By Gerald B. Bryan
Seventy Thousand years ago, according to that modern
Arabian Nights’ Entertainment, Unveiled Mysteries, a certain king of the Sahara
Desert had three beautiful children. This king was a good king, not wicked as
kings of fairy tales are wont to be. He ruled wisely and well, and was looked
upon almost as a God by his adoring subjects. His children were adorable, two
manly boys and a lovely girl, and they had golden hair and violet eyes. The
sons wore form-fitting garments made of metallic gold, with breastplates like a
great sun of jewels. They wore sandals set with precious stones. The daughter,
a vision of loveliness, appeared among the courtiers and gallants of that day
attired in golden garments covered with diamonds which glittered with every
movement of her body. Her hair was like spun gold, and it hung almost to the
floor. There was no wicked stepmother to mar the peace and tranquility of this
happy royal family.
In this picture of the ancient civilization of the Sahara
Desert we secure our first introduction to the “Ascended Master Saint Germain,”
who was a mighty king in those days.
And his three lovely children are none other than the
three current Ballards — Lotus, Godfre, and Donald!
In a later civilization Ballard and son Donald become
priests of an ancient temple in Egypt, and Lotus its fair vestal virgin.
Still later, the golden-haired, blue-eyed Donald is
crowned king over the red-skinned, dark-eyed Incas in an ancient civilization
of fourteen thousand years ago, and all was happy, too, in this forgotten
kingdom of so long ago.
But alas! the scene changes, the years move on, and in
present days of worldly strife, kings do not rule so wisely and well, nor do
vestal virgins tend so faithfully the glowing altar fires.
And so as the curtain rises on this latest scene of all,
we discover the former Emperor’s golden-haired children, the three Ballards, in
the not-so-exotic, bustling city of Chicago bearing no imprint on badge of
royalty.
Just like other mortals who have outlived somehow the
fairy tales of childhood, they have their disappointments and their struggles.
There was no king or prince to rescue them, not even a “Saint Germain” to
prevent the bills from mounting nor end the hundred-and-one ills to which flesh
is heir.
Born at Newton, Kansas, on July 28, 1878, it was not
until Ballard was fifty-two years of age that he assertedly met the ascended
Master Saint Germain on the side of a California mountain. And likewise, it was
not until his good wife Edna was at the middle age of life that Aladdin rubbed
his Wonderful Lamp and produced for her the money and power which, like most
others, she had long been seeking.
Showing the struggles and ambitions of their early life,
we now quote excerpts from letters written by people who knew one or both of the
Ballards intimately:
“I have known Guy Ballard for more than thirty years,”
writes one of his friends, who is amazed at Ballard’s sudden ascension into
power. “He came to our home when I was a little girl, and at that time tried to
be a medium. Edna, his wife, always has been ambitious, great for personal
adornment, and has always been the man of the family.”
“We have known Mr. and Mrs. Ballard for years,” writes
another party. “Mr. Ballard was a spiritualist in Chicago, and practiced
spiritualistic mediumship. Your diagnosis of them is practically correct.”
“I have known Mr. Ballard for over thirty years,” says
still another. “He has been a medium during all these years. He told me he had
made a great discovery and that he has the answer to all the difficulties we
encounter.”
We quote now from a much longer letter, written in the
summer of 1938, which will give, perhaps, as vivid a picture of the Ballard
background as it is possible to give:
“I know whereof I speak, for I have known the Ballards
intimately for about twenty-six years. It was about 1915 we will say that I
wrote a book on ancient Egypt. It had considerable to say about Egyptian Black
Magic, and it was printed in an occult magazine. The story aroused considerable
interest in several people . . . men who walk around apparently sane, but have
a break somewhere in the brain fibre. Well these people wrote to me and many of
them were most interesting correspondents. One of them later spent about four
years in a mad house; still, he now walks around and proves himself to be a
very subtle and dangerous person . . . “I wrote to the Ballards for four years
steady every week, then my husband died . . . They invited me to visit them in
Chicago, which I did March 12, 1919. I lived with them for seven months,
sharing their poverty, their sorrows, and their woes, for they were as poor as
the proverbial church mouse . . .
“They induced me to finance the trip to California . . .
