The I AM Activity (Dieselpunk Era Spirituality)

As we have mentioned, the 1920s and 30s were an explosion of alternative spirituality, centered in California, proliferated by endless mail order correspondent courses, many encapsulating ideas derived from the now dying Theosophical Society. Over these two decades what was left over from Theosophy was slowly mutating into what would soon be the New Age movement and our featured movement today was key in bringing about that transition.

The I AM Activity was a major player during the 30s. They were enormously huge in their heyday. By 1938 they had a million followers, hundreds of centers and made millions of dollars off their incredibly successful merchandising operation, which would be a template for many later movements. Indeed, The I AM Activity, like another alternative spirituality organization called Psychiana, an hysterically popular mail order correspondence course, showed that during the height of the great depression, enormous success in the alternate spirituality was indeed possible.

We have covered the Compte St. Germain previously, our prolific Ascender of the Higher Planes returns to center stage once again in the I AM Movement.

The Compte St. Germain was a tall tale telling socialite of the 1700s who was later dug up and giving a fresh coat of spiritual spackle by Helena Blavatsky, the leader of the enormously influential Theosophy movement. St. Germain was made into a purified and dazzlingly holy Ascended Master. The Ascended Masters were a group of great, holy teachers which included Jesus who had become spiritually perfect, and were working together to secretly guide the rest of mankind to become enlightened.

Blavatsky, the founder of the Theosophy Society, died in 1891 and over the next 30 years the Theosophical Society ebbed and splintered due to the craziness of Blavatsky’s successor Annie Besant. Thus it is we come to the early 1930s when a gentleman by the name of Guy Ballard is hiking Mt Shasta in California when lo and behold St. Germaine appears to him.

Guy Ballard was an avid reader of Theosophy and he started a movement which focused on the Ascended Masters which Blavatsky had invented some decades before. St. Germain became on par with Jesus (who was also an Ascended Master and thus why The I AM Activity considered themselves a Christian organization). Saint Germain supposedly assigned Ballard the task of initiating the Seventh Golden age, the permanent “I AM” age of eternal perfection on earth. The saint designated Ballard, his wife, and their son Donald as the only accredited messengers of the masters.

Guy and Edna Ballard

In 1934 and 35 Ballard published two books Unveiled Mysteries and The Magic Presence, which describe Ballard’s experiences with the masters. Unveiled Mysteries is of course reminiscent of Blavatsky’s famous Isis Unveiled, a seminal Theosophical work. Ballard set up shop in Los Angeles and used the profits from the books to advertise heavily on radio. He began holding public classes in which he would channel St. Germain and deliver expositions on morality and the state of the upper worlds.

“Through Ballard the masters taught of the “I AM,” the basic divine reality of the universe, God in action. Individualized, the “I AM” is the essence of each person, they said, and should be constantly invoked and activated. It is pictured as an entity residing above each person’s head and surrounded by golden light and a rainbow of color. It is connected to the person by a shaft of white light. The “I AM” presence is invoked by use of decrees, affirmative commands that the “I AM” presence initiate action in the self and the world. Basic in the daily activity of an “I AM” student is the violet flame decree, in which a violet flame is pictured surrounding the person and purifying him spiritually.”

Ballard was both a showman and had the right product at the right time. He channeled, he wrote, he held mass gatherings where he would exorcise any of the countless psychic entities plaguing the earth and humankind. He held services that were classic seances   He led audience in prayers and affirmations. He held classes and let the attendees hear directly from the great disembodied St. Germaine Himself (channeled through Ballard of course) and he sold a cascade of merchandise “including books, records, pins, rings, posters, and portraits of the Masters, including Saint-Germain and Guy Ballard himself. I AM rings sold for $12, photographs of Ballard for $2.50, a Chart of the Magic Presence for $12, and $1.25 bought a special binder in which to store the flood of continuing I AM edicts. New Age Cold Cream was also available.” He made millions.

By the late 30s The I AM Activity was unstoppable.

I AM Temple

I AM had its detractors. Cult critic Carey McWilliams described “Ballardism as “a witch’s cauldron of the inconceivable, the incredible and the fantastic… a hideous phantasm. The movement was attacked by occultists no less than skeptics, because of I AM’s bastardized version of esoteric teachings, and its vast appeal to New Age believers. Theosophical magazines rejected Ballardism as a perversion (and of course it tread upon and plagarized their own teachings), and in 1937, Rosicrucian H. Spencer Lewis denounced these “mystical racketeers:” he ruefully confessed that his own writings on Lemuria had provided Ballard with some of his sources.

