Peasant art, tramp art, folk art corrects for the radical religious ideas and proves the integrity of their life. But the extremes are interesting. Celebrations of baptism held in such honor as to be worthy of death in Switzerland, in Pennsylvania were more about contradiction.
The Baptisms of Beissel
One star in this stellium of radical artists, Conrad Beissel operated under the guise of prophetic religion in 18th century Pennsylvania. The illuminations of the books and prints of Ephrata, what Hawthorne would have deemed a Utopian society in the next century, had already occurred in Pennsylvania. Whether in Hawthorne's The Blithedale Romance (1852) or Brook Farm (1841-47) New England imitated the real transcendentalists of Pennsylvania. Beissel's ritualistic mentality and isolation were so extreme that he at one time had attempted to baptize himself, a difficult feat: "this questionable act, however, failed to convince him...yet he considered his old master...so far beneath him... that it would be too great a humiliation for his proud spirit to receive baptism at their hands." (Sachse, German Sectarians, I, 102). He got by this handicap by comparing himself with Jesus. In the revival on the Pequea (1724) Beissel remembered "that even Christ had humbled himself to be baptized by so lowly a person as John" (103). Then he was immersed face forward three times.
Sachse, himself a Rosicrucian, empathizes as Beissel in November 1724 "plunges beneath the flood, and through it again enter[s] the material world cleansed from all taint and sin...yet his pride forbade him to humble himself, as he considered, to bow to his old master [Peter Becker] and receive the rite at his hands" (103). These exaggerations match the pride of the celebrant, for that cleansing from all taint lasted only so long. It had to be redone, so was no cleansing at all. Of course all this must be done in further imitiation "apostolicwise," Sachse says. "Apostles" appeared in Pennsylvania as much as they did in later Scottsdale's pyramid schemes. Aposticity seemed to go along with autocracy when down he went "face forward, under the cold flood." Sachse says that "this baptism in the Pequea was the most noteworthy one in the history of the sect-people of Pennsylvania" (104).
But not so fast. As those baptized in muddy water had later to rewash, four years later Beissel renounced this baptism lest there seem to be any taint on his authority in having been baptized by a group from which he now severed (Becker's baptists). It uts a whole new meaning on Anabaptist when Beissel was rebaptized again, that is he back down to the river and got re-baptized twice. By any proper count we are now at four. First he was unbaptised backwards to wash off the former at the hands of Becker. He went under three times backwards. This was done to an accompaniment of Rosicrucian fours and sevens that only Sachse comprehends. Then Beissel, after being unbaptized, flipped over on his face and went down forwards. Backwards means face up in renunciation and frontwards means face down in restoration. In 1738 Beissel enacted baptisms in and for the dead, (Chronicon, 122) that the son of Alexander Mack has baptized in his father's stead in order to qualify him for the Celestial Virginity. These incongruent baptisms were apparent common knowledge. In his polemic against Beissel he says, "I have, without baptizing myself and letting myself be baptized four times (like him) (Sachse, German Sectarians, I, 344). They could not leave baptism alone, took Anabaptists again and again into the water. They rebaptised as a rededication, a repentence and a show of solidarity until in 1745 repeated baptism was joined with hair cutting. The whole sisterhood was rebaptized as were ten at one time, fourteen at other, all performed by Beissel. It was "purposed it be a yearly custom" (192) This occurred after the trying period when the Eckerlins had left, accused of "church-robbery" (190)
Sabbath and Celibacy
Lawlessness attracted other peculiarities, contention over the sabbath, denial of sexuality in celibacy, fervent separation from the world. Whether it be wife from husband or goose from the table, "luxurious indulgence." Buñuel's Simon of the Desert captures the spirit of this monasticism. Maybe it's hard to believe they're serious, but death threats were also exchanged. Establishment charismatics Paul Crouch, Benny Hinn, et al. have continued the practice of death threats (xvii) against Hanegraaff and his children. Prophetic authority, tithing, healing have all been turned to lawlessness as much as baptism, chastity, Sabbaths and communal living were. Should it be called spiritual inconsistencies? Convinced they were headed east they called it west.
