International Association for the Preservation of Spiritualist and Occult Periodicals

   

Periodical: Shiloh's Messenger of Wisdom

Summary:   From Pat Deveney's database:

Shiloh’s Messenger of Wisdom.
Devoted to the Ingathering of Israel.
1905—1945?
Benton Harbor, MI. Language: English.
Editor: Benjamin (Benjamin Franklin Purnell, 1861-1927).
1/1, 1905-1945(?) Fifty cents a year. 8 pp. Noted in S.C. Gould, "Arcane Societies in the United States. III," Notes and Queries 26/9 (October 1908), under “The Israel House of David.”

This was the American extension of the group centered around the teachings of James J. Jezreel. See the note under The Flying Roll. The members of the House of David, while awaiting the Ingathering of Israel for the chosen 144,000, refused to cut their hair and beards and, uniquely among religious cultists, made their living by playing exhibition baseball games, quite successfully and flamboyantly, against both local and national teams and even teams in the Negro Leagues. Curiously, the often jailed Editha Diss Debar, one of the most notorious and flamboyant spirit-painting mediums and later claimant to H.P. Blavatsky’s mantle, was for a time about 1909 the head of the group under the name of Elinor I. Mason.

Other Sources:NYPL; Hamilton College; Clarke Historical Library; University of Michigan; University of Minnesota; Library of Michigan; Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.
Issues:Shilohs Messenger Of Wisdom V8 N12
Shilohs Messenger Of Wisdom V55 N8 (Souvenir Edition)
Shilohs Messenger Of Wisdom V56 N11
Claude-Generated Themes:   Shiloh's Messenger of Wisdom was the organ of the Israelite House of David, the communal sect founded at Benton Harbor, Michigan, in 1903–05 by Benjamin Franklin Purnell, and was 'Devoted to the Ingathering of Israel.' The American extension of the Jezreelite 'Flying Roll' movement, it preached a millenarian gospel of the chosen 144,000, the twelve tribes, the opened 'Little Book' and Purnell as the seventh and final messenger before a thousand-year peace. Its members famously wore their hair and beards uncut and supported themselves with flamboyant exhibition-baseball teams while living communally and vegetarian. The paper sits largely outside the occult tradition — it is a prophetic Adventist sect journal, with only faint communal-living and dietary reform notes at its edges.

Generated by Claude from the periodical's digitized text; a thematic reading, not a bibliographic description.
Topics:Theosophy