July 10, 2018 • 44 mins
There's a nifty bit of hidden history tucked away in Philadelphia's Wissahickon Valley Park -- a cave that, legend has it, was home to a doomsday cult. In today's episode, the guys follow the strange journey of Johannes Kelpius and his followers from Europe to North America as they prepared for the end of days (first in 1694, then in 1700). Tune in to learn what motivated the group, how they influenced American history, and what happened to them after the world kept spinning.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:24):
Well, well, well, no ole old friend. Here we are
Ridiculous History about too h about to dive into a
topic that I find endlessly fascinating. Yeah, we're going to
dive into a sea hoole. What is a sea hole
like cut cold hole? Yes? Or a cave hole? Right? Yeah?
When I say a sea hoole, it's more of a
(00:44):
ce rectangle. Really, yeah, because it's a it's a cave,
a man made cave with a rectangular door that was
one of the first ever homes to America's like original
doomsday cult. My name is Ben. Uh. This ridiculous history,
as I think I just mentioned, And of course we
are joined as always with our superproducer, Casey Pegram. So no,
(01:09):
the rumors are true. We're talking about a legitimate doomsday cult.
And you know, in another show that you and I
do together, we run into cults on a on a
like bi monthly basis, semi regular. But in Ridiculous History, man,
we don't deal in rumors. What's the brass tacks, my man? Yes,
(01:31):
the brass tacks take us to a place very familiar
with everyone here, known as Philadelphia. See the Cave of
Kelpius is tucked away in a remote section of the
modern day Fairmont Park in Philadelphia. But it's it's very old.
You could you could walk past it and not really
(01:54):
notice the history now unless you went inside, right, that's right.
In fact, a lot of places that describe it say,
even if you know where you're going, you're probably a
lot less likely to find it rather than just stumble
upon it, because it is in like a heavily wooded,
kind of blair witch kind of environment. Right. Uh, it's
along the banks of the Wissahickon Creek. Um. And in
(02:17):
sixteen ninety four, a very smart fellow, a scholar, something
of a of a New Age mystic type, right by
the name of Johannes Kelpius. He brought forty of his followers,
all learned men, from their home in Transylvania, to the
(02:38):
newly settled Germantown, Pennsylvania, because they were escaping religious persecution,
because they were they weren't playing by the book book. Yeah, yeah,
they had their own playbook spiritually, and they believed that
the end was nigh. Uh. Johannes Kelpius was born Johann
(02:59):
kelp in Transylvania, as you said, in sixteen sixty seven,
is that nominative determinism. Do you think his family like,
we're we're maritime folk. I wonder that's a good question.
You know. Also, what I noticed is given the timeline,
this is way before Graham Stoker made Transylvania a scary place.
That's true. Is that weird? It's going to come up
(03:21):
in the next episode. We're gonna do I think, Oh
it is it is, stay tuned spoiler alert. But yeah,
so he brought these forty they had I think he
himself had. Well, what you were starting his chronology? Um,
he was he was born, yeah, and then he was educated. Yeah.
He completed his education at Bavaria's University of Altdorf, and
(03:45):
at the time it was a very respected high flutant
institution there in Europe. Uh. And his name change occurred
not because of vanity so much as because the common
practice for scholars at this day and age was to
latinize your name. So kelp became Kelpius. What would mind
become brownie us? That's interesting, Millennius Brownius pegrams. That sounds good.
(04:15):
So while he's at university, he becomes attracted to, acquainted with,
enamored of a religious movement known as Pietism. This was
a reaction against the orthodox Lutheranism of the time, and
then it later expanded to include beliefs that, you know,
as you said, with his followers, beliefs that were considered heretical, strange,
(04:39):
forbidden knowledge, possibly a cult. And as he became more
and more immersed in this world, he also began to
gather different people around him. He was a follower of
a guy named Johann Jacob Zimmerman, and Zimmerman formed a
small group of like minded pe called the Chapter of Perfection.
(05:03):
It's true and actually I saw him described as such
as a noted German mathematician, astronomer and defract Lutheran minister.
And you know what happens when they defrock you, right,
That's like when you pull all the metals off the
general's chest, you know, and send him with his tail
between his legs. You were no longer allowed to practice
the spiritual beliefs or giving me your badge and gun
(05:25):
detective exactly. And this group led by Zimmerman that Kelpius
as a member of. He right right around this time.
He's maybe twenty years old, and most of the people
in the group around his age and the group believed
that there was a new spiritual age imminent, uh, their
(05:45):
version of the one thousand year idea of Christ returning,
and that they had to prepare for this. And I
love that you mentioned Zimmerman being an astronomer, because that
was the quantitative basis for a lot of his arguments.
That's right, And I just want to say to Zimmerman
was kind of the one who initially, unless I'm reading
(06:05):
this increctly, initially put together this expedition. You know, it
was like a six month boat trip yea from yeah,
from from there from Europe to Germantown or Philadelphia area. Um.
But he passed away before it could take off. So
Kelpius kind of became the new de facto leader of
the group, the neo Zimmerman. Right, Yeah, this is an
(06:29):
interesting part of the story that I could not I
don't know if you found anything, but I couldn't solve
one mystery about this. Estimates say that around this group,
the Chapter of Perfection received an offer of free land
in Pennsylvania, in Germantown where you mentioned, and a free
boat ride over, but they received it anonymously. Now I
(06:51):
had read somewhere that it was from the governor of Pennsylvania,
was trying to, you know, encourage new settlers to come in,
and offers of religious tolerance was a big part of
early Pennsylvania settlements, right, Okay, that makes a lot of
Maybe it wasn't the government, but I know there definitely
was an effort from the powers that be in this
particular part of the colonies to attract more religiously freethinking
(07:18):
types and to populate the land with Europeans of course too. Yeah,
I think you must be spot on, you know. I
I love the tantilizing hint of an anonymous person, but
I bet you are correct that it was the governing
structure of the time. But as you said, Zimmerman ride
around the time they're about to leave for what would
(07:40):
become the United States. Zimmerman dies in August of six.
Kelpius becomes the commander. He leads them. He leads his
group of forty people to a ridge there above the
Wissahicken Gorge. That's such a fun word to say to uh.
And there along the fort parallel, Kelpius builds a forty
(08:05):
foot square tabernacle because in their philosophy and their understanding,
forty is like the best number. It's the most important
magical number. I did just find. It was William Penn
who apparently invited the group, and William Penn was the governor,
and I think kind of governed Pennsylvania like its own tear,
(08:29):
like its own entire autonomous, autonomous thing. Yeah, that's right, Um,
so Bendy notte. Millennialism is millennialism, from what I understand,
is the belief that the world will expire at a
significant date, either either completely end or some great change
will occur. As that correct. That it's big time correct,
(08:49):
and that is what these folks were all about. Um.
You may have seen the Fox television show kind of
a bit of an X Files rip off called Millennium,
but it was all about like the end times, in
the end of days and stuff. But there's a couple
of different interpretations of millennialism, and I'm taking this from
the New World Encyclopedia. Um. One of them is this
(09:10):
notion that Christ will come back to Earth and establish
himself an entire new kingdom and rule for one thousand years,
at which point will come the reckoning, you know, or
some kind of calling of those that deserve to stick
around and those that have to go. Then there's another
version of it where the second Coming occurs with an
(09:31):
immediate culling of the wicked through some sort of cataclysmic
event to you know, trigger a new world order kind
of thing. But whichever one they believed in, the fact is,
there was a very specific part of the Bible that
was a foundation of this belief system in general, and
it's obviously the Book of Revelations UM. And there's a
(09:53):
particular passage that gave this group one of their many monikers.
They had a handful UM and the passages called the
Woman and the Dragon, and it's from Revelations twelve through sixteens.
Gonna read you a little bit of it. A great
sign appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun,
with the moon under her feet and a crown of
twelve stars on her head. She was pregnant and cried
(10:14):
out in pain as she was about to give birth.
Then another sign appeared in heaven, an enormous red dragon
with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on
its head. Skip a little bit. Then war broke out
in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon
and the dragon and his angels fought back, but he
was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven.
(10:36):
The great Dragon was hurled down that ancient serpent called
the devil or Satan, who leads the whole world astray.
He was hurled to the earth and his angels with him.
So it's this idea of hell on earth kind of
And what was What were some of the names of
their group, starting with the one that was taken from
this passage that they so held so dear. They were
collectively known by several names. The weirdest one was the
(10:58):
Woman of the Wilderness. Forty guys calling themselves the Woman
of the wildern. It wasn't even like the women collective
of the Woman of the Wilderness, society of the just
the woman. Yeah, that's the weird That's the weird thing
about it is history doesn't seem to completely agree. Some
people will tell you they were just collectively called the
Woman in the Wilderness, and then you'll find a couple
(11:20):
of other places where they say they were the Society
of the Woman of the Wilderness, which makes more sense.
