Speaker 1: M oh, how I wish that this was behind the bastards.
Speaker 1: We were talking about Rick Springfield Jesse's Girl. It's everyone
Speaker 1: here his favorite song. We all just learned, all of
Speaker 1: us our favorite song is Jesse's Girl. Great songs. Speak
Speaker 1: for yourself. What is your favorite song? Revert It's Jesse's
Speaker 1: Girl by Rick Springfield. I want to, I want to.
Speaker 1: I want to tell Rick Springfield that I love him,
Speaker 1: But the point is probably moot. That was Jesse's Girl. Joe,
Speaker 1: what's your favorite song? What song are you? I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't think you can really have a favorite song,
Speaker 1: like because songs I have songs like I have. Um,
Speaker 1: there's a Cat's in the Cradle just different. Now I
Speaker 1: hate that song, but like for different songs for different moments,
Speaker 1: right like when my mom died, the first thing we
Speaker 1: listened to was Miserrare by the Cat Empire. Um, and
Speaker 1: that's like a song for for that particular moment um.
Speaker 1: But like you know, I like listening to Also, it's
Speaker 1: of ship. I like, if I'm running, I'm gonna put
Speaker 1: on some infected mushroom or some ship because I want
Speaker 1: to like get moving. Um, if I'm sitting and writing.
Speaker 1: I'm probably gonna listen to like Yonder Mountain String Band
Speaker 1: and Green Sky Bluegrass doing like live shows at Red
Speaker 1: Rocks and Ship because that works good with writing. I
Speaker 1: don't know if I have a yacht rock moment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I like some yacht rock. I like you know who
Speaker 1: I you know who? I Who? I like Jamie Loftus
Speaker 1: is fucking every now and then in the right moment. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's um, um the fucking Oh god, how am I
Speaker 1: spacing on his name? Right? Five o'clock somewhere, guy, Margarita Ville.
Speaker 1: Got Jimmy Buffett. Jimmy Buffett. Yeah, I went to Margaritaville
Speaker 1: last night. That sounds I did. I got, I got,
Speaker 1: And it's five o'clock somewhere. Uh, and it costs five
Speaker 1: hundred dollars. And then I went to see Minions Rise
Speaker 1: of Crew all buzzed up. Wow, Um, how was the
Speaker 1: how was the drink? How was the Buffett Margarita? It
Speaker 1: was disgusting? Yeah, they are. I love going to Margaritaville
Speaker 1: because it is the trashiest place you can possibly be
Speaker 1: as a human being. There's no you can't do battery acid.
Speaker 1: It's not it's not alcoholic. Nothing. Can't get drunk there.
Speaker 1: You can't get drunk there. You will get disgusting. You
Speaker 1: will give yourself diabetes before you can get drunk at
Speaker 1: a margarita Ville. But but hey, that's why I got
Speaker 1: I have a fake volcano, at least the one in
Speaker 1: Vegas does. And I love showing up housed at a
Speaker 1: Margarita Ville in Vegas. Well, you have to because you
Speaker 1: can't really make a lot of progress there. You just
Speaker 1: you just get completely skull fucked on, like cheap liquor
Speaker 1: that you bought at one of the liquor stores four
Speaker 1: miles away from the strip, so it's not like completely
Speaker 1: not You bring a flask in with you and you
Speaker 1: add shipped to their terrible Margarita's and you have one
Speaker 1: of the worst hamburgers of your life while you watch
Speaker 1: a shitty's floor show. It's the best. I can't I
Speaker 1: can't do the food there, even as a joke. I
Speaker 1: can't do the food there. But I think it's too
Speaker 1: bad to even eat as a funny joke. But yeah,
Speaker 1: if yeah, five o'clock somewhere at Margaritaville, and then you know,
Speaker 1: you bring like a couple of nips to put into
Speaker 1: your soda at the movies, you sort some ketamine in
Speaker 1: the bathroom of the back of your friend's phone, like
Speaker 1: that's okay, and then that's and some people do that.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure they did that while I was there,
Speaker 1: because why not, Jamie, I've done that. I've done that
Speaker 1: probably ever been less shocked in my life, probably while
Speaker 1: you were there. Because I'm always at margarita Ville in
Speaker 1: some form. I feel like we would really have a
Speaker 1: good time at Margaritaville. I thought Margariteville at an airport
Speaker 1: and now we're fucking fuck. Yeah, that's the good stuff.
Speaker 1: And they just called it a Margaritaville. Exactly what I want. Okay. So, Jamie,
Speaker 1: when we last left off, Helena Blavotsky H block H black,
Speaker 1: Oh what h black? Something like that? What do we
Speaker 1: do for her nickname? What do we call her? Anyway?
Speaker 1: The Black, the Blacks, the Black, the Blatster had just
Speaker 1: made her way to Crittenden to hang out with this journalist,
Speaker 1: Henry olcott Um, who was getting hard old coot is
Speaker 1: in this period, just getting super pilled on the paranormal, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: the future president of Theosophy himself here yeah, he and
Speaker 1: he again he starts off as like this upper middle
Speaker 1: class lawyer guy who had like done an administrative job
Speaker 1: so well in for the Union Army during the Civil
Speaker 1: War that he got made a colonel and but had
Speaker 1: just been like waiting his whole life for something weird
Speaker 1: to make him feel special. And again he had he
Speaker 1: had like he's he's like abandoned his family in order
Speaker 1: to like become a seeker um his wife and kids.
Speaker 1: He's a cool dude, Henry Olcott him. He meets Helena Blovotsky.
Speaker 1: She she reads his articles about this farmhouse medium thing
Speaker 1: in Crittendon and goes over and just like immediately wraps
Speaker 1: this dude the funk around her finger like she's she's
Speaker 1: this is and again she is not one of the
Speaker 1: things that's interesting about here you talk about like l
Speaker 1: Ron Hubbard, he's conning people constantly, right, just his life
Speaker 1: is an endless series of cons that are at least
Speaker 1: successful for a period of time. She's been failing pretty
Speaker 1: much NonStop, like you feel like takes a special kind
Speaker 1: of scammer to continue persisting in the face of only flops.
Speaker 1: She is broke most of her scams or flops. When
Speaker 1: she gets someone to believe in her, it doesn't usually
Speaker 1: mean much of any money, Like she's not good at this.
Speaker 1: So it says a lot about Henry that she so completely,
Speaker 1: like instantly just like dominates this man's life and mind.
Speaker 1: It's very funny. Um, he was just waiting for this,
Speaker 1: Like you get the feeling with Henry Ocott. He's just
Speaker 1: this guy who always wanted nothing but like some occult
Speaker 1: lady to tell him there's magic. Like he just is
Speaker 1: ready to be a wizard immediately. I mean, people are
Speaker 1: like always looking for confirmation of this, and I feel
Speaker 1: like like figures like Helena Blavoski, even though she like
Speaker 1: could not pull off a scam for so long, like
Speaker 1: they just like live in people's rains because they like
Speaker 1: visually represent something that people want to be true, and
Speaker 1: even though they prove it, they're just so ready. I
Speaker 1: don't know, it's like an anesthetic appeal to It's part
Speaker 1: of the thing like j. K. Rowling became a billionaire
Speaker 1: because she was able to tap into that sort of
Speaker 1: thing just within uh, because they were all like how
Speaker 1: many of the people listening right now as little kids
Speaker 1: like waiting to get a fucking letter from them a
Speaker 1: magic school and ship like that's Henry Olcott. He's like,
Speaker 1: that's he's like the first of those guys. He's like
Speaker 1: a fifty year old man. He's a fifty year old
Speaker 1: man who's abandoned hisst children so that he can learn
Speaker 1: to be a wizard. One of those embarrassing people who
Speaker 1: was like, where are those ugly graphic teams, like still
Speaker 1: waiting for my letters? Yes, that that is Henry Olcott
Speaker 1: um and he yeah, he falls for her immediately. She
Speaker 1: she does some pretty basic cons um and he starts
Speaker 1: to write articles about her. And I want to quote
Speaker 1: now from an article published by the Oxford Unity Adversity
Speaker 1: Press titled The West Turns Eastward. Quote. Ocott was impressed,
Speaker 1: he began to write about her, and she therefore became
Speaker 1: a prominent figure in the spiritualist movement soon afterwards, defending
Speaker 1: first the authenticity of the Chittenen phenomena against a skeptical
Speaker 1: doctor Beard, and then the authenticity of a similar of
Speaker 1: the similar manifestations of John and Katie King in Philadelphia.
