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.
#Mazdaznan#
And here is another and even more startling revelation from Chicago,
given to a seer by the name of Dr. Otoman Prince of Adusht Ha'nish,
prophet of the Sun God, Prince of Peace, Manthra Magi of Temple El
Katman, Kalantar of Zoroastrian Breathing and Envoy of Mazdaznan
living, Viceroy-Elect and International Head of Master-Thot. If you
had happened to live near the town of Mendota, Illinois, and had known
the German grocer-boy named Otto Hanisch, you might at first have
trouble in recognizing him through this transmogrification. I have
traced his career in the files of the Chicago newspapers, and find him
herding sheep, setting type, preaching prestidigitation, mesmerism,
and fake spiritualism, joining the Mormon Church, then the "Christian
Catholic Church in Zion", and then the cult of Brighouse, who claimed
to be Christ returned.
Finally he sets himself up in Chicago as a Persian Magus, teaching
Yogi breathing exercises and occult sex-lore to the elegant society
ladies of the pork-packing metropolis. The Sun God, worshipped for two
score centuries in India, Egypt, Greece and Rome, has a new shrine on
Lake Park Avenue, and the prophet gives tea-parties at which his
disciples are fed on lilac-blossoms--"the white and pinkish for males,
the blue-tinted for females". He wears a long flowing robe of pale
grey cashmere, faced with white, and flexible white kid shoes, and he
sells his lady adorers a book called "Inner Studies", price five
dollars per volume, with information on such subjects as:
The Immaculate Conception and its Repetition; The Secrets of
Lovers Unveiled; Our Ideals and Soul Mates; Magnetic
Attraction and Electric Mating.
A Grand Jury intervenes, and the Prophet goes to jail for six months;
but that does not harm his cult, which now has a temple in Chicago,
presided over by a lady called Kalantress and Evangelist; also a
"Northern Stronghold" in Montreal, an "Embassy" in London, an
"International Aryana" in Switzerland, and "Centers" all over America.
At the moment of going to press, the prophet himself is in flight,
pursued by a warrant charging him with improper conduct with a number
of young boys in a Los Angeles hotel.
I have dipped into Ha'nish's revelations, which are a farrago of every
kind of ancient mysticism--paper and binding from the Bible,
illustrations from the Egyptian, names from the Zoroastrian, health
rules from the Hindoos, laws from the Confucians--price ten dollars
per volume. Would you like to discover your seventeen senses, to
develop them according to the Ga-Llama principle, and to share the
"expansion of the magnetic circles"? Here is the way to do it:
Inhale through nostrils for four seconds, and upon one
exhalation, speak slowly:
Open, O thou world-sustaining Sun, the entrance unto Truth
hidden by the vase of dazzling light.
Again inhale for four seconds, and breathe out the following
sentence upon one exhalation as before:
Soften the radiation of Thy Illuminating Splendor, that I
may behold Thy True Being.
I have a clipping from a Los Angeles newspaper telling of the
prophet's arriving there. He takes the front page with the captivating
headline: "Women Didn't Think Till They Put On Corsets". The interview
tells about his mysteriousness, his aloofness, his bird-like-diet, and
his personal beauty. "Despite his seventy-three years, Ha'nish
evidences no sign of age. His keen blue eyes showed no sign of
wavering. There were no wrinkles on his face, and his walk was that of
a man of forty." The humor of this becomes apparent when we mention
that at Ha'nish's trial, three or four years ago, he was proven to be
thirty-five years old!
Being thus warned as to the accuracy of American journalism, we shall
not be taken in by the repeated statements that the Mazdaznan prophet
is a millionaire. But there is no doubt that he is wealthy; and as all
Americans wish to be wealthy, I will quote his formula of prosperity,
his method of accomplishing what might be called the Individual
Revolution:
When hungry and you do not know where to get your next piece
of bread, do not despair. Thy Father, all-loving, has
provided, you with everything that will meet all cases of
emergency.
