Any individual monitoring the pre-primary Election 2008 chatter, can’t have missed that one of the biggest issues thus far has been Mitt Romney’s Mormonism and what it means. There are many good reasons to find Romney disturbing– like his apparent lack of an ethical center and core identity, but Mormonism is not one. There’s a double-standard in American religion against any faith that has its originS in the New World. This is not unique to Mormonism– take, for example, the case of the Nation of Islam or the Moorish Science Temple of America. In the popular and scholarly literature, both are discussed as social protest groups but ignored almost entirely as serious expressions of religious faith.

This isn’t to say that Mormonism isn’t ridiculous. Of course it is. Religions are inherently unable to withstand rational scrutiny from without. This is the real Mystery of Faith; that people are able to accept and believe ideas both supernatural (i.e., the resurrection) and social (i.e. love thy enemy, turn the other cheek) that make no logical sense. It’s no different if you’re Christian or Muslim or Scientologist. There’s an inherent hypocrisy to the debate circling around Romney– as if believing that Jesus appeared in the Americas is somehow more implausible than believing that he appeared, resurrected from the dead, to that doubtful fellow Thomas.

Because I have a weak spot for Mormonism, the Romney candidacy excites me, if only for the prospect of revisiting the origins of the religion. Over the last few decades, the Church of LDS has softened, becoming Christ-centric and moving away from its early history and its prophet, Joseph Smith. That’s too bad, but understand. Outside of Mormon circles, Smith has a terrible reputation as a charlatan and a conman.

While there’s no reason to believe that Smith was anything but sincere, I do think that he is best understood as a late practitioner of Western occultism. Prior to his discovery of the Golden Tablets, Smith had been employed as a treasure-hunter; his final method of divination was via the use of scrying stones, and indeed, it is through scrying crystals, which he called Umrim and Thummin, that he “translated” what became the Book of Mormon. When Smith was assassinated, a talisman of Jupiter was found on his body– it took decades to identify but eventually was traced to an 1801 book entitled The Magus by Francis Barrett. The Magus is kind of a catch-all primer on Western occultism– unsurprisingly, it instructs the reader on how to scry via crystals and stones.

Perhaps most fascinating is that the Book of Mormon, and its method of delivery, has a direct antecedent in the magical workings conducted during the reign of Elizabeth by Dr. John Dee and Edward Kelley. Like Smith, Kelly and Dee employed scrying stones, some of which are still in the British Museum. They used these stones to communicate with Angels, who gave them a systematic form of religion (since dubbed Enochian magic) that was used by the Golden Dawn and now plays a role in the OTO. A central part of the story of Mormonism is Smith being lead to the Golden Tablets, like Dee, by an Angel. Nor should we overlook the instructions to Dee and Kelly of wifeswapping (which eventually ended their partnership), another direct parallel with Smith’s eventual revelation of polygamy.

The meaning of any of this is beyond me– it’s fascinating to contemplate that there is an outside chance that soon there could be a presidential candidate whose religious faith traces to time-honored and hoary occult practices. Romney’s the occultist’s choice!

UPDATE: Incidentally, this post was quoted in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

So there’s this woman in Los Angeles named Prophet Olga Soto, who is infamous for predicting the appearance of Jesus at the lake in Echo Park. If you aren’t from LA, you know Echo Park and its lake from the beginning of Chinatown. If you are from LA, you know Echo Park as the neighborhood loaded down with two-piece bands, guys who continue to dress like Elliot Smith, and a handful unfortunate bars.

The appearances of Jesus (7/7/05 and 7/7/07) were heralded in hastily scrawled fliers that Olga taped all over the city. The general craziness of content, combined with Olga’s poor English (and not so hot Spanish), have been the occassion for hilarity amongst the dissolute class of hipsters and slackers that find amusement in any expression of religious belief.

Being a collector of ephemera (read: trash picker) and always interested in offbeat religious expression, I tend to take Olga a little more serious than, well, anyone else, really. I don’t find her funny– just fascinating. It’s interesting to think about the leveling out effect that easy duplication has had amongst religious dissenters. If this were 17th century England, Olga’d have to find a lunatic to pay for her typesetting and printing, and then convince a bookseller by St. Paul’s to sell her stuff. The wide availability of copy machines allowed Olga to nearly blanket certain neighborhoods (mine included) with her fliers, for months and months and months.

I had meant to go to the appearance of Jesus on Saturday, but in the bad craziness of the preceding week, I forgot entirely that it was happening. But I have hung out with Olga a handful of times over the last few months. She’s quite nice but obviously troubled, and, as always, it’s nearly impossible to hold a conversation with someone that speaks in tongues.