Speaker 1: So we're not going to get into Katie King off enough,
Speaker 1: but she's like this guy's dead, dying yeah, you want
Speaker 1: to talk a little bit about Katie King. About Katie King,
Speaker 1: Katie King, I mean, I god. I I also kind
Speaker 1: of opted not to go into her on Ghost Church
Speaker 1: because I feel like her story is like very adjacent
Speaker 1: to there's like a lot of stories like this at
Speaker 1: the time. But she she was a um, I feel
Speaker 1: like just sort of another example of a physical medium.
Speaker 1: Who I mean, her thing was like she went fucking big.
Speaker 1: She had like an entire separate person that she could
Speaker 1: quote unquote conjured. There was like a lot of magic involved,
Speaker 1: like a lot of magic tricks involved, and she was
Speaker 1: able to like really get a gigantic following. Uh and
Speaker 1: then you know, uh is eventually exposed and uh in obscurity.
Speaker 1: It's the same story, unfortunately they have a million times,
Speaker 1: but it's but she's an interesting one. She she had
Speaker 1: a lot of eyes on her at and it was
Speaker 1: also like the sexuality element to her performance as well.
Speaker 1: And she is one of the things that that Blovotsky
Speaker 1: starts by doing is backing Katie King is like like
Speaker 1: making these like writing articles and being because she she
Speaker 1: realizes very because again she's she is She's not been
Speaker 1: great as a con person but she's she's figured some
Speaker 1: stuff out. Maybe it's just that she's older and she
Speaker 1: kind of intuitively grasps that. Like, Okay, what I need
Speaker 1: to be doing to start is not push in immediately
Speaker 1: with my own grift, but established myself as a credible
Speaker 1: expert on the paranormal, and then any time a paranormal
Speaker 1: story goes viral, I want journalists reaching out to me.
Speaker 1: Helena Blovotsky. I want to be the one. She's just
Speaker 1: trying to become like a point of Okay, that's yes.
Speaker 1: I didn't realize that there was because yeah, the woman,
Speaker 1: so k that's how she starts. Janny King is the spirit,
Speaker 1: Florence Cook is the medium. Um yeah, I'm not you
Speaker 1: know whatever. I'm not really anti them, and but like yeah,
Speaker 1: Arthur Corn and Doyle was really into another guy like
Speaker 1: Henry Olcott, who was just a perfect mark from the beginning.
Speaker 1: Um so Dr Beard, the skeptic mentioned earlier, describes the
Speaker 1: two of them old Coot and Blovotsky this way. Quote. H.
Speaker 1: S Olcott is a rabid spiritualist. He capitalizes both of
Speaker 1: the R and the S and that and HP. Blovotsky
Speaker 1: is an occultist who laughs one who laughs at the
Speaker 1: supposed agency of spirits, but all the same pretends to
Speaker 1: be one herself. But the criticism so like that's like
Speaker 1: he notes that because again Blovotsky is she's coming at
Speaker 1: this from a different angle than the actual spiritualists. She's
Speaker 1: backing that these people are channeling something, but she doesn't
Speaker 1: believe it like it's ghosts. She believes it's basically kind
Speaker 1: of like psychic imprint some people. If I'm understanding her
Speaker 1: argument correctly, Um and yeah. So the fact that this
Speaker 1: doctor is like attacking her and attacking old cot again,
Speaker 1: it's the same way ship works. Now it only heightens
Speaker 1: her prominence and the weirdo spiritualist set. The fact that
Speaker 1: like skeptics are attacking her for branding herself as a
Speaker 1: paranormal expert helps to set her career off. Um and yeah,
Speaker 1: and she and and also it sounds like she's also
Speaker 1: like she's finding a way to like capitalize on the
Speaker 1: hype of spiritualism without fully backing it, to like make
Speaker 1: space for her to develop her own ideology. And part
Speaker 1: of a part of I think why she's successful is
Speaker 1: she's she's mutating it a little bit, right, it's the
Speaker 1: same way of virus works. Right, you want to if
Speaker 1: you want to escape and marine capture, you have to, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: alter it a little bit. And that's what she's doing.
Speaker 1: And that the fact that she's bringing something new to
Speaker 1: what is by eight seventy five it's kind of boring, right,
Speaker 1: Spiritualism is not new and exciting, and she is making
Speaker 1: it exciting again by changing changing the game. In eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy five, she writes an article in response to another
Speaker 1: article on Rosicrucianism, and it was here that she first
Speaker 1: described her beliefs in a concise way. Quote, occultism or
Speaker 1: magic stands in relation to spiritualism as the infinite to
Speaker 1: the finite, or as the infinite to the finite, as
Speaker 1: the cause to the effect, or as the unity to
Speaker 1: multifarious nous. So she's like, what you're actually seeing with
Speaker 1: with these summonings isn't like the thing itself. It's just
Speaker 1: like one thing you can do with these spirits, right,
Speaker 1: And people are not People have not actually been like
Speaker 1: exploring all of the things that magic can bring you. Now,
Speaker 1: this was which is an interesting like flavor variation on spiritualism. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: and also opens up your ability to kind of like
Speaker 1: grift off of it significantly. So this was a really
Speaker 1: good time to be spouting that particular line of bullshit
Speaker 1: because it was it was spiritual and religious. But also,
Speaker 1: and this is something you alluded to early here, it
Speaker 1: was more modern than religion itself, which was undergoing a
Speaker 1: crisis at the end of the eighteen hundreds. Scientific advances
Speaker 1: had rapidly thrown a lot of old knowledge into disarray,
Speaker 1: and many people had come to believe that like scientific
Speaker 1: progress and Christianity were in direct conflict. Geologists had pretty
Speaker 1: recently shown that the world was a lot older than
Speaker 1: people believed it was like six thousand years old because
Speaker 1: some dude in the church like did weird Bible math
Speaker 1: and like that. It was becoming clear that that was
Speaker 1: not accurate. Uh, Darwin's theory of evolution was like starting
Speaker 1: to really pick up steam in terms of like widespread
Speaker 1: acceptance um. And also for the first time, the machines
Speaker 1: people were making were like things that wildly exceeded anything
Speaker 1: found in nature. Right up until pretty much this point,
Speaker 1: the fastest way to travel anywhere unless you've got like
Speaker 1: a train, is a fucking horse. Right now, people are
Speaker 1: making like cars and ship there's like light bulbs and stuff.
Speaker 1: Um right, that's yeah, that that is part of like
Speaker 1: what is kind of like so fascinating about spiritualism was
Speaker 1: like how they were able to at least for a while,
Speaker 1: ingratiate themselves into like this is a scientifically bast religion.
Speaker 1: And they still say that in every single Spiritualist service
Speaker 1: that happens, and that Blovotsky starts. That Blovotsky is like
Speaker 1: the primary motive force behind that switch. From the Oxford
Speaker 1: University press quote, she described science and theology as too
Speaker 1: conflicting titans between which a bewildered public was fast losing
Speaker 1: all belief in man's personal immortality and in a deity
Speaker 1: of any kind. She thought that her contemporaries needed a
Speaker 1: religion that can meet the challenge of modern science, and
Speaker 1: she thought that occultism provided just such a religion. So
Speaker 1: when she's talking about the occult, she's thinking talking about
Speaker 1: like spirits and gods and all that stuff and kind
Speaker 1: of dealing with it technically the same way that you
Speaker 1: deal with like physics to put a plane in the air. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: as I've noted, she is unique in that she starts
Speaker 1: pushing this in a really public way. Um. But she's
Speaker 1: not an original thinker. She is not creating anything on
Speaker 1: her own, and she does her best work. She's a
Speaker 1: fan fiction writer, right, That's essentially what she's doing. So
Speaker 1: many like horrible like eventually horrible spiritual leaders are fanfiction writer,
Speaker 1: and she is. She is literally pivoting not off of
Speaker 1: other spiritual texts that people are writing, but a huge
Speaker 1: amount of what she's writing is her taking fiction that
Speaker 1: other people had written and like repurposing it, particularly the
Speaker 1: works of Edward Bulwer Lytton, who's the guy who wrote
Speaker 1: The Coming Race, which is that book about like underground,
Speaker 1: a super race. This is the dude to her Again,
Speaker 1: her mom had translated some of these guys books when
Speaker 1: she was a kid. Um And and Bulward Litton's stories
Speaker 1: often centered on like a racer, a civilization that had
Speaker 1: been kind of the font of all human culture and science.
