The whole review was interesting, but this passage stood out to me:

Hubbard had frequently compared life to a game, and he didn’t want to be ‘playing some minor game in Scientology. It isn’t cute or something to do for lack of something better.’ The game hinged on the idea that we can choose what we perceive to be ‘true’, and discard everything else as an illusion. Yet soon Hubbard’s postmodern religion strove to become a ‘real’ one. His followers – among them hippies as well as educated and ambitious young people – surprised him with the intensity of their belief. Hubbard told a group of doctoral students in Philadelphia in 1954 that his followers were more convinced of Scientology’s cosmology than he was. ‘I’m just kidding you mostly,’ he said. ‘I don’t believe any of these things and I don’t want to be agreed with about them … All I’m asking is that we take a look at this information, and … let’s see if we can’t disagree with this universe, just a little bit.’

That’s a very different way of looking at Hubbard than I’m used to, and that quote is very telling. I’m used to seeing Hubbard and his followers as either scammers, lunatics or dupes. But if you are (for lack of a better word) postmodern enough to believe that you can create your own reality, then what better way to shape this new reality than by creating a religion?

And this might go some way towards explaining why so many of Scientology’s most prominent followers are actors or authors. These are people who work at creating a new reality for their audience.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I don’t want to live on this planet anymore.

According to Chivers, the prosecuting lawyer, Giuliano Mignini, is a bit of a loop, with a thing for finding conspiracies and satanic cults that don’t actually exist. Apparently he had it out Knox becuase she was ‘”a diabolical, satanic, demonic she-devil” who “likes alcohol, drugs and hot, wild sex”. ‘

What’s interesting is that Chivers then goes on to ty this case to the “Satanic Panic”. This may be old hat to you, but since I’ve avoided the story it’s news to me:

It’s all very reminiscent of another Satanic panic which flared up a couple of decades or so ago in the US and Britain. “Satanic ritual abuse” became something of a buzzword after the 1980 publication of a book, Michelle Remembers, apparently detailing the childhood memories of the eponymous Michelle, uncovered using hypnotherapy, in which she claimed to have been abused by her mother and others in part of a Satanic cult in Victoria, Canada. Shortly after, a parents’ group in California decided that their children’s school was being run by Satanists, after a schizophrenic woman made claims about practices at the school, and the children – under lengthy questioning after initial denials – started making up tales of abuse. Suddenly, hundreds of similar cases were cropping up, on both sides of the Atlantic, frequently based on similarly hypnosis- or psychotherapy-derived memories.

At its height, there were claims that thousands of people had been killed by a global conspiracy-cult. But it all transpired to be imaginary: no evidence of actual Satanic murders or torture was ever uncovered, and the techniques used to glean the “memories” have since been thoroughly discredited. By 1995 the panic had by-and-large died down: Gary Clapton, a University of Edinburgh social-work academic, writes that the furore drew attention away from real child abuse issues, by pushing imaginary Satanic abuse to the top of the seriousness pile, relegating very real physical and sexual abuse down the order. The staff of the California school, incidentally, were all acquitted after a seven-year court case, then the most expensive in US legal history.

Nice work from Mr. Chivers in spotting that similarity. I’m sorry that religious mania seems to be the only thing we Americans can seem to export these days.

The gay overtones of this got the attention of Westboro Baptist Church. Spinner quotes their website (which I don’t link to):

“The entertainment industry is a microcosm of the people in this doomed nation: hard-hearted, hell-bound, and hedonistic,” leader Fred Phelps wrote on the church’s website. “These people have a platform and should be using it to encourage obedience to God; instead they teach every person who will listen all things contrary to him: fornication, adultery, idolatry, fags.”

Naturally, Westboro shows up to picket a concert. But as they brought out their picket signs, a truck pulling a parade float drives up. On the float were the Foo Fighters, dressed in the hillbilly outfits from the “Hot Buns” video, singing a parody country song “Keep it Clean.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

I think I see a new American sport in the making: baiting Westboro. Provoking them into doing their usual bit, them making them the butt of the joke.

*shudder*

One of the NAR efforts that the Pagan community has been tracking is called “DC40,” the goal of which is to create “eternal change in our nation’s capitol so our elected officials can govern from a new position of uncompromising light and understanding as we change the spiritual atmosphere over Washington DC forever.”

How will this work? One of the Wild Hunt contributors describes it:

DC40 plans to have teams in the capital cities of all 50 states and Washington DC linking state capitals to the nation’s capital to help harness the intents and wills of thousands of Christians for this working. [...]

The 51 day events start in Hawaii on October 3rd and moves to each state in reverse order of its entry into the union and continues until November 22. Christians in the state for the day are to “take point” in praying for the District of Christ, the repudiation of Columbia and other non-Christian deities and religions, and the election of Christian God-fearing candidates.

That last bit is one of the symbolic goals of the movement, to remove the “pagan goddess” Columbia from Washington D.C. and replace her with Christ.

Honestly, I don’t know what to think. Every time I think I’ve got the NAR figured out, they turn the weirdness up another notch.

Doubt it.

Fantz does a good job of making her two subjects – Sheila Martin and Clive Doyle – seem like just plain folk. Which, I suppose, they are. They’re just plain folk who got caught up into a cult of personality infused with religion. Here’s how Doyle explains his continued obedience to the memory of David Koresh:

There are three crucial points to understanding the Branch Davidian brand of religion.

First, God can appear in the flesh as a man. Second, that man doesn’t have to be a good person. Third, if you question whether that man is God, then you are questioning God. In other words, the devil is responsible for your doubt.

“Now,” Doyle asks, “are you going to give the devil control?”