The long title of Beissel's Mystyrion says, the "Lawless ANTICHRIST discover'd and Disclos'd, Shewing that all those do belong to that Lawless Antichrist, who wilfully reject the Commandments of God, amongst which, is his holy, and by himself blessed Seventh-Day Sabbath." Beissel summoned these extremities to defend his notion of the Sabbath. A law of opposites prevails in his writing in code where yes means no, whore means bride, rest means turmoil. So the preface to the reader of Mystery of the Lawless invests in Beissel's own word, invokes the editorial "we" dozens of times in two pages. The thing is as apostolic as his proof that truth must first be spoken before it is written, that is, by himself. Facetious returns of such words indict the speaker, "the Whore and her Cup," "explain the Words of God after her crooked Serpentine Will" who must "withdraw with all his Heart and whole Mind from all Vanity, and Love of Creatures, and from all Worldly and carnal or fleshly Desire," "denying the world," a favorite topic of the sanctifieds own thoughts even while the whole of Pennsylvania subculture in its art celebrated the very world its religion forswore. You have to get used to "the Whore together with the Antichrist" being the facetious Beissel himself.
Baptism morphed with the Sabbath in 1728 and 29 when Beissel's confederate Michael Wohlfarth made an equal insistence on his own inspired authority in Philadelphia, "I have a message to you from the Lord" (Sachse, 150) and exchanged broadsides with opponents. The upshot being that Wohlfarth and Beissel found 
themselves on the court house steps arguing about the days of the week (154). The odd thing in this mix of genius and idiocy is that while Beissel is proclaiming himself sultan, introverting his sexuality, baptizing again and again, he is early associated with Franklin who becomes his printer, coins the atonal music of his later community and fosters the decorative art there to the nth degree. All this is simultaneously active more or less with Beissel's theosophical second work in print, the first with Franklin (c. 1729), also of 32 pages, of which 99 were printed because, as Sachse helpfully explains, "the figure 1 stands for the finite or man, while the 0 represents the infinite, and to make the number 100 would have been to place the finite before the infinite" (162). We can't have that. These NINETY NINE MYSTICAL SENTENCES exist translated by Peter Miller in part (1768), issued by the Pennsylvania German Society in 1912. So Beissel in quick succession in two years published four books, the Mystery of Lawlessness, 99 Sayings, a hymnbook of 62 hymns, 31 of his own, Gottliche Liebes (Franklin, 1730) and one on Matrimony, Ehebuchlein (Franklin 1730) in addition to Wohlfarth's Seventh-Day-Sabbath (1729). These would be the points of contention to occupy him the rest of his years: baptism, the Sabbath, wisdom, hymns and music, celibacy.
Denial of sexuality as a perversion of the human seems to have opposite programs in Beissel and Zinzendorf, celibacy on the one and tanticism on the other. Turning freedom of inquiry on its head and substituting their own systems of control, their supercharged terms for sexual denial were similar, from the celestial virgin on. The harm and productivity of their efforts is measured both by their autocracy and amazing outputs of energy, which should not necessarily seem a product of sublimation. Beissel kept publishing prolific editions of his hymnbooks of 1730, 32, 34 (ms. edition) and 36, with Ben Franklin, most of the hymns written by Beissel. All told in those years he was a propaganda machine. The First Century of German Language Printing attributes eight of the twelve known printed works in the colony to Beissel and Wohlfarth (2) before 1738, the Mystery of Lawlessness, German and English editions of 1728, 29, the Ninety-nine Mystical Sentences of 1729-30, a book on marriage as the penitentiary of man, Ehebuchlein...Menschen of 1730 and the hymn books. He and his community built houses for neighbors and held theater even when they marched the road.
