox mainstream in a fixed or permanent way. Ideas, symbols, and even ways of life can move in both directions between the orthodox mainstream and the counterculture of the CM. One of Campbell’s main arguments was that although there was little formal connection, mainstream organisations such as established churches could draw upon the ideas that were being produced in the cultic milieu and make use of them or incorporate them.

Sometimes a whole body or wider system of ideas will move from fringe and countercultural status to being part of the mainstream conversation. That does not necessarily mean that they become widely accepted; they may still be intensely controversial. The point is that they are taken seriously and engaged with by others where before they were dismissed or ignored. When an idea has not made this movement across the semi-permeable barrier between the mainstream and the CM the only effective way of discovering or exploring it is to visit or move into that milieu.

Once an idea has made the transition that is no longer true – one can come across it in normal discourse. One contemporary example of this is radical theories about the nature of money. For many years these were seen as being classic cranky ideas and were often associated with other ideas of that kind such as conspiracy theories, anti-Semitism, and unorthodox politics.

Now, under the guise of Modern Monetary Theory these ideas (or an example of them) have left the CM and entered the academic and political mainstream. They are still very controversial and rejected by most but they are taken seriously and engaged with by critics. As ideas pass out of the CM and into the mainstream they shed the associations with other fringe notions that they had before so now you would not expect an advocate of MMT to also hold fringe beliefs about science or history. Another example is vegetarianism or veganism. These are now mainstream ideas held by many people. At one time though they were very much part of the CM and exponents would often believe in other ideas that have not transitioned, such as spiritualism and anti-systemic politics.

The mirror image of that process is movement in the opposite direction, from an accepted and debated idea in the main public and intellectual argument to one found only in the counterculture of the CM. The big examples of this are fascism and ideas such as racist theory and eugenics which were controversial but part of the main conversation before World War II and which became definitively part of the milieu after 1945. As this happened they came to be associated with other ideas in that milieu, such as theories about ancient alien civilisations visiting earth, flying saucers, and lost or suppressed technologies. Here we can observe an interesting process at work.

Fascism, and particularly Nazism, were to a great degree inspired by ideas that had moved out of the cultic milieu at the end of the nineteenth century (such as ariosophism and occult neo-paganism) so that set of political ideas moved from the counterculture to the mainstream and then back. Ideas such as ‘racial science’ and eugenics however had been part of the main conversation for many years before World War I and so only moved across the barrier once, after 1945.

What this means of course is that beliefs that are part of the mainstream or even widespread can gradually slip into the strange subword of the CM. How though can you tell if a set of ideas and principles that you subscribe to yourself is in danger of suffering that fate? The main warning sign is to discover that many of the people who share your views on one issue also have beliefs that are clearly outside the mainstream discourse and which you regard as bizarre or outright bonkers, such as conspiracy theories or fringe science/anti-science propositions such as opposition to vaccinations.

If you find that the number of clicks it takes to go from online sites expressing your views to ones with utterly fringe ones is never more than three then that is a bad sign. A disturbing realisation is that this process is clearly happening to parts of the contemporary libertarian movement. That is bad enough but the really alarming reality is that this phenomenon is happening elsewhere in the political spectrum as well - in many ideologies right now there is a clear movement towards a kind of subculture of radical dissent from many widely held theories and well established facts.

Right now the size and influence of the CM is growing. Ever more people subscribe to fringe beliefs and the availability of the kinds of ideas that circulate in the cultic counterculture has increased dramatically. This has happened before, notably in the period between roughly 1890 and 1930.

Colin Campbell’s original model has been used to explain contemporary phenomena, above all the persistence and growth of radical right collectivist ideas, as well as radical left ones and other movements such as Islamism. The best known example of this was a 2002 collection of essays entitled “The Cultic Milieu: Oppositional Subcultures in an Age of Globalization” edited by Jeffrey Kaplan and Helene Loow. Campbell himself was critical of this, arguing that straightforward radical politics was not itself part of the wider counterculture of cultic beliefs.

However, many of the contemporary radical right movements do in fact also subscribe to or are associated with other ideas that are clearly part of the CM, so he is being too cautious here. However as such ideas start to gain purchase in the mainstream (as they clearly are doing) we should expect them to become much less associated with things such as fringe science or ‘alternative history’ for example.

