The Profits of Religion, Fifth EditionSinclair, Upton
Religion
The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition
Sinclair, Upton
Christianity -- Controversial literature
The reader soon discovers that he must radically revise not
only his ideas of celestial Cosmogony, but the order and
significance of names and titles commonly applied to the
Transcendental Brethren. The great provinces of Etheria are
presided over by chiefs, chosen for their superior
development in wisdom and love. For our solar system to
cross one of these provinces requires about 3,000 years, and
between them are belts of high Etherian light which take
several years to pass over. The passage of each province is
a cycle of earthly history, and the crossings are called
Dawns of Dan.
And here is Koreshanity, a revelation vouchsafed by the Lord to Dr.
C.R. Teed of Chicago in the year 1889. This new seer took the name of
Koresh, which is Hebrew for Cyrus, "the Shepherd from Joseph, the
Stone of Israel, the Sun-Man; the illuminating center of the Son of
man", and went out on the streets of the city to preach that the earth
is a hollow sphere with the stars inside. The street urchins of the
pork-packing metropolis threw stones at him, and the irreverent
newspapers took up his adventures, with the result that followers
gathered, and now there is a flourishing colony in Florida, with a
dignified magazine called "The Flaming Sword", and a collection of
propaganda volumes: "The Cellular Cosmogony, an Exposition of Koreshan
Universology and the New Geodesy"; "The Immortal Manhood, the Laws and
Processes of its Attainment in the Flesh"; "The Great Red Dragon, by
Lord Chester"; "The Coming of the Shepherd from Joseph, The Standing
of the Great Ensign, by Koresh." The "Religio-science" of this Chicago
revelator is based, first upon some precise measurements of the earth
which prove that its surface is concave; and second upon some
philological discoveries very much resembling puns. Thus the "cross of
Christ" is explained in a sense of the word more common among
horse-breeders than among theologians:
The highest characteristic of the alchemical law is the
cross of Christ with sensual man. The cross means that the
Lord God, in order to perpetuate his own being, descends
into the race of sensuality.
And again, when someone asks about meteors:
The word Heaven means things heaved up, that is, heaved up
from their material basis, the earth; thus, the meteors
which fall to the earth are composed of metallic, mineral,
and geological substances, being materialized or actually
created in the atmosphere by an alchemico-organic process
from zones or belts periodically open, which precipitate
their contents in the form or shape of meteors."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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