Mr. Thor
Kiimalehto was a printer by profession and became a great friend of Harvey Spencer
Lewis (the main founder of AMORC) when Lewis was working in advertising.
In 1915 when
AMORC was founded in New York, Mr. Kiimalehto was elected Secretary General,
then in 1917 the Supreme Grand Lodge of AMORC moved to Tampa, Florida, and
later to San Jose, California.
Subsequently,
Mr. Kiimalehto's widow sued the AMORC leadership for the rights that she
claimed belonged to her, and she also stated that AMORC had been created to
profit from the people.
And this was
reported by Time magazine on April 1949 (link):
«
MONASTERY SECRETS . . . the
Forbidden Knowledge of Tibet . . . Like the streams that trickle from the
Himalayan heights to the plateau below, the great truths of these brotherhoods
have descended through the ages.
Last week this ad, like hundreds of others before it in such respectable
publications as the New York Times Magazine Section, was bringing sacks of
letters to the headquarters of the Rosicrucians in San Jose, Calif. After
receiving their free Sealed Book, some of the ad-answerers would go on to
become members of AMORC (the Ancient Mystical Order Rosae Crucis) and pay dues
of $2.50 a month to learn "through alchemy, metaphysics and
cosmology" how to be happy. But many a faithful U.S. Rosicrucian might be
jolted by the picture of the San Jose order painted in a lawsuit filed by the
widow of the cofounder.
Mrs. Myra Kiimalehto, sixtyish, sued for her late husband's share in
what she claims he and his partner had conceived as "a business of
conducting rituals, ceremonials, lessons, instructions and the sale of books
and periodicals . . ." They founded AMORC, she says, "as a device to
disseminate information, lessons and instructions to others for a profit."
The take, she contends, is good. According to Widow Kiimalehto, the AMORC
membership is now around 2,000,000 (which Rosicrucian officials claim is a
gross exaggeration).
This successful blend of faith and finance, according to Myra
Kiimalehto, was at first administered jointly by Thor, her slight, pince-nezed
Swedish immigrant husband, and ex-Methodist Harvey Spencer Lewis, former
president of an "Institute for Psychical Research." Together they
applied modern U.S. selling methods to a potpourri of lore derived from the
ancient esoteric Rosicrucian cult which dates back beyond the isth Century.
In
1928, the Lewis-Kiimalehto brand of Rosicrucianism found in San Jose a happy
combination of favorable weather and favorable authorities. There Lewis
incorporated it as a nonprofit organization, and settled down to be
"Imperator of the Supreme Grand Lodge." Kiimalehto sold his New York
printing shop and came along to San Jose in 1936 as "Sovereign Grand
Master."
Today the mosquelike structures of Rosicrucian Park house an Egyptian
and Oriental museum (complete with genuine mummies), an auditorium, a library,
a shrine dedicated to Pharaoh Amenhotep IV, a planetarium and Rose Croix
University, with its Colleges of Fine Arts, Mundane and Arcane Sciences and
Humanities.
Lewis died in 1939, Kiimalehto in 1948. Mrs. Kiimalehto, who has not
been a practicing Rosicrucian for four years, says that she is not interested
in money but in rescuing AMORC from the control of Lewis' son, daughter-in-law
and widow.
Last week Rosicrucian leaders filed their answer to Widow
Kiimalehto's suit: the Kiimalehto-Lewis team, they said, had not been a
business partnership. Meanwhile, the checks and money orders continued to roll
in from those who yearn to learn about "the system of metaphysical and
physical philosophy intended to awaken the latent faculties of the individual
whereby he may utilize to a better advantage his natural talents and lead a
more happy life." »
(Section:
religion)
OBSERVATION
The leaders of AMORC say that their organization is
not a commercial company, and on paper it appears that way, but the facts show that
AMORC is a very commercial organization that seeks to obtain the most money
from its members.
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