Speaker 1: There was also this idea of real which is this
Speaker 1: like basically like the spiritual equivalent of electricity is kind
Speaker 1: of the way Bulward Litton describes it. Um. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: for Bolovotsky's unfolding, she basically she starts making the case
Speaker 1: that like no Bulwar. Litton wasn't writing Fi and bull
Speaker 1: where Litton was like tapping into something very true or
Speaker 1: like you know, hiding it a little bit or whatever,
Speaker 1: which is a fun one of Like they said they
Speaker 1: were writing fiction, but they didn't realize they were tapped
Speaker 1: into a higher spiritual power and it was a chance.
Speaker 1: That's my My channeled texts are my favorite ship in
Speaker 1: the world, because we'll be talking about that. Yeah, Jesus
Speaker 1: wrote this like, Okay, okay, I have I have my favorite.
Speaker 1: I own a couple when I was researching Ghost Church,
Speaker 1: and my favorite one is um channeled from someone who
Speaker 1: died on the Titanic. I would like that. I may
Speaker 1: do that for my next book, but have it still
Speaker 1: be about like Cyborg Superman fighting in a post Civil
Speaker 1: war United States. But just be like, no, this was
Speaker 1: absolutely written by a nine year old who died on
Speaker 1: the Titanic, for sure. This is what the message for
Speaker 1: the world. This is her story. I do get all
Speaker 1: the proceeds, but this is her story. This is her
Speaker 1: story about Horny Cyborg's in the seventies. She this is
Speaker 1: what she wanted to teach people. It's an interesting one. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: so for Bolovotsky's unfolding spiritual cosmology, India was going to
Speaker 1: be like what she gave as the center and source
Speaker 1: of ancient knowledge. She wrote that although many Westerners had
Speaker 1: seen Egypt as the source previously quote, it has been
Speaker 1: discovered that the very same ideas expressed an almost identical language,
Speaker 1: maybe read in Buddhistic and Brahmanical literature. Now, Orientalists at
Speaker 1: the time had started again because she's not creating anything
Speaker 1: out of whole cloth, She's reading other people's work, and
Speaker 1: a lot of Orientalists had started to make the claim
Speaker 1: that Hinduism predated Christianity. Blovotsky added their work to her
Speaker 1: own ideas and to bulwer Lytton. She mashed in real
Speaker 1: bits of actual religion that she had encountered while traveling,
Speaker 1: and she came up with a brand new story to
Speaker 1: tell people. Quote, six thousand years ago, India had contained
Speaker 1: a brilliant civilization that was overflowing with people. Later, a
Speaker 1: matured section of these people had immigrated to eastern Ethiopia,
Speaker 1: where they had become known as the Mighty Builders, and
Speaker 1: from where they had colonized Egypt. And finally, Western culture
Speaker 1: owed much to a Judaic law that had come from
Speaker 1: these Egyptians. There was therefore an ancient wisdom that underlaid
Speaker 1: all religions, and this ancient wisdom had definite Indian roots.
Speaker 1: As Blovotsky explained, there is not one of all these
Speaker 1: sects Cabalism, Judaism, and our present Christianity included, but sprang
Speaker 1: from the two main branches of that mother trunk, the
Speaker 1: once universal religion which anti dated the Vedic ages. We
Speaker 1: speak of that prehistoric Buddhism, which merged later into Brahmanism.
Speaker 1: Now none of that's accurate historically, right, Um. I think
Speaker 1: experts on Buddhism and and Brahmans would all be like, well,
Speaker 1: wait a second, that's not that's not at all what happened.
Speaker 1: And also experts are just like where humans like obviously
Speaker 1: people like the first human beings. I mean, again, this
Speaker 1: is a contentious issue, but uh, it's not that that's
Speaker 1: not what happened. There's no like, all of the evidence
Speaker 1: we have is not that right, It's it's so like
Speaker 1: that is like one of my feel like the huge,
Speaker 1: huge issues with like all branches of spiritualism is like
Speaker 1: spiritualism as a particular issue with historically misrepresenting indigenous culture
Speaker 1: completely and just like co opting indigenous culture to say
Speaker 1: whatever they need them to say. And then Blotski is
Speaker 1: doing that in the East. She is and she's not. Again,
Speaker 1: one of the things that you might argue as positive
Speaker 1: is that kind of previously the dominant beliefs in Western
Speaker 1: culture had been like Hinduism in Buddhism, where these kind
Speaker 1: of like weird pagan degenerate, like not advanced savage and
Speaker 1: stuff like this. These were the especially the British right.
Speaker 1: This was one of the justifications the British had for
Speaker 1: what they were doing in India was all of these
Speaker 1: these Hindu practices that we we're just you know, in
Speaker 1: their eyes, horrific um. And Blovotsky is is fighting against that,
Speaker 1: is saying that Christianity and Judaism are like them, are
Speaker 1: themselves kind of the degenerated um offspring of of of
Speaker 1: like the of Brahmanism, of of of you know what
Speaker 1: people call Hinduism. Um. So you can say that's positive,
Speaker 1: but also it's not really. Nothing she's talking about is
Speaker 1: real Hinduism or real real Buddhism. She's like using these
Speaker 1: words and bits and pieces of these stories and mixing
Speaker 1: it with like her favorite fantasy author. It's like if
Speaker 1: you it's like if you took zoro Asterianism and like
Speaker 1: jammed it into Game of Thrones and then told people
Speaker 1: that that was like you're an actual religion. Well that's
Speaker 1: the thing, is like and and and you know, knock
Speaker 1: yourself out, but like keep it to yourself, yeah, or
Speaker 1: like make it clear that it's film start like or yeah,
Speaker 1: don't don't start, don't start a religious cult about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's nothing wrong. I feel like a fiction author of
Speaker 1: being like, oh, these real world beliefs are interesting, and
Speaker 1: I'm writing this fantasy book and I'm inspired by this
Speaker 1: and by that like obviously fucked up waste. But there's
Speaker 1: nothing inherently wrong with that idea. She is just saying, no,
Speaker 1: this is the real Buddhism and the real Hinduism. Um,
Speaker 1: and I'm I'm the one who actually knows what's what
Speaker 1: these things are. That is that is extra. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's like it's one thing to invent a religion that
Speaker 1: is all religions, but to like steal, like dishonestly steal
Speaker 1: from other religions in order to prop up your own
Speaker 1: bunk religion is just like extra shitty. Here's the cool thing.
Speaker 1: She's also kind of ship talking anyone who knows anything
Speaker 1: about these religions, including like because she's the only one
Speaker 1: who knows, because she's been I'm gonna read another quote
Speaker 1: about that quote. Blavatsky justified her selective use of contemporary
Speaker 1: occultism by using two interconnected distinctions. If anyone claimed that
Speaker 1: Indian religions were not as she said, she simply replied
Speaker 1: that this person had focused on either modern Hinduism or
Speaker 1: the exoteric meaning of the Vedic works, not on the
Speaker 1: true esoteric meaning of ancient Brahmanism. She argued that scholars
Speaker 1: often fell into the trap of taking modern Hinduism or
Speaker 1: the Vedas at face value, when the true religion of
Speaker 1: India remained hidden in the esoteric Brahmanical teachings of the Vedas. Indeed,
Speaker 1: whilst Orientalists rightly had dated the Vetas as pre Christian,
Speaker 1: we should not trust their interpretations of Vetic works, since
Speaker 1: they could not perceive the inner meanings of these works.
Speaker 1: Blotsky wrote, our scientists do not say nay, do not nay,
Speaker 1: cannot understand correctly the old Hindu literature. And so again
Speaker 1: she's framing this as like Westerners have misinterpreted this, but
Speaker 1: she is also at the same time saying, actual people
Speaker 1: in India aren't really worshiping proper Hinduism, modern Hinduism isn't right.
Speaker 1: They don't understand the secret message of their own religion, right,
Speaker 1: which is just like a galaxy brain asshole behavior like yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty cool, it's pretty cool. Yeah, She's like, oh,
Speaker 1: you think that my interpretation of an entire culture is wrong,
Speaker 1: we'll argue at the wall. I guess you're just like, okay,
Speaker 1: you just don't get the secret meanings of your own
Speaker 1: religious texts. Um. So she began meeting with prominent Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is this is like, this is like the absolute
Speaker 1: highest tier of cultural appropriation. Like it doesn't it does.
