If there’s one thing that beautiful British Columbia needs, it’s more cults. This week, the gang explores the volatile life of Edward Arthur Wilson, better known as “Brother XII.” Wilson was an English mystic who wasted absolutely no time building a spiritual compound south of Nanaimo on Vancouver Island. Prepare yourself for Egyptian gods, hidden treasure, and heart problems as Brad Abrahams gently ferries us off to the De Coursey islands in search of gold.
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Music by Pontus Berghe. Editing by Corey Klotz.
Welcome, listener, to Chapter 235 of the QAnon Anonymous podcast, The Brother 12, the original King of Conspiratuality episode.
As always, we are your hosts, Jake Rokitansky, Brad Abrahams, Liv Agar, and Travis View.
The world will say, this man is mad, but it has always said so of all who departed from its miserable conventionalities.
Moses, Gideon, the Baptist, Jesus, all were mad in the opinion of the mediocre.
I am also mad, or inspired, but I am not mediocre.
That within me has overcome sickness, and bonds, and a weak body.
Make no mistake, brothers, I am not a person filled with power, but a power using a personality.
Brother 12.
My home country of Canada is known for many things.
An entirely rat-free province, the Hawaiian pizza, bagged dairy called homo milk, the invention of basketball and the discovery of insulin, the snake orgy dens of Manitoba, and the home of the first modern eugenics movement.
Interesting, for sure.
But exciting?
Besides Queen Ramana and the late crack-smoking Toronto mayor, we seem to miss out on the most interesting fringe religious movements, paranormal happenings, and demented characters, adding to our inferiority complex with our southern neighbor.
There is one little-known chapter in Canadian history that will titillate even the most thorough chronicler of the fringe.
It's October 2012.
I'm in a small motorboat in the Georgia Strait, a strip of ocean between Vancouver Island and the mainland, where some of the world's largest octopus lurk underneath.
I'm watching the fog hug a small, secluded island in the distance, as we cut through the choppy water towards it.
The boatman asks, What brings you out to the islands?
I tell him I'm researching a cult that used to be present in the area.
You mean that former psychiatry professor and his abusive sex cult?
I heard he just got out of prison.
No, I reply.
I hadn't heard of that one.
The group I'm researching rose and fell almost a hundred years ago, and perhaps was the prototype for all others like it to come.
This is the true story of the rise and fall of Brother 12, Canada's false messiah and the original king of conspirituality.
His goal of universal brotherhood was marred by greed, lust, and paranoia, turning an island utopia into a living hell.
There's physical torment, dictatorial tyranny, slavery, a female enforcer wielding a horse whip for punishment, and lots of hidden gold.
It's the archetypal story of a paradise promised and hell delivered that we've seen in religious and spiritual sects over and over since.
I have been obsessed with this story for almost 20 years, at various points dreaming about a film adaptation.
My hunger eventually compelled me onto a pilgrimage to the former settlements on the mystically beautiful and secluded islands off the coast of British Columbia.
A chance encounter at a cafe even led me to an invitation into Brother 12's old home in Nanaimo.
The new owner showed me a room-sized safe they found inside that they were too creeped out to open.
Imprinted onto the door were the words, This door to be kept locked.
Don't, don't brother, open inside.
This is amazing.
This reminds me, there was a real Ghostbusters episode from the cartoon.
It was one of their ones that made it onto VHS as kind of a standalone movie.
And I believe the episode was called Knock Knock.
And there was a stone in the bottom of the subway that the Ghostbusters are investigating.
And the stone keeps telling them, it says, DO NOT OPEN UNTIL DOOMSDAY!
And this is very much that, but not a cartoon and out in the real world.
And of course, of course Brad would find himself here.
Before I take you to the precipice of the abyss, a mention of my sources.
Aside from primary sources from the time, the only complete secondary source on the story is John Oliphant's 1991 book on Brother 12.
I've used it heavily for my telling of the history of the cult.
I'd also like to mention the work of James A. Santucci, a professor of religious studies.
And finally, post-grad Stephanie Helmhoffer, who I roped into an interview near the end of this journey.
John Oliphant.
Any relation to Timothy Oliphant?
No, unfortunately not.
Or, I don't know why that's unfortunately.
I mean, would have been funny, I guess, if this story was connected to an actor, I guess.
But, you know, it's not that important.
Prepare thyself.
On a chilled England evening in 1924, a sickly man in his late 40s lies in bed, resting his weakened body.
He notices a peculiar stillness, realizing the sounds outside his open window have suddenly silenced.
The room around him vanishes, and is replaced by a limitless fiesta of time and space.
It's then that he hears a voice.
Thou who hast worn the double crown of upper and lower Egypt, of the high knowledge and the low, humble thyself, prepare thy heart, for the mighty ones have need of thee.
Thou shalt rebuild, thou shalt restore.
Therefore, prepare thy mind for that which shall illumine thee.
That's John, I guess.
I hear him all the time.
He's a friend of mine.
Oh Johnny's calling, alright.
Oh yeah, cool.
Guess we're gonna go have a couple beers, eh?
A cold wind blows through the corridor and the vista fades to white.
The man touched by these visions was then known as Edward Arthur Wilson.
During the core of this story, he was in his early 50s, standing 5'7 with a slight build and a sallow, wispy look to him.
He was physically weak, suffering from chronic chest pain which had him taking nitroglycerin pills daily.
He had grey hair styled in a pompadour and wore a clipped, angular grey beard.
His eyes were a grave pale blue.
He was always seen in a conservatively styled grey suit and tie with a red handkerchief in the lapel.
Think Jordan Peterson.
You'll see a picture on the next page.
Jesus, he looks exactly like him!
Oh my god!
This is so fucked up.
I hope he doesn't have his voice.
For the sake of him being a demagogue.
He would speak in a baritone, with words that cut like a knife, and pointed straight at you when he spoke.
But his weakness meant his voice would rasp after only a sentence or two.
Aside from his severe aesthetic, he was said to have a charming smile, and those around him felt love, loyalty, and warmth.
At least at first.
His early life, as I'll reveal later, is purposefully shrouded in mystery.
Some accounts come from what is now known as a completely fraudulent and sensational book, written by a man claiming to be his brother, who wasn't.
He stated that Wilson's mom was an Indian princess, and that Wilson was at one point a slaver.
We do know that he was born in 1878 to a strictly religious family.
They were Irvingites, a sect of Catholics known for ecstatic outbursts and speaking in tongues.
The trail then went cold until 1912.
Around this time, he claimed to have sloughed off the constraints of a conventional life, including abandoning his destitute wife and children.
He became a deep-sea mariner and traveled the Orient for 12 chaotic years, seeking spiritual enlightenment.
At the end of this journey, he returned back to England with a new and devoted wife named Alma.
A message from the Masters.
The message given is the first trumpet blast of the new age.
The message is everything.
The personality of the messenger is nothing.
On the acceptance of the message itself, all must stand or fall.
Back in 1924, following his first mystical vision, Wilson frequently lapses into trances receiving wisdom from whom he calls the Masters via automatic writing.