The most powerful condemnations are found in the pamphlets produced from 1936 onwards by the former Ballard student, Gerald Brya who comprehensively attacked the dubious origins of the movement, its plagiarized scriptures, and the mercenary motives of the founders. He also charged that I AM devastated the lives of its members. Bryan argued that “probably in no other movement has there ever been such widespread interference with the personal lives of its members as in this cult of the Mighty I AM.” Members were told to sever all contact with anyone who rejected I AM teaching, even family members, and the strain on family life was enhanced by the Ballards preaching against sexual desire, which was an enemy to be suppressed. I AM prohibited sex except for procreation, and recommended against bringing children into a world so close to its end. “Husband, wife, mother, or some other relative living in a fanatical Mighty I AM family has actually been kept in another part of the house and denied former privileges because he or she would not embrace the Ballard doctrines.” Intolerance was demanded of “hundred percent students.” Also bizarre was the Ballard view that animal life was the creation of black magicians, and that spirits in animals should be freed, in other words, that members should “release” their animals by having them killed.

The I AM leaders instructed movement followers to buy and burn Bryan’s work, which they did “with all the fanaticism of a witch-burning rite, reminiscent of a former age of bigotry and superstition,”

Ballard taught that followers could become spiritually pure and Ascend straight to heaven, bypassing physical death just like Jesus and His buddy St. Germain had. But in 1939, at the absolute peak of his popularity Ballard did the dumbest thing he could possibly do for the movement. He died. He didn’t ascend, he just died and was cremated. This has been the downfall of many a spiritual leader claiming superhuman abilities. Few have come out unscathed, although Hubbard managed it, But Hubbard had learned an enormous amount from Ballard.

Ballard’s wife, Edna, quickly redefined Ascention to mean dying normally but ascending to the highest plane of the afterlife. Edna had been right there with her husband the entire time and could have carried business forward admirably, but in 1942, she and her son were charged with eighteen counts of mail fraud on the basis of claims made in books and pamphlets sent through the mail.

In the trial the prosecutor argued that Ballard had made up the religion and that he and other members did not believe it and operated the foundation purely as a fraudulent moneymaking scheme. Although the defendants were initially convicted, the convictions were eventually overturned in an important Supreme Court decision holding that one’s religious faith could not be put on trial. No matter how nutty sounding a belief system, a defendant’s faith in it cannot be put on the stand.

However, during the prosecution the movement was stripped of the right to use the postal service as well as their tax exempt religious status, neither of which was returned until 1957. Edna removed the group from public spotlight but quietly continued on and indeed The I AM Activity is still in existence today, although no knew messages from the Masters have been received since Edna’s death in 1971.

 

Los Angeles and the 1920s Occult Explosion

When folks think of explosions of wild spiritualities they usually think of the 1960s and 70s. But California in the 1920s was equally as crazy, and many would argue more.

The Victorian Era started the ball rolling with Spiritualism, Theosophy and The Golden Dawn. Between these, all the concepts that would grow and be experimented with through the 20th century emerged: mediuimship/channeling, clairovoyance, astral projection, astrology, mixtures of eastern and western religious concepts, past lives, ceremonial magick, cabalic esotericism for non Jews, the list is endless.

All of these interests and the children of the Victorian generation who begat this explosion converged in Los Angeles during the 20s to the 40s.

It was at first accidental then purposeful. In 1920 the population of Los Angeles was 576, 673. By 1930 the population had more than doubled to 1, 238, 048. Why? Hollywood, baby. Hollywood came on the scene and hopefuls from across the land gathered to be part of the film industry. They were a perfect audience for the new forms and creative mixtures of Spiritualist, Theosophical and post Golden Dawn ideas that were erupting in the young, loose, anything goes era of the roaring 20s.

Before now, Lodges were the way this stuff was explored. Men had their Freesmasonry lodge, or their Rosicrucian group or hundreds of other types of lodges practicing everything from drinking to symbolic morality to the occult. During the 1800s Lodges were how it was done. But in the new 20th century things were changing. People with interesting systems of alternative spirituality were discovering a way to actually achieve stability was to form a little hub in LA and offer a correspondence course by mail across the country or even mail as far as Europe.