But my favorite though, is that they were the Hermits
of the Ridge. Yeah, it's like a the name of
a D and D party, you know, or the name
of the name of like a good old folksy prairie
home companion story. That's true, the old Hermit of the Ridge,
(11:43):
because the place we're talking about today the Cave of Kelpius.
Folks in Philadelphia area just call it the Hermit's Cave, Yeah, yep.
And the legend has it that Kelpius lived and meditated
in this cave built in the hillside of the ravine,
(12:03):
and that it was you'll hear some people say that
it was just an old spring house where occasionally Kelpius
where some other person would spend the night, yeah, and
then he would return to his summer house, you know,
in warmer No, I'm kidding, the springhouse like a well
house or something like some sort of enclosure where there
would be a well and a source of fresh water, right, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
(12:26):
So while they established themselves and what became known as
Hermit's Glenn or the Hermit's Cave and the Hermit's Glen,
they also made an impression on the town. There's a
nearby road you can find today, we believe, called Hermit Lane.
So this is established. It's not very well known i'd
say outside of Philadelphia, but it has left a physical
(12:50):
trace on the on the city, that's right. And there's
actually a fantastic article from out with Thiss Obscura called
Cave of Kelpius where America's first doomsday called awaited the
End of the World, and there's a little um sidebar
on it that has the uh coordinates of the cave
because it's not exactly something you can Google map too,
because again, like we said, you kind of just have
to wander around and find it yourself. But it is
(13:12):
technically on Hermit Lane. Yeah, yeah, it's you'll have a
hard time getting mail sent there, but you can find
it with the coordinates and the space from what we understand,
the meeting space of the hermits, or the society or
the just the woman in the Wilder of the Wilderness
included the following things. At a rudimentary observatory where the
(13:35):
monks would practice astronomy, and this is thought to be
the first observatory built in the New World, the quote
unquote New World. Yeah, and astronomy was a huge deal
for these folks, and there's a there's a sense that
it was because they were on the lookout for I'm
gonna call them extraterrestrials, but I almost want to say
(13:55):
like heavenly like angels or something. Signs and wonder same
signs in wonders, because they really did believe that, you know,
like that passes that maybe the devils were going to
come flying down from the sky. What's that? What's that line?
And uh, I think it's Batman v. Superman where it
says turns out the devils don't come from below, they
come from above. Yeah, you know, he seemed to have
(14:18):
that in mind when he was looking, and it was
a very for the time advanced telescope, right, absolutely, Yeah,
they were able to have um a very clear view
because we have we have to remember, it's very easy
for us nowadays as a species to see a mystical
belief that one group or person has and take that
(14:40):
to mean that we should dismiss their scientific beliefs. It's
not the case. These things exist hand in hand, and
to these people, they were not contradictory, sort of the
same way that Isaac Newton had some really out there
esoteric beliefs, yeah, or that Redyard Kipling was kind of
a racist. I was absolutely right. Oh god, what a
(15:00):
terrible person. The interesting thing too about Kelpius is that
we don't know. We don't have a lot of primary
sources on him, so there's a lot of conjecture. And
when you go to the cave of Kelpius, it's there's
no artifacts left behind, there's no furniture, it's just out there.
(15:22):
There is a marker, right, I was put there by
a little society. We know a bit about their philosophy,
don't we been the Rosicruction in the Order of the
Rosicrucians for the Rose Cross. That's right, and all the
Order of the Rosy Cross built a marker for this.
And you know, if you went back in the forties,
you would see some stuff in the cave, Like you'd
(15:42):
see a chimney that was there for a while, and
I think it got vandalized or damage beyond repair, and
so they moved it. But um, I saw this cool
video that it was cool for a minute and then
it started to lean a little heavily into some not
true stuff. But it did have a really cool walk
through of the cave. And I don't know if this
was added later. I mean, I it's certainly possible, but
(16:05):
there's a there's a cross and then an upside down
cross right next to it, and the idea being that,
like you know, one is a sign of Christ, the
other is the sign of the devil. And then throughout
the space there are some other kind of strange coded messages.
But one thing we do know um is real and
not just you know, passers by having a laugh. Is
(16:26):
this Rosicrucian marker that identifies Kelpius as being the first
Rosicrucian in the New World. Yeah, it's it's legit, and
the chronology works out. The thing about these semi secret orders,
these mysterious esoteric groups, is that they can often just
(16:47):
appoint themselves in you know, a point authority to themselves.
But according to the tradition, he's not only the first
ruse Crucian, he's the first rouse Crucian master. Right. Uh,
there's there's some neat articles about this, Like you can
find a lot of local Pennsylvania history places. I really
(17:09):
enjoyed the explore p a history dot com story about
the marker, and you can read both the modern marker
that is in place that tells you about the Kelpist
community that's the newer one, and then you can see
the the other older stuff that's also spread around there.
It's a shame about the vandalism, you know what I mean,
(17:29):
that really that really broke my heart. But we forgot
to we forgot to mention. Okay, so they are millennials, milleniarians.
Here we go, and uh, they had a very specific
time frame for this last judgment, and it was six four,
the year that they all got together in this area, right,
(17:53):
or when they really doubled down. But that time came
and went. See, that's the problem with a lot of
doomsday cults. They'll predict something and then that moment will
pass and the world will spin on as as it will,
and then they have to find a new way to
understand this. So, according to the Chestnut Hill Local with
(18:16):
the title the Rapture that Never Came, the story of
the Hermits of the Whissa Hicken. According to them, when
six came and went without a last judgment, Kelpius and
the society said, you know what, we're gonna look towards
the year seventeen hundred. Certainly the advent of this new
century will bring about the end of mankind and the
(18:39):
return of Jesus Christ. Got to hope you know, hope
for something better, right, and the year arrived there was not,
from their perspective, a return of a Messiah. And then
they started to, I don't know, the members began to
get tired of these continue whole claims. Well, if you
(19:01):
hear the Church of the SubGenius ben, yes, it's sort
of a joke cult kind of. I mean, yes, I'm
gonna leave it that it's it's sort of a joke
call where they worship supposedly this like fifties clip art
like Dad looking Ahead and with the pipe called j
Reverend Jr. Bob dobbs uh. And the fundamental concept of
(19:22):
Um SubGenius is slack. But a big part of them
is they have this thing called X Day, or supposedly
these aliens are gonna come and do very much a
thing that I think the the order of the Hermits
or whenever you want to call them, we're hoping for.
But they got the day wrong because they looked at
it upside down, the big dummies, you know. And that's
just sort of like a little bit thumbing of the
nose that a lot of these death cults where they
(19:44):
always get something a little off and then you know, oh,
it'll be next time. Just keep keep stick with us,
you know. And again in in the defense of this
group of Kelpius community, they were not super aggressive, crazy, vile,
lent agro people like you said. The community even kind
of enjoyed their presence, very gentle types. It would seem, yeah,
(20:07):
it would seem so. And then as they began to
as enthusiasm at least began to taper off, they saw
the end of the cult becoming more and more immediate.
Because Kelpius, it turns out that living in caves with
uh with crushing low temperatures, especially in the winter months,
(20:29):
it turns out it's not good for you, even no
matter how well informed you are, and no matter how
talented of an astronomer you are. That's the fun that
a lot of times people that are like really driven
and obsessed with the quest for knowledge sometimes don't take
the best care of their physical vessels because they're so
busy doing all the maths and stuff, you know, that
they just got time to eat or you know, put
(20:51):
on a blanket. And Kelpius became ill with tuberculosis. It's
around seventeen o five. He had to go away from
the tavern actal area and move into the home of
a former member who had already left the organization in
Germantown proper. And he lived, Uh, he lived for about
(21:11):
three more years. I believe he was early forties when
he passed away. Seems seemed quite quite unfortunate and young. Yeah. Yeah,
he never really recovered from that bout of tuberculosis, and
he died in seventeen o eight. His followers returned. They
took his body to the tabernacle. They buried him in
the garden, and they had a ceremony where they released
(21:35):
a dove as they were lowering him into the ground.
The society itself survive for about another ten years or so,
but without the same drive or enthusiasm it was. At
some point it got down to just six hardcore believers.
But here we end some of the facts and we
get to some of the real juicy stuff, the legends.
