STREAMLINE BEGINNINGS

 

 

By Gerald B. Bryan

 

At a modest brick bungalow, 1620 East 84th Place, Chicago, there occurred during the fall of 1932 a series of assertedly miraculous happenings, out of which has arisen the most fantastic and extravagant spiritualistic movement in American history.

 

Some form of spiritualistic communication has always been the belief and hope of the human race. Sometimes such a belief has been tempered with reason and common sense. All too often, however, it has been made to flare into something analogous to a raging forest fire, periodically sweeping certain sections of the country, preying upon credulous minds, and laying waste a lot of mental timber of promise.

 

Such has been the result of the spiritualistic phenomena which assertedly took place in the red brick bungalow on 84th Place in old Chicago, and which during the last few years has flared into a psychic conflagration so widespread and intense that it should be of considerable interest to psychologists and psychiatrists who deal in strange behaviorisms of the human mind, as well as to politicians who astutely watch the current of human emotions, that they may the better obtain power and authority in the land.

 

In the history of the American colonies, and even in more recent times, there are other instances of such psychic movements, but never, however, on such a flamboyant and extravagant a scale as this present-day cult.

 

Nearly a hundred years ago, at another little house, now historically famous as the “Fox Cottage at Hydesville, New York,” there similarly occurred certain psychic phenomena credited with having given birth to spiritualism in America.

 

This humble house, occupied by honest John Fox, his wife, and their two little children, became what was popularly known in that day as “haunted.” Here there began a remarkable series of psychic “rappings” and “knockings” which were destined to be heard throughout the United States of that day, and are still being heard in thousands of seances throughout the country.

 

But in this latter-day happening which assertedly occurred in an equally unpretentious house, although not considered “haunted,” this ancient and primitive belief in the supernormal has taken wings on a flight of fancy far beyond that of the humble happenings at the cottage home of the little Fox sisters. For this later happening deals not with spirit “raps” and “knocks,” but with distinctly more modern and streamlined methods of communicating with the other side of life.

 

In short, instead of having ordinary “spirit guides” and commonplace “ghosts” of departed relatives giving the usual type of spirit messages, we now have, reportedly, great and mighty “Ascended Masters” speaking audibly over a dazzling “Light and Sound Ray!”

 

Foremost among the “Masters” who speak audibly over this streamlined “Light and Sound Ray” is the great “Ascended Master Saint Germain,” who is alleged to have been the same mysterious personage whom history records as the Comte de St. Germain — a man who in the 18th century had wide political influence, and was adviser to Louis XV of France and some other potentates of that day.

 

Thus the world moves on; and today the disciples of the new cult can sit comfortably at home by their own radios listening to inspired fireside chats from this 18th century Count, telling about the state of the nation and the world, or they may read his “Light and Sound Ray” discourses, all printed and duly copyrighted in seven large green-colored books!

 

The first of these books has the alluring title: Unveiled Mysteries, wherein is described how the hero, a Mr. Godfre Ray King, meets in the fall of 1930 the Comte de St. Germain in person on the side of a California mountain Godfre Ray King, we later learn is none other than Guy W. Ballard, co-originator of the mighty I AM cult; and, according to this book, he “had been sent on government business to a little town situated at the foot of the mountain.” (p. 1, Unveiled Mysteries.)

 

 

Please note the following abbreviations used in this book:

 

A.M.D.  A.M.L.  D.  G.L.  M.P.  U.M.  V.

The Ascended Master Discourses  Ascended Master Light  The “I AM” Discourses  Group Letter  Magic Presence  Unveiled Mysteries  Voice of the I AM

 

While there, according to his account, he occupied his leisure time trying to unravel a strange rumor concerning an alleged Occult Brotherhood said to be domiciled in the mountain fastnesses of Mt. Shasta — California’s own “Mystic Mountain.”

 

One day on one of his alleged rambles around Mt. Shasta, he stopped at a mountain spring for a drink. Cup in hand, he knelt down to fill it when something like an “electric current” passed through his body from head to foot.

 

Looking up, he saw “no ordinary person.”

 

“Drink this,” said the mysterious stranger, handing him a cup filled with a rich, creamy liquid. Very trustfully, Ballard did so —  and he was never quite the same afterwards.

 

A few moments later the stranger was demonstrating his gold-making abilities to Ballard.

 

“See!” said the mysterious one, “I have but to hold out my hand and if I wish to use gold — gold is here.”

 

Instantly, Ballard said, “there lay in his palm a disc about the size of a ten dollar piece!” (p. 4, U.M.)

 

From that time on, this mysterious mountain visitor —who turned out to be none other than the great “Ascended Master Saint Germain”— reveals to his wonder-eyed disciple more mysteries in heaven and earth than ever dreamed of in any Shakespearean philosophy. The great “Master” takes time out from more cosmic labors to personally escort his disciple to secret retreats in America, Arabia, and India, and gets him back to his home in Chicago in time to tune in to the marvelous “Light and Sound Ray” coming through the ceiling of Ballard’s modest 84th Place bungalow.

 

In this streamlined spiritualistic movement there are many additional marvels, of which we shall duly learn. But just now let us introduce the couple who are the self-styled “Accredited Messengers” of this Ascended Master Saint Germain, and who are responsible for a movement which is today controlling the thought, dictating the action, and winning the financial support of tens of thousands of people in the major cities throughout the United States, a movement which actually claims “over a million earnest and devoted students.”