Correspondence courses quickly became the new Lodge. You would advertise whatever incredible new system or method of achieving amazing hidden knowledge of reality in magazines, and interested parties would contact you and pay you to send them a step by step educational course by mail. You would get your lessons mailed to you, mail back your “tests” and when finished with the system, which could take anywhere from 25 to 75 letters,, you’d graduate and be able to form local Lodges.

Over the decade as Los Angeles’ reputation grew, it attracted droves of occultists and those wanting to start their own systems of alternative spirituality as well as all the young Hollywood fodder.

To be sure, there was also an explosion of charismatic Christian sects as well as numerous more sedate Protestant denominations. But we talk today about the wild and crazy stuff.

Examples include the Blackburn Cult, also known as the Divine Order of the Royal Arms of the Great Eleven, or the Great Eleven Club. It was started in 1922 on Bunker Hill in Downtown Los Angeles,California and later formed a retreat in the Southern California Simi Valley. The group’s founder, May Otis Blackburn, is said to have received revelations directly from angels, and along with her daughter Ruth Wieland Rizzio believed she was charged by the archangel Gabriel to write books revealing the mysteries of heaven and earth and life and death.

In 1929 group leaders were indicted for grand theft and investigated in the disappearances of several members. These indictments created a media sensation when the background on the grand theft was revealed to the public. May Otis Blackburn was charged with twelve counts of grand theft, and articles at that time referred to Blackburn as a “cult leader.”  The cult later collapsed after May Otis Blackburn was imprisoned for stealing $40,000 from Clifford Dabney.

The following is a wonderful summation by a gentlemen who goes on the web by the moniker Deadhand who was going to write a book on the subject of Occult and cult activity in Los Angeles during the 20s to the 40s. I alas, do not know his real name, but would LOVE to be able to properly credit him. Here is his take:

“A great many “lost” souls hoped to abandon the ways of the old world and make a new one on the West Coast, where the motion picture industry seemed to teach that all things were possible.

Films stars of the 1920’s immersed themselves in the occult.   A society page reporter, not from Hollywood and so unfamiliar with its ways, once visited a major studio of the time was astounded to find that, “hundreds of performers are more than passingly interested in necromancy, superstition, and prognostication in general.”  He reported that seers – palmists, crystal gazers, and trance mediums – were everywhere.  “I am told that these do a truly amazing business among the players (actors).”  He learned that many actors paid annual fees to astrologers so that they would be informed of any momentous planetary changes that might affect their careers.

“This modern world is full of primitive minds,” stated the famed religious scholar, Dr. Lewis Browne in 1929, when explaining how it was that men and women of his age could be so easily drawn toward unorthodox, pagan, or primitive religious practices.   A resident of Santa Monica, Dr. Browne was said to have found Southern California a “fruitful field” for his studies of religious movements.   He estimated that there were, in the late 1920’s, approximately 400 cults active in Southern California alone, with memberships numbering in the hundreds of thousands.   The included such notable organizations as Zeralda and Omar’s “Love Cult,” also known as the “Sacred Schools Cult”, the Mazdaznan Cult, the “Perfect Christian Divine Way” cult, the “Christian Church of Psychosophy,” and the “Pisgah Work.”

There were numerous Devil-worshipping cults, too.  A man name Macario Timon was murdered in Oakland in 1926, and in the victim’s home police found books and manuals of the cult and prayers signed in blood, indicating the victim himself was part of such the cult.  They also found, behind a large red seal in a folder a sketch of a sun rising behind some hills, with a cross at the base of a tree, surrounded by bizarre symbols.   One of the prayers written in blood began, “Most powerful Lucifer…” and went on to beg for wisdom and knowledge that could be used to overcome enemies.

Purification by fire and “Garden of Eden orgies” were the hallmark of the Oroville-based House of Judah cult, in which members prayed and chanted together while a stitch away from being nude.  They sacrificed lambs, which were burned alive, according to horrified neighbors.

A certain self-proclaimed “Bishop,” Wilbur Leroy Cosper, was arrested in Oakland in 1926 and sentenced to six months for violations of the “medical practice act” for mixing levity, religion, and medicine.  His minions, who gathered to wait for him outside the jailhouse were “lightly clad dancers, major and minor deities, a scattering of archangels, and scores of (uncostumed) followers – mostly women.” They promised passersby a “resurrection day” to celebrate their leader’s eventual release.  The “Bish,” as he was called, told reporters through the bars of his jail cell that they should attend the promised gala, which he hinted would include “graceful maidens in aesthetic dances.”  It is likely that many of them accepted the invitation.

