Bittersweet Infamy - #78 - Brother XII of the Great White Lodge
Episode Date: August 20, 2023In this road trip special recorded inside a 1970 Volkswagen bus in Jordan River, BC, Taylor tells Josie about spiritualist Edward Arthur Wilson, a.k.a. Brother XII, and the Aquarian Foundation, Vancou...ver Island's mystical doomsday cult. Plus: the sweetest protest in Canadian history—the Ladysmith chocolate bar strike of 1947.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Where you taking me, Josie?
We're going to Mystic Beach.
Gonna get some pizza.
We're gonna get some pizza, some Mystic pizza from Julia Roberts.
It's gonna be very exciting.
Here's the, yeah, the local pizza place is not called Mystic Pizza.
That's a missed opportunity.
It's just called Stoke Pizza.
That's actually pretty cool though.
That's, no, that should be Revel Stoke.
Yeah.
Damn!
It's all wrong.
We need to shape up. We. Damn! It's all wrong.
We need to shape up around here.
Right some letters.
I will write some letters.
Look out for this log here.
We're currently in the middle of the most beautiful forest with the most soft soil and more exposed roots than I've ever seen in my entire life.
The soil is so squishy.
It is squishy.
It's dry right now.
Pins the campfire band.
Oh yeah, dries how.
This thing would go up like a fucking box of matches.
We must be very careful.
Not use our lighters while we're here.
Oh, I'm going gonna go around up here
Which way am I going my love this this down here over here
This right here, okay
This is very Blair-Witch to get lost in
Watch out by the way, I noticed on my sweater, and then on my bag, there's these, look at mushroom, cool mushroom.
There's these little guys, these little mites,
they might be like baby spiders or something, or little red guys.
Oh, I saw something.
Oh, here, here.
Oh, is that what the markers are?
I just assumed.
God, this is the wrong size to go over or under.
I'm gonna try it over.
Yeah, I can go over. Yeah, that was the way to go.
Oh.
They make you work for Mystic Beach.
But it is worth it, I think.
So, we blare witched ourselves a little bit on that hiking trail.
We went the wrong way for about seven or eight minutes,
down a slippery riverbed of meat of rocks.
But, now we're a bit muddy.
Now we're a bit muddy.
A lot of rotten staircase, there's a lot of bugs.
A lot of squish between your toes, but we made it.
Whoops.
We made it.
It's fucking pretty. nd This is a watercloth onto the beach.
Welcome to Fitter Sweets 6-04. That group can 1927 and here at poverty exploitation funded to torture and the unbeatable
vulgarities of a self-proclaimed Messiah.
I even looked at the mic fucking sweet because it was a bummer.
I thought if it was over going to pull those sleeping,
I don't want to be here.
I'm going to say here,
Swindler and Brad Beaver murder.
You are about to enter
Dant-Honey's side.
You think you're a knoth of Fraser around Maw?
Not all of a sudden, we went in on Bangalow.
Talks about it, since.
I couldn't say no to Hela. En un bango, trata de 8 sensas. Hay cunce, hay noco, hay la...
...en tennoir, en persona, Canada.
...cuase, cuáce, que es el surque,
el surque de la Puebla. We are coming at you from the inside of a VW bus.
And there are loads of moths in here.
There's moths on moths, buddy.
I think it's just two.
That's a moth on a moth. That's true.
Yeah, we're back for Mystic Beach, back for Mystic Pizza.
Oh my gosh, barely.
You barely, we almost got lost in the woods there for a second.
Yeah, no, the way back was even blare-witchier
than the way there.
Oh my gosh.
We were talking about this, the tree fall on that forest floor
makes it look like there are trails everywhere.
Because instead of just like plants growing and then there's one well-worn path,
it looks like well-worn paths everywhere.
I think once it started getting a little bit dark because we wrote there like 5-7-ish kind of vibes.
Yeah.
And even though I put it to this way, I was doing some research out there at
almost 10 p.m. and it was light enough to read by, when you're in and amongst that particular
kind of like very tall, it's darker than the rest of the world and you're not familiar with it.
Yeah. It's not a very nice feeling. So I had a real moment of like, well,
shit, maybe I will die here. just a moment. Beautiful place to die.
Worried of advice if you're going oh yeah gorgeous if you're going to
to Mystic Pizza and River Jordan look for the ribbons on the trees take
real close attention to those ribbons. Yeah they're not that good but pay close
attention. We did find one abandoned flip flop. We did. I found the second flip flop on the way up.
Oh, really?
We did it was it.
So I know I didn't tell you.
You've also heard it.
We were pretty far apart at that point.
I was one of those tragic stories and six words for sale.
Used sandals worn once.
We went the wrong way and we doubled down to this river bank.
Really, really pretty, but it should have been clear to us pretty quick
that that wasn't the way to go.
And we didn't kind of realize it until we got to this lake.
Yeah.
Very precarious log thing over a pit.
It was a good log jam.
It was a log jam.
And then on the way back up, we saw this family, two parents and a kid.
And they did not look pleased.
And the mom I noticed was wearing these little
sparkly silver sandals and she had just had her toenails done.
And I was like, nope.
Turn around now.
Nope, you're not gonna like the fly mud.
We didn't even know about the fly mud.
Yeah, that was a pleasant surprise.
We could sense it.
We knew that those sparkly, slightly platformed sandals
were not gonna cut it.
Yeah, no good.
Also, every staircase and bridge is rotted out,
so be fair for that as well.
And you have to go through some bushes,
bring a first-aid kit and a flashlight, you know?
That's all.
Close-toed shoes.
Yes, that too.
I was rocking some sandals, that was a little messy.
I was wearing my runners, that wasn't much better.
I was wearing like baggy jeans.
I didn't know. I just didn't know.
We didn't know. We didn't read the Google reviews.
We did.
Yeah, we did. Well, we skipped.
Well, yeah, that's the problem.
I had a whole fucking 376 page bookter.
So...
It was gorgeous though. That beach was stunning. Holy cow.
Absolutely. Beautiful rocks rocks beautiful beach sand
Some of it you would just like have little stretches where it was like sparkly pink sand and then integrate and then into tan
It was really nice. Yeah, and it's part of the Wanda Fuka Trail
I didn't realize that there were people there like doing overnight backpacking trips. Yeah
There was a lot of people with tents. Yeah, I'd say the majority of people we saw down there
I don't know if I could if I could stay on that beach in a tent. I think I would get pretty intense
Nice. Yeah, I'm fired of that too. Good
That was my hike for the day
Yeah, it was a sweaty time
We moved indoors
We're not out by the fake twinkly light campfire anymore. We're in and amongst.
Are you lucky to be spoiled with all of these different acoustic situations?
You're welcome.