The baby Eudonia [Donald ] was just five years old . . .While in San Francisco
this great idea of Guy’s was born. We went to a fake _____ church, and there
was a lot of chicanery. The Priest and Priestess sitting in two gold chairs
with the twelve vestal virgins as the choir. Behind them was a great
illuminated cross with flashing lights. During the service the very lightly
clad virgins threw flowers among the audience. It was a scream. Afterwards came
the Love Feast. A virgin held a basket of strips of bread and the audience were
asked to join this holy order, which was non-sectarian. Another virgin held a
loving cup of wine. Talk of hypnosis, would you believe it, over one hundred
and fifty people went forward and partook of that sacrilegious feast, a parody
upon the Lord’s Supper!
“During this scene Guy’s face was a study. He was
enchanted with the show, but did not join the church. As soon as he reached the
sidewalk, he could not stop talking about it . . . and from what I now hear, he
has fashioned his church upon the same lines with his illuminated background.
He could not stop talking about this laughable service . . .
“Guy Ballard had one obsession. He wanted to find a gold
mine. He had dabbled a bit in mining, prospecting, etc. He also studied
hypnotism at this time, but was a bit afraid of it. His idea in bringing me to
Chicago was that I might lead him to a gold mine, because I was a medium and
had a spirit guide.
“My guide offended them both, for one night he told Edna
that she had better stop right where they were, that she would become . . .
[Here this woman quotes what the spirit guide said about Edna launching a great
deception.]
“Thenceforth Edna had nothing more to do with my Ascended
Master, but Guy thought he could manage him.
“So we traveled to the top of the Sierras, and lived in a
tiny cottage next door to a gold mine. Every day either he and I walked out on
the mountains, or Edna and he wandered to far distant places while I took care
of the dream child. Guy was determined to find that gold mine. There was no
money in the house and we lived upon practically nothing.
“One day in September, I remember it was the 21st, I was
exploring the little village of about twenty houses, when I came across a tall
white shaft numbered 10 up to 150.
“Why, what’s that?” I asked, “the game they play in Coney
Island?” “‘No, Ma’m,’ replied the native, ‘that be the snow gauge. After this
month you won’t see anything but the roofs of the houses; even the horses go on
snow shoes.’
“Well sir, I prayed hard to get out of discovering a gold
mine. And strange to relate in a day or two a registered letter came to me
inviting me to Ontario, Canada.
“I took the next train out of the nearest station, and
that’s the last I saw of the Ballards, until I ran into a group of people who
with bated breath and fear in their eyes told me of the wonders they perform .
. .
“I don’t believe a word of the Mt. Shasta story.
Poppy-cock! He got the idea wandering around the top of the Sierras. They would
be gone for days together and camp out under the stars.
“The people I met in New York nearly mobbed me when I
told them that the Ballards were frauds. One of them, not yet touched by their
crazy ideas, gave me your letters, and this story of the killing of dear little
trusting animals has induced me to write to you . . .
“I am told that thousands seem to be paralyzed or under a
spell while they hold their meetings. He must have turned into a wizard of some
sort. No wonder they bothered my life to try and give them the names of certain
books . . .
“They are just very ordinary people, but clever. But
again, they may be dealing in black magic. Guy was crazy about it.”
From this graphic description of the Ballards’ early
history, two facts stand out in bold relief:
First, Guy Ballard and his wife Edna had what amounted to
almost an obsession about gold mines. Second, they craved occult powers and
mastery over others. Their books and platform utterances are clear evidence of
these two cravings, and confirm what is said in this letter by a woman who had
not, when she wrote it, read any of the Ballard books and had only attended one
or two of their meetings.
Both were interested in, and no doubt had studied
hypnotism. When they first came to Los Angeles in 1935 Guy Ballard at every
class would suddenly get up from his seat and start to make mesmeric passes
over his audience. This would continue for many minutes, or until the audience
would be in a suitably passive condition, enabling “Saint Germain” and his band
of darkened “Spirits” to work on those susceptible to this kind of thing.
These mesmeric passes later were discontinued, no doubt
for the reason it was all too apparent what these people were trying to do to
their audiences. Perhaps, too, after such a good start in psychologizing their
people there was no further need for being so objective in their hypnotic
methods.