Margaret Rowen founded the Reformed Seventh Day Adventist Mission, not to be confused with the Seventh Day Adventist church.  Mrs. Rowen, who will play a peripheral but important role in another cult’s future, was based in Los Angeles and was adamant that the end of the world would occur on February 6th, 1925.  She is estimated to have had a thousand followers and was the subject of much publicity at the time, to include mention in national magazines, yet she was rather more successful as a self-promoter than as a prophetess, as most LA residents would attest on the seventh day of February 1925.

A Mrs. Nelson was investigated in Oakland for her fitness as a mother after she admitted abandoning her children and husband.  At the time of the interview, the abandoned husband was a resident of a state asylum.  She claimed that one child, whom she had found and reclaimed, was born as a result of “delvings in the occult, mysterious experiments in mind control, and spiritual investigations” while she and her husband were members of an unnamed cult.

One woman under police protection in 1930 was so terrified of the cult she had joined and abandoned that she refused to state its name for fear of deadly retribution.  Eventually it would be known as the cult of “Hickory Hall.”  The woman said that the priestess who ran the cult, a Mrs. Leech, also called the “Most High Interpretess,” “dominated the household mentally and physically…We could have no wills of our own, no thoughts except hers.”  When the former member objected to children in the cult being spanked with sticks, she was bent over a chair and spanked by five other cult members instead,  “just like a child”.  She fled that same night.  Later she would receive a telegram from her former cult brothers and sisters that contained only four telling words: “We won’t hurt you.”

In 1929 the Fresno Bee reported that the leader of the “Brother Isaiah” cult was traveling around Southern California in his “tri-motored airplane” inspecting property upon which he might open a new branch of his own cult.  Area realtors were on the plane with him, pointing out properties that were available and haggling prices.  Indicative of just how accustomed Californians had become to cult activity is the fact that this story did not appear on the front page of the newspaper.  It was not reported as news at all.  It was conveyed as a minor happening on the Women’s Daily Feature Page, alongside “Fall Formal Fashion,” “Rector’s Recipes,” and a notice that a party was to be held at Mr. and Mrs. E.W. French’s home the coming Saturday.

There were so many cults that the District Attorney had an undercover man whose job it was to infiltrate and monitor them.  His name was Detective Eddie Kane and he achieved a flash of fame for befriending and then exposing the fraudulent activities of a popular spiritualist of the time, Elsie Reynolds.

An editorial in a Van Nuys newspaper in 1930 complained that, “Los Angeles…extends a welcome asylum to every cult of every kind that seeks a place to hide temporarily its ugly head until it can build sufficient strength to begin the spreading of its poisonous propaganda.  The number of cults in Los Angeles are a standing joke the country over.”  Dan Thomas, a Los Angeles reporter echoed these sentiments when he wrote, “Detroit has its auto factories, Pittsburgh has its steel mills and New York has its night clubs; and Los Angeles, not to be outdone, has its own peculiar and unrivaled specialty, too – Los Angeles probably has more fake “religious leaders” – and more suckers to follow them – than any other city in the country.”

It wasn’t just Californians joining cults, though.  In Michigan there was the infamous “House of David” and the Evangalista cult – the leader of the latter was found beheaded, with all his family members murdered in their sleep, allegedly by disgruntled followers.  Chicago had the “Magi Cult”.  Pennsylvania had the “Hex murders.”   Iowa had the “Flock of Holiness.”  Kansas had the “Brotherly” cult, led by a blind pastor who required married women to kiss men other than their husbands or else suffer eternal damnation.   And a New York writer complained in 1922 that, “We have the most variegated menagerie of cults anywhere to be found,” lamenting that “freak religions” were infesting the city, being supported by “women of a certain age suffering from suppressed religion.”

Not surprisingly, cult activity was not contained within the borders of the United States.   In 1927, a reporter posed the question to his readers, “How do Americans and English residents of the Riviera amuse themselves?”  According to Italian police, he wrote, “They join cults.”  He went on to say the local police stations had to employ a secretary to track all the cults and sects.  There were, one policeman reported, nude cults, vegetarian cults, Spartan cults, the Simple Life cult, and of course numerous “Occult” cults, which, he said, caused the most trouble.”

 

Fraternitas Saturni (Dieselpunk Era Spirituality)

Fraternitas Saturni is an extremely influencial and long running German occult society which is technically still operating today.

