Baptisms
The brightest star in this stellium of mystic artists pretending to the prophetic was Conrad Beissel. The illuminations of books and prints of the utopian society at Ephrata were a century before Hawthorne's Blithedale Romance (1852) or Brook Farm (1841-47). New England got all the press but the real transcendentalists were in Pennsylvania. Beissel was just hitting his stride in 1741, but, as will happen with the individual and the prophetic, the isolation of his mentality and individuality was extreme. At one time he attempted to baptize himselfto baptize himself which is as hard as marrying yourself, which he also tried to do. Anointing yourself is more common and just as prideful. Of the baptism, "this questionable act, however, failed to convince him...yet he considered his old master [Peter Becker]...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). In the revival on the Pequea (1724) he compared himself with Jesus, "even Christ had humbled himself to be baptized by so lowly a person as John" (103). Then he was immersed face forward three times. When one changed religions there was a giving of "a bill of divorce to their former spiritual wife" (51). "There were few under the leading of the Superintendent who were not rebaptized at least three times, according as their zeal for God demanded (51). The social relationships in these communities were as difficult as New England's. Hawthorne quit Brook farm over its nastiness in 1841.
Julius Friedrich Sachse (1842-1919), Beissel's biographer, another Rosicrucian, empathizes with Beissel in November 1724 as he "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). Submission is the opposite of lawlessness but pride isn't.These exaggerations were a style of writing of the 18th century (compare Sterne or Defoe) and they match the pride of the celebrant himself, for that cleansing from all taint, if it had any effect at all (and if it did we should all instantly baptize the world) it lasted only so long as it had to be redone, and redone, so was no cleansing at all. Before this their adversaries had taunted the Baptists who needed a second baptism with a third, drowning, but that is another course entirely. All must be done to further imitation "apostolicwise," Sachse says. "Apostles" appeared in Pennsylvania as much as they did in latter day Scottsdale pyramid schemes, what they call affinity frauds. Aposticity went with autocracy down to the Pequea where 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" (The German Sectarians of Pennsylvania I, 104).
But not so fast. Four years later Beissel renounced this baptism lest there seem to be any taint on his authority from having been immersed by a group he now severed (Becker's baptists). It puts a whole new meaning on Anabaptist. Beissel rebaptized again, went back down to the river and got re-baptized twice. By any proper count we are now at four, not counting those congregants baptized in muddy water who had to rewash. First he was unbaptised backwards to wash off the former (at the hands of Becker). He went back under three times backwards. This was done to an accompaniment of Rosicrucian fours and sevens that Sachse comprehends, that the underground cities of the future will practice in thirds. Then Beissel, being unbaptized on his back, flipped over on his face and went down forward thrice. 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) wherein the son of Alexander Mack was baptized in his father's stead to qualify him for Celestial Virginity. These incongruities were common. They just could not leave baptism alone. In his polemic against Beissel Christopher Sauer says, "I have, without baptizing myself and letting myself be baptized four times (like him) (Sachse, German Sectarians, I, 344). Anabaptists again and again took the waters. They rebaptised as rededication, as repentance and as 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 another, all performed by Beissel, who "purposed it be a yearly custom" (Chronicon, 192). This occurred after the trying period when the Eckerlins had left, accused of "church-robbery" (190).
Sabbath Celibacy
Many extremities were summoned to defend Beissel's notion of the Sabbath. The long title of his Mystyrion is the "Lawless ANTICHRIST discover'd and Disclos'd, Shewing that all those do belong to that Lawless Antichrist, who willfully reject the Commandments of God, amongst which, is his holy, and by himself blessed Seventh-Day Sabbath." A law of opposites prevailed in his writing, a code where bride means whore, and rest means turmoil. So the preface to the reader of Mystery of the Lawless invests in Beissel's own word an editorial "we," dozens of times in two pages. His proof of truth is that it must first be spoken before it is written, that is, by himself. That makes it apostolic, "the Whore and her Cup," "explain the Words of God after her crooked Serpentine Will." So it was necessary to "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," was always a favorite topic of the Sanctifieds, except that the whole of Pennsylvania art celebrated the world its religion forswore, if you count the thousand domestic details of their Jerusalem in Eden fraktur and furniture. It's almost as if "the Whore together with the Antichrist" was the facetious Beissel himself.
