Upstate Cauldron

Joscelyn Godwin

Description

Bronze Medalist, 2016 Independent Publisher Book Awards in the US Northeast -Best Regional Non-Fiction Category
Honorable Mention, 2015 Foreword Reviews INDIEFAB Book of the Year Awards in the Religion Category

From 1776 to 1914, an amazing collection of prophets, mediums, sects, cults, utopian communities, and spiritual leaders arose in Upstate New York. Along with the best known of these, such as the Shakers, Mormons, and Spiritualists, this book explores more than forty other spiritual leaders or groups, some of them virtually unknown, but all of them fascinating. The author uncovers common threads that characterize these homegrown spiritualities, including roots in Western esoteric traditions, liberation from the psychological pressures of dogmatic Christianity, a preoccupation with sex, and involvement in the radical reform movements of the day. In addition to maps and photographs of surviving buildings and monuments, the book also features a gazetteer of sites listing 150 locations connected to these groups, which may be used as a helpful travel guide to the region.
Acknowledgments

1. The Historical Background

2. The Religious Background

3. The Female Face of God

4. The Indian Tragedy

5. Sleeping Preachers

6. Mormon Roots

7. The Square and Compass

8. Not the End of the World

9. Not the End of the World

10. Perfection in This Life

11. The Poughkeepsie Seer

12. Rapping Spirits

13. The Progressives Take Notice

14. Sex, Drugs, and Mirrors

15. Chautauqua Follies

16. Open Breathing

17. Practical Spirits

18. Theosophy, from Ithaca to Halcyon

19. The Hollow Earth

20. Freethought

21. Oz and Ends

22. The Fra

23. The Craftsman

24. The Rochester Yogi

25. The Cauldron Refired

Maps
Gazetteer of Sites
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Local history
• Region
• History of the Americas
• Regional

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 06 mars 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438455969
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

Upstate Cauldron
SUNY SERIES IN W ESTERN E SOTERIC T RADITIONS
David Appelbaum, editor
Upstate Cauldron

E CCENTRIC S PIRITUAL M OVEMENTS IN E ARLY N EW Y ORK S TATE
JOSCELYN GODWIN
Published by
STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS
Albany
© 2015 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
E XCELSIOR E DITIONS IS AN IMPRINT OF S TATE U NIVERSITY OF N EW Y ORK P RESS
For information, contact
State University of New York Press
www.sunypress.edu
Production, Laurie D. Searl
Marketing, Anne M. Valentine
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Godwin, Joscelyn.
Upstate cauldron : eccentric spiritual movements in early New York State / Joscelyn Godwin. — Excelsior editions.
pages cm. — (SUNY series in Western Esoteric traditions)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-5595-2 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4384-5594-5 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4384-5596-9 (ebook)
1. New York (State)—Religion. 2. Occultism—New York (State) I. Title. BL2527.N64G63 2015 200.9747—dc23 2014020301
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Acknowledgments
1. The Historical Background
2. The Religious Background
3. The Female Face of God
4. The Indian Tragedy
5. Sleeping Preachers
6. Mormon Roots
7. The Square and Compass
8. Not the End of the World
9. Brief Utopias
10. Perfection in This Life
11. The Poughkeepsie Seer
12. Rapping Spirits
13. The Progressives Take Notice
14. Sex, Drugs, and Mirrors
15. Chautauqua Follies
16. Open Breathing
17. Practical Spirits
18. Theosophy, from Ithaca to Halcyon
19. The Hollow Earth
20. Freethought
21. Oz and Ends
22. The Fra
23. The Craftsman
24. The Rochester Yogi
25. The Cauldron Refired
Maps
Gazetteer of Sites
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
This book is the outcome of a gradual discovery of the spiritual archaeology of Upstate New York. It began in the late 1960s when my mother, Stephanie Allfree Godwin, introduced me to Woodstock’s Old Catholic Archbishop (Father Francis) and to devotees of Meher Baba, and when I discovered Anthony Damiani in his Ithaca bookstore (see chapter 25 ). In 1989 I met John Patrick Deveney, an authority on spiritualist history, to whom I am most grateful for reading this book in manuscript, and for his and Dr. Penny Asbell’s hospitality in New York City. At the same time, I met Leslie Price, founder of the journals Theosophical History and Psypioneer and encourager of my work from that day to this. Much later, Marc Demarest added his rich fund of data in the website “Chasing Down Emma,” and his ever-ready willingness to mine it for his friends’ benefit. Madis Senner helped to define my project with his website Mother Earth Prayers: Places of Prayer in Greater Upstate New York, and his short-lived Spirit House Society inspired my first phase of research. Tom Tryniski’s online collection of local newspapers at fultonhistory.com was an enormous help in this.
Others have helped through conversations or correspondence: Joseph Caezza and Mark Stavish with their deep knowledge of esoteric traditions; Eugenia Victoria Ellis with her dissertation on Claude Bragdon; John Gallucci and Tom Klenck, companions on long drives around the state; Layne Little, with materials on Mormonism; Mildred E. Logan and Wade Jacobson at the Temple of Truth in Freeville. For their many comments, hints, and ideas, some that they themselves may not recall, I thank Milton Chapin, Deborah Belle Forman, Cathy Gutierrez, Brenda and Rosemary Hayes, Alvin Holm, John Leidenfrost, Jack Loop, Thom Metzger, Zac Moore, Bruce Moser, John Nelson, John Patane, Einar Petander, Marjorie Roth, James A. Santucci, Avery Solomon, Carl Stearns, Pringle Symonds, Andy Tetlow, Hugh Urban, John Anthony West, Judith Wellman, Thomas Willard, Peter Lamborn Wilson, Mason Winfield, Anthony Wonderley, and Melanie Zimmer. Among the friends no longer with us, Phyllis Benjamin, John Michell, and Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke all took an interest in this, as in my previous projects.
At Colgate University, the Upstate Institute has generously supported this project, especially through publishing my study of the Spirit House in Georgetown, for which I thank Ellen Kraly, Meika Loe, and Julie Dudrick. I also thank Colgate University’s Research Council for grants in support of my travel around the state, and the Division of the Humanities for enabling me to give papers on this topic at the conferences of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism in Strasburg and the Association for the Study of Esotericism in Davis, California.
Among the libraries and historical societies of New York State, I especially thank Christian Goodwillie, Curator of Rare Books and Special Collections at Hamilton College, for opening the resources of the Communal Societies Collection to me and for providing many of the illustrations in the present book. Andrea G. Reithmayr, Curator of Rare Books at the University of Rochester Library, shared her intimate knowledge of Claude Bragdon and gave me access to his papers. I also thank Norman Carlson of the Fenton History Center, Jamestown; David Corson of the Kroch Library, Cornell University; Jerry Dale and Phyllis Evans of the Georgetown Historical Society; Holly Hewitt of the Marion Skidmore Library, Lily Dale; Sarah Keen of Colgate University Library’s Special Collections; Barbara Kittle of the Daniel A. Reed Library of SUNY Fredonia; Denise A. Roe of the Madison County Archives, Wampsville; Joyce Hackett Smith of the Cayuga-Owasco Lakes Historical Society, Moravia; John Paul Wolfe of the McClurg Museum, Westfield; and the guides at the visitors centers of the Mormon sites at Palmyra and the Whitmer Farm. My son, Ariel Godwin, designed and drew the four maps. My wife, Janet, read the book in manuscript and suggested many improvements of style and expression. Neither she nor anyone else named above is responsible for any infelicities, solecisms, or errors that remain.
Hamilton, New York, February 2014
Upstate Cauldron
I LLUSTRATION 1.1. Sir William Johnson. Statue in Johnstown by Pioggi, with assistance of Edward Lamson Henry, erected by the Aldine Society, 1904. 1 Author’s photograph.