Speaker 1: It does not get more appropriating than this. This is
Speaker 1: this is the top of that particular or mountain and
Speaker 1: within spiritualist ideas that is really saying something. Yeah that
Speaker 1: it is. It is quite an achievement. So she begins
Speaker 1: meeting with all these academics, writers and celebrities. She starts
Speaker 1: to get very famous doing this, like pushing this line,
Speaker 1: bringing in these attitudes. She is part of why the
Speaker 1: concept of karma gets to the United States in a
Speaker 1: popular way, Um, it is because of Blovotsky and like
Speaker 1: these this social scene that she sets up a New
Speaker 1: York City that asking people how's your karma? Like becomes
Speaker 1: common in the eighteen nineties. Like that is, we have
Speaker 1: Helena Blovotsky to thank for that concept being part of
Speaker 1: American culture in the way that it is, which is
Speaker 1: not you know, to say anything about how karma is
Speaker 1: actually treated in the religions and stuff, but like why
Speaker 1: kind of our attitudes towards it. She starts that she
Speaker 1: popularizes it here. Um, so she starts, she again, they
Speaker 1: call them salons and stuff. She's always like hanging out
Speaker 1: with celebrities and writers and ship in these like bars
Speaker 1: and clubs and stuff, giving talks on different elements of
Speaker 1: spirit rualis um um. And she has she develops that
Speaker 1: she builds this following all these different little tricks for
Speaker 1: like making people convinced that she's got the truth. Her
Speaker 1: particular favorite is she would have a mysterious person who
Speaker 1: was supposed to be her master kut Humi, teleporting from
Speaker 1: Tibet to like New York, deliver a letter to another
Speaker 1: person who was like she was trying to bring on
Speaker 1: as a mark. Yeah, sorry, I forget. Is this a
Speaker 1: real person or is this a person She's made up?
Speaker 1: This isople so like basically another big spiritualism thing is
Speaker 1: made up. So like yeah, sometimes it would be like
Speaker 1: a person in a costume handing and we'll talk about
Speaker 1: this later. Sometimes it would just be like a letter
Speaker 1: falls out of, you know, somewhere in the building and
Speaker 1: like lands on somebody's head and it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: this is a letter written in the handwriting of kut whomie.
Speaker 1: This is like my my master wanted you to have
Speaker 1: this piece of information, and it's it's a big part
Speaker 1: of like why people get on the Bolovotsky train is
Speaker 1: like what she meets an individual and she's like, oh,
Speaker 1: you're a popular journalist or like you're a celebrity, you've
Speaker 1: got some clout. I'm going to make sure you have
Speaker 1: this like encounter with Master kut Umi that he's like
Speaker 1: he needs you to know this. That's why this letter
Speaker 1: operated in front of you. You know. Um, And yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's fascinating. Um, it's real, real cool ship.
Speaker 1: Her biographer Mary and Meade writes that in bringing Eastern
Speaker 1: mysticism to the salons and upperclass parties of New York,
Speaker 1: Madame Blovotsky quote paved the way for contemporary transcendental meditation.
Speaker 1: Zin Harri Krishna's yoga and vegetarianism, Karma and reincarnations, Swammy's
Speaker 1: Yogis and Gurus. She is the first guru in the
Speaker 1: Western world in like the a proper sense. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's pretty good stuff, really really really smearing the
Speaker 1: name of actual gurus. Yes, um, yeah, it's cool shit, Um,
Speaker 1: it's very cool. Ship Jules Evans rights quote. She claimed
Speaker 1: that she had discovered the lost city of Shambala and
Speaker 1: the Gobi Desert, and they're encountered a great white brotherhood.
Speaker 1: They were led by the Lord of the World, who
Speaker 1: descended from the planet Venus. Other masters included Mano Matrea
Speaker 1: Jesus and Buddha Mesmer, and two Indian gentlemen called Master
Speaker 1: Moray and kut Humie. These two lived in a valley
Speaker 1: in Tibet, in an underground city with subterranean tunnels, from
Speaker 1: which they emerged occasionally to guide humanity and communicate with
Speaker 1: their favorite adept Helena Blovotsky against this white brotherhood. There
Speaker 1: was a secret order of dark forces, black magicians seeking
Speaker 1: to gain power and harm humanity. In the words of
Speaker 1: Peter Washington, Occasionally the war between the lords and brothers
Speaker 1: reaches a violent public climax, and events such as the
Speaker 1: Crucifixion of Jesus, when the esoteric becomes exoteric and the
Speaker 1: secret struggle is briefly revealed. Okay, so this yeah, absolutely terrifying,
Speaker 1: And I think the first time in Blovotsky speak where
Speaker 1: this is like completely outside of anything that I've studied
Speaker 1: with spiritualism, Like this is just like, is this the
Speaker 1: hard left moment? Like this is so people have been
Speaker 1: writing recently some kind of more mainstream journalists have noticed
Speaker 1: that like the the New Age community and kind of
Speaker 1: the occult community has like a fascism problem that has
Speaker 1: been increasingly an issue. Yes, yeah, and and a lot
Speaker 1: of that has come through Q and on. There's huge
Speaker 1: New Age elements. It's very tight into like alternative medicine
Speaker 1: and like uh meditation, like different kinds of like energy
Speaker 1: healing and stuff. That's all really big in that community.
Speaker 1: And there's this attitude that they're really separate. No, they
Speaker 1: started these these conspiratorial beliefs about there being the secret
Speaker 1: order of like white hats fighting the evil black hats
Speaker 1: and the background of everything, and that all exogenic like
Speaker 1: exoteric conflicts are like really the result of this secret
Speaker 1: occult conflict that is the start of the New Age movement.
Speaker 1: That Helena Blovotsky is the start of the New Age
Speaker 1: in in a modern sense in the United States. She's
Speaker 1: the one who not only to physical health and stuff
Speaker 1: like yeah, well and as it as it pertains to
Speaker 1: taking things from the East and mixing them up with
Speaker 1: like other stuff too, right, Like you can't you can't
Speaker 1: separate all of that, like Blovotsky is again obviously she's
Speaker 1: not starting or creating any of this from whole cloth.
Speaker 1: She's mixing up strands, but she gets the mixture in
Speaker 1: its modern sense right for the first time. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And god that I'm sorry that that that passage is
Speaker 1: really sticking in my mind incredibly fucked. It's so interesting,
Speaker 1: Like the things that she's stealing are so like I mean,
Speaker 1: she's stealing in a way that I understand why. It
Speaker 1: like resonated with your audience at the time, and you
Speaker 1: can see how it just like descends into fucking madness
Speaker 1: so quickly. The stuff with like the energy healing stuff
Speaker 1: is always an interesting discussion to me because there's some
Speaker 1: people now who, like, I think the real issue is
Speaker 1: like when it's brought as like and you cannot use medicine,
Speaker 1: like medicine is not a thing you can use, it
Speaker 1: can only be this, and then that is like, uh,
Speaker 1: you're going to die, like goodbye. Um, And that's like
Speaker 1: I think part of why like a lot of new
Speaker 1: age people are so vulnerable to like anti vax rhetoric
Speaker 1: as well, which like so many of them are and
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's it's weird. When I was in
Speaker 1: Florida doing research there there were some people who were
Speaker 1: like energy healing overall medicine and it's like you're in
Speaker 1: dangers and then there but there also were people who
Speaker 1: are like I I like that kind of stuff, but
Speaker 1: but I use it as a tool, like almost more
Speaker 1: of a meditative tool. And then I also go to doctors,
Speaker 1: which I don't really give a shit about either way.
Speaker 1: She's actually I mean part of when there are a
Speaker 1: couple of points in her life where she has health
Speaker 1: issues and it's hard to tell what's real because a
Speaker 1: lot of her health issues are like diagnosed by doctor.
Speaker 1: She channels UM, so it's yeah, like that's going on
Speaker 1: here too, Um like it's it's it's cool. Although I
Speaker 1: haven't come across her saying anything in particular about vaccines.