He described it as being wrapped right out of the body, or what we might call an out-of-body experience.
During this time, he's bedridden every other day from heart problems.
The channeling leads to two books in short succession.
The first is called The Three Truths, and the second, A Message from the Masters of the Wisdom.
The texts bear the message of universal brotherhood, but within the context of a world in crisis.
They are heavily anti-government, anti-technology, and anti-religion, proclaiming that Christianity and Judaism will crumble as the Age of Aquarius rises.
Wilson declares that he is the receptacle of the Masters, and from this point forward, he refers to himself as Brother Twelve.
His organization will be called the Aquarian Foundation.
The work of the Foundation will be the preparation for the founding of a more evolved race of humanity.
The books heavily reference the one and only Helena the Beautiful Blavatsky, aka Madame Blavatsky, of whom Wilson was a huge admirer.
Have you seen her before?
Do you know what she looked like?
No, this is the first time I've seen a picture of her, I think.
And she's a real smoke show.
Yeah.
As the name suggests.
Very piercing eyes.
Maybe at one point, when she was younger, she was bewitching.
Yeah, this looks like the type of lady who might carry around a poisoned apple in one of her pockets.
Blavatsky founded the Theosophical Society in 1875 before publishing the seminal work that inspired a million New Agers since, Isis Unveiled.
A brief descent into theosophy is essential to understand Wilson's beliefs.
Professor of Religious Studies James A. Santucci put it most succinctly, Theosophy, according to Blavatsky and her followers, refers to the ultimate truth of the supreme, the cosmos and humanity.
It is a truth that in its pure form is primordial, in that it existed from the dawn of humanity, esoteric, since only those few individuals capable of understanding such knowledge are allowed to receive it, and universal, because all great minds throughout the world enunciated the same wisdom.
Blavatsky claimed to distill this knowledge by studying ancient philosophers in their schools, major religions, and two very mysterious masters.
The wisdom revealed that 1.
Reality is unknowable and infinite 2.
There is a unity to all existence 3.
The universe is subject to an eternal ebb and flow of cycles 4.
Evolution is from progressive development over lifetime-slash-reincarnation and not random actions.
5.
Karma-slash-cause-and-effect guides this evolution.
6.
The universe is created and guided by a hierarchy of several sentient beings or ascended masters.
While Wilson was a self-described back-to-Blavatskyist, his doctrine had a spin that was wholly original and dangerous for the time.
He blended warm, soft New Ageism with fire-and-brimstone millenarianism.
There would be a total and imminent destruction of the present civilization and the uprising of a new age, which would be ushered in in 1975.
The special work of his Aquarian Foundation was to prepare the world for the coming of this new age.
Through devotion to the work, those who were worthy would evolve into a mental and spiritual aristocracy to guide the rest of humanity.
There's something always interesting about theosophy, which is like, it's like a more insane version of Protestantism, basically.
That's what it leads to.
Like, even less church and even more insane theological views.
Initiates of the Foundation must be righteous, altruistic, discriminating, and above all else, serve.
Additionally, there were four things that the members must be unalterably opposed to.
1.
Selfish interests at the expense of others.
2.
Corrupt authority, be it government, justice systems, financial policies, market fraud, manipulation of public opinion.
3.
Cultural and political movements that undermine order and bring chaos and destruction, namely communism, Bolshevism, and anarchy.
So not too controversial so far.
You know, he's calling for separation of church and state.
least thought in speech, specifically the Catholic Church.
Sure.
Quote, "No bargains between church and state."
So not too controversial so far, you know, he's calling for separation of church and
state, which was, you know, pretty progressive at the time.
With all that groundwork laid, his text is printed throughout England with the support
of the Occult Review, gaining significant notoriety.
Also publishing in the Review at this time was a man named Alistair Crowley.
I found that he had published an earlier piece in the Review, but under a pen name.
It's a classic, increasing degeneracy leads to doomsday, sort of panic, that sounds as though, again, Jordan Peterson could have written it today.
We are presented with the spectacle of whole communities who are from day to day obsessed with an endless succession of crazes.
Startling clothes, freak fashions, jazz music, cubist and futurist pictures, meaningless quote-unquote poetry, these are but a few of the more obvious and least harmful symptoms.
In the ceaseless rush for amusement, for excitement, in the mania for speed and every form of excess, I find an indication that the real nature of the psychic melody, which has infected and invaded every activity today, through one and all runs the high, harsh, strident note of insanity.
Yeah, he's, you know, not the easiest writer to read out loud.
But I mean, you know, we also got to keep in mind, I'm looking at the picture that you included of this, The Occult Review, and what's interesting is that it's from June of 1926, which means it is exactly, that this was published exactly 103 years ago today, which is... Not quite.
97, right?
No, because it's...
Oh, yeah, I did the math in the opposite direction.
It's okay.
You were close.
I was close, that's fine.
Yeah, yeah.
A hundred just sounds so much better than ninety.
Let's just make it a hundred.
The one vocal detractor of his occult review writings was none other than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Whoa.
Yeah, who slammed Wilson's doomsaying.
Undeterred by a cranky Conan Doyle, Wilson begins recruiting.
British.
Columbia.
Love, emotion, experience, life itself, all of these will be seen in a newer and truer perspective.
You will view and understand them from the mountain peaks of reality, instead of, as heretofore, from the weary and flattened plains of illusion.
Life for you will no longer mean the few brief and perhaps empty years which lie within the span of one short incarnation, for you have now entered consciously into a life that is endless and eternal.
You have only to realize the fact.
A handful of seekers soon flock around Brother 12, including Alfred and Annie Barley, renowned astrologists in Britain.
He craftily tells these early disciples that only those with links from past lives to the Masters will fully respond to the message, thus affirming their special bond with the Masters and himself.
With these first members present, Wilson goes into a deep trance state in which the Masters communicate what is to be the location for their community.
It is an ideal location for year-round development of the mind and body.
Here's a dramatization of the moment from a charmingly low-budget Canadian TV documentary from the 60s.
The world will end.
The brothers have decreed it.
We're hurting towards Aquarius.
Nothing can stop the catastrophe, the holocaust.
The sacred task of leadership is mine.
The sacred task of work, loyalty, silence, and obedience is yours.
You must sell all.
And give, through me, to this holy cause.
But I believe our chosen land is indeed a paradise.
I have seen it in a vision.
Its huge trees of cedar.
Its blue waters and white sands.
It has a strange name.
British Columbia.
Very strange name.
It's the type of Canadian culture that I'm glad is being funded by the state and the Telecommunications Commission.
It's a National Film Board of Canada production, probably.
I think the makers of Mortal Kombat stole a lot of this dialogue for the character of Shang Tsung.
He's got the rings.
He's got the followers bathed in candlelight.
He's got the yellow satin robe.
I mean, this is pretty epic.
And with that, he tells everyone to liquidate all their assets into Canadian dollars and investments, and relocate with him and his wife to Vancouver Island, British Columbia.
It's like, it sounds like the original Iraqi Dinar scam, but it's Canadian dollars.