That's the tact we're gonna take.
You are...
It's experiential.
Lucky.
Yes. It is. I actually sincerely believe that as much as I'm
joking. I do believe that. No, no, no. I think often you don't think about the sound of a place
and it becomes very apparent when you start recording it. So, yeah, no, for sure. Focus in, hyper-local.
Taylor is reporting to you from the bed in the VW bus. I am. I'm all cross-legged. Yeah, it's a low clearance. Like I have to do some stupid to
I know I gotta get I'm excited to be laying down flat.
Flat back. Are you gonna join me in the bed tonight?
I think I'm gonna do out under the stars. Again? It's pretty nice. Nice, give you. Yeah. Yeah.
We'll see. I had a set of the beds so yeah that might not happen.
Are you ready for a little Mymphamous over here?
I'm always ready for Mymphamous at any given point and to inflict one on someone else as well.
Yeah, yeah, I know there's been a few impromptu Mymphamous throughout the trip here now.
Yeah, I wrote one on a postcard.
There was a wave around my face though.
Oh, they even read that the whole time it was done before I came here. Oh, they can do that. You can read that the whole time. It was done before you came here.
Oh, I was going to ask, what did you do it?
Right around the time I was jotting white spot facts into my notebook.
And I was like, oh my god, this is too much work.
I'll just look at my phone on the very...
As it should be.
Well, on our way out here, we had a brief little stop and suck to do some grocery shopping.
Get some provisions for our glamping trip. We had a brief little stop and suck to do some grocery shopping get some
Provisions for our Glamping trip because there's a little kitchen here
Parker Posey love soup. Yeah, yeah, she does let the record show. Mm-hmm. Well as we were
Moving through the aisles of the grocery store, which we did kind of repeatedly. I think we made about
Four five last year. It was a new grocery store, we didn't know what we wanted.
Come on, man.
But it was very noticeable how expensive everything was.
And how?
Woo, big time.
Oh, baby.
Vegetables, expensive fruit, expensive.
Serial.
Expensive.
Cookies.
Expensive.
Rabbioli?
Expensive.
Yeah.
Yeah.
They were.
There was, there was like 12 bucks a bag.
Yeah. Everything's a pretty expensive these days and that was
true as well. In.
Okay. In 1947. Oh baby, post-war. When the kids of a small community on Vancouver Island, The island of a tree finders.
This kids were on our side of the island. We're on the western side. These kids
were on the eastern side and a small city called Lady Smith.
I know Lady Smith. Kim Katra. Is that where she's from?
Her Pam Anderson. One of them is from Lady Smith. I can't promise you which one, but if you go, you will see. To Wikipedia that shit, folks. Why don't I? We can be everybody here with them.
You have a wife I got here. Pam Anderson born in Lady Smith.
Okay, okay. Oh wow. Discovered on the Toronto to BC Lions game.
Yes, I did know that. That's a real big part of Canadian history.
That's a Canadian heritage moment. But in 1947, perhaps one of Kim Kitchhal's ancestors, who's to know?
Pam Anderson.
Maybe one of my parents' to think Kim Kitchhal's a-
I mean, look up Kim Kitchhal.
Hold on.
Is she B.C. as well?
She was born in London, but she lived here most of her youth.
London, Ontario.
London, England. London, England.
Liverpool, sorry.
Liverpool.
Courtney, Kim Kachal lived in Courtney from 3 to 11.
Oh, OK.
Good.
There you go.
OK, well.
I do, that's the problem is, is like, that's
a conversation with any Canadian, not just me.
That's the whole story.
It's like, you know what, Kim Kachal?
Courtney, 3 to 11. That's the whole story. It's like, you know what, Kim Kachow? Courtney.
8-11.
I could tell. You can tell the lush, shukka values.
I'm just looking at her eyes and you know, 3-11. There it is. Courtney.
That Courtney Public School System doesn't write it. Good lot of good.
We'll back to 1947, ladies move. When the kids arrived at the local wigwam cafe April 25th to
find that their favorite chocolate candy bars had increased in price 60%
over night without any warning the price had gone from five cents the customary
going rate for chocolate candy bars in Canada up to eight cents.
Disgusting.
It was disgusting.
I want blood.
They were enraged.
So what did they do Taylor?
Still on the train tracks.
Kind of.
They took to the streets protest.
Beauty, beauty.
They got together some picket signs.
They marched up and down Main Street.
They sang an impromptu protest song.
Which I will read the lyrics to you now.
Please.
We want a 5 cent chocolate bar.
8 cents is going to darn far.
We want a 5 cent chocolate bar.
Oh, we want a 5 cent bar.
Yeah. We'll get Mitchell to compose something for that. Please let me know.
Give us something nice schmaltz for the background.
It's nice to use that chocolate bar.
Very Canadian.
As opposed to that candy bar.
A local newspaper shot a photo of the kids and their picket signs and their protest march
and published a newspaper
and it went nationwide.
Viral baby.
Viral and pretty quick considering the speed of newspaper news.
Now all these kiddos, all these Canadian kiddos across the nation were protesting in the streets. Various protests slogans popped up. One being,
what this country needs is a good 5 cent bar. Another one, candy is dandy, but 8 cents isn't handy.
I don't know, that's a little sweaty, that's a little laborative.
Do you got a better one, Taylor? Stay sweet. Ooh!
Stay cheap.
It's stay cheap.
Stay sweet, stay cheap, stay cheap, stay cheap, stay cheap.
That's good.
Took two seconds.
I mean, you're trained professional, though.
Yeah, that's true.
This is kind of what I do for a living.
I'm not like a six-year-old child.
Without a chocolate bar.
You've had a, you haven't had one today, but you know,
happy. No, we didn't get any chocolate bars. We didn't. I knew I was gonna do this store, I don't know
why I did it. Yeah, why did it with the park? I got chocolate cookies. So tell me a chocolate cookie
story. Okay, okay, let me, like I'm back to the research. The largest chocolate bar strike protest occurred only five days later, April 30th, when 200
kids.
This is 1947, so, you know, adjust for inflation, 200 kids is like a thousand kids.
That's funny.
I like that joke.
200 kids marched on the capital building in Victoria and they shut down government business for the day.
Wow. Yeah.
These protests spread all over the province of British Columbia, but then all over this great nation of Canada in
Bernabé, which is just east of Vancouver.
Traffic was clogged on a major thorough way for two hours because kids were
protesting in the street, the the rise in chocolate bar prices, in Ottawa, on
Parliament Hill, 60 students protested by blaring bugles.
Yeah, in Toronto, 500 little kiddos, carried signs in Christie Pits Park, protest occurred in Calgary, Edmonton,
Winnipeg, Montreal, Quebec City, even the Maritimes.
