BROTHERHOOD OF ETERNAL LOVE TIMELINE

1965 (Fall):  John Griggs robbed a Hollywood producer of LSD. He used the psychedelic drug for the first time shortly thereafter.

1966 (October 11):  Brotherhood of Eternal Love registered as a church in California, with LSD used as a sacrament.

1966 (December):  Brotherhood would move to Laguna Beach after a fire burned down their church in Modjeska Canyon

1968 (December):  The United States Senate amended the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to ban LSD from use.

1968 (December 26):  Timothy Leary was arrested in Laguna Beach for marijuana possession.

1969 (August 26):  John Griggs died of what many believed to be an overdose; he was twenty-five years old.

1970 (September 12)  Leary broke out of prison, with the help of the group the Weather Underground. The Brotherhood financed most of the operation.

1970 (September 12):  President Richard Nixon signed the Controlled Substances Act into law.

1970 (December 25-28):  “The Christmas Happening” concert took place, where the Brotherhood dropped 25,000 tablets of LSD onto the crowd. It marked a more concerted effort by law enforcement to bring about the end of the Brotherhood and the counterculture.

1972 (August 5):  The Brotherhood of Eternal Love Task Force raided establishments all across the West Coast, arresting fifty-three Brotherhood members and confiscating millions of dollars-worth of contraband.

1973 (July 1):  The Drug Enforcement Administration was formed as the overarching drug control apparatus for the U.S. Government.

1973 (October 3):  A U.S. Senate subcommittee hearing, entitled “Hashish Smuggling and Passport Fraud: The Brotherhood of Eternal Love,” presented the extensive drug smuggling operation of the group. For many, this was considered the end of the Brotherhood’s group.

FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY

The Brotherhood of Eternal Love was founded on the idea that the psychedelic drug, LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide), was a sacrament to bring people closer to God. For many of the groups’ apostles, LSD helped them gain a greater awareness of the love and wisdom inherent in the universe. The Brotherhood’s spiritual ethos, which to outsiders was nothing more than drug-infused debauchery, was rooted in the belief that traditional religions had done little to help society. In particular, the 1950s and 1960s were marked by fear, paranoia, and chaos as numerous global conflicts raged (be it the Cold War or the war in Vietnam), as well as the countless other struggles for freedom in the U.S. and parts of the decolonizing world.  Born from the the cultural and social chaos of the counter-culture movement of the 1950s and 1960s in the U.S., the Brotherhood would eventually have a monumental impact on the use of psychedelic drugs as either a form of social and cultural resistance or revival.

The Brotherhood was largely a byproduct of the life of John Griggs. Griggs was a seemingly unlikely figure to be considered the founder of a religious group proselytizing the use of LSD as a conduit for the spread of love and spiritual awakening. Growing up in southern California, Griggs was described by many as a fighter. As leader of the gang, the Blue Jackets, Griggs spent many of his teenage years patrolling Anaheim, California looking to fight, and years later, as a member of the gang, the Street Sweepers, John spent numerous marijuana-fueled evenings racing cars and terrorizing passers-by (Brotherhood of Eternal Love1 n.d.) Street-fighting and illegal drag racing had their limitations however; Griggs wanted more. It was during the mid-60s that Griggs shifted focus, and endeavored to become one of the largest marijuana dealers in southern California. Griggs, along with Eddie Padilla, another founding member of the Brotherhood, began smuggling marijuana from Mexico and selling in Anaheim. (Schou 2010)

But in 1965, John Griggs would have an awakening of sorts. Griggs, who was using marijuana and heroin heavily, had heard of a drug more powerful than both drugs: LSD. John was intrigued, and he took it upon himself to find some. Rumors spread of a Hollywood film producer who kept a large stash of acid on the top of his refrigerator. One night, a cohort and Griggs showed up at the producer’s home, and robbed him at gunpoint, only stealing the LSD. (Schou 2010) The group drove into the California desert and proceeded to take a massive dose of LSD. Almost overnight, Griggs transformed from a rough-housing street fighter and drug-peddler into a missionary of psychedelic drugs.

Contrary to popular ideas about drug use at the time, that people only used drugs to party, or for “kicks,” Griggs fascination with LSD was rooted in his belief that it led him to God. As Brotherhood member Dion Wright  wrote:

Whatever John’s religious and spiritual roots may have been, they kicked into overdrive. He came back into this plain of objectivity with a single conviction: ‘Its God! Its all God!…The bedrock realization never left him (Maguire and Ritter 2014).

Griggs religious conviction only grew with time. Not long after discovering LSD, Griggs contracted Hepatitis from his previous heroin use, and was hospitalized. Griggs claimed to have gone through a near-death experience and that LSD had helped him feel “for the first time a powerful and humbling connection to a greater life force in the universe.” (Schou 2010) Once recovered, Griggs spread the word on the gospel of acid. His transformation centered largely on the belief that through the healing powers of LSD they could create a utopian society. Only a few months after Griggs first was revealed, to what Aldous Huxley called the “doors of perception,” would he make it his life’s work to recruit any and all people to this new higher calling. (Huxley 1954)

Eddie Padilla, like many others, was converted to the gospel of LSD. Padilla lived a rebellious life, often getting into trouble with law-enforcement, but through LSD, he found meaning and purpose. Padilla regularly accompanied Griggs to Tahquitz Canyon, near Palm Springs, to drop acid. It was there that they both increasingly believed that LSD could help people struggling with drug abuse or living a life of crime. With an evangelical zeal, Griggs and Padilla worked tirelessly to expose anyone they possibly could to the drug. They soon led communal excursions into the desert to take acid, often referring to the weekly trips as “church.” Rick Bevan, a surfer from Garden Grove, fit the profile of the type of person who could benefit from “church” with Padilla and Griggs. Bevan started taking acid with them following a stint at a work camp for delinquent juveniles. Bevan’s description of the experience is indicative of why many young people in southern California were drawn to Griggs and the sacrament of LSD, and saw these trips as something much greater than themselves. As Bevan explains:

The house had all these Buddhist statues in it, and he had incense burning and was meditating. I just wanted to get drugged out…I just broke through right away, it wasn’t like discovering something about yourself for the first time, it was like remembering something that you hadn’t remembered your whole lifetime, remembering something form a previous lifetime…We were experiencing a whole new viewpoint of life that was beautiful and loving and caring of others and the whole world, we felt connected to the source of all life. We were plugging into that source on a weekly basis (Schou 2010).

The groups started to meet on Wednesdays to help those who had reverted to conventional bad habits of drinking and using drugs. As the groups grew in size many of the members started to refer to themselves as Disciples. Griggs took it upon himself to spread the gospel further, and utilized the United States loose laws regarding tax-exempt status for churches to his advantage.

On October 26, 1966, Brotherhood member Glenn Lynd filed paperwork incorporating the Brotherhood of Eternal Love as a non-profit in the state of California. The group had become a church, with Griggs their prophet, and LSD their sacrament. The objective of the church was to “bring to the world the teachings of Jesus Christ, Buddha, Ramakrishna, Babaji, Paramahansa Yoganada, Mahatma Gandhi, and all the true prophets and apostles of God, and to spread the love and wisdom of these great teachers to all men”(Lee and Shlain 1992) The timing of the Brotherhood’s incorporation, however, would have a major impact on its future, as it would put the church and its holy sacrament, at odds with California law. Fifteen days before the group filed paperwork the California state legislature banned LSD. The confluence of legal and cultural issues surrounding LSD would make it increasingly difficult for the Brotherhood to execute their divine vision for the future of the world.

Shortly after their incorporation, the Brotherhood moved to Laguna Beach, south of Los Angeles. Laguna was ideal for the Brotherhood; the beautiful beaches were popular among surfers, artisans, and a growing bohemian hippie community. They set up a store front called Mystic Arts World and sold various products that catered to the growing psychedelic subculture. It seemed that the Brotherhood and its gospel of love and LSD was gaining traction, but to grow even further, they would need legitimation of a grander sort. Griggs began to recruit of one of the most infamous counter-cultural icons of the 1960s, Timothy Leary, the High Priest of LSD. [Image at right] Leary’s role as icon of the hippie movement was more mundane and “square” in its origins; he started his career as a Harvard University psychologist who, after a series of failed marriages began to second-guessing his career, eventually compelling him to experiment with hallucinogenic mushrooms. The trip fundamentally transformed Leary’s life, describing it as “the deepest religious experience of my life.” (Lee and Shlain 1992) Leary tried to incorporate his growing belief in the power of psychedelics with his academic work, to no avail; he would be fired from Harvard for giving LSD to undergraduates. However, Leary could not be constrained by the conventions of the ivory tower, as his books, The Psychedelic Experience (1964) and Turn On, Tune In, and Drop Out (1966), and his popular phrase, “turn on, tune in, and drop out,” catapulted him to global fame (Leary 1970). By 1966, Leary, continued his psychedelic experimentation at the estate of the heirs to the Mellon fortune in Millbrook, NY, and cemented his status as one of the most important figures of the 1960s counter-cultural movement (Greenfield 2006).

John Griggs revered Leary, and believed he would provide both guidance and legitimacy to the Brotherhood’s cause. In 1966, Griggs drove cross-country to Leary’s compound in Millbrook, NY. He was granted an audience with Leary, an event that played a major role in convincing Griggs to incorporate the Brotherhood of Eternal Love as a church. Griggs seemed to make an impression on Leary and invited him to move to the west coast. Leary,  who was facing mounting law enforcement pressure in New York, would eventually move to Laguna Beach in 1966. In Laguna, Leary and his family took root, hosting psychedelic sessions and lectures at the Mystic Arts World on Leary’s popular catchphrase: “turn on, tune in, and drop out” (Greenfield 2006). [Image at right] Leary settled into his role as the spiritual guru, bringing both academic clout and a “pop-star” like presence to the west coast, and it certainly gave the Brotherhood a sense of visibility that they didn’t have before (Schou 2010). Griggs and Leary’s relationship was mutually beneficial as they worked together to hatch a plan to find a property that would help them and others to “drop out” of society, but they did have disagreements as to where.  Griggs, and much of the Brotherhood, had always envisioned buying an island utopia somewhere in the South Pacific; Leary, on the other hand, wanted to stay on the mainland. Many members of the Brotherhood believed Leary wanted to stay on the mainland to be closer to media and publicity in order to take psychedelics mainstream. Eventually, the Brotherhood used their money to buy a ranch north of Palm Springs, and named it the Idyllwild ranch. The purchasing of the ranch foreshadowed the divergent views within the Brotherhood, as it became increasingly muddled by Leary’s fame, money from the drug trade, and the ambitions to transform society (Schou 2010).

For Griggs, and the Brotherhood, who lacked the international cachet of Leary, if not notoriety, the ambition to create a new global utopia, with LSD as its sacrament, required a much more ambitious and grander plan. By late 1966, and early 1967, the Brotherhood realized that Mystic Arts World, while providing consistent income, was not enough to purchase land and supplies for their growing membership. Furthermore, the Brotherhood needed money to finance their properties at Idyllwild and Laguna, as well as their growing membership. The answer to their financial issues lay in the illicit drug trade, something with which both Griggs and Eddie Padilla had experience. Soon Mystic Arts World became a depot for illicit drug sales; members of the Brotherhood began trafficking kilos of marijuana from Mexico, or buying LSD in San Francisco, to sell in Laguna. But the big money lay beyond California. Some, like Glenn Lynd, began trafficking marijuana to New York City, moving hundreds of kilos from the Arizona-Mexico border to Manhattan (Schou 2010).

Other Brotherhood members, like David Hall, began moving drugs on a global scale. He first started trafficking weed in planes from Mexico, realizing the real money lay across the ocean. Rick Bevan and Travis Ashbrook, both avid cannabis users, became infatuated with hashish from Asia; that infatuation  proved both profitable and perilous for the Brotherhood. In late 1967, Bevan and Ashbrook flew to Munich, Germany, purchased a car, and began the long journey east to Katmandhu, Nepal, which was later known as the “Hippie Trail.” But they never made it Nepal. To make big money in the drug business, one needed to find a cheap source for the drug, and that was Afghanistan. For many hippies and drug traffickers, Afghanistan was a drug paradise as Afghanistan had some of the best, and cheapest, hashish in the world (Bradford 2019). Bevan and Ashbrook’s first trip to Kandahar, Afghanistan yielded eighty-seven pounds of hash, and tens of thousands of dollars in profit. Not long after, Laguna Beach was flooded with some of the best hash in the world, and the Brotherhood with newfound wealth (Maguire and Ritter 2014). Given its high-quality product, as well as loose enforcement of anti-drug laws, Afghanistan would become the primary source of hashish for the Brotherhood throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s (Bradford 2019).

By the summer of 1967, the hippie movement had reached an apex in California, culminating in what was known as “the Summer of Love.” More than a hundred thousand people converged on the Bay area, especially the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco, embracing sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll. The growing music scene proved essential to the growing nexus of drug use and the counterculture. An example of this was in Timothy Scully, partner chemist with Nick Sand, who lived with the infamous Ken Kesey and Merry Pranksters. As detailed in Tom Wolfe’s, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Kesey gave LSD to hundreds, if not thousands, of people in what were known as the “acid-tests.” The musical group, the Grateful Dead, became an integral part of the “Palo Alto scene” where the Pranksters resided, often combining their “wall of sound” concerts with taking LSD (Wolfe 1968). In June 1967, at the Monterey International Pop Festival, artists like the Who, Jefferson Airplane, the Byrds, Jimi Hendrix, and the Grateful Dead played to thousands of revelers and fans fueled by LSD. Naturally, most of the artists partook as well. Most of the acid was supplied by the Brotherhood. The Summer of Love, and the myriad of live concerts that followed throughout the 1960s, provided a blueprint for the Brotherhood to expand their brand; members often dressed in orange jumpsuits would pass out Orange Sunshine at concerts by the fistful (Schou 2010).

Although the hash trade was lucrative for the Brotherhood, it did not have the sentimental value of LSD, as LSD was, in many ways, the life blood of the group. Thus, the Brotherhood remained ever-entangled in the world of LSD production and distribution; this would lead the group to Nick Sand. Like Leary and members of the Brotherhood, Sand was converted to the gospel of psychedelics after a trip of mescaline in 1961, and shortly after became one of the most notorious chemists in American history, producing much of the LSD that fueled the counterculture movement in California. (Brotherhood of Eternal Love2 n.d.) In 1968, Sand, who had been producing LSD from his farmhouse in Windsor, California, first met John Griggs and Timothy Leary. The meeting between the “outlaw chemist” and two of the most prominent figures of the psychedelic movement in California, would be transformative. Sand had produced an incredibly potent type of LSD, which after using Griggs, dubbed “Orange Sunshine.” At the time, it was believed to be the most powerful LSD ever made. Sand would end up making Sunshine exclusively for the Brotherhood and the impact was monumental; within a half-year he produced nearly 3,600,000 tablets of the drug (Brotherhood of Eternal Love2 n.d.). Unlike hashish, which was the drug that would finance their movement, Orange Sunshine was the drug that was seen as instrumental to the creation of a global utopia. In turn, many in the Brotherhood gave the drug away, rather than sell it, even though some believed they could have made a fortune in the LSD business (Schou 2010). But as the counter-culture movement grew, so too did knowledge of LSD and Orange Sunshine. It wasn’t long before the Brotherhood’s most famous drug sparked the moral panic that would bring it to its end.

On August 26, 1969, John Griggs died of an apparent overdose; he was twenty-five years old. In many ways, Griggs death marked a divergence in the various forces at play within the LSD-fueled counter-culture scene in California, but especially the Brotherhood. While the profits from drug sales at Mystic Arts World and concerts helped finance Brotherhood ambitions, the money was seductive. For some members of the Brotherhood, the drug business had become more important than the mission. Moreover, the growing role of the Brotherhood in both the LSD and hashish trade was increasingly apparent to law-enforcement. For Neil Purcell, an enterprising young patrol officer in Laguna Beach in 1968, the constant influx of hedonistic and LSD-fueled hippies was driven by Leary and the Brotherhood; they then became the primary target of police. Things would come to a head on December 26, 1968, when Purcell pulled Leary over and arrested him for marijuana possession; Leary was sentenced to one to ten years in prison. Although, the arrest of Leary was a victory for law enforcement, the war between the Brotherhood and police was only beginning. On the night of September 12, 1970 Leary broke out of prison, with the help of the anti-government group the Weather Underground. The Brotherhood played a vital role in the prison break: they had launched a “Free Timothy Leary” fundraising campaign, and helped finance his escape to Canada and eventually to Algeria (Schou 2010).

During the late 1960s and early 1970s, as the Brotherhood continued to supply most of the LSD and hashish to California, and aided in the high-profile escape of Leary, police pressure increased dramatically. Many Brotherhood members, including Griggs, and the Mystic Arts World, were under constant police surveillance (Schou 2010). The threat posed by police prompted many in the Brotherhood to leave Laguna; Griggs fled to the Idyllwild ranch in 1969 (where he would later die), while others fled to Hawaii. Travis Ashbrook, along with Jack Harrington and Gordon Sexton, fled to Maui to escape the heat of law enforcement. For Ashbrook, the move to Maui presented lucrative opportunities to expand the drug business, not necessarily the opportunity to build the island utopia. Hawaii had transformed into a haven for hippies, surfers, and various vagabonds, all of whom had an insatiable appetite for marijuana. To capitalize on this large market, Ashbrook purchased a seventy-foot yacht, the Aafje, to smuggle hash from Asia and Mexico into Maui. [Image at right] From 1969-1972, Maui was indeed profitable, as many members of the Brotherhood raked in hundreds of thousands, if not millions, in illicit drug profits (Maguire and Ritter 2014).

The growing impact of drug money led to growing distrust among members of the counterculture movement, a distrust that would be amplified by the escalating war on the illicit drug trade. When Richard Nixon was elected president in 1969 he called the problem of illicit drugs “public enemy number one.” Nixon, as well as many members of Congress, believed that the counterculture and its embrace of psychedelic drugs was a significant threat to American society. The government needed a dramatic new policy approach to deal with the problem. The first shoe to drop took place on October 24, 1968; the United States Senate amended the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to ban LSD from use. Although, the LSD Act marked a new approach to the problem of the counterculture and illicit drug use, it was limited in scope. A complete transformation of how the government regulated drugs would be required. This would come in 1970 when Congress passed the Controlled Substances Act (CSA). The CSA fundamentally transformed the legal framework for regulating and prohibiting all drugs. Drugs were placed within five schedules, with schedule one drugs deemed the most harmful and therefore entirely prohibited. The law  granted the government, and in turn law enforcement agencies, sweeping powers to regulate legal and, in this case, illegal commerce.  By the time the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) was created in 1973 as the umbrella organization for all drug regulation, the “war on drugs” was fully underway (Frydl 2013). The counterculture, especially the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, would soon be squarely in the crosshairs of the emboldened American government.