Upon arrival, they immediately set to recruiting new members, with an emphasis on wealthy and respected members of society.
Wilson begins appointing a board of seven governors, including himself.
These governors rule the foundation as a committee, with Wilson having the final veto.
They include Edward Lucas, a respected Vancouver lawyer, Will Levington Comfort, who was a famous adventure novelist, Coulson Turnbull, So you can see, like, these weren't just, like, randos that they picked up off the street.
They were all pretty wealthy, all really well-known.
German-American, Philip Fisher, the trust fund son of a wealthy industrialist, and
lastly, Philip Judson, whom Wilson informs is the reincarnation of an Aztec
sacrificial priest. So you can see like it was these weren't just like randos
that they picked up off the street. They were all pretty wealthy, all really
well-known. So somehow Wilson was able to enrapture or hypnotize them all into
joining. Yeah, you can also see that these aren't just regular names.
You know, they all seem to come from, like, you know, 1930s pulp magazines.
Well, you know, it's really the backbone of cults is the idle rich.
They get a lot of money, they get a lot of time on their hands, they get that empty feeling in their bellies, and they come across a person who's very charismatic who can fill that up for them.
Yes, yes.
If you are bored and you've got money and there's somebody out there that is promising some sort of immortality, whether physical or spiritual, you're gonna pull out that checkbook.
After scouting several locations throughout Vancouver Island, Cedar-by-the-Sea, a small idyllic farming village located nine miles south of the city of Nanaimo, is unanimously chosen.
They purchase 126 acres of land framed by maple, alder, and cedar trees, banked by a beach with clean, blue water.
Wilson tells all Foundation members they must donate funds so that construction can commence, and that this plea for funds is fully sanctioned by the Masters.
They give generously.
This is the thing.
I feel like the Anglo-Settler brain cannot just deal with the, like, cannot just appreciate the beauty in, like, the Pacific Northwest.
They see it and they're like, alright, time to be, like, insane.
I'm gonna be insane about this environment.
Construction is swift and expansive, including several houses, an office building, a power plant, wells, water towers, and a 10-foot-high gate around the property.
The final construction is called the House of Mystery, and it's only for Wilson, and later whichever female disciple needed special initiation.
Donning brown robes, Wilson would retreat to the small shack for deep meditation and contact with the masters.
Approaching the house was strictly forbidden, as the vibrations would disturb the brother.
At one point, Wilson announced he would retreat to the house for a full seven days of fasting.
Several times he is spotted wandering around the underbrush eating pie.
In spite of his secret pie binging, membership booms with 125 Aquarian Foundation groups globally.
His latest book, Letters from an Elder Brother, sees 5,000 copies published.
Riding on this high, the seven governors meet for the first time in person in Cedar-by-the-Sea.
On an idyllic late summer day, they sit under a large ancient oak, dubbed the Tree of Wisdom, and excitedly discuss the future of the Foundation.
For them, it's a euphoric moment, with immense promise of a new world to come, based on love and unity.
The spiritual adventure has begun.
And there they all are, all the six governors and Wilson.
How would you describe that group?
These guys look like children who have drank a potion that makes them all old.
Yeah, oh, yeah, lots of lots of spectacles.
Lots.
I see a bow tie there.
They're all squatting down and sort of like, you know, crouching.
Yeah, it does look like does look like a sleepaway camp for people who have like Benjamin Button disease.
Pray for peace.
Prepare for war.
I saw the land of Europe spread out below me.
At the four corners stood four men, holding each the corner of a black cloth.
Now a wind came from the east, causing the cloth to billow and shake.
Then I asked one of the men, What is the meaning of the cloth?
He said, It is the shadow of those things about to come upon the earth.
Then the foreman lowered the cloth and it covered all the land.
I asked, how soon shall these things be?
And he said, the land which you see are now in the cycle of madness.
The next cycle is the cycle of destruction.
Every spiritual sect needs its own unhinged newsletter, and Brother 12's newly minted one was called The Chalice.
There's the first issue cover there.
So this is from November of 1927.
And according to Jake, that's 140 years ago.
At the top it says, there's a quote, it says, "Give up thy life if thou wouldst live."
And then there's three dates named.
There's 1875, 1925, and 1975.
So this must be the three times that Gozer, the Gozerian, has tried to enter our dimension.
And, you know, luckily for us, it's been fought back.
That's exactly it, Jake.
You intuited correctly.
The articles give the first reveal of the conspiratorial mindset of Wilson.
He repeatedly refers to an quote-unquote empire of evil that controls the capitalist world.
Their goal is to create global chaos to prepare the world for a one-world government.
Who is this evil shadowy cabal?
Any guesses?
That's right.
Uh-oh.
It's the Jews.
I know where this is going, goddammit!
What is the Jews?
I thought you were maybe gonna say the Jesuits, but no.
Yes, actually, so he also does implicate the other J-word, which are the Jesuits, but they are secretly also Jews.
Oh, come on!
Jesuits are basically Catholic Jews, so...
So here's an excerpt from one of these newsletters written by Wilson, but under a pseudonym, which was The Watchman.
I'm glad you're reading this, Jake.
Yes.
The Jews, as a race, are the chosen agents of the enemy of mankind, and this explains the instinctive dislike which is felt for them by other nations.
It is the deliberately evil policies of the Jewish secret hierarchy which are at the root of nearly all national mysteries and disorders today.
The same influence has been the cause of nearly all national evils from a very remote period.
But, you will say, the Jews are the chosen people of God!
Where did you get that idea?
You got it from the Bible.
Or in other words, you got it from the statements of the Jews themselves.
Christians today are looking for the return of a Jewish Messiah, thereby playing into the hands of those who have plotted for centuries to dominate and enslave them.
I'm getting a lot of mixed messages on Christianity from this.
Yeah, it was complicated.
I mean, he was raised a Catholic, but then we'll find out more later why he rejected that and formed his own religion.
We're not trying to be dominating or enslaving anybody.
We just want to be left alone, you know?
He's got it all wrong.
Unsurprisingly, he also quoted liberally from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Aha!
When multiple members pointed out that the Protocols were a known forgery, he lashed out at them in the next newsletter for being dumb idiots.
Along with a newsletter, a sect also needs an in-group within the group.
To this end, the Foundation purchases land on the nearby but even more secluded Valdez Island.
The island wilderness is to become an ashram-like, self-sufficient settlement, completely isolated from the outside world, with a monastery and a schoolhouse.
Only specially selected disciples that displayed the highest spiritual potential would be permitted in this city of refuge from the modern world.
Back at Cedar-by-the-Sea, the original settlement, Wilson holds an all-hands gathering for their one-year anniversary.
His address is a paranoid rant about the state of chaos rapidly approaching the United States.
20 million African Americans are ready to fight, led by communists, organized by the Jewish World Dictatorship, which is in turn run by the Rothschilds.
He announces the creation of an independent third political party as an alternative to the Democrats and Republicans, both of which are part of the conspiracy.
Brother 12 announces he will handpick the next president of the USA at the upcoming convention in Chicago.