This community was in many ways analogous to a large family in the support they gave one another, although one feels an issue under this surface that it is a substitute for the real family and functions like a gang. Celibacy's extremities. How to explain such things? A prejudice against life? You can see it in the theosophy of the cycle of death and rebirth. One life is never enough. Those dying generations at their song says Yeats, dying generations, entropy, life never sufficient. Celibacy, tantricism, magic rituals, incantations, death, rebirth, drug use oppose life which exists in and of itself. Negativity is so strong it casts itself as positive and maligns the positive as negative. Theosophy contributes to this in a range from the dictates of every cult leader like Beissel to every popular media view. That negativity also produces huge creativity, denial, push a thing down here and it comes up there, is something to come to terms with. Polarized or natural? We are unable to think clearly when the poles are reversed! The commonplace phrases of these esoteric teachings increase the reversals: mystic rites, secret rituals, mystic theosophists, altar of mysticisms, fires of theosophy, esoteric speculations, Celestial Eve, heavenly virgin, spiritual virgin, celestial virgin, virgin Sophia, all mixed up with mystic dogmas, spiritual awakening, primitive Christian simplicity, extraordinary revival powers, fervent spirit. As if all you need do to attract a following is tie disparates up in a sack and call it love. The negative joined to its opposite is still negative, thus comes the sensational claim that St. Paul had a agapetae, meaning a live-in snuggle bunny the real version of which might be David's girl who warmed him on his deathbed. Is there a priest, give him a bastard. Is there a romance of Thecla, make it historical. The root of negativity is overturn authority to create undue authority. Error goes in every direction. The one thing none of this bears is the thought, from the apposite Beissel condemnation of those who profane his sabbath to those seduced by women, that the universe, all human relation, every act, every thought, each moment is infused with redemption and the spirit of redemption, so no matter what you have done, thought or said, there is redemption for it.
Even if Beissels's tract against marriage has no copy known there is plenty of evidence of his view. About 1735 he was awakened in his hut by intruders who whipped him presumably for seducing one of the Reformed wives to seek her virginity with him (Sectarians, 254). All opposites! Along with chastity came mortifying the flesh, full beards, pilgrim costume with the implicit violence of that garb. Whether to be a full hermit or merely a monastic seemed the choice in their minds. Of our immediate temptations in this melancholy we have Buñuel again to spank.
To borrow from conspiracy theory, the processes of this control through sexual repression are mesmerist, patterning and depatterning, inversion techniques, hypno-illusions, etc., and even if we question the applications in politics, the techniques are there to see in the Pennsylvania communes.
Zinzendorf
There were many of these mystics. The meditations of Zinzendorf riding horseback to take the gospel to the Indians may resemble the meditations of Crashaw and Donne, but Zinzendorf is a consumed megalomaniac. His mysticism was tantricism, his community autocracy. Pennsylvania is more than toy statistics in the bathtub however. Christopher Sauer's wife went one snowy night to become the spiritual bride of Conrad Beissel at Ephrata. Alexander Mack, Brother Timotheus (Sectarians, 88) got baptized for his godly father of the same name, founder of the Baptists. Conrad Weiser bounced from Lutheran to Beissel to Zinzendorf and back to Muhlenberg's daughter after burning all his prayer books. The New Mooners of Pennsylvania, played trombones at the new moon in the wilderness, holding that prayer ascended in the waxing but descended in the waning moon as did deceased souls (Sectarians, 431). The entrance to the doorway of the Ephrata chapel was low to force the entrant to bow (404). Iron was prohibited in their building because it was unholy in the
Sachse says they aped the monastic customs of the Middle Ages in night vigils, tonsures, regalia, priesthoods (375), a mystical theology that included baptism for the dead, an even more primitive than reincarnation, the most absurd instance being the creation of "immunity for deceased or absent kinfolk" (366) gained by the outer faith. Medieval except that in his high calling and self esteem Beissel was forced to adopt the office of Vater instead of merely Brother, a title "too commonplace" (367). Such orders, rituals and hierarchies of law and outer ceremony were just opposite the Oley Newborn so totally dominated by inner vision. Signs, countersigns and mystics, how embarassed was Yeats when he practiced the rituals of the Golden Dawn?
If it is a mystery how Blake yokes such disparates in his visionary poems, bespeaking at the same time primitive biblical devotional language with an allegorical remake of the nature of man, describing his Fall in mysterious quaternaries, he is just the most lovable case axiomatic of 18th century minds where renaissance cabala remarried a pietistic lifestyle. Were there such extremes in England as turned up in Penn's Woods of a mix of emotion and pietism with the renaissance pictographs of the spiritual bride? Blake got it from Swedenborg. Swedenborg got it from Zinzendorf. Thus the teachings of "the occult philosophy of the Mystics and Cabalists of the Middle Ages [were joined] with the severely simple Sabbatarian worship and tenets set forth in their primitive Bible teachings" (German Sectarians, 31). There was always a heavy blend of Rosicrucianism in Boehme, in the mystics of the Wissahickon, in Beissel, Zinzendorf, in them all, Muhlenberg aside.