Even the Maritimes.
Those marine provinces.
Exactly.
It's recorded that the 3000 kids signed Plegx cards to promise to boycott candy bar sales in Canada.
Interesting. And by some reports, the sales of candy bars dropped 80% in a
manner of days across Canada. Why were the prices inflated to begin with?
Candy bars increased in price because this was 1947
and the war had just ended.
And Canada had had a wartime price freeze
during the years of combat.
Got it.
And for us, that was 39 to 45.
We were in it a little bit longer than you all.
Yeah, exactly.
This was two years after the war.
And so the price freeze had been lifted.
So it wasn't just chocolate bars that were being affected.
Everything was going through the roof.
Right.
The inflation was pretty rampant.
Even the Raviole?
Even the Raviole.
Damn.
Even the Raviole.
Not unlike now.
There were actually quite a few adults who were also protesting their own grievances with the
hike and prices.
And a lot of adults were supportive of the kid's chocolate bar strike. They really thought that
this was important, this was a good thing to let the government know, to let the people know.
I think in particular, the strike generated from Lady Smith, and this is actually an account from one of those kid protesters, his name is Parker Williams.
He says, we were more tuned into strikes.
This being a resource extraction industry area
with the mining and the forestry.
Yeah.
So Lady Smith in particular kind of had
this rich history of labor strikes,
and the kids were watching this, seeing this,
kids always know what's going on. Yeah. Even if they don't really know what's going on. Yeah, and even if you don this, kids always know what's going on.
Yeah. Even if they don't really know what's going on. Yeah, and even if you don't want them to know what's going on.
Yeah. In response, big candy bar, which at that time, many of them in Canada were created by two
companies, one round trees and the other willards. They took out ads in major newspapers across the nation, explaining that the cost of cocoa,
the cost of butter, the cost of sugar,
all of this was super high.
The wartime taxes were also high.
They were just trying to pretty much write a defense,
included in that defense was the point
that they were just trying to follow the American market.
Yeah, that's, I guess, kind of the sad reality of Canada isn't it, is that like, we're so
militant about not wanting to be you all, but like, you heard there's more in you're better at
making money and you're everything industry is bigger than ours, and if we don't watch out,
we just won't have any part of the pie at all.
I think that kind of angered a lot of people in Canada though.
Oh, I personally like, why would we, who cares?
We want five cents.
For sure.
And I've seen a lot of like theories that a lot of the way
that Canada positions its own identities, we're not America.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. It's, it's that kind of like older brother who's popular in high school kind of thing.
We're like, no, I'm Goth.
Canada is America's Goth younger brother.
The Goth hat to America.
May 3rd, 1947, that same year, the Toronto Evening Telegram, a newspaper out of Ontario, they ran a story that said that
these kid chocolate candy bar strikes were orchestrated by the National Federation of
Labor Youth, which was not untrue. They were involved in getting things organized. But
the Toronto Evening Telegram claimed that the National Federation of Labor Youth had an affiliation with the Communist Party.
Of course.
Broom, broom, broom, broom!
So, all of a sudden...
Fucking pingo kids.
Yeah.
He's fucking bingo kid commies. Just want cheap chocolate.
These miniature Bolsheviks fuck them.
Yeah, exactly.
So, the Toronto Evening Tele telegram wrote and I quote,
the indignant students parading with their placards demanding a five-cent candy bar have become
another instrument in the communist grand strategy of the creation of chaos. Okay. Yeah.
Let's say I guess my response is that Oh, okay. Whatever you say man. I
Mean this was right before the 50s right before red scare kind of stuff
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah in
2003 there was a documentary made about the candy bar strike and they interviewed the co-founder of
this organization the
National Federation of Labor Youth the co-funders name is Bill Stewart,
and he had no uncertainty when he said this simply was not true.
Oh yeah.
They had no affiliation with the Communist Party.
All they wanted to do was to encourage kids to speak out, and all they wanted was candy.
Yeah.
And eight cents is just, that's crazy.
That's crazy, Tom. These are heretical rates. Mm-hmm. Twins dollars for a dozen eggs? No sir.
Welcome. As quickly as the protest had gotten started out of Lady Smith BC, the red
scare squashed the protests. Really? Yeah. God damn it.
People really don't like communism.
He was a big, a big no-no.
Especially then.
One of the kid protestors who we heard from earlier, his name is Parker Williams, he
was talking about the resource extraction.
He says of the whole ordeal, we did what we thought was necessary.
We didn't win.
We lost.
Still I think we were satisfied that we were able to express something that we thought wasn't right.
And I think one of the reasons that I was pulled to the story was because I
found so much information about labor movements in BC, so many unionizations,
so many, I mean, even the militant mothers of a framework kind of has this vibe, but in particular when it comes to
labor, there seem to be a ton of activism and a ton of
activism and spaces that are rural. It was really exciting to
see like what a hotbed BC is for all of this like activity and
all of this like working left coast baby.
Left coast yeah it's deep in there. It's been there for a long time and it's really
rad to see.
Cool.
Interesting.
And one of its striking moments was the chocolate candy bar strike of 1947.
There is a striking strike in our history.
Uh-huh, uh-huh.
All led by kids.
Cool, love it. Love to see young people get involved in important things like the price of chocolate is too god damn fine.
Yeah, I'm writing bad little jingles to support their cause.
You want a chocolate bar?
Yeah, I could do like a cookies and cream.
Did you have it?
No.
God damn, I thought you were gonna do another surprise.
So as Josie can attest to you, I've been reading today. And yesterday, I decided that that I was gonna read a whole book for this, so it's my only source.
Oh!
Because...
Okay, I didn't put that together.
Isn't that enough?
Yes.
Yeah.
And because I was so busy reading today,
like reading up until very recently.
Pullin' a Josie.
Pullin' a Josie, and I'm also pulling...
I described this to her as I'm doing my episode
today, Josie's style, which is a lot like
ordering your fries animal style.
And I am doing this with a script.
Secret menu.
Yeah, secret menu, shit.
I'm doing it without a script,
so if it's not my usual, usually,
Josie, I think, does bullet points typically
and just kind of elaborates.
I do a mix.
A little bit of this,
script the important stuff.
Script, don't script the...
Yeah.
There's some stuff that I leave unscripted to you on purpose.
Yeah.
But by far the majority of everything I've ever done in the podcast
has been pretty tightly scripted, just because it's how I like to write.
And today I'm kind of a fly-in, like a boyd.
So...
Free ball in it, baby.
Free just shit my shit's flopping around. So please forgive me for any disorganized moments or if it's not what you wanted from me.
Watch, this is gonna end up being your favorite episode.
Probably, that's how that goes, right?
Yeah.
That's what happens to me.