The Fraternitas Saturni was begun in 1925 as a splinter from another society, Collegium Pansophicum as a result of a dispute between the Collegium’s founder, Heinrich Traenker’ and Aleister Crowley.

Here’s the deal: Heinrich Traenker was a bookseller who founded an occult group, the Collegium Pansophicum. Like every single occultish entity for the past 400 years, it invented a backstory in which it claimed to be a direct descendant of the fictional Rosicruciansof the 17th century. However, the type of magick it practiced was pretty standard for the 1920s.

 

They had a  33 degree initiation system straight out of Freemasonry.”Yogic and meditative techniques combined with Astrological and Planetary Magic held a significant role in their Work, and Crowley’s Thelema and Sex Magic played a part in their Work. Probably their biggest contribution to current magical practice was the development and use of the idea of an egregor or group generated spirit that acted as a magical powerhouse and guide for the Brotherhood.” It is a Luciferian system, positing a Gnostic idea that what passes for God in the dominant monotheistic religions is actually an evil Being intent on Man’s subjugation and imprisonment, and there is a higher God who wished to see Mankind freed and thus gives him the knowledge to rise out of his chains. (The apple from the Tree of Knowledge is not a bad thing, it’s a good thing).

Crowley’s sex magick and his new religion Thelema were big influences and thus one day in 1925 Crowley popped on over to Germany to visit for the Weida Conference. Corwley had his magick society the OTO and the conference was expected to proclaim both Crowley’s world leadership oft eh OTO and his position as World Teacher.

Crowley stayed with Heinrich. However Crowley’s ego, pompousness amd stubbroness was always too big for any room and when it ran up against Heinrich’s own stubborness, chaos ensued. The two men ended up quarreling constantly and hating each other. Heinrich Traenker finally went to the German authorities to have Crowley kicked out of Germany.

The Collegium Pansophicum became split as well. There were those who wanted to keep Crowley’s Thelema, those who wished to expunge all things Crowley, and those who wanted to continue on without either Crowley or Heinrich in control of them. Thus the Fraternitas Saturni was founded. It kept Crowley’s Thelema mixed in with all their other interests, but never had any ties to Crowley or involvement with Traenker.

Why Saturn? In a planetary based occult system, the planets represent different stages of spiritual consciousness as well as numerous other properties and aspects of reality and you can work your through the planets. As you master each planet you master that state of being and the forces of reality associated with it.

Thus there is the concept of Saturn gnosis. The idea is that everyone is bound in a mechanism of predetermined influences (karma, originally) ruled over by (or identical with) the demiurge Saturn. Everyone is everyone else’s tool. By magically transcending Saturn, they would free themselves, evolve to the Uranian sphere and become controllers of the Saturn-Uranian Age.

The Lodge flourished but after the Nazis took power it was shut down, as was every society, lodge and fellowship in Germany under the Nazis.

The FS was reformed in 1945 and although it has struggled, it still continues to this day.

If you want more info on their beliefs and practices, this comprehensive book is available in its entirety for free online:

 

Adonism (Dieselpunk Era Spirituality)

We have explored at length Victorian era spiritualities such as Spiritualism, Theosophy, The Golden Dawn amongst others, but we have yet to touch upon interesting versions from the Dieslepunk era of the 1920s through the 1940s.

We begin to correct that absence today. Welcome to Adonism, founded in 1925 by Franz Sattler.

Before commencing let’s give a quick snapshot of the esoteric and alternative spiritual landscape of the 1920s. The two fallen giants who ruled the landscape were Theosophy and Golden Dawn inspired western occultism. Theosophy was technically still around, but its founder, Helena Blavatsky had died and the new head of the society, Annie Besant was driving away old Theosophists in droves. The Golden Dawn had long since expired but groups carrying on their legacy were all the rage and a highly divisive, almost unbearably egotistical but extraordinarily influential Aleister Crowley was in his heyday and a force to contend with.

Upon this scene came the German “neopagan” religion of Adonism. Inspiration from both Theosophy and the post Golden Dawn method of degrees and magical practice can be seen and traced, but it was also quite original. It probably inherited a very gnostic mythology from theosophy and we’ll start there first.

Gnosticism is an ancient pre-Christian religion which ended up embracing Christianity wholeheartedly. During the first few centuries of Christianity’s existence it and the more Orthodox/Catholic version fought it out tooth and nail to be the main mode of the religion. Gnosticism lost.