Theosophists are well loved nor confined to particular time, place and station. Percival Lowell in Occult Japan makes what we can only call a space jump when he undergoes possession in the Shinto ritual. Whether to be possessed by food or the gods? Shall we be satisfied merely to say our names in sobriety and let that be enough?
"Many thousands of these people cared so little for religion [or so much] that it became a common saying in reference to such, who cared neither for God nor His word, that they had the Pennsylvania religion" (Spangenberg as quoted by Sachse, I, 442).
Hawthorne's Dimmesdale impregnated a naif to prove that human nature can neither be created nor destroyed by ordinary means.
There was a continual flow between the Moravians at Bethlehem and Beissel at Ephrata about 1742 (Sachse, German Sectarians, 424).
Esoteric teaching, secret ritual, mystic behaviors have much invaluable surface truth meant as bait for all poor flies who find the sweetness bitter as they dive, but with enjoyment skim the surfaces. Deeper dived bitter truth, which is so sweet and satisfying beneath, is the way of opposites in earth.
Nothing is so unimportant as the principled conflict of principals.
Megalomania is incomplete without projection, that holiest of psychological mechanisms where the outer world is inflicted with the inward state.
The comet must be punitive if Beissel is so and his word greater than God's.
It's easy to exaggerate liberty, from Gottlieb Mittelberger (1756) to Jack D. Marietta and Gail Stuart Rowe's Troubled Experiment (University of Pennsylvania, 2006), which is just shocked to learn that the crime rate among Germans was greater than among English, as if there were such statistics. But Pennsylvania includes more notable lawless mystical hard cases than libertines. These made a work of love and roaring contradiction. What makes up spiritual lawlessness can be left to the induction from cases interesting in themselves, but it is a little ironic that one of the first publications in Pennsylvania was Conrad Beissel's The Mystery of Lawlessness (Andrew Bradford, 1729), translated by Michael Wohlfarth.
[One is tempted to be facetious and say that elaborations on these practices in Felker's Schwamp coined a deep pit baptism. Celebrants there had feet tied to a rope suspended from a branch over water and were raised and lowered three times head first. You believe that? Oley Judizers practiced left and right side baptism. Then there was foot first baptism, reserved for sects whose final planting at burial, made ready to be raised.]Why douse a sick girl with buckets of water three times in the middle of the night? To be able to say at her funeral that it was just in time for her death. Sprinkle or plunge, forwards or backward, splash one or three, that's obvious Pennsylvania.
Some Sources:
On the musical compositions of Conrad Beissel. Peter Miller to Ben Franklin, President of the American Philosophical Society (1768)
"The Present, which I have added, was the Father's musical Book, wherein are contained the most part of the Musical Concerts, by himself composed. It did cost three Brethren three Quarters of a Year Work to write the same: by the Imbelllshment thereof It will appear, what a great Regard we had for our Superior, In the whole Book there Is no musical Error. And as It was written before the Mystery of Singing was fully discovered, there- for are not all the Keys therein mentioned. The Masters of that Angelic Art will be astonished to see that therein a Man, destituted of all human Instruction, came therein to the highest Pitch of Perfection, merely through his own Industry. Also, that when he did set up a School In the Camp, not only the Members of the Single Station were therewith occupied for many years : but also the Family- Brethren were also thereby enamoured, that their natural Affection, to their Family suffered a great Loss.
It Is a Wonder, how the even Notes and few half-notes can be so marvellously transposed, as to make thereby 1000 Melodies, all of 5 Tunes, and some of 6 Tunes, yea some of 7 Tunes, also that they came not one the other In the Way. In the Composition the Father had the same Way as in his Writings, viz : he suspended his considering Faculty, and putting his Spirit on the Pen, followed its Dictates strictly, also were all the Melodies flown from the Mystery of Singing, that was opened within him, there- fore have they that Simplicity, which was required, to raise Edification. It Is certain, that the Confusion of Languages, which began at Babel, never did affect Singing: and therefore is in Substance of the Matter in the Whole."
It's very rare to find someone who writes down something and does reveal their disease in the writing.