 

Inasmuch as he claims to have been the originator of the movement, let us present Guy W. Ballard first. However, his good wife, Edna Wheeler Ballard, is far from being backward in her claims and activities, and one can easily gather the impression from the way the show is handled that the set-up is more of a matriarchy than a patriarchy.

 

Guy George Washington Godfre Ray King Ballard is a tall, meticulously dressed man of some sixty years of age, usually attired in an immaculate white suit, over which, for variety, he sometimes very effectively drapes a long indigo-blue cape with shiny white satin lining, or sometimes a full-length all-white one.*

 

 

*The first and second chapters in this book, as well as some of the others, were written BEFORE the so-called “Ascension” of Guy Ballard. However, we publish the material as written, and have retained the PRESENT tense, even though later history may now place some of the events in the past tense.

 

In the glare of the footlights there is much sparkle of jewels from rings and tie pin as he bows and gesticulates before his audiences.

 

Pale, deep-set blue eyes look below a slanting forehead topped by grey hair, well-groomed and combed straight back as if flattened out by the wind, giving the impression of a bird in flight. A well-formed eagle-like nose and thin under jaw adds to this impression of flight into the empyrean.

 

In short, Guy Ballard gives the impression of being one of those individuals who can easily live in a world of their own, peopled by creatures and glories of their own imaginative making, but albeit, in his case, a world sufficiently material to include and satisfy a life-long craving for heavenly splendors.

 

Emotionally, this man of fantastic tales ranges from mannerisms of deepest humility to a crescendo of high and mighty utterances designed to show his self-claimed Messianic destiny as “Savior of America.”

 

From an over-display of humility attitudes, garnished with such endearing expressions as “Dear Hearts” and “Beloved Ones,” he will suddenly sweep into dynamic denunciations against “vicious individuals,” spies and black magicians within and without our borders and call on “Mighty Ascended Masters” to smite these individuals and all their works.

 

After such an exhibition of emotional pyrotechnics, the audience is either hypnotically leaning forward in their respective seats with delicious chills running up and down their individual spines, or else a few will register disgust at such mass-stirring heroics by getting up and leaving the auditorium.

 

One thing is certain: This man, in his eagle-like flights of fancy and sweeping denunciations of so-called vicious individuals, has the power not only to hypnotize himself as to the truth of what he is saying, but he can, it seems, make his audience believe in the green cheese story of the moon — or its occult parallel.

 

The play of his emotions up and down the scale tends to keep his audiences in proper emotional trim —on their psychic toes as it were— and the recital of marvels yet to come, gold, jewels, precipitated dinners, and what not, to every devoted student through the Ballard system of salvation, makes these students all too willing to be hypnotized away from their logical faculties and follow the fanciful imaginings of the master of the show.

 

Let us now take a look at the feminine side of the Ballard household.

 

Edna Anna Wheeler Lotus Ray King Ballard, known also as “Little Dynamite” to her psychic master and also as “Chanera,” are names which perhaps fit all the characteristics of this dynamic personality.

 

Years ago, before later and more euphonious names were born, she was simply Edna Wheeler Ballard, a concert harpist, a vaudeville trouper, a clerk in an occult bookstore, or sometimes just a housewife, varied at times by trips to the mountain tops with her gold-seeking husband and infant son, looking for the ever-eluding pot of gold (the Ballard gold mines we will learn about) at the end of the rainbow.

 

As simply Edna, she was like most other people struggling along through life. There was a child to raise, hospital and dental bills to pay, and the rent came around all too soon. But the restless god of ambition within her did not want it that way. It wanted power, glory, diamonds, gold, and a luxury such as attributed to fabled rulers of old. To all these besetting desires her early friends will attest.

 

Is it any wonder, therefore, that these ambitions should not have been out-pictured some time in some tangible way? Particularly so, when it is realized that she planned, worked, and schemed for them instead of doing a lot of metaphysical wishful thinking. A dynamic, authoritative, battling kind of person, Edna Ballard rules her “Mighty I AM” family with all the command of the Amazonian chieftain. Appropriately, therefore, may she be called “Little Dynamite,” the name bestowed upon her by the mighty “Ascended Master Saint Germain.”

 

Viewed from afar, and in the soft radiance of the usual Ballard stage setting, Edna’s appearance may be rather much in her favor. There is a certain grace about her figure and the rhythmic movements of her arms as she issues her decrees. Her gowns, ornate and overdone, are the envy of her women audiences and a source of wonder and admiration no doubt to some of the men. Sparkling rings and bracelets flash showers of light over her audiences. Diamond tiaras, overhanging corsages, expensive furs, gorgeous new gowns, their long trains sweeping the stage floor, all this is but an inadequate description of the complete ensemble.

 

And so, today, Lotus Ray King Ballard, having achieved in some degree the desires and ambitions of a frustrated Edna, has a portion of the metaphysical and phenomena-seeking world at her feet. They, too, want the things that Lotus has, and until the hypnotic spell has run its course and the thin covering of goodness and saintliness of her cult has worn down to the tinsel underneath, Lotus will hold the stage as dictator over the lives of many.

 

 

 

(Psychic Dictatorship in America, chapter 2)