Law enforcement agencies, frustrated by their inability to stop the Brotherhood’s role in the illicit drug trade, created the Brotherhood of Eternal Love Task Force, a collaboration between local, state, and federal law enforcement. After years of playing cat-and-mouse with Brotherhood members, the task force scored a major victory on August 5, 1972 when police raided houses in Hawaii, Oregon, northern California, and Laguna Beach. Fifty-three people were arrested that day, and the police confiscated nearly two and one half tons of hash, thirty gallons of hash oil, and 1,500,000 tablets of Orange Sunshine (Schou 2010). The operation continued through the following year. Twenty-six members of the Brotherhood, or those affiliated with its smuggling operation, were targeted by police. [Image at right] Possibly the biggest catch, Timothy Leary, was captured in Kabul, Afghanistan, and flown back to Los Angeles. He was charged with escaping prison, along with various other drug charges. The police raid, and the revelations of the depths of the drug trafficking operations, no doubt captured the media’s attention, with Rolling Stone magazine dubbing the group “the Hippie Mafia.” By October 3, 1973, the U.S. government all but celebrated its victory over the Brotherhood. That day, a subcommittee hearing, entitled “Hashish Smuggling and Passport Fraud: The Brotherhood of Eternal Love,” highlighted the extensive drug smuggling operation of the group. DEA supervisor Job Sinclair told Congress:

To date, the Brotherhood investigation has resulted in the arrest of over 100 individuals, including Dr. Timothy Leary who is currently serving 15 years in Folsom Prison. Four LSD laboratories have been seized, along with over 1 million ‘Orange Sunshine’ LSD tablets, and LSD powder in excess of 3,500 grams, capable of producing over 14 million dosage units of the drug…A total of six hashish oil laboratories were seized, along with over 30 gallons of hashish oil and approximately 6,000 pounds of solid hashish” (Schou 2010).

The victory lap was considered the first major victory in the governments “war on drugs.” Yet, for many in the Brotherhood, the victory was pyrrhic. Brotherhood member, Robert Ackerly, who served a brief stint in prison, and was released in the early 1970s, went on to become a major cocaine dealer. In fact, many in the Brotherhood, received relatively light sentences considering the quantities of drugs sold.  Some believed that the U.S. government was “thankful” for them, as it gave the government an enemy to justify the passing of the Controlled Substances Act and to create the DEA.

While the government’s war against the Brotherhood certainly marked the end of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, many of the Disciples found its downfall to be more a consequence of the death of Griggs, or the pursuit of fame and money, than of the police. For example, when Griggs died in August 1969, numerous disciples abandoned the cause. To Robert Ackerly, “John was the Brotherhood,” and his death meant the loss of the movement’s prophet (Schou 2010). Moreover, the ambition to create a global utopia, with LSD as a sacrament, was ultimately lost to the allure of wealth, and fame. These enveloped many members of the Brotherhood and its association with various counterculture figures, most notably Timothy Leary. When Griggs opted to buy the Idyllwild ranch, rather than buy an island utopia, many believed that marked a turning point for the group, for the ranch and Leary would become a magnet for publicity and police scrutiny. Indeed, Leary’s public advocacy for psychedelic drug use, as well as his thirst for fame and fortune, garnered him a public notoriety and scrutiny from police that harkened back to the days of Lucky Luciano (Valentine 2004). Fittingly, one of the last members of the Brotherhood to evade police, Brenice Lee Smith, provides the most clarity about the downfall of the group. Smith, who fled to Nepal in 1981, married a Nepalese girl, and became a Buddhist monk. Heremarked four decades later (after serving a brief stint in jail in the U.S. for his role in the Brotherhood) that it was greed and paranoia that led to the Brotherhood’s demise. The Brotherhood of Eternal Love “wanted people to be happy and free and not like what society conditioned you to want to be….we loved everyone and wanted everyone to find love and happiness. We wanted to change the world in five years, but in five years, it changed us. It was an illusion” (Schou 2010). That illusion, just like an acid trip, had to end.

DOCTRINES/BELIEFS

When Aldous Huxley first used the psychedelic mescaline, he described it as being

shaken out of the ruts of ordinary perception, to be shown for a few timeless hours the outer and the inner world, not as they appear to an animal obsessed with survival or to a human being obsessed with words and notions, but as they are apprehended, directly and unconditionally, by Mind at Large—this is an experience of inestimable value to everyone (Huxley 1954)

What Huxley described in Doors of Perception was an experience in which people were cast off from the ordinary and mundane features of their life, and thrust into a world whereby the individual was part of something greater, if not extraordinary.

For John Griggs, the de facto leader of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, the use of LSD was instrumental in his spiritual awakening. Prior to his use of LSD, Griggs lived a life of crime; he used heroin, picked fights, and robbed people at gunpoint. But after a near-death hospitalization for Hepatitis C, and subsequent trip on LSD, he was fundamentally transformed. As friend of Griggs, Chuck Mundell described, “Something happened to John in that hospital…he asked me to come to the hospital and take Christ in my heart with him.” For Griggs, LSD was the living incarnation of God, and it had the power to not only heal an individual but also to heal society. It was through this revelation that Griggs became an evangelist for LSD, believing that it could help create a global utopian society, built on love and happiness, and without war, pain, and trauma (Schou 2010).

When the Brotherhood of Eternal Love was incorporated as a church in 1966, it provided the sense of legitimacy that would help Griggs spread the gospel of LSD. Contrary to his friend and colleague, Timothy Leary, who coined the phrase, “turn on, tune in, and drop out,” at least for Griggs, the various illicit enterprises the Brotherhood engaged in, be it marijuana and hashish trafficking, or LSD manufacture and distribution, were done with the intent to finance and spread the gospel of LSD.

RITUALS/PRACTICES

Central to Brotherhood of Eternal Love rituals was the use of LSD. According to Glenn Lynd, who filed the incorporation of the Brotherhood as church, the Brotherhood, and LSD, would help

bring to the world the teachings of Jesus Christ, Buddha, Ramakrishna, Babaji, Paramahansa Yoganada, Mahatma Gandhi, and all the true prophets and apostles of God, and to spread the love and wisdom of these great teachers to all men (Lee and Shlain 1992).

When people arrived the Mystic Arts World, or the Idyllwild ranch, LSD trips were conducted in a way to amplify the spiritual aspects of the LSD journey. Incense was often burned, and houses or teepees were decorated ornately with statues of famous religious figures. The aim was to use LSD with the intent of spiritual growth, to meditate rather than to party.

ORGANIZATION/LEADERSHIP

Although the Brotherhood was non-hierarchical in nature, like many other counterculture groups of the 1960s, they were still centered around their inspirational leader, John Griggs. [Image at right] Griggs’ life was dramatically transformed by the use of LSD; it inspired him to abandon a life of crime to pursue a more spiritual life. Griggs became an evangelist for LSD; he believed it would bring people to closer to God, and that it could ultimately help create a global utopia. Griggs would try to recruit everyone possible to the cause.

Those that would follow Griggs (Eddie Padilla, Robert Ackerly, Chuck Mundell, Dion Wright, Rick Bevan and others) all shared similar stories of transformation to Griggs. Many had lived lives using hard-drugs, committing crime, or lacked general purpose. It was Griggs who showed them the light. It was his zeal for LSD as a conduit for spiritual enlightenment that seemed to convince many others to follow. As more people were drawn to Griggs, and moved to Laguna beach, or the Idyllwild ranch, to participate in the daily or weekly LSD rituals, they began to refer to themselves as the Disciples. The Disciples conversion to the Brotherhood was often compelled by their own revelatory experiences with LSD. Many claimed it healed them of trauma, others of their addiction, and even one claiming it cured a stutter (Schou 2010).

When it came to the Brotherhood’s illicit drug businesses, Griggs was the leader in terms of scheme and purpose; however, they remained relatively non-hierarchical in practice. For example, Griggs was instrumental in putting the sprawling global hash-smuggling operation into motion. However, Griggs was rarely involved in the drug business directly. Rather, it was the Disciples who would be instrumental in conducting the drug business. In fact, for law enforcement part of the challenge of prosecuting the Brotherhood for their illegal drug trafficking operation was that there was no clear leader of the drug business. The lack of clear leader meant that they could never pinpoint precisely the figurehead of the scheme; this partially explains the relatively short sentences served by many of the Brotherhood (Maguire and Ritter 2014).

ISSUES/CHALLENGES

By the late 1960s, LSD had emerged as “every mother’s worst nightmare” (Valentine 2004) For conservative Americans, LSD use was indicative of the growing hedonism and declining moral standards of the country. This association with the counterculture movement eventually compelled state and federal authorities to pass laws to criminalize the use of LSD. But it was the Brotherhood’s various other illicit activities that contributed to their demise.

John Griggs grandiose plans, such as buying an island to create an LSD-fueled utopian society, required major financing; the answer lay in marijuana. By the late 1960s, marijuana was ubiquitous with counterculture and social rebellion. As a result, the demand for marijuana exploded (Dufton 2017). From 1966 to 1972, members of the Brotherhood trafficked ever-increasing quantities of marijuana and hashish from Afghanistan and Mexico to feed the insatiable American appetite. The funds from the marijuana and hashish business helped finance the production and distribution of LSD. Over time, as marijuana and hashish flooded southern California, along with copious amounts of LSD, law enforcement took notice. Laguna Beach police officer Neil Purcell, spent years trying to implicate both Griggs and Leary in a conspiracy to traffic illicit drugs, and more often than not, instead busted hippies and surfers.  The leader of the nefarious drug trade flooding California’s shores remained elusive (Schou 2010).

On Christmas day, 1970 things would change. The “Christmas Happening” as it was called, was a three-day festival in Laguna Canyon, which was supposed to feature some of the biggest musical acts in the world, such as Bob Dylan and George Harrison. Although, none of the big musical acts showed up, except for Jimi Hendrix drummer Buddy Miles, the festival carried on. During one of the acts, a member of the Brotherhood flew a plane over the crowd, and police, and dropped 25,000 tablets of LSD (Ramm 2017). The audacious act embodied the chaos of the event: food ran out, people had no access to sanitation, and three people even gave birth. Ultimately, the “Christmas Happening” pushed local authorities to the limit. This marked the beginning of a concerted effort on the part of Laguna Beach, California and federal officials to root out the problem that was the Brotherhood. In particular, Purcell and fellow officer Bob Romaine, were able to convince officials of the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (the predecessor to the DEA) that the Brotherhood was more than just innocuous hippies growing vegetables in their commune, but rather the largest drug trafficking organization in the United States. The coordinated effort to bring down the Brotherhood, called Operation BEL, would eventually bring the group to its end in August 1972 following nearly two years of consistent police surveillance (Schou 2010).

Although, the Brotherhood’s role in the growth of the illicit drug trade in California played a major role in its downfall, so too did its affiliation with one of the most infamous figures of the period, Timothy Leary.  Leary believed he was the modern messiah, “the wisest man in the 20^th Century” (Ramm 2017). Initially, Leary’s presence among the Brotherhood was welcomed. As a college professor, and from an older generation, he legitimized the actions of the Brotherhood by reinforcing the idea that what they were doing (while appearing outlandish to mainstream conservative American society) was indeed the right thing to do (Schou 2010). But Leary was also one of the most visible figures of the counterculture movement, appearing on television shows, testifying in front of Congress, and meeting rockstars. As he became increasingly entrenched in the Laguna scene, with the Brotherhood at his side, their popularity began to corrupt members of the group. While, many Brotherhood members joined the group to live a simple, and pure spiritual life, they soon found that with their newfound fame, and wealth, they became local celebrities. As Travis Ashbrook stated: “if you were part of the Brotherhood? My god, you might as well be Mick Jagger” (Schou 2010). When combined with their outsized role in the illicit drug trade, it is not all too surprising that the fame, fortune, as well as constant infidelity proved to disenchant many members of the group who truly believed in the spiritual mission of the Brotherhood. In essence, over time money proved to be a more powerful force than God, a story that seems all too familiar.

IMAGES

Image #1: Timothy Leary.
Image #2: Mystic Arts World store front @1967.
Image #3: The seventy-foot yacht, the Aafje, used to smuggle hash from Asia and Mexico into Maui.
Image #4: Wanted poster of Brotherhood members and affiliates in the drug smuggling operations.
Image #5: John Griggs with his children.

REFERENCES

Bradford, James. 2019. Poppies, Politics, and Power: Afghanistan and the Global History of Drugs and Diplomacy in the 20^th Century. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Brotherhood of Eternal Love1. n.d. “Events.” Accessed from https://belhistory.weebly.com/events.html on 26 January 2024.

Brotherhood of Eternal Love2. n.d. “History.” Accessed from https://belhistory.weebly.com/bel-files.html on 26 January 2024.

Dufton, Emily. 2017. Grass Roots: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Marijuana in America. New York, NY; Basic Books.

Frydl, Kathleen. 2013. The Drug Wars in America 1940-1973. Cambridge, UK; Camrbidge University Press.

Greenfield, Robert. 2006. Timothy Leary: A Biography. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin.

Huxley, Aldous. 1954. The Doors of Perception. London, UK: Harper & Row.

Leary, Timothy. 1970. The Politics of Ecstasy. London, UK: Granada.

Lee, Martin A. and Bruce Shlain. 1992. Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD: the CIA, the Sixties, and Beyond. New York, NY: Grove Point.

Maguire, Peter and Mike Ritter. 2014. Thai Stick: Surfers, Scammer, and the Untold Story of the Marijuana Trade. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.

Ramm, Benjamin. 2017. “The LSD Cult That Transformed America.” BBC, January 12. Accessed from https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20170112-the-lsd-cult-that-terrified-america on 25 January 2024.

Schou, Nicholas. 2010. Orange Sunshine: The Brotherhood of Eternal Love and Its Quest to Spread Peace, Love, and Acid to the World. New York, NY: Thomas Dunne Books.

Valentine, Douglas. 2004. The Strength of the Wolf: The Secret History of the America’s War on Drugs. London, UK: Verso.

Wolfe, Thomas. 1968. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. New York, NY: Farrar Straus Giroud.

Publication Date:
30 January 2024

Bárbara Mujica is a professor emerita at Georgetown University who specializes in early modern Spain. She is author of numerous books and hundreds of articles on Spanish theater, mysticism, the counterreformation, and women’s writing. In 2022, her study Women Religious and Epistolary Exchange in the Carmelite Reform won the GEMELA Prize for best book of the year on early modern Hispanic women.

Bárbara Mujica is also a novelist. Her latest novel, Miss del Río, was named one of the best books of 2022 by Library Journal and one of the five best recent historical novels by The Washington Post. It won second place in the ScreenCraft Cinematic Novel competition out of thousands of submissions. It was a Target Book Club Book of the Month, and the audio version was an Apple Audio “Must Listen.” Her other novels include Frida, an international bestseller that appeared in 18 languages, Sister Teresa, adapted for the stage at The Actors Studio in Los Angeles, and I Am Venus, a winner of the Maryland Writers’ Association National Fiction Competition.

SAINT TERESA OF ÁVILA TIMELINE

1515 (March 28):  Teresa Sánchez Cepeda y Ahumada was born to Alonso de Cepeda and his second wife, Beatriz de Ahumada.

1528 or 1529:  Teresa’s mother died.

1531:  Teresa’s father placed her as a boarder in the Augustinian convent, Our Lady of Grace.

1535:  Teresa entered the Carmelite convent of the Incarnation in Ávila.

1536 (November 2):  Teresa became a novice at Incarnation convent.

1537 (November 3):  Teresa professed (took her final vows) at Incarnation. She left the convent due to a serious illness, during which time she fell into a coma for four days. On her way to Castellanos de la Cañada for treatment, she read Francisco de Osuna’s Third Spiritual Alphabet, her introduction to mental prayer.

1543:  Teresa’s father died.

1553:  Teresa experienced what was called her “reconversion” before an image of the crucified Christ (known as ecce homo).

1554:  Teresa met Francisco Borgia, one of the most influential men in Spain, who became a Jesuit priest. Although many clerics doubted the authenticity of Teresa’s spiritual experiences, Borges believed they were valid

1556–1557:  Teresa had several intense mystical experiences. She began confessing with Jesuits. She also had a famous vision known as the “transverberation.”

1558:  Teresa met Pedro de Alcántara, a famous Franciscan friar and mystic.

1560:  Teresa and some of her close friends began to entertain the possibility of founding a Carmelite convent that would adhere to the unmitigated (original) rule of the order.

1562 (August 24):  Teresa founded the first Discalced Carmelite convent, Saint Joseph, in Ávila, Spain, which followed the unmitigated rule. (Although “discalced” literally means barefoot, the Sisters wore sandals.) Teresa finished the first draft of The Book of Her Life.  

1563:  Teresa received verbal permission to reside in the Saint Joseph of Ávila convent.

1564:  Teresa completed the revised version of The Book of Her Life.

1567:  The Carmelite general, Giovanni Battista Rossi, known as Juan Bautista Rubeo in Spain, gave Teresa patents (official permission) to found male and female monasteries. On August 15, a convent was founded in Medina del Campo. (Note that the words “monastery” and “convent” can refer to either male or female religious houses. These words are used interchangeably.)

1567:  Teresa met the Spanish mystic John of the Cross.

1568:  Teresa wrote the Constitutions of the order. On April 11, she founded a convent in Malagón, and on August 15, another in Valladolid.

1568 (November 28):  John of the Cross and Antonio de Heredia founded the first Discalced Carmelite friary in Duruelo.

1569:  Several more monasteries were founded: on May 14, in Toledo; on June 28, a female convent and on July 13, a male convent in Pastrana.

1570 (September 29):  A female convent was founded in Salamanca.

1571 (January 25):  A female convent was founded in Alba de Tormes. Teresa became prioress of the Medina del Campo convent, then was forced to become prioress of Incarnation. Teresa began to compose Concepts of the Love of God.

1573: Teresa finalized the text of Way of Perfection and began The Book of Foundations.

1574 (March 19): A female convent was founded in Segovia.

1575 (February 24):  A female convent was founded in Beas. Teresa met Jerónimo Gracián, the Carmelite visitator. The struggle between Calced and Discalced Carmelites began.

1575 (May 29):  A female convent was founded in Seville. At the General Chapter of the order at Piacenza, Italy, delegates decided that Teresa must retire to one convent and refrain from making further foundations (that is, establishing any more convents).

1576: Teresa left for the Carmelite convent in Toledo, where she remained until the following year. She wrote The Way of Visiting Convents.  

1577:  Teresa wrote The Interior Castle. She returned to Ávila at the end of July.

1577 (December 3–4):  Calced Carmelites captured and imprisoned John of the Cross. On December 24, Teresa fell and broke her arm.

1578: Rubeo died. The papal Nuncio Felipe Sega put the Discalced Carmelites under the authority of the Calced.

1579: Sega withdrew the Discalced Carmelites from the control of the Calced.

1580 (February 2): A female convent was founded in Villanueva de la Jara. Teresa fell seriously ill. The female convent in Palencia was founded on December 29.

1581:  The Calced and Discalced Carmelites became two separate provinces. The Discalced Constitutions were confirmed. On June 14, a female Discalced Carmelite convent was founded in Soria. Teresa was elected prioress of Saint Joseph convent in Ávila. The Constitutions were printed.

1582 (April 19):  A female Discalced Carmelite convent was founded in Burgos. Ana de Jesús and John of the Cross made a foundation in Granada.

1582 (October 4 or 15):  Teresa died in Alba de Tormes.

1622 (March 16):  Pope Gregory XX canonized Saint Teresa of Ávila.

1970 (September 27):  Pope Paul VI named Saint Teresa the first female Doctor of the Church.