All through their books this same love of magical powers
and mastery over others is shown. Saint Germain demolishes huge temples by the
use of “Light Rays.” Ballard and son Donald ape the great “Master” in the use
of destructive forces.
When Mrs. Ballard was allegedly “Lotus, the Vestal
virgin,” she was saved by the present Donald from being carried away by the
slave of a “visiting prince” who wanted “to seize the vestal virgin for his
bride.” (p.25, U.M.) We quote:
“The High Priest . . . [Donald in a past life] . . .
raised his right hand and pointed directly at the slave. A flash of Flame shot
forth like lightning, and the slave fell lifeless to the floor.”
The visiting prince, all too careless of such
death-dealing power, in a “blind rage” and “giving full vent to lust, rushed
forward.”
But again the priest raised his hand.
“The Flame flashed out a second time — and the prince
followed the fate of his former slave.”
In this same book the senior Ballard also tells of his
own deftness in the use of destructive forces; but instead of saving a fair
vestal virgin in a past life, he in his present life saves a poor, lone widow
from having her rich gold mine taken away from her by a wicked mine
superintendent.
We quote: “He [the superintendent] lifted his steel cane
and as I [Ballard] raised my hand to seize it — a White Flame suddenly shot
forth flashing full in his face. He dropped to the floor as if struck by
lightening.” (p. 221, U.M.)
After this happy combination of both “magic power” and a
rich “gold mine,” Ballard proceeds in his next book to even tell about meeting
face to face the “God of Gold!”
This great Being appeared to him, he says, while he was
at the Rayborn mine in Colorado in 1932, and very unselfishly showed to him the
location of a marvelous gold mine. And then the generous “Saint Germain” —still,
however, holding on to his “Spanish gold lost at sea”— tells him: “After your return from the Far
East, it will be opened up and one day the ore will be used for a special
purpose . . .” (p. 280-281, M.P.)
But, alas! Ballard never achieved his dream of gold,
except in his writings, and his magical powers only blossomed in his story
books. The Ballards wandered around on mountain tops with mediums and guides
looking for the elusive metal, ever seeking, but never finding. And in their
seeking after occult powers, they wandered from teacher to teacher. Not
“Ascended Masters,” mind you, as their books would have the credulous believe,
but merely physical-plane mediums, occult lecturers, Hindus, Egyptians, and
others in the magic world of metaphysics.
They became wandering metaphysical tramps, sat at the
feet of earth-plane teachers too numerous to mention, and varied the business
by getting through a few spiritualistic messages for themselves, as any other
ordinary medium might.
They imbibed a little of Christian Science, read a bit of
the Walter Method C.S., branched over to the Unity School at Kansas City,
linked up with the Ancient and Mystical Order Rosae Crucis (A.M.O.R.C.), joined
the Order of Christian Mystics, studied under Pelley the Silver Shirter, sat at
the feet of some of the Swamis, read a little of Theosophy, looked into the
magic of Yogi Philosophy and Oriental Mysticism, interested themselves in Baird
T. Spalding and his “Masters of the Far East,” which
association gave them the idea, no doubt, of making all these metaphysical
contacts produce the gold which their gold mines had failed to do — and which
“Saint Germain,” in a private dictation, said would bring in more money than a
gold mine!
From this curious mixture of heterodoxy came forth the
Ballard books — books which “Saint Germain” himself has said “none in the world
had ever been written like them,” which we can well believe.
They used what they wanted, changed and distorted what
they desired, flavored the whole heterogeneous mixture with literary spice from
novels of the Deadwood Dick type, salted it with pseudo-scientific facts from
the pulp magazines, sugared it with a certain amount of goodness to catch the
spiritual-hungry souls of this world, put it out in cellophane wrappings with
an Arabian Nights’ sparkle, labeled it the “Ascended Master Instruction of the
Mighty I AM,” privately imported by the three and only divinely-appointed
Messengers, and sold it hot over the counters for large profit in the sacred
temples of the I AM.
And this is the strange and fantastic concoction that so
many thousands of sincere people are being fed morning, noon, and night, and
most of them will need a good psychological purging to get it out of their
system.
(Psychic Dictatorship in America, chapter 17)
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