(21:56):
Oh man, this is fun stuff. This is much more
in the realm of our other pro him stuff. They
don't want you to know, but it is just uh
so much fun, so great so. One of Kelpius's most
trusted confidants and followers was a guy by the name
of Geisler was his first name, Daniel Daniel Geisler, and
(22:17):
he was kind of trying to adhere to the mystical
guru's last wishes as he was on his deathbed, right
because Kelpius gave Geisler a very particular artifact. It was
a box, but it was locked. Yeah. I like to
(22:39):
refer to it as this the mystery box. I think
of that thing in Mulholland Drive, you know, where they
pull out the box and the cameras zoom is in
and then everything gets real weird. It's like that, you know, um,
no one knows what's in the box, but there's a
fantastic article from the Voice, The Philly Voice in fact,
called did with a Hicken hermit have fabled Philosopher's Stone?
(23:02):
Huh yeah, Ben, remind us what's the philosopher's stone? Yes? Well,
in the the most common way to put it without
making it a crazy metaphor for something, is that it's
a legendary substance that you hear a lot about an
alchemical writings that can turn things into other things. It
(23:23):
can transmute substances, so you'll hear stuff like turning lead
into gold, for instance, Right, that sounds cool. Yeah, it
sounds like a great stone to have, right. It may
not be a physical stone, and all the stories. Sometimes
it's just the substance, and sometimes it's thought to be
more of a symbol of a mystical term for the
(23:46):
great work in every effort by alchemist too discover this
substance or created or reproduce it, where those efforts were
collectively known as the great Work. So the idea that
a mystic like Kelpius would possess this philosopher's stone is
(24:09):
amazing and astonishing to anybody who was still searching for it. No,
we have to keep in mind. You know, this is
the early early eighteen century, so belief in alchemy is still,
you know, much more widespread than it is in I
would say. So Kelpius is on his deathbed um in
the throes of the dreaded tuberculosis. This is the early
(24:31):
seven sev sev eight, and his confidante there Geisler geislers Is.
I'm just paying a picture here kneeling by his bedside
and say, masta, masta, what can I do for you too?
Easier suffering anything? This is totally how it went down,
and to that Kelpius says, well, there is one thing,
my son, Come closer. You know how they always do
(24:52):
that when they're dead. Then come closer. I don't have
this straight. I'm closer. I want you to take hence
this box, my arcanum, and I want you to throw
it in the river, the the sho Kill river. Would
you say that schwi kill? Yeah, I want you to
throw it in the watery depths of the showy Kill.
(25:15):
And you know, to this um our boy Geestler, he
said sure, yeah, well of course and then and then
promptly didn't didn't didn't do it. And the the great
part of that legend is um when when he comes
back and he's like all done, Boss Kelpius, he says,
come closer. Yeah. He raises himself up and he expands
(25:39):
what little energy as pointed him and say, Daniel, thou
hast not done as I bid thee. Nor hast thou
cast the casket into the river, but hast he diden
it near the shore. And then he was like, oh
you got me, boss, I was gonna try to pick
that lock. And so now he's convinced that his mass her. Yeah,
(26:00):
he's definitely, he's definitely convinced, and so he you know,
he finally does it, and what a disappointment though he
this guy was, Yeah, what kind of follow are you
if you can't just follow simple instructions of a dying mystic?
Is a dying wish? Seriously, So what happens when he
actually does throw it away? Well, according to this account,
(26:21):
which was given by Geisler to a guy by the
name of Henry Muhlenberg, who in the Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania,
um was named after. And also he I think he's
he started the North American Lutheran Church or he was
a big force and establishing the North American Lutheran Church.
(26:44):
This is again from this Philly Voice article. It's a
very uh fabulous account because he says, and this is
this is all you know written down that as soon
as he threw it in the river exploded. Yes, yeah,
like is it so help help we get this street?
(27:04):
Did it explode? Was it a flash of lightning? Did
it come from the box? That's what it almost sounds like, Yeah,
it's it's it's it's a little weird, um it it's
it's it's written as though it produced some kind of
alchemical reaction, some sort of elemental that's the way I'm
looking for reaction. Because it's described as producing quote producing
(27:28):
flashes of lightning and peals of thunder. It made me
think when we first were reading about this of Indiana
Jones and the readers of the Lost Arc, remember where
they find somebody ignores the advice and they open the
arc and people melt and it's all this strange at
the time, amazing special effects. It's it's also been um
(27:49):
forever memorialized in an amazing gift that you can drop
whenever someone says something crazy. That third down the one
of the Nazis face melting off and its eyes bugging out.
There we go this account. We should also mention I'm
glad you brought up Henry Muhlenberg because Geisler didn't tell
the pastor about this immediately after, right, it was a
(28:10):
number of years. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Um. But this,
this Philly Voice article does a really good job of
pointing out how this sounds a whole lot more like
a kind of literary device rather than an actual account.
You know. They compare it to um King Arthur asking
(28:30):
his follower to throw excalibur into the lake and then
the lady of the lake reaches aloft and grabs Excalibur.
You know what I mean, Like they would have known
about those stories. Yeah, but it's like, it's it's very
odd that that he would tell this very specific and
quite incredible account that to what end, to help spread
(28:52):
the mythos of of of this this mystic. Yeah, that's
that's the interesting question. Because of as Lee, they would
have they were quite educated for the time, they were
aware of folklore. They would understand the connections. Oh, and
I can't believe we forgot the fun fact there. These
(29:12):
guys are famous for another reason because Christopher wit in
Seive painted Kelpius. It is believed to be the oldest
oil painting in the US. Oh, I didn't catch that.
It has nothing to do with magic or allegations thereof Now,
art art is its own kind of magic and its
own reward. That's awesome. That's a good way to look
(29:33):
at it. So this account maybe fictitious, It may be
solely a legend. Yeah. And this this speculation is coming
from a historian from the Historical Society of Pennsylvania by
the name of Dan Roth, who was interviewed for this
piece on Philly Voice dot com that was written by
(29:55):
John Copp was a staff writer for Philly Voice. So
where does that leave us today? Um? Oh, I do
have one of the things I did see this video
that I was talking about earlier, that it's kind of
cool for a for a point and then it really
starts to get into like and he was totally looking
for aliens and Ben Franklin like it was believed in
aliens too, and Ben Franklin supposedly got possession of all
(30:19):
of the relics and remaining materials that were ever in
this cave. But I found no mention of that anywhere
with any connection between Ben Franklin, other than the fact
that the Um American Philosophical Society, which was founded by
Ben Franklin, does have two books of Kelpius is in
(30:39):
in their library. One of them is the Diar Rheum
of Magister Johannes Kelpius Um, and that is from nineteen
seventeen reprinted, so it's not even an original. And then
they also have the Journal of Johannes's Kelpius, Magister of
the Hermits on the Ridge in Pennsylvania seven or eight.
So those two I think are the only surviving um
(31:03):
actual accounts from Kelpius himself. Yeah, a lot of them.
There maybe was another correspondence or something like that, but
it was not a whole lot. None of his actual
philosophy is codified in any kind of like expansive works,
you know, right right, it's those. Those are the two
books that we're aware of. There is one other, I thought,
(31:25):
fascinating paranormal story if we want to continue getting works. Okay,
so we said that after his death, the Brotherhood, the
society dwindles down. At one point, they're just six let's
call him hardcore monks, zealots, ardent believers, and they were
led by a guy named Conrad Mathi. Mathi, let's go
(31:49):
with that. Yeah, like my Thi. There we go perfect.
But eventually the group starts breaking down further and further
and further. And that guy we mentioned and Christopher Witt
who moved to Germantown, he also quit the the group,
but he continued a lot of his hobbies that he
had from his time in the group, and he did
(32:11):
pretty well. By seventeen eighteen, he was a wealthy man.
He had bought over a d twenty acres of land,
but he was always under suspicion in town of being
get this knoll hexan meister. Is it like a witchy dude? Yeah?
Uh so. People thought he was maybe using his magic.
(32:34):
His magical abilities were his esoteric wisdom to get ahead
in the secular world, and they also continued to provide
services of a paranormal or spiritual type to the community.
This guy I just mentioned, Conrad Matthai cast horoscopes, he
performed exorcisms. He said he could travel outside of his
(32:55):
own body. There was a book called The Pietists of
Provincial Pennsylvania written yes, written by a guy named Julius
Sach who says the following about Conrad. A captain's wife
allegedly asked Conrad in seventeen forty when he could expect
her husband's ship to return. So the guy goes into
(33:19):
his chamber, lays down in a trance for an hour,
then he wakes up. He comes back in and he
tells this lady her husband is at a London coffee
house and he's preparing to set sail for the New World.
And when the captain returns, you know, several months later
whatever he meets Conrad, and then the first thing he says, again,
(33:40):
according to this story, is that he was in a
London coffee house and saw the dude Conrad himself, staring
at him, and he said he remembered the encounter because
apparently the old man Conrad had come up and yelled
to him about not writing to his wife. That's got
to be total malarkey, rude. But what a G eight story. Yeah,
(34:01):
that's a good one. Good way to cap this one off.