That second part explains how they could remain members, even as Koresh slept with Doyle’s 14 year old daughter.

But the most heatbreaking part comes at the beginning, as Shelia Martin shops for memorial flowers:

Sheila Martin’s children burned alive. God, she says, wanted it that way.

“I don’t expect you to understand,” she says, leaning her bird-tiny frame against a full shopping cart in the nursery aisle at a Super Walmart. Her pink shirt, flats and purse match the lilies, hydrangeas and clusters of jasmine she’s buying.

The problem is, I think I do. If this isn’t part of God’s end times plan, then the children burned for nothing. That would mean they died because David Koresh was deluded and Martin and dozens of others got pulled into his delusions.

That doesn’t make Marin anything more or less than human, but it’s still a hell of a thing to face every day of your life. How much easier must it be to cling to those old beliefs, rather than admit that your mistake cost your children their lives?

A year after the end of WWII, noted astronomer Gerard Kuiper (for whom the Kuiper Belt is named) published an article in Popular Astronomy describing the German astronomical work undertaken during the period in which communications had broken down. He bemoaned the “intellectual deterioration” that had allowed many German scientists to embrace pseudo-scientific theories. As an example, he mentions Nazi scientists who aimed infrared equipment upward, hoping to catch images of a British fleet on the other side of the globe. For this he blames “hohlwelt-theorie,” or hollow earth theory.

Hollow Earth

Pullquote: Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out heaven with the span…
Isaiah 40:12

But wait a minute, that still doesn’t make sense. The hollow earth theory was first proposed by Edmund Halley, and it conjectured that the earth was a series of concentric spheres. This would not allow anyone to view the other side of the globe.

Later proponents, like John Cleves Symmes, simply refined the theory. Symmes argued that there were holes at the poles that would allow explorers to venture inside, and he hoped to lead such an expedition. (This was an inspiration for Edgar Allen Poe’s only novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket.)

In order for the supposed Nazi experiment to work, we’d have to live on the inside of a hollow earth. We’d need to live on a concave inner surface, so that Nazi scientists could look up and see British ships on the other side. The only person I’ve found who advanced that idea was Cyrus R. Teed, a religious and scientific eccentric from the Burned Over District.

Teed Off

Pullquote: “In 1870, the Author of the Koreshan System of Universology, upon the basis of the law of comparative analogy, announced the discovery of the cosmogonic form, which he then declared to be cellular, the surface of the earth being concave, with a curvature of about eight inched to the mile.”
Cellular Cosmology, p 5

In addition to having one of the better names in American religious history (sounds like a B-Western villain, doesn’t he?), Teed was a true son of the Burned Over District. Born in 1839, he grew up in Upstate New York, worked the Eerie Canal, served in the infantry during the Civil War and eventually trained to be a physician.

By 1869 he was also a dabbler in alchemy. According to one version of the story, one of Teed’s experiments gave him a nasty electric shock and left him unconscious, during which time he had a vision. (Another version has him receiving a vision after making a philosopher’s stone.)

Teed claimed that God had appeared as a female figure, and henceforth he considered God both Father and Mother. Then the proper understanding of the universe was given to him; Teed called this revelation “cellular cosmology,” since the universe was like a “alchemo-organic cell.” It’s a classic example of an ancient theory that the macrocosm will reflect the microcosm. Heaven and earth are like a living cell; as above, so below.

Koreshian Unity

Pullquote: “We live inside”
Koreshian greeting

After his vision, Teed took the name “Koresh,” (I’ll stick with “Teed”) but continued to live and work in Upstate New York. He worked as a physician, published a newspaper and even tried his hand at the family mop business. At the same time, he associated with some of the religious communal societies, like the Shakers and the Harmony Society in Pennsylvania.

When his medical practice declined and the mop business was wrung out (sorry) Teed was able to found a communal society of his own. It started in Chicago, then moved to Florida, where it was incorporated as the “Koreshan Unity” in 1903. No long thereafter, the society rose to 250 members.

Apparently, politics were his undoing. In 1906, he tried to play peacemaker during an argument over local politics, and ended up taking injuries when the argument turned violent. His injuries slowly worsened over time, and he died two years later. After his death, and failure to resurrect, the membership of his organization declined.

From the Upstate to Germany?

Pullquote: “One of the symptoms of intellectual deterioration in Nazi Germany was the wide-spread use of pseudo-scientific theories.”
Gerard Kuiper

I’m always interested in seeing how far the influence of the Burned Over District goes. Obviously, the Church of LDS has expanded across the globe, extending the reach of Joesph Smith’s Upstate blend of religion and occultism around the world. But did a theory invented by a single religious eccentric make it across the Atlantic to the Nazis?

Arguing for it is the oddness of the theory. Could two separate people come up with the same idea, when that idea runs so contrary to our own experience? Arguing against it is the lack of documentation. While I think that Kuiper is trustworthy, there’s no guarantee that he wasn’t accidentally passing on a legend.

There is one definite connection between the Koreshian Unity and the Nazis, although it runs the other way. The final resurgence of the Unity came in 1940, when a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany named Hedwig Michel reorganized the dying group. But even she couldn’t stave off the inevitable, and she oversaw the transfer of the organization’s property to the state of Florida in 1961.

Resources:
The Koreshans, the unofficial blog of the Koreshan State Historic Site.

The Koreshan Virtual Archives, which lists the archival holdings of the official Koreshan State Historic Site.

Turning the Universe Inside-Out, from skeptic Donald Simanek. Simanek examines an experiment performed by one of Teed’s supporters, which “proved” the earth was concave.

Click here to view the embedded video.

via Dangerous Minds

Here’s the screenshot of the Westboro site before it was removed. Click to embiggen: