EPISODE 28 - HANS & WISAMIA
Hans was no stranger to the good life. Before Rebecca, there had been many women and much drinking of rum in the taverns and brothels of Philadelphia. He had taken the easy road at every turn and, now mid-40s, he lacked the knowledge of the world to choose a path of interest to him. Mere repeating drunken exploits of previous years seemed boring and mundane. Still he was drawn to one particular house of ill repute that also provided gambling in the back rooms for men of means. They had exotic women from around the world to help men pass the night away, but they were not the draw for Hans. The sale of the family business had put considerable funds in his grasp and he was determined to parlay that fortune into preeminence in the city.
The Garden, as it was called, was a “tippling house”, an unlicensed tavern providing strong drink and strong entertainment. The clientele was mainly sailors, stevedores, and stewbums. Hans choose this tavern to avoid the members of society he would find in the Indian King or City Tavern where the revolution was discussed nightly. Hans had always gambled and knew the history of gambling.
Sometimes, gambling played an important part in history. In 1020 A.D., King Olaf of Norway and King Olaf of Sweden met to decide the ownership of an isolated district of Hising. The history of dice however goes back to ancient Egyptian rulers and ancient Greeks as well. The original dice were bones and teeth of animals. Romans were especially notorious at cheating; Augustus, Nero, and Caligula all happened to be prolific dice cheaters. Dicing, by the tenth century, was so popular that the Crusader army leaders had to prohibit dice gambling among the lower ranks of troops so as to prevent the soldiers from gambling out their possessions entirely.
Playing cards were used in Europe back in the 13th century. Chinese Turkestan used them in the 11th century, probably the first to do so since they invented paper to begin with. When two of the guards showed up that had been sent with Bill to help protect Aphra on the voyage to Europe, having been sent back, they brought with them the game of “vingt et un” or “twenty one”. The name “Blackjack” came from the early version of the game in which the player received a payoff of 10 to 1 if he had a black jack of spades and a black ace of spades. It was this version that excited Hans in that he needed huge sums of money to rise in the ranks of the wealthy of Philadelphia. He showed the gamblers in the back room the game and everyone thought it was a good one but the amount of money that the players could bet was limited to the wages they had on them. This would not help his wealth accumulation and he used the Garden for recreational purposes only. It was the recreational side of his life where he met Wisamia.
It was the second or third time he was in the Garden. At this point, he was gambling more than drinking until he figured out the gambling would have to be done elsewhere. He first noticed her at one of the side tables with a sailor and began to look closer that the Indian maiden. She was tall for an Indian and graceful in her movements. He couldn’t tell from her bone structure which tribe she came from. The following night he found himself walking over to her to talk some of the day’s events and see if she was as interesting as she looked. Sitting down he expected an immediate flow of giggles or non-stop babble of some sort or another. Instead she sat quietly and watched him intently as if she was tying to figure him out. She knew he was different from the usual customers, but couldn’t quite guess what he was doing there in that particular tavern. Neither spook until the point when it would be awkward to talk at which point she asked him if he was there for the gambling, drinking or women. He laughed and said three days ago I would have said the gambling of course but now the drinking and women appealed to him. She looked around and said there were plenty of women to choose from why her. He looked into her eyes and said she already knew the answer in her heart. She looked away and softly said she had no heart left, that it had died a hundred times since she was young. He looked closer at her eyes and did not see the glaze of a dead soul in them. He said he didn’t believe her but it was her decision whether or not to open herself up to a customer. She looked at him again for the first time and wondered why he was interested in her. His eyes were still clear and it was obvious that rum was not loosening his tongue and that he interest was a sober one. Satisfied that he was genuine in his interest she proceeded to tell her story stopping every so often to make sure he wasn’t just being polite and appearing to listen.
Her people had migrated from the west. Her early ancestors had been more civilized than the descendants, according to the oral history of her people. The Muhheconnuk, or Stonebridge Indians, name meant “great waters or sea, which are constantly in motion, either flowing or ebbing” which speaks to a much earlier homeland to the west. There was a great famine which forced them to go east over the Bering Strait to seek a new home.