See, this really is following in the history of, like, Canadian conspiracism insofar as it's just about America.
Exactly, yeah.
We just can't quit the US.
Yeah.
On the train journey to the convention, Wilson meets a beauty in her mid-thirties named Myrtle Baumgartner.
I don't think anyone told him that's a Jewish last name.
He learns she's unhappily married to a physically disabled husband.
They experience an instant bond.
When you know, you know.
They attire to Wilson's sleeper cabin and consummate the relationship.
In a post-coital glow, Wilson announces that they are reincarnations of Egyptian gods Isis and Osiris.
Damn, the sex was that good, huh?
The moment he busted, he was like, I am an Egyptian god!
Together, they shall conceive Horace, who will be the world leader in the new age of 1975.
Myrtle is pregnant by the time the train reaches Chicago.
I do like that he's following in the theosophical tradition of just, like, lying.
Just making shit up.
Yeah.
His political efforts at the convention completely fail, and he abandons these aspirations entirely.
Instead, he travels to Toronto to meet with one of the Foundation's wealthiest members, Mary Connolly, a petite and by all accounts sweet Southern woman in her mid-60s.
Wilson pitches her on his new settlement on Valdez and building an alternative school for children of the foundation members.
She is so thoroughly impressed that she signs over a check written out to him personally for about $225,000 in today's money.
Holy shit.
Yeah, yeah, he was that good.
Damn.
When Wilson returns back to the settlement on Vancouver Island, he hides his new paramour away in a cabin on the uninhabited Valdez Island, where she's to remain until giving birth.
Her presence is kept a total secret.
Remember, Wilson was still married to Elma.
While their relationship had no romance, and by accounts she was henpecking and prudish, this was still the 1920s.
Word of Myrtle's presence eventually spread, though, and the disciples were dismayed at Wilson's infidelities.
You know, Christianity, run by Jews, institution of marriage, good.
That's what we're getting.
Undeterred by the disapproving members, Wilson brings Myrtle into the House of Mystery and they brazenly defile it.
His flock became incensed, openly objecting that he was advocating free love.
Wilson defended himself in the next newsletter by saying religion has always had a dictatorial position over what defined a marriage.
He explains that there are actually three types of marriage.
1.
Those based on sexual attraction.
2.
Those based on mental-slash-spiritual unity.
3.
Those of initiates-slash-soulmates.
Myrtle was his soulmate, and plus, he was the messiah, so plebeian social conventions did not apply to him.
Amid the controversy, Wilson continues to build on Valdez Island with Mary Connolly's generous donation.
He announces that to live and receive training on Valdez, one must first renounce all personal possessions and wealth to him by converting their assets to gold.
Prospective settlers must also mind their own business and curb curiosity and criticisms.
He proclaims that higher beings will be reincarnated into children born onto the island.
Very normal cult stuff.
And here's some of the children that they brought into this world.
Kind of looks like, yeah, Lord of the Flies.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
This is the children before they drink the potion that turns them into the adults that we saw earlier.
It's interesting.
You see in the back, there's like a teepee.
Like, I think that does go to show how difficult it is to make, like, a community on these islands.
Like, there isn't much.
It's just a lot of, like, pretty dense tree cover.
Yep.
It's at this point that some disciples begin to fear for Wilson's sanity.
He's given conflicting orders and frequently flying into fits of rage.
A meeting is requested by the governors in which they voice these concerns.
Wilson becomes enraged and promptly expels them all and declares them enemies of the Foundation.
No disciples are to speak with him ever again.
The only governor to not dispute Wilson was the trust fund kid Philip Fisher, but only because he'd gone completely manically insane, not sleeping for days on end and proclaiming himself the next master.
He's seen staggering around, drooling, eyes wide.
He ends up committing himself to an insane asylum.
That's why you know he wasn't a master, because he declared it.
That's like rule number one of being a master.
Give up thy life if thou wouldest live saith wisdom.
Surrender self.
Thus shalt thou come to know thy true self, which knows not birth nor death, but is eternal.
Rule thou the shadow thine outer form.
Subdue its will to thine, the lower to the higher.
This is the way of life.
So, wow, even back then you had people posting, this is the way, even way before Mandalorian came out.
This is incredible.
Brother 12's soulmate, Myrtle Baumgartner, aka Isis, suffers a miscarriage, leading to a nervous breakdown.
After a second miscarriage, Myrtle loses all remnants of sanity and leaves the colony a total broken human.
One of the original governor's snidely remarks, How is Horace a miscarriage?
Other members wonder if the miscarriages were a direct result of Wilson's tyrannical treatment of her.
Back on the mainland, the now-deposed governor's start filing suits against Wilson for misappropriating Foundation funds and lack of payment.
He's arrested, and during the first hearing is berated and humiliated by the judge and prosecution, and almost denied bail.
About this he writes, They knew this would have killed me physically as I am an invalid and can only keep my body going with the greatest of care.
He almost posted to death, basically.
a heart attack in bed while writing a rebuttal to his charges.
He almost posted to death, basically.
Yeah.
However, he's eventually acquitted when Mary Connolly, the member who originally gave him the money,
made a surprise appearance in court to clear his name.
The next court case sounds almost too bizarre to believe, but is documented.
Before giving testimony, an ex-Foundation governor begins to shake violently and keels over onto the floor.
Several others in the courtroom faint.
Wilson emerges from the pandemonium of the audience and walks straight towards the prosecutor and points at him.
The prosecutor shouts, The judge attempts to gain control, but finds he cannot speak, emitting dog-like growls.
He manages to croak.
The court is adjourned!
After a recess, the prosecution lawyer falls quiet in the middle of his address.
This is ridiculous, but I've forgotten what I was saying.
Wilson is again acquitted.
Spooky.
Well, case closed.
I mean, that sounds like black magic to me.
Like, we're not refuting any of this now.
I mean, the rest of the episode goes on to say that this guy was an Egyptian god, right?
But if you're him, what are you supposed to think if that happens to you?
Exactly!
Exactly!
I would!
I would be like, God damn, I actually do have some of these powers after all!
Yeah, it wasn't just making all this up.
I guess I do have powers!
The disciples believed the strange court proceedings were a direct result of Wilson's occult powers and mastery of black magic.
Some frightened members fled the colony, including one effeminate interior decorator who was said to have run like a rabbit into the night.
I thought that was a very interesting detail that was in one of the books.
Others were too terrified to leave.
The brothers still had a hold on them.
Remember Valdez Island, the settlement for the most pious and loyal adepts?
These wealthy and respected individuals were made to sleep in tents until they hand-built their own houses.
The brother starts putting them to perversely hard physical labor, explaining that these hardships are tests designed to assess their suitability for future enlightenment.
If anyone has been on Vancouver Island or like general British Columbia, that is a very especially difficult task, I feel like, in the ecology.
This madness didn't seem to slow the influx of wealthy disciples.
Roger Painter, a 50-something man known as the Poultry King of Florida, sold all his assets and donated about 1.5 million in today's dollars to Wilson.