Place your teeth tightly together, with tongue pressing
against the lower teeth and lips parted. Breathe in, close
lips immediately, exhaling through the nostrils. Breathe
again; if saliva forms in your mouth, hold your breath so
you can swallow it first before you exhale. You thus take
out of the air the metal-substance contained therein; you
can even taste the iron which you convert into substance
required for making the blood. Should you feel that,
although you have sufficient iron in the blood, there is a
lack of copper and zinc and silver, place upper teeth over
lower, keep lower lip tightly to lower teeth, now breathe
and you can even taste the metals named. Then should you
feel you need more gold element for your brain functions,
place your back teeth together just as if you were to grind
the back teeth, taking short breaths only. You will then
learn to know that there is gold and silver all around us.
That our bodies are filled with quite a quantity of gold.
#Black Magic#
What all this means is that we have a continent, with a hundred
million half-educated people, materially prosperous, but spiritually
starving; so any man who possesses personality, who looks in any way
strange and impressive, or has hunted up old books in a library, and
can pronounce mysterious words in a thrilling voice--such a man can
find followers. Anybody can do it with any doctrine, from anywhere,
Persia or Patagonia, Pekin or Pompei. I would be willing to wager that
if I cared to come out and announce that I had had a visit from _God_
last night, and to devote such literary and emotional power as I
possess to communicating a new revelation, I could have a temple, a
university, and a million dollars within five years at the outside.
And if at the end of five years I were to announce that I had played a
joke on the world, some one of my followers would convince the
faithful that I had been an agent of God without knowing it, and that
the leadership had now been turned over to him.
I would not be understood as believing that all our cults are
undiluted fakery, for that would be doing injustice to some earnest
people. There are, in this country, many followers of the Persian
reformer, Abbas Effendi, who call themselves Babists, and who have
what I am inclined to think is the purest and most dignified religion
in existence. There was a man named Jacob Beilhardt, who founded a
cult in Illinois with the painful name of "Spirit Fruit Colony", who
nevertheless was a man of spiritual insight, a true mystic; he was
honest, and so he failed, and died of a broken heart. Also there are
the Christian Scientists and the Theosophists, so exasperating that
one would like to throw them onto the rubbish-heap, who yet compel us
to sift over their mountains of chaff for the grains of truth which
will bear fruit in future.
While we western races have been exploring the natural world and
perfecting the mechanical arts, the Hindoo students have been
exploring the subconscious and its strange powers. What Myers and
Lodge and Janet and Charcot and Freud and Jung are telling us today
they had hints of a long time ago; and doubtless they have hints of
other things, upon which our scientists have not yet come. I have
friends, perfectly sane and competent people, who tell me that they
can see auras, and use this ability as a means of judging character.
Shall I say that there are no auras, simply because I do not happen to
have this gift of seeing them? In the same way, having read Gurney's
"Phantasms of the Living," I am not ready to ridicule the claim of the
Yogi adepts, that they are able to project some kind of astral body,
and to communicate with one another from distant places. But granting
such occult powers in a world of economic strife, what follows? Simply
new floods of charlatanism, elaborate and complicated systems of
ritual and metaphysic for the deluding and plundering of the
credulous.
I have seen the thing working itself out in one case known to me. A
young man had a gift of mental healing; I know, because I saw it work;
but it did not always work, and that was annoying. He was penniless
and had a taste for power, and to eke out his erratic endowment he got
himself books of Eastern lore, and day by day as I watched him I could
see him becoming more and more impressive, mysterious and forbidding.
Today he is a full-fledged wonder-worker, with the language of a dozen
mystic cults at his tongue's end, and the reverent regard of many
wealthy ladies. I have never tried to break through his guard, but I
feel certain that he is a deliberate charlatan.