Do you got anything else? You know what? I think
we can call it? Oh? No, do you hear that?
It's really Oh man, it's been so long. We had
such a street guy. It's strick. It's been so long.
Jonathan Strickland. The question you've been working on that laugh,
(34:25):
I've been celebrating, gentlemen. Missing seven. It's weird. It's like
the way you miss a like a sharp pain. It
was suddenly you wake up one morning and you think
that's different. Yeah, I kind of miss it now. That's
very sweet of you. Day after the chiropractor kind of longing. Well,
just consider me your spinal adjustment of love. Here. I
(34:46):
am all right to give you yet another a bilexing scenario,
whereupon you must decide whether or not in this truth
or fiction within the span of thirty minutes. You know,
I put forth a perplexing scenario or a notion that
my theory is that you we haven't seen you for
so long because you're going around and messing with other
podcasts that we don't know about. That true. I can
(35:10):
neither confirm nor deny have you been podcast cheating on us? Man?
I listen, Ben, listen, listen, Hey, listen Ben. Things are
complicated right now. Check my Facebook status. O. Man. It's
just you never know when someone needs to be, you know,
shown up by wow, having to prove their ability. I
(35:35):
had proposed strength. I have defended you on this show. Listen, Ben,
listen listen. Mortgages don't pay themselves, Ben Alquist, Caves don't
come cheat the most. It's the most cringe worthy segmented
all the podcasting. Yet again, and of course here we
have recently celebrated the fourth of July. That is true,
(35:59):
that is in fact today is the fifth of July,
in fact, as we record this in July. And so
the question today, our scenario today has to do with
someone who was very much connected to the declaration of independence,
and so you'll you will get your scenario the time
(36:21):
I will start a three minutes. You will, of course
have to ask questions of me, and I just confused
that one with the constitution. Is that going to be
a problem We will see. But in order in order
to ask a question this time, I always give you
an arbitrary rule this time, if you wish to ask
a question me, you must first say, sit down, John
(36:42):
alright reference to a musical called seventeen seventy six. Go
watch it. Nor alright. Here, here's your scenario. Prepare yourself
and start the time or when I am done, let
me warm up, because as long time listeners know, I
have to get a running start to jump and hit
the hit the second. And this Grandfather clock we spent
so much money on. If you could get the touch
(37:03):
screen on that Grandfather clock activated and just unlock it
now so that you can type in the numb here
we go. We're working live Man. Along with doctor Lyman
Hall and George Walton Button, Gwynnette signed the Declaration of
Independence representing the colony of Georgia. He would return to
(37:24):
Georgia to serve as president. He also maintained a rivalry
with Lachlan Macintosh, a Scotsman who served in the American
Army as a brigadier general, which was a position that
Gwynette had coveted. Gwinnette commanded McIntosh to conduct an invasion
of East Florida during the Revolution. The invasion was a
(37:44):
terrible failure. The two men blamed one another for the fiasco,
and it all resulted in a duel. However, on the
morning the duel was to take place in southern Georgia,
near the border of Florida. As Button Gwinnette walked his
way to Lachlan Macintosh, he was bitten by a venomous
snake suspected by historians to be a coral snake. And
(38:07):
while the bite itself might not have been fatal, the
medical attention that was given to him certainly was, and
he died of infection a week and a half later.
Start the clock, all right, we are start giving running
start boom. Okay, sit down, John y R. Could you
tell us again where this duel allegedly took place. Southern
(38:31):
Georgia's too far from the border of Florida. Okay, you
know what is now known as Fort McIntosh as a
As it turns out, and Button Gwynette. So we know
there's a Gwynette county. We know about Button. I remember
him from Georgia history as a lay you know, and uh,
Macintosh is a is a common name for institutions here
(38:51):
in Georgia. Was confused Button Gwynette with Oglethorpe though, just
like I do, the declaration of independs with the Constitution.
I am a really bad historian. You know. We're not bad. No,
we're ridiculous. That's our whole So uh yeah. One thing
I don't remember from Georgia history is hearing anything about
a snake bitten but also coral snakes. That's standing out
(39:13):
to me. I am very tempted to just go false. Yeah,
you just well, do we sit down? John is the
is the kicker that he died from poor medical like
we we are, we've it's been so long. Are we
trying to discern if like any detail of the story
is true, the whole thing is not true. If if
(39:33):
if you're saying he died from poor medical attention, but
then there was a detail in there that wasn't any
one detail there could make this statement that's false that works.
So so it is either all true or all false
or there's some falsehood in it. But if there's just
some falsehood in it, it's still inherently it is inherently okay,
(39:56):
all unlocking in false babies. Alright me personally, I'm I'm
looking you did. Let's yeah, yeah, let's let's count it
down and make it official. Grow three do what false gentlemen?
You have defeated me. Finally, I believe now I'm only
(40:17):
three ahead, you know, one day at a time. Man. Yeah, Hey,
Casey que place of victory, music naked nake it a dirge,
Casey dirge. So they here here are the actual Yes,
there was a duel. There was a duel. I remember that.
Button Gwinnette did wish to be brigadier general at the
American Revolutionary War. Lachlan Macintosh, his political rival, got that,
(40:39):
and then when he returned to Georgia, he was first
elected Speaker of the House of Georgia as well as
a Commander in chief of the of the Georgia Forces,
and he did in fact order McIntosh to invade East Florida,
British colony. It did not go well because McIntosh did
not have the resources needed. He returned to Georgia and
(41:01):
then he proceeded to bad mouth Button Gwynette in front
of the Georgia Assembly. You go bad mouth and Button
in front of an assembly man. A duel was arranged.
McIntosh totally shot Button Gwynette, and Button Gwynette died about
three days later on May nineteenth, seventeen seventy seven, a
signer of the Declaration of Independence shot by a soldier
(41:24):
who served in the Revolutionary Army. So no, no coral snakes,
No coral snakes. He was not bitten by a snake.
He was merely shot by a Scotsman. Shot by a Scotsman,
just as fatal as it turns out, Maybe I missed this.
How did the scotsman end up fighting for the American cause?
He was? He was given the position of brigadier general,
(41:47):
so they were both up for consideration for brigadier general,
and Button Gwynette was passed over. Button Gwynette's closest ally
was Dr Lyman Hall. And as you mentioned, we have
a Gwynette County, we also have a whole count Yeah, yeah,
that is where I am from, Hall County. Okay. Getting
to know you, is that where your layer is in
Hall County? Heavens no are you have an old fourth
(42:10):
ward man? Now? Well, Jonathan, what a tremendous pleasure to
have finally started winning some of these, right, noll. I know,
but I'm not I'm not getting enough remorse from you.
I'm not seen something still three ahead. Well, I know,
but I almost feel like you threw us a little
bit of a softball with this one. And while I
appreciate it, I also somewhat resent it. So then I'll
(42:34):
come at you extra hard next time. So what will
happen next, ridiculous historians? Will the tension continue to simmer?
Will we get closer and closer to an even score?
Or fall further into the hole. There's only one way
to find out. Well, there are several, but there's one
way we would like you to find out. You know,
listen to the show, continue to subscribe to my Twitter feed.
(42:56):
You'll find out about Hey. Now, yeah, hey, what's this
other show? I'm not at liberty to say, no, what's
the other show? I have no idea. Oh, you guys
making me so paranoid. That's fine, that's part of the
whole interaction. Here's paranoia. But seriously, thank you for coming again.
Jonathan Strickland, The devious quister. We appreciate it, Slash resent
(43:18):
it heavily. Thanks for helping us learn stuff man, that's
true love YouTube, and thank you folks for tuning into
the show. We hope you'll join us next time where
we talk about a bunch of states that never were
that that have a lot of fun names and stories
and just just listen to the episode will be good.
In the meantime, you can write to us at Ridiculous
(43:38):
at how stuff works dot com. You can check us
out on the typical social media channels. UM are preferred
method of communication with our ridiculous historian communities through our
Facebook group of that very name, Ridiculous Historians, And we
actually just come out with an episode that featured some
stuff from that very community and we had a really
good time doing it and we'll probably do it again.
(43:59):
So check that out and UM drop some memes or
stories or questions or ideas on there. You might hear
it in an episode, yes, and you may well hear
from us from Casey Nolan myself. A big thanks of course,
as always too super producer Casey Pegro, big thanks to
Alex Williams who composed the track. You know what, big
thanks to everybody except Jonathan. Thanks to Christopher hassi Otis. Jonathan,
(44:23):
You've got You're making a stink face with I love
you do know, guys, I'm feeling the emanations of affection here.
