Cover to Mystic Magazine—featuring a photo of Mark Probert and highlighting articles about Richard S. Shaver, OAHSPE, and The Obeah Man (cover designer/photographer unknown, 1955).

On this day (October 4) in 1884, John Ballou Newbrough founds the Shalam Colony in Dona Ana County, NM.

To Newbrough, a dentist and Spiritualist who has produced a new scripture through automatic writing, Shalam is the culmination of a prophecy. Here he will raise perfect children who will lead the world into a new age of peace and harmony.

It does not go well. Newbrough and his followers do not know the first thing about farming and are not inclined to learn. In the end the entire colony is kept afloat through the largesse of New England millionaire Andrew Moore Howland.

The colony somehow manages to survive for two decades despite the death of Newbrough in 1891, several legal reversals, and the loss of most of the colonists. By 1907, though, Howland can no longer keep it running and shutters it forever.

On this day in 1922, Frances Vandewater Sweet dies in El Paso, Texas.

Sweet had been the assistant to dentist and would-be messiah John Ballou Newbrough, who claimed to have received a new Bible ("The Oahspe") via automatic writing. She became Newbrough's most devoted disciple, his muse, and his mistress.

In 1884, Newbrough and Sweet moved to the deserts of New Mexico to found a utopian colony, "Shalam," devoted to raising orphan children in an environment free of racial prejudice. The colony is a financial boondoggle and is never stable.

Newbrough was divorced in 1886, and married Sweet a year later in in 1887. The messiah died unexpectedly in 1891 and Sweet married his successor, Boston millionaire Andrew Howland, sparking rumors she was the real power behind the colony.

Howland ran through his fortune trying to keep the moribund colony afloat, to no avail. Shalam was formally dissolved in 1901. The couple relocated to El Paso, and spent the  remainder of their days as eccentric local characters.

Okay, so I know we said last time that we weren't going to do this again, but you know what? We lied. 

https://order-of-the-jackalope.com/oahspepals-god-goo/

Because you've been good, here's a podcast where two non-believers  read through the Oahspe and try not to be jerks about it. 

https://order-of-the-jackalope.com/oahspepals/

(Apologies to @apocrypals for nicking their format -- it's purely out of love, we swear.)

In 1880, God dictated a new Bible to John Ballou Newbrough, and then told him to move to New Mexico and open up the strangest orphanage the world has ever seen. It did not end well.

https://order-of-the-jackalope.com/suffer-little-children/

The Story of Creation From Oahspe – The Faithist Bible

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First there is the Creator, Jehovih, then His creation, and there is nothing else. What does this mean?  Simply put, nothing can create or make itself and since nothing “just happens”, without a cause, then He is the cause or Creator of all.

Jehovih is a Great Spirit that fills all space.  Everything is inside of Him.  Everything is a part of Him.  The Universe, which comprises everything,…