After receiving the money, Wilson dubbed him Brother 14, and informed him they had known each other in a past life, in 1565, when he was the Grand Master of the Knights of Malta.
Painter arrived on Valdez Island with a woman named Mabel Scotto, a wiry and severe-looking redhead with an abrasive manner.
She adopts the moniker Zee as her mystical name.
Zee promptly moves in with Wilson on yet another island purchased named D'Coursey, and becomes indispensable to him.
He notifies the disciples that, She is my eyes, she is my ears, she is my mouth.
Her orders are my orders.
She demands that everyone calls her "Madame Z" and has napkins monogrammed with the letter Z.
Which is fucked up in Canada.
Exactly.
Letter Z.
Yeah.
She proves to be a harsh foreman, or forewoman, carrying a horsewhip and using it on those who need a
discipline.
The disciples on Valdez are growing increasingly disgruntled.
The labor is too intensive and Zizrul too merciless.
They begin saving small amounts of money in order to leave the colony.
Wilson catches wind of this and gathers them for a meeting.
He reads a powerful tract from the Bible on treachery.
It frightens them so much they surrendered the money, which amounted to a paltry $35, which I found really sad.
The strange rumors surfacing about the colony, paired with the press from the court cases, caused the Canadian government to begin surveillance.
A paranoid and furious Wilson calls it religious persecution, and he and Z leave for England on their boat to wait for it to blow over.
Their absence is the best thing to happen to the Foundation.
Life goes on peacefully without them, as though a weight has been lifted, and there are many new arrivals.
But soon would begin an ever-accelerated descent into madness for Wilson, and hell for his disciples.
Messenger of Doom.
Upon Wilson and Z's return to BC, their ship is blown wildly off course and badly damaged.
They drift for weeks and would have died if it weren't for a last-minute rescue from a passenger liner.
Wow.
Yeah, they may have survived, but the ordeal makes them even more deranged.
Back at the settlement, Wilson begins ranting and raving while taking parcels wrapped in black cloth from the ship's hold and hiding them throughout the island, likely filled with gold.
By daytime, Wilson starts recruiting the most physically fit of the new arrivals into a wrecking gang, bullying problematic disciples, and physically removing them from the community.
They forcibly move the elderly Barleys, who were the first disciples, and Mary Connolly, that generous member, who helped to quit Brother 12 in the court hearing, to Valdez without any warning.
The elderly trio is made to carry all of their personal belongings and furniture for miles in the cold rain.
Happily, they bear the hardship as it signaled an evolution in their initiation.
So yeah, completely undeterred.
And that's Mary Connolly, the sweet 60-year-old.
Oh man, I wouldn't make this woman walk in the rain and snow carrying an armoire.
I mean, that's nothing.
Oh, it gets worse.
Great.
So sweet old Mary's residence was a dilapidated shack unfit for living.
It was riddled with holes, freezing cold, and without running water.
She went from a life of luxury and riches to spending the entire winter shivering in tattered blankets.
She was put to hard labor scrubbing floors, washing windows, digging holes, house painting, chopping wood, and delivering supplies from cabin to cabin.
Another woman named Leona was charged with supervising Mary and drove her relentlessly without rest, demanding the work be done under breakneck speed.
Even with all this, Mary believed her suffering was a lesson in discipline and was proud to be pushed to the limit.
But it wasn't enough.
She received a message from the Master that she hadn't coped adequately and was demoted back to Cedar.
Disgraced and heartbroken, Mary wished herself dead.
Even after all of this, Mary and Leona were still made to work arduously, plowing acres of fields by themselves in freezing rain.
And Mary was said to have been yoked to a plow that, you know, a beast of burden usually would have been yoked to, to plow those fields.
She ended up losing 30 pounds over this season of Hell and was already like a slim, skinny woman.
And it was rumored that the harsh treatment towards Mary was actually just due to her running out of money, because she had given it all already to Wilson.
So here she is on her abuse.
"I cannot tell you what agony I suffered.
I was abused, threatened, made to scrub floors, carry heavy loads,
and I expected at any time to get shot in the back.
Brother Twelve turned from a saint into a devil.
He forced me to till the land, and he made the rest of the colony stand over me and make
me work."
Leona felt awful about her treatment towards Mary, but was threatened by Wilson that she'd be separated from
her husband and forbidden to see him.
She was also told that she'd lose her soul if she didn't carry out her task to the fullest.
As an aside about separating married couples, husband and wives were often split up in the group, and the younger female disciples were encouraged to have sexual relations with older men, regardless of their marital status.
The men believed it would keep them young, which is just another classic ingredient in cult soup.
Back to more horrible abuse.
Madame Z took a particular dislike to a middle-aged woman named Georgina Crawford.
She would work her in the fields from 2 a.m.
to 10 p.m.
When she collapsed with exhaustion, Z would rouse her with curses.
She was then made to pile impossibly high stacks of potatoes until she fell and badly hurt her knee, crying in excruciating pain.
Z felt no sympathy and continued to work her relentlessly.
She was eventually banished to Valdez as punishment.
Once there, she was forced to paint a shack that stood precariously on the edge of a sheer cliff with a 20-foot drop.
She had to hold on with one hand and paint with the other, nearly falling to her death several times.
Why did she agree to do this?
She explains.
You stood for it for this reason.
Each one in turn was supposed to be loyal.
And it was such a mental dominance for the sake of loyalty, that if you raised your hand to protest any order, then you might be separated from your wife, or immediately deported from the island.
You'd be destitute in a strange country.
And there she is.
That's a photo of the house that... Jesus.
This house is half off the cliff.
It's not on the edge of the cliff.
It's half off the edge of the cliff.
Yeah.
This is insane!
A surprise visit from police investigating a kidnapping charge reignited Brother Twelve's
fear and paranoia of authority.
He begins amassing weapons, and his disciples fortify the islands.
Armed zealots guard the forts in four-hour shifts and fire warning shots at any vessels
that stray too close.
Wilson would stand on the shore, cursing at approaching vessels, screaming, "Ram them
with our tugboat!"
He was now prone to fits of cursing until he lost his voice, then would retreat to his
headquarters trembling.
This would occur up to ten times a day.
Disciples were put on rations of a slice of bread and a tablespoon of tea per day.
They were ravenous.
Oh my god!
The torment kept coming.
78-year-old Sarah Puckett was told by Z that she must drown herself so that she may benefit the colony from the afterlife.
She's told to row out into the sea and lean back until she falls into the water.
Poor Sarah attempts suicide three times, but ultimately can't go through with it.
When she returns, Z hurls abuse at her until she weeps.
This is the last straw for the Disciples, and they all agree to revolt.
An enraged Wilson responds, "I will run all of you people off.
You're no good!"
He proceeds to physically remove every single disciple from Valdiz and D'Courcy in his tugboat,
dropping them at Cedar-by-the-Sea.
It was the last they would ever see of him.
Wilson, Zee, and their henchmen then proceed to completely and chaotically destroy the entire island.