Before they were Mohican, they were Delaware. Long after the eastward migration, the Mohicans intermarried and had become “a detached body, mixing two languages together, and coming up with a dialect of their own. The Shawnee contributed to the new dialect. They asked the Shawnee for permission to settle the Ohio River region. The new territory of the Mohicans was surrounded completely by water.
A typical Mohican village was built on a hill with 20 to 30 longhouses. Families belonged to one of three clans, the bear, wolf, and turtle. Descendancy and clan affiliation were determined by the mother and sachems inherited their positions through the maternal lines of the bear clan. Women, however, did not possess political clout like Iroquois women and were not permitted to attend counsels. War with the Iroquois, especially the Mohawk, was frequent. Both the Mohicans and the Mohawk were respected and feared as fierce, aggressive tribes. When the Dutch arrived in 1609 the Mohicans (Mahicans-Dutch spelling) were awash in European goods, including firearms which put the Mohawk at a temporary disadvantage. As beaver disappeared from the Hudson valley, the French asked the Mohicans to arrange trade with the northern Indians of the St. Lawrence region, the Algonkin and Montagnais. These tribes were allies of the French and more importantly enemies of the Mohawk. This started a four year war between the tribes with Connecticut Valley Indians and the Dutch fighting on the Mohican side. 1628 marked the high point of the Mohican tribe in terms of wealth and power. In 1672 Governor Lovelace of Massachusetts successfully arranged a lasting truce between the two nations by having the Mohicans surrender their sovereignty to avoid extinction, thus becoming the first member of the Iroquois “Covenant Chain”. Except for an incident when their sachem Minichque was murdered by four free black men in 1702, they remained loyal to England and an ally to the Mohawk. The year of my birth, 1710, my grandfather chief Etowaukaum in a final attempt to salvage any dignity for the Mohican tribe went with chief Hendrick to England to meet and charm Queen Anne. While they were there they brought up missionaries in an attempt to gain favor with the English and to gain favor with the English god which had helped the English to dominate the new world.
Wisamia went on to describe an ongoing collapse of conditions in the tribe, now well under 500, counting men, women, and children. It had been a hundred years since a Mohican could be proud and she had left the village two years ago at 17 to seek her fortune in the white man’s world. At that point she laughed when she said fortune because it was obvious she had not found a fortune at all, instead she had ended up being used by white men and now had a distrust for them all of them including Hans who somehow looked like all the rest all of a sudden. He saw the change in her face and sat back waiting for what comes next. She looked away and he was a little relieved for the break in the emotions that were coming to the surface.
Then, out of the silence, she asked him if he had heard of Wissahickon Creek, of course he had but in another context entirely. He asked why she asked him that and she went on to tell him that was the first place she stayed after leaving the village. A group calling themselves Rosicrucians had invited her to stay with them until she decided what she was going to do with her life. Johannes Kelpius had established the group just before 1700 basing the tenants on the Rosicrucianism and Kabbalistically flavored mysticism of Jacob Boehme. Later in 1720 the German mystic and Pietist Johann Conrad Beissel had sought to join the group then moving to Lanchaster and founding the Ephrata. Hans looked at her with one question on his mind. He asked her if she studied the mystic arts or did she just stay there with them. She told him she had spent a year in study but last year decided to leave since it was not either what she thought it was or what she wanted for her life. But whether he was ready or not he got a brief history lesson as she reeled off some of the main ideas she learned.