Everyone, then I'm like, wow, really shot the battle and I go back and listen to it.
And I'm like, it was actually pretty good.
I was on, and I was, the adrenaline was pumping.
This was, that works. I was, I was all, I know it was, the adrenaline was pumped and this was, that worked.
I just blacked it out, yeah.
And so, you know, typically I have these like kind of big ass intros.
These very like kind of scripty intros, not today.
But I will tell you that today's story has everything but a script.
It has evil spirits.
Okay. A house of mystery.
Love houses of mystery.
Love houses and mystery.
The living reincarnations of several major Egyptian gods.
Ooh!
Buried gold.
Okay.
Uh-huh.
And all of it happens right here on Vancouver Island and the surrounding Gulf Islands.
Today, I'm going to be telling you all about Brother 12,
Madame Z, the Aquarian Foundation Foundation and the Ark of Refuge. What does that mean? A homegrown Doomsday called baby?
Yeah
I did see your book. That's okay
So I knew a little bit of this. I also was kind of researching a few things and you had given your ideas to
Mitchell. Mitchell was our intermediary. He was our human interstitial music.
Yes, to make sure that we didn't do the same exact story and there's a few
cults in BC turns out. I was looking at a few of those stories and Mitchell
gently guided me away from those. And right at least and that's what we pay him the big bucks.
That's what he reaches nothing.
Yeah, the big bucks.
It's on his ear.
The chocolate causes a sense.
We can't.
No.
It's like shit is crazy.
It's crazy.
Can't pay the man.
This book is called Brother 12, the strange Odyssey of a 20th century profit and his quest
for a new world by John Alphan. And this is a, this is old B12. The other 12, the strange Odyssey of a 20th century profit and his quest for New World.
By John Alphan and this is a, this is old B12.
Woo!
A little pointy face, pointy beard guy.
A lot of points on that face.
Very angular.
Yeah.
The story, such as I'm going to be telling it today, largely focuses on the man himself,
Brother 12.
That's stylized as XII,
so it's 12 in Roman numerals, just to get the full picture.
Okay, yeah.
Get that in your head.
Yes, support information.
And much to my shagran, I'm kind of trimming out a lot of
like kind of the fun little wacky members of the cult.
Well, I imagine that this story is just extremely large.
It's a verbose story.
There's a lot underneath even the first few layers of it.
And how? And let me tell you all about it. Okay, let's go. So Brother 12 has not this man's
Christian name, believe it or not, his real name, what real name? Listen, we are what we call
ourselves, but the name on his papers is Edward Arthur Wilson. He is born July 25th, 1875, in Birmingham, England, then called
Edgebaston. So he's like Kim Katral, he's a transplant. He was born to religious parents
who were Irvingites, and that is basically a kind of secty rapture deems day called
the kind of thing.
Okay, Irvingites is probably under the guidance of a man named Irvin. In fact, it's under a
guidance of a man named Edward Irving after whom Edward Arthur Wilson was named. So that's how deep it
went. Oh, damn, namesakes, yeah. Mm-hmm. Rough. He apprenticed on a royal Navy ship when he was
young and he earned his money primarily through nautical activities for most of his life, although he
will also have been like, I think he worked in mining, he worked in the trains,
you know, he'd heard it everywhere.
Yeah, BC baby, resource extraction in real ways.
But not BC yet.
In 1902, he goes to New Zealand.
Mm.
He needs a woman, they have a son and a daughter,
but by 1907, he gets antsy and restless moves away.
Does her, it's family, I don't think we see them again.
Oh, bye.
So, I'll fly.
It's a lot of take a drink at home.
Yeah.
And he moves to BC.
Okay, from New Zealand.
Yeah, and I think he's living on the island.
I think he's living in and around a NIMO at that point.
And we'll circle back in a NIMO if you don't know much about it.
At the time in 1907 he leaves BC2 and he goes to California
and that is where he joins the philosophical society.
Okay.
Does that, do you know that word, theosophy?
What does it suggest here?
God and philosophy.
There you go.
It's kind of spiritual mysticism,
a little bit of metaphysics in there.
Okay. Just, how can we, we gooey explanations for the world and humanity.
He then kind of tours the world and he studies here, he stays there, he goes,
he stays in Italian monastery and kind of learns from the monks.
He goes to France, becomes very this sort of like very worldly,
very charismatic in his way,
knowledgeable,
occultist kind of person.
I'll call it.
Yeah.
And I'm not just the occult,
but like spiritual things.
Okay, okay.
Said Victoria Businessman Walter Miles,
he was one of the most fascinating
businessmen and conversationists I ever met.
His knowledge of world religions was stupendous.
He corresponded with political and spiritual leaders all over the world.
He knew all kinds of prominent people.
Big man on campus.
Big man on campus and the campus is the world, but not just the physical world, the spiritual
world as well.
And it's sort of at the age of 46 is when we pick back up with him.
Okay.
It's 1925.
It's never too late to start a new life.
No, no, no, this kind of story doesn't really start until Edward Wilson hits Middle-Age.
Okay.
He's 46.
He's traveling, continuing to travel the world seeking spiritual solace.
He started to see like apparitions. He has these like
spectral figures in the candlelight kind of things
So he's like feels like he's a I guess like a very spiritually susceptible person and like yeah
Possibly someone who can communicate with both sides as it were
He's in Genoa, Italy in
1925 when he starts his practice of automatic writing, which if you've
ever seen a psychic do automatic writing, they kind of close your eyes and just write down,
I guess whatever is being imparted upon them by somebody on the other side.
Oh, I've never seen that.
Yeah, it's like a decently common way that psychics kind of communicate information.
Yeah, okay.
And he has been in contact with a spiritual master from the great white lodge.
And the great white lodge is sort of if you've ever seen Twin Peaks and you know of like
the black lodge, the same basic concept.
Like, it's like a spiritual other place that kind of only exists in the spirit realm.
It doesn't exist in our physical realm.
Okay.
And these teachings are the three truths, which are the unity of all life, mortality, karma, gist of it.
Yeah.
Maybe more importantly, this master has told Wilson
that he has been chosen to carry on the work
of acclaimed Russian spiritualist Helena Petrovna Blavatsky,
who founded the Theosophical Society in 1875.
So he's here like spiritual heir.
Oh, and seedling.
Yes, he's twirled off the little maple tree. And spirit names Edward Arthur Wilson as brother
12 of the Great White Lodge.
Okay.
And so what that means?
You're the first 11 brothers.
That's the thing. There's...
There's supposedly 12 brothers, total I think.
And I guess you'd call them like prophets or like they're the people who've been chosen
to usher in this new era. We're starting a new age.
Okay.