Baptism and the Sabbath were crucial in 1728 and 29 when Beissel's confederate Michael Wohlfarth insisted on his own inspired authority in Philadelphia, "I have a message to you from the Lord" (Sachse, 150) and exchanged broadsides with opponents. Wohlfarth and Beissel found
themselves
on the court house steps of Philadelphia arguing about the days of the
week (154). The odd thing of this mix of genius and idiocy is that while
Beissel was proclaiming himself sultan of the left wing, introverting
sexuality, baptizing again and again, he was early associated with Ben
Franklin, his printer, the Mason, and had begun to coin the atonal music of his later
community that fostered decorative art to the nth degree. All this is
more or less simultaneous with Beissel's second theosophical work in
print, and first with Franklin (c. 1729), 32 pages, of which the
99 maxims printed were, as Sachse unhelpfully 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 (1768), part 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 a work on Matrimony, Ehebuchlein (Franklin 1730) in addition to Wohlfarth's Seventh-Day-Sabbath (1729). These points of contention would occupy him the rest of his years: baptism, the Sabbath, wisdom, hymns and music, celibacy. Beissel kept publishing prolific editions of his hymnbooks in 1730, 32, 34 (ms. edition) and 36, with Franklin, most of the hymns written by Beissel. He was a propaganda machine. The First Century of German Language Printing attributes eight of the twelve known printed works in the colony before 1738 to Beissel and Wohlfarth (2) , 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. His community built houses for neighbors and held theater when they marched the road.
This Ephrata community pretended to a large family, but under the surface it was more like a gang. How to explain celibacy's extremities? A prejudice against life? You can see it in theosophy in the cycle of death and rebirth. One life is never enough for Those dying generations at their song, as Yeats, dying generations, entropy, life is never sufficient. Celibacy, tantraism, magic rituals, incantations, death, rebirth are drugs that oppose existence of itself. This negativity was so strong it cast itself as positive and maligned the negative as the positive. This negativity unleashed huge creativity, push a thing down here and won't it come up there? Polarized or natural? We are unable to think clearly when the poles are reversed! Commonplace phrases of esoteric teachings increase the reversal: rites, secret rituals, mystic theosophists, altars, fires, esoteric speculations, Celestial Eve, heavenly virgin, spiritual virgin, celestial virgin, virgin Sophia, mixed with the mystic, dogmas, awakening, simplicity, revival. All you need do to attract a following is tie up a sack and call it love. But the negative joined to its opposite is still negative, so if St. Paul had an agapetae, meaning a live-in snuggle bunny, the real version of which might be David's girl who warmed him on his deathbed, but there will be some priest who will give him a bastard, and some critic to write about it. The root of negativity is to usurp authority to create authority. The one thing none of this bears is the thought that all human relation, every act, every thought, each moment is infused with 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 known copy there is plenty of evidence of his view. About 1735 he was awakened in his hut by intruders who whipped him for seducing one of the Reformed wives, presumably seeking 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 Hegelian choice in their minds. Of the immediate temptations in this holy melancholy we have only Buñuel to spank, and he wasn't there. To borrow from conspiracy theory, the processes of 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 seen in the Pennsylvania communes.
"The tail of a comet portended switches with which God would lash and judge them with great "calamities (417), compelling Beissel to issue Mystische Abhandlung uberdie Schopfung und vondes Menschen Fall (1745), A Dissertation on Mans Fall, Englished in 1765 (433) which Peter Miller (Agrippa) said "has gone further than even the holy Apostles in their revelations" (422). No wonder Christopher Sauer says, but not in devotion, "this one must be regarded as a God" which he calls "spiritual harlotry and idolatry" (343, 44) in regard to Beissel's hymn to himself (Hymn 400 in the collection Sauer printed for Ephrata in 1739, Zionitic Incense Hill, (Zionitischer Weyrauchs Hugel (320). But of course in this god-awakened soul that word awakened, being the favorite of them all, had several meanings. Peter Miller in the Ephrata Chronicon claims that Beissel can render himself invisible, "the spirit under whose guidance he was, at times made him invisible" (332).