Gnosticism poses that the god who created our universe is in fact a tainted/evil/bad god and there is another god beyond that who is the true Light. This simply idea is a key doctrine to numerous more modern spiritualities, Adonism amongst them.

Adonism claims that there are 5 main gods above all others:  Belus, Biltis, Adonis, Dido and Molchos.

Belus and Biltis are the parent gods. These are primordial and emerged from the primal Chaos from which all things spring. They had a son, Molchos. Molchos is a bad god. He created a world but this world was nightmarish and full of deformed monsters. When his parent Belus and Biltis caught wind of this they destroyed it.

Belus and Biltrus then went on to have two more children, really nice ones this time, Adonis and his sister Dido. They like to have sex. Adonis then created our world and it was good. He created humanity specially, basing them on the likeness of him and his sister.

But along came Molchos. Molchos  was jealous of the awesome world Adonis created, so he killed Adonis and took control of the world. Thus the world became tainted. However, borrowing from Egyptian mythology, Dido managed to resurrect her brother and he tried to protect humanity from Molchos.

Dido to the rescue

Molchos is the inventor of monotheism. He is the god of the Bible, who attacks people with plagues and sickness. He has sent false prophets such as Moses, Jesus and Muhammad to convert people to monotheistic worship and worship him under his many guises such as Jehovah, Allah and Ormuzd (the god of Zoroastrianism.) Chtristianty, Judiasm, Islam, all monotheistic religions are false religions spread by the eveil one, attempts to subvert the truth and demonize the good Adonis by painting him as Satan.

Through the domination of these monotheistic religions, Adonists believe that Molchos maintained control of the world, but that in 2000 CE, Adonis will face Molchos in a final battle, defeating him and bringing about a Golden Age, which will last until the universe is once more subsumed under Chaos. As is usual these types of predictions, Adonis seems a little late in getting his act together and sticking to the schedule.

The most important virtue of Adonism is tolerance and the area in which he can practice it is boundless”, and also holding to a personal maxim: “To understand everything means to pardon everything”. Adonism also promotes sexual intercourse as being key to its religious practice.

Franz Sattler

All this was the brainchild of Franz Sattler and he officially began Adonism in 1925. The beginnings of it however stem back to his time in a WWI prison camp. He was German, but born in northern Bohemia (what is today the Czech Republic) and a member of the Austria-Hungarian Empire. He was not a soldier, but when the town he was in, Saloniki, was taken by French forces, he and his wife were sent to an internment camp where he spent some time.

He struck up a close friendship with the camp’s chief officer, M. Parizot, who was actively involved in the Theosophy an who got Franz greatly interested in it and things esoteric. Their discussion were so interesting and Franz’s interest so piqued that Parizot had his entire esoteric library transferred to the prison camp so Franz Sattler could read them. And read them he did.

Sattler was released in 1919. He ended up in Germany in 1922, but was caught doing spy work on behalf of the newly formed Czechoslovakia. He was imprisoned for 4 years. During this time he wrote down his esoteric ideas, wrote two books, The  Book of Oriental Secrets The Magical Bible, and created Adonism.

He got out in 1926 and immediately created the Adonistic Society (which according to its by laws was begun in 1925, a year before he actually got out). However esoteric societies always play hard and fast with their origins. Like every single other movement of the 200-300 years, EVERY ONE mind you, he backdated the origins of his religion to the ancient Chaldeans, Phoenicaians, Persians, Egyptians and Greeks. You cannot find an esoteric order, including Wicca, that does not backdate their origin stories. It is standard practice, it is always bullshit and it’s just the way it’s done.

The Adonistic Society survived up until the Nazis came along and made illegal every secret and esoteric society (we can discuss the relationship between the Thule Society and the SS at a later date). Sattler however was plagued by financial scandals. The guy was shady as hell.  “In 1929 he began magical cures and other items which included talismans, love potions and even powder that allegedly belonged to the dailai Lama to supplement this income, as well as founding a stock company called Olbia-Gold, through which he defrauded stock holders by telling them that he had discovered a gold treasure at the foot of Mt. Olympus in Greece. With all these money-making activities that he was involved with, he became embroiled in a financial scandal in 1932.”

That’s it for Adonism, although it’s amkr on history was made because it was incredibly influencial on those who were to become the major German esoterics, including Friedrich Quintscher and the famed and and still active Fraternis Saturni.