We're starting that new age in 1975. It's gonna be a good new age,
but before we get to that new age, the world is going to end in 1928. And that will be
preceded by Anarchy, Bloodshed, War, and Bolshevism. Well, yeah. There's goddamn pinko candy
bar case. They were right along that there was fucking commies. Yeah. So he needs to
basically start a group of like-minded brothers to serve as a chalice for this new age.
And so because they're going to be a chalice for this new age, they need to be pure people,
like pure of spirit, pure of intention, etc. Uh-oh. Don't, don't enjoy pure. Well, the master
might have scrubbed up himself, but we'll gather. So this kind of spirit that Brother 12 is hearing tells him next to go to England.
So in May 1926, he goes to England and he goes to the offices of the Occult Review,
which is like what it sounds like. It's kind of a spiritualist magazine.
Okay. Yeah.
And he goes to editor-in-chief Henry Dre Stritten tells him his story and Henry is
convinced to publish the message that this spiritual master through Brother 12 has auto-written. Right. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. And the gist of this message, and by the way, it is embedded in this message. You must accept
or reject this message. This is its purpose.
There's no middle ground here.
You're either in or you're out.
Whoa.
We need to build an arc of refuge.
It will serve as the crucible, like I said,
for this new, more evolved form of humanity
called the sixth subrace.
Right now it's the fifth subrace.
No good, dying out.
Oh, okay.
Badly motivated, we need the sixth step right?
Five bad six great. Right get him out of here. Okay under this name E.A. Chaler is his
student name is sort of non-deplume. He's publishing
repeatedly in the occult review and they're these very dramatic like I say it's a doomsday
prophecy, right? Yeah. Yeah. Go bigger go home
Exactly. Go bigger go go home. Exactly.
Go bigger, go to heaven or don't.
Yeah, go bigger, go to hell, I guess.
And of course, this engenders like support,
controversy, disagreement, people writing in,
what tell me more about this brother 12?
Yeah.
Yeah, content.
I think that's what's happening.
It is truly content of the high-student.
Yeah.
And one of the, who do you think might have been one
of the biggest names to comment on the matter?
The Queen.
No, think about the subject matter that we're dealing with.
We call it reveal.
Oh, sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Boom, show us, dad.
Oh my gosh, Sherlock's dad is here.
That was one of the people where I was like,
what are you doing here? Sherlock's dad is in. That was one of the people where I was like, what are you doing here?
Sherlock's dad is in the VW bus, ya'll.
Sherlock's dad is here, he's smoking a pipe and he said,
you can't smoke the VW bus.
You're not allowed to smoke in the VW bus.
It's a bus, not a bug.
Bug bus.
Do I smoke in the VW?
That's all.
Busg.
So Arthur Conan Doyle says that this whole, sordid thing is an attack on spiritualism.
He said, quote, your contributor speaks as if spiritualism itself, by thinning the walls,
which divide us from the unseen, may admit a flood of evil, such a supposition would
presuppose that there is more evil than good, which cannot be said of God's realm.
On the contrary, such a thinning of the barrier would give wider entrance to all of the
angelic forces which may save and redeem the world.
I don't trust him.
He's just talking smack.
He's making content.
It's all a big content farm.
Yeah.
And in the cult review, Brother 12, starts this talk of building a better race called the
Aquarian Race.
This is the fifth sub-race as a Piscyn race.
Bad. No good. Don't want it.
Mitchell is a Aquarian, and so is my mom.
There you go. Well, they are going to be very good for the Aquarian Race, and this proposed
group which becomes known as the Aquarian Foundation.
Ooh.
Pretty much everyone in this story is big into astrology like he really made astrology in birth charts
Like an animating force of like who you were allowed to
Get married to in the call. Oh
Also foundation very interesting kind of a 501c vibe there. It is it has a board
So basically like long story short
That's that's what I've been doing all day is long story short. A bunch of interesting people interested and interesting people start writing letters to
Brother Tov and the ones who are local, the ones who are in England, he's able to meet
up with and a astrologer named Henry Alfred Barley and his wife Annie.
They come up from Hurtford.
They meet him and his companion, Elma,
who's a Scottish woman who he met during his travels
of the world.
He fell ill, she nursed him back to health
and stayed alongside him.
And they're effectively met in life.
Okay, partnered up.
A common law.
Yeah, brother 12 meets them and is very able to like,
just kind of like talk to them as though they've already
Decided that they're gonna do whatever he says and it kind of works and what he says is you
Need to liquidate all of your securities and invest in BC securities
Okay, because that's where I'm building this new community and at first he thinks he's gonna do it in hope
But he never it doesn't end and which is a
this new community and at first he thinks he's gonna do it in hope but he never it doesn't end and which is a city in BC that's not important to the story because he doesn't.
But it's a good name to build a car.
Yeah that's true that's maybe if he'd be able to build in hope it would have gone a bit better.
Yeah.
And so being a bit hopeless.
Spoiler.
And specifically the doomsday cult tends to be.
Oh specifically he doesn't tell them I don't think that he's been to BC before.
For whatever reason he has chosen to keep this a secret and this will kind of later on down the
line when people are trying to bring him down. They try to pin to him like why did you lie about
that you've never been to BC before. There's people in the street who recognize you from when
you were working here in you know, 19 or 19 or whatever. But he wanted he wanted to pass it off as
like the spirit came onto me and told me to go to British Columbia.
Exactly that.
I've never been there, but I trusted the spirit
and I shall go.
Yes, exactly that.
Yeah, a lot of shouts.
So they move out ahead, the Barley's, Henry and Annie.
They move out ahead of him with Elma and a couple of other
kind of eccentric that I would love to talk to you more about, but there simply isn't the time.
A cookie-castic character.
A cookie-castic character is a group of cranks, really.
Parker Posey plays the mall.
Exactly that.
She loves Suk.
She loves Suk.
And on parting he says to them,
goodbye, forget everything but the work.
Ooh.
Meanwhile...
That's why I can't say to you, but I say goodbye to you. Just focus on the work. Ooh. Meanwhile. That's why I can't say to you, but I should goodbye to you.
Just focus on the work.
If everything else is earthly shit, it'll go away.
The work is what's important.
Take your face in my hands.
Yeah.
Just focus on work.
And so the reason that Brother 12 doesn't immediately
join them is because he's doing the circuit
to kind of germ up knee recruits. And goes to like theosophical societies in in Ottawa and Toronto and he gives
these kind of big presentations about the arc of refuge under these like kind of photographs
of Medanple of Attski. He's doing the Ted Talk circuit. He's doing the Ted Talk circuit
and he also does like a whistle stop train tour across Canada to anybody who's written
in the letter
So this is this cult has great service. Wow
He's like coming to like random fucking farmers and Saskatchewan and random this this fucking person in Manitoba and this person in Alberta and whatever and just like
Take me to your house. Let me like let me give you my elevator pitch
Wow
Okay, cool and he starts to go also not just across the country
But he goes takes a little tour of the West Coast of the US.