The entrance to the doorway of the Ephrata chapel was so low as to force the entrant to bow (404). Iron was prohibited in their building because it was unholy in the Temple, as Sachse says in reference to Nebuchadnezzar's dream, "that even in Babylon iron was known as the symbol of destruction" (402), but while iron may have been destructive it was not deceitful. When it served them to spurn Babylon they did, but when it suited them they would confirm their learning with Rosicrucian Egyptian-Babylonian ritual. Even while surrendering their so called "Babylonian names given them by their parents at baptism, they substituted new spiritual names" (305) embracing Babylon at every turn, admitting Eckerling (Onesimus), Miller (Jaebez) and Weiser (Enoch) to the grandiose Order of Melchizedek (386). It was a new/old testament Babylon Talmud/Gospel. The Zionitic Brotherhood at Ephrata could in as little as 40 days so completely physically and spiritually rehabilitate someone as to lengthen their years to 5557 in perfect health and contentment. The initiate restored to the state of perfect innocence of Adam was reborn by fasting, chanting, and drugs, a perfect Castaneda of the 18th century (361f). The good news for historians is that these elites, living so long, must still be alive to be interviewed. Of course they are yet in their infancy, so bring a bottle to their meeting. So incompatible with rational discourse, the underlying purpose of these efforts, as reported by Sachse of Johann Frantz Reguier, was the good Pennsylvania quest that "by a strict life and bodily denial one may grow and increase in sanctification" (362). And when the self-administered treatment failed and he had some time later regained his senses, Reguier went off "on July 15, 1735…for Georgia in the hope of meeting Count Zinzendorf and through him learning the way to perfection and sanctification' (quoted by Sachse, 364). "The fortunate adept who had thus successfully completed the ordeal, with physical body as clean and pure as than of a new-born child, his spirit filled with divine light, with vision without limit, and with mental powers unbounded…should finally be able to say to himself, I AM, THAT I AM." But we know all this. What Van de Wetering says of the Zen Buddhists is said of every human spiritual master; then you deed him your home and your estate. They will give you a reading. I am not going.
Sachse says they aped the monastic customs of the Middle Ages in night vigils, tonsures, regalia, priesthoods (375) and mystical theology that included baptism for the dead, 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. It's all about the outer. Look who has entered the human plane, they will tell you. So medieval was this high calling and self esteem that Beissel was forced to adopt the office of Vater instead of merely Brother, a title "too commonplace" (367). These orders, rituals and hierarchies of law and outer ceremony were just opposite of the Oley Newborn who were so totally dominated by inner vision, but yet the impetus to egotism and domination were the same. Signs, countersigns and mystics, how embarrassed was Yeats when he practiced the rituals of the Golden Dawn?
Zinzendorf
Denial of sexuality in Beissel and promotion of sexuality in Zinzendorf had opposite programs as kinds of perversion. Enforcing their own anti-laws, their supercharged terms for sexual denial and promotion were similar if opposite. The productivity of their efforts is measured by their autocracy and amazing released energy, which should not necessarily seem a product of sublimation. 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, like Beissel, is a consumed megalomaniac. His mysticism is tantrism, 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, called Brother Timotheus at Ephrata (Sectarians, 88) got baptized for his godly father founder of the Baptists (after his death!). Conrad Weiser (1696-1760) bounced from Lutheran to Beissel to Zinzendorf and back to Muhlenberg 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 most extensive use of drawing Lots in the Pietist tradition may have been Count von Zinzendorf and the Moravian Brethren of Herrnhut who drew lots for many purposes, including selection of church sites, approval of missionaries, the election of bishops and many others. This practice was greatly curtailed after the General Synod of the worldwide Moravian Unity in 1818 and finally discontinued in the 1880s." Cleromancy
The words of Beissel and Zinzendorf had a bite. They could not mutually humble themselves enough even to meet in the flesh. Beissel, who "regarded himself as of a higher rank in the theosophical fraternity, considered it against his dignity to call on Zinzendorf (Sachse, 448), who responded by letter to Beissel that he "should descend from his spiritual height that others might sit alongside of him without danger to their lives" (449). This pearl comes from the same Zinzendorf who threatened to kill Weiser. The two are paired. Both loved secret orders, paraphernalia of medals, robes, rituals and the power to command others. The Moravians had the Order of the Mustard Seed and the Order of the Passion of Jesus (Sachse 4548f). Both were social visionaries. Zinzendorf held seven ecumenical conferences to found "one congregation of God in the Spirit" (442). Throughout these things their words about Christ and love are enticing to the extreme, but the liberty and love they spoke were completely opposite their autocratic practice of the Bethlehem and Ephrata communities (435).
