From Lomaland to Hollywood - On Theosophy and the Study of Trauma and Ritual Abuse

From Lomaland to Hollywood - On Theosophy and the Study of Trauma and Ritual Abuse (pizzagatewhatever)

submitted 5.5 years ago by letsdothis3

So, I was doing some further research into the Paradise fires and the neighbouring town Chico came up. Apparently there are heavy occult overtones there: https://www.newsreview.com/chico/chico-code/content?oid=19738767

With its tree-lined streets, mix of modern and historic architecture and plentiful public art, downtown Chico is often described as charming, quaint and welcoming. But local occult researcher Cort Lindahl believes there are also clues to ancient mysteries—passed through the centuries by secret societies, religious orders and even a royal lineage that includes Chico founder John Bidwell—hidden in plain sight throughout the city.

He further claims that several local landmarks, and even the city itself, are part of regional and international arrays of sacred sites that connect Chico with everything from Hearst Castle to The Vatican.... "Chico definitely has an intentional setup in relation to the locations and architecture of certain buildings, including this one.” ...Though its exterior has changed a great deal over the years, the arched facades over the dual entrances to the Chico Bank of America building—designed by Henry A. Minton—remain untouched. Lindahl points to several of the reliefs—or raised sculptures—that he believes indicate the building has esoteric origins, in this case a monument dedicated to the Sumerian goddess Ishtar.

“There’s a tradition in architecture to include symbolism reflective of both the architect and the patron’s values,” Lindahl explained. He added that many architects, particularly before the 1800s, openly acknowledged that their work was meant to symbolize ancient truths or even channel mystic energies. Feng shui is a similar concept that remains popular in design today... Symbolism also had a practical use, Lindahl said, to preserve real scientific knowledge: “In antiquity, astrology and astronomy and alchemy and chemistry were the same things … there’s a lot of mystical beliefs tied up in early science. You see the same thing with cartography—map-making—and architecture. A lot of mysteries and legends are meant to remember these concepts. A chemical process would be made into a story to pass along.”

The buildings remind me of the links with Theosophy that I've been picking up so googling Theosophy and Chico:

https://theosophy.wiki/en/International_Theosophical_Conferences

This brief history was written by Garrett Riegg, ITC President, in 2013:

Beginning in 1995, Willie Dade with the help of her family and lodge hosted six annual weekend conferences with more than 60 people attending mostly from the West Coast, Europe and Arizona. Willie spent most of her life studying Theosophy with the United Lodge of Theosophists (ULT). She started lodges in places like Chico, California and Brookings, Oregon. After Willie passed away in the year 2000, many of her students got together over the phone and decided to continue the tradition by hosting conferences all around Southern California.

At the 2008 conference, at a small college near Philadelphia, our diversity increased as we welcomed a large contingent from the Theosophical Society Point Loma (Holland) and speakers from the Theosophical Society (Adyar), Free Masonry and Vedanta (a local professor). ..In 2010, the conference was hosted by our Point Loma friends at The Hague in Holland.

And I google Hearst and Theosophy and get this:

Anthony Mann, Geoffrey Shurlock, and the Cult of Theosophy - http://filmnoirfoundation.org/noircitymag/Anthony-Mann-Geoffrey-Shurlock.pdf

It’s now known that during the first two decades of the 20th century, Anthony Mann was raised in a bizarre utopian commune known as “Lomaland,” run by the Universal Brotherhood and Theosophical Society. It was located on 350 acres of Point Loma, a peninsula bordering San Diego Bay.

Shurlock’s bulwark against homosexuality is especially interesting when one considers that Katherine Tingley’s most aggressive weapon against her great rival in the Theosophical world, Annie Besant, head of the Adyar Society, was propaganda, widely distributed in a series of tracts, that denigrated Besant for the continued support within her organization of reputed pederast Charles Webster Leadbeater. To articulate the distinction between the American lodges and those led by Besant in the UK, Europe and India, Tingley vociferously campaigned against Besant’s harboring of an admitted homosexual. One early historian of Point Loma wrote that Tingley “doubtless hoped to establish in the public mind a distinction of Point Loma as the center of ‘pure’ Theosophy and Adyar as the disseminator of an ‘unpure’ brand.”

Like the two brothers in Mann’s Winchester 73 (1950), the righteous Lin McAdam (James Stewart) and the outlaw Dutch Henry Brown (Stephen McNally), Mann and Shurlock followed divergent paths, but their unusual and intense upbringing inevitably brought them into fundamental conflict. In its day, the Theosophical movement had a strong presence in Hollywood. The Krotona colony, founded by followers of Annie Besant, was established on 10 acres in lower Beachwood Canyon in 1912, and, in 1924, moved to a 115-acre property in Ojai. That same year, Thomas Ince, “father of the Western”, after dying mysteriously (in some reports, he was shot by William Randolph Hearst), was given a Theosophist funeral. Talbot Mundy, writer of “King of the Kyber Rifles” and “Her Reputation,” lived on the grounds of Lomaland from 1922-1927, and there wrote the Blavatsky-influenced “Om: The Secret of Ahbor Valley.”

Lomaland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lomaland

Lomaland dissolved in the aftermath of the Great Depression of the 1930s and in 1942, the campus was sold to Coronado developer George W. Wood [huge Navy connections]. The Theosophical Society staff and remaining students moved to Covina.

After Wood died, Dwight Standord helped purchase the property for the struggling Balboa University, a deal which was finalized on September 15, 1950. That same year, Balboa University became affiliated with the Southern California Methodist Conference, changed its name to California Western University and relocated to Lomaland. In 1960, the failing Cal Western law school moved from its downtown location to Rohr Hall at Point Loma to join the rest of the school. The law school received accreditation from the American Bar Association in 1962. In 1968, California Western University changed its name to United States International University (USIU). The law school, however, retained the name Cal Western. In 1973, the law school relocated from its Point Loma location to the current downtown campus and Pasadena College moved to Point Loma to replace it. USIU moved to Scripps Ranch and in 2001 it merged with California School of Professional Psychology to form Alliant International University.