Economics can help explain why the size and influence of the cultic milieu is increasing now and grew in the earlier period. (Campbell himself thought it was a response to the ‘disenchantment of the world’ and loss of transcendent meaning brought about by modernity - hence the ‘secularisation’ in his original title).

For economists a clear factor is technological and economic developments that make it less costly to both spread ideas and information and to discover them, even when people holding those ideas do not have access to the dominant modes of communication. In the late nineteenth century cheap printing did this, along with the telegraph and telephone. By contrast the dominant communications technologies of the twentieth century (radio and television) did not because it was more difficult for proponents of non-mainstream ideas to use them.

Today social media and the internet are playing the same role as cheap printing but on an even larger scale (because the cost reductions are greater). Economic history also suggests that a growth of the cultic counterculture is a response not to secularization but to the social disruption brought about by episodes of rapid innovation (“all that is solid melts into air, all that is sacred is profane,” as Marx and Engels put it).

Such episodes lead to a feeling for many people of social disconnection and displacement and bring what are seen as serious social costs. Ideas that reject received opinion then become attractive to many people as well as more accessible.

The notion of the cultic milieu helps explain many aspects of today’s politics, such as the rise of movements like the alt-right, and the growth of fringe beliefs across the ideological spectrum. When combined with economics we also get a better understanding of why this is happening right now. History suggests that in time the process will stop and, while the cultic milieu will still exist, the membrane between it and the mainstream will become again much less permeable.

Stephen Davies

Dr Steve Davies, a Senior Fellow at AIER, is the Head of Education at the IEA. Previously he was program officer at the Institute for Humane Studies (IHS) at George Mason University in Virginia. He joined IHS from the UK where he was Senior Lecturer in the Department of History and Economic History at Manchester Metropolitan University. He has also been a Visiting Scholar at the Social Philosophy and Policy Center at Bowling Green State University, Ohio.

A historian, he graduated from St Andrews University in Scotland in 1976 and gained his PhD from the same institution in 1984. He has authored several books, including Empiricism and History (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003) and was co-editor with Nigel Ashford of The Dictionary of Conservative and Libertarian Thought (Routledge, 1991).

https://www.aier.org/article/cultic-milieu-and-rise-violent-fringe

?fbclid=IwAR1CRwnuV772Rvh0dvR7HOat8HhlwEW9Z9cxDKm7SrPYE6j-OhyHNqpJWeo

Whatever Happened to the Utopian Communes and Cults of L.A.?

Religious healers, optimistic socialists, and hippie cult leaders have long settled around Los Angeles, but few of their communities endure

LA MagazineThomas Harlander
January 18, 2017

There’s something about L.A. that draws dreamers. Maybe it’s the temperate climate and fertile soil, or the fact that it’s as far removed from the rigidity of the nation’s eastern cities as you can get. It’s a place where visionaries can stake a claim and build a city on their ideals—a religious compound, say, or a sex commune. It’s also a land that draws the delusional. Promises of sunshine, oranges, and edenic landscapes beckoned families west on transcontinental railroads and Route 66. Aspiring stars packed up and set out for Hollywood, sure of finding fame. Maybe when the overblown hopes that impel us here run dry, they leave behind a residual gullibility. If you think of L.A. as a city of hope deflected, the allure of an egalitarian socialist commune or a cult led by a charismatic man begins to make sense. Many unusual utopian societies have flourished here, but few have lasted. Here’s a look at the rise and fall of some of the more eccentric.

Llano del Rio

Job Harriman was the United States’ first Socialist vice presidential candidate (he ran on a ticket with Eugene Debs and lost). He also ran for mayor of L.A., twice, and lost both of those races as well—though not by much. Unable to turn the nation or Los Angeles into a Socialist utopia, he decided to create one himself, founding Llano Del Rio in the Antelope Valley in 1914. The self-sustaining, racially exclusive community grew to around 1,000 before infighting and squabbles over water rights with local farmers forced Harriman and his followers to relocate to Louisiana. All that remains are foundations, walls, and a few scattered chimneys.