This is an economic process, automatic and irresistible. Just as the
manufacturer of honest foods is driven out by the adulterator, so the
worker of miracles drives out the sincere investigator. As a result we
have here in America a plague of Eastern cults, with "swamis" using
soft yellow robes and soft brown eyes to win the souls of idle society
ladies. These teachers of ancient Hindoo lore despise us as a race of
barbarians; but they stay--whether because of love of man or woman, I
do not pretend to say.
There are the Theosophists of many brands, with schools and institutes
and temples and colonies, and a doctrine as complex and detailed and
fantastic as that of the Roman Catholics. I have already referred to
the writings of Madame Blavatsky, a runaway Russian army officer's
daughter, whose career reads like a tale out of the Arabian Nights.
And there is Annie Besant, who was once an ardent worker in the
Social-democratic Federation; H.M. Hyndman tells of his dismay when
she went to India and walked in a procession between two white bulls!
Here in California is Madame Tingley, with a colony and a host of
followers in a minature paradise. Men work at money-lending or
manufacturing sporting-goods, and when they get old and tired they
make the thrilling discovery that they have souls; the theosophists
cultivate these souls and they leave their money to the soul-cause,
and there are lawsuits and exposés in the newspapers. For, you see,
there is ferocious rivalry in the game of cultivating millionaire
souls; there are slanders and feuds, just as in soulless affairs.
"Don't have anything to do with Madame Tingley," whispers a
Theosophist lady to my Wife; and when my wife in all innocence
inquires, "Why not?" the awe-stricken answer comes, "She practices
black magic!"
Let me add that I do not say that she practices black magic. I do not
believe that she #could# practice it, even if she wanted to--I do not
believe in black magic. My purpose is merely to show how theosophists
quarrel: going back to the days of Anu and Baal and the bronze Image
of the Babylonian fire-god:
Let them die, but let me live!
Let them be put under a ban, but let me prosper!
Let them perish, but let me increase!
Let them become weak, but let me wax strong!
#Mental Malpractice#
This is the other side of the fair shield of religious faith. Why, if
there be a power which loves and can be persuaded to aid us, may there
not also be a power which hates, and can be persuaded to destroy? No
religion has ever been able to answer this, and therefore none has
ever been able to escape from devil-terrors. Even Jesus was pursued by
Satan, and the Holy Catholic Church has its ceremonies for the
exorcising of demons, and a most frightful formula for cursing. And
here are our friends the Christian Scientists, proclaiming the
unreality of all evil, their ability to banish disease by convincing
themselves that they are perfect in God--yet tormented by a squalid
phobia called "Mental Malpractice", or "Malicious Animal Magnetism".
Christian Science is the most characteristic of American religious
contributions. Just as Billy Sunday is the price we pay for failing to
educate our base-ball players, so Mary Baker Glover Patterson Eddy is
the price we pay for failing to educate our farmer's daughters.
That she had a power to cure disease I do not doubt, because I have a
little of it myself. At first my opinion was that her "Science" made
its way by curing the imaginary ailments of the idle rich. If a person
has nothing to do but think that he is sick, you can work easy
miracles by persuading him to think that he is well; and if he has
nothing to do but think that he is well, he will help you to build
marble churches and maintain propaganda societies. But recently I have
experimented with mental healing--enough to satisfy myself that the
subconscious mind which controls our physical functions can be
powerfully influenced by the will.
I told the story of some of these experiments in Hearst's Magazine for
April, 1914. Suffice it here to say that if you will lay your hands
upon a sick person, forming a vivid mental picture of the bodily
changes you desire, and concentrating the power of your will upon
them, you may be surprised by the results, especially if you possess
anything in the way of psychic gifts. You do not have to adopt any
theories, you do not have to do it in the name of any divinity,
ancient or modern; the only bearing of such ideas is that they serve
to persuade people to make the experiment, and to make it with
persistence and intensity. So it has come about that "miracles" of
healing are associated with "faith"; and so it comes about that
scientists are apt to flout the subject. But read of the work of Janet
and Charcot and their followers at the Salpetriere; they have proven
that all kinds of seeming-organic ailments may be entirely hysterical
in nature, and may be cured by the simplest form of suggestion.
