Sunna Dagor Message.
1923?--1957? Monthly
Winter Park (Orlando), FL.
Publisher: Landone Foundation.
1/1, 1923 (?) $2.00 a year, 4 pp. (For the first 15 years of its existence the newsletter was free of charge; this changed when the cost of mailing each issue was said to have exceeded $1,000 -- an unlikely claim since second-class postage during the period was one and a half cents per pound, which implies a vast and improbable circulation.)

"Brown Landone," whose teachings were propounded through this journal, was an active New Thought figure for 40 years, taking up in turn one topic of the day and then moving to the next: health foods, eugenic education of children, proper breathing, prophecy, Bible secrets, politics, the Teleois Key numerological system, physical immortality, dream travel, pyramidology, guaranteed success schemes, etc., etc. Underlying all these were Landone's claims to exalted international connections and education and advanced age. The most commonly used version of his biography can be found in his Prophecies of Melchizedek in the Great Pyramid and the Seven Temples (1940), almost all of which, including his name, is false. As the eminent scholar who unearthed Landone's background has written: "Leonard Elbert Brown (1877-1945) – known at various times as Leon Elbert Brown, Leon Elbert Landone, Leon Elbert Brown Landone, L. E. Brown-Landone, Leando Brown, and Brown Landone – was a schoolmaster turned serial con with a penchant for inventing institutions (Comite Franco-Americain de l'Alliance d'Education Sociale et Civique; the International Social and Industrial Betterment Exposition; the Bureau of Executive Leadership) and a decided literary bent, who worked in the New Thought trade with both Parker Sercombe, at To-morrow (as L. E. Landone), and Elizabeth Towne at The Nautilus before branching out on his own, and ending his days in Florida, as an expert on nearly everything, and – he claimed, inaccurately – a nonagenarian who looked several decades younger than his actual age."

Landone, like so many other mages (H.P. Blavatsky, W.J. Colville, Alberto de Sarak, et al., for example) exaggerated his age to impress his audiences -- his tombstone gives March 6, 1847 as his birth date and he variously listed France (to aristocratic parents), England, the high seas, and Canada as his place of birth. In reality he was born in Fremont, Wisconsin in 1877. He first appeared to the public as a schoolteacher and then, by 1905, was associated with the almost unknown National Purity League (one of several at the time of like name), which, among other interests, advocated plain, simple, unspiced food as a cure-all for immorality. By 1907 under the guise of Dr. Leon Elbert Landone "an English scientist and brain building specialist" he had parleyed those small beginnings into a career as a lecturer ("Awakening Man's Dormant Brain Centers and Unconscious Possibilities") and nutritionist (a "spineless cactus diet") and announced his intention of spending $100,000 to found a school or evolution and child culture (experimenting on selected children) -- which received notice in the American Journal of Eugenics. He buttressed these learned pursuits by touting his education in Italy, France and England (including three months with Herbert Spencer), and let it be known that he had "spent some time with the Brotherhood of India," all the while writing regularly and voluminously for (and advertising in) the likes Nautilus, The Kalpaka, Round Robin, Mind Digest, To-Morrow, Master Mind, Occult Digest, Stellar Ray, New Thought, and others. By late 1920s he was ordaining "ministrants" nationally for his Landone Spiritual Bible School and by 1940 he was working from the Landone Foundation in Winter Park, Florida, where apparently he had taken refuge from some altercation in California, employing a large secretarial staff to keep up with the sale of his innumerable pamphlets and mail-order lessons: Four Brains and Improvement; Two Stupendous Truths – Life and Death Reversed; Rhythmic Multiplying Powers; How to Turn Your Desires and Ideals into Reality; Your Electronic Body (Each Cell is Electrically charged); Greater Spiritual Responsiveness of Body and Awakening the Brain of Spirit; The Breath of Youth (12 Lessons); Spiritual Bible Course; Deep, Deep Down in Your Heart; Instead of Damning a Disease, Bless It!; Seven El Ohim Cycles of Manifestation; Beginning Youth; Mysticism and the Caetens; "Unconsciously" Freeing the Body: A Course of 16 Lessons; The Means Which Guarantee Leadership; 28 Epistles of I Reveal ($5.00 for two of the Epistles, $60.00 for all 28, or $120.00 for the "complete course" – on sale for $1.00 each); Your "Inner" Attitude Toward War: Spiritual Help for you; Messages of the Caetens,; Mysticism and the Caetens, The Success Process (7 Lessons); The Silence Which Creates ("I increased my net equity in real estate 300%"), etc. Like Harry Gaze and others, Landone taught the reality of physical immortality in this body – and demonstrated this by his claims of great age. Most of his later publications sported a photograph of a vigorous Landone: "It is as it is, -- no elaborate retouching. Take 13 months ago – proof of continued vitality and youthfulness"). The only original elements in Landone's lessons were his claims to show the student how to awaken the "sacred special senses" through fragrance, beautiful tones, beauty of color, and his promise that he and the ancient "mystic wise men" could lead the students in their dreams through time and space to Egypt and the New Temple in the Andes ("After the first thirteen nights of spiritually winging my way with you, up under the stars -- to Ancient Egypt and Cathay and the Holy Andes, I have awakened talent I never knew I possesses"--grateful student). In his later years Landone organized the Spiritual Army of the Caetens / Caetenarians – a spiritual practice of prayer (one synchronized second an hour) and mutual help that would include and encompass all existing organizations, churches, business clubs, professional groups, etc., and be ready to take over after World War II had destroyed all old, corrupt forms of government and bring to the fore the World Leader (presumably Landone). "Each Caeten must, first of all, consecrate himself to pray with all his heart and soul – in unity with others – for a great spiritual leader to rise up from among our people, to appear as soon as we are spiritually prepared to receive him. . . . And a leader will come." The result of this revolution was to be a communitarian "Super State with Power to Enforce Peace" (the name of one of his pamphlets). All of this wisdom was available to the student through the use of Landone's Teleois Key, a numerological system based on 11, 4 and 7, laid out in his Prophecies of Melchizedek in the Great Pyramid and said to have been derived from the Canon of Proportions of Polykleitos. (This should not be confused with Avys Teleios Monthly, q.v. Both are derived from the Greek word for "mature" or "completed.")

The journal carried prophecies for the coming month, short pieces by Landone, and advertising for Landone's books and other enterprises ("Landone Menus," $2.00 for 93 menus for the month). INTA (1947 and 12 issues for 1957).

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