Download PDF by Lyn Millner: The Allure of Immortality: An American Cult, a Florida

For 5 days in December 1908 the physique of Cyrus Teed lay in a bath at a seashore condo simply south of castle Myers, Florida. His fans, the Koreshans, waited for symptoms that he was once coming again to existence. They watched hieroglyphics emerge on his dermis and saw what gave the look of the formation of a 3rd arm. They observed his stomach fall and upward thrust with breath, although his swollen tongue sealed his mouth. As his corpse grew to become black, they declared that their chief used to be becoming the Egyptian god Horus.

Teed used to be a charismatic and arguable guru who on the age of 30 were "illuminated" by means of an angel in his electro-alchemical laboratory. on the flip of the 20th century, surrounded by means of the marvels of the second one business Revolution, he proclaimed himself a prophet and led two hundred humans out of Chicago and right into a new age. Or so he promised.

The Koreshans settled in a mosquito-infested scrubland and set to construction a communal utopia inside of what they believed used to be a hole earth--with people residing at the inside of crust and the complete universe contained inside. based on Teed’s socialist and millennialist teachings, if his humans practiced celibacy and centred their love on him, he might go back after loss of life and they might all develop into immortal.

Was Teed a visionary or villain, savior or two-bit charlatan? Why did his offers and his thought of "cellular cosmogony" convince such a lot of? In The attract of Immortality, Lyn Millner weaves the numerous strange strands of Teed's lifestyles and people of his fans right into a riveting tale of angels, conmen, offended husbands, yellow journalism, and finally, hope.