If it is a mystery how Blake yokes such disparates in his visionary poems, speaking at the same time primitive biblical devotional language over an allegorical remake of the nature of man, describing his Fall in mysterious quaternaries, he is just another lovable case of 18th century mind whom renaissance cabala remarried to a pietistic lifestyle. Were there such extremes in England that turned up in Penn's Woods with the renaissance pictographs of the spiritual bride? Blake got it from Swedenborg. Swedenborg got it from Zinzendorf. In the greater context it is urged that
Whatever the practices urged on these Pennsylvanians and Blake get taken as a whole they lead to madness, which you could conceive from the prevention of climax to provoke greater consciousness. They call them antinomian spiritual practices of the mystical marriage of the mind, visualizing Hebrew letters with the breath, orgasmic trance, heavenly sex, " brain corticals, lung rhythms, abdominal muscles, and seminal ducts" all this while controlling evil thoughts and manipulating the cremaster muscle such as it was for Swedenborg who had mistresses throughout Europe.
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 well loved were not confined to particular time and place. Percival Lowell stationed himself in Occult Japan so that he could take a space jump when he underwent possession in his Shinto ritual. Whether to be possessed by food or the gods, or a girl? Or shall we be satisfied merely to say our names in sobriety and let that be enough? Was Sauer's criticism mere sour grapes, for "all was well between the two men until Sauer's wife left her husband and family to follow…a stricter observance (313).
Mania can't hold still. Beissel is one who "journeyed towards the valley of the Pequea to bring about an awakening among the Mennonites, who had settled there, many of whom had become followers of the seductive Bauman and his noxious "Newborn" teaching.
"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 cannot be altered by ordinary means.
There was a continual flow between the Moravians at Bethlehem and Beissel at Ephrata about 1742 (Sachse, German Sectarians, 424).
Nothing is so unimportant as the principled/unprincipled conflict of principals.
Megalomania is incomplete without projection upon the other, that holiest of psychological mechanisms where the outer world is inflicted with the inner.
The comet must be punitive if Beissel says so.
One is tempted to be facetious and say that elaborations upon these practices in Felker's Schwamp coined a new deep pit baptism. In this ritual celebrants had their feet tied to a rope suspended from a branch over water and were raised and lowered three times head first. You believe that? Also, Oley Judizers practiced left and right side baptism. There was foot first baptism, reserved for sects whose final planting at burial was made ready to be raised, so they were buried standing up. 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, two, 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."
Peasant art, tramp art, folk art connects to the radical religious Anabaptist and demonstrates the integrity of its life. The extremes are interesting juxtaposed against each other but are nothing compared with old world extremes where celebration of baptism was held to be worthy of death. Switzerland vs. Pennsylvania was the greater contrast.Finally, it's very rare to find someone who writes down something and does reveal their disease in the writing.
One of the first publications in Pennsylvania was Conrad Beissel's The Mystery of Lawlessness (Andrew Bradford, 1729), translated by Michael Wohlfarth. It's easy to exaggerate lawless effects from Gottlieb Mittelberger (1756) to Jack D. Marietta and Gail Stuart Rowe's Troubled Experiment (University of Pennsylvania, 2006), which is shocked to learn that the crime rate among Germans was greater than among English, as if there were statistics. To combine the mystic and the outlaw, Pennsylvania may have as many mystical hard cases as libertines. They make a work of roaring contradiction.
The brightest star in this stellium of mystic artists pretending to the prophetic was Conrad Beissel. The illuminations of books and prints of the utopian society at Ephrata were a century before Hawthorne's Blithedale Romance (1852) or Brook Farm (1841-47). New England got all the press but the real transcendentalists were in Pennsylvania. Beissel was just hitting his stride in 1741, but, as will happen with the individual and the prophetic, the isolation of his mentality and individuality was extreme. At one time he attempted to baptize himselfto baptize himself which is as hard as marrying yourself, which he also tried to do. Anointing yourself is more common and just as prideful. Of the baptism, "this questionable act, however, failed to convince him...yet he considered his old master [Peter Becker]...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). In the revival on the Pequea (1724) he compared himself with Jesus, "even Christ had humbled himself to be baptized by so lowly a person as John" (103). Then he was immersed face forward three times. When one changed religions there was a giving of "a bill of divorce to their former spiritual wife" (51). "There were few under the leading of the Superintendent who were not rebaptized at least three times, according as their zeal for God demanded (51). The social relationships in these communities were as difficult as New England's. Hawthorne quit Brook farm over its nastiness in 1841.
Julius Friedrich Sachse (1842-1919), Beissel's biographer, another Rosicrucian, empathizes with Beissel in November 1724 as he "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). Submission is the opposite of lawlessness but pride isn't.These exaggerations were a style of writing of the 18th century (compare Sterne or Defoe) and they match the pride of the celebrant himself, for that cleansing from all taint, if it had any effect at all (and if it did we should all instantly baptize the world) it lasted only so long as it had to be redone, and redone, so was no cleansing at all. Before this their adversaries had taunted the Baptists who needed a second baptism with a third, drowning, but that is another course entirely. All must be done to further imitation "apostolicwise," Sachse says. "Apostles" appeared in Pennsylvania as much as they did in latter day Scottsdale pyramid schemes, what they call affinity frauds. Aposticity went with autocracy down to the Pequea where 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" (The German Sectarians of Pennsylvania I, 104).
But not so fast. Four years later Beissel renounced this baptism lest there seem to be any taint on his authority from having been immersed by a group he now severed (Becker's baptists). It puts a whole new meaning on Anabaptist. Beissel rebaptized again, went back down to the river and got re-baptized twice. By any proper count we are now at four, not counting those congregants baptized in muddy water who had to rewash. First he was unbaptised backwards to wash off the former (at the hands of Becker). He went back under three times backwards. This was done to an accompaniment of Rosicrucian fours and sevens that Sachse comprehends, that the underground cities of the future will practice in thirds. Then Beissel, being unbaptized on his back, flipped over on his face and went down forward thrice. 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) wherein the son of Alexander Mack was baptized in his father's stead to qualify him for Celestial Virginity. These incongruities were common. They just could not leave baptism alone. In his polemic against Beissel Christopher Sauer says, "I have, without baptizing myself and letting myself be baptized four times (like him) (Sachse, German Sectarians, I, 344). Anabaptists again and again took the waters. They rebaptised as rededication, as repentance and as 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 another, all performed by Beissel, who "purposed it be a yearly custom" (Chronicon, 192). This occurred after the trying period when the Eckerlins had left, accused of "church-robbery" (190).
Sabbath Celibacy
Many extremities were summoned to defend Beissel's notion of the Sabbath. The long title of his Mystyrion is the "Lawless ANTICHRIST discover'd and Disclos'd, Shewing that all those do belong to that Lawless Antichrist, who willfully reject the Commandments of God, amongst which, is his holy, and by himself blessed Seventh-Day Sabbath." A law of opposites prevailed in his writing, a code where bride means whore, and rest means turmoil. So the preface to the reader of Mystery of the Lawless invests in Beissel's own word an editorial "we," dozens of times in two pages. His proof of truth is that it must first be spoken before it is written, that is, by himself. That makes it apostolic, "the Whore and her Cup," "explain the Words of God after her crooked Serpentine Will." So it was necessary to "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," was always a favorite topic of the Sanctifieds, except that the whole of Pennsylvania art celebrated the world its religion forswore, if you count the thousand domestic details of their Jerusalem in Eden fraktur and furniture. It's almost as if "the Whore together with the Antichrist" was the facetious Beissel himself.
Baptism and the Sabbath were crucial in 1728 and 29 when Beissel's confederate Michael Wohlfarth insisted on his own inspired authority in Philadelphia, "I have a message to you from the Lord" (Sachse, 150) and exchanged broadsides with opponents. Wohlfarth and Beissel found
themselves
on the court house steps of Philadelphia arguing about the days of the
week (154). The odd thing of this mix of genius and idiocy is that while
Beissel was proclaiming himself sultan of the left wing, introverting
sexuality, baptizing again and again, he was early associated with Ben
Franklin, his printer, the Mason, and had begun to coin the atonal music of his later
community that fostered decorative art to the nth degree. All this is
more or less simultaneous with Beissel's second theosophical work in
print, and first with Franklin (c. 1729), 32 pages, of which the
99 maxims printed were, as Sachse unhelpfully 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 (1768), part 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 a work on Matrimony, Ehebuchlein (Franklin 1730) in addition to Wohlfarth's Seventh-Day-Sabbath (1729). These points of contention would occupy him the rest of his years: baptism, the Sabbath, wisdom, hymns and music, celibacy. Beissel kept publishing prolific editions of his hymnbooks in 1730, 32, 34 (ms. edition) and 36, with Franklin, most of the hymns written by Beissel. He was a propaganda machine. The First Century of German Language Printing attributes eight of the twelve known printed works in the colony before 1738 to Beissel and Wohlfarth (2) , 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. His community built houses for neighbors and held theater when they marched the road.
This Ephrata community pretended to a large family, but under the surface it was more like a gang. How to explain celibacy's extremities? A prejudice against life? You can see it in theosophy in the cycle of death and rebirth. One life is never enough for Those dying generations at their song, as Yeats, dying generations, entropy, life is never sufficient. Celibacy, tantraism, magic rituals, incantations, death, rebirth are drugs that oppose existence of itself. This negativity was so strong it cast itself as positive and maligned the negative as the positive. This negativity unleashed huge creativity, push a thing down here and won't it come up there? Polarized or natural? We are unable to think clearly when the poles are reversed! Commonplace phrases of esoteric teachings increase the reversal: rites, secret rituals, mystic theosophists, altars, fires, esoteric speculations, Celestial Eve, heavenly virgin, spiritual virgin, celestial virgin, virgin Sophia, mixed with the mystic, dogmas, awakening, simplicity, revival. All you need do to attract a following is tie up a sack and call it love. But the negative joined to its opposite is still negative, so if St. Paul had an agapetae, meaning a live-in snuggle bunny, the real version of which might be David's girl who warmed him on his deathbed, but there will be some priest who will give him a bastard, and some critic to write about it. The root of negativity is to usurp authority to create authority. The one thing none of this bears is the thought that all human relation, every act, every thought, each moment is infused with 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 known copy there is plenty of evidence of his view. About 1735 he was awakened in his hut by intruders who whipped him for seducing one of the Reformed wives, presumably seeking 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 Hegelian choice in their minds. Of the immediate temptations in this holy melancholy we have only Buñuel to spank, and he wasn't there. To borrow from conspiracy theory, the processes of 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 seen in the Pennsylvania communes.
"The tail of a comet portended switches with which God would lash and judge them with great "calamities (417), compelling Beissel to issue Mystische Abhandlung uberdie Schopfung und vondes Menschen Fall (1745), A Dissertation on Mans Fall, Englished in 1765 (433) which Peter Miller (Agrippa) said "has gone further than even the holy Apostles in their revelations" (422). No wonder Christopher Sauer says, but not in devotion, "this one must be regarded as a God" which he calls "spiritual harlotry and idolatry" (343, 44) in regard to Beissel's hymn to himself (Hymn 400 in the collection Sauer printed for Ephrata in 1739, Zionitic Incense Hill, (Zionitischer Weyrauchs Hugel (320). But of course in this god-awakened soul that word awakened, being the favorite of them all, had several meanings. Peter Miller in the Ephrata Chronicon claims that Beissel can render himself invisible, "the spirit under whose guidance he was, at times made him invisible" (332).
The entrance to the doorway of the Ephrata chapel was so low as to force the entrant to bow (404). Iron was prohibited in their building because it was unholy in the Temple, as Sachse says in reference to Nebuchadnezzar's dream, "that even in Babylon iron was known as the symbol of destruction" (402), but while iron may have been destructive it was not deceitful. When it served them to spurn Babylon they did, but when it suited them they would confirm their learning with Rosicrucian Egyptian-Babylonian ritual. Even while surrendering their so called "Babylonian names given them by their parents at baptism, they substituted new spiritual names" (305) embracing Babylon at every turn, admitting Eckerling (Onesimus), Miller (Jaebez) and Weiser (Enoch) to the grandiose Order of Melchizedek (386). It was a new/old testament Babylon Talmud/Gospel. The Zionitic Brotherhood at Ephrata could in as little as 40 days so completely physically and spiritually rehabilitate someone as to lengthen their years to 5557 in perfect health and contentment. The initiate restored to the state of perfect innocence of Adam was reborn by fasting, chanting, and drugs, a perfect Castaneda of the 18th century (361f). The good news for historians is that these elites, living so long, must still be alive to be interviewed. Of course they are yet in their infancy, so bring a bottle to their meeting. So incompatible with rational discourse, the underlying purpose of these efforts, as reported by Sachse of Johann Frantz Reguier, was the good Pennsylvania quest that "by a strict life and bodily denial one may grow and increase in sanctification" (362). And when the self-administered treatment failed and he had some time later regained his senses, Reguier went off "on July 15, 1735…for Georgia in the hope of meeting Count Zinzendorf and through him learning the way to perfection and sanctification' (quoted by Sachse, 364). "The fortunate adept who had thus successfully completed the ordeal, with physical body as clean and pure as than of a new-born child, his spirit filled with divine light, with vision without limit, and with mental powers unbounded…should finally be able to say to himself, I AM, THAT I AM." But we know all this. What Van de Wetering says of the Zen Buddhists is said of every human spiritual master; then you deed him your home and your estate. They will give you a reading. I am not going.
Sachse says they aped the monastic customs of the Middle Ages in night vigils, tonsures, regalia, priesthoods (375) and mystical theology that included baptism for the dead, 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. It's all about the outer. Look who has entered the human plane, they will tell you. So medieval was this high calling and self esteem that Beissel was forced to adopt the office of Vater instead of merely Brother, a title "too commonplace" (367). These orders, rituals and hierarchies of law and outer ceremony were just opposite of the Oley Newborn who were so totally dominated by inner vision, but yet the impetus to egotism and domination were the same. Signs, countersigns and mystics, how embarrassed was Yeats when he practiced the rituals of the Golden Dawn?
Zinzendorf
Denial of sexuality in Beissel and promotion of sexuality in Zinzendorf had opposite programs as kinds of perversion. Enforcing their own anti-laws, their supercharged terms for sexual denial and promotion were similar if opposite. The productivity of their efforts is measured by their autocracy and amazing released energy, which should not necessarily seem a product of sublimation. 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, like Beissel, is a consumed megalomaniac. His mysticism is tantrism, 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, called Brother Timotheus at Ephrata (Sectarians, 88) got baptized for his godly father founder of the Baptists (after his death!). Conrad Weiser (1696-1760) bounced from Lutheran to Beissel to Zinzendorf and back to Muhlenberg 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 most extensive use of drawing Lots in the Pietist tradition may have been Count von Zinzendorf and the Moravian Brethren of Herrnhut who drew lots for many purposes, including selection of church sites, approval of missionaries, the election of bishops and many others. This practice was greatly curtailed after the General Synod of the worldwide Moravian Unity in 1818 and finally discontinued in the 1880s." Cleromancy
The words of Beissel and Zinzendorf had a bite. They could not mutually humble themselves enough even to meet in the flesh. Beissel, who "regarded himself as of a higher rank in the theosophical fraternity, considered it against his dignity to call on Zinzendorf (Sachse, 448), who responded by letter to Beissel that he "should descend from his spiritual height that others might sit alongside of him without danger to their lives" (449). This pearl comes from the same Zinzendorf who threatened to kill Weiser. The two are paired. Both loved secret orders, paraphernalia of medals, robes, rituals and the power to command others. The Moravians had the Order of the Mustard Seed and the Order of the Passion of Jesus (Sachse 4548f). Both were social visionaries. Zinzendorf held seven ecumenical conferences to found "one congregation of God in the Spirit" (442). Throughout these things their words about Christ and love are enticing to the extreme, but the liberty and love they spoke were completely opposite their autocratic practice of the Bethlehem and Ephrata communities (435).
If it is a mystery how Blake yokes such disparates in his visionary poems, speaking at the same time primitive biblical devotional language over an allegorical remake of the nature of man, describing his Fall in mysterious quaternaries, he is just another lovable case of 18th century mind whom renaissance cabala remarried to a pietistic lifestyle. Were there such extremes in England that turned up in Penn's Woods with the renaissance pictographs of the spiritual bride? Blake got it from Swedenborg. Swedenborg got it from Zinzendorf. In the greater context it is urged that
"In l743 the names "Mr. and Mrs. Blake" appeared on
the register of the Fetter Lane Society, at a time when seventy-two members
formed "The Congregation of the Lamb. The Blake couple were perhaps
Willam's grandparents, for James Blake (his father) married a widow, Catherine
Armit
age, in l752 [9]. Catherine's maiden name was Wright, anda
Mr. Wright (her father?) was included among the married men in the l743 register. According to the early Blake facsimilist William
Muir they "attended the Moravian Chapel in Fetter Lane." [10]...Of greatest relevance of Blake's radical sexual beliefs is
the fact that his family was allegedly associated with the Moravians during the
turbulent "Sifting Period"a series of experiments in social
egalitarianism, magical practices, and
sexual antinomianism. Count Nicolas Ludwig Zinzendorf, the
chief of the "United Brotherhood," was determined to act out the
Kabbalistic theories of earthly and heavenly copulation that he had learned...." Schuchard, Why Mrs. Blake
Whatever the practices urged on these Pennsylvanians and Blake get taken as a whole they lead to madness, which you could conceive from the prevention of climax to provoke greater consciousness. They call them antinomian spiritual practices of the mystical marriage of the mind, visualizing Hebrew letters with the breath, orgasmic trance, heavenly sex, " brain corticals, lung rhythms, abdominal muscles, and seminal ducts" all this while controlling evil thoughts and manipulating the cremaster muscle such as it was for Swedenborg who had mistresses throughout Europe.