He goes like San Francisco, Santa Cruz,
and Luis Obispo, like just does the circuit, right?
Yeah, California, another cold hot spot.
Oh, babies, fertile grounds, and it's a very successful
operation.
Yeah.
His California trip.
Shaken babies, kiss and hands.
Exactly.
All kinds of interesting people join.
Again, I won't go that much into them, but like a Chicago policeman turned a astrologer,
a German-American baron who retired to Pasadena with a big fortune.
You know, that sort of thing.
Yeah, yeah.
I'll play it by Parker Posy.
There's like a young boho.
Speaking of people played by Parker Posy.
There's a young boho couple who drives Brother 12 back to B.C. from San Francisco
and he and the girl hit it off and he's like,
why don't you carry my child?
Ooh.
She demurs and she writes back to the comforts.
Oh, sorry, I should explain.
The comforts are like some new recruits.
They got a letter being like,
he tried to come on to me but they're unmoved.
The patriarch says that Brother 12 is a man beyond tampering.
And the daughter, Jane Comfort, also had an interaction with him.
I bet she did.
Quote, when I went in to see him, Jane Comfort remembers, he asked me, do you have any questions?
I said no, I have no doubts.
He talked on for a while and then he leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek.
The kiss was lovely, it was very pure. It was a tribute really Steve will not mind that he said referring to my husband
Then he took me by the shoulders and looks straight into my eyes. You are a living flame of truth
He said practically shaking with the intensity of his emotion. Then he let me go now go. He said go
And he practically shoved me out the door
So that's his sort of mixed Then he let me go. Now go, he said, go! And he practically shoved me out the door.
So that's his sort of- Mixed messages.
That's his interpersonal demeanor.
God, just 60 miles per hour all the time. 90 kilometers per hour all the time.
So okay, so he goes back to Vancouver Island, decides to settle in a NIMO,
which is another, like, lady Smith, it's in a NIMO, which is another like lady Smith
It's like a you know like a coal mining resource extraction forestry kind of town. Mm-hmm pretty big
And he's he's got support
There's a lawyer there named Edward Lucas who let him stay with the family for a while and Edward Lucas and we'll kind of come back and
Robert England is a name of another kind of big name supporter of it. So those two names kind of remember those.
Alright, bookmarked.
And they end up in an area near Nainimo called Cedar by the sea or cedar.
So if I ever talk about like the cedar encampment, that's what I'm talking about.
And they buy 126 acres there at 20 bucks an acre. It's a lot of chocolate bars.
Whoa.
So he gets a lot of money from the membership to kind of build this place up and he builds the house of mystery.
And the house of mystery is like a little cabin in the woods
where he goes alone to do his like weird,
scrying shit and get messages from the other side.
You mean just masturbate?
Yes.
Because like there's like mention that various disciples.
No mystery there.
I just need to fucking bang one out before I go to bed, but I'm supposed to be above that sort of thing.
It's hard out there for the 12th brother.
No, so he would kind of go there and he'd be like, yeah, I'm just like in a trance, the whole door.
I'm like spiritually, you know, but like they would see him.
Like the disciples saw him once and he was not transdowed at all
He was just kind of walking. He was just like, duh duh duh duh duh duh bustling around and they're like we weren't supposed to see that
Yeah
May 16th 1927 the Aquarium Foundation is
Legally incorporated as a society in VC. Oh
Basically the way that it works is there's a board of directors that brother 12 has the
final say.
So basically it's like a ceremonial board basically, but he gets like a bunch of like
interested parties in and he's able to like convince them like guys when I was in the
house of mystery.
I got a message, you're the other brothers, get out.
Oh, that's why we're all, get out, I know, brother too.
So they all get together, take a big picture, and everyone is very now devoted to the cause,
because when she like to be told you to figure into the mythology,
Yeah, yeah, they're called in, and they're told they're very important, yeah.
With this kind of additional manpower, they're able to release more literature,
they get 125 groups of 10 members or so each scattered around Canada and the US. So if you're not
like actually they're building the arc of refuge in Cedar with these guys, you could be part of like
your local chapter of the Aquarium Foundation in Tulsa. Right, right, right, right, okay, yes,
still a very important member of the organization. In that you have money that we could potentially get one day.
Yeah, exactly.
The Aquarium Foundation starts publishing
a monthly magazine called The Chalice.
And basically what The Chalice is,
is like any time Brother 12 gets pissed off at somebody,
you'll just write this fucking verbose,
exhausting die a tribe about them in The Chalice,
and release it to all the members
so everyone can read about who we hate now.
So like for example, around the time that guy comfort that I told you about,
he leaves and Wilson shat all over him in the chalice. Big, long fuck this guy.
The precursor to Twitter.
If only it had a character limit, yes.
That was a lot of the skimming.
And in the first issue of the chalice, he goes off on an unseen empire of evil
that rules the world, controls all the kings, all the presidents, puppet masters, everything.
The first group of people he starts to pin it on is the Jewish people. In 1896, there was a
conspiracy rag that got published protocols of the elders of Zion that alleged to be the meeting of
The shadowy cabal of Jewish figures that controls the world their meeting minutes basically
But it's not just the Jews. It's the Roman Catholic Church as well. They're in collusion. Oh
You know different people but the same interest. What do we need to do to bring down the Catholics and the Jews?
We need to form a third party and down the Catholics in the Jews? We need
to form a third party and run a slate in the United States elections. So basically what
happened? Well, let's try to take twist and turns at dovetails all over the place. So basically
there was a candidate named Alfredi Smith. He was pictured kissing the Pope's ring, which
really pissed off the prods. Oh, yeah. And so it turns into a big, like, a lot of, I guess,
US politics around the time of Hoover is characterized by this kind of big falling out
between the Catholics and the Protestants.
Oh, okay.
This is the big fight of the moment.
Well, because JFK was the first Catholic president in New York.
Biden's the second.
That is fucking wild.
Because there was a lot of like a Catholic fucking president.
Yeah, yeah. Because there was this like anti-Catholic sentiment, brother 12 who also hated the Catholics,
was convinced that he could use the discord that would so by basically planting a candidate.
And the candidate, he becomes allies with this guy,
James Thomas Hefflin, who's the clans best ally in Congress.
The clux.
The clux.
The clux.
Okay.
Brother 12 in the Aquarian Foundation,
we're 100% in bed with the clans.
And he's basically able to use this specter
of a potential Catholic president to kind of be,
to sow these like prophecies,
where he's like if a Catholic selected, there's going to be another civil war.