Pisgah Grande

When physician Finis Ewing Yoakum had an encounter with God on a hill in Highland Park in the 1895, he designated the place Mt. Pisgah (after the peak where God showed Moses the Promised Land) and devoted his life to feeding, healing, and housing the downtrodden. He doled out medicine, vegetarian food, and the Gospel from his home, around which grew a tent city of homeless and, apparently, at least one outlaw gunslinger. When his mission outgrew itself, he relocated the whole operation to a ranch in Simi Valley and built Pisgah Grande, a missional community complete with schoolhouse, dining hall, cabins, a post office, and a prayer tower. After Yoakum’s death in 1920, his followers eventually disbanded.

Krotona

The Theosophical Society—a group dedicated to pursuing the somewhat vague traditions of divine wisdom and ancient knowledge—began building Krotona, their national headquarters, in Beachwood Canyon in 1912. The commune, which attracted wealthy Angelenos and Hollywood types like Charlie Chaplin, was surrounded by serene gardens of olive trees and date palms. It included a cluster of summer houses, an inn, and meditation room, an a space where a “scientist” worked to detect human auras. The group later relocated to Ojai, where it still operates today. Much of the society’s old digs—plus a handful of members’ whimsically-designed homes—remains in Beachwood Canyon.

The Hog Farm

This semi-portable commune up in Sunland was founded in the ’60s by the clown prince of hippies himself, Wavy Gravy. With community duties coordinated by a “Dance Master” and “Dance Mistress,” members scavenged usable food discarded by supermarkets, performed group breathing exercises, did quite a bit of LSD, and lived for the moment. They’re possibly best known for flying to New York to provide security and food at Woodstock. The collective has long since abandoned the Sunland site, and most of the structures are gone.

The Source Family

In the early ‘70s, WWII veteran Jim Baker took on the name Father Yod, drove around in a white Rolls-Royce wearing a white suit, opened the city’s first spiritual vegetarian restaurant, married 14 wives, and founded a health-food hippie cult. In 1972 he moved his followers into the Mother House in Los Feliz, then relocated shortly thereafter (in part due to creeped-out neighbors) to the Father House in Nichols Canyon. It was there that they lived with their 140-person troupe, recording psych rock albums and delivering a ton of babies, until they skipped off to Hawaii in 1975, where Father Yod died in a hang gliding accident.

Thomas Harlander is junior web producer at Los Angeles magazine. You can follow him on Twitter and Instagram. He recently wrote “An Insider’s Guide to the 100 Hidden Gems of L.A.”

http://www.lamag.com/culturefiles/whatever-happened-utopian-communes-cults-los-angeles/

The American Religions Collection at the University of California, Santa Barbara: Celebrating Research

Collection Profile:

Jonestown, Waco, Heaven's Gate-all names in the headlines that continue to capture our interest. The American Religions Collection at the University of California, Santa Barbara contains printed, manuscript, and ephemeral material relating to these and thousands of other religious movements, figures, and events. 

The driving force behind the collection has been J. Gordon Melton, Methodist minister, prolific author of works such as theEncyclopedia of American Religions (1978), expert witness at numerous "cult" trials, and founder of the Institute for the Study of American Religion (ISAR). 

Since the late 1960s Melton and ISAR have been seeking materials relating to America's many new and alternative religious and spiritual groups in the short time before they disappeared from distribution. In 1985, Melton moved from Illinois to Santa Barbara and donated this burgeoning collection to the UCSB library. With his help, it has continued to grow dramatically and today contains more than 30,000 books, several thousand serial titles, 1,000 linear feet of manuscripts, and hundreds of audiotapes, videotapes, CDs and DVDs.

Some of the American Religions Collection's holdings date from the early 19th century, but the bulk is from the mid- and latter 20th century. The emphasis has been on less documented religious groups, with strengths in the newer Asian religions, American Islam, esoteric and New Age organizations, religious healing, the metaphysical religions, astrology, independent Catholicism, and smaller Protestant denominations. There are particularly substantial holdings for Buddhist, Christian Science, evangelical Christian, Hindu, Mormon, Scientology, Theosophical, and Unification movements, as well as religious broadcasting, Wicca and Neo-Paganism, and flying saucer religions.

Alongside the core collection donated by Melton are more than 60 other discrete manuscript collections. 