Speaker 1: Although this is the eighteen seventies so that was less
Speaker 1: of a thing. Yeah, but you know what is a thing,
Speaker 1: Jamie loftus capitalism? Babe, Wow, hot take thank you. Here's
Speaker 1: some ads. Oh we're back. You know what I liked
Speaker 1: about those ads, Jamie? I like that they were ads
Speaker 1: from Margaritaville. God, wouldn't that be amazing? What if you
Speaker 1: had like the Black Card for Margaritaville, Oh god, where
Speaker 1: they put actual alcohol in the drinks? Yeah? Yeah, they're
Speaker 1: like did you know that? We don't. These bottles are
Speaker 1: full of water, battery acid. With the with the black card,
Speaker 1: you get actual alcohol and they'll go get you a
Speaker 1: burger from five of guys, so you can actually consume
Speaker 1: something that's that's edible or they're like at very at
Speaker 1: least they're like, hey, um, so the burgers still aren't good,
Speaker 1: but they're not like mysteriously wet. So there you go. Yeah,
Speaker 1: wet in a way that isn't right for meat. So no,
Speaker 1: it's not moist, it's we it's wet, it's soaking wet. Anyway,
Speaker 1: go to Margaritaville. We love it so. In his first
Speaker 1: in his first article about Helena Blovotsky, Henry Olcott had
Speaker 1: described her as quote a Russian lady of distinguished of
Speaker 1: distinguished birth, which is accurate. Um. He had also described
Speaker 1: her as having rare educational and natural endowments, which is
Speaker 1: also probably accurate, although I think he's kind of saying
Speaker 1: she's hot there. Uh. Then he listed what we're becoming
Speaker 1: the standard cliffs notes of her life. She had traveled
Speaker 1: in most lands of the Orient, looked for and tiquities
Speaker 1: at the base of the pyramids, beheld the mysteries of
Speaker 1: Hindu temples, and traveled with armed escort far into the
Speaker 1: interior of Africa. Um, which I don't believe she ever
Speaker 1: spent time in Africa other than like northern Africa, like
Speaker 1: Egypt and stuff. But she's not in the Congo and
Speaker 1: ship um. But that's popular at the time, right, this
Speaker 1: is the scramble for Africa going on Africa, Like white
Speaker 1: people can't not get enough stories of explorers in Africa,
Speaker 1: so she's got to throw that in the resume now.
Speaker 1: At first, Helena played koe about her beliefs regarding spiritualism.
Speaker 1: She didn't think any of the mediums who dotted the
Speaker 1: land were speaking to ghost but again basically psychic echoes.
Speaker 1: She was also an occultist, so she believed that magic
Speaker 1: could be used to accomplish things um. Once she'd known
Speaker 1: Old Cott for a while and in the subject of
Speaker 1: several articles, she confided to him that she had a
Speaker 1: secret purpose in the United States, which was to reveal
Speaker 1: the truth about spiritualism to people. So she brings Old
Speaker 1: Catt and she's like, look, hey, this is all like
Speaker 1: do you want to join me in my secret quest
Speaker 1: to like pill the world about the occult um, Like
Speaker 1: the United States needs to know that they've been getting
Speaker 1: spiritualism wrong, and like I'm trying to sneak into this
Speaker 1: community to to to to get this across. So in
Speaker 1: her public writings and statements, she gradually becomes more and
Speaker 1: more emphatic about her true beliefs, and this leads to
Speaker 1: something of an uproar in the spiritualist community. Some people
Speaker 1: pointed out rightly that it was dishonest for her to
Speaker 1: hide her real feelings just to make a name for
Speaker 1: herself in a field she didn't believe in. She would
Speaker 1: later make up lurid stories about how she'd attempted to
Speaker 1: join occult groups in Europe and the United States have
Speaker 1: been kicked out due to some nefarious plot. To keep
Speaker 1: her from spreading her knowledge to the general population, she
Speaker 1: would like fake death threats against herself. She would also
Speaker 1: fake letters from different occult organizations to Old coot Um
Speaker 1: in order to like be like, you have to do
Speaker 1: this where the order of the fucking I know, some
Speaker 1: some Osiris or some ship in Egypt, and like, you
Speaker 1: need to do this. Where do you find the fucking
Speaker 1: time I did? I think it's interesting that it doesn't
Speaker 1: like like she would. She would have infiltrated kind of
Speaker 1: any place that was vulnerable to her, infiltrating it. And
Speaker 1: I and I because I was sort of like, because
Speaker 1: her ideas divert so wildly so quickly, you're like, why spirituals?
Speaker 1: And you're like, oh, I guess that there's only so
Speaker 1: many religious movements that were accessible to women at all,
Speaker 1: So that would have been an easy one. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: there's a number of reasons it makes sense. So after
Speaker 1: her articles with old Cotts start to really get big,
Speaker 1: she gets a letter from a guy named Jerry Brown
Speaker 1: who has a popular magazine called The Spiritual Scientist, and
Speaker 1: he basically over time agrees to like starting with just
Speaker 1: kind of give it letting her write articles. He basically
Speaker 1: turns his magazine into her personal mouthpiece, which she uses
Speaker 1: to spread her belief Stephen Wider yeah Um. Eventually all
Speaker 1: the press around her earns her another interview with the
Speaker 1: mainstream publication. Like the first real big one focused on her.
Speaker 1: It's by the Daily Graphic, which is a sizeable publication
Speaker 1: at the time. Mead writes quote at the newspaper office,
Speaker 1: she blew smoke at the reporter and narrated a life
Speaker 1: story peppered with more falsehoods than a cookie has crumbs.
Speaker 1: Knocking three years from her age, she presented herself as
Speaker 1: a former child bride married to a doddering seventy three
Speaker 1: year old whose habits were not agreeable to me, and
Speaker 1: as I had a fortune of my own, I decided
Speaker 1: to travel. She mentioned, having lived in England and Egypt,
Speaker 1: also in the Sudan, where she made a small fortune
Speaker 1: after cornering the Ostrich feather market and at baden Baden,
Speaker 1: where she lost a fortune at the gambling tables. In fact,
Speaker 1: she declared moneyment nothing because fortunately she had received a
Speaker 1: sizeable legacy from Princess Bagration. Goggling. The reporter kept lighting
Speaker 1: Helena's cigarettes and repeating that's a remarkable statement, to which
Speaker 1: HBP would solemnly reply it's true. Name dropping constantly, she
Speaker 1: reeled off stories about Daniel Home, Charles Darwin, whose work
Speaker 1: she claimed to have translated into Russian while in Africa,
Speaker 1: Zar Alexander, and other persons likely to impress a newspaper reporter,
Speaker 1: and he seems to be kind of both a little
Speaker 1: bit it's a combination of like laughing at her but
Speaker 1: also kind of dazzled by her. Um. He again describes
Speaker 1: her as handsome and voluptuous in his article. A lot
Speaker 1: of all the guys who write about her have to
Speaker 1: talk about her appearance and stuff. Yeah, yeah, um, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's interesting stuff, um and yeah. By eighteen seventy five.
Speaker 1: By late eighteen seventy five, she's probably the most influential
Speaker 1: occult and spiritualist like related figure in the country. And
Speaker 1: she decides then that it was finally the time to
Speaker 1: form a secret society, this one themed after the Rosicrucian
Speaker 1: lodges that she believed had once existed. So she and
Speaker 1: Olcott start what they called the Miracle Club, which sounds
Speaker 1: like a modern like yeah, like everyone puts in ten
Speaker 1: dollars and yeah, that does sound like a place that
Speaker 1: I could walk by. It's it's it's it's pretty good.
Speaker 1: Even Lochman admits nothing too miraculous happened in it, but
Speaker 1: he doesn't really talk about what the Miracle Club is.