The blacks will rise up in the South, led by the communists and supported by the Jews,
just like this kind of gibberish, right?
This mean, navel gibberish.
The 1928 election approaches, Alfredi Smith gets the Democratic nomination, which leads to
a redoubling of efforts.
He sends out a letter to all the senators
being like, we need to stop this.
Oh, he forms the, what's called the Protestant protective league,
the PPL to unify the work of Protestant groups
in the US and advance this third party.
Okay.
Meanwhile, back home, he's stockpiling for Armageddon.
He's teaching his disciples how to like spiritually kill the various entities
that might breach the veil.
Here's how you do that by the way.
Okay, yeah, I want the full rundown, just in case.
If you see a figure that has an impressive helmet and robes and a purplish, yellowish light
exuding from them, that is an evil doer, that is an adept. They're called the black adepts.
And what you need to do is disintegrate it and the way that you can tell, you challenge it.
And you say you have to make the sign of the cross and declare your allegiance to the white
brotherhood. And if they won't do it, because they're black adepts, quote, inhale a deep breath
at the same time, mentally asking for and drawing down the force of the white lodge into yourself.
Then extend the right arm and point the finger at the same time mentally asking for and drawing down the force of the white lodge into yourself. Then extend the right arm and point the finger at the suspected
figure. Don't point at me. You're dead, baby. You're
destiny. Now exhale and with all the mental concentration
possible say, I repel you, I resist you by the power of the white brotherhood,
I disintegrate and drive a center your body of evil. Go. Make the sign of the
cross. When sending out the disintegrating power,
visualize it as issuing from the center
between your eyebrows.
And following the course of the extended armen figure,
and then this is an alcaps,
shoot it into the suspected figure
with all the force you can muster.
I'm getting a lot of like Harry Potter
but also ghost busters.
So the next thing that happens is,
I think because of these kind of like political ambitions
of making a difference in America,
Brother 12 finds himself on a train from Seattle to Chicago,
and not since Agatha Christie has such an eventful
train ride occurred.
Like, truly.
Brother 12 meets a woman named Mertlebaum Gardner.
Go right name.
She's married to a guy who used to be quite athletic, but he's fallen ill.
He's become really like kind of embittered that he can't be as active as he used to be.
And it's kind of ruining the marriage. And a lot of the people that Brother 12 picks up are like
in bad marriages or in, you know, vulnerable life spots.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It can be infiltrated spiritually. marriages or in, you know, vulnerable life spots. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It can be infiltrated spiritually.
And speaking of infiltrating each other,
Brother 12 says to her, like, well, that's an interesting story.
I am Brother 12 of the Great White Lodge.
I have an arc of refuge and seated by the sea.
And like, didn't, you know, tell you the whole thing
and she's into it.
Like, she's very into it.
And very into him. Okay, and very into him.
Okay, like she's not listening to anything he says, she's,
she's just like staring at his mouth.
Little pointy beard.
Yeah.
And their seduction rekindles a thousand year old bond to
your John O'all if you tell it gross.
They do an occult ritual on the train called the sixth initiation
S.I.X.T.H sixth initiation
Okay, and in so doing
they
Realized that he was Osiris
Oh, and she was Isis and together they would have a son who would be the rebirth of Horus
So they bombed on a train and then they're like,
alright, we're gods, ancient Egyptian gods.
They bombed on a train and she conceived.
Oh, okay.
So the proof is in the pudding.
Yeah.
Oh!
Oh no, I remember why he was going to shut Chicago.
The reason he was going to Chicago is because
all of the, I think all the third parties were having their presidential nominee meetings there that year.
And he wanted to unify them together.
He created an organization called the Jefferson Lincoln League and he specifically wanted
to get the farmer labor party and the prohibition party together in a room to unify them as
this third party under James Thomas Hafflin, this racist congressman.
Right, right, right, the seed of the plant.
Right. The problem is that at this meeting between the prohibition party and the
former labor party, someone stands up and shares exactly what they think of the
Catholics and it turns into bedlam. The whole thing, I don't even think that
Brother 12 ends up speaking at it because it just kind of deteriorates so quickly.
Isn't he anti-catholic? Isn't he stoked about this?
He's anti-catholic, but not everybody in the room is.
This is the prohibition party and the farmer's labor party.
So when one of them gets up and says, fuck the Catholics, the next thing that happens, obviously,
is a Catholic sends up and says, no fuck you buddy. Okay, okay. And Bedlam. And of course everyone has their
own positions on these things especially because they're from different
social parties that have nothing to do with Catholicism. Yeah. Time magazine
observed that the delegates had accomplished quote, just about as little as
several hundred adult citizens could possibly have accomplished had they set
out purposefully to be futile for several days.
So not a good meeting in the end. And it's also around this time that Wilson, brother 12, makes the acquaintance ship of a socialite named Mary Weretham Thomas Connolly, Lady Mary from
Asheville, North Carolina. She is so white that her ancestors arrived there before the Mayflower.
They beat the Mayflower there.
They were in the little robot office.
They were, they were in the scouting party apparently.
Wow.
And so she's really fancy, really rich.
She gives like 25k to the Aquarian Foundation.
Ooh.
Quite a bit of money at that time.
And now, and she joins the society at the age of 60s, she's an older chick.
Okay.
Back in Cedar Bay of the Sea, brother 12 decides,
okay, we need to kind of expand the operation.
A buddy buys 400 acres on Valdez Island
as an osherum for specially selected disciples,
and you had to take an oath to go there
called the obligation, which was basically
no bad vibes that we kick you out of the cult. Like, don't complain.
You're the prettier one you smile.
Yeah.
That kind of thing.
Yeah, yeah.
No bad vibes sounds maybe a little more chill.
Yeah, I don't know.
No, it's like you will be severely punished for bad vibes.
Okay.
You'll see how bad the vibes can get if you vibe bad.
Okay.
On these 400 acres in Valdez Island,
he settles Myrtle Bond Gartner there,
the incubator for Horus, right?
Oh, right, right, yeah.
Mind you, he is still with Alma, the Scottish woman.
Okay.
She's still his wife through all of this.
I don't think very pleased about any of it,
as you may imagine.
Yeah, no.
And so he settles Myrtle on Valdez Island,
and he would occasionally back
in Cedar. He'd take her to the the cabin of mystery for spiritual work. A.K.A. fucking. Yeah.
The whole cult obviously really scandalized and upset. So Brother 12 writes an article in the
chalice denouncing the union of marriage. He's like, Merit. Oh yeah, never mind. Sorry. Merit is
fake. Fuck it. Make it back. Yeah. Makes things worse. He'd also built the Valdez settlement without consulting anybody.