That is, is what you're feeling. Well, the course of
true love never did run smoothly. Thanks for tuning in everyone. Goodbye,
Well, well, well, no ole old friend. Here we are
Ridiculous History about too h about to dive into a
topic that I find endlessly fascinating. Yeah, we're going to
dive into a sea hoole. What is a sea hole
like cut cold hole? Yes? Or a cave hole? Right? Yeah?
When I say a sea hoole, it's more of a
(00:44):
ce rectangle. Really, yeah, because it's a it's a cave,
a man made cave with a rectangular door that was
one of the first ever homes to America's like original
doomsday cult. My name is Ben. Uh. This ridiculous history,
as I think I just mentioned, And of course we
are joined as always with our superproducer, Casey Pegram. So no,
(01:09):
the rumors are true. We're talking about a legitimate doomsday cult.
And you know, in another show that you and I
do together, we run into cults on a on a
like bi monthly basis, semi regular. But in Ridiculous History, man,
we don't deal in rumors. What's the brass tacks, my man? Yes,
(01:31):
the brass tacks take us to a place very familiar
with everyone here, known as Philadelphia. See the Cave of
Kelpius is tucked away in a remote section of the
modern day Fairmont Park in Philadelphia. But it's it's very old.
You could you could walk past it and not really
(01:54):
notice the history now unless you went inside, right, that's right.
In fact, a lot of places that describe it say,
even if you know where you're going, you're probably a
lot less likely to find it rather than just stumble
upon it, because it is in like a heavily wooded,
kind of blair witch kind of environment. Right. Uh, it's
along the banks of the Wissahickon Creek. Um. And in
(02:17):
sixteen ninety four, a very smart fellow, a scholar, something
of a of a New Age mystic type, right by
the name of Johannes Kelpius. He brought forty of his followers,
all learned men, from their home in Transylvania, to the
(02:38):
newly settled Germantown, Pennsylvania, because they were escaping religious persecution,
because they were they weren't playing by the book book. Yeah, yeah,
they had their own playbook spiritually, and they believed that
the end was nigh. Uh. Johannes Kelpius was born Johann
(02:59):
kelp in Transylvania, as you said, in sixteen sixty seven,
is that nominative determinism. Do you think his family like,
we're we're maritime folk. I wonder that's a good question.
You know. Also, what I noticed is given the timeline,
this is way before Graham Stoker made Transylvania a scary place.
That's true. Is that weird? It's going to come up
(03:21):
in the next episode. We're gonna do I think, Oh
it is it is, stay tuned spoiler alert. But yeah,
so he brought these forty they had I think he
himself had. Well, what you were starting his chronology? Um,
he was he was born, yeah, and then he was educated. Yeah.
He completed his education at Bavaria's University of Altdorf, and
(03:45):
at the time it was a very respected high flutant
institution there in Europe. Uh. And his name change occurred
not because of vanity so much as because the common
practice for scholars at this day and age was to
latinize your name. So kelp became Kelpius. What would mind
become brownie us? That's interesting, Millennius Brownius pegrams. That sounds good.
(04:15):
So while he's at university, he becomes attracted to, acquainted with,
enamored of a religious movement known as Pietism. This was
a reaction against the orthodox Lutheranism of the time, and
then it later expanded to include beliefs that, you know,
as you said, with his followers, beliefs that were considered heretical, strange,
(04:39):
forbidden knowledge, possibly a cult. And as he became more
and more immersed in this world, he also began to
gather different people around him. He was a follower of
a guy named Johann Jacob Zimmerman, and Zimmerman formed a
small group of like minded pe called the Chapter of Perfection.
(05:03):
It's true and actually I saw him described as such
as a noted German mathematician, astronomer and defract Lutheran minister.
And you know what happens when they defrock you, right,
That's like when you pull all the metals off the
general's chest, you know, and send him with his tail
between his legs. You were no longer allowed to practice
the spiritual beliefs or giving me your badge and gun
(05:25):
detective exactly. And this group led by Zimmerman that Kelpius
as a member of. He right right around this time.
He's maybe twenty years old, and most of the people
in the group around his age and the group believed
that there was a new spiritual age imminent, uh, their
(05:45):
version of the one thousand year idea of Christ returning,
and that they had to prepare for this. And I
love that you mentioned Zimmerman being an astronomer, because that
was the quantitative basis for a lot of his arguments.
That's right, And I just want to say to Zimmerman
was kind of the one who initially, unless I'm reading
(06:05):
this increctly, initially put together this expedition. You know, it
was like a six month boat trip yea from yeah,
from from there from Europe to Germantown or Philadelphia area. Um.
But he passed away before it could take off. So
Kelpius kind of became the new de facto leader of
the group, the neo Zimmerman. Right, Yeah, this is an
(06:29):
interesting part of the story that I could not I
don't know if you found anything, but I couldn't solve
one mystery about this. Estimates say that around this group,
the Chapter of Perfection received an offer of free land
in Pennsylvania, in Germantown where you mentioned, and a free
boat ride over, but they received it anonymously. Now I
(06:51):
had read somewhere that it was from the governor of Pennsylvania,
was trying to, you know, encourage new settlers to come in,
and offers of religious tolerance was a big part of
early Pennsylvania settlements, right, Okay, that makes a lot of
Maybe it wasn't the government, but I know there definitely
was an effort from the powers that be in this
particular part of the colonies to attract more religiously freethinking
(07:18):
types and to populate the land with Europeans of course too. Yeah,
I think you must be spot on, you know. I
I love the tantilizing hint of an anonymous person, but
I bet you are correct that it was the governing
structure of the time. But as you said, Zimmerman ride
around the time they're about to leave for what would
(07:40):
become the United States. Zimmerman dies in August of six.
Kelpius becomes the commander. He leads them. He leads his
group of forty people to a ridge there above the
Wissahicken Gorge. That's such a fun word to say to uh.
And there along the fort parallel, Kelpius builds a forty
(08:05):
foot square tabernacle because in their philosophy and their understanding,
forty is like the best number. It's the most important
magical number. I did just find. It was William Penn
who apparently invited the group, and William Penn was the governor,
and I think kind of governed Pennsylvania like its own tear,
(08:29):
like its own entire autonomous, autonomous thing. Yeah, that's right, Um,
so Bendy notte. Millennialism is millennialism, from what I understand,
is the belief that the world will expire at a
significant date, either either completely end or some great change
will occur. As that correct. That it's big time correct,
(08:49):
and that is what these folks were all about. Um.
You may have seen the Fox television show kind of
a bit of an X Files rip off called Millennium,
but it was all about like the end times, in
the end of days and stuff. But there's a couple
of different interpretations of millennialism, and I'm taking this from
the New World Encyclopedia. Um. One of them is this
(09:10):
notion that Christ will come back to Earth and establish
himself an entire new kingdom and rule for one thousand years,
at which point will come the reckoning, you know, or
some kind of calling of those that deserve to stick
around and those that have to go. Then there's another
version of it where the second Coming occurs with an
(09:31):
immediate culling of the wicked through some sort of cataclysmic
event to you know, trigger a new world order kind
of thing. But whichever one they believed in, the fact is,
there was a very specific part of the Bible that
was a foundation of this belief system in general, and
it's obviously the Book of Revelations UM. And there's a
(09:53):
particular passage that gave this group one of their many monikers.
They had a handful UM and the passages called the
Woman and the Dragon, and it's from Revelations twelve through sixteens.
Gonna read you a little bit of it. A great
sign appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun,
with the moon under her feet and a crown of
twelve stars on her head. She was pregnant and cried
(10:14):
out in pain as she was about to give birth.
Then another sign appeared in heaven, an enormous red dragon
with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on
its head. Skip a little bit. Then war broke out
in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon
and the dragon and his angels fought back, but he
was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven.
(10:36):
The great Dragon was hurled down that ancient serpent called
the devil or Satan, who leads the whole world astray.
He was hurled to the earth and his angels with him.
So it's this idea of hell on earth kind of
And what was What were some of the names of
their group, starting with the one that was taken from
this passage that they so held so dear. They were
collectively known by several names. The weirdest one was the
(10:58):
Woman of the Wilderness. Forty guys calling themselves the Woman
of the wildern. It wasn't even like the women collective
of the Woman of the Wilderness, society of the just
the woman. Yeah, that's the weird That's the weird thing
about it is history doesn't seem to completely agree. Some
people will tell you they were just collectively called the
Woman in the Wilderness, and then you'll find a couple
(11:20):
of other places where they say they were the Society
of the Woman of the Wilderness, which makes more sense.
