Such are the beliefs built on the Bible. But there are other
ancient writings with strange nomenclature and ritual and
symbolism, calculated to impress the unlettered; also our
prophets have imaginations of their own, and can invent
nomenclature and ritual and symbolism never seen in heaven nor on
earth before. Thus there is Dr. Newo Newi New, who called himself
"Archbishop of the Newthot Church," and gathered about him a
harem of devoted females in San Francisco, and was landed in jail
for using the mails to defraud. Or there is "Oahspe, the Cosmic
Bible," a work of brand-new revelation with a brand-new view of
the universe and all things therein:
The reader soon discovers that he must radically revise not only
his ideas of celestial Cosmogony, but the order and significance
of names and titles commonly applied to the Transcendental
Brethren. The great provinces of Etheria are presided over by
chiefs, chosen for their superior development in wisdom and love.
For our solar system to cross one of these provinces requires
about 3,000 years, and between them are belts of high Etherian
light which take several years to pass over. The passage of each
province is a cycle of earthly history, and the crossings are
called Dawns of Dan.
And here is Koreshanity, a revelation vouchsafed by the Lord to
Dr. C. R. Teed of Chicago in the year 1889. This new seer took
the name of Koresh, which is Hebrew for Cyrus, "the Shepherd from
Joseph, the Stone of Israel, the Sun-Man; the illuminating center
of the Son of man", and went out on the streets of the city to
preach that the earth is a hollow sphere with the stars inside.
The street urchins of the pork-packing metropolis threw stones at
him, and the irreverent newspapers took up his adventures, with
the result that followers gathered, and now there is a
flourishing colony in Florida, with a dignified magazine called
"The Flaming Sword", and a collection of propaganda volumes: "The
Cellular Cosmogony, an Exposition of Koreshan Universology and
the New Geodesy"; "The Immortal Manhood, the Laws and Processes
of its Attainment in the Flesh"; "The Great Red Dragon, by Lord
Chester"; "The Coming of the Shepherd from Joseph, The Standing
of the Great Ensign, by Koresh." The "Religio-science" of this
Chicago revelator is based, first upon some precise measurements
of the earth which prove that its surface is concave; and second
upon some philological discoveries very much resembling puns.
Thus the "cross of Christ" is explained in a sense of the word
more common among horse-breeders than among theologians:
The highest characteristic of the alchemical law is the cross of
Christ with sensual man. The cross means that the Lord God, in
order to perpetuate his own being, descends into the race of
sensuality.
And again, when someone asks about meteors:
"The word Heaven means things heaved up, that is, heaved up from
their material basis, the earth; thus, the meteors which fall to
the earth are composed of metallic, mineral, and geological
substances, being materialized or actually created in the
atmosphere by an alchemico-organic process from zones or belts
periodically open, which precipitate their contents in the form
or shape of meteors."
And perhaps I ought also to quote the "Indicia of Human
Progress", by "Berthaldine, Matrona". I don't know what a
"Matrona" is--unless it is a female matron. This female matron
tells me that now is the "Time of Restitution", and explains that
"the prolification of the human race has reached a fruition of
the adultery of the truth and good of the Lord with the fallacies
and evils of the mortal hells"..... We have come, it seems, to
the "age of Pisces", which is "one of the greatest radical
prolification"; and what we now need is the "power of
polarization", so that we may join the "White Horse Army of the
Most High", which is the organization of the "Aquarian age",
proclaimed by Koresh on January 15th, 1891.