BIOGRAPHY

Traditional biographies describe Saint Teresa of Ávila (known as Teresa de Jesús in the Spanish-speaking world) as an Old Christian (a Christian with no Jewish or Muslim ancestors) of patrician ancestry. For example, William Walsh claims that her father, Alonso Sánchez de Cepeda, was a nobleman and that “Teresa’s family, on both sides, boasted of limpieza de sangre, blood “clean” from any Moorish or Jewish taint” (Walsh 1943:4, 5). However, Teófanes Egido has produced ample documentation that Teresa’s paternal grandfather, Juan Sánchez, was a converso (convert from Judaism). Sánchez adopted the Catholic faith a decade before King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella (jointly ruling 1479–1516) issued the Alhambra Decree in 1492 ordering Jews in Spain either to leave or convert to Catholicism. However, in 1485, Sánchez was charged with backsliding into Jewish practices and avoided being burned at the stake by paying a hefty sum of money (Egido 1986:26). He then left his native Toledo for Ávila, where ambitious merchants like himself were making new lives for themselves (Bilinkoff 1989:53).

Successful conversos often sought to procure a position in society through a pleito de hidalguía, a petition for recognition as a gentleman. Sánchez won a pleito de hidalguía in 1500 and then secured an ejecutoria (patent of nobility), a legal document issued in the name of the king affirming a person’s Old Christian lineage and noble status. The patent was obviously fraudulent in Juan’s case. It must have offered Juan’s family insufficient protection because four of his sons, including Teresa’s father Alonso, began another pleito de hidalguía in 1519, when Teresa was four years old. Scholars have debated whether Teresa was aware of her Jewish origins. It was common for conversos to hide their ancestry from their children. Cathleen Medwick writes that if Teresa knew, it was “probably not through her father, a man invested in obliterating the past” (Medwick 1999:24). However, Teresa probably did know the truth, as she mentions the patents of nobility in a letter to her brother Lorenzo written on December 23, 1561 (Teresa 2001:36).

In 1505, Alonso de Cepeda married Catalina del Peso, who bore him two children and then died in 1507. Teresa Sánchez de Cepeda y Ahumada was the third child and eldest daughter of Alonso and his second wife, Beatriz de Ahumada. Before Teresa was born, [Image at right] Beatriz had had two sons and then, after Teresa’s birth, five more sons and another daughter, Juana. It was the custom in large families for some children to take their father’s surname and others to take their mother’s. Teresa, who was named after her maternal grandmother, took her mother’s. After Beatriz died shortly after Juana’s birth in 1528, Teresa took the Virgin to be her mother, she writes in The Book of Her Life.

Nevertheless, by her own description, she was not a particularly devout child. She loved reading hagiographies, but many of these were adventure stories similar to novels of chivalry. Biographers have made much of an incident she describes in The Book of Her Life in which she and her brother Rodrigo decided to run away to Moorish lands to be martyred (Teresa 1987:55), but this seems to have been more of a lark than an act of true devotion. Teresa describes herself in Life as a rather frivolous adolescent, occupied with “conversations and vanities” (Teresa 1987:58). Her account of her early years reveals a shrewd, strong-willed young woman who knew how to get her own way.

A scandal involving one of Teresa’s male cousins prompted Don Alonso to place his daughter in the Augustinian convent of Our Lady of Grace as a boarder in 1531. At the time, Teresa had no intention of becoming a nun. However, under the guidance of Mother María Briceño, she changed her mind. She left the convent in 1532 due to illness, but then, despite her father’s objections, entered the Carmelite Convent of the Incarnation, in Ávila, in 1535. The Carmelite sisters followed what was called the mitigated rule: that is, they did not adhere to the strict policies dictated by the original friars of the order. For example, under the mitigated rule, nuns were allowed to leave the convent, while under the unmitigated rule, they were strictly cloistered. Although Incarnation was not lax by prevailing standards, it was more relaxed than Our Lady of Grace.

Shortly after profession of her vows on November 3, 1537, Teresa once again fell ill. Her father sent her to a famous healer in the nearby town of Becedas to be cured. On route, she visited her Uncle Pedro, who lent her his copy of The Third Spiritual Alphabet, by the Franciscan friar Francisco de Osuna (1497–1541). This book introduced her to recollection (turning inward to seek God in one’s own soul) and mental prayer (conversing with God without an established text). In Life, Teresa writes:

I did not know how to proceed in prayer or how to be recollected. And so I was
very happy with this book and resolved to follow that path with all my strength. . . . I
began to take time out for solitude, to confess frequently, and to follow that path,
taking the book for my master (Teresa 1987:66–67).

Although recollection had been practiced by Observant Franciscans (those who followed the unmitigated rule) since around 1470, after the Protestant Reformation, the Catholic Church viewed spiritual illumination unmediated by clergy, rite, or a sanctioned script as unorthodox. Teresa’s emphasis on interiority eventually caused her countless difficulties.

In 1537, when the healer in Becedas failed to cure Teresa, Don Alonso took her back to Ávila, where she fell into a coma that lasted four days. Eventually she returned to the Convent of the Incarnation, but instead of immersing herself in prayer, she was once again drawn into the social whirl of the community. Teresa was by nature an outgoing person and enjoyed the company of the Sisters. However, she began to feel that Christ was judging her harshly. She plunged into a period of spiritual struggle and suffered long bouts of aridity, or dryness, during which she could not pray.\

Teresa’s father died in 1545, leaving Teresa and her brother-in-law Martín de Guzmán as coexecutors of his will. A series of lawsuits against the estate followed, which provided Teresa with excellent negotiating experience for the future. In 1553, when Teresa’s younger sister Juana married Juan de Ovalle, it was Teresa who arranged the marriage contract.

During these years, Teresa’s spiritual experiences intensified. [Image at right] In 1553, she had a powerful vision before an ecce homo (image of the crucified Christ), which has come to be known as her “reconversion.” Distressed at the thought that her behavior might be offensive to Jesus, who had sacrificed so much for humanity, she threw herself down and began to sob. The incident marked a spiritual awakening, after which Teresa was able to practice recollection and mental prayer. Several more mystical experiences followed. However, not all of her confessors took her seriously: “They were all against me; some, it seemed, made fun of me when I spoke of the matter, as though I were inventing it; others said my experience was clearly from the devil” (Teresa 1987:220). Her critics were so severe that Teresa herself began to fear that her visions and locutions came from the devil.

Guiomar de Ulloa, a rich widow with two daughters at Incarnation, introduced Teresa into her circle of friends, which included the spiritual avant-garde of  Ávila (people who were knowledgeable about sophisticated prayer practices). Doña Guiomar was also friendly with the recently-formed Society of Jesus(the Jesuits) who founded a school in Ávila in 1554. At her urging, Teresa began to confess with a young Jesuit priest, Diego de Cetina (1531–1568), who believed her reports of spiritual experiences. When another Jesuit, Francisco de Borja (1510–1527), came to town, he too reassured her that her experiences came from God. Borja was a powerful and influential man whose favor enabled Teresa to gain credibility among the Jesuits. Shortly afterward, she began to confess with yet another Jesuit, Juan de Prádanos (1529–1597), under whose guidance Teresa made considerable spiritual progress. She also met Pedro de Alcántara (1499–1562), the renowned mystic, who encouraged her as well.

In the months that followed, Teresa’s mystical experiences became more intense and frequent. The most famous of her visions is called the “Transverberation,” in which an angel pierced her heart with a flaming dart, an image immortalized by Italian sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680) in his statue Saint Teresa in Ecstasy and described by Teresa herself in Life: [Image at right]

I saw in his hands a large golden dart and at the end of the iron tip there appeared to be a little fire. It seemed to me that this angel plunged the dart several times into my heart and that it reached deep within me. When he drew it out, I thought he was carrying off with him the deepest part of me; and he left me all on fire with great love of God. The pain was so great that it made me moan, and the sweetness this greatest pain caused me was so superabundant that there is no desire capable of taking it away (Teresa 1987:252).

Teresa’s fame as a mystic now began to spread, but while many admired her spiritual sensitivity, others believed her to be a fraud.

The Catholic Church maintained a skeptical attitude toward mystics, who claimed to have personal experiences of God without the mediation of an ecclesiastical authority. The Church found the teachings of certain mystics too close to Protestantism or alumbradismo (Illuminism), which taught that the individual could be directly illuminated by God without external intervention. Especially problematic was the practice of Illuminist sects of holding meetings in private homes without the guidance of a priest and sometimes under the leadership of a woman. Many clerics viewed women as daughters of Eve (sinful and deceitful) which made them distrustful of female mystics. Hysteria was associated with women, and ecstasies in women were often viewed as signs of mental instability. Any nun claiming to have mystical experiences was investigated, and if she was deemed to be a fraud or, worse yet, possessed by the devil, her whole convent came under scrutiny.

Theologian Gillian Ahlgren argues that the Catholic Church’s position undermined women’s religious authority, which depended on revelation from God; as confidence in revelation diminished, “so inevitably did the authority of women’s voices” (Ahlgren 1996:21). As a female mystic, Teresa was in a vulnerable position made even more dangerous, as literary scholar Carole Slade points out, by her converso background, of which some people were surely aware despite her father’s and uncles’ pleitos de hidalguía (1995:20). Because Teresa herself distrusted her mystical experiences, she consulted her acquaintance García de Toledo (1514–1577), the subprior at the Royal Monastery of Saint Thomas. Through him, she met the respected Dominican theologian Pedro Ibáñez (c. 1589–1633), who declared her experiences legitimate. Still, García was concerned that Teresa would be investigated by the Inquisition. He ordered her to write a spiritual memoir to demonstrate the orthodoxy of her prayer practices.

Teresa felt uncomfortable at the Incarnation convent both because her reputation as a mystic was causing resentment among some of the Sisters and because no time was set aside for mental prayer. Along with her relative María de Ocampo and a close-knit group of friends, she decided to leave Incarnation, where she had lived nearly twenty-five years, and found a new convent that would adhere to the primitive rule. Here, nuns would live in poverty and silence, remain cloistered, forgo the use of titles such as Doña, and devote themselves to prayer. Dowries would not be required. Given her background as a converso, Teresa would not do background checks to determine lineage, a significant act of resistance against prevailing social norms (Slade 2001:91). The nuns would call themselves Discalced (Barefoot) Carmelites to highlight their commitment to austerity, although they did wear sandals. (Note that what distinguished the Discalced from the Calced [Shod] Carmelites was not footwear, but adherence to the original rule of the order.)

Opposition to Teresa’s project was fierce and immediate. To begin with, the reform was producing conflict in the Carmelite order. The Incarnation nuns were angry that Teresa had found their convent lacking. The Carmelite authorities were furious that Doña Guiomar had applied directly to Rome on Teresa’s behalf for authorization to found a new convent in the primitive rule under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Ávila, rather than under the Carmelite provincial, Ángel de Salazar (c. 1518–c. 1596). Furthermore, the city council was enraged that she had founded the community in poverty rather than under the sponsorship of a rich patron, as was the custom, arguing that the new convent would be expensive for the town to maintain, even though it was originally inhabited by only four Sisters.

Salazar was anxious to remove Teresa from Ávila. When the husband of Duchess Luisa de la Cerda died, Salazar sent Teresa to Toledo to comfort the grieving widow. However, rather than hinder Teresa’s plans, Salazar advanced them. In Toledo, Teresa made important friends who would help her with future foundations, that is, new communities of Discalced Carmelites. She also had time to compose her spiritual memoir—The Book of Her Life—and met María de San José (1548–1603), who would become one of her closest collaborators.

On August 24, 1562, the new convent, Saint Joseph of Ávila, opened its doors. Teresa returned to Incarnation, where she remained until she was given permission to occupy the Saint Joseph of Ávila convent the following year. In 1566, she wrote The Way of Perfection, a guide to prayer for the Sisters of the Saint Joseph convent. In the spring of 1567, the prior general, Giovanni Battista Rossi, known as Rubeo in Spain (1507–1578), made an official visit to the new convent and consented to the creation of Discalced foundations for women as well as two for men in Castile. He did not want Teresa to found in the south because the Andalusian friars, who were known as a rough lot, were opposed to the reform. Teresa established a second Discalced Carmelite convent for women later in 1567, in Medina del Campo, where she met her future collaborator, John of the Cross (1542–1591). [Image at right] Although she had never wanted sponsors, the following year, she made a third foundation in Malagón, on the estate of her friend Doña Luisa. She also wrote the Constitutions of the order. More foundations followed: Valladolid (1568); Toledo (1569); Salamanca (1570); Alba del Tormes (1571). In the meantime, she instructed John of the Cross about the Discalced way of life. With Antonio de Heredia, he founded the first Discalced Carmelite convent for friars in Duruelos in 1568.

Some clerics thought that Teresa was displaying too much independence and administrative ability for a woman. To get her out of the way, Salazar made her prioress of Incarnation, a Calced convent (one that followed the mitigated rule), where many of the nuns still harbored resentment against her. During the next three years, however, she managed to win them over and introduce reforms. She also named the Discalced friars John of the Cross and Germán de San Matías to be confessors at the Incarnation and began writing The Book of Foundations.

One of Doña Luisa’s friends was Ana de Mendoza, princess of Éboli, known to be a deceitful, treacherous woman. Because Doña Luisa had a convent on her property, Doña Ana insisted on endowing one on hers, in Pastrana. When her husband died, she moved into the new convent. However, she refused to obey the rules of the order, and after several clashes with the prioress, Isabel de Santo Domingo, she left. Then she suppressed the nuns’ revenue to starve them into submission. Teresa ordered the nuns to abandon the convent, which they did, sneaking out in the dead of night on April 6–7, 1574. Doña Ana took revenge by denouncing Teresa’s Life to the Valladolid Inquisition, which did not make a decision on the book until years later.

Although the Inquisition is often associated with the persecution of heterodoxy in Spain, it did not originate there. The German king and Roman emperor Frederick II (1194–1250) took a step toward the establishment of the Inquisition when he declared death by fire for impenitent members of certain religious sects in northern Italy. Pope Gregory IX (p. 1227–1241) later issued the decrees to institute the medieval Inquisition, an institution that spread throughout Germany, France, and Aragón (then an independent kingdom). By the time King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain adopted the Inquisition, its methods had already been established. Known as the Catholic Monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella received authority from the pope to appoint inquisitors in all parts of Castile, and tribunals were set up in eight Castilian cities. Two years later, tribunals were established in parts of Andalusia (Kamen 1998).

After founding a convent in Segovia in 1574, Teresa founded convents in Beas and Seville the following year. While in Beas, in 1575, she met Jerónimo Gracián (1545–1614), the Carmelite visitator, the friar charged with visiting convents to ensure they are observing the rules of the order. Thirty years Teresa’s junior, Gracián was well connected and filled with reformist zeal. Teresa was so impressed with him that she made a vow of obedience to him, while he promised to consult her on all issues involving the reform.

Teresa believed Beas to be in Castile, but it was actually under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of Andalusia, where Rubeo had forbidden her to take the reform. The error had serious consequences. Gracián had already founded Discalced friaries in Andalusia, disregarding Rubeo’s order. Now, he convinced Teresa to found a convent in Seville. The new convent was inaugurated on May 26, 1575, with María de San José as prioress, and problems occurred from the beginning. A resentful nun accused Teresa, María, and others of unorthodox spiritual practices, leading to an investigation by the Seville Inquisition. Furthermore, the Carmelite authorities were furious that Teresa had disobeyed Rubeo’s directive. At the chapter meeting in 1575, in Piacenza, Italy, they decided that Teresa must retire to one convent and make no further foundations. Now the conflict between the Calced and Discalced Carmelites began in earnest.

Teresa retired to Toledo but was furious. She wrote in Foundations that the Toledo convent “would be a kind of prison” (Teresa 2011:338). Yet she maintained her leadership of the reform through intensive letter-writing activity. Starting in 1575, she wrote letters constantly, corresponding with Carmelite and other ecclesiastical authorities, collaborators, family members, and friends. When the Calced faction launched a campaign of calumnies against Gracián, she even wrote to King Philip II of Spain (r. 1556–1598) protesting the slanders of “the friars of the cloth,” as she called them (Mujica 2009a:18–43). At the behest of Gracián, she also began writing The Interior Castle, considered her masterwork, in which she describes the soul’s path toward union with God.

In response to the Piacenza directives, the new visitator, Jerónimo Tostado (1524–1582), attempted to suppress all the Discalced Carmelite convents and bring them under the control of the Calced, but King Philip II intervened and prevented him from achieving his goal. In 1577, a new papal nuncio, Filippo Sega (d. 1596), took office. An anti-reformist zealot, he joined Tostado in his efforts to eliminate the Discalced houses.

In July 1577, Teresa left Toledo, thanks again to the king’s intervention. She returned to Ávila, but now the same Incarnation nuns who had created obstacles for her earlier wanted her to serve as prioress for their convent. Teresa managed to have a new prioress installed, but then, Calced friars kidnapped and imprisoned John of the Cross and his associate Germán de San Matías. Once more, Teresa wrote to the king begging, unsuccessfully, for his intervention (Slade 2003). John endured a brutal captivity until he managed to escape nearly a year later (Rodríguez 2012:295–43).

On December 24, 1577, Teresa fell down the stairs and broke her arm at the Saint Joseph convent. Yet, with the help of an amanuensis, she continued to write letters to undermine Sega’s maneuvers. Finally, appalled by the behavior of the Calced friars, the pope intervened to force Sega to abandon his campaign. In 1580, the papal brief Pia consideratione allowed the Discalced to form a separate province, the same year that the Toledo Inquisition finally approved publication of a “corrected” version of Teresa’s Life. The following year, King Philip II officially divided the Calced and Discalced Carmelites, and the Discalced Constitutions were approved.

Exhausted and infirm, Teresa continued to carry on the work of the reform. During the last three years of her life, she founded convents at Villanueva de la Jara (1580), Palencia (1580), Soria (1581), and Burgos (1582). She assigned the task of founding a community in Granada to Anne of Jesus and John of the Cross (1582). In the spring of 1582, she initiated the journey to Burgos in a treacherous storm to found her last convent, inaugurated on April 19, 1582. She then left for Alba de Tormes, where she had been called by the Duchess of Alba. She died there on October 4. Due to the calendar reforms of Gregory XIII, which required the excision of the dates October 5–14, her death and feast day are celebrated on October 15. In total, Teresa was responsible for founding seventeen female and many male convents.

DEVOTEES

Teresa’s fame as a mystic and the foundress of a new order, the Discalced Carmelites, had spread widely long before she died. She was declared Blessed by Pope Paul V in 1614 and canonized by Pope Gregory XV on March 12, 1622, barely forty years after her death. Nevertheless, the process was far from automatic. Because female mystics continued to be viewed with suspicion, the canonization of women could be problematical.

Some seventeenth-century priests began to reconstruct Teresa’s image. Rather than celebrating her as a strong, innovative woman, they strove to transform her into “an obedient, submissive virgin who could serve as an emblem of female sanctity” (Mujica 2009a:181). They downplayed her work as spiritual guide and teacher, as they believed that these were roles that should be reserved for university-educated men.  When the Bishop of Puebla Juan de Palafox y Mendoza (1600–1659), an influential cleric and politician, published the first printed edition of Teresa’s letters in 1656, he omitted those he considered problematical and included some apocryphal missives that highlighted the qualities he thought appropriate to a female saint (Mujica 2009a:182).

Some ecclesiastics were patently opposed to Teresa’s canonization, arguing that her books were proof of her pride, pride being Satan’s sin. In fact, the inquisitor Alonso de la Fuente crusaded to have Teresa’s books banned on the grounds that they were creations of the devil, even though Teresa had been investigated and cleared five times by the Inquisition (Weber 1990:160).

For many, however, Teresa’s canonization was cause for great celebration. Plays and poems were written in her honor. Etchings and paintings were made as well. In 1617, the Discalced Carmelites petitioned the Spanish cortes, or parliament, to make Teresa copatron saint of Spain, along with the existing patron saint, James (Santiago) of Compostela. This initiative was unsuccessful, as were several later ones. One of the fiercest opponents to Teresa’s elevation to the position of copatron saint was the Spanish writer Francisco de Quevedo (1580–1645). For Quevedo, Saint James was a hero in the battle against the infidel, one of the twelve apostles, and the protector of Spain, whose remains were buried at Compostela. According to historian Katie MacLean, “By preserving the pre-eminence of Santiago as the only patron of Spain, Quevedo hoped to preserve Spain’s unique tie to Christ and to the primitive Church” (MacLean 2006:905).

Interest in expanding the Discalced Carmelite reform beyond Spain began while Teresa was still alive. In 1578, Teutónio de Bragança (1530–1602), Archbishop of Évora, requested that she found a female convent in Portugal, but she was too occupied with other Discalced Carmelite business to act on his suggestion. However, in 1581, the year before Teresa’s death, Ambrosio Mariano, one of her close associates, founded a male convent in Lisbon, and in 1584, María de San José founded a female convent in the same city (Mujica 2020:25–134).

In 1604, Ana de Jesús (1545–1621), a close friend of Teresa’s, crossed the Pyrenees at the urging of the religious reformer Pierre de Bérulle (1575–1629), future confessor of King Henri IV (1553-1610, king of France 1589-1610). Bérulle was a member of a reformist spiritual circle known as Paris dévot, headed by his cousin Barbe Acarie (1565–1618).  A powerful aristocrat, Acarie attributed her spiritual awakening to the French translation of Teresa’s hagiography, by Francisco de Ribeira. Acarie believed that God wanted her to bring the Discalced Carmelite reform to France, and she called upon her influential contacts to advance the project. Bérulle traveled to Spain to recruit Spanish nuns (among them Ana de Jesús and Teresa’s former nurse and amanuensis, Ana de San Bartolomé (1549–1626)) to found a Discalced Carmelite convent in Paris (Diefendorf 2006:78ff). Ana de Jesús became the first prioress (superior) of the Paris foundation, but she was unhappy in France, and, at the invitation of Isabel Clara Eugenia (1566–1633), who ruled as co-Sovereign of the Low Countries with her husband Albert of Austria (1559–1621), went north to found convents in Brussels, Louvain, and Mons (Mujica 2020:137–204).

Ana de San Bartolomé stayed in France to found several female convents. However, she and Bérulle soon had a serious falling out. According to Ana, Bérulle was manipulating the nuns and trying to take control of the order even though he was not a Discalced Carmelite. Eventually, Ana de San Bartolomé extricated herself from Bérulle’s dominance and followed Ana de Jesús to the Netherlands, where, in 1616, she founded a female Discalced Carmelite convent that still stands, in Antwerp (Mujica 2020:207–302).

The Discalced Carmelite reform spread rapidly throughout Europe and the New World during the seventeenth century. Today, Teresa of Ávila has millions of devotees. In addition to the nuns and friars, “third order” or “secular” Discalced Carmelites keep the order alive. These are lay persons from every walk of life who maintain a relationship with the Discalced Carmelites and practice the teachings of Saint Teresa.

Teresa has influenced many well-known people. For example, the German Jewish philosopher Edith Stein (1891–1942) converted to Catholicism after reading the works of Teresa de Ávila. Later, she became a Discalced Carmelite nun and was murdered by the Nazis because of her Jewish origins.

Teresa’s influence is not limited to those with ties to the order. In fact, Christians, non-Christians, and even nonbelievers have found inspiration in Teresa’s teachings. The current disillusionment with conventional religions in many sectors of society has sparked an explosion of popular interest in alternative approaches to faith. Teresa’s emphasis on interiority and meditation speaks to many people who consider themselves spiritual, yet not religious. The self-help writer Caroline Myss has attracted a large following with her Entering the Castle books and CDs, which are based on Teresa’s Interior Castle. Books on Teresa appear every year in Germany, Italy, and, of course, Spain and Latin America. France, considered a bastion of secularism, has produced several new books on Teresa, including Thérèse Mon Amour [Teresa, My Love], by Julia Kristeva (b. 1941), the prolific Bulgarian-born philosopher, feminist critic, and psychoanalyst. Interest in Teresa has been so intense in recent years that Publisher’s Weekly called her “a mystic for our times” (Mujica 2010).

TEACHINGS AND PRACTICES

By the late Middle Ages, many Christians in Europe recognized the need for spiritual reform, as the Catholic Church had become highly bureaucratic, and prayer was often reduced to empty rituals. New orders that stressed austerity and simplicity, in accordance with their primitive rules, began to form. In the Low Countries, laypeople spearheaded the devotio moderna, a movement aimed at restoring a more authentic form of Christianity. Adherents practiced mental prayer, a direct and unstructured conversation with God in which one speaks directly to God and listens to the voice within. The movement was popular both among certain Spanish nobles and conversos, who preferred to pray without the encumbrance of Catholic ritual.

Although Teresa had learned the principles of the devotio moderna from Osuna’s book, she did not put its teachings into practice immediately. However, she eventually came to understand that mental prayer provided a means to enter the depths of the soul and find God within. In The Interior Castle, she offers a concise description of her spiritual teachings and prayer practices through the metaphor of the soul as “a castle made entirely out of a diamond or very clear crystal, in which there are many rooms, just as in heaven, there are many dwelling places” (Teresa 1980:283). Through the process of recollection, the soul moves into itself, through the rooms, which are arranged in seven concentric circles, gradually detaching itself from worldly concerns as it approaches the center, where God dwells. The door that enables the soul to enter the castle is prayer, but prayer is not an intellectual process; it is an effect of the soul’s longing for God and of God’s love for us. Prayer does not guarantee a mystical experience. The Interior Castle is not a manual on how to achieve union with God, which depends solely on the divine will. It is, rather, a description of a process that no two people experience in the same way.

The circles of the castle are arranged symmetrically, with the three outer circles corresponding to the meditative, or active, stages of prayer. For example, the individual can initiate recollection by engaging with an inspirational image or reading. The outer rooms of the castle remain relatively dark, as they receive little light from within. However, Teresa writes:

It should be kept in mind here that the fount, the shining sun that is in the center of the soul, does not lose its beauty and splendor; it is always present in the soul, and nothing can take away its loveliness. But if a black cloth is placed over a crystal that is in the sun, obviously the sun’s brilliance will have no effect on the crystal even though the sun is shining on it. (Teresa 1980:289)

That is, while the soul is still consumed with worldly matters, it remains “in the dark.” It cannot reach its inner light. Yet, that light is always present, and the soul can strive to reach it through prayer.

The fourth circle is transitional and can be painful because here the soul loses agency; it can no longer advance on its own but depends entirely on God’s will. The three inner circles correspond to the passive, or contemplative, stages of prayer. Now, the faculties and understanding cease to function, and the soul surrenders entirely to God.

When beginning to pray, the soul meets with many obstacles. The poisonous pests on the periphery of the castle represent the temptations and vanities that distract us from prayer. The servants of the castle, the senses, reside in the first dwelling places and serve as mediators between the soul and the “world,” that is, the everyday concerns that keep us from advancing in prayer. In the second dwelling places, the intellect is not passive but plays an important role in the process of detachment, for it now grasps the dangers of worldly things and consciously disengages from them. It recognizes its own sinfulness, which sparks humility, a virtue essential for spiritual progress. In the third dwelling places, the soul becomes increasingly aware of its own free will, which it places at God’s service. This means serving others, for, as Teresa writes, love of God “must not be fabricated in our imaginations but proved by deeds” (Teresa 1980:308). For Gillian Ahlgren, this is “a space of greater mindfulness, intentionality and personal integration” (Ahlgren 2016:28).

The journey into the castle is a process of letting go. By the fourth dwelling places, the soul is reaching a state of detachment, and hence, inner tranquility. The intellect is much less active: “the important thing is not to think much but to love much” (Teresa 1980:319). Once the soul opens itself completely to God’s love, the individual becomes more sensitive and compassionate toward others. At the same time, the soul suffers because it is anxious to move more deeply into itself but cannot do so of its own will; its progress depends on God.

The fifth dwelling places mark the beginning of the contemplative state, the “prayer of union,” during which the soul comes to understand God’s love more profoundly. The faculties are benumbed. The soul “has died to the world as to live completely in God. Thus, the death is a delightful one. . .” (Teresa 1980:337). The soul is like a moth that is drawn to a flame and is consumed by it. Yet it does not lose all agency. As Ahlgren explains, it opens itself “relationally to allow for divine activity to operate in it” (Alhgren 2005:69). The soul is transformed by submitting completely to God, which intensifies its awareness of its connection to others and its wish to serve.

In the sixth circle, the soul comes to know God mystically, sometimes experiencing favors such as raptures (feelings of ecstasy or being transported to another dimension). The soul may become frightened, explains Teresa, for God’s presence can be overwhelming: “The soul truly suffers a form of disintegration in the sixth dwelling places, because it is undergoing a final purification that threatens its identity as an individual” (Ahlgren 2005:90). However, this dissolution of the self is what permits the transformation of the soul and enables it to endure everyday challenges. The soul will emerge renewed and ready to enjoy the delights of the spiritual marriage in the seventh circle.

Through the metaphor of marriage, Teresa describes the total surrendering of the soul (the Bride) and God (the Bridegroom) to each other. [Image at right] Spiritual marriage is different from spiritual union, explains Teresa, for in the latter, the lovers can separate: “Let us say that the union is like the joining of two wax candles to such an extent that the flame coming from them is but one. . . . But afterward, one candle can be easily separated from the other. . .” (Teresa 1980:434). In contrast, marriage is like rain that falls into a river: “all is water, for the rain that fell from heaven cannot be divided or separated from the water of the river” (Teresa 1980:434). They are one. Teresa also employs the metaphor of the butterfly (the soul) that approaches a candle (God) and is consumed by flame, becoming oblivious to its physical self and the world. It emerges from this experience transformed and with the desire to submit entirely to do God’s will, not by withdrawing from the world but by “helping the Crucified,” that is, those who are suffering (Teresa 1980:439).

ORGANIZATIONAL LEADERSHIP

Teresa’s profound experience of God’s presence in her soul galvanized her to found a new religious order, the Discalced Carmelites. Having experienced life at Incarnation, an overcrowded, mitigated Carmelite convent, Teresa wanted to provide other women with a truly spiritual environment where they could immerse themselves in prayer.

In early modern Spain, many women entered convents with no sense of vocation. Some were the younger daughters of parents without the means or desire to pay their marriage dowries and so placed them there as toddlers. Some were widows, orphans, or girls with tainted honor. Convents reflected the prevailing social hierarchy. Nuns from aristocratic families maintained their titles and enjoyed special privileges, such as keeping their servants and slaves. Often relatives joined the same convent, which contributed to cliquishness and petty rivalries. At the time Teresa made her profession, Incarnation was severely overpopulated. Although fasting, abstinence, and periods of silence were required, strict claustration (enclosure) was not. Because the number of inhabitants was larger than the convent could comfortably accommodate, nuns were permitted to take their meals elsewhere and accept gifts of food from visitors.

The new order that Teresa founded followed the unmitigated Carmelite rule. The nuns lived in poverty and devoted themselves entirely to God. They renounced their titles and social identity, disassociating themselves from the male power structure by taking new names. Thus, Teresa Sánchez de Cepeda y Ahumada became Teresa de Jesús. To avoid girls taking vows before they understood their commitment, Teresa set the minimum age for novices at seventeen. To avoid overcrowding, she limited the number of nuns in a convent to around thirteen, although the number sometimes fluctuated.

For Teresa, withdrawal into the convent mirrored the inward movement of the soul, a liberating experience that freed the individual from the trials of everyday life (Carrión 1994:133). Yet, a spiritual life was an active life. It required making conscious decisions in conformity with God’s will and acting on them. Teresa saw spreading the reform as a spiritual mission, one that involved risks. In the face of fierce opposition, making foundations became a form of engagement, even militancy (Bilinkoff 1994:174). Paradoxically, the castle, a refuge from worldly affairs, prepares the individual to better engage in worldly affairs. Spiritual grounding enables today’s men and women to better interact with others and to accept a role in contemporary life.

As founder of a new order, Teresa maintained administrative responsibility for the operation of her convents. She argued that she, not a priest, was best equipped to govern the nunneries because she had a better understanding of female psychology than any man. Since visitators were always male, she wrote The Way of Visiting Convents to guide them. Teresa’s letters show that she was involved with every detail of convent management: the selection of novices, finance, dowries, legal issues, property management, discipline, health, and diet (Mujica 2009a:141–177). She was especially concerned with mental health and wrote extensively on melancholia in Foundations. She determined how nuns could spend their leisure moments and how they sang psalms. She also had to deal with political and diplomatic questions, such as the order’s sometimes rocky relationship with the Jesuits (Mujica 2009a:172–177). As she couldn’t be everywhere at once, she had to handle many of these matters by letter.

Teresa gave prioresses considerable administrative freedom to manage their convents. They could accept novices, negotiate dowries, and purchase property, although Teresa maintained oversight authority. Prioresses were also charged with the spiritual well-being of their nuns. Early modern Hispanist Alison Weber points out that one of Teresa’s innovations was “a system of governance based on an expanded spiritual magisterium for prioresses working in close collaboration with prelates who shared their vision” (Weber 2000:126). Prioresses were to work together with confessors to ensure the spiritual progress of their nuns. Teresa herself had some bad experiences with incompetent confessors and wanted to ensure that those working with Discalced Carmelite nuns were sensitive to their needs.

ISSUES AND CHALLENGES

Teresa met with opposition from the beginning of her career due largely to the Catholic Church’s distrust of mystics, especially female mystics. [Image at right] The prevailing view that women were defective beings, prideful and susceptible to the wiles of the devil, meant that women had to avoid appearing clever, independent-minded, or assertive. Alison Weber argues that Teresa used different rhetorical strategies in her writing to affirm her authority yet avoid the appearance of pride. Like many early modern women, she cultivated a “rhetoric of modesty,” using self-deprecating language or expressions such as “it seems to me” to avoid making outright assertions (Weber 1990:42–70).

Teresa’s teachings made her susceptible to charges of alumbradismo, and, in fact, her name first appears in Inquisition records in 1574 in connection with a case of Illuminism. Although she was never brought to trial, without the intervention of influential friends, she might have suffered severe punishment (Slade 1995:17–18). The Interior Castle links Teresa to the apophatic tradition, which teaches that by moving inward, the soul finds absolute darkness from which the light of God emanates. Strict apophaticism admits no rational understanding or anthropomorphic descriptions of God, which made it problematic for the Church, since Christianity centers on belief in the manifest presence of God on Earth through Christ. Apophaticism came to be seen as a manifestation of spiritual autonomy. It was associated with Illuminism and, later, Protestantism.

Teresa sought to disassociate herself from strict apophaticism. In Chapter 22 of Life, she defends the centrality of the sacred humanity of Christ, and in The Interior Castle, images of Christ in his humanity and Christ as Bridegroom abound, especially in the seventh dwelling places. The danger in the sixth dwelling places, she explains, is that the soul will become so lost in contemplation that it will disengage from the Passion, the physical presence of the suffering Christ (Teresa 1980:399). Teresa’s insistence on the humanity of Christ positioned her securely within the tenets of Catholic Christianity. The words she reputedly spoke on her deathbed, “I die a daughter of the Church,” were a final affirmation of her orthodoxy and Catholic identity (Slade 1995:71).

SIGNIFICANCE TO THE STUDY OF WOMEN IN RELIGIONS

Unlike letrados (lettered men who studied scripture and practiced an intellectualized spirituality based on theology), women did not receive a university education. They practiced affective spirituality, which depended more on interior experience than on formal theologizing. By founding convents that fostered interiority, Teresa validated women’s devotional practices and defended their right to pursue higher forms of spiritual activity. Her manuals, The Interior Castle and The Way of Perfection, written to guide her nuns in prayer, came to be cherished by a wide audience outside the convent.

Discalced Carmelite convents offered women not only a place for spiritual growth, but also opportunities for educational and vocational development (Mujica 2009b:74–82). [Image at right]Teresa read widely in the vernacular, and she specified in article forty of the Constitutions that all Discalced Carmelite nuns be taught to read (Teresa 2011:321). Teresa believed that reading, which enabled nuns to seek counsel in the words of sages, was an indispensable protection against unscrupulous or ignorant confessors. White-veiled nuns—those who performed menial tasks such as cooking, cleaning, gardening, and nursing—were not required to learn to write. Black-veiled nuns, who were responsible for praying the Divine Office, had to learn both to read and write.

Convents of literate nuns of different orders often developed into true intellectual communities, with Sisters writing chronicles, memoirs, poetry, plays or letters (Arenal and Schlau 1989). In some convents, nuns composed music. In some, they painted religious images. All Discalced Carmelite convents had a novice mistress who taught reading, writing, and religion, as well as an infirmarian who cared for the ill and a cellaress in charge of ordering provisions.

Discalced Carmelite nuns withdrew from the world to form strong prayer communities where women found spiritual sustenance, a sense of unity and belonging, and meaningful work. After Teresa’s death, the reform spread throughout the world. Today there are Discalced Carmelite convents on every continent. Teresa of Ávila’s successful leadership is manifested in the seventeen female convents, and additional male monasteries, she founded, as well as the expansion of Discalced Carmelites throughout Europe. Perhaps the sixteenth-century saint’s most famous protégé is a nineteenth-century saint, Thérèse of Lisieux (1873–1897), a Discalced Carmelite known as the Little Flower.

IMAGES

Image #1: Portrait of Teresa of Ávila, by French painter François Gerard, 1827. Wikimedia Commons.
Image #2: The Vision of Saint Teresa. Portrait by Francesco Cozza. Wikimedia Commons.
Image #3: Statue of Teresa by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, titled “Teresa in Ecstasy.” Cornaro Chapel, Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome. Wikiemedia Commons.
Image #4: John of the Cross, 1656. Portrait attributed to Zurbarán. From www.muzeum.archidiecezja.katowice.pl. Wikimedia Commons..
Image #5: Saint Teresa of Ávila. Wikimedia Commons.
Image #6: Statues representing John of the Cross and Teresa of Ávila in Beas de Segura. Cosasdebeas. Wikimedia Commons.
Image # 7: Carmelite saints: Blessed Anne of Jesus, Saint Teresa of Ávila, and Blessed Anne of St. Bartholomew. The Church of Stella Maris, Haifa, Israel. Adobe Stock Photos.

REFERENCES

Ahlgren, Gillian. 2016. Enkindling Love: The Legacy of Teresa of Ávila and John of the Cross. Minneapolis: Fortress Press.

Ahlgren, Gillian. 2005. Entering Teresa de Ávila’s Interior Castle: A Reader’s Companion. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press.

Arenal, Electa, and Stacy Schlau. 1989. “‘Leyendo yo y escribiendo ella’: The Convent as Intellectual Community.” Journal of Hispanic Philology 13:214–29.

Bilinkoff, Jodi. 1989. The Ávila of Saint Teresa: Religious Reform in a Sixteenth-Century City. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Carrión, María. 1994. Arquitectura y cuerpo en la figura autorial de Teresa de Jesús. Barcelona: Anthropos.

Diefendorf, Barbara B. 2004. From Penitence to Charity: Pious Women and the Catholic Reformation in Paris. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Egido, Teófanes. 1986. El linaje judeoconverso de santa Teresa. Madrid: Espiritualidad.

Kamen, Henry. 1998. The Spanish Inquisition. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

MacLean, Katie. 2006. “The Mystic and the Moor-Slayer: Saint Teresa, Santiago and the Struggle for Spanish Identity.” Bulletin of Spanish Studies 83:887–910.

Medwick, Cathleen. 1999. Teresa de Ávila: The Progress of a Soul. New York: Knopf.

Mujica, Bárbara. 2020. Women Religious and the Epistolary Exchange in the Carmelite Reform: The Disciples of Teresa de Ávila. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

Mujica, Bárbara. 2010. “Teresa de Ávila: A Woman of Her Time, A Saint for Ours.” Commonweal, February 22. Accessed from https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/teresa-%C3%A1vila on 15 December 2023.

Mujica, Bárbara. 2009a. Teresa de Ávila, Lettered Woman. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press.

Mujica, Bárbara. 2009b. “Was Teresa of Ávila a Feminist?” Pp. 74-82 in Approaches to Teaching Teresa de Ávila and the Spanish Mystics, edited by Alison Weber. New York: Modern Language Association.

Rodríguez, José Vicente. 2016. San Juan de la Cruz: La biografía. Madrid: San Pablo.

Slade, Carole. 2003. “The Relationship between Teresa of Ávila and Philip II: A Reading of the Extant Textual Evidence.” Archive for Reformation History 94, no. 1: 223–42.

Slade, Carole. 1995. St. Teresa of Ávila: Author of a Heroic Life. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Teresa de Ávila (de Jesús). 2007. The Collected Letters of St. Teresa of Ávila. Translated by Kieran Kavanaugh, O.C.D. Volume 2. Washington, D.C.: Institute of Carmelite Studies.

Teresa de Ávila (de Jesús). 2001. The Collected Letters of St. Teresa of Ávila. Translated by Kieran Kavanaugh, O.C.D. Volume 1. Washington, D.C.: Institute of Carmelite Studies.

Teresa de Ávila (de Jesús). 2011. The Collected Works of St. Teresa of Ávila. Translated by Kieran Kavanaugh, O.C.D. and Otilio Rodríguez, O.C.D. Volume 3. Washington D.C.: Institute of Carmelite Studies.

Teresa de Ávila (de Jesús). 1987. The Collected Works of St. Teresa of Ávila. Translated by Kieran Kavanaugh, O.C.D. and Otilio Rodríguez, O.C.D. Volume 1, Revised. Washington D.C.: Institute of Carmelite Studies.

Teresa de Ávila (de Jesús). 1980. The Collected Works of St. Teresa of Ávila. Translated by Kieran Kavanaugh, O.C.D. and Otilio Rodríguez, O.C.D. Volume 2. Washington D.C.: Institute of Carmelite Studies.

Walsh, William. 1943. Saint Teresa of Ávila. Rockford, IL: Tan.

Weber, Alison. 2000. “Spiritual Administration: Gender and Discernment in the Carmelite Reform.” Sixteenth Century Journal 31:127–50.

Weber, Alison. 1990. Teresa de Ávila and the Rhetoric of Femininity. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

SUPPLEMENTARY RESOURCES

Carrera, Elena. 2005. Teresa de Ávila’s Autobiography: Authority, Power and the Self in Mid-Sixteenth Century Spain. Oxford: Legenda / Modern Humanities Research Association.

Efrén de la Madre de Dios, and Otger Steggink. 1986. Tiempo y vida de Santa Teresa de Jesús. Madrid: Espiritualidad.

Lehfeldt, Elizabeth. 2005. Religious Women in Golden Age Spain: The Permeable Cloister. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate.

Mujica, Bárbara. 2023. “Finding Refuge in Your Own Castle: Teresa de Ávila’s Las Moradas.” Pp. 149-61 in Refugees, Refuge, and Human Displacement, edited by Ignacio López-Calvo and Marjorie Agosín. New York: Anthem.

Mujica, Bárbara. 2007. Sister Teresa. New York: Overlook.

Mujica, Bárbara. 2001. “Beyond Image: The Apophatic-Kataphatic Dialectic in Teresa de Ávila.” Hispania 84:741–48.

Osuna, Francisco. 1981. The Third Spiritual Alphabet. Translated by Mary Giles. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press.

Rossi, Rosa. 1984. Teresa de Ávila: Biografía de una escritora. Translated by Marieta Gargatagli. Barelona: Icaria.

Weber, Alison, ed. 2009. Approaches to Teaching Teresa de Ávila and the Spanish Mystics, edited by Alison Weber. New York: Modern Language Association.

Welch, John. 1982. Spiritual Pilgrims: Carl Jung and Teresa de Ávila. New York: Paulist Press.

Wilson, Christopher, ed. 2006. The Heirs of Saint Teresa. Washington, D.C.: Institute of Carmelite Studies.

Publication Date:
18 December 2023

COLLEGE OF INTEGRATED PHILOSOPHY TIMELINE

1959 (November 11):  John de Ruiter (Johannes Franciscus de Ruiter) was born in Nipawin, Saskatchewan, Canada.

1976:  De Ruiter reported having his first spiritual experience.

1982:  De Ruiter married his first wife.

1983:  De Ruiter began a series of ministerial appointments.

1987:  DeRuiter left the Bethlehem Lutheran Church and began his own ministry, the College of Integrated Philosophy.

1998:  De Ruiter launched his first world tour.

1999:  Joyce De Ruiter learned of her husband’s marital infidelity and publicly confronted him at a group meeting.

2001:  De Ruiter published Unveiling Reality. Edmonton: Oasis Edmonton.

2002:  De Ruiter and his wife divorced.

2007:  The Oasis Centre opened in Edmonton.

2009 (August):  De Ruiter ended his intimate relationship with the von Sass sisters.

2010:  De Ruiter married follower Leigh Ann Angermann.

2020 (March):  The College of Integrated Philosophy paused in-person meetings in response to the COViD-19 pandemic.

2023 (January 21):  De Ruiter was arrested on charges of sexually assaulting four members of his movement.

FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY

Johne de Ruiter was born in Nipawin, Saskatchewan in 1959 as one of four children. [Image at right] The family was Lutheran immigrant, and his father was a shoemaker. De Ruiter spent his childhood in Stettler, Alberta, Canada. For a brief period he followed in his father’s footsteps, working at European Shoe Comfort in Edmonton.

As a young man, de Ruiter had numerous religious experiences. He claimed that Jesus had appeared to him on many occasions and “transferred who he is over to me” (Rinaldi 2023). When he was seventeen, de Ruiter reported an awakening, a brief “flowering inside that made everything in this existence pale in comparison,” that then immediately disappeared (de Ruiter 2001; Pruden 2017). He stated that “I was unexpectedly gifted with a knowing and an experience of oneness with the source”…“My awareness of reality expanded in ways that I could have never imagined” (Rinaldi 2023; de Ruiter 2001). However, he was unable to recreate this experience despite intense efforts of various kinds.

De Ruiter met his future wife, Joyce in 1981 in the Canadian Bible Society bookstore near the European Shoe Comfort in Edmonton where he worked at the time. The couple married the following year and together had three children (Naomi, Nicolas and Nathaniel).

De Ruiter’s religious career began in 1983 when he attended a Baptist seminary for a year, moved on to the Prairie Bible Institute and then to an internship at the Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Edmonton. In 1987, de Ruiter left Bethlehem Lutheran, and five couples followed him as he established an independent  ministry. After leaving the Bethlehem Lutheran Church, de Ruiter gradually began moving away from and becoming more critical of Christianity, ultimately referring to Christianity as “Satan’s Masterpiece” (McKeen 2000). His narrative of encounters with Jesus in which Jesus “transferred who he is over to me to do as he did” shifted to one in which he had “an experience of being “re-immersed in the benevolent reality of pure being” (Pruden 2017).

De Ruiter’s new message was favorably received enough that he launched an international tour in 1998. Some of those who he encountered on the tour later decided to move to Edmonton in order to be close to him. In 2001, he published a book, Unveiling Reality, through his foundation explaining his perspective on reality and truth. [Image at right] The construction of the Oasis Centre in 2007 by his followers in Edmonton provided a spacious venue for his expanding group of followers. However, the movement began to encounter turbulence by the late 1990s as de Ruiter’s involvement in controversial sexual practices led to dissolution of his first marriage, loss of followers, and, ultimately, criminal prosecution (See, Issues/Challenges)

DOCTRINES/BELIEFS

The College of Integrated Philosophy does not have a formal set of doctrines, and de Ruiter does not present himself as a “teacher.”  The most systematic presentations of his thought are contained on his website and in his 2001 book, Unveiling Reality. A core principle of his thought is what he terms “core splitting honesty.” He understands himself as one who assists others to realize their own potential by knowing what is actually true. He describes the concept in the following way (John de Ruiter website 2023):

An uncommon honesty that splits through the core of false beliefs, no longer believing what you want to be true, need to be true, or wish were true. Core-splitting honesty is informed exclusively by a deeper, direct knowledge untouched by self-interest.

There is only one path to the wholeness and authenticity that de Ruiter professes (John de Ruiter website 2023):

Listen only to what directly speaks to what you know the truth of. You, awareness, being quietly grounded in what you directly know the truth of puts you into oneness. Nothing else does that. A teaching and a practice, on its own, isn’t going to do that. Your response to what you know the truth of in a practice or in a teaching takes you within; it connects you within. 

The path to the truth therefore is not the mind; it is not understanding. It is becoming one with your essence, your soul (Hutchinson 2001):

When you no longer consult with your mind, when you consult only with what you are, in everything you are doing, then you’ve found the source of life within, which frees us from always having to get something from this life.

De Ruiter’s message had a deep impact on some of those who attended his meetings. As one follower, who later disassociated from the group, recalled (Mulcahy 2023):

I believed that he was a profoundly spiritual man who had deep access to knowledge and wisdom, who could see into my soul, who was going to guide me to the truth of myself, who was going to guide me to freedom. I thought I’d found my connection to God.

Participating in meetings, which offer the opportunity to form “silent connections” with John, facilitates moving along this path. The path, of course, involves choosing based on this pure knowing. As de Ruiter puts it, “I do not navigate fundamentally by the effect on others or myself. I follow the thread of pure knowing” (de Ruiter 2023). It was precisely this proclivity, of course, that informed his decisions on sexual relationships, which created the personal and organizational turmoil in which he became enmeshed.

RITUALS/PRACTICES

The primary rituals in the College of Integrated Philosophy take place in spaces accommodating several hundred participants, which for many years was the Oasis Centre is Edmonton. The room in which the ritual takes place contains an elevated stage with a comfortable chair that de Ruiter occupies. [Image at right] Immediately in front of the stage is a designated area that contains a “dialogue chair” from which selected participants are able to speak directly with de Ruiter, presenting issues they are personally confronting and, often, appreciation for his guidance. De Ruiter may or may not respond to particular comments and queries, and responses often are limited. Responses tend to lead back to the basic principle that individuals should trust what they truly know, what is actually true. For example, Hutchinson (2013) reports one such exchange:

I’m not tuning in the way I used to and something’s wrong with me,” said a woman who took “the chair” on Sunday. “There are larger things going on here, but I don’t have any evidence. I’m just not sure.”

“When you know the truth, you need no evidence,” Mr. de Ruiter replied after a long pause.

“I mean this in a kind way,” the woman said, “but my real self doesn’t have a foggy clue about what’s going on here and will never be able to figure it out.”

“You don’t need to understand what you know for you to believe in what you know,” said Mr. de Ruiter.

There was more cryptic banter and the woman seemed to come around. “All I know is that something’s happening and that’s enough,” she said.

The guru spoke: “If you knew that you were going to die in one minute, you would say that you’re ready now.”

Much of the remainder of the meetings involve extended periods of “silent connection” during which de Ruiter silently and unwaveringly maintains intense eye contact with some or all the participants. Numerous accounts of these silent connections indicate that they can sometimes produce intimate, powerful psychological experiences such as weeping, visions and hallucinations, transcendent and even near-death experiences, auras, and visions of religious figures (Pruden 2017 Hutchinson 2001).

ORGANIZATION/LEADERSHIP

John de Ruiter is clearly the central figure in the College of Integrated Philosophy (Joosse 2006). Committed followers attribute beyond human capacities to him, such as shape shifting, bilocation, and  dream visitation (Rinaldi 2023). He is regarded as a messianic figure who is ushering in a new, advanced level of human development, which is sometimes referred to as a “living embodiment of truth” and view him as a “new messiah. He thus embodies a model of what they aspire to be.

De Ruiter is surrounded by a coterie of volunteers, assistants, tour organizers and event administrators. For a time, wealthy  Calgary businessman Peter von Sass, his wife Ilona, and their daughters, Benita and Katrina, were important members of de Ruiter’s inner circle, and the von Sass family provided de Ruiter with financial support (Hutchinson 2013). De Ruiter’s son, Nataniel, has also participated in movement financial operations.

After de Ruiter established an independent ministry in 1987, the movement gradually developed meeting venues, first in the home of one of the couples and then in his own home. These home bases continued through the first half of the 1990s. His ministry then moved from private residence to a New Age bookstore, to the Royal Acupressure Clinic. to the spacious Edmonton Oasis Centre in 2007, which was constructed by his followers. [Image at right] His venue remained the Oasis Centre until 2021 when, in response to a pause in in-person meetings during the COVID-19 pandemic, it was sold to the Aga Khan Foundation for $6,650,000.

De Ruiter then purchased the Mosquito Lake Campground for $1,000,000 and converted the former campground into Midnight Sky, a center of the movement (Crawshaw 2022). Cabins were constructed and support facilities upgraded  A number of followers, including de Ruiter’s son Nathaniel, purchased properties and local businesses in the nearby community of Fort Assiniboine (McWilliams 2022; Pruden 2023).

The College of Integrated Philosophy has had a variety of sources of financing through its history. In the early years of the movement the Oasis Centre served as an attractive event venue that generated revenue  as well as serving as a home base for the movement. The sale of the center in 2021 Shah Karim Al Hussaini, Aga Khan IV, who is the spiritual leader of the Ismaili Muslims, later buttressed movement resources. In addition, the College fundraises through sale of livestreams, podcasts, transcripts, YouTube videos, downloads, books, seminars, meeting admissions (John de Ruiter website 2023; Pruden 2017). De Ruiter’s personal wealth has been estimated to be well into seven figures.

ISSUES/CHALLENGES

John de Ruiter faced both controversy and success through much of his career. He began to openly take issue with Christian doctrine by 1987 when he left the Bethlehem Lutheran Church to start his own independent ministry with his own unique doctrines and rituals. The ministry began slowly as he met in private homes and then in small venues. In 1998, he launched his first international tour. Not only was his movement expanding, but followers were moving to Edmonton from as far away as Europe. By 2007 the movement had grown to the point at which his followers established the Oasis Centre in Edmonton, a venue large enough to accommodate several hundred followers.

Even as his movement was expanding, de Ruiter began to develop and implement ideas on sexuality that ultimately created crisis within the movement. Most significantly for future events, de Ruiter distinguished between “superficial lust” and “higher forms of sexual energy that resided in the heart” and claimed his sexual relationships were supernaturally inspired (Finaldi 2023).

The first chapter in this unfolding drama occurred in the late 1990s after de Ruiter was introduced to the von Sass sisters, Benita (34) and Katrina (26). In November 1999, de Ruiter informed his wife that he would be taking the von Sass sisters as wives, with the parents’ approval. Joyce de Ruiter decided to challenge John’s decision publicly and appeared at a group meeting where she read a letter that she had written to him. The letter read in part:

“My sweetie. You are not god, you are not deity,” Joyce said that evening. ”You are a normal man who has been seduced by power and adoring women….You are sleeping with two of your disciples,” said Joyce, ”and you can’t recognize how far off you’ve gone. Sex with Benita and Katrina is not truth.”

There was no visible response to her presentation within the congregation, and the von Sass family remained in the movement (McKeen 2000; Hutchinson 2001). Joyce de Ruiter subsequently initiated divorce proceedings and then moved to the Netherlands with the children. When John de Ruiter addressed his congregation on the matter he simply stated that that “truth” had told him to sleep with the von Sass sisters (Leon 2015).

A second chapter in the drama began in 2009 when de Ruiter abruptly ended his relationship with the von Sass sisters and shortly thereafter legally married follower Leigh Ann Angermann. The sisters responded to the rebuff by filing lawsuits against both de Ruiter personally and various movement entities. They asserted that the were owed compensation for their roles as spouses, employees and benefactors. In her suit Benita von Sass alleged that de Ruiter invoked spiritual authority for their sexual relationship (Pruden 2017):

“The defendant convinced me to sexually submit to him, reminding me that this was ‘God’s will,’ ” she wrote. “The defendant stated he was the ‘Christ on Earth’ and that defying him was to defy truth, goodness and God. Accordingly, I obeyed and submitted.”

She also alleged that de Ruiter had been teaching marital fidelity while having affairs with married followers. His account of this apparent contradiction was that “his ‘burden from God’ was to act against his own message and to violate his own marriage so as to prepare him inwardly for his upcoming battle with Satan” (Rinaldi 2023). Benita von Sass subsequently settled her suit out of court, along with a nondisclosure agreement.

As questions about his sexual activities mounted, de Ruiter offered explanations that invoked the logic of his teachings on his website (John de Ruiter website 2023):

However this may look on the surface, I know that it comes to me through my response to what I most deeply know on a metaphysical level. I invite anybody in proximity to me to draw from the equivalent clarity within them. In addressing the woman to whom I have given the invitation, I asked nothing but that each finds a response that is deeply rested and true to their own clarity…. Knowing is a point of no question, no further choices, just the love inherent to awareness at rest.

The controversy swirly around de Ruiter’s sexual relationships led to an erosion of the movement’s membership base and the formation of an “Accountability Committee” (Horsley 2017; Pruden 2017; Rinaldi 2023). The committee reported that “the committee spoke for many meetings about “the movement of the calling through sexuality” but that, “Through John’s opening this up in a deep, delicate, sensitive, discreet and forthcoming manner” the committee was able to reach “new understandings” and “a depth of restedness.” The committee also established an ongoing presence for itself, stating that “The members of the Committee have seen that what comes from John has always been good…and we continue to meet every month or two, looking at what is moving in the community and how we can all take care in the best way possible.” Committee report signatories included John de Ruiter, Leigh Ann de Ruiter, and Nicholas de Ruiter.

Movement damage control did not end the controversy, however. John de Ruiter was subsequently charge with sexually assaulting seven group members between 2012 and 2020 (Mulcahy2023). Leigh Ann de Ruiter was implicated in five of those incidents. In those five cases Leigh Ann allegedly invited women to the de Ruiter residence and was present while de Ruiter explained that “’the calling’” was directing him toward them and that, by having sex with him, they would achieve a higher state of being” (Pruden 2017; Rinaldi 2023).

The couple has been charged, entered a not guilty plea, and been granted bail pending trial. Given the erosion of group membership, the move to a more remote location, and pending legal proceedings, the future of the movement and its leadership appears to be precarious.

IMAGES

Image #1: John de Ruiter.
Image #2: Front cover of de Ruiter’s book, Unveiling Reality.
Image #3: John de Ruiter conducting a ritual.
Image #3: The Oasis Centre in Edmonton.

REFERENCES

Crawshaw, Caitlin. 2022. “Controversial Spiritual Leader John de Ruiter Sets his Sights on Rural Alberta.” Urban Affairs, August 29. Accessed from https://urbanaffairs.ca/dirt/controversial-spiritual-leader-john-de-ruiter-sets-his-sights-on-rural-alberta/ on 25 November 2023.

De Ruiter, John. 2001. Unveiling Reality. Edmonton: Oasis Edmonton.

Horsley, Jasun. 2017. “The Casualties of “Truth”: Deconstructing John de Ruiter’s Sexual “Calling.” Anticulture, April 10. Accessed from https://auticulture.wordpress.com/2017/04/10/the-casualties-of-truth-deconstructing-john-de-ruiters-sexual-calling/ on 5 December 2023.

Horsley, Jasun. 2017. Dark Oasis: A Self-Made Messiah Unveiled. Anticulture.

Hutchinson, Brian. 2013. “When lovers turn litigants: Edmonton sisters sue spiritual leader for support.” National Post, April 26. Accessed from https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/edmontonspiritualleader on 1 December 2023.

Hutchinson, Brian. 2001. “The Gospel According to John De Ruiter.” Religion News Blog, May 5. Accessed from https://www.religionnewsblog.com/14341/the-gospel-according-to-john-de-ruiter on 26 November 2023.

John de Ruiter website. 2023. “Don’t Listen to Teachings.” Accessed from https://johnderuiter.com/ on 1 December 2023.

Joosse, Paul. 2006. “Silence, Charisma and Power: The Case of John de Ruiter,” Journal of Contemporary Religion 21:355-71.

Leon, Harmon. 2015. “The Canadian Man Who Commands a Cult With His Gaze.” Vice, February 25. Accessed from https://www.vice.com/en/article/xd5eqz/inside-a-canadian-staring-cult-224 on 5 December 2023.

McKeen, Scott. 2000. “I was God’s wife.” Religion News Blog, May 16. Accessed from https://www.religionnewsblog.com/14340 on 26 November 2023 on 5 December 2023.

McWilliams, Joe. 2022. “Midnight Sky the new kid on the block in Hondo.” Lakeside Leader, May 30. Accessed from https://www.lakesideleader.com/midnight-sky-the-new-kid-on-the-block-in-hondo/ on 1 December 2023.

Mulcahy, Karyn. 2023. “John and Leigh Ann de Ruiter to plead not guilty to sexual assault charges.”  CTVNewsEdmonton, September 21. Accessed from https://edmonton.ctvnews.ca/john-and-leigh-ann-de-ruiter-to-plead-not-guilty-to-sexual-assault-charges-1.6572240 on 5 December 2023.

Pruden, Jana. 2023. “Alberta spiritual leader John de Ruiter charged with four counts of sexual assault.” Globe and Mail, November 25. Accessed from https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-alberta-spiritual-leader-john-de-ruiter-charged-with-four-counts-of/ on 25 November 2023.

Pruden, Jana. 2023. “Embattled spiritual leader John De Ruiter selling home as followers continue migration to northern Alberta.” Globe and Mail, June 25. Accessed from https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/alberta/article-embattled-spiritual-leader-john-de-ruiter-sells-home-as-followers/ on 27 November 2023.

Pruden, Jana. 2023. “The Outsiders.” Globe and Mail, March 17. Accessed from https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-john-de-ruiter-alberta-followers/ on 1 December 2023.

Pruden, Jana. 2017. “Are a spiritual leader’s sexual relationships a calling or a dangerous abuse of power?” Globe and Mail, November 25. Accessed from https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-john-de-ruiter-oasis-centre-edmonton/ on 27 November 2023.

Rinaldi, Luc.  2023. “ The False Prophet of Edmonton.” Macleans, November 20. Accessed from https://macleans.ca/longforms/john-de-ruiter/ on 1 December 2023.

Publication Date:
14 December 2023

NEO-AMERICAN CHURCH TIMELINE

1928 (April 17):  Arthur J. Kleps was born in New York City.

1960:  High school and prison psychologist Arthur (Art) Kleps and his wife Sally first experimented with the psychedelic substance mescaline and had transformative experiences.

1963 (November 1):  The Neo-American Church (NAC) was founded by Kleps and incorporated in California.

1963 (December):  After reading an account of psychedelic researchers Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert moving to the Hitchcock estate in Millbrook, NY, Kleps wrote to Leary and was invited to visit for the first of many times.

1964 (Winter):  Kleps was fired from his job as a school psychologist for distributing a memo he had written suggesting that marijuana use was not dangerous. Kleps began experimenting with LSD at this time.

1965 (April):  The NAC rented a camp in rural Cranberry Lake, NY called Morning Glory Lodge.

1965 (Summer):  Morning Glory Lodge was opened as summer retreat for members of the NAC and for those associated with the Millbrook commune.

1965 (Fall):  Kleps and his family moved to Florida for the winter with the intention of returning to Cranberry Lake the following summer. He established a branch of the NAC in Miami.

1965 (December):  New York State Police began investigating Kleps and his association with Leary.

1966 (Spring):  Kleps returned to Cranberry Lake and again opened Morning Glory Lodge to visitors.

1966 (May 25):  Kleps testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee investigating LSD use and called for psychedelics to be made legal for religious purposes.

1966 (Summer-Fall):  Kleps and Sally separated, and she moved to Florida with their two children.

1967 (January):  Kleps moved full-time to the Millbrook commune, which was already home to Leary’s League for Spiritual Discovery and the Sri Ram Ashram and its guru William Haines.

1967 (Spring):  Kleps estimated the NAC had approximately 1,000 members around the nation. However, NYS Police records from November 1966 indicated only 327 members in the United States.

1967 (May 4):  The NAC was incorporated as a religious corporation in New York State. The original trustees included Kleps, Leary, Haines, and William Mellon Hitchcock, co-owner of the Millbrook estate.

1967 (April):  Kleps married his second wife Wendy Williams at the Millbrook estate. The ceremony was conducted by Timothy Leary.

1967 (July):  Local Dutchess County police established a day-long roadblock around the Millbrook estate, stopping motorists as they passed by and ticketing many for a variety of minor reasons.

1967:  Kleps’ book The Neo-American Church Catechism and Handbook was first published by the Sri Ram Ashram’s Kriya Press. A coloring book titled History of the Psychedelic Movement Cartoon and Coloring Book was also published.

1967 (December 9):  Local Dutchess County police raided the Millbrook estate and charged Leary, Kleps, Haines and Hitchcock with drug possession.

1968 (February-May):  Kleps and other members of the NAC were forced off of the Hitchcock Estate when it was closed to everyone other than Hitchcock family members and employees. Kleps established the NAC headquarters in South Hero, Vermont with $10,000 given to him by the Hitchcocks.

1968 (July 1):  The United States vs. Kuch decision was issued by Judge Gerhard A. Gesell of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The ruling asserted that the NAC was not a religion in the same way that the Native American Church was and that, as such, the defendant Judith Kuch (a member of the NAC) could not claim she was transporting marijuana for use in her religious practice.

1969 (April 6):  Kleps was arrested in Washington D.C. for attempting to distribute peyote in front of the Department of Justice building in protest of the United States vs. Kuch ruling.

1969 (Fall):  Kleps separated from Wendy and moves to South Hadley, Massachusetts and began living with a seventeen-year-old Smith College student. Their apartment was raided that September, and Kleps was charged with possession of LSD and marijuana and lewd and lascivious cohabitation. He eventually served four-months in prison for these offenses.

1970 (February):  Kleps was arrested for allegedly attempting to smuggle cocaine to prisoners at the Hudson River State Hospital in Dutchess County. The charge was reduced to possession of an illegal substance, and he was put on probation for three years.

1970 (Summer):  Kleps returned to Millbrook to briefly live on the Hitchcock estate once again.

1970-1971:  Kleps married his third wife Joan.

1971:  The second edition of The Neo-American Church Catechism and Handbook, aka, The Boo Hoo Bible, was published.

1973 (December 7):  Kleps excommunicated Leary from the NAC for Leary’s recent publication, Starseed.

1975:  Kleps’ memoir Millbrook: A Narrative of the Early Years of American Psychedelianism was first published in book form. Revised versions were published in 1977, 1992-1994, and 1997-1998.

1977 (Winter):  The NAC purchased 100-acres of land in Humboldt County, California to establish a commune called “Mandalit.”

1984 (September):  Arthur Kleps was charged with possession of 927 marijuana plants and for shooting at a police observation plane in Humboldt County. He fled the state.

1985 (May):  Kleps was tracked down in Vermont after fleeing Humboldt County and was extradited back to California to stand trial.

1988-1991:  After serving time for his California charges, Kleps moved with his family to Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He is soon forced to leave the country by that nation’s government for reported anti-Semitic activities, which he denied.

1999 (July 17):  Kleps passed away in Multnomah County, Oregon. His wife Joan has continued as Bee Hee of the NAC.

FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY

The Neo-American Church (NAC) was originally incorporated as a religion in California by Arthur J. Kleps in 1963. [Image at right] Kleps, born in New York City in 1928, was the son of the prominent Lutheran minister Arthur R. Kleps, and earned a master’s degree in psychology from Syracuse University. In 1959, he married his first wife Sally Pease, and the two moved to Virginia where Kleps held the post of chief clinical psychologist in education at the Lynchburg Training School. The two lived in Virginia only briefly before returning to New York State when their first daughter Susan was born. In 1960, Kleps and Sally had their first experience with a psychedelic substance (pure mescaline sulfate), which he later described as a “ten-hour long total visionary” experience (Kleps 2005:6). By 1963, the family was living in New York’s Adirondack Mountains where Kleps served as a psychologist for four regional school districts. In the fall of that year Kleps first read about Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert, Harvard psychologists who had begun conducting experiments with psychedelics in 1960 and had been dismissed from their positions in the spring of 1963. Leary and Alpert, along with their former graduate student Ralph Metzner and others, moved onto a 2,500-acre estate in the village of Millbrook, Dutchess County, New York, in August of 1963. Intrigued that there were other psychologists interested in psychedelics and willing to put their careers on the line as a result, Kleps wrote to Leary that fall and sent him a copy of a mock psychological test he had devised as well as a description of his mescaline experience. Leary responded with a postcard and invitation to visit the Millbrook estate (Kleps 2005:5). [Image at right]

By the time Kleps first visited Millbrook in December 1963, he had already decided that the psychedelic experience he had undergone was profoundly spiritual in nature and thus the substances themselves were in fact sacramental. As a result, on November 1, 1963, Kleps incorporated the NAC in the State of California with the intent:

1. To provide mutual help and encouragement in the search for Truth, for the enrichment and unfoldment of the spiritual life.

2. To furnish a central headquarters, through which seekers may locate and communicate with each other.

3. To encourage reading and study on the part of members and friends, and to make available books and literature in the fields of religion, mysticism, philosophy, psychology, and parapsychology.

4. To provide, for those that request it, the opportunity to have an experience, which is a sacrament of the Neo-American Church. The experience is defined as that experience which occurs following the partaking of such substances as may be found useful for the purpose of increasing man’s understanding of himself. (Neo-American Church By-Laws, 1963).

The fact that the original by-laws do not specifically mention psychedelics as being sacraments, and the fact that the church was initially incorporated in California and not New York State where Kleps lived, was most likely the result of his desire to continue being employed as a school psychologist. This changed in the winter of 1964 when Kleps issued a report in response to harsher marijuana penalties having been enacted in New York State in which he argued that cannabis was not addictive and that these new penalties were too harsh. Kleps maintained that he was dismissed from his school psychologist position as a result of having authored this report, though school officials suggested at the time that he resigned (“Art Kleps Formed Neo-American Church” 1966:40.).

Kleps’ loss of employment freed him to devote more of his time to establishing both the NAC itself and its initial headquarters, known as Morning Glory Lodge, located on Cranberry Lake in New York’s Adirondack Mountains. For the church, Kleps decided to take a decidedly irreverent and satirical tact when establishing its structure. “Clergy” were known as “Boo Hoos (male)” or “Bee Hees (female)” while a “Primate” was designated for each state by the “Chief Boo Hoo (Kleps).” State Primates could name local Boo Hoos, but final decisions were made by Kleps. A “Board of Toads” acted in an advisory manner and included Timothy Leary and William Mellon (Billy) Hitchcock, co-owner of the Millbrook estate along with his twin brother Thomas (Tommy) Hitchcock III. The church’s symbol was a drawing of a three-eyed toad, [Image at right] while its official motto was “Victory over Horseshit” and its official hymn was “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.”

Morning Glory Lodge was a former private camp that included a wood-framed house, four smaller cabins, and an outbuilding with a generator. [Image at right] The camp was accessible only via boat or by walking through a wooded area that abutted a nearby Department of Environmental Conservation campground road. Kleps found the rustic and peaceful location suited his desire to establish a “psychedelic summer camp.” He purchased the property in the spring of 1965 for “$15,000, with $2,000 down on a $100-a-month land contract” (Kleps 2005:36-37).

Kleps had kept in touch with the Millbrook group during this time and visited them in the spring of 1965, when Leary was away in India on his honeymoon. During this visit, Kleps was unknowingly given a large dose of LSD and had an extremely intense experience in which he described himself as changing colors until finally completely disappearing (Kleps 1971:209-11). This was Kleps first experience with LSD, which he found to be most useful for achieving his definition of enlightenment, and he referred to it as “the Divine sacrament,” or “the True Host.”

Through a network established via his friendly relationship with the Millbrook group, Kleps was not only able to grow membership in the NAC, but also played host to several visitors at Morning Glory Lodge throughout the summer of 1965. A mimeographed flyer noted that the Lodge had electricity and running water as well as “docks, boat, beach, etc.” while all “mail, food, booze” were delivered daily by boat. A list of activities included slides, a stroboscope (which they “hoped” to acquire), music (though the Lodge’s generator had to be running to power the stereo), group meetings at sunset, yoga in the morning (all group activity was voluntary), discussion time, summer sports (swimming, fishing, hiking), “bizarre, surreal activities,” the possible construction of a chapel in the woods, art work, reading, divination, and psychedelic sessions, though psychedelics themselves would not be distributed (Kleps 1965b: “Morning Glory Lodge”). Guests that summer included Lisa Bieberman, an associate of Leary’s who published an informational bulletin on psychedelics from an office in Cambridge, Massachusetts, underground psychedelic chemist Tord Svenson, professor of the psychology of religion Walter Houston Clark, Ed Rosenfeld, founder of the psychedelic religion known as the Natural Church in Greenwich Village, and, briefly, Timothy Leary and Billy Hitchcock (Kleps 2005:49-59).

The fall and winter of 1965 saw Kleps shut down Morning Glory Lodge for the winter, and he and Sally helped move her mother to Florida. While in Florida for the winter, Kleps rented a house and held weekly meetings of the NAC, and his activities received local media attention (Davis 1966:68). While Kleps was in Florida, one of the members of the NAC from Upstate New York attempted to claim that he was a conscientious objector and that due to the beliefs of his religion he refused to serve in the military. This situation gained the attention of the FBI, who contacted law enforcement in Florida to investigate Kleps and the NAC. The Florida Bureau of Narcotics opened an investigation that included interviewing Kleps and other members of the NAC as well as monitoring their meetings. The Florida Bureau of Narcotics contacted the New York State Police which began an investigation into the activities taking place at Morning Glory Lodge, including interviewing various locals and collecting written material related to the NAC. The investigation also included the testimony of a variety of informants who continued reporting on the goings on at Morning Glory Lodge throughout the summer of 1966, after the Kleps’ had returned (Neo-American Church files, New York State Division of State Police Non-Criminal Investigation Case Files).

Shortly after returning from Florida and opening the Lodge for the summer, Kleps reached his peak of national fame, first by being featured in an interview in Pageant magazine, which at the time had a circulation of over 300,000, and later through his testimony before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on narcotics at which he outlined the general philosophy of the NAC, answered questions from various Senators, and suggested that should Leary, who was facing a jail sentence due to his December 1965 arrest for possession of marijuana at the Laredo/Mexico border, be incarcerated, there would be a “religious civil war” (Watertown Daily Times: May 25, 1966) (Bowart 1966:3). Though the “civil war” quote gained notoriety in newspapers across the U.S., the rest of Kleps’ testimony was an impassioned declaration that psychedelics (and marijuana) were used by the members of the NAC as paths to enlightenment, not as frivolous “kicks,” and were therefore sacramental and because of this it was unconstitutional for the government to regulate the free exercise of their religious practice. Citing the recently passed Drug Abuse Control Amendments which exempted peyote use by the Native American Church, Kleps declared that since the government saw fit to allow one religion to use psychedelics in ceremonial practice, it must therefore allow other duly formed religions the same ability (Kleps 1966:413-17).

Following his Senate testimony and the media attention it received, Kleps became a kind of underground celebrity. However, his wife Sally was finding it increasingly difficult to raise small children in an unstable environment that included various visitors and hangers on, most of whom were under the influence of marijuana and psychedelics, as well as Kleps’ admitted alcoholism and philandering. She left Morning Glory Lodge with the children and moved to Florida full-time in the summer of 1966. Kleps, upset by the loss of his family, attempted to relocate permanently to the Millbrook estate shortly after, but Leary dissuaded him, suggesting instead that he move to Alabama where a supposed wealthy donor was willing to pay Kleps’ living expenses so that he could write a book. Kleps attempted to do so, shutting down Morning Glory Lodge once again and moving to Alabama, but the wealthy donor turned out to be a criminal conman who disappeared with most of Kleps’ belongings. (Kleps 2005:92-93). By the winter of 1966, Kleps was back in New York State, essentially alone and with no permanent place to live. He returned to Millbrook and once again asked to be allowed to move onto the estate full-time. This time Leary agreed and in January 1967, Kleps moved his meager belongings into the estate’s sixty-four-room “Big House.”

By the time Kleps had returned from the fiasco in Alabama there was another religious group also living at the Millbrook estate; a splinter group who once were part of the Ananda Ashram in nearby Monroe, New York and were now known as the Sri Ram Ashram. Led by their guru William Haines, the Sri Ram Ashram members had left Ananda after a falling out over the use of psychedelics and marijuana, and Leary had invited them to reside at the estate. In Haines, Kleps found an iconoclastic fellow-traveler with an equally dark humor and sharp wit. The two immediately hit it off, though their relationship would be a tumultuous one.

