I had transformed myself to spiritous essence
Thou hast wandered through the labyrinthine coilings of time’s spiral transmigrations
By the middle of the previous century, alchemy had lost much of its luster. No longer would the practice have the pretense of respectable science, nor would it be labelled a tenet of chemistry. Hundreds of years of research weren’t all for naught, however. The field had somewhat indirectly contributed to the broader growth of sciences, even as its own goals proved evolutionary dead ends. It would see resurgences over the years, though its once broad focus of elemental transmutation was now solely the realm of gold, as it was relegated to the occult – a label that attracted more than its share of charlatans.
Cyrus Teed had little time for such labels. In his own practices, no path of inquiry would be unnecessarily written off. When he eventually found his field, eclectic medicine, he happily embraced the spirit of the branch. The path to his studies was a fittingly windy one, born in Teedville (now Trout Creek), a sawmill hamlet in New York State that bore the name of an ancestor, Samuel Teed. At 11, he left school to work on the Erie Canal, eventually finding his way into the Union Army, where he first embraced medicine.
Another, far more distant (or, perhaps, alleged) relative had recently made an international name for himself. While praying in a wooded area, Joseph Smith had been visited by both God and Jesus, a vision that would eventually lead him to move west from New York, in search of acceptance for his nascent religion. The young Church of Christ settled in Ohio a year prior to Teed’s birth. Six years later, Smith would be killed by a mob, while awaiting trial for inciting a riot in Carthage, Illinois, where a young lawyer named Abraham Lincoln had recently come up short in his defense of Efram Fraim — the only person ever legally hanged in the county.
Teed’s moment of spiritual clarity arrived at age 29. An alchemy experiment requiring a high voltage current electrocuted him to the point of black out. The recent graduate of the newly opened New York Eclectic Medical College was visited by an angel, in an act of “divine illumination.”
“Fear not, my Son, thou satisfactory offspring of my profoundest yearnings!” the angel announced, backed by a purple aura and sparkling rainbow. “I have nurtured thee through countless embodiments. I have seen thee as thou hast wandered through the labyrinthine coilings of time’s spiral transmigrations.”
Teed later wrote of the experience,
I had transformed myself to spiritous essence, and through it had made myself the quickener and vivifier of the supreme feminine potency, and had formulated the counterpartal energies, the pneuma and psyche, into the Majesty who, in all her radiant glory, had compassed me. While thus inherent and clothed upon with the femininity of my being, how vividly was awakened in my mind the passage of Scripture found in Jeremiah XXXI:22: “How “long wilt thou go about, O thou backsliding daughter? for the Lord hath created a new thing in the earth, a woman shall compass a man.”
The angel declared themselves to be God — at once a male and female spirit. Teed, they added, was the messiah, before vanishing as quickly as they had arrived. The newly branded messiah adopted the title “Koresh,” the biblical name for Cyrus the Great, founder of the first Persian empire. It was a breakthrough he was quick to share with the public – a fact that contributed greatly to the failure of his Utica medical practice.
A move downstate to Binghamton did little to change his business fortunates, though it was here he found a loyal convert in a fellow medical professional. Teed would relocate his practice, yet again, this time to Sandy Creek, another village with a sawmill-based economy. This time, its workers would provide the physician with steady work, owing to frequent injury. But being a messiah alone wouldn’t pay the bills – at least not yet – and the money he (and several family members) did possess would be contributed to building his religious order. A newspaper and planned communist takeover of his parents’ mop factory in Moravia failed to move the needle.
Teed’s scientific learnings were foundational to his prophecy and plans to "redeem humanity.” He posited that his pursuits could cure any medical problem, up to and including cancer. He preached collectivism, celibacy and his own immortality. His most well-known belief, however, centered around a new spin on the 18th century Hollow Earth concept, which he explained thusly,
The sun is an invisible electromagnetic battery revolving in the universe's center on a 24-year cycle. Our visible sun is only a reflection, as is the moon, with the stars reflecting off seven mercurial discs that float in the sphere's center. Inside the earth there are three separate atmospheres: the first composed of oxygen and nitrogen and closest to the earth; the second, a hydrogen atmosphere above it; the third, an aboron atmosphere at the center. The earth's shell is one hundred miles thick and has seventeen layers. The outer seven are metallic with a gold rind on the outermost layer, the middle five are mineral and the five inward are geologic strata. Inside the shell there is life, outside a void.
His preachings were practiced at first by a commune in Chicago, and then a planned utopian “New Jerusalem” among the citrus groves in Estero, Florida. The group launched their own political movement, The Progressive Liberty Party, in a bid to unseat local Democrats and managed to incorporate the town in 1904. Two years later, Teed attempted to break up a group of his own followers fighting among themselves outside a Fort Myers supermarket. He sustained injuries that contributed to his death on December 22, 1908
His followers kept watch over his body, anticipating his planned resurrection. With no signs of returning life, local officials ordered Teed’s body be buried just after Christmas. A 1910 hurricane destroyed his Estero Island tomb and swept his coffin out to sea. The Koreshan movement died shortly after.
Sources:
American Messiahs : False Prophets of a Damned Nation by Adam Morris
When Koreshan science invaded the south side https://chicagoreader.com/city-life/when-koreshan-science-invaded-the-south-side/
Cyrus Teed and the Hollow Sphere Cult https://www.mpnod.org/2017/08/cyrus-teed-and-the-hollow-sphere-cult/