Understanding this, you may find it more easy to credit the fact that
cripples do sometimes throw away their crutches in the grotto of
Lourdes. For my part, I can believe that Jesus performed all the
miracles of healing attributed to him--including the raising up of
people pronounced to be dead by the ignorance of that time. I am
convinced that in the new science of psycho-analysis we have a
universe as vast as the universe of the atom or of the stars.
The Christian Scientists have got hold of this power; they have mixed
it up with metaphysic and divinity, and built some four or five
hundred churches, and printed the Mother Church alone knows how many
million pamphlets and books. I once invested three of my hard-earned
dollars for a copy of the Eddy Bible, and let myself be stunned and
blinded by the flapping of metaphysical wings. It is unadulterated
moonshine--as the Platonist and Berkeleyan and Hegelian and other
orthodox collegiate metaphysical magi can prove to you in one minute.
What interests me about the phenomenon is not the slinging of
tremendous words, but the strictly Yankee use which is made of them.
There is no nonsense about saving your soul in Christian Science; what
it is for is to remove your wen, to nail down your floating kidney,
and to enable you to hustle and make money. We saw in our politics the
growth of a Party of the Full Dinner-Pail; contemporaneous therewith,
and corresponding thereto, we see in our religious life the
development of a Church of the Full Pocket-Book.
It is a strict religion--strictly cash. The heads of the cult do not
issue cheap editions of "Science and Health, With Key to the
Scriptures", to relieve the suffering of the proletariat; no--the work
is copyrighted, in all its varying and contradictory editions, and the
price is from three to seven-fifty, according to binding. Treatments
cost from three dollars to ten, whether you come and get them or take
them over the telephone. And we have no nonsense about charity, we
don't worry about the poor who fester in our city slums; because
poverty is a product of Mortal Mind, and we offer to all men a way to
get rich right off the bat. You may; come to our marble churches and
hear people testify how through the power of Divine Mind they were
enabled to anticipate a rise in the stock-market. If you don't avail
yourself of the opportunity, the fault is yours, and yours also the
punishment.
As to the management of the Church, the Roman Catholic hierarchy is a
Bolshevik democracy in comparison. The Church is controlled by an
absolutely irresponsible self-perpetuating body of five men, who alone
dictate its policy. I have in my hand a letter from a Christian
Science healer who was listed as an "authorized practitioner", and who
withdrew from the Church because of its attitude on public questions.
He sends me a copy of his correspondence with the editors of the
"Christian Science Monitor", containing a detailed analysis of the
position of that paper on such issues as the Ballinger land-frauds. He
writes:
I am thoroughly convinced now that the policy of the Church
is consciously plutocratic. The only recommendation I have
heard of the latest appointee to the Board of Directors is
that he is one of the richest men in the movement.
After the Titanic disaster, Senator La Follette brought in a carefully
drawn bill to compel steamship companies to provide life-boats and
trained crews. The "Christian Science Monitor" opposed this bill; and
when my correspondent cited the fact, he brought out a quaint bit of
metaphysical logic, as follows:
One would prefer to travel on a vessel without a single
boat, rather than on some other vessels which were loaded
down with life-boats, where the government of Mind was not
understood!
#Science and Wealth#
The truth is that the brand of Mammon was on our Yankee religion from
the day of its birth. In the first edition of her new Bible "Mother"
Eddy dropped the hint to her readers: "Men of business have said this
science was of great advantage from a secular point of view." And in
her advertisements she threw aside all pretense, declaring that her
work "Affords an opportunity to acquire a profession by which one can
accumulate a fortune." When her pupils did accumulate, she boasted of
their success; nor did she neglect her own accumulating.
It has been a dozen years since I looked into this cult; in order to
be sure that it has not been purified in the interim, I proceed to a
street corner in my home city, where is a stand with a sign:
"Christian Science Literature." I take four sample copies of a
magazine, the "Christian Science Sentinel", published by the Mother
Church in Boston, and turn to the "Testimonials of Healing". In the
issue of August 11, 1917, Mary C. Richards of St. Margarets-on-Thames,
England, testifies: "Through a number of circumstances unnecessary to
relate, but proving conclusively that the result came not from man but
from God, employment was found." In the issue of December 2, 1916,
Frances Tuttle of Jersey City, N.J., testifies how her sister was
successfully treated for unemployment by a scientist practitioner.
"Every condition was beautifully met." In the same issue Fred D.
Miller of Los Angeles, Cal., testifies: "Soon after this wonderful
truth came to me, Divine Love led me to a new position with a
responsible firm. The work was new to me, but I have given entire
satisfaction, and my salary has been advanced twice in less than a
year." In the issue of January 27, 1917, Eliza Fryant of Agricola,
Miss., testifies how she cured her little dog of snake-bite and
removed two painful corns from her own foot. In the issue of August 4,
1917, Marcia E. Gaier, of Everett, Wash., testifies how it suddenly
occurred to her that because God is All, she would drop her planning
and outlining in regard to real estate properties, "upon which for
nine months all available material methods were tried to no effect."
The result was a triumph of "Principle".
While working in the yard one morning and gratefully
communing with God, the only power, I suddenly felt that I
should stop working and prepare for visitors on their way to
look at the property. I obeyed this very distinct command,
and in about an hour I greeted two people who had searched
almost the entire city for just what we had to offer. They
had been directed to our place by what to material sense
would seem an accident, but we know it was the divine law of
harmony in its universal operation.
After this no one will wonder that John M. Tutt, in a Christian
Science lecture at Kansas City, Mo., should proclaim:
My friends, do you know that since the world began Christian
Science is the only system which has intelligently related
religion to business? Christian Science shows that since all
ideas belong to Mind, God, therefore all real business
belongs to Him.
As I said, these people have the new-old power of mental healing. They
blunder along with it blindly, absurdly, sometimes with tragic
consequences; but meantime the rank and file of the pill-doctors know
nothing about this power, and regard it with contempt mingled with
fear; so of course the hosts of sufferers whom the pill-doctors cannot
help flock to the healers of the "Church of Christ, Scientist".
According to the custom of those who are healed by "faith", they
swallow line, hook, and sinker, creed, ritual, metaphysic and
divinity. So we see in twentieth-century America precisely what we saw
in B.C. twentieth-century Assyria--a host of worshippers; giving their
worldly goods without stint, and a priesthood, made partly of fanatics
and partly of charlatans, conducting a vast enterprise of graft, and
harvesting that thing desired of all men, power over the lives and
destinies of others.
And of course among themselves they quarrel; they murder one another's
Mortal Minds, they drive one another out, they snarl over the spoils
like a pack of hungry animals. Listen to the Mother, denouncing one of
her students--a perfectly amiable and harmless youth whose only
offense was that he had gone his own way and was healing the sick for
the benefit of his own pocket-book:
Behold! thou criminal mental marauder, that would blot out
the sunshine of earth, that would sever friends, destroy
virtue, put out Truth, and murder in secret the innocent,
befouling thy track with the trophies of thy guilt--I say,
Behold the "cloud" no bigger than a man's hand already
rising on the horizon of Truth, to pour down upon thy guilty
head the hailstones of doom.
And again:
The Nero of today, regaling himself through a mental method
with the torture of individuals, is repeating history, and
will fall upon his own sword, and it shall pierce him
through. Let him remember this when, in the dark recesses of
thought, he is robbing, committing adultery and killing.
When he is attempting to turn friend away from friend,
ruthlessly stabbing the quivering heart; when he is clipping
the thread of life and giving to the grave youth and its
rainbow hues; when he is turning back the reviving sufferer
to his bed of pain, clouding his first morning after years
of night; and the Nemesis of that hour shall point to the
tyrant's fate, who falls at length upon the sword of
justice.
#New Nonsense#