Aurum nostrum no est aurum vulgi (“Our gold is not vulgar gold”). Alchemy’s medieval dictum expressed the fact that alchemy was more than producing gold from lesser elements. Historic foundations of alchemy nurtured the early mystical roots of Kabbalah. Albertus Magnus (1193-1280) authored numerous alchemy works. Thomas Aquinas, the great student of Albertus, suggested the philosophical and religious tenor of alchemical thought. As the Age of Reason dawned, Isaac Newton, Robert Boyle, and John Locke secretly delved into alchemy’s occult mysteries; Newton known to have written more than a million words on the great Art. At the core of alchemy was the declaration Tabula smaragdina : That which is below is above, that above is also below. It asserts, in the face of Christian dogma, that matter was eternal and uncreated. Its core image, complexio oppositorum, expressed by dualities such as “light and dark”, “wet and dry”, “material and spiritual”, is seeking transformative, creative union. By 1600 there was an alternative to the Reformation and Counter-Reformation madness that bathed Europe in blood. A noble, secret, and ancient brotherhood calling itself the fraternity of the Rose Cross, founded by Christian Rosencreutz, born in 1378. He had traveled to the East as a sixteen-year-old boy, wise men received him as one that was expected and showed him an important book known only as “the book M”. Johann Valentin Andreae authored three manifestos of Rosicrucian mythos between 1604 and 1616: Fama Fraternitatis, Confessio Fraternitatis, and The Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosencreutz. The first was more of an allegory than actual history, the second repeated the message of the first, interpreting and intensifying the first, and added a powerful and apocalyptic and prophetic note: a great millennial reformation was at hand, and with it, a return to an Adamic knowledge revealed by God. Knorr von Rosenroth’s translation into Latin of several key Kabbalistic works, including large sections of the Zohar fermented a high spiritual quest for ultimate, individual knowledge of God. Reigning over all the occult hieroglyphic emblems of this period was the “All-Seeing Eye” of God, mankind’s single, unfailing light. Hans had heard of the all seeing eye of God but thought it was the eye of Isis image where fertility rights were involved. He told her he was impressed with her knowledge of alchemy but he had to go and maybe they could talk again of such things. She seems distant as if something she had said was still in her mind and dismissed him with a nod like some queen dismissing an attendant that was waiting on them. Walking back to his home he thought of all the things she had said. It was the first time he had had the basic beliefs of the Rosicrucians explained so he could understand what was being said. But the concepts were troubling. It was as if everything was its opposite and nothing made any sense to bother labeling if all was its opposite. He spent the rest of the evening thinking about how it all made sense. The next night Rebecca came home early.
He asked her what she knew of Rosicrucian mysticism. She thought the first night she had come home early in months would have him asking why she was home early. Happy that he was even in a talkative mood after months of fretting over the sale of the business, she went into her version of the subject.
It all started with the age of enlightenment when the occult made a come back in a big way in England. The first secret Masonic lodge was formed by some highly informed men including Elias Ashmole a founding member of the Royal Society. He had copied the Rosicrucian manifestos by hand. From 1646 to 1717 when the first Grand Mason Lodge was formed there were many gradual changes in the formation of occult brotherhoods and societies, culminating the beginnings of “speculative Masonry”. At this point Hans admitted he was lost when it came to defining the movement precisely. Seabreeze was surprised at this new found interest in the occult of his but tried to summarize for him.
Common threads of a specific mythos weave through these movements and societies, even if they are not of one common cloth. The recurrent theme is restoration: restoration of a more perfect, ancient order; of a forgotten priesthood; of secret mysteries and rituals; and of lost occult words and powers. Man is intrinsically and eternally imbued with uncreated divine intelligence and thus can restore Zion upon the earth. It is a Hermetic-Kabbalistic mythos, deeply admixed with alchemy, reformed by Rosicrucianism, and cojoined with a Mason’s compass and square. At its esoteric core there shone a distant Gnostic spark. Although they generally use the Christian vocabulary, the intentions they fostered can appear antithetical to orthodox Christianity. It combines the practical examination of nature with a spiritual view of the universe as an intelligent hierarchy of beings; which draws it wisdom from all possible sources, and which sees the proper end of man as the direct knowledge of God. This belief underlies the Rosicrucian manifestos, alchemy, the more esoteric aspects of Freemasonry, and underlies the millennial aspiration for a new Adamic restoration on earth.
Hans loved his wife and always was amazed at her broad knowledge base and today was no exception. He wasn’t quite sure what everything meant she was saying but he was sure that she had the details straight in her mind. He asked her if she thought that the truth lay on their side of the world’s ideas or do the Christians have the truth all bottled up on their side. She said that truth and the true essence of things is best left to the experts. If you want a cosmic reading on the matter, talk to Father de Brebeuf in the Philadelphian Jesuit compound.
Hans went the next morning to the compound of the Jesuits to find the father. After hours of discussion of the occult and walking without a destination in mind, they ended up in front of the Garden tavern. Jean de Breheuf was not familiar with the tavern, but knew what was inside by reputation. Hans quickly went inside, assuming Jean would follow, which he did reluctantly. The main floor was smoky as usual as they made their way to the far side where it was less noisy and smoky. There by an open window, Jean continued with the last person noteworthy of the discussion. Hans seemed distracted as he looked around the room, looking for Wisamia. Jean asked if they were meeting someone and Hans admitted he was looking for a girl that had spent some time with Rosicrucians in the gorge. When Hans said the word gorge Jean’s eyes widened just a bit, enough to show a reaction.
Hans was just about to ask what Jean knew of the gorge when he felt someone standing next to him. He looked up and there stood Wisamia with a puzzled look on her face as she studied Jean sitting across the table. Then in an attempt to be funny she accused Hans of being so shook up after their discussion that he felt compelled to run to a priest to feel safe again. Jean laughed out loud and Hans only managed a slight smile, more of a grimace really. Hans introduced Wisamia to Father de Breheuf in as formal manner as possible given the joke that was just had at his expense. He asked her to sit down and she did so in a calm, cool manner. Jean tried to excuse himself from the table with the line he had to get back to the compound, but Hans cut him off with the fact he still had Johannes Kelpius to tell about. Jean relaxed and continued.
In 1673, he was born Johann Kelp in Transylvania near the village of Sighisoara, the birthplace of the infamous Vlad the Impaler. By the age of 16, he graduated with a doctorate in liberal arts and philosophy from Bavaria’s University of Altdorf, one of Europe’s most respected institutions. While at the university he became acquainted with the Pietist religious movement.
One of the most charismatic figures in German Pietism was Johann Jacob Zimmerman, a brilliant mathematician, astronomer, and cleric. Zimmerman had been dismissed from the Lutheran Church for preaching that the Lutheran Church was the Anti-Christ. He formed the Chapter of Perfection which believed that a new spiritual age was dawning—their version of the 1,000 year rule of the returned Christ—and it was necessary to prepare for it. In 1692 the Chapter was offered free land and passage to Pennsylvania, but Zimmerman died just prior departure. Kelpius took over as spiritual leader, determined to fulfill Zimmerman’s vision, he led his group to a ridge above the Wissahickon gorge, one of the oldest geologic formations in North America. To avoid conflict with other groups and religions in the area they chose not to go by any name or tenets. They were often collectively referred to as “The Woman in the Wilderness.” For ten years they flourished, but the inherent conflict between a desire for spiritual seclusion and a desire to serve their fellow man proved to undermine their focus. Many of the members left and joined the burgeoning population of nearby Germantown. Kelpius contracted tuberculosis and finally died around 1708 at the age of 35, a small stone marker beside a cave once thought to be a meditation cell of his claims him to be “America’s first Rosicrucian Master.”
Kelpius left behind a collection of original hymns, a journal that included many of his correspondences, and the authorship of a book on prayer and meditation.
Jean stopped to catch his breath. Hans immediately noted that unlike Boehme, Spener, Huss, Francke, Hauge, Labadie, or Zimmerman, Kelpius (Kelp) was here in the Philadelphia area not that long ago. Wisamia said that most of the followers that still lived on the ridge talk about him as if he was still their leader and quote him constantly. Some still go to the cave to meditate and recite the prayers he left behind. Hans asked if she could remember any of the prayers but she was not an initiate and therefore not allowed to study either the prayers or the specific meditations. Jean said around a year ago there was a story about Kelpius that he possession of the legendary Philosopher’s Stone, the mythical element that can cure all human ills. Wisamia said it was true, he had cured members of several kinds of diseases, many of the people he cured were still on the ridge when she arrived. She said she knew two people that watched while the mysterious “box” was thrown into the deep waters where the Wissahickon Creek empties into the Schuylkill River. They swear that when the box struck the water there was a deafening explosion with “flashes of lightning arcing into the sky and rolling thunder claps.”
Jean said he had heard the story as well. Then without a chance for Hans to stop him with a question or any other device, Jean excused himself from the table and left by an exit door close at hand. Hans looked back at Wisamia and said it must have been something we said. They both laughed and began to discuss the Rosicrucian premise of “what is above is below, and what is below is above.” It was late when Hans drug his drunken, tired body into bed. Rebecca rolled over and asked if Hans had gotten the Father drunk learning about the occult. NO, but after hearing about the history of the occult I needed a few drinks.
TO BE CONTINUED