Speaker 1: Mead goes into a lot more detail. She says it
Speaker 1: was basically a private seiance club for New York socialists
Speaker 1: who were forbidden to speak about what they saw during
Speaker 1: the seances um, which was mainly just to like make
Speaker 1: them feel special, right, like if you make everyone sign
Speaker 1: a blood introduced the exclusionary element, and this was like
Speaker 1: a big like especially in New York City, was like
Speaker 1: middle upper class kind of yeah, I mean to be honest,
Speaker 1: this is this is just a precursor to like the
Speaker 1: board Ape Yacht Club and stuff like, oh you get
Speaker 1: this like secret chat room with all these influencers and
Speaker 1: stuff and like nobody gets to know what goes on
Speaker 1: in there. And it's funny because usually what happens is nothing,
Speaker 1: nothing at all, because these are these are very boring
Speaker 1: people looking for something to make them feel exciting. Um
Speaker 1: So the medium that she brought on for this is
Speaker 1: a guy named David Dana, whose brother was the editor
Speaker 1: of the New York Sun, Which is why she picks
Speaker 1: him right, because she's she's always looking for publicity. The
Speaker 1: whole thing collapses though, because Dana wanted to be paid
Speaker 1: for the work that he was doing, and Blovotsky was like, oh, no,
Speaker 1: you're we're not going to pay you for doing this
Speaker 1: thing that's making us a bunch of money. Um So
Speaker 1: he does the nineteenth century version of canceling her on
Speaker 1: social media. Um Olcott later wrote quote The Wretch failed utterly,
Speaker 1: not only as a medium, but was also reported to
Speaker 1: us as having spread calumnies against the one who had
Speaker 1: done him kindness, the kindness of unpaid labor. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's being paid an exposure, Robert, he is getting paid
Speaker 1: an exposure. But also they can't talk about it. Listen,
Speaker 1: that's been that's look, that's how I didn't make an
Speaker 1: income for six or seven years. Um, you were famously
Speaker 1: channeling people from my miracle club, um, which we're not
Speaker 1: allowed to talk about everyone. No, no, So despite her
Speaker 1: growing notoriety, times were tough for an aspiring spiritual guru. Uh.
Speaker 1: An economic recession had brought a swift into the easy
Speaker 1: cash that some spiritual grifters had enjoyed over the last
Speaker 1: few years. In a letter to a friend, Bulovotsky wrote,
Speaker 1: there is terrible panic. Those who have got money hide it,
Speaker 1: and those who have not are dying of hunger. It
Speaker 1: all does sound a lot like in f t S. Honestly,
Speaker 1: like there's a weird similarity between like that crash and
Speaker 1: like the way they write about it at least, um
Speaker 1: I know, but it's like I also don't really by
Speaker 1: how she writes about it, Like I I just assume
Speaker 1: almost anything she says is like overblown, like blown out
Speaker 1: of proportion because of her flair for the dramatique. And
Speaker 1: she yeah, she's she's claiming in some of these letters
Speaker 1: that her income, she's making more than six thousand dollars
Speaker 1: a year, which is like a lot of money in
Speaker 1: the day. That's a very healthy income. But she's also
Speaker 1: claiming at the same time, I'm broke because I keep
Speaker 1: putting all of the money back into the movement. Um, right,
Speaker 1: So like she yeah, could be true. I mean it's
Speaker 1: like hard to there, I know, at least with spiritualism,
Speaker 1: but they're they're was always an issue with like the
Speaker 1: being like an influential movement, but the numbers being like
Speaker 1: constantly like really really really inflated to the point where
Speaker 1: everyone was like, how could this religion be going broke?
Speaker 1: And it's like, well, not as many people are a
Speaker 1: part of it, as they're saying, And it seems fair
Speaker 1: to say that, like primarily the thing keeping her going
Speaker 1: is old Coot, who's good at raising funds, who's good
Speaker 1: at like putting money together and stuff. And he had
Speaker 1: like pre existing class, yes, yes, and he's making sure
Speaker 1: that there's always money, and she's kind of working him
Speaker 1: to the bone, right because she has expensive tastes, including
Speaker 1: a pound to day tobacco habit. Now. At the time,
Speaker 1: the center of Bolovotsky social life was the Lotos Club,
Speaker 1: a parlor where she and Oldcott held court with regular
Speaker 1: audiences of spiritualists, mediums, and quote bright clever people of
Speaker 1: occult leanings. According to old Coott. Many of the latter
Speaker 1: were scientists, lawyers, doctors, clergymen, and other people with a
Speaker 1: kind of influence and resources that could support growing movement.
Speaker 1: One of them, Reverend doctor J. H. Wiggan, edited a
Speaker 1: paper call The Liberal Christian. He wrote after a visit
Speaker 1: that topics Yeah, yeah, yeah Christian, he wrote after a visit.
Speaker 1: The topics discussed in the Night at the Salon included
Speaker 1: whether or not flowers had souls, penises, and religious worship, gravitation,
Speaker 1: something called jugglery and chemistry. I think it's juggling science. Junglery.
Speaker 1: Isn't that just physics? Like what? Um, that's that's it's
Speaker 1: so that like that sounds so silly. And I'm also like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's like exactly the kind of like conflations that would
Speaker 1: happen all the time of like stuff that sounds absolutely ridiculous.
Speaker 1: But like at the time you're like, yeah, let's not
Speaker 1: rule out that flowers have souls because uh, there's we're
Speaker 1: about to get fucking planes and like X rays exist,
Speaker 1: like and ice cream has been invented. Yes, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's awesome. Um and it's yeah, it's it's it's It's
Speaker 1: interesting one of the things that this guy complains about
Speaker 1: that a lot of people complain about her chain smoking
Speaker 1: and how bad it makes everything smell. And again, this
Speaker 1: is the eighteen seventies, and dudes keep being like this
Speaker 1: lady smokes a lot, Like this lady is smoking too much. No,
Speaker 1: one is never not smoking in this period, and she's
Speaker 1: smoking to alarm someone in eighteen seventy. Think about think
Speaker 1: about how much a cigarette ways, and think about what
Speaker 1: a pounded day of tobacco actually means to smoke. That's
Speaker 1: like a brick of cigars. I kind of blocked that
Speaker 1: out since our last recording, and a pound that that's
Speaker 1: a nightmare amount of tobacco. I hope that that is
Speaker 1: the only figure in this entire story that has not
Speaker 1: been inflated. Then I don't think it is. So it is.
Speaker 1: One of the reasons why I think that's probably accurate
Speaker 1: is so many different kinds of people comment on it
Speaker 1: that like, yeah, this lady smokes like nobody I've ever seen. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: it was from this poorous group of hangers on who
Speaker 1: formed Bolvatsky's Parlot that the Theosophical Society would develop meat rights.
Speaker 1: On Tuesday, September seven, a crowd of seventeen gathered in
Speaker 1: her parlor to hear George H. Felt, an engineer and architect,
Speaker 1: give an unusually dense lecture on the lost canon of
Speaker 1: proportion of the Egyptians. This was not Felt's first appearance
Speaker 1: at Madame's, for he had been introduced by one of
Speaker 1: the regulars, Charles Southern, a rare book expert who was
Speaker 1: editor of the American Biblio Bibliopolist. Helena had Felt had
Speaker 1: found Felt interesting and asked him to give an informal
Speaker 1: lecture which would offer her guests something out of the ordinary.
Speaker 1: Having brought with him some nicely done illustrations, Felt began
Speaker 1: somewhat ponderously by explaining his theory that the architectural proportion
Speaker 1: employed by the ancient Egyptians was actually observed in templar hieroglyphics.
Speaker 1: The audience proceeded to yawn, but visibly perked up when
Speaker 1: Felt went on to remark that the Egyptians had been
Speaker 1: adepts and magical science, and that some of their hieroglyphic
Speaker 1: figures were realistic drawings of elementals, the messenger spirits who
Speaker 1: pop up at seances. He himself he added modestly, had
Speaker 1: discovered an ancient formula for evoking elementals. Would it be
Speaker 1: possible for him to do a demonst ration? Could he
Speaker 1: actually call forth an elemental? He announced that he could
Speaker 1: if they were willing to finance the operation and pay
Speaker 1: for his time. Of course, Henry wrote an old diary leaves.
Speaker 1: We passed on an informal vote of hearty thanks for
Speaker 1: his highly interesting lecture, and an animated discussion followed. While
Speaker 1: people were chatting, it occurred to Henry that it would
Speaker 1: be good, a good thing to form a society to
Speaker 1: pursue and promote such a cult research. On a scrap
Speaker 1: of paper, he scribbled, would it not be a good
Speaker 1: thing to form a society for this kind of study?
Speaker 1: And handed it to William Judge to pass over to HPB,
Speaker 1: who read it and nodded her head. Olcott got up
Speaker 1: and presented his idea to enthusiastic Murmurs and George Felt
Speaker 1: promised he would teach them to evoke and control elementals.
Speaker 1: Thus it was unanimously agreed that Olcott Society would be formed.
