The 1940s witnessed a boom in esoteric and occult movements, and we so often encounter evidence for such movements that we realize just how familiar a part they must have been in the social landscape.
We see this for instance in Wallace Stegnerâ??s 1942 study of Utah, Mormon Country. Near Monticello, in one of the remotest corners of the state, Stegner discovered the â??Home of Truthâ?, a communal Theosophical settlement first founded by Marie Ogden in 1933. She envisaged this commune as a nucleus of The Kingdom That is Being Built, on the principles laid down in the Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ. Like the many such occult colonies that then operated in America, the Home had grand aspirations, with its Middle and Inner Portals, its Community Houses and Dormitories. Mrs. Ogden â??controls and directs the community with the aid of messages from the spirit world and from Jesus Christ.â? On the spiritual plane, she would regularly converse with Tibetan lamas.
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