The house and school are wrecked.
windows smashed, doors wrenched from hinges, furniture burnt, water tanks punctured, fruit
trees uprooted.
Wilson's own house was hacked away in a frenzy with an axe.
A metal box was later found there with needles and syringes strewn around it, by the way.
All the disciples had struggled for, for years of their lives, was reduced to dust over the
course of a day.
Fools and traitors.
Back on Cedar, the physically and mentally broken disciples held a meeting.
They talked about the tyranny that had controlled their lives, the constant fear and abuse.
Together, they gained renewed strength and decided to continue the religion collectively, without Wilson.
They hired a lawyer named Harrison, who led one of the original cases against Wilson, to represent them.
They reluctantly showed the lawyer around the settlement, although some were still paralyzed with fear.
When the lawyer asked one of the disciples to show him the House of Mystery, the man fell to the ground and refused.
A disciple tells Harrison, There's nothing wrong with the religion.
It's sound and true.
It was Wilson.
The power of darkness took control of him.
They eventually work up the courage to tell their stories of abuse and exploitation in court.
This is like the ex-Scientology members that continue to do Dianetics in the auditing process.
They're like, yeah, no, this is all good.
It's just, it's the institution.
The Scientology is good.
It's Tom Cruise that's the problem.
He's been consumed by darkness.
He's been consumed by Mission Impossible 6.
Seeing the writing on the wall, Wilson and Zee fled the colony by boat, going into hiding.
Though unconfirmed, it's said they ended up in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, where Wilson was being treated by a specialist for his failing heart.
On November 7th, 1934, Wilson died in his hotel room.
Cause of death is recorded as a heart attack.
In the Catholic tradition, he hated sew.
His body was cremated.
The fate of Z and the rumored millions of dollars in gold are unknown.
After Wilson's death, she was said to be seen stepping out of a town car in Nanaimo.
One of the settlement's laborers recognized her and asked, She replied, Morbid curiosity.
Well, there's the ending to your dramatization, Brad.
I mean, that's a perfect ending right there.
Just watching the car drive away after that last nice couplet.
I mean, credits roll.
all.
He says they met on a passenger liner in San Francisco.
The son described a figure dressed all in white and thought to himself, This man lived!
This sort of feels like the theories that Hitler survived after the war.
It's like, I think he didn't have any more juice left in him.
I don't know.
No, his heart was a real weak one.
A few years after Wilson's reported death, Mary Connolly's caretaker found a large, fortified hidden vault while exploring one of his farmhouses.
Could this be where the infamous gold was hidden?
He cracked it open, and inside found a single roll of black paper.
He unrolled it to reveal a message, written in white chalk.
Nothing.
Amazing.
Wait, that fucking rules.
Oh my God.
So wait a minute, hold on.
So this guy had this vault built.
Maybe the gold was there at one point, but he was like, so, you know, so pissed off at, you know, this perceived sort of mutiny that he was like, I know they'll find the vault and in it, a note.
I mean, this is, this really is something out of a movie.
This is insane.
Yeah, next level troll.
Remember when I mentioned that Wilson's pre-Brother 12 life was a complete mystery?
Well, no more.
Somewhat recently, a collection of letters he'd written to his father were unearthed by one of his descendants.
They paint a portrait of a man wholly at odds with the crazed, charismatic cult leader you've just gotten to know so well.
His first job was as a dairy farmer in Birmingham, England, where he lived with his first wife and two small children.
So this is another situation where it's a non-Canadian leading some sort of insane Canadian float?
Yep.
Okay, great.
But it was an early failure, as he just couldn't make enough milk to make ends meet.
This kicked off a pattern of a string of failed jobs and doomed entrepreneurial efforts that took him and his family from England to New Zealand, back to England, and then ultimately to Canada.
He toiled at grueling jobs he saw as well below his considerable abilities.
Though it was revealed he came from a wealthy family, he himself always seemed to be scrounging for money and was constantly pleading to his father and mother-in-law for handouts.
He blamed all these failures on his health issues, which seemed vague and unceasing.
Perhaps today he would have been diagnosed with something like chronic fatigue syndrome or debilitating migraines, but he was never able to sort of put a diagnosis to it.
His father usually answered all of his son's calls for cash, but on one occasion they were just so disappointed in him that he was denied.
His reply to that letter showed a real penchant for the dramatic.
It's hard to tell if he's being genuine here or if it's just a play for sympathy, but I'll let you all decide that.
I am, at this moment, a man who has lost all confidence in himself and knows that it is useless to hope anymore.
Eleven years of ill health and consequent failure have done their work too surely for me to ever hope for anything else.
I thank God that you have not sent any more capital out to me.
Do not do so, for I can never do any good anymore.
For myself, I feel that there is nothing to hope for, but I will not do anything to bring you nearer to the miserable depths of poverty and wretchedness that lie before me.
I, who have but a small amount of strength and am utterly friendless and without influence, I am like a drowning man.
There comes a time when it's better to throw up one's hands and go down quietly than to prolong the struggle by useless effort.
It will be better not to write anymore.
I have had my chance and lost it.
I am done on both sides of the water.
I feel myself a wretched, ungrateful brute.
You have done everything for me and I have done nothing for you in return.
And now the last hope of ever being able to has been taken away from me.
Then he immediately asked for money again.
At the end of that letter.
But it's really such a stark difference between this total Omega male and the Alpha that he was to become.
It's like almost unrecognizable.
And what's so interesting is if he had approached a less harmful path of life with the same vigor that he approached forming a cult, he probably could have been fairly successful.
Yeah, why not just start a supplement company, you know?
Yeah.
He's just their generation's Elizabeth Holmes.
Yeah, I mean, this is the 20s.
Like, come up with a tonic, my guy, you know?
Literally start selling snake oil.
Yeah!
He eventually turned on his loyal wife and separated with her before embarking on his 12-year midlife crisis, sailing the world.
And what of his children?
His daughter, who was in the hospital for months suffering with diphtheria, recalls that her father visited her just once, bringing her a bowl of strawberries.
She never saw him again.
Absolute power.
So all this begs the question, what happened to Wilson?
And how do such educated, well-off, respected members of society fall for all of this?
With Wilson, I think as with many other religious leaders, the original visions and intent was genuine.
But, as we see time and time again, absolute power corrupts absolutely.
It's a trope for a reason.
It doesn't totally explain his descent into utter madness though, and there's a theory that his philandering led to syphilis, of which there was no real cure at the time aside from mercury, which was also like, you know, could make you crazy.
So yeah, we know that untreated syphilis can lead to madness and delusions.
There was also that box of syringes and vials found in one of his homes, and injection of amphetamines was widely a vice back then.
Or is this just the natural endpoint of an insecure narcissist with delusions of grandeur?
I think a little bit of column A, a little bit of column B.
Antsy?
And what about his followers?
I don't think it's too difficult to empathize with them.
From all accounts, Wilson dripped with a hypnotic, magnetic charisma, encyclopedic knowledge, and was an incredible conversationalist.
This was a tumultuous time, not long after the Great War, with people searching for an urgent sense of meaning.