Speaker 1: This is what becomes theosophy which this based on. That
Speaker 1: description does sound kind of par for the course with
Speaker 1: how um the Great Beyond and science were kind of
Speaker 1: related at the time. There's usually some sort of like
Speaker 1: scientific like intermediary So for like I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: because you were you would Paul left as we're all
Speaker 1: we're on the entire episode. It was like ectoplasm that
Speaker 1: was like an excreting goop that mediums could make that
Speaker 1: would connect you to the like this this all sounds
Speaker 1: kind of par for the course. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: yet I feel another hard left well again because they're
Speaker 1: number one, They're they're trying to like actually control this stuff,
Speaker 1: which is which is different, but um no, it's not
Speaker 1: wildly different from the kind of things that are going
Speaker 1: to come later on. And part of that, part of
Speaker 1: like the fact that it isn't wildly different, is why
Speaker 1: Bulovatsky is not that into it at first. Again it's
Speaker 1: old Coot. He's the guy who starts what becomes the
Speaker 1: Theosophical Society. Um. Now, obviously later on she would claim
Speaker 1: that the society had been formed by her. Her master
Speaker 1: in Tibet had ordered her to make a society and
Speaker 1: like that's how it had started, Um my imaginary friend. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but she only starts claiming that after it gets big, right, Um, Like,
Speaker 1: at first it's it's small. There's like financial difficulties. Um yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about that in a second. But when they
Speaker 1: form what becomes the Theosophical Society, Um, it's with the
Speaker 1: promise to provide seekers with quote, a synthesis of science, religion,
Speaker 1: and philosophy. The Society had three objectives. Number one, to
Speaker 1: form a nucleus of the universal brotherhood of humanity without
Speaker 1: distinction of race, creed, sex, cast or color. To to
Speaker 1: encourage the study of comparative religion, philosophy, and science. Three
Speaker 1: to investigate the unexplained laws of nature and the powers
Speaker 1: latent in man. Now, despite again her later claims, Plovotsky
Speaker 1: seems to have mostly sat back and let Olcott do
Speaker 1: the organizing and fundraising. Will she like, smokes a bunch
Speaker 1: and goes on vacation. I mean, someone's got to keep
Speaker 1: mommy full of SIGs. Yeah, keep Mommy full of figs.
Speaker 1: She's she's um and you know she Uh. It was
Speaker 1: the kind of thing where she would be very hands
Speaker 1: off until he did something she didn't like, and then
Speaker 1: she would have she lose it. Well, she would know
Speaker 1: she would have one of her ghosts or her spirit
Speaker 1: friends sent him a letter that's like, oh, the guys
Speaker 1: in Tibet wants you to do something different, buddy, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's yeah, Um, yeah, it's pretty cool. Um. Of course
Speaker 1: there were issues at once, namely the fact that George
Speaker 1: Felt never managed to summon an elemental UM. Henry was
Speaker 1: hesitant to throw more of the of the Society's money
Speaker 1: at the man, but Helena convinced him that he would
Speaker 1: do the deed eventually, So Henry kept putting Society money
Speaker 1: into like fund. This guy who was a grifter, Felt
Speaker 1: takes the money and like just disappears eventually. Um. And
Speaker 1: this causes skeptics in New York to mock the society
Speaker 1: membership falls. There's like articles about this stuff, and Helena
Speaker 1: herself stops attending meetings entirely. Um. Now, she had a
Speaker 1: lot to worry about in her personal life. At this point,
Speaker 1: she had gotten bigumously married and was struggling to hide
Speaker 1: her second husband from her first one. UM. She had
Speaker 1: also started to oh, there's these these two fucking guys.
Speaker 1: It's not important. Um. But yeah, she's definitely like illegally
Speaker 1: married to two people at the same time. Um. She's
Speaker 1: also started to work on a book, which Meade writes
Speaker 1: was intended to quote salvage the ancient world from the
Speaker 1: modern stigma of superstition and ignorance. In short, she wanted
Speaker 1: to write a book that would synthesize all her knockoff
Speaker 1: Buddhist and Hindu beliefs with American spiritualism. For months, Henry
Speaker 1: funded her writing and trips to upstate New York to
Speaker 1: do more writing while she smoked and fucked her illegal husband's.
Speaker 1: She is not getting a lot of writing done for
Speaker 1: the first year or so that she's working on this book. Um,
Speaker 1: but she is getting a lot of illegal marriage stuff done.
Speaker 1: So that's that's good. You know what else is illegal? Jamie?
Speaker 1: What all the products that we're about? Product this podcast?
Speaker 1: This week is crime Week, and we are entirely sponsored
Speaker 1: by illegal explosives. Umme week, controlled substances. Uh, the works
Speaker 1: of Woody Allen. Yeah, um, all all our sponsors. You've
Speaker 1: lost me, you've lost me. Well, yeah, you know you're
Speaker 1: going to be into crimes. You've got to be into crimes, Jamie. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: I I renounced. I renounced that brand of Let's just
Speaker 1: cut to a break it's just cut to a break
Speaker 1: rather than discussing the Christine Oh my God minions. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I go see minions. We're back, Jamie. Do you think
Speaker 1: Woody Allen got minions? Like if they follow around violins
Speaker 1: talking to you about Woody Allen any more? Can I
Speaker 1: tell you something though? Um? I? Do you know how
Speaker 1: I told you earlier? I was eating easy Mac before
Speaker 1: the episode, Yes, but only because I was eating swift Mac.
Speaker 1: I was eating off brand easy Bac called swift Mac.
Speaker 1: Is it easier or is it harder? It was harder
Speaker 1: and less good. Do you think the Minions had anything
Speaker 1: to do with Swift Mac? No? I don't think that. No,
Speaker 1: because they're They're one thing get to know about the
Speaker 1: minions are abys. They love bananas, and that's kind of
Speaker 1: like they're only interesting. Yeah, there's something freudy and going
Speaker 1: on there, But you think the minions are going to
Speaker 1: explore that. I don't. Speaking of bananas, um and speaking
Speaker 1: of the minions, primarily, oct is Helena Blavotsky's minion um
Speaker 1: and so wow, she's she's bigorously married, she's like him,
Speaker 1: she grew he's minions. Yeah, she has definitely grew and
Speaker 1: and again, she's she's kind of abusing him during this
Speaker 1: period of time because she's she is living she is
Speaker 1: living well, right, She's not only like has these secret husbands,
Speaker 1: but like she's she's living a life of leisure and
Speaker 1: luxury off of society money which is provided by olcott Um.
Speaker 1: And at the same time, she has started to preach asceticism,
Speaker 1: the idea that like, in order to be an occultist,
Speaker 1: you have to avoid all of the pleasures of the flesh.
Speaker 1: You can't have sex, right, a good occultist isn't fucking.
Speaker 1: You have to be like celibate, you don't eat meat,
Speaker 1: you have to be a vegetarian. Um, you can't drink alcohol.
Speaker 1: And like Henry, a lot of the early ulchure of
Speaker 1: like the salon and stuff that they ran together was
Speaker 1: like based on drinking. They had a bar. So he
Speaker 1: changes his life on a dime when she starts preaching this,
Speaker 1: and in fact, he gets so obsessed with like the
Speaker 1: different rules about food that she is not abiding by herself,
Speaker 1: but that she makes that he becomes anorexic, Like he
Speaker 1: stops eating for days at a time. Yeah, it's she.
Speaker 1: She really does a number on this guy and Oh
Speaker 1: my god, that's so um that makes me so sad
Speaker 1: for that was the twist I wasn't expecting. He is
Speaker 1: such a he is such a follower to her, like
Speaker 1: it's amazing. Like again, there's it's either brain you could
Speaker 1: look at it that way and maybe that's the right
Speaker 1: way to do it, or maybe it's just that like
Speaker 1: for whatever reason, this guy had a hole in his
Speaker 1: life that she just figured out perfectly how to fill.
Speaker 1: Like you do you get the feeling with Old that
Speaker 1: he was always waiting to be this guy while he
Speaker 1: was like kind of like sleepwalking through life successfully. He
Speaker 1: was like this is the thing that he wanted was
Speaker 1: to like be this which lady wizard ladies yeah yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: Um so while while he's living this way at her orders.