CHAPTER 1
The Historical Background 2

During the first century of American independence, at least thirty spiritual movements, cults, utopian communities, or new religions started in Upstate New York. The Shakers, the Mormons, the Oneida Community, and spiritualism are merely the best known. The others range from the obscure to the ephemeral; all were “eccentric,” in the sense of being outside the political and social norms of the era, and in rejecting the Protestant churches that supposedly formed its spiritual bedrock. The whole phenomenon, with its concentration in time and space, is without parallel in social or religious history.
In trying to account for it, historians have turned to the Christian revivals of the “Burned-over District,” as the central and western region came to be known; the mass emigration of New Englanders cut loose from their home churches; the mushrooming towns along the Erie Canal and the opening to the West, with its sense of a new world dawning; and the growing disgust with institutionalized racial and gender injustice. Others see a “psychic highway” across the state, nourished by native spirits, earth energies, and other intangibles. 3 In an epilogue I will reconsider these ideas, but for now this book is more about facts than theory. It emphasizes the lesser-known personalities and, when possible, goes to the primary sources. Each succeeding chapter begins with an original statement, a credo, or an account of some extraordinary happening. It is for the reader to wonder at these outer reaches of human experience, which some call folly, others the broaching of boundaries between worlds.
I find this study by turns fascinating, comical, and moving. Besides its value as a human document, it is a laboratory for the study of religious origins. Here are recent cases of men and women who had visions or encounters with divine beings, assumed missions of cosmic importance, received doctrines or sacred books, attracted disciples, and started movements. Some blazed for a moment, then fizzled out like the ancient religious radicals Apollonius of Tyana, Marcion the Gnostic, al-Hallaj, or Sabbatai Zevi. 4 Others, like Moses, Jesus, or Mohammed, succeeded in planting an inextinguishable root. What determines the difference? I do not know, any more than I know why one particular acorn becomes an oak tree. My principle is always to respect, and usually to credit, the experience that lit the fuse, but not its interpretation or the doctrinal baggage train that follows it. That is a study in itself, reflecting the character, limitations, prior beliefs, and motivations of the person reporting the experience.
Readers familiar with Western esoteric traditions will notice many echoes among our provincial visionaries, such as astral journeys like those recounted in Plato’s Republic and the Hermetic Poimandres , the search for hidden meanings in the books of Genesis and Revelation, and the mythic origins of Freemasonry and the Rosicrucians. Early Mormonism owes a distant debt to alchemy, as does spiritualism to Swedenborg, while the Theosophical Society and the occultist movement that appeared in the later nineteenth century were explicitly rooted in Egyptian tradition.
On a more mundane level, every character portrayed in this book had to deal with historical and geographical realitie