He promised ideals of brotherly love, immortality, creating a refuge from the horrors and inequalities of the world, and of making them a part of a new world which they would together create.
This also highlights the peril of when a group works in total isolation, cut off from the outside world.
A hundred years ago, no one could know that we'd be doomed to repeat the story of Brother 12 and his foundation.
But since, we've had The Branch Davidians, Scientology, Heaven's Gate, The People's Temple, Children of God, Love is One, NXIVM, and on and on.
While the story of Brother 12 still hasn't cracked into the mainstream, there are a few fun pop culture artifacts from Canada.
There was a community musical theater production called The Cult of Brother 12, a musical dark comedy.
Here's a couple clips from this endearing local show.
Hey, we love musicals on the pod!
Extra!
Extra!
Read all about it!
Extra!
Extra!
Listening and picturing and shivering!
Go, go, go!
I see you.
So gold makes an appearance in the musical, you got to.
Of course.
Yeah, there was a suspicious amount of hip thrusting in that opening scene, too.
You've got to have a song about gold, folks, okay?
When people are going to the musicals, they want to see songs about gold!
And more recently, there was a Brother 12 rock opera out of Montreal.
Amazing.
♪ Bad times are on their way ♪ ♪ An apocalyptic cabaret ♪
♪ We'll build ourselves a refuge by the sea ♪ ♪ Our sanctuary salvation guaranteed ♪
♪ Salvation ♪ How would you all describe the visuals there?
Well, it's very glam.
It's not quite a Jesus Christ superstar.
It's a little bit more in, like, it's got a little bit more maybe hair in it.
If I had to sort of pick a musical comparison, maybe a little bit of Tommy in there, you know?
This seems to be about in line with what I think English speakers in Montreal are generally up to.
Yeah, that perfectly sums it up, Liv.
You know, in high school, I occasionally attended what they called 80s parties, and it consisted of people dressing up in, you know, costumes from a decade that everyone was too young to really even remember.
And it kind of reminds me of that, this weird approximation.
While neither of these productions are my cup of tea, kudos to them all for getting them out there.
But the world really does need a good feature film made about the story.
I think it's just like begging for it.
Yeah, it's kind of like a cross between, um, my pitch would be, uh, this is The Master crossed with Deliverance.
I do however like this Canadian country rock song about Wilson.
It was Brother 12 with disciples many.
Some were rich till they gave him every penny.
Into his mystic world we delve.
To find the truth about Brother 12.
Just to realize of course he's The infamous devil of D'Courcy.
Now that rocks.
Yeah, and lastly there's a Brother 12 craft vodka which you can order that gets fairly high marks.
It's got some pretty good bottle art there.
Goes hard.
Oh yeah, that goes pretty hard, yep.
It looks like he's exploding out of your vodka with an olive coming out of his head.
If you've stuck around this far, you have evolved to the next level of initiation, and are rewarded with a little interview.
In my research, I stumbled across Stephanie Halmhoffer, one of the only contemporary academics working on the story.
She's even more obsessed with the story than me, devoting the next several years of her life to all things Brother 12.
I dive in with her on some fascinating, more conspiratorial aspects of the story that I missed.
Tell me more broadly about your field of study and work.
I've been an archaeologist in Canada for a very long time, across several different provinces.
I've worked on sites in Spain as well.
And more recently, my PhD research is really focused on pseudo-archaeology and how mostly far-right or right-leaning conspiritual groups use pseudo-archaeology.
And then more focused, I'm researching Brother 12 and the Aquarian Foundation.
So, for the uninitiated, what is pseudo-archaeology?
Pseudo-archaeology basically refers to making these speculative and alternative claims about the human history using archaeology, but they rely on matter of faith rather than matter of proof.
It's kind of like a, trust me dude, I know what I'm saying.
And they do this all under a guise of what's called stigmatized knowledge, which is something Michael Barkin came up with.
So it's all these claims that archaeologists are suppressing these truths or rejecting them or ignoring them out of concern for our reputations or because we're being paid big money, stuff like that.
Things like ancient aliens claims are probably the most well known.
Atlantis is a big one.
It comes up all the time.
Wouldn't Brother 12 and the Brother 12 story, The Aquarian Foundation, be considered like anthropology or historical anthropology?
It's not necessarily pseudo-archaeology itself, but it's how Brother 12 used pseudo-archaeology.
And I'm exploring it through what's sort of called an anthropological-archaeological approach, which is a huge mouthful.
So there's like the anthropology side of things is, yeah, looking at the stuff that he wrote and his worldviews and all this stuff.
But then the archaeology side is going out to these locations where he lived and set up and using all sorts of archaeological tools or an archaeological way of exploring things or viewing things to look at more physical features of the Brother 12 story.
Is there anything kind of particular to the story that draws you in?
One of the things I find so interesting about him is he was doing their thing almost like a hundred years ago exactly.
But so much of the stuff that they were into, that they incorporated into their worldviews, that they wrote about, that he talked about, there's still so much of almost the exact same stuff we see happening today.
From the pseudo-arc elements like Atlantis and Pyramidism, but also like the conspiracism that he was into and other new age elements he was in to see all the time.
Today, every time I browse Twitter, somebody has said something that's like almost exactly like what Brother 12 would have said.
So I find that really interesting how these ideas and these concepts have really carried forward.
Have you been to his former house, too, in Nanaimo?
Yeah.
So I've been to the main headquarters area, which was just outside of Nanaimo.
It's called Cedar.
And then I've been over to D'Corsi, which is where the farm was and where he was allegedly building the City of Refuge.
But I haven't been to Valdez yet, which is, I think, arguably the most important of the spiritual side of things of his settlement.
So that's on my list for this summer.
What did it feel like being in those spaces?
So there's, of course, all of the baggage that you might have from doing all of this research around it.
But what about just the general feeling of being there?
You know, these are very, like, beautiful, peaceful locations.
So that side of things was very much coming through.
And I think that is part why they chose these locations for the peace and the serenity of them.
And you definitely pick up on that.
And then, like you say, there's that, I guess, baggage of knowing everything else about Brother 12.
So always keeping that in the back of my mind and giving kind of like a Not necessarily spooky feeling, but especially on DeCourcy where, like, you know, the gun forts were and where his conspiracism is most obvious.
I guess there's almost this, like, this, like, edge to it.
So I've told the general narrative of Brother 12 and the Aquarian Foundation in this episode, but what are some of the, like, interesting connections or rabbit holes that the main narrative misses or people haven't really talked about yet that you've looked into?
Yeah, one being William Dudley Pelley, which I find a really interesting connection because my research is very focused on far-right things and Pelley was a big figure in the history of the development of, you know, the contemporary American far-right movement.
Another interesting aspect is Brother 12's connection, very brief connection, to the KKK in the States.
This was around the time of the second revival of the KKK, and they connected through their mutual hatred of Catholics.
Brother 12 was trying to start a third party.
He wanted to influence the 1928 presidential election, and he was so anti-Catholic, so he connected with this KKK and militant Freemason publication.