But my favorite though, is that they were the Hermits
of the Ridge. Yeah, it's like a the name of
a D and D party, you know, or the name
of the name of like a good old folksy prairie
home companion story. That's true, the old Hermit of the Ridge,
(11:43):
because the place we're talking about today the Cave of Kelpius.
Folks in Philadelphia area just call it the Hermit's Cave, Yeah, yep.
And the legend has it that Kelpius lived and meditated
in this cave built in the hillside of the ravine,
(12:03):
and that it was you'll hear some people say that
it was just an old spring house where occasionally Kelpius
where some other person would spend the night, yeah, and
then he would return to his summer house, you know,
in warmer No, I'm kidding, the springhouse like a well
house or something like some sort of enclosure where there
would be a well and a source of fresh water, right, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
(12:26):
So while they established themselves and what became known as
Hermit's Glenn or the Hermit's Cave and the Hermit's Glen,
they also made an impression on the town. There's a
nearby road you can find today, we believe, called Hermit Lane.
So this is established. It's not very well known i'd
say outside of Philadelphia, but it has left a physical
(12:50):
trace on the on the city, that's right. And there's
actually a fantastic article from out with Thiss Obscura called
Cave of Kelpius where America's first doomsday called awaited the
End of the World, and there's a little um sidebar
on it that has the uh coordinates of the cave
because it's not exactly something you can Google map too,
because again, like we said, you kind of just have
to wander around and find it yourself. But it is
(13:12):
technically on Hermit Lane. Yeah, yeah, it's you'll have a
hard time getting mail sent there, but you can find
it with the coordinates and the space from what we understand,
the meeting space of the hermits, or the society or
the just the woman in the Wilder of the Wilderness
included the following things. At a rudimentary observatory where the
(13:35):
monks would practice astronomy, and this is thought to be
the first observatory built in the New World, the quote
unquote New World. Yeah, and astronomy was a huge deal
for these folks, and there's a there's a sense that
it was because they were on the lookout for I'm
gonna call them extraterrestrials, but I almost want to say
(13:55):
like heavenly like angels or something. Signs and wonder same
signs in wonders, because they really did believe that, you know,
like that passes that maybe the devils were going to
come flying down from the sky. What's that? What's that line?
And uh, I think it's Batman v. Superman where it
says turns out the devils don't come from below, they
come from above. Yeah, you know, he seemed to have
(14:18):
that in mind when he was looking, and it was
a very for the time advanced telescope, right, absolutely, Yeah,
they were able to have um a very clear view
because we have we have to remember, it's very easy
for us nowadays as a species to see a mystical
belief that one group or person has and take that
(14:40):
to mean that we should dismiss their scientific beliefs. It's
not the case. These things exist hand in hand, and
to these people, they were not contradictory, sort of the
same way that Isaac Newton had some really out there
esoteric beliefs, yeah, or that Redyard Kipling was kind of
a racist. I was absolutely right. Oh god, what a
(15:00):
terrible person. The interesting thing too about Kelpius is that
we don't know. We don't have a lot of primary
sources on him, so there's a lot of conjecture. And
when you go to the cave of Kelpius, it's there's
no artifacts left behind, there's no furniture, it's just out there.
(15:22):
There is a marker, right, I was put there by
a little society. We know a bit about their philosophy,
don't we been the Rosicruction in the Order of the
Rosicrucians for the Rose Cross. That's right, and all the
Order of the Rosy Cross built a marker for this.
And you know, if you went back in the forties,
you would see some stuff in the cave, Like you'd
(15:42):
see a chimney that was there for a while, and
I think it got vandalized or damage beyond repair, and
so they moved it. But um, I saw this cool
video that it was cool for a minute and then
it started to lean a little heavily into some not
true stuff. But it did have a really cool walk
through of the cave. And I don't know if this
was added later. I mean, I it's certainly possible, but
(16:05):
there's a there's a cross and then an upside down
cross right next to it, and the idea being that,
like you know, one is a sign of Christ, the
other is the sign of the devil. And then throughout
the space there are some other kind of strange coded messages.
But one thing we do know um is real and
not just you know, passers by having a laugh. Is
(16:26):
this Rosicrucian marker that identifies Kelpius as being the first
Rosicrucian in the New World. Yeah, it's it's legit, and
the chronology works out. The thing about these semi secret orders,
these mysterious esoteric groups, is that they can often just
(16:47):
appoint themselves in you know, a point authority to themselves.
But according to the tradition, he's not only the first
ruse Crucian, he's the first rouse Crucian master. Right. Uh,
there's there's some neat articles about this, Like you can
find a lot of local Pennsylvania history places. I really
(17:09):
enjoyed the explore p a history dot com story about
the marker, and you can read both the modern marker
that is in place that tells you about the Kelpist
community that's the newer one, and then you can see
the the other older stuff that's also spread around there.
It's a shame about the vandalism, you know what I mean,
(17:29):
that really that really broke my heart. But we forgot
to we forgot to mention. Okay, so they are millennials, milleniarians.
Here we go, and uh, they had a very specific
time frame for this last judgment, and it was six four,
the year that they all got together in this area, right,
(17:53):
or when they really doubled down. But that time came
and went. See, that's the problem with a lot of
doomsday cults. They'll predict something and then that moment will
pass and the world will spin on as as it will,
and then they have to find a new way to
understand this. So, according to the Chestnut Hill Local with
(18:16):
the title the Rapture that Never Came, the story of
the Hermits of the Whissa Hicken. According to them, when
six came and went without a last judgment, Kelpius and
the society said, you know what, we're gonna look towards
the year seventeen hundred. Certainly the advent of this new
century will bring about the end of mankind and the
(18:39):
return of Jesus Christ. Got to hope you know, hope
for something better, right, and the year arrived there was not,
from their perspective, a return of a Messiah. And then
they started to, I don't know, the members began to
get tired of these continue whole claims. Well, if you
(19:01):
hear the Church of the SubGenius ben, yes, it's sort
of a joke cult kind of. I mean, yes, I'm
gonna leave it that it's it's sort of a joke
call where they worship supposedly this like fifties clip art
like Dad looking Ahead and with the pipe called j
Reverend Jr. Bob dobbs uh. And the fundamental concept of
(19:22):
Um SubGenius is slack. But a big part of them
is they have this thing called X Day, or supposedly
these aliens are gonna come and do very much a
thing that I think the the order of the Hermits
or whenever you want to call them, we're hoping for.
But they got the day wrong because they looked at
it upside down, the big dummies, you know. And that's
just sort of like a little bit thumbing of the
nose that a lot of these death cults where they
(19:44):
always get something a little off and then you know, oh,
it'll be next time. Just keep keep stick with us,
you know. And again in in the defense of this
group of Kelpius community, they were not super aggressive, crazy, vile,
lent agro people like you said. The community even kind
of enjoyed their presence, very gentle types. It would seem, yeah,
(20:07):
it would seem so. And then as they began to
as enthusiasm at least began to taper off, they saw
the end of the cult becoming more and more immediate.
Because Kelpius, it turns out that living in caves with
uh with crushing low temperatures, especially in the winter months,
(20:29):
it turns out it's not good for you, even no
matter how well informed you are, and no matter how
talented of an astronomer you are. That's the fun that
a lot of times people that are like really driven
and obsessed with the quest for knowledge sometimes don't take
the best care of their physical vessels because they're so
busy doing all the maths and stuff, you know, that
they just got time to eat or you know, put
(20:51):
on a blanket. And Kelpius became ill with tuberculosis. It's
around seventeen o five. He had to go away from
the tavern actal area and move into the home of
a former member who had already left the organization in
Germantown proper. And he lived, Uh, he lived for about
(21:11):
three more years. I believe he was early forties when
he passed away. Seems seemed quite quite unfortunate and young. Yeah. Yeah,
he never really recovered from that bout of tuberculosis, and
he died in seventeen o eight. His followers returned. They
took his body to the tabernacle. They buried him in
the garden, and they had a ceremony where they released
(21:35):
a dove as they were lowering him into the ground.
The society itself survive for about another ten years or so,
but without the same drive or enthusiasm it was. At
some point it got down to just six hardcore believers.
But here we end some of the facts and we
get to some of the real juicy stuff, the legends.
(21:56):
Oh man, this is fun stuff. This is much more
in the realm of our other pro him stuff. They
don't want you to know, but it is just uh
so much fun, so great so. One of Kelpius's most
trusted confidants and followers was a guy by the name
of Geisler was his first name, Daniel Daniel Geisler, and
(22:17):
he was kind of trying to adhere to the mystical
guru's last wishes as he was on his deathbed, right
because Kelpius gave Geisler a very particular artifact. It was
a box, but it was locked. Yeah. I like to
(22:39):
refer to it as this the mystery box. I think
of that thing in Mulholland Drive, you know, where they
pull out the box and the cameras zoom is in
and then everything gets real weird. It's like that, you know, um,
no one knows what's in the box, but there's a
fantastic article from the Voice, The Philly Voice in fact,
called did with a Hicken hermit have fabled Philosopher's Stone?