The Nori Muster Betrayal of the Spirit Collection, for example, contains correspondence, diaries, interviews, and other material from a former member and associate editor of ISKCON World Review: Newspaper of the Hare Krishna Movement.

The Anthony U. Leitner Memorial Collection focuses on hundreds of Buddhist groups, many in the greater Los Angeles area, where Leitner attended and often recorded services. 

The Cult Awareness Network (CAN) Collection includes files on hundreds of organizations whose activities were considered suspect, as well as detailed records of CAN's annual conferences which often featured sessions on deprogramming, psychological evaluation, and abuse issues.

Use of the American Religions Collection has mushroomed as word of the broad scope of its holdings has spread. Some of the use comes from religious studies faculty and students, but the bulk comes from independent religious scholars, devotees and debunkers of specific movements, researchers in American studies, sociology of religion, women's studies, gender/sexuality (ordination of women, gay/lesbian issues), as well as those studying Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, and other immigrant groups in America. The collection has served as the source for many of Gordon Melton's works, as well as numerous other publications.

Collection Profile and Overview: David C. Tambo

More About This Collection

Further information, including new acquisitions, can be found on the following Web pages: 

http://www.celebratingresearch.org/libraries/santabarbara/religions.shtml

http://www.library.ucsb.edu/speccoll/aguides.html

http://www.library.ucsb.edu/speccoll/collections/rare.html#arc

Theosophy and Culture: Nicholas Roerich

Anita Stasulane

Interreligious and Intercultural Investigations Series, Volume 8, 2005. Gregorian Research Centre on Cultures and Religions. (Editrice Pontificia Universita Gregoriana, Piazza della Pilotta, 35 – 00187, Roma, Italia. Email: editricepugpib-gi@biblico.it.) ISBN 88-7839-035-6 (trade paperback) $25.00. 336 pages.

Reviewed by Joseph P. Szimhart

If you look at an American one-dollar bill, you will find a pyramid with an “eye” on top. The Great Pyramid is often associated with Freemasonry, and many of the American founding fathers were Freemasons. The symbol comes from the Great Seal of the United States designed in 1782 by Charles Thompson. In 1934 the Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace convinced Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau to place it on the dollar. It appeared in 1935. Morgenthau did not know at the time that Wallace made the suggestion at the behest of his guru Nicholas Roerich. To Roerich, the eye represented the gaze of mahatmas, or super-evolved beings that guide the affairs and spiritual evolution of humanity. Roerich (d 1947) and his wife Helena (d 1955) followed the Theosophy teachings of the colorful 19th century occultist, Helena P. Blavatsky (1831–1891). By 1925, the Roerichs had established a new theosophical group called Agni Yoga in New York and London, and later in Latvia, Russia, and India. Like Blavatsky, the Roerichs believed that mahatmas had chosen them as messengers to an elite core of mankind.

Roerich died the year I was born, so by the time I encountered his art and Agni Yoga teachings in 1975, his legacy had faded considerably in America. For example, as late as the mid-1980s, Agni Yoga did not make it into an impressive list of new religious movements established by the Institute for the Study of American Religion. Roerich’s greatest achievement in America was, through President Franklin Roosevelt, to have 21 nations in the Pan-American Union sign the Peace Pact, also known as the Roerich Pact, in 1935. The Pact was intended to preserve cultural creativity in hospitals, museums, and significant religious sites in time of war. For his effort, Roerich was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize; he did not win.

In a way, Roerich, who was an accomplished artist, and his wife Helena, who “transmitted” the Agni Yoga spiritual teachings, were my favored gurus from 1975 to 1982. I mention this because I gained an intimate insight into their work, history, and devotees. I met with the last two directors (both gracious individuals) of the Roerich Museum in New York many times. I also had occasion to study several offshoot groups that used the Agni Yoga teachings in their core doctrine. The largest of these was the Church Universal and Triumphant cult that used Roerich art images and teaching without permission from the Agni Yoga Society. The second largest of these groups in America was the Aquarian Educational Group founded by Torkum Saraydarian.