Here’s my collection of her fliers, picked up over the last few months:

1972: Bowie is a Soul Brother Warrior Hipster from Outer Space and Marianne Faithful is a junky just back from Egypt and the Black Forest of Germany, where she’d played the role of Lilith in Kenneth Anger’s Lucifer Rising:

The Thoughtography of Ted Serios was a phenomena of the 1960s– as credulous a decade as this country has ever seen– and it produced an excellent work of Fortean literature, The World of Ted Serios: “Thoughtographic” Studies of an Extraordinary Mind by Jules Eisenbud, M.D. The good doctor tells the whole story– of witnessing Serios, in drunken rampages, projecting his thought-images onto Polaroid film.

And though Serios has been semi-convincingly debunked, I recommend the book– it’s reasonably well written, and it reeks of the subjectivity that paranormal investigation engenders, an in the moment loss of perspective which leads to dodgy but compelling narratives. It contains an enormous number of reproductions of Serios’s Thoughtographs. Whatever their value as psychic manifestations, they often are visually stunning. This is a Serios image of the Denver Hilton (he had been trying to produce the Chicago Hilton):

When I was traversing the archives, I discovered a letter that I had written to Serios in May of 2006. I had read this article by Calvin Campbell and thought, okay, sure, why not? In those days, of course, I still had a desire to Meet Interesting People– but that’s since been slaked in ways unimaginable. Serios never wrote me back–  it turns out that he died about half a year later. Too bad.

–

Jarett Kobek
Brooklyn, NY 11211

Ted Serios
[address redacted]

25 May 2006

Dear Mr. Serios,

Please forgive the intrusion of my letter—-I was hoping to inquire as to whether or not you are the same Ted Serios of Thoughtography? I saw some of your photographs on display in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s exhibit on occult photography and was fascinated by them—so I endeavoured to read Mr. Eisenbud’s wonderful book on the subject of your Thoughtography experiments. Upon finishing the last page, I felt that I must try and find the man capable of producing such phenomenal and radical images with only the powers of his mind.

I should like to ask you very many questions on the topic and hope that you should be inclined to answer them. Before I begin my course, however, I would like to receive confirmation that you are indeed the same Ted Serios! Otherwise I could be sending very strange letters to an unsuspecting individual!

Many, many thanks in advance. I am,

Most Truly Yours,

Jarett Kobek

(Normal people should ignore this post.)

FBI Freedom of Information Act Files on Jack Parsons.

Part One  Part Two

The first and foremost of my sub rosa publishing efforts, a reissue of the 1926 Freak Masterpiece, The Oldest History of the World Discovered by Occult Science in Detroit Michigan by Benny Evangelist, is now available in handy PDF format. This is an update and total resetting of the 2001 print edition.

Evangelist, a Neapolitan immigrant born Benjamino Evangelista, came up hard knuckle days in the Hex County of York, PA. He moved to Detroit and became an Occult Scientist, a divine prophet and a faith healer. The Oldest History was produced in nightly trances over a period of some years and was intended as the first of several volumes. The other three were never published. Fate intervened.

On July 4, 1929, Evangelist was found in his St. Aubin Avenue home-office with his head hacked off; upstairs the bodies of his wife and four young children lay mutilated in their own coagulate gore. The crimes went unsolved.

The 2001 edition was one of those projects that a person undertakes for good reasons, and then, years later, the effort turns out to have changed them entirely. My typesetting and design on the book were revolting, and the great shame that I came to feel over the layout sparked a total and on-going obsession with Getting Things Right. Another unintended consequence was the slow descent into Archival Madness– which lead, amongst other crimes of love, to the haunting of countless libraries, turning kobek.com into a dumping ground for sub-sub-sub-sub-subcultures, putting up PDFs of incredibly obscure work, publishing old crime novels and the collected works of Theauraujohn Thomas Tany and, perhaps strangest of all, a co-grant from the American Academy of Religion for a project that never materialized.

The present PDF has been retypeset & includes contemporary news reporting on the murders along with photographs I took of Evangelist’s unmarked grave in December of 2001. There’s a few things that I might add later, but nothing of particular consequence.

This is, I suspect, the definitive edition.

Those who’ve perused the kobek.com mainsite know that I have a long and abiding interest in early 20th century esoteric African-American and Afro-Caribbean religion; this was, at one point, intended to be the subject of an anthology of original writings and primary documents, but landing a publisher proved problematic. In the next few months, hopefully, I’ll be migrating the lion’s share of research materials online, where they’ll be available for everyone with an interest.

Digging through old materials, I came across a really odd thing– an apparent letter from W.D. Fard, the founder of the religious culture that would develop into both the Nation of Islam and the Nation of Gods and Earths (the 5%), to his primary disciple, Elijah Mohammed.

The best book on the history of Fard and Mohammed in the early Detroit/Chicago days is The Messenger: The Rise and Fall of Elijah Muhammad by Karl Evanzz. Despite the author’s paranoid willingness to believe every imaginable thing about Fard (going so far as to suggest a family tie with the Theosophist Florence Farr), it does give a fairly accurate warts-and-all picture of Elijah Muhammad and W.D. Fard.