Speaker 1: Thomas Stawazinski describes Blovotsky's lifestyle. She worked on it the
Speaker 1: book every day, stopping only for meal breaks. Her favorite
Speaker 1: food was fried eggs soaked in butter. She smoked one
Speaker 1: cigarette after another. Old Codd estimated that she could get
Speaker 1: through up to a hundred cigarettes a day. Madame claimed
Speaker 1: she received a lot of her materials and telepathic messages
Speaker 1: from Morea and Kut humie, but healthy lifestyle advice seemed
Speaker 1: to be on the master's area of expertise um, and
Speaker 1: she does eventually come out with her book. It takes
Speaker 1: her a couple of years, but isis unveiled comes out
Speaker 1: in September of eighteen seventy seven. Thomas writes, quote, it
Speaker 1: was founded on one major claim. All the religions of
Speaker 1: the world, both those currently followed and the ones to come,
Speaker 1: derived from one common source, ancient her medic philosophy. It's
Speaker 1: basic premises are contained in Corpus her medicum, a tech
Speaker 1: of unclear origin, translated into Italian and popularized in the
Speaker 1: fifteenth century by a Renaissance philosopher and Marsilio Ficino. According
Speaker 1: to Corpus Hermeticum, the universe is an intricate system of
Speaker 1: various emanations. Material reality is a product of a complex
Speaker 1: evolutionary process which subtle spiritual levels of existence create new layers,
Speaker 1: dinser and more physical. The history of the human race
Speaker 1: is subject to the same law, but in fact it
Speaker 1: works in an opposite direction than proposed by Charles Darwin.
Speaker 1: Humans evolved downwards, so to speak, from advanced spiritual beings
Speaker 1: to more lowly forms but there is another aspect of
Speaker 1: it too. The human spirit, trapped inside the physical body
Speaker 1: misses the perfection of higher planes of reality. The spirit
Speaker 1: can develop and protect and perfect itself through theosophy to
Speaker 1: turn to its sources as soon as possible. Therefore, evolution
Speaker 1: is too directional. Now, Jamie, does that sound like a
Speaker 1: religion that's popular in the town where you currently live?
Speaker 1: Does that sound at all like scientology? To you? We
Speaker 1: are spirit and you can teach yourself to Yeah, exactly, now,
Speaker 1: sorry for us. Good. I thought you're talking. I thought
Speaker 1: you were your ship talking Brock to Massachusetts and I
Speaker 1: was like, no, they're all Catholics there, Uh no, yes, absolutely,
Speaker 1: And this is uh yes, it's it's fan fan like
Speaker 1: scary fan fiction religionship. Yeah. And l Ron Hubbard is
Speaker 1: He's obviously not alive when she is doing her ship,
Speaker 1: but he is. He is he enter her? I actually, yes,
Speaker 1: he's hugely into Blotsky. He's reads her a bunch when
Speaker 1: he's younger, like because he's he's very much into the
Speaker 1: occult ship of the twenties. He has sex magic with
Speaker 1: Jack Parsons, the inventor of the rocket and ship right
Speaker 1: like he is absolutely into this ship. Yeah, and he's
Speaker 1: clearly he's Yeah, in the same way she's like ripping
Speaker 1: off the corpus her medical the corpus her medicum. She's
Speaker 1: taking bits of Lward Edward Bulward Litton stuff. She's mixing
Speaker 1: in like Eastern religion. L Ron Hubbard is just doing
Speaker 1: a version of what she did to her stuff too, right,
Speaker 1: Like that's and he's like mixing and in his case,
Speaker 1: he's taking the new fairly new science at the time
Speaker 1: of like psychology and mixing that in with this occult
Speaker 1: is stuff. Um right, well it's also and like at
Speaker 1: the beginning of psychology was also like influenced by spiritualism
Speaker 1: at the first psychological text evolved spiritualism and then like
Speaker 1: phased it out pretty thoroughly by like their early nineteen hundreds.
Speaker 1: But like early stuff which I just didn't didn't know. Um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, all this ship is interconnected. But that is
Speaker 1: that is very uh, that's that's ringing some miscabbage bells
Speaker 1: for Jamie now before isis unveiled. Helena Blovotsky had been
Speaker 1: again very prominent in the New York weirdo occult is
Speaker 1: spiritualist scene because of her writing there were people around
Speaker 1: the world who knew of her. But after this book
Speaker 1: is a hit, and after it she becomes a bona
Speaker 1: fide celebrity. Suddenly the Theosophical Society was swarmed with new
Speaker 1: potential members. New York High Society began to delve back
Speaker 1: into alternative religion, now with a much stronger occult angle.
Speaker 1: From time to time, Blovotsky would put on shows summoning
Speaker 1: objects from far away, having letters delivered by her, reporting
Speaker 1: spectral masters, masters, etcetera. With fame came mo money, but Jamie,
Speaker 1: with MO money came MO problems. Journalists time I'm hearing this,
Speaker 1: I know I invented that phrase. Journalists began to turn
Speaker 1: their eyes to her budding empire, and they start tearing
Speaker 1: apart her claims of celibacy and a staticism because she's claiming, like, right,
Speaker 1: I have never had sex, you know, I don't indulge
Speaker 1: in any these vices of the flesh, which like she's
Speaker 1: out in public doing all this stuff. Like everyone who's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: she's like bigamous, lee married, everyone talks about it, and
Speaker 1: like she's constantly smoking and eating all of this rich
Speaker 1: food like where it's like, yeah, like live your life
Speaker 1: but that's yeah, you're not composition everything you say that.
Speaker 1: I can't get past your use of the phrase budding empire.
Speaker 1: Yeah it is. She's she's making an empart. Yeah, I know,
Speaker 1: but that phrase is just really um, it's like it's
Speaker 1: a horny phrase. It is a horny phrase. Um. And
Speaker 1: Helena Blovotsky probably a pretty horny person, if you can judge.
Speaker 1: She was biguously married. But but we're we're not ready
Speaker 1: to talk about that, no. Um. So it was pointed
Speaker 1: out that many of these letters seemed to be written
Speaker 1: in her handwriting by these journalists who start like tearing
Speaker 1: her apart um. And so it just becomes like the
Speaker 1: fact that she gets famous also leads to a lot
Speaker 1: of negative attention. Um. And you get the feeling it
Speaker 1: just kind of overwhelms her at a certain point. And
Speaker 1: now that she's got money, she has the opportunity to
Speaker 1: like maintain and build this religion that she started somewhere
Speaker 1: other than the United States where people are looking too
Speaker 1: much into her business. L Ron Hubbard does this too, right.
Speaker 1: He moves to England and he takes to the sea.
Speaker 1: She goes to England first, also like Ron Hubbard, and
Speaker 1: sets up offices there. But after she's like established theosophy
Speaker 1: in England, she moves to India, and that is what
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about in part four, along with
Speaker 1: finally a lot more information about how she accomplished a
Speaker 1: lot of these tricks, because it's after India that becomes clear.
Speaker 1: And then we're going to talk about the Nazis. But Jamie,
Speaker 1: you know who's not a Nazi? Definitely me? That's right,
Speaker 1: That's right. Why don't you plug your awesome credit for me? Um? Okay,
Speaker 1: you can listen to my podcast ghost Church on cool
Speaker 1: Zone Media. It's about the history of American spiritualism, which
Speaker 1: I think we've officially now diverged from just in the story, um,
Speaker 1: And so you can hear about the history and then
Speaker 1: me going to a spiritualist camp in Florida there or
Speaker 1: you can follow me on Twitter or Jamie long to
Speaker 1: help Instagram, Jamie christ Superstar. Go find Jamie on the internet.
Speaker 1: Listen to Ghost Church. It is the best podcast that
Speaker 1: you can listen to right now. Um. Your episode, Um
Speaker 1: was truly I think my favorite in the series. You
Speaker 1: and Paul just really it was good. You know you
Speaker 1: there's a lot on the cutting room floor when you
Speaker 1: when you finally release the loftist cut um, and that
Speaker 1: that full five hour conversation we had. Um. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that people are going to be upset, but that
Speaker 1: people will you know, it would be controversial to at
Speaker 1: least a lot of what was said. Yeah, And I honestly,
Speaker 1: you know, I've gone back and forth on this a lot,
Speaker 1: but I think a lot of what we said about
Speaker 1: Donald Rumsfeld was legally slander. Um. But well, why do
Speaker 1: you think you did right? Jamie Loft is protecting Donald
Speaker 1: Rumsfeld and you the listener go home and find a
Speaker 1: way to protect Donald Rumpsfeld in your own life. Until
Speaker 1: Part four