All this brings me to Theosophy and Culture: Nicholas Roerich, published last year by a Roman Catholic press associated with the Vatican. Why, I asked, would the Catholic Church bother to publish an extensive study on a new religious group rarely even mentioned by religious scholars in America? My answer came when I discovered through Internet resources that the author had written this study initially in 1997 as a student dissertation (under the direction of Dr. Michael Fuss) to address the phenomenal growth of the “Rerikh societies and groups” throughout the Russian Federation since the late 1980s. According to the author Anita Stasulane, a religious scholar from Latvia, the Roerich teachings have “captivated the minds of millions” in the former Soviet Union.

Anita Stasulane has done a remarkably even-handed job delineating essential aspects of the Roerich approach to theosophy and culture at large. I can hardly imagine how someone not familiar with Helena Blavatsky might appreciate this study, but it contains just enough essential information to give most readers a good grounding to understand Roerich in context. The text is heavily footnoted with a majority of Russian-language references. Some of the text is in French, especially when it quotes René Guénon, an esoteric scholar who was critical of Blavatsky’s writings and claims. In that regard, the study would better suit the religious scholar or a student familiar with languages than the average American reader.

Stasulane points out that the “Rerikh” groups “differ enormously throughout the world but they fulfill the longing in atheist Soviet society for something that is simultaneously highly intellectual, scientific and mystical.” [i] Prior to the Bolshevik takeover, Russian seekers were already imbued with what later became the New Age explosion of beliefs in America in the decades after 1960. That explosion includes astrology, Theosophy, occultism, vegetarianism, Buddhism, Indian religions and yoga, and messianic expectations. It is no surprise, therefore, that a significant portion of post-Soviet seeker society has embraced the culture’s native mystics in Blavatsky and the Roerichs. It is important to remember that Agni Yoga per se, as offered by the Agni Yoga Society, has sustained a rather benign history for the past half century. Stasulane states:

Totalitarian sects pass away like illnesses, but the Rerikh movement is alive and well all over Russia, even after accusations in the press that the Rerikhs collaborated with the NKVD [communist secret police], and even after the Russian Orthodox Church has anathematized it.[ii]

The author quotes extensively from primary source texts of Agni Yoga and the two volumes of published Letters of Helena Roerich to define for the reader exactly what the Roerichs teach and believe. Stasulane demonstrates that the Roerichs teach that the great religions, including Christianity and Indian religions, have distorted the pure teachings of their founding prophets. With Agni Yoga, or the “Teaching,” the Roerichs viewed themselves as emissaries of the master Morya and other mahatmas who will draw enlightened seekers toward the one Truth or Ancient Wisdom. Despite the Roerichs claims to “the highest” spirituality, Stasulane shows that the Russian couple defines or reduces religion, whether Buddhist or any other, to a version of “Blavatskaya’s” theosophy. The latter’s genius was to apply a spiritual form of evolutionary theory to human destiny supported by stringing together a myriad of 19th century occult teachings. The result in both Theosophy and Agni Yoga, as the author demonstrates, is a highly suggestive, vague notion that we are destined to return to the impersonal Source of being after efforts in many incarnations. The real, unvarnished Truth is thus hidden, or occulted, from the uninitiated or ignorant.

With the richness of thought and lofty efforts of the Roerich agenda for humanity, Stasulane’s study should impress any reader. She shows that, among theosophists, Nicholas Roerich stands out mightily as a particularly accomplished artist and teacher. In the end, she writes that Roerich in 1926 visited and approached the Kremlin with his blessings for the communist regime. The author does not mention this, but Roerich did praise Lenin at the time as a “mahatma” on the order of his Morya. In the author’s opinion, Roerich believed that Theosophy, as a “theosophocracy,” would be the proper route for the people in a “New Russia.”


[i] Religion, State and Society, Vol. 28, No. 1/2000, 134-148 (www.vatican.va).

[ii] Ibid.

Book Review: In the shadow of the new age: Decoding the Findhorn Foundation

Book Review Frank MacHovec

Center for the Study of Self
Flight. 2, no. 3, 2003

Cultic Studies Review

2003 

In the shadow of the new age: Decoding the Findhorn Foundation

Greenway, J. P. (2003) London, England: Finderne Publishing. 385 page paperback

John Greenaway is a British lawyer whose interest in New Age religion took him to Scotland’s Findhorn Foundation, considered by many to be Europe’s Esalen. This book details his spiritual journey that included “several short stays” at Findhorn, meditation with a Carmelite monk as “spiritual director,” and “supplementary direction from Tibetan Buddhist sources.”  It is also a detailed history of the New Age from pre-World War II.  Greenaway concludes that New Age religion is socially divisive, blocks understanding by those of differing spiritual paths, and undermines genuine spiritual renewal.”

There is a lengthy 12-page Preface that could have been Chapter 1.  There are 22 chapters of varying lengths from Chapter 8 at three pages and Chapter 15 at 70 pages. The bibliography uses an unusual 4-column format, and there is a detailed 13-page two-column index.  Greenaway considers the Findhorn Foundation “a highly distorted and commercialized version of the Ancient Wisdom” (p. 19).  He describes a major weakness in many cults and sects, absolute certainty they have spiritual truth though it is based on very little or highly speculative data. “Human potential practitioners make their own methods sound more unique than they actually are” (67).  Most are actually spin-offs of historical movements such as Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, or Islam but hybrid versions with very little originality or authentic historical concepts. Greenaway comments that the Findhorn Foundation was “never any good at historical scholarship” (21) but followed the dictum “we create our own reality,” a “megalomaniac doctrine” of “New Age psychospirituality, excited hyper-theosophy” and a “wacky package” of “California occultism” (21-25).

Chapter 1 traces Findhorn’s roots to Peter Caddy; this is useful information, but six pages are devoted to commenting on a 70-pound cabbage claimed to have grown “by spirit force.” There are misleading examples or errors when the book wanders off its focus on New Age movements.  Empedocles is linked to acupuncture, more Chinese than Greek, and Pythagoras to prana, shakti, and chi mixing Hindu and Chinese origins (13).  Greek culture is said to have centered in Alexandria, Egypt not Athens, Greece (12). Chapter 2 is a historical overview of the New Age movement in four phases, from Blavatsky’s theosophy to humanistic psychology then to the human potential movement in the 1960s and prosperity consciousness since the 1980s.  Chapter 3 updates the Findhorn Foundation from the 3-year visit by David Spangler of California after Peter Caddy dropped out in 1979.  Spangler introduced channeling and group consciousness.  Greenaway feels Spangler’s work resulted in disenchantment for many members who left the program.

In Chapter 4 history is again reported but this time in waves.  The first wave began 1914-1919 with Aleister Crowley and peaked in the 1950s.  The second wave was in the 1960s energized by the “third force” of humanistic psychology.  The third wave began with Esalen’s Big Sur program and continued in the 1980s prosperity consciousness.  This material belongs in Chapter 2.  There is more history in Chapter 5 but with some subjective bias.  Maslow and Rogers are referred to as “the seminal influences” of the human potential movement. Timothy Leary and others like him would have been better examples.  He credits Rogers with developing group therapy (68), but he was but one of many who used group methods.  He charges “Rogerian attitudes hinder maturation and development ‘growth’ workshops are supposed to be about” (68),but Rogers’ major emphasis was on self-awareness and personal growth.  Rogers takes another hit for espousing empathy and unconditional positive regard “teetering on the edge of the manic” (72).  Does this mean the Good Samaritan was just manic?  “We create our own reality” is misattributed to Maslow.  It is a basic tenet of existentialism that preceded Maslow.

Humanistic psychology and the human potential movement are criticized for “a curious lack of foundation, a relative absence of historical sense and historically guided coordination despite much pre-occupation with groundedness” (71). Not true.  They were “the third force” against the first two, psychoanalysis and behaviorism, which denied or minimized free will and the potential to overcome instinctive drives and conditioning.  Modern historical roots are Rousseau’s “noble savage” against Locke’s mind as a blank slate and the Darwinian idea that we are monkeys' uncles.  Ancient roots can be seen in Socrates’ admonition “know thyself.”  It is charged they are anti-intellectual but “the anti-intellectualism of these people, nearly always intellectual themselves though prone to deny it, is by no means confined to the New Age,and paradoxically has intellectual roots” (72). Translation, please?

Chapter 15 is 69 pages and the book’s longest.  Eight pages describe the relationship of Freemasons to Findhorn Foundation and how its “structure and modus operandi imitates Masonry” (178). The author states that he is not a Mason and the only substantiating data offered is that some of Findhorn leaders were or are Masons. The chapter wanders through “mystery traditions” such as the “aeons” of Osiris and Horus, Ordo Templi Orientis, star Sirius, the Order of Melchizedek, and the Great White Lodge. Caddy, Crowley, Blavatsky, and Bailey are revisited adding little substance, though Alice Bailey’s husband (Ahah!) was “a respected Freemason” (195).  More than half the chapter details Blavatsky’s theosophy, which “has been a central influence in Foundation spirituality” (217) and “what C. G. Jung calls ‘the shadow,’ i.e.,archetypal material pushing up from the unconscious” (218).  The New Age is seen as “a new paradigm” for “an emerging global religion” and “new root race” (189), a worldwide movement using “paranormal techniques preserved from ancient times, including hypnosis, laws of forms, ritual, and behavior control” (190). Its aim is “to restore the inner or esoteric dynamic” that Christianity has “largely lost” (202).

Chapter 16 explores “the United Nations connection” in the Lucis Trust, originally The Lucifer Trust, but omits the etymology that Lucifer first meant light and in Britain, a match.  Lucis “appears to have a long term advisory connection with the U.N.” (238) and “a sympathetic parallelism” with the Findhorn Foundation “and its leading affiliates and writers” (239).  Findhorn “achieved three U.N. affiliations.” This may be evidence of a “ramp, something between a paradigm and a conspiracy … a kind of group consciousness that is charged and selfish in nature” (240). This ramp is “a mingling of Alice Bailey’s theosophy with eccentric Freemasonry and an extreme development of Star Sirius lore” (247)."  The “U.N. bureaucrats do not appear to know what is going on in the engine room” (242).  “We are looking at an international network which has already acquired enormous power without revealing much of what it is about …” (248).

Chapter 17 focuses on “language games” such as the “classic mind-trap” of Findhorn’s “we create our own reality’” and “democratic sounding terms such as ‘eco, group, community, village’” (250). There is a change in direction that describes various Findhorn operations. Chapter 18 details ways Findhorn creates its own reality but its “eco-village is but the ‘planetary village’ of ‘Limitless Love and Truth’ under a toned down title and expensive workshop spirituality … derived from New Age California and its distorted Theosophy” (263). The work of Singer, Lifton, Clark, and Langone on mind control are described and compared to Findhorn practices. Chapters 19, 20, and 21 describe various foundation activities over time.

Chapter 22 summarizes the book and concludes “Findhorn Foundation is not the exploration of Eastern religions or the Western mystery tradition” but “a type of commercial spirituality” (356).  It is “genuine up to a point when seeking public recognition or applying for public money.”  It is “trying to re-invent itself as an international eco-center,” though it remains “a hybridization” of New Age elements (356). The prefix “eco” is “a gift to word-spinners,” a “chameleon word” for Findhorn “a magical compression of its totalist mission” (356). Without data he again charges, “Freemasonry allied to the New Age is a volatile and flaky departure from historical Masonry” and “Christian churches have been almost mown down by the New Age phenomenon" (357).  He describes New Age religion as a “distorting prism” to “first dive into our Self” to find “pristine innocence ignoring Man’s Fall” then to realize “we are God.” In contrast, Christianity “stands ready with natural powers at rest before a higher Power which lifts us up” but critical of it because its “narrow doctrinal rationalism and legalism drives people out of existing churches by the million” (359). He offers “two ways back to sanity,” recognizing “a significant proportion” of New Age religions are “exploitive,” and “churches need to recover their history” including the “healing traditions” and “energy flow” of earlier Christian and Eastern ideas (358).  He recommends “a Western Christian ashram” such as Bede Griffith’s in India and “meditative prayer” to “discourage crazes” (360).  He considers the New Age not new at all but can be traced back to Virgil and 12th century papal approval of meditative prayer “nurturing the space before words” (361).  He sees traditional religion as too restrictive of individual spiritual growth and New Age versions as too unrestricted and shallow.

Despite some rambling, repetition, needless tangents, and a focus on relatively trivial facts this book contains much wisdom and insight.  It would have benefited greatly from better organization and editing. Reading it is work but it is worth reading, a labor of love for the rich material to be mined.  The author’s search for truth is clear, his observations are objective despite some factual errors, and his judgment sound, making it a useful model for others and a detailed account of Findhorn’s history and program.