Following legal battles with both the Detroit (being the D in the 1930s, this inevitably involved human sacrifice) and Chicago police, Fard disappeared, never to be heard from again. Much, much later, after the advent of Malcolm X and the rise of the NOI to national prominence, the Hearst press, in conjunction with the FBI, outed Fard as Wallace Ford, a one-time California drug dealer and San Quentin convict. Apparently much of this serves as the basis for Jeffrey Eugenides’s Middlesex. (I haven’t read the book, I wouldn’t know.)

During the course of my 2002/3 era research, I was saving and archiving about every scrap of information that I could find on both the Moorish Science Temple of America and the early NOI, which operated under several names, but was perhaps best known as the Allah Temple of Islam. Somewhere I found the following text of an apparent letter from Fard to Mohammed (the spellings of NOI names in the early years were different) and scans of two of its four pages. As far as I know, this is the only letter or writing of any kind (other than the Lessons, of which the actual authorship is difficult to ascertain) that is directly attributable to Fard. Based on the look of the scans and the language, I presume that it’s authentic, but there’s so much misinformation and disinformation on the topic that a forgery isn’t implausible. Take it for what it is.

The text:

South West Part of N. America
Dec. 18 - 1933
4 A.M.

Mr. E. Mohammed

The Minister of Islam

Detroit, Michigan

North America

Dear Brother:

Here is a few line to let you Know that I have received both of your letters one return mail and the other regular, also one from Kallatt; I have been just getting over the terrible mistake and unofficial movements that you been taken not only one that you went to Birmingham but different time you have done minus things with out saying any thing before. I have numbers of records of charges against you; but I not brought them to enforce knowing you have taken these steps with good attentions. NOW MY DEAR BELOVED BROTHER, I will tell you again and again you have heard me from time to time that must not under take the labor of Islam unless you do know it 100%; This is why I am here to guide you to the right road, you must always tell me other you will not be successful. It is true that you can use the wisdom but remember you are the wise and is in the mouth of the lion in his cave or civilization without any right in regards to the rules and regulations for practicing your profession in this cave civilization in first place you have no business being here but since you are here long way from home and your kind and are in the cave of savage you must use your wisdom with care, other this savage will peice you in two; The law of nature will not allow a man to run the home of another man, so be clear on this and use your wisdom with care; I will tell you to get out on the street and on the top of all the high building, yell out you wisdom when the time come, the time is not ripe yet, how many time have I told you this? Are you wasting my valuable moments on the same things over and over; My movements time and hours are limited and are for the dead nation, so you be aware not to rob the dead and your ???

You keep this letter and present to me when I see you and I will read for you and explain to you, I know you going to ask 1000 un-valuable question but write them down and present to me when I see you get on the labor now and study your assignment. See that you master your history all of the form all of the problems. All every thing I left you is to be dug out and study; Problem 31 should clear you of the mystery that you all long for but your wisdom and keep all to your self. Now right along with your study you can go over to Chicago unexpected do not tell no one where you going or when you going excepting Kallatt Mohammed, give them a lecture and run over to MILWAUKEE at 8th and Center St. inquire about Mr. Joe Bey, many semellers around there and ask to have a special metting for you, give them a lecture or two and go back to Evanston and ask for Mr. Brown. Try to get aquaited there and start a station there; you may promise some Ice Maker a big bone and get in with him and start arising the dead, With your wisdom you easily do this, but have patient; just look at me. I have all the hard luck and confronting more hard luck cause by my own people; Don’t you see they are poison by the devil and so badly poison that they can’t see me walking among them every day and eating with them give them Knowledge to compare with any body in the world and they are still in doubt. How many you want me to pick out each time when you have meeting; be wise and take lots of graveness for you are dealing with babies There will be time when they all will know you then your happiness will be give, Now I go back to my subject; Then from Evanston you can round Chicago again unexpected then home, stop in these little towns on your way home and leave little wisdom everywhere get around and get aquainted caravan the territory between your home and Milwaukee start stations every where you can St. Louis and Kansas City will be your territory too but at present you can master the above said and later I will tell you when to there; about your labor working the problems, you are doing fine; you may consult one of the Teachers on beginning and forming your figures, the distance of Platoon is given in one of the problems Light travel 186,000 miles per second and the sun is 93,000,000 miles from the Earth Then if you divide the traveling speed in to the distance it shall give you the time to strike the Earth. Ha! Ha! this is good one for you, I shall have big time with you when I see you; but now do not be bashfull to study, for the wise always go to the bottom to secure real cure: Write to me every day and tell me all about your study, My best wishes to you and family all the labors and 17,000,000 I am going with you, from W.D. Fard

The images: