Word: cult
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1930-1939
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...last week in Benton Harbor, Mich. Under the leaden sky a melancholy old lady picked up all her belongings and traipsed a half-mile to a new home. She was "Queen" Mary Purnell, wife of the late "King" Benjamin Purnell, self-proclaimed Messiah, founder of the famed, bewhiskered religious cult called House of David...
...King" Benjamin died in December 1927. Soon the House of David became a house divided. "Queen" Mary vied for control with H. T. Dewhirst, onetime California jurist. For 28 years she had inhabited Shiloh, as the cult's property is called. There stands the austere mansion in which secret chambers reputedly conceal a fortune of $1,000,000 in cash and jewels left by "King" Benjamin. There is nothing secret about his mummified body, which is there on display. "Queen" Mary had hoped to cherish these properties, sacred and personal, to preach immortality there in the footsteps...
...Queen" Mary mustered about 200 followers; Judge Dewhirst the same. Thus it was not surprising that, after months of litigation, the question was settled out of court by dividing equally the cult's property and wealth, reputedly a matter of several hundred thousand dollars, farmlands in Michigan and Australia...
...vast Universal Brotherhood and Theosophical Society, founded in Manhattan in 1875 by Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, long led by the late Katherine Tingley. The late Lyman Judson Gage, San Diego banker, Secretary of the Treasury in the McKinley and Roosevelt Cabinets, was an ardent Point Loma Theosophist. The cult attempts to harmonize with all great faiths, but is deeply colored in its observances and specific modes of thought by Eastern philosophers and prophets. In glass-domed buildings on Point Loma children may attend a Theosophical school. Excellent is the musical education obtained therein...
...Order of the Star in the East recently established a 1,000-acre colony, one of four world centres, in Krotona, Ojai Valley. It is the U. S. headquarters of 82-year-old Dr. Annie Besant's Theosophical Society, a schismatic offshoot of the Blavatsky-Tingley cult. Constant is the conflict between the two; each is anxious not to be confused with the other. Dr. Besant's teachings are very closely linked with Eastern thought, occult and mystical. She has proclaimed her famed, sloe-eyed Hindu protege, Krishnamurti, to be the vehicle of the World Teacher...