Once Kleps moved onto the Millbrook estate he embarked on his most productive time. In May of 1967, he incorporated the NAC as a religion in New York State; Leary, Haines, and Billy Hitchcock were among its directors (the Board of Toads). Upon moving on to the estate, he met Wendy Williams, whom he would marry at a psychedelic ceremony overseen by Leary that summer. All the while, Kleps worked regularly on his first book, The Neo-American Church Catechism and Handbook, aka, “The Boo-Hoo Bible,” which was first printed and distributed by the Sri Ram Ashram on a printing press they installed in the estate’s former carriage house. [Image at right]

It was also during this time that Kleps began to have philosophical and personality differences with Leary and his group, which by that time was also incorporated as a religion in New York State and was known as the League for Spiritual Discovery. Often jealous of Leary’s fame and charisma, and also envious of his relationship with the Hitchcocks whom Kleps saw as would-be benefactors of the NAC, Kleps bristled both at what he perceived as Leary’s lack of philosophical depth and his ability to consistently be in the news. Kleps saw himself as a more radical psychedelic advocate than Leary and one with a purer conviction. For his part, Leary at first viewed Kleps as a similarly minded former psychologist whose views and ideas were in line with his own. Over time, however, Leary and others on the Millbrook estate began to question Kleps’ alcoholism and sometimes erratic behavior as well as his biting satire.

The differences between Leary and Kleps were exacerbated when The Neo-American Church Catechism and Handbook was first published. At Kleps’ request, Leary agreed to provide a review of the book in which, despite lauding Kleps as an “authentic American anarchist, non-conformist, itinerant preacher,” he also described him as having “absolutely no sense of beauty,” being a “clumsy manipulator, a blatant flatterer, a bully to the willing weak, the world’s most incompetent conman” and “a sodden disgrace to the (psychedelic) movement” (Kleps 2005:206-08.) This double handed review was likely a result of Kleps’ frequent alcohol-fueled benders and the fact that he had begun plotting with Haines to usurp Leary as the wealthy Hitchcocks’ favored tenant. According to Kleps himself, both he and Haines were constantly attempting to curry favor with Billy Hitchcock particularly in an attempt to receive financial backing for their various endeavors (Kleps 2005:115-16).

External pressure was also rising on the Millbrook communal scene. Local law enforcement had been concerned about the situation on the estate for some time and after Leary’s Laredo arrest and the subsequent media fallout, they took action. In April, 1966, the Dutchess County Sheriff’s office, along with the Dutchess County District Attorney’s office, raided the estate and arrested forty-one people for various drug-related offenses. While Kleps was not there at the time, the raid represented to him the first salvo in the “Battle of Millbrook.” Continued law enforcement pressure throughout 1966 and 1967 included roadblocks around the estate, stopping anyone and everyone passing by, and the visiting of the estate by undercover informants. In December, 1967, the estate was raided once again, and this time Kleps, along with Leary, Haines, and Hitchcock were arrested on drug charges (Kleps 1971:69-73; Leary 1968:5). A prolonged legal battle would result, lasting into the early 1970s.

The continued law enforcement pressure and internal fissures eventually led to the Hitchcock brothers closing the estate to everyone but their own family and employees in early 1968 (“Dr. Leary and Followers Told to Vacate Estate” 1968:20). Leary moved with his wife and children to California while Haines and the Sri Ram Ashram moved to Arizona to land purchased by Billy Hitchcock and another wealthy patron. Kleps, Wendy, and their infant daughter moved to Vermont with $10,000 donated by Billy Hitchcock. The NAC continued after the Kleps’ left Millbrook and in the spring of 1968 one of its members, Judith Kuch, the “Primate of Potomac,” who had been arrested for possession of marijuana and LSD, attempted to have her case overturned via the Freedom of Religion clause. Kuch’s lawyers argued that as a member of the NAC she held the religious belief that marijuana and LSD were sacraments and that she should be allowed to possess and use them based on the legal precedent established by the Native American Church’s peyote exemption. However, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that, essentially, the NAC was not a “true” religion at all and that, therefore, its members were not protected by the free exercise clause. In the ruling opinion written by District Judge Gerhard A. Gesell, he suggested that a close examination of the NAC’s established beliefs and a reading of The Boo Hoo Bible [Image at right] showed a lack of “any solid evidence of a belief in a supreme being, a religious disciple, a ritual, or tenets to guide one’s daily existence” and that instead “one gains the inescapable impression that the membership is mocking established institutions” and shows no regard for “a supreme being, law or civic responsibility” (United States v. Kuch 1968).

The Kuch decision has remained controversial as it was effectively an attempt by a federal court to rule upon what is legally considered a “legitimate” religion, which itself has a contentious legal history (Newman 2015). Kleps attempted a public protest of the ruling in 1969 by trying to distribute peyote in front of the Department of Justice building in Washington, for which he was arrested. He also included a transcript of the Kuch decision in the second edition of The Boo Hoo Bible, which was published in 1971.

By the early 1970s the NAC was essentially dormant, though Kleps did periodically issue church bulletins (which were called Divine Toad Sweat) and published the second edition of The Boo Hoo Bible. Kleps and Wendy separated in the fall of 1969, and he began an affair with a seventeen-year-old Smith College student. The apartment they shared was raided and Kleps was arrested for possession of LSD and marijuana and for “lewd and lascivious cohabitation” (“Kleps Faces Another Charge” 1969:10B). He was arrested in 1970 for attempting to smuggle cocaine in to a prisoner at the Hudson River State Hospital (“Charge Reduced Against Kleps” 1970:17). In all, he served four-months in prison and was placed on probation for three-years. Kleps also met and married his third wife Joan during this time and made successful attempts at abstaining from alcohol, though he continued to use both marijuana and LSD.

In 1973, Kleps excommunicated Leary from the NAC for publication of the essay Starseed, in which Leary declared that he was decoding the secrets of the universe through the recent discovery of the Kohoutek comet. Kleps found these claims preposterous and, frustrated by Leary’s continued ability to be in the news while he and the NAC had faded in the post-1960s media landscape, he published a Divine Toad Sweat banishing Leary from the church (Kleps 1973). Leary did not respond and by 1973 had stopped communicating entirely with Kleps.

In an attempt to raise money (Kleps refused to work at a paid job and instead lived off NAC membership dues and welfare), he wrote a memoir of his time at Millbrook titled Millbrook: A Narrative of the Early Years of American Psychedelianism. Despite grandiose hopes that the book manuscript would be picked up by a major publisher and lead to a windfall of several hundred thousand dollars, Millbrook drew little interest, and Kleps first self-published the book via hand-typed and mimeographed pages. In 1975, it was published by a small publisher called The Bench Press and has been republished several times since, though never earning near the money Kleps had hoped (Call 2020:77-80, 122-23).

In the winter of 1977, the NAC purchased 100 acres of land in Humboldt County California. Kleps had decided that he and his family, along with a small group of church members, should move to a rural location to live communally and grow and sell marijuana to earn money. In Kleps’ mind this would become the headquarters of the NAC and would eventually attract many members to join them who would each pay a fee to acquire a small piece of the acreage to build some type of residence and otherwise pool their resources. Called “Mandalit,” the commune lasted until 1984 when it was raided by police and Kleps was charged with possession of 927 marijuana plants and for shooting at a police observation plane (“North Coast Residents Indicted by Grand Jury” 1984:2.)  He fled California but was tracked down in Vermont and extradited to Humboldt County where he was sentenced to over two years in prison (“$40,000 Bail Set for California Fugitive” 1985:17).

In 1988, after serving his jail time in California, Kleps moved with his family to Amsterdam in the Netherlands. He was soon forced to leave the country by that country’s government for reported anti-Semitic activities. Kleps himself claimed that he had been set up by “a DEA agent named D. O’Neill and his co-conspirators in the Dutch police, Mossad, and American Express” and unsuccessfully filed suit against the Netherlands in the European Court of Human Rights (Kleps 2005:171-72). Kleps and his family returned to the U.S., and he eventually passed away on July 17, 1999 in Multnomah County, Oregon, at the age of seventy-one. His wife Joan continued the NAC, which has continued as a web-based organization.

DOCTRINES/BELIEFS

The NAC is a very loosely organized religion and has long been against overt doctrine. However, there are three principles listed on the current NAC website that all members are required to agree to:

1. The psychedelic substances, such as cannabis and LSD, are religious sacraments since their ingestion encourages Enlightenment, which is the recognition that life is a dream and the externality of relations an illusion (solipsistic nihilism).

2. The use of the psychedelic sacraments is a basic human right and all interference therewith is an assault on this right.

3. We do not encourage the ingestion of the greater sacraments such as LSD and mescaline by those who are unprepared and we define preparedness as familiarity with the lesser sacraments such as cannabis and nitrous oxide and with solipsist-nihilist epistemological reasoning based on such models as David Hume, Sextus Empiricus and Nagarjuna. (Neo-American Church website).

The current three principles are variations on the original three as created by Art Kleps in 1965. The original three were:

1. Every human being has the right to explore and expand his own consciousness in his own way, and to simulate visionary experience by whatever means he considers desirable and proper—without interference. Others may encourage, assist, deplore, ignore, argue, or keep silent but they have no right to use force.

2. We regard the writings and teachings of Timothy Leary to be the best general present guide to expansive living in our time-space. This is subject to individual reservations and future changes, interpretations and misinterpretations.

3. We will not encourage (although we will not prevent by force) the ingestion of psychedelic substances by people who are unprepared. (Kleps 1965a:1).

Most likely these changed after Leary was excommunicated by Kleps in 1973.

RITUALS/PRACTICES

As with doctrine, the NAC did not have fixed rituals. Kleps wrote in a 1965 that the reason for the lack of doctrine or rituals in the NAC was because “anyone who has been through the psychedelic experience knows that what appears to be a great shining truth at one level can turn out to be the most crashing nonsense at another” (Kleps 1965a:1). In the 1966 interview with Pageant magazine, Kleps stated that “the important thing with the Neo-American Church is not the service. We do hold weekly meetings, and they certainly have instructional and social value, but the important thing in the Church is the psychedelic experience itself” which is best conducted “in your own home, with people you know very well and trust, or to have it in the kind of situation that is available at Morning Glory Lodge, our headquarters on Cranberry Lake, New York, or at the Castalia Foundation’s Center in Millbrook, New York…” Through the group meetings, NAC members, often with the aid of marijuana or a low dose of LSD, could achieve, in Kleps words, “the same sort of group identity that you sometimes will get in a meeting of the Society of Friends” (Kleps 1971:83-84).

The NAC also used nonchemical means to achieve a state akin to the psychedelic experience, through a variety of ways including “multiple reading,” where four or more people read random lines from different books in succession, turning on a television with no sound while playing a random radio station, as well as psychedelic paintings, stroboscopes, and slide shows (Kleps 1971:84).

ORGANIZATION/LEADERSHIP

The following is a summary of the 1968 by-laws of the NAC, as reprinted in Kleps 1971:39-43, except otherwise noted:

The Chief Boo Hoo/Bee Hee:

1. He/she is, by virtue of their office, the Chairperson of the Board of Toads.

2. He/she has such powers as may be reasonably construed as belonging to the chief executive of any organization, and, in addition, absolute power to rule by fiat within the Church on all matters pertaining to faith and morals and the ordinary affairs of the organization.

3. He/she appoints all officers of the Church and defines their duties and responsibilities.

4. He/she appoints members of the Board of Toads.

The Board of Toads:

1. The primary purpose of the Board of Toads is to ensure that the Chief Boo Hoo/Bee Hee’s every wish is granted.

2. Upon the apparent incapacitation or death of the Chief Boo Hoo, a special meeting of the Board may be called by any Toad to elect a successor to the post of Chief Boo Hoo. This shall be done through consultation with astrologers, who attempt to find a candidate whose horoscope closely resembles that of the incumbent. If two or more nominees are found with such horoscopes, the issue may be settled through bribery and “deals.” However, once the new Chief Boo Hoo/Bee Hee is elected, his/her power shall be absolute, and he/she may repudiate any agreement made with electors prior to his/her elevation. If no replacement is found within one year of the Chief Boo Hoo/Bee Hee’s death or total disablement, the organization shall be dissolved, and all assets sold, and the proceeds given to the Roman Catholic archbishop of New York.

SPIN

1. SPIN is the super-secret, highly trained defensive arm of the NAC. Made up entirely of young men of fanatical and paranoid dispositions, SPIN serves to ensure a supply of the True Host (LSD, peyote, etc.) to members held by the enemy and to carry out special assignments designed to prevent persecution of our religion (Kleps 1971: 14).

SPIN activities are entirely the responsibility of the Chief Boo Hoo/Bee Hee and shall not involve the Board of Toads.

CLERGY

1. All clergy shall be ordained by the Chief Boo Hoo/Bee Hee or his/her nominees (at present Toads, Primates, Metropolitans or Patriarchs). Powers of removal and excommunication are reserved to the Chief Boo Hoo/Bee Hee.

2. Boo Hoos/Bee Hees may call meetings, distribute the sacraments, perform marriages, etc.

3. Boo Hoos/Bee Hees report to the Primate, Metropolitan, or Patriarch of the sack in which they reside.

ORGANIZATION OF THE LOCAL BAGS

1. The administrative district from which the local Boo Hoo/Bee Hee draws his/her congregation shall be known as a “bag,” and shall be self-governing.

SOCIAL POLICY

1. The social policy of the NAC shall be set by the Chief Boo Hoo/Bee Hee, however, members of the Hierarchy, Boo Hoos/Bee Hees and ordinary members are free to speak and act on the basis of their own convictions and to represent the Bags, Sacks and administrative divisions for which they are responsible, even if such conviction and representation is contrary to official policy.

ISSUES/CHALLENGES

The main issues and challenges for the NAC had to do with the fact their “sacraments” were illegal, despite various legal challenges by the NAC and affiliated religions such as the League for Spiritual Discovery. As noted earlier, this illegality led to nearly constant law enforcement pressure, up to and including arrests and jail sentences for Kleps and others affiliated with the NAC. This constant pressure led to the NAC being an essentially underground religion with limited growth. Kleps’ own erratic behavior, alcoholism, misogyny, philandering, extreme views, and overall iconoclasm limited the attraction of the NAC, despite its countercultural bona fides.

After being forced off of the Hitchcock Estate in Millbrook, Kleps’ association with Leary essentially evaporated, leading to his eventual excommunication of Leary in 1973. In subsequent years, the struggle of the NAC to attract and maintain new members led to Kleps and his family’s frequent financial troubles and instability. Various attempts to establish permanent headquarters in Vermont, upstate New York, and California ran into similar problems with local law enforcement. Even Kleps’ attempt to move his family to Amsterdam in the Netherlands, seeking more liberal attitudes towards the use of drugs ended in failure when he was accused of antisemitism and forced to return to the United States. However, despite all of these struggles, the NAC has survived as an organization, though it is far from the mass religion that Kleps had envisioned it to be.

IMAGES

Image #1: Photo of Art Kleps when he was a school psychologist, early 1960s, Neo-American Church Website.
Image #2: Photo of the “Big House” on the Hitchcock Estate, Millbrook, NY, winter of 1966-1967, Neo-American Church Website.
Image #3. Logo and motto of the Neo-American Church, Neo-American Church Website.
Image #4. Photo taken by NY State Police undercover officers of the cabins at Morning Glory Lodge, Cranberry Lake, NY, summer of 1966, New York State Archives.
Image #5. Photo of the “gray buildings” on the Hitchcock Estate, Millbrook, NY, winter of 1966-1967.
Image #6: Cover of the the Boo Hoo Bible.

REFERENCES

Bowart, Walter. “Neo-American Church Gives ‘Em Hell.” 1966. The East Village Other, June 15, 3.

Call, Jack. 2020. Life in a Psychedelic Church: Memories and Musings. Wittier, CA: The Institute for the Advancement of Psychedelic Christianity.

“Charge Reduced Against Kleps.” 1970. Poughkeepsie Journal, February 27, 17.

Davis, Miller. 1966. “LSD: ‘Walls Come Alive…You Soar.’” The Miami Herald, March 13, 68.

“Dr. Leary and Followers Told to Vacate Estate.” 1968. New York Times, February 20, 20.

“$40,000 Bail Set for California Fugitive.” 1985. The Burlington Free Press, May 25. 17.

Kleps, Art. 2005. Millbrook: A Narrative of the Early Years of Psychedelianism, Recension of 2005. Oakland: The Bench Press.

Kleps, Art. 1973. “The Excommunication of Timothy Leary.” Neo-American Church Website. Neo-American Church. Accessed from https://okneoac.org/ on 28 October 2023.

Kleps, Art. 1966. Testimony before the United States Senate, Committee on Government Operations, Subcommittee on Executive Reorganization, May 25, 413-25.

Kleps, Art. 1965a. “Announcing the Formation of the Neo-American Church.” Neo-American Church files, box 1, folder 113, items 251-260, New York State Division of State Police Non-Criminal Investigation Case Files, New York State Archives, Albany, NY.

Kleps, Art. 1965b. “Morning Glory Lodge.” Timothy Leary papers, box 80, folder 33, Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library, New York City.

“Kleps Faces Another Charge.” 1969. The Poughkeepsie Journal, September 21, 10B.

Leary, Timothy. 1968. “The Great Millbrook Snot Bust.” The East Village Other, January 1, 5.

Neo-American Church. 1963. “By-Laws.” Neo-American Church files, Box 1, Folder 113, items 251-260, New York State Division of State Police Non-Criminal Investigation Case Files, New York State Archives, Albany, NY.

Newman, Joel S. 2015. “What is a Church? A Look at Tax Exemptions for the Original Kleptonian Neo-American Church and the First Church of Cannabis.” Lexis Federal Tax Journal Quarterly, December 1. Accessed from https://ssrn.com/abstract=2714965 on 28 October 2023.

“North Coast Residents Indicted by Grand Jury.” 1984. Ukiah Daily Journal, September 16, 2.

United States v. Kuch, 288 F. Supp. 439. 1968. United States District Court for the District of Columbia.

SUPPLEMENTARY RESOURCES

“Arthur Kleps Formed Neo-American Church.” 1966. Watertown Daily Times, May 25, 12-13.

Axler, Judith. “Chief of LSD Sect Warns of Religious War.” 1966. New York Daily News, May 26, 686.

Bieberman, Lisa. 1968. “The Psychedelic Experience: Its Betrayal and Its Promise.” The Boston Globe, January 21, 216-20.

“Chief Boo Hoo Beats War Drums on Leary’s Retreat.” 1968. Poughkeepsie Journal, February 21, 1.

“Cult Leader of Cranberry Lake Predicts LSD ‘Holy War’ If U.S. Jails Famed Advocate of Drug.” 1966. Watertown Daily Times, May 25, 12.

“Dr. Leary and 2 Associates Indicted in Narcotics Case.” 1968. New York Times, March 13, 23.

“‘Floating Parsonage’ Planned by Chief Boo Hoo Arthur Kleps.” 1968. Poughkeepsie Journal, April 21, 5.

Lander, Devin R. 2011. “Start Your Own Religion: New York State’s Acid Churches.” Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions 14:64-80.

Partridge, Christopher. 2018. High Culture: Drugs, Mysticism, & the Pursuit of Transcendence in the Modern World. London: Oxford University Press.

Publication Date:
29 October 2023

MISANTHROPIC LUCIFERIAN ORDER TIMELINE

1975:  Jon Nödtveidt was born.

1977:  Shahin Khashnood-Sharis, also known as “Nemesis” or “Vlad”, was born.M

1980s:  Khashnood-Sharis moved to Luleå, Sweden from Iran with his mother.

1990s:  Khashnood-Sharis moved to Gothenburg.

1995:  Misanthropic Luciferian Order (MLO) was formed.