(23:02):
Huh yeah, Ben, remind us what's the philosopher's stone? Yes? Well,
in the the most common way to put it without
making it a crazy metaphor for something, is that it's
a legendary substance that you hear a lot about an
alchemical writings that can turn things into other things. It
(23:23):
can transmute substances, so you'll hear stuff like turning lead
into gold, for instance, Right, that sounds cool. Yeah, it
sounds like a great stone to have, right. It may
not be a physical stone, and all the stories. Sometimes
it's just the substance, and sometimes it's thought to be
more of a symbol of a mystical term for the
(23:46):
great work in every effort by alchemist too discover this
substance or created or reproduce it, where those efforts were
collectively known as the great Work. So the idea that
a mystic like Kelpius would possess this philosopher's stone is
(24:09):
amazing and astonishing to anybody who was still searching for it. No,
we have to keep in mind. You know, this is
the early early eighteen century, so belief in alchemy is still,
you know, much more widespread than it is in I
would say. So Kelpius is on his deathbed um in
the throes of the dreaded tuberculosis. This is the early
(24:31):
seven sev sev eight, and his confidante there Geisler geislers Is.
I'm just paying a picture here kneeling by his bedside
and say, masta, masta, what can I do for you too?
Easier suffering anything? This is totally how it went down,
and to that Kelpius says, well, there is one thing,
my son, Come closer. You know how they always do
(24:52):
that when they're dead. Then come closer. I don't have
this straight. I'm closer. I want you to take hence
this box, my arcanum, and I want you to throw
it in the river, the the sho Kill river. Would
you say that schwi kill? Yeah, I want you to
throw it in the watery depths of the showy Kill.
(25:15):
And you know, to this um our boy Geestler, he
said sure, yeah, well of course and then and then
promptly didn't didn't didn't do it. And the the great
part of that legend is um when when he comes
back and he's like all done, Boss Kelpius, he says,
come closer. Yeah. He raises himself up and he expands
(25:39):
what little energy as pointed him and say, Daniel, thou
hast not done as I bid thee. Nor hast thou
cast the casket into the river, but hast he diden
it near the shore. And then he was like, oh
you got me, boss, I was gonna try to pick
that lock. And so now he's convinced that his mass her. Yeah,
(26:00):
he's definitely, he's definitely convinced, and so he you know,
he finally does it, and what a disappointment though he
this guy was, Yeah, what kind of follow are you
if you can't just follow simple instructions of a dying mystic?
Is a dying wish? Seriously, So what happens when he
actually does throw it away? Well, according to this account,
(26:21):
which was given by Geisler to a guy by the
name of Henry Muhlenberg, who in the Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania,
um was named after. And also he I think he's
he started the North American Lutheran Church or he was
a big force and establishing the North American Lutheran Church.
(26:44):
This is again from this Philly Voice article. It's a
very uh fabulous account because he says, and this is
this is all you know written down that as soon
as he threw it in the river exploded. Yes, yeah,
like is it so help help we get this street?
(27:04):
Did it explode? Was it a flash of lightning? Did
it come from the box? That's what it almost sounds like, Yeah,
it's it's it's it's a little weird, um it it's
it's it's written as though it produced some kind of
alchemical reaction, some sort of elemental that's the way I'm
looking for reaction. Because it's described as producing quote producing
(27:28):
flashes of lightning and peals of thunder. It made me
think when we first were reading about this of Indiana
Jones and the readers of the Lost Arc, remember where
they find somebody ignores the advice and they open the
arc and people melt and it's all this strange at
the time, amazing special effects. It's it's also been um
(27:49):
forever memorialized in an amazing gift that you can drop
whenever someone says something crazy. That third down the one
of the Nazis face melting off and its eyes bugging out.
There we go this account. We should also mention I'm
glad you brought up Henry Muhlenberg because Geisler didn't tell
the pastor about this immediately after, right, it was a
(28:10):
number of years. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Um. But this,
this Philly Voice article does a really good job of
pointing out how this sounds a whole lot more like
a kind of literary device rather than an actual account.
You know. They compare it to um King Arthur asking
(28:30):
his follower to throw excalibur into the lake and then
the lady of the lake reaches aloft and grabs Excalibur.
You know what I mean, Like they would have known
about those stories. Yeah, but it's like, it's it's very
odd that that he would tell this very specific and
quite incredible account that to what end, to help spread
(28:52):
the mythos of of of this this mystic. Yeah, that's
that's the interesting question. Because of as Lee, they would
have they were quite educated for the time, they were
aware of folklore. They would understand the connections. Oh, and
I can't believe we forgot the fun fact there. These
(29:12):
guys are famous for another reason because Christopher wit in
Seive painted Kelpius. It is believed to be the oldest
oil painting in the US. Oh, I didn't catch that.
It has nothing to do with magic or allegations thereof Now,
art art is its own kind of magic and its
own reward. That's awesome. That's a good way to look
(29:33):
at it. So this account maybe fictitious, It may be
solely a legend. Yeah. And this this speculation is coming
from a historian from the Historical Society of Pennsylvania by
the name of Dan Roth, who was interviewed for this
piece on Philly Voice dot com that was written by
(29:55):
John Copp was a staff writer for Philly Voice. So
where does that leave us today? Um? Oh, I do
have one of the things I did see this video
that I was talking about earlier, that it's kind of
cool for a for a point and then it really
starts to get into like and he was totally looking
for aliens and Ben Franklin like it was believed in
aliens too, and Ben Franklin supposedly got possession of all
(30:19):
of the relics and remaining materials that were ever in
this cave. But I found no mention of that anywhere
with any connection between Ben Franklin, other than the fact
that the Um American Philosophical Society, which was founded by
Ben Franklin, does have two books of Kelpius is in
(30:39):
in their library. One of them is the Diar Rheum
of Magister Johannes Kelpius Um, and that is from nineteen
seventeen reprinted, so it's not even an original. And then
they also have the Journal of Johannes's Kelpius, Magister of
the Hermits on the Ridge in Pennsylvania seven or eight.
So those two I think are the only surviving um
(31:03):
actual accounts from Kelpius himself. Yeah, a lot of them.
There maybe was another correspondence or something like that, but
it was not a whole lot. None of his actual
philosophy is codified in any kind of like expansive works,
you know, right right, it's those. Those are the two
books that we're aware of. There is one other, I thought,
(31:25):
fascinating paranormal story if we want to continue getting works. Okay,
so we said that after his death, the Brotherhood, the
society dwindles down. At one point, they're just six let's
call him hardcore monks, zealots, ardent believers, and they were
led by a guy named Conrad Mathi. Mathi, let's go
(31:49):
with that. Yeah, like my Thi. There we go perfect.
But eventually the group starts breaking down further and further
and further. And that guy we mentioned and Christopher Witt
who moved to Germantown, he also quit the the group,
but he continued a lot of his hobbies that he
had from his time in the group, and he did
(32:11):
pretty well. By seventeen eighteen, he was a wealthy man.
He had bought over a d twenty acres of land,
but he was always under suspicion in town of being
get this knoll hexan meister. Is it like a witchy dude? Yeah?
Uh so. People thought he was maybe using his magic.
(32:34):
His magical abilities were his esoteric wisdom to get ahead
in the secular world, and they also continued to provide
services of a paranormal or spiritual type to the community.
This guy I just mentioned, Conrad Matthai cast horoscopes, he
performed exorcisms. He said he could travel outside of his
(32:55):
own body. There was a book called The Pietists of
Provincial Pennsylvania written yes, written by a guy named Julius
Sach who says the following about Conrad. A captain's wife
allegedly asked Conrad in seventeen forty when he could expect
her husband's ship to return. So the guy goes into
(33:19):
his chamber, lays down in a trance for an hour,
then he wakes up. He comes back in and he
tells this lady her husband is at a London coffee
house and he's preparing to set sail for the New World.
And when the captain returns, you know, several months later
whatever he meets Conrad, and then the first thing he says, again,
(33:40):
according to this story, is that he was in a
London coffee house and saw the dude Conrad himself, staring
at him, and he said he remembered the encounter because
apparently the old man Conrad had come up and yelled
to him about not writing to his wife. That's got
to be total malarkey, rude. But what a G eight story. Yeah,
(34:01):
that's a good one. Good way to cap this one off.
Do you got anything else? You know what? I think
we can call it? Oh? No, do you hear that?
It's really Oh man, it's been so long. We had
such a street guy. It's strick. It's been so long.
Jonathan Strickland. The question you've been working on that laugh,
(34:25):
I've been celebrating, gentlemen. Missing seven. It's weird. It's like
the way you miss a like a sharp pain. It
was suddenly you wake up one morning and you think
that's different. Yeah, I kind of miss it now. That's
very sweet of you. Day after the chiropractor kind of longing. Well,
just consider me your spinal adjustment of love. Here. I
(34:46):
am all right to give you yet another a bilexing scenario,
whereupon you must decide whether or not in this truth
or fiction within the span of thirty minutes. You know,
I put forth a perplexing scenario or a notion that
my theory is that you we haven't seen you for
so long because you're going around and messing with other
podcasts that we don't know about. That true. I can
(35:10):
neither confirm nor deny have you been podcast cheating on us? Man?
I listen, Ben, listen, listen, Hey, listen Ben. Things are
complicated right now. Check my Facebook status. O. Man. It's
just you never know when someone needs to be, you know,
shown up by wow, having to prove their ability. I
(35:35):
had proposed strength. I have defended you on this show. Listen, Ben,
listen listen. Mortgages don't pay themselves, Ben Alquist, Caves don't
come cheat the most. It's the most cringe worthy segmented
all the podcasting. Yet again, and of course here we
have recently celebrated the fourth of July. That is true,
(35:59):
that is in fact today is the fifth of July,
in fact, as we record this in July. And so
the question today, our scenario today has to do with
someone who was very much connected to the declaration of independence,
and so you'll you will get your scenario the time
(36:21):
I will start a three minutes. You will, of course
have to ask questions of me, and I just confused
that one with the constitution. Is that going to be
a problem We will see. But in order in order
to ask a question this time, I always give you
an arbitrary rule this time, if you wish to ask
a question me, you must first say, sit down, John
(36:42):
alright reference to a musical called seventeen seventy six. Go
watch it. Nor alright. Here, here's your scenario. Prepare yourself
and start the time or when I am done, let
me warm up, because as long time listeners know, I
have to get a running start to jump and hit
the hit the second. And this Grandfather clock we spent
so much money on. If you could get the touch
(37:03):
screen on that Grandfather clock activated and just unlock it
now so that you can type in the numb here
we go. We're working live Man. Along with doctor Lyman
Hall and George Walton Button, Gwynnette signed the Declaration of
Independence representing the colony of Georgia. He would return to
(37:24):
Georgia to serve as president. He also maintained a rivalry
with Lachlan Macintosh, a Scotsman who served in the American
Army as a brigadier general, which was a position that
Gwynette had coveted. Gwinnette commanded McIntosh to conduct an invasion
of East Florida during the Revolution. The invasion was a
(37:44):
terrible failure. The two men blamed one another for the fiasco,
and it all resulted in a duel. However, on the
morning the duel was to take place in southern Georgia,
near the border of Florida. As Button Gwinnette walked his
way to Lachlan Macintosh, he was bitten by a venomous
snake suspected by historians to be a coral snake. And
(38:07):
while the bite itself might not have been fatal, the
medical attention that was given to him certainly was, and
he died of infection a week and a half later.
Start the clock, all right, we are start giving running
start boom. Okay, sit down, John y R. Could you
tell us again where this duel allegedly took place. Southern
(38:31):
Georgia's too far from the border of Florida. Okay, you
know what is now known as Fort McIntosh as a
As it turns out, and Button Gwynette. So we know
there's a Gwynette county. We know about Button. I remember
him from Georgia history as a lay you know, and uh,
Macintosh is a is a common name for institutions here
(38:51):
in Georgia. Was confused Button Gwynette with Oglethorpe though, just
like I do, the declaration of independs with the Constitution.
I am a really bad historian. You know. We're not bad. No,
we're ridiculous. That's our whole So uh yeah. One thing
I don't remember from Georgia history is hearing anything about
a snake bitten but also coral snakes. That's standing out
(39:13):
to me. I am very tempted to just go false. Yeah,
you just well, do we sit down? John is the
is the kicker that he died from poor medical like
we we are, we've it's been so long. Are we
trying to discern if like any detail of the story
is true, the whole thing is not true. If if
(39:33):
if you're saying he died from poor medical attention, but
then there was a detail in there that wasn't any
one detail there could make this statement that's false that works.
So so it is either all true or all false
or there's some falsehood in it. But if there's just
some falsehood in it, it's still inherently it is inherently okay,
(39:56):
all unlocking in false babies. Alright me personally, I'm I'm
looking you did. Let's yeah, yeah, let's let's count it
down and make it official. Grow three do what false gentlemen?
You have defeated me. Finally, I believe now I'm only
(40:17):
three ahead, you know, one day at a time. Man. Yeah, Hey,
Casey que place of victory, music naked nake it a dirge,
Casey dirge. So they here here are the actual Yes,
there was a duel. There was a duel. I remember that.
Button Gwinnette did wish to be brigadier general at the
American Revolutionary War. Lachlan Macintosh, his political rival, got that,
(40:39):
and then when he returned to Georgia, he was first
elected Speaker of the House of Georgia as well as
a Commander in chief of the of the Georgia Forces,
and he did in fact order McIntosh to invade East Florida,
British colony. It did not go well because McIntosh did
not have the resources needed. He returned to Georgia and
(41:01):
then he proceeded to bad mouth Button Gwynette in front
of the Georgia Assembly. You go bad mouth and Button
in front of an assembly man. A duel was arranged.
McIntosh totally shot Button Gwynette, and Button Gwynette died about
three days later on May nineteenth, seventeen seventy seven, a
signer of the Declaration of Independence shot by a soldier
(41:24):
who served in the Revolutionary Army. So no, no coral snakes,
No coral snakes. He was not bitten by a snake.
He was merely shot by a Scotsman. Shot by a Scotsman,
just as fatal as it turns out, Maybe I missed this.
How did the scotsman end up fighting for the American cause?
He was? He was given the position of brigadier general,
(41:47):
so they were both up for consideration for brigadier general,
and Button Gwynette was passed over. Button Gwynette's closest ally
was Dr Lyman Hall. And as you mentioned, we have
a Gwynette County, we also have a whole count Yeah, yeah,
that is where I am from, Hall County. Okay. Getting
to know you, is that where your layer is in
Hall County? Heavens no are you have an old fourth
(42:10):
ward man? Now? Well, Jonathan, what a tremendous pleasure to
have finally started winning some of these, right, noll. I know,
but I'm not I'm not getting enough remorse from you.
I'm not seen something still three ahead. Well, I know,
but I almost feel like you threw us a little
bit of a softball with this one. And while I
appreciate it, I also somewhat resent it. So then I'll
(42:34):
come at you extra hard next time. So what will
happen next, ridiculous historians? Will the tension continue to simmer?
Will we get closer and closer to an even score?
Or fall further into the hole. There's only one way
to find out. Well, there are several, but there's one
way we would like you to find out. You know,
listen to the show, continue to subscribe to my Twitter feed.
(42:56):
You'll find out about Hey. Now, yeah, hey, what's this
other show? I'm not at liberty to say, no, what's
the other show? I have no idea. Oh, you guys
making me so paranoid. That's fine, that's part of the
whole interaction. Here's paranoia. But seriously, thank you for coming again.
Jonathan Strickland, The devious quister. We appreciate it, Slash resent
(43:18):
it heavily. Thanks for helping us learn stuff man, that's
true love YouTube, and thank you folks for tuning into
the show. We hope you'll join us next time where
we talk about a bunch of states that never were
that that have a lot of fun names and stories
and just just listen to the episode will be good.
In the meantime, you can write to us at Ridiculous
(43:38):
at how stuff works dot com. You can check us
out on the typical social media channels. UM are preferred
method of communication with our ridiculous historian communities through our
Facebook group of that very name, Ridiculous Historians, And we
actually just come out with an episode that featured some
stuff from that very community and we had a really
good time doing it and we'll probably do it again.
(43:59):
So check that out and UM drop some memes or
stories or questions or ideas on there. You might hear
it in an episode, yes, and you may well hear
from us from Casey Nolan myself. A big thanks of course,
as always too super producer Casey Pegro, big thanks to
Alex Williams who composed the track. You know what, big
thanks to everybody except Jonathan. Thanks to Christopher hassi Otis. Jonathan,
(44:23):
You've got You're making a stink face with I love
you do know, guys, I'm feeling the emanations of affection here.
That is, is what you're feeling. Well, the course of
true love never did run smoothly. Thanks for tuning in everyone. Goodbye,
Ridiculous History News
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