-
Introduction
- University of Minnesota Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
1 With utopian visions both messianic and practical, a new cooperative colony was established in the Arroyo Grande valley of California in 1903. Named Halcyon and organized by a new theosophical movement called the Temple, it was an attempt to practice the Christian Golden Rule in a communal setting of liberty, equality, and fraternity. Nearly a year after they arrived, on Wednesday, May 25, 1904, members invited other residents of the Central Coast to tour the building and grounds and to attend the grand opening of the Halcyon Hotel and Sanatorium, the first nature-cure hospital in the region. At an evening ceremony, founders of the Temple physician William Henry Dower (1866–1937) and spiritual leader Francia Amanda LaDue (1849–1922), recently relocated from Syracuse, NewYork, spoke about the objectives of thenewcooperativeTempleHome introduction Arouse ye! Arouse ye! Children of the New Covenant. . . . The days of preparation are upon thee. Gird on that armor of Righteousness which is the heritage of every Son of the Living God, and strike for the freedoms of the races of the earth from the clutch of the Beast, the embodied Mammon who now holdeth in subjection the children of Man. . . . In freedom lies thy strength. —Artisan, 1900 Religion should be scientific, and Science religious, to be effective; and the great hope of proving to the world the fact that true Science and Religion are one and the same thing in reality, actuates all earnest members of the Temple. —The Temple and Science, circular, 1900 00front_Layout 1 2/12/2013 05:32 Page 1 2 Introduction Association. The group was building Halcyon nearby and was responsible for renovating the sanatorium’s three-story Victorian house. After a short piano selection, Dower introduced the new electrical apparatus and X-ray machine that had just been delivered. He invited guests to experience the effect of the device, and several did so. Many thought that the sensations were “very pleasant and soothing.” The local newspaper reported, “Every one had the opportunity of seeing a coin in a closed book and the bony structure of their hands by the aid of this wonderful ray.”1 The X-ray images demonstrated an energy that revealed a physical and organic structure normally unseen under the surface of matter. To Temple members, this was really a scientific demonstration of esoteric spiritual forces being made practical to human beings. The fact that the Temple members introduced their neighbors to groundbreaking technologies as well as new socialist settlement patterns alerts us to the importance that technology and social science held in the vision of Temple members as they settled and started businesses in California. This vision derived from their interest in modern Theosophy. Theosophy deals with duality, with the belief that two distinct but complementary forms of reality, such as spirit and matter, must be in right relation to one another in order for balance and harmony to occur. The constant balancing of opposing forces leads to motion that is either progressive or retrograde, depending on its positive or negative energy, but that is always subsumed in an overarching inevitable evolution to Spirit. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Theosophy emphasized that the intuitionofreligiousteachingsandtherationalityofscience,induality,were both necessary roads to spiritual and material progress. Religion The context for this understanding of religion and science was the proliferation of new spiritual impulses reborn from the ancient Western esoteric tradition as well as from South and Central Asia, informing the West through Theosophy and referred to as Wisdom Religion. Knowledge of the mysterious East rose in the last half of the nineteenth century, as translations of Eastern sacred texts began to appear in English and books such as Edwin Arnold’s story of Buddha, The Light of Asia (1879), became popular. Furthermore, a “missionary movement to the West” was inaugurated with 00front_Layout 1 2/12/2013 05:32 Page 2 [18.209.209.28] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 20:03 GMT) great publicity by Vedantist Swami Vivekananda at the World’s Parliament of Religions during the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. Modern Theosophy became “the most comprehensive, precise and authoritative re-statement” of Wisdom Religion that had yet appeared, and its ideas spread rapidly after the Theosophical Society was founded in New York in 1875.2 Progressive religion in the United States emerged from the crucible of the World’s Parliament of Religions, where the introduction of Eastern philosophies flashed intensely against a backdrop of disunity within Protestantism . The great financial panic of 1893...