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 well loved were not confined to particular time and place. Percival Lowell stationed himself in Occult Japan so that he could take a space jump when he underwent possession in his Shinto ritual. Whether to be possessed by food or the gods, or a girl? Or shall we be satisfied merely to say our names in sobriety and let that be enough? Was Sauer's criticism mere sour grapes, for "all was well between the two men until Sauer's wife left her husband and family to follow…a stricter observance (313).
Mania can't hold still. Beissel is one who "journeyed towards the valley of the Pequea to bring about an awakening among the Mennonites, who had settled there, many of whom had become followers of the seductive Bauman and his noxious "Newborn" teaching.
"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 cannot be altered 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 lies
have truth meant as bait for all poor flies
who find the sweetness bitter as they dive,
but with enjoyment skim the surfaces.
Deeper dive to bitter seeming truth,
which is so sweet and satisfying beneath.
This is the way of opposites and earth.
Nothing is so unimportant as the principled/unprincipled conflict of principals.
Megalomania is incomplete without projection upon the other, that holiest of psychological mechanisms where the outer world is inflicted with the inner.
The comet must be punitive if Beissel says so.
One is tempted to be facetious and say that elaborations upon these practices in Felker's Schwamp coined a new deep pit baptism. In this ritual celebrants had their feet tied to a rope suspended from a branch over water and were raised and lowered three times head first. You believe that? Also, Oley Judizers practiced left and right side baptism. There was foot first baptism, reserved for sects whose final planting at burial was made ready to be raised, so they were buried standing up. 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, two, 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."
Peasant art, tramp art, folk art connects to the radical religious Anabaptist and demonstrates the integrity of its life. The extremes are interesting juxtaposed against each other but are nothing compared with old world extremes where celebration of baptism was held to be worthy of death. Switzerland vs. Pennsylvania was the greater contrast.Finally, it's very rare to find someone who writes down something and does reveal their disease in the writing.
One of the first publications in Pennsylvania was Conrad Beissel's The Mystery of Lawlessness (Andrew Bradford, 1729), translated by Michael Wohlfarth. It's easy to exaggerate lawless effects from Gottlieb Mittelberger (1756) to Jack D. Marietta and Gail Stuart Rowe's Troubled Experiment (University of Pennsylvania, 2006), which is shocked to learn that the crime rate among Germans was greater than among English, as if there were statistics. To combine the mystic and the outlaw, Pennsylvania may have as many mystical hard cases as libertines. They make a work of roaring contradiction.
Early Pennsylvania was a frontier contrary to the reputation of peaceful Quakers, a haven of religious plurality and a contest among public relations teams of the majorities. Spiritual lawlessness turned into law attracted dueling personalities who contended over the sabbath, sex and separation from the world. Whether it wife with husband or sensuous goose of the table, "luxurious indulgence" was an offense to them. Buñuel's Simon of the Desert gets the spirit of this monasticism when it exchanges death threats one against each other. Contemporary establishment charismatics Paul Crouch, Benny Hinn, et al. continue death threats (xvii) against Hanegraaff and his children. Prophetic authority, tithing, healing were all turned lawlessness along with baptism, chastity, Sabbaths and communal living. Should it be called spiritual inconsistency? Convinced they were headed east they called it west.
One Pennsylvania prophet who opposed them all was Matthias Baumann of Oley, founder of the Newborn. He objects to baptism in all its forms. He opposes all devout practices, says that "all that Christ and his Apostles commanded have become vast idolatry," calls the sects and denominations, Christians without Christ, (Call to the Unregenerate. Tr. Stoudt. Berks County Historical Review, Fall, 1978, 144). In the context of continuing epidemic spiritual lawlessness he says, "all people want to look at Christianity from the outside...and they know nothing about the inward ground" (138). The outer ground is here the mystic lawlessness, not confined to practice only. Baumann's direct speech calls into question the plague of gnostic transferences from Eve to the body and to women.