So I think that's really interesting, because for so long the story has been about ISIS and Osiris and this hidden gold.
But the whole anti-Catholicism, anti-Semitism in particular, as well, is really downplayed.
What do you think it is about that area of Canada or North America that seems to draw this type of group or these types of movements, be they New Age, spiritualism, or cult-like behavior?
Because this isn't the only one in that area.
The West Coast has these just incredible, immense forests.
And I think that it offered him a lot of privacy.
He could go and buy these plots of lands that were still predominantly forested and away from where most people were living.
And it's this sense of exclusion and spiritual privacy and connection with nature.
And I think it was similar for a lot of other groups, this idea of these untouched wildernesses.
First Nations history, as well, has also been very attractive to New Age spirituality since the get-go.
And the West Coast nations have so many incredible stories and legends about connecting with nature and things like, you know, Sasquatch, for example.
And I think that also plays into the attractiveness of these areas to spiritual groups.
I spent a little bit of time there and there is a feeling, this kind of exalted feeling when you're out there that it could just chalk it up to how beautiful it is and it feels remote and it's quiet and the air is clean but I've been to a lot of pretty places but there's some places that have this extra almost illogically mystical kind of feeling to them.
Mount Shasta had that feeling to me.
Yeah, and so does Vancouver Island.
And you're like, huh, I guess, you know, I understand.
You could start a cult out here, maybe.
Oh, definitely.
BC's current slogan is Supernatural British Columbia.
So they definitely play up on that feeling.
And you're right, there's something super special about this area.
Is there anything that you haven't gotten to talk about or share from your findings or just your general awareness of the history?
The part that I always sort of try to emphasize is that conspiracist side of things, especially as conspirituality also is something that people are beginning to pay more attention to now.
You know, through things like QAnon, I see so many similarities between stuff Brother 12 said and QAnon.
And to understand it in the contemporary, looking at history is a good thing.
So Brother 12 is a good place to start.
So tell me how people can follow along on your journey with your work on Brother 12 and other pursuits.
My Twitter handle is cult underscore RKO.
A-R-C-H-A-E-O.
That's where the majority of stuff I share.
Also, I have a website.
It's called Bonestones and Books.
And as I start to prep some fieldwork, I'll share what I can.
And that's it.
That's the story of Brother 12 and the Aquarian Foundation.
What'd you guys think?
Wow, you have brought us yet another cult that is terrifying, super depressing, that I had no idea existed.
So, well done once again, Brad.
It seems like Canadian culture is very heavily dependent on America as a result of our economy.
But the previous large wasp country we were dependent on was Britain.
And this is a perfect example of maybe a century back, the cultural hegemon that we're dependent upon sending over their kooks to make Canadians go insane.
How did it make you feel, Liv, just now knowing and diving into a new chapter in Canadian history?
It's great.
It's very normal, as is most of Canadian history.
And I think if Canada did have, like, an absolute monarchy, he would be the Rasputin.
Absolutely.
He would be there.
Thank God.
Yeah, him and the Queen of Canada could rule together.
Yeah.
No, no, no, no.
Let's not get these two together, all right?
You know, I feel like this is really sort of like made the mold for like 20th century cults.
There's the, you know, the theosophical roots, there's the being propped up by the idle rich, there's the syphilitic badness, there's the, there's the, you know, the being propelled by a failed son.
I feel like there's lots of things here that we see repeated over and over again.
Yeah, that's why I was so fascinated by it, is the more research I did, the more modern cults would pop into my mind, like, oh, this is just like X, this is just like Y, just like Z. And because of that, I feel like it's a good case study in trying to understand why we sort of keep repeating this history over and over.
Yeah, we have got to stop letting our milk farmers fail.
So that they reinvent themselves as a tyrannical cult leader.
Yeah, we can end cults with better dairy subsidies, definitely.
Thanks for listening to another episode of the QAnon Anonymous podcast.
You can go to patreon.com slash QAnon Anonymous and subscribe for $5 a month to get a whole second episode every single week, plus access to our entire archive of premium episodes.
Brad, where can the listeners find more of your work?
They can follow me on Twitter, I'm at LoveandSaucers, and also on Instagram, I'm bradwtf.
And Liv, where can the good people find more of your content?
I have a Twitch stream, twitch.tv slash liveagar, and then a podcast for a general kind of philosophy, politics stuff, also called LiveAgar, available on whichever podcast hosting sites use.
Yeah, so just Google, Google LiveAgar, Google Brad Abrahams, and you'll find their stuff.
It's out there.
It's good.
Subscribe to it.
Although, if you Google Brad Abrahams, there's actually this convicted sex pest Oh, well, that's very unfortunate for you.
I'm not taking that out of the episode.
He's also Bradley Abrahams.
He's pretty much my age and was living in Texas, but it's not me.
He was a soccer coach who assaulted high schoolers.
At least you're not that guy on Twitter whose name is Jeffrey Epstein.
Right.
Brad, you're like, yeah, look, he's my age, he does live in Texas, he looks almost identical to me, but it is not me.
Travis, do you have anything to plug?
Once again, I'm going to plug enjoying spring.
It's very fleeting, doesn't last forever.
Today is a really gorgeous day, so get some sunshine on your face.
It's already 100 in Austin, though.
Well, Brad, you stay inside, but everybody else, you go outside.
We also have a website, QAnonAnonymous.com.
There's links to the Discord and, I don't know, some other stuff there, so check it out if you feel so inclined.
Listener, until next week, may the Deep Dish bless you and keep you.
It's not a conspiracy, it's a fact.
And now, today's Auto QQ.
There was a mystical cult on North Valdez That's what Jerry Hill at Yellow Point says Followed by an eerie silence They reappeared on D'Coursey Island It was Brother 12 with disciples many Some were rich till they gave him every penny According to what I've been told He converted it all to coins of gold
There's something funny going on and I don't mean hilarious.
What the hell's an Ark of Refuge for the age of Aquarius?
Who was his brother twelve of the Great White Lodge?
We should have ordered him the hell out of Dodge.
Into his mystic world we delve To find the truth about Brother 12 Just to realize, of course, he's He's the infamous devil of decoracy I heard he had a New Zealand wife He left her and the kids for another life
They say he had a vision in the south of France.
I say he was flying by the seat of his pants.
But he could hypnotize and use black magic.
Some lost everything, and that's what's tragic.
When the game was up, he became so violent.
Then in court, he made every witness silent.
Intuitionistic world we delve To find the truth about Brother Twelve
Just to realize of course he Is the infamous devil of the course
He had crazy cow flame and hair of red.
Went by Madam Z or was it Madam Zed?
They call themselves Truth Advances.
We got way more questions than we got answers.
Late one night they disappeared.
All the gold did too, as everybody feared.
In Switzerland they say he passed away.
That he was seen on a ship in San Francisco Bay Oh, Brother 12, he's sly, he's mean In the deep blue seas, the devil between But he ain't the wickedest brother I've seen On Protection Island there's a Brother 13 Into his mystic world we delve To find the truth about Brother 12 Just to realize of course he