1997:  Several members, including some founding members, left MLO.

1997 (July 23):  Josef Ben Meddour was murdered in Keiller’s park, Gothenburg, Sweden.

1997:  Khashnood-Sharis met his girlfriend, who joined the group.

1998:  Khashnood-Sharis and Nödtveidt were arrested and convicted of murder.

2002:  Liber Azerate was published.

2004:  Khashnood-Sharis and Nödtveidt were released from prison.

2006:  The band Dissection released the album Reinkaos.

2006 (August 13):  Jon Nödtveidt committed suicide.

2006:  Misanthropic Luciferian Order changed its name to Temple of Black Light.

2006:  Quimbanda: Vägen till det vänstra riket (Quimbanda: The Road to the Left Hand Kingdom) was published.

2008 – 2013:  Liber Falxifer Book I, Book II, and Book III were published.

2013:  The Book of Sitra Achra was published.

FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY

In Gothenburg, in 1995, Misantropiska Lucier Orden (The Misanthropic Luciferian Order, MLO) was formed by a handful of Black Metal enthusiasts. The founding members were Shahin Khashnood-Sharis and two of his friends (who shall remain anonymous for reasons made clear below). Khashnood-Sharis was born in the year 1976 in Iran. He emigrated to Sweden together with his mother at a young age and was raised in Luleå in the far north. Classmates have described him as showing interest in Black Metal, Satanism and occultism already in his teens (Hilton 2005:202–04). The family moved to Gothenburg in the early nineties when Khashnood-Sharis was a young adult, and it was here that MLO was first envisioned. Khashnood-Sharis changed his name to Nemesis, but also called himself “Vlad,” “N.A-A.218” and “Father Nemidial.” He was most likely always the front-runner and group leader, even though the hierarchy of MLO was originally intended to be egalitarian (Hilton 2005:190). Jon Nödtveidt (1975–2006), [Image at right] the guitarist of the Black Metal band Dissection, joined the group early in its history. Originally from a small town a few hours from Gothenburg, Nödtveidt had always been interested in music and Black Metal became a passion. He joined the True Satanist Hord, a group of Black Metal enthusiasts who experimented with extreme forms of metal music and occultism. Nödtveidt was later introduced to MLO and Khashnood-Sharis by a mutual friend, one of MLO’s original members (Bogdan 2016:490–91; Hilton 2005:187). Khashnood-Sharis and Nödtveidt quickly became close, inseparable, and they made up the core of the group.

Before MLO had been formed, some of the members frequented “Den Svarte Cikeln” (The Black Circle), an informal gathering of Black Metal musicians and students of occultism, gathered in the record store run by Øystein Aarseth (1968–1993), one of the founding members of the band Mayhem. The Black Metal scene in Norway had been lively since the late 1980s but become more and more erratic during the beginning of the 1990s, culminating in conflicts and violent acts such as church burnings, the suicide of the lead Mayhem singer Per Yngve “Pelle” Ohlin (1976–1991), and the murder of Aarseth in 1993 by Varg Vikernes, founder of the band Burzum. During this time Sweden experienced a Satanic scare which in many respects resembled what had been transpiring in America and Canada in the eighties, sometimes termed “the Satanic Panic” (Best et al. 1991). Reports of horrendous rituals, abductions and murders were in newspapers and TV-shows attached to an unidentified undercurrent of satanism that was said to terrorize Sweden. Even though there is a possibility that isolated incidents (­­like the Church burnings occurring in Norway and Sweden) could have been motivated and committed by people with sympathies for some forms of satanism, there is no evidence of any large presence of satanic groups carrying out violent acts in Sweden during this time (Hjelm et al. 2009:515–29). MLO grew out of this context, a music scene which drew much inspiration from occult ideas and symbolism, Satanism in particular (Johannesson and Klingberg 2011:336–55), and a broader cultural climate in Scandinavia where Satanism was associated with violence and disturbing rituals.

MLO never consisted of more than a handful of members. Most of them (possibly all except Khashnood-Sharis and Nödtveidt) left the group early in its history due to what has been described as internal conflicts, concerns surrounding an increasingly hostile environment and demands on members to undergo and act out violent and gruesome acts. Defected members have been reported as being harassed and threatened after leaving the group (Hilton 2005:190–92).

On July23, 1997 the Algerian migrant Josef Ben Meddaour was murdered in Keiler’s park in central Gothenburg. He had been shot in the back and the head, and had strange markings on his torso, three dots between his shoulder blades. Ben Meddaour’s boyfriend was initially arrested and suspected of the murder but was soon released (“Mordet i Keillers Park” 2013). Almost six months after the crime, the police still had no leads, but then got a tip which turned their attention to Khashnood-Sharis. His girlfriend had reported him to the authorities for domestic abuse and during questionings had said that she was in fear for her and her children’s lives. She knew first hand, she told the police, that Khashnood-Sharis was capable of murder since he had told her that he and Nödtveidt were responsible for the murder of the man who was killed during the summer that year. The police began investigating Khashnood-Sharis and in December 1997 arrested him and Nödtveidt, finding a number of weapons in their respective apartments. They were charged with the murder of Ben Meddaour. The prosecutor’s investigation showed, much thanks to Nödtveidt’s confession, that Khashnood-Sharis and Nödtveidt had run into Ben Meddaour during the evening of the July 22 after a long day of partying. They had struck up a conversation with Ben Meddaour and ended up at Nödtveidts apartment. Ben Meddaour was invited in to continue the conversation but declined. Instead, they agreed to go to a park nearby to drink beer. It is here, supposedly after having attempted to incapacitate Ben Meddaour with a stun gun, which did not have the desired effect, that Ben Meddaour was shot in the back as he attempted to run away, and then shot a second time in the head. During initial interrogations Nödtveidt had said that Ben Meddaour was a sacrifice to Satan, a statement that was later retracted (Hilton 2005:chapter 3).

Khashnood-Sharis and Nödtveidt were convicted to ten years each. Khashnood-Sharis was also convicted of three counts of assault (Gothenburg district court case B19859–97). After the murder, but before the arrest, Khashnood-Sharis had become involved with the woman who would later turn them in. He had contacted her after seeing her on a television talk show, discussing Satanism. She had appeared soaking in a bathtub of what was said to be blood and described her admiration and love of Satan. Khashnood-Sharis and the woman became involved, and she was, most likely, part of MLO during this time. After having reported Khashnood-Sharis to the authorities the couple reunited and Khashnood-Sharis’ girlfriend supported him in court, pregnant with his child (Hilton 2005:220).

In 2002, the book Liber Azerate  [Image at right] was published, attributed to “Father Nemidial”, most likely referring to Khashnood-Sharis. It was first published online in Swedish, only later translated into various languages and made accessible in printed versions. This writing is presented as containing the tenets of MLO. Many subequal publications followed, most likely all penned by Khashnood-Sharis (see more below).

In 2004, Khashnood-Sharis and Nödtveidt were both released. Nödtveidt pursued his musical career and his band Dissection released their third and last album Reinkaos [Image at right] on April 30, 2006. The lyrics were said to be based on Liber Azerate and MLO-beliefs. In 2006, after some public interviews concerning his music, he was reported as having said that he was planning a trip to Transylvania (said to be a designation for Hell), Nödtveidt was found in his apartment shot dead by a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Nödtveidt’s body is said to have laid in the middle of a pentagram drawn on the floor, with a book (possibly Liber Azerate) next to him (Introvigne 2016:509). Soon after Nödtveidt’s death, MLO changed its name to Temple of Black Light. Not much is known of the activities or structure of the group since then, as few studies have been conducted. However, Khashnood-Sharis has continued to published a series of books exploring the worldview and sacramental aspects of the particular form of Satanism of MLO, also termed “Chaos-Gnosticism.”

DOCTRINES/BELIEFS

The group has commented on its relation to Satanism and described it as being opposed to the “vulgar” versions of Satanism which evolved in America, i.e. Anton Lavey’s Church of Satan (Linjamaa and Olsson 2023:30–31). MLO has nonetheless stated that “we indeed do venerate and serve the Cause of Satan/Lucifer/Samael.” This statement is interpreted to mean as opposed to other forms of Satanism who only use Satan as a symbol (Ixaxaar publications 2011).

MLO is to be considered as part of “Left Hand Path current,” which MLO members have themselves also stated (Hilton 2005:275). The Left Hand Path is a category encompassing a large number of different initiatory groups and occult ideas. At the heart of it can be said to be the pursuit of the individual’s spiritual progress and the procurement of selfish gains through dark magic, as opposed to white magic which rather seeks to achieve selfless results through magic (Granholm 2009:85–101; Senholt 2012:250–74). MLO can be further understood as a certain version of the Left Hand Path occultism, one which practices worship of demons and destructive forces, as well as the glorification of violence (Linjamaa and Olsson 2023:34). One aim is to work toward the destruction of the structures of contemporary society and the introduction of new hierarchies over which they possess control. MLO see it as its right to govern other people, being superior in both intellect and spirit. As scholar of religion Frederik Gregorius has described it, there are aspects of Nietzschean and National Socialistic ideals imbued in the versions of Satanism common in the Black Metal scene of Norway and Western Sweden in the early 1990s. Some people are viewed as superior to others since they have an inborn right to command and take advantage of other people of lower standing, due to their intelligence and spiritual maturity (Hilton 2005:195).

MLO has described its ideology as “Chaos-Gnosticism,” which can be understood to be an interpretation of the beliefs attached to ancient Christian heresies discussed in the writings of the Church Fathers of the second to fourth century. Ancient Gnostics had nothing to do with Satan or his veneration, but rather viewed the world as created by a lower power, not God. Similarly, MLO views the world as a lower representation of a higher form of existence. The structures of society we see now are meant to control and suppress the chaotic and powerful spirit which some people have been granted. It is the aim to reawaken and let lose this primordial dark power within. While Gnostics rather viewed the human spirit originating with God and a heavenly restful and calm state (in line with Middle and Neo-Platonic thought)  MLO has turned these ancient ideas on their head and views the original nature of the human soul as originating from a chaotic state of being. The goal is to return to this original state of Chaos, a creative and limitless turmoil of infinite power.

MLO’s religious beliefs are expressed in several books. Liber Azerate was the first (2002), only published several years after the group had virtually disbanded due to the incarceration of its key members. This text is where the group’s principles are most clearly stated, for example in what is termed “Den sataniska trosbekännelsen” (The Satanic confession of faith) (Liber Azerate 2002: 13). At the very beginning of the text, it states that (Liber Azerate 2002: 13, author’s translation):

I confess Satan, the wrathful God of Chaos, as my king and father and submit myself only to his law, which is total lawlessness.
I believe in one truth, which is beyond all forms and a word which will destroy the lie: that word is Wisdom.
I believe in the cause and its goal, which is the conversion of eons, and I am willing to sacrifice my enemies’ and if need be, my own blood for the cause, to expediate the establishment of the new age.

[Jag erkänner Satan, det vredgade kaosets gud, som min konung och fader och underkastar mig endast hans lag, som är total laglöshet.
Jag tror på en sanning, den som är bortom alla former och på ett ord som skallförgöra lögnen: det ordet är Visdom.
Jag tror på kampen och på dess mål, som är eonskifte och är därför redo att offramina fienders och om nödvändigt mitt eget blod, för att påskynda inledandet av den nya tidsåldern]

The “cause” which is mentioned refers to the liberation of the true nature of the human soul (the “dark light” within), which is being restricted and controlled by the present eon and its embodied state. This is achieved through channeling, opening portals to and strengthening the a-causal order which reigned primordially. Causality, structure and regulations are basic forms of the present eon’s order, which are seen as contrary to the true nature of limitless Chaos. The worldview presented in Liber Azerate is full of gnostic references. The present eon is viewed as controlled by the Demiurge (Jahve) and his seven Archons, identified with the seven planets and the Sumerian gods. Cosmos is managed through causality and through limiting existence to the three corporate space dimensions and one linear time dimension. Over the centuries the dark Chaos has pierced through conventional myth and religion in different ways, always described as evil by the powers that be, like Satan or the Babylonian dragon goddess Tiamat, who is destroyed by the other Sumerian gods to establish the world of order.

In 2006, the book Quimbanda: Vägen till det vänstra riket (Quimbanda: The Road to the Left Hand Kingdom) [Image at right] was published at Lux Absconditus Publishing, and a few years later, between 2008­–2013, three books of the Liber Falxifer series were published. These contain different interpretations of folklore and various religious traditions interpreted in light of MLO’s Chaos Gnosticism. Another book associated with MLO’s “Chaos-Gnsoticism,” was published in 2013. The Book of Sitra Achra is described as a grimoire, also containing reinterpretation of the genesis story (in a similar way as Book II in the Liber Falxifer-series). MLO employs many references to gematria, numerology and kabbalah. For example, the number 11 is important. Azerate is the name of the principle guiding Sitra Achra (“the Other Side”), the numerological value of which (Azrat) is 218. (Chaos-Gnosticism is also called “Current 218”).  The three numbers added together total 11, the number symbolizing Chaos (the number beyond 10, i.e., order). In later publications and interviews, the numerical value 182 is also highlighted, suggesting a change in the view of the nature of principle Azerate.

The totality of MLO’s bibliography is hard to treat as representing a structured or fixed theology, but is rather dynamic and evolving. As such, it is not unlike other newly formed religions. The worldview is imbued with references to a long line of ancient religions, Kabbalah, Gnosticism, Hermeticism, Mesopotamian religion, as well as more contemporary forms of occult traditions, like the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and the Order of Nine Angles. The above-mentioned texts contain a conglomerate of different and reinterpreted mythologies and philosophies, a plethora of ritual instructions and sacramental manuals. The books are authored in the name of several different authors: Frater Nemidial, N.A-A.218, Frater Asath-Anatos, and many other pseudonyms, all of which are probably Khashnood-Sharis (Introvigne 2016:509).

RITUALS/PRACTICES

Little is known with certainty of MLO’s ritual activities. Most likely their ritual practice has been experimental. It has been that blood rituals and animal sacrifices have been part of the practices, as well as incantations and summonings of various demonic powers. The goal has chiefly been the development of the members’ spiritual progress, harnessing and strengthening the inner dark and chaotic fire within, “the black flame.” According to the journalist Johan Hilton who has conducted interviews with members of the group, to become an MLO member one had to undergo an initiation ritual consisting of the ritual sacrifice of five cats (Hilton 2005:190). When search warrants were carried out at Nödtveidt’s at Khashnood-Sharis’ apartments, altars were found; they were described as tables covered with black sheets on which knives, metal cups and animal bones of different kinds were placed. An aged human skull was also found. Apart from sacrificing cats, goats have also been reported to have been ritualistically killed. Human blood has also played a role, collected as well as consumed (Hilton 2005:chapter 3). In MLO writings, a myriad of different rituals and initiatory instructions are described, with varying detail, such as “Invocation Of The Seven Evils,” “Lilith’s evocation ritual,” “The qliphothic mass,” “Pentagram-ritual,” “Dark sex-magic,” “The satanist alchemy of five steps,” “Self-initiating,” and many more. It is unclear to what extent the large number of rituals, spells and incantations mentioned in MLO writings have been practiced.

ORGANIZATION/LEADERSHIP

The group has most likely never consisted of more than a handful of people. The unofficial leader of MLO has always been Khashnood-Sharis, but Nödtveit was, during the few years he was engaged in the group in the 1990s also a leading figure. Other members who have come and gone during the years must be considered as peripheral in comparison. Khashnood-Sharis has been called the group’s “Magister Templi,” but what this role entailed in detail is unclear. Recruitment has chiefly been achieved through personal contacts with friends, partners, and acquaintances.

ISSUES/CHALLENGES

MLO is a marginal group, only consisting of a few people at any time. Its influence and importance should thus not be overestimated. Nevertheless, it has undoubtedly had some influence on different contemporary subcultural milieus, in different sub-genres of the Black Metal scene as well as in the sinister versions of the Left Hand Path (Johannesson and Klingberg 2011:336–54). Due to the marginal nature of the group and the lack of actual research on the social setting of the group, the sources are scarce and often hard to verify. What is more, the eclectic nature of the many publications that have been released over the years are hard to assess and fit into a cohesive worldview or theology. MLO’s ideology could be viewed as organic and constantly evolving.

One should consider the violent nature of MLO’s ideology, which glorifies violence, cruelty and death. To what extent the heinous acts committed by MLO members have actually been fueled by their sinister beliefs and worldview is hard to determine, but it cannot be ruled out. As investigations have shown, the killing of Josef Ben Meddaour could be described as a hate crime, as both Khashnood-Sharis and Nödtveidt have reported feeling disgust with Ben Meddaour due to his sexual orientation. To what extent the killing was motivated by MLO beliefs or as a result in extreme homophobia, therefore, is hard to determine. The ideas and practices attached to MLO should not be romanticized, but viewed and studied as a problematic and potentially dangerous undercurrent of a sinister version of contemporary Satanism (Senholt 2012:250–74).

IMAGES

Image #1: Jon Nödtveidt
Image #2: Cover of Liber Azerate.
Image #3. Cover of the album Reinkaos.
Image #4: Cover of Quimbanda: Vägen till det vänstra riket (Quimbanda: The Road to the Left Hand Kingdom).

REFERENCES

Best, Joel, David G. Bromley, and James T. Richardson. 1991. The Satanism Scare. New York: Routledge.

Bogdan, Henrik. 2016. “Satanism in Sweden.” Pp. 489–93 in Western Esotericism in Scandinavia, edited by Henrik Bogdan and Olav Hammer. Leiden: Brill.

Granholm, Kennet. 2009. “Embracing Others than Satan: The Multiple Princes of Darkness in the Left-Hand Path Milieu.” Pp. 85–101in Contemporary Religious Satanism: A Critical Anthology, edited by Jesper A. Petersen. London: Ashgate.

Hilton, Johan. 2006. No Tears for Queers: Ett Reportage om Ma ̈n, Bo ̈gar och Hatbrott. Stockholm: Bokförlaget Atlas.

Hjelm, Titus, Henrik Bogdan, Asbjørn Dyrendal, and Jesper Agaard Petersen. 2009. “Nordic Satanism and Satanism Scares: The Dark Side of the Secular Welfare State.” Social Compass 56:515–29.

Introvigne, Massimo. 2016. Satanism: A Social History. Leiden: Brill.

Ixaxaar publications. 2011. Interview with N.A-A.218, October 31. Accessed from http://www.ixaxaar.com/ 218-interview-2.html on 29 September 2023.

Johannesson, Ika and Jon Jefferson. 2011. Klingberg, Blod, Eld, Död: En Svenska Metalhistoria. Stockholm: Alfabeta.

Linjamaa, Paul and Johnny Olsson. 2023. “Chaos Untold: The Use of Gnosticism in the Misanthropic Luciferian Order (MLO).” Nova Religio 27:29–50.

”Mordet i Keillers park.” 2013. P3-documentary (Swedish Radio) March 24. Accessed from https://sverigesradio.se/avsnitt/mordet-i-keillers-park Retreaten on 1 October 2023.

Senholt, Jacob C. 2012. “Secret Identities in the Sinister Tradition.” Pp. 250–74 in The Devil’s Party: Satanism in Modernity, edited by Per Faxneld and Jesper Petersen. OxOford: Oxford University Press.

Verdict in case B 19859–97, Gothenburg district court.

Publication Date:
30 September 2023