Messiahs

It does not follow, because our ancestors made so many errors of fact and mixed them with their religion, that we should therefore leave off being religious at all.

— William James

To empower them, our prehistoric ancestors anointed their leaders with fat from dead animals. When, thank goodness, animal sacrifice later became taboo, fat was replaced with olive oil.

For as long as there have been tribes, messiahs (Hebrew for "the anointed") have walked among us.

Some have been annointed; some, self-appointed.

As an example of the latter, take Cyrus Teed.

A medical corpsman in the Civil War, Teed earned a medical degree after the war and began to experiment with electricity, a hobby of his since childhood.

One experiment gave Teed such a jolt he was knocked unconscious. While out, he was visited by a shapely angel. She told Teed he was on a mission from God.

Once awake, Teed changed his name to Koresh and promptly announced to everyone he was the messiah. He also joined the Shakers.

Over the next two decades, Teed managed to persuade 4,000 people to join religious communes he had founded in New York, Chicago and San Francisco.

Not content with a far-flung flock, however, in 1893 Teed led 300 of his followers to Fort Myers, Florida, which he calculated to be the center of the universe. 

Outside Fort Myers, Teed directed his followers to build a tropical utopia he named "New Jerusalem." The small town soon had its own general store, bakery, restaurant, post office, saw mill, boat works, power plant, mattress factory, college, playhouse and newspaper, The Flaming Sword.

Like the Shakers, Teed's followers believed in celibacy. 

They also believed in reincarnation, alchemy, and "Cellular Cosmogony," a metaphysical system Teed had concocted based on his study of electricity. 

Cellular Cosmogony held that the universe exists within a gargantuan womb and that Earth is the "great cosmogonic egg.”

If that's not whacky enough for you, Teed's followers also believed in gender equality, socialism, and farm to table. 

Teed was said by a Chicago newspaper to have "a mesmerizing influence over his converts.” But he was also shrewd, raising money by claiming he was Christ reincarnated and starting his own political party to avoid paying Florida taxes.

When Teed died in 1908, his followers refused to bury his body, insisting he'd rise from the dead. The Fort Myers coroner finally ordered that the pungent body be removed from the bathtub it was being kept in and buried. 

Teed's failure to reappear led to the dwindling of his followers and the eventual abandonment of New Jerusalem. 

Today, the abandoned town is a state park.

If Cyrus Teed's chosen name sounds familiar, you might recall another self-appointed messiah, Teed-follower David Koresh.

But that's a story for another day.