In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

The Temple theosophists were part of a middle-class migration into California that took place between 1900 and 1920 as a “second wave” from the East Coast. Many of these migrants believed that California represented an ideal where nature and social setting provided the fundamentals that would allow them to attempt to establish a “new life.” This ideal was health, popularized in the later nineteenth century through the widespread idea that California was the land of restorative climate. Health seekers flocked to Southern California in droves in the 1880s, enough to call it a “health rush,” and set up a “sanatorium belt” that stretched from San Diego to Loma Linda.1 Many of them were city dwellers, but they worked outdoors on numerous citrus farms and bee ranches, gaining back their health and improving their livelihoods.2 With their move to California, Temple members exchanged the actualities of urban life in the East with an image of an ideal city, both urban and agricultural, in the West. There they would 99 5 Early Halcyon The Temple Sets Its Foundations in the Golden West In order to labor effectually, the Temple organization must direct its work from a center strong enough to hold and conserve the forces sent for its advancement. . . . A dynamic center which, while it may draw men who will scoff at first, will compel them to remain and work. With the permanent organization of the work . . . there should be outlined to all interested the building of a city where there may be faithfully carried out the ideas of a righteous government of the people, by the people and for the people. . . . The city which will some time be built already hangs in the heavens in form. This form will be given to you ere long. —Teachings of the Temple, 1900 05chap5_Layout 1 2/12/2013 05:34 Page 99 escape into the perfection of their new “White City” and provide a sanatorium that would be replete with the supportive therapies then available in the advancing healing arts. As early as 1901, Blue Star saw visions she described as “the hill at San Luis Obispo,” with “a guardian line of entities surrounding it.” She saw a collection of buildings and felt “a good force at work among the people there.”3 Temple members viewed the Pacific coast as a “fiery zone” and believed the higher vibrations needed for their success came through fire rather than water. The Atlantic coast was under the influence of the water elementals.4 This idea underpinned the romanticism and desire for improvement that gripped many living in eastern states, no longer satisfied with the “Arcadian East,” who looked toward an area “where distance and a strange nature held hope for a rediscovery of the ideal.” To Temple members, the move to California would be an attempt to create the transcendent ideal in a real place, inspired by esoteric plans.5 Esoteric: The White City, To Prepare a Place In 1900, the Master Hilarion told Temple members to use the Temples of Brotherhood to gather the people and funds necessary to build a cooperative city according to a “great design.” A pamphlet about the League of Brotherhoods’ purpose and work was issued that included the site plan of a four-square-mile circular city. The Master called for certain portions of the land to be set aside as “business centers, schools, government buildings , places of entertainments, parks etc.” The plan consisted of “a Circle [that] . . . cut the Square on the inside.” The “New City” or “White City,” with sections grouped into esoteric number systems, was divided into four quadrants of seven radiating roadways, each quadrant mirroring the others. Streets were laid out in a circular grid four miles square, with roads spaced a little under half a mile apart. Zones for farms of four or five acres, as well as smaller residential tracts, were included in the possible configuration of the city space. The Master Hilarion told the group: I am not urging you to attempt some strange impracticable scheme. I shall try to show you that the idea advanced by us is just as practical, just as sensible, as would be any business enterprise where personal gain was the only factor worth consideration. I am but asking you to form an association on a larger scale than is usual for the purpose of soliciting means and interesting the right people in building and occupying a place 100 Early Halcyon 05chap5_Layout 1 2/12/2013...

Share