So, lots of money in there. Oh, yeah. At least plant a seed in the board and have it grow naturally.
Yeah. Yeah. He's getting lazy.
He is getting lazy and maybe a bit arrogant too.
He calls it the Manliet settlement after the birthplace of Osiris on the Nile.
So, a very fancy name.
Yeah.
I'll just be calling it Valdas Island.
Yes.
And the first rule of Valdas Island is in all caps, mind your own business.
I just imagine it like you hit the dock and there's a sign.
Just like rule number one.
Mind your own business.
Rule number two, mind your own God damn business.
Rule number three, shitty vibes will be processed
to the fullest extent.
When I say that the whole cult is being scandalized,
I especially mean the board of directors.
And you might remember that guy Edward Lucas,
he was a lawyer.
Right, you told me that I remember that name.
I told you remember that name.
He was one of the first,
brother 12 kind of stayed with his family
when he first arrived in in Animo. And then before he set up the cedar by the C place. Okay
He's one of the board of directors
He's still at this point a bit more neutral because he's really been brother 12's right-hand guy
But in the end the business that I'm about to describe will lead to the falling up between them
The board thinks that brother 12 is going crazy his temper has been a lot worse
His orders have become a lot worse.
His orders have become a lot more capricious
and contradictory.
Mind your own business.
Mind your own business.
I heard from the other side and they said,
shut the fuck up.
For the 12, here's out the governor's
at a meeting and he says that he's like willing
to dissolve the foundation,
but he kind of, no, actually I thought about it, and no, I am not. And this is a heist because when the foundation, but he kind of, no, actually I thought about it and no I am not.
And this is a heist because when the foundation dissolves, the assets get split amongst the
board.
So he thinks this is a stick up.
Yeah.
And not like this is getting really weird, really fast.
Right.
Yeah.
No, that makes sense.
He thinks there would be alternative motives there because their mind had been in addition.
Robert England, the other name that I told you to remember, this is kind of where he comes
back in because he's another one who is like real, real tight with Brother 12.
Like, 12 didn't expect a knife in his back from this guy at all and one day England goes
to the bank that the Quarantine Foundation used.
Takes out 2,800 bucks that he says he's owed.
He hasn't been paid.
Okay.
And decides to leave. And Brother 12 freaks out, charges him with theft at the NIMO Police Department.
He decides he's gonna pack the board with the Barlies and another couple of the Hobarts.
Not to solve the foundation. I'm just gonna I'm just gonna change the number of people in the board.
And that way I have power. Oh pack the courts baby pack the courts
So the outgoing board of directors responds by bailing out Robert England
They bail him out and they set a warrant for brother 12's arrest for stealing 13k from the foundation
Brother 12 gets very
embarrassingly arrested on the ferry
Brother 12 gets very embarrassingly arrested on the ferry. He...he...
On the ferry.
You hate to see it.
Yeah.
He spends a bunch of the big ticket donations on his own bail.
He was just sitting down with his white spot, when they...
Oh, my God.
They came in and the announcement came on.
Yeah.
It was the announcement.
Brother 12, please put away your white spot.
And then go to the Pokey.
Yeah.
And they also get, the board of directors
gets an injunction preventing him from touching
the funds of the foundation.
So the bank accounts are frozen now.
Right, yeah.
The work of the Valdes, the island settlement stops.
Mertle, who is living there, has a miscarriage,
and then a second miscarriage, and then a mental breakdown,
and then a second mental breakdown. Her relationship with Brother 12 obviously falls apart
because now she's too much work.
Oh, for a woman.
The whole thing goes to court.
There are many court, I've trimmed out a lot of court cases,
but just to assume that Brother 12 is always going in and out of court.
Yeah.
Who knows why?
Yeah, well I'm sure he would justify it in some way.
Like this is the...
The Catholics and the Jews collaborating?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, for sure.
It adds to his like rhetoric of persecution.
That's, yeah, that's right.
So the whole thing is very, very acrimonious
and the stress of it gives brother 12
of a minor heart attack.
So he's laid up in bed for a while.
Oh, shit.
1928 comes and goes.
No more am I getting?
So it goes.
Oh, right.
That was a big deal.
We are still here. Yeah, Yeah. Same year Herbert Hoover gets elected
over Alfred Smith. So although the third party stuff didn't
really work out, he ended up getting, you know, a president
that he wanted. And that's kind of the end of the politics
stuff for him. He takes this as a moment of like, well,
yeah, let's call this a victory and go back to. Yeah. I'm
going to end on the dubbing here. Okay. And so around this time a moment of like, well, let's call this a victory and go back to a really year for.
I'm going to end on the dubbing here.
And so around this time in 1928, a Nanaimo lawyer named Victor B. Harrison, who is one,
also the former mayor of Nanaimo and two, related to William Henry Harrison, the shortest
lived US president.
Oh my god.
We're not sure to slip, but like shortest rate running.
It's some diet a month after we got in.
Yeah, you got where?
Warm coat.
Yeah, those rainy speeches.
I wonder if that's actually true or if that's just a...
I don't why I tell that mom's tell.
That's what they put on their coat.
Mr. Harrison died.
Because you have too long a speed.
You gotta keep it short, keep it cute and keep it warm.
As well as a reporter from Vancouver named Bruce McHelvey.
I think they go to Cedar by the sea to pay them a visit.
It might be Valdez, but I think it's Cedar.
Okay.
And Brother 12 typically wouldn't let them in because he hates the media.
It's all everybody's conspiring against me blah, blah, blah.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
But because he's laid up in bad recovering from his heart attack,
the lawyer and the reporter get greeted by the eager aquariums who give them
the full tour of the place and every piece of sensitive info about the bad blood with Brother 12 of the governors,
Marl from Chicago, the house of mystery, all of it. Do you think they just kind of naively
give all that information or was there kind of some ulterior motive there to undermine some things?
I don't think that there was an ulterior motive. I think that they were quite proud to give away
the information because they believed it so wholeheartedly. And because at this point, I don't think any
of them have a question that brother 12 is like a good man. So they don't think that they have
anything to hide. Maybe. Oh, right. Oh, see, too good of a cult. The cult got too good. You need to
have some, you need to. Some more cynicism built in.
And some more discretion.
Yeah, yeah.
Bruce McElvy, types up his article for the province,
the Sunday edition.
And he writes a private letter to his friend Harry Pooley
who's the attorney general of BC.
Okay.
And he gives his opinion, Leslie.
It is nothing more or less than a free love colony
and the resort of weak-minded money-mad Americans who have been restoring there by the hundreds. If not checked, I am sure
that British Columbia is going to be put to the expensive maintaining a number of them
at SN Dale, which is the provincial mental hospital.
This article in the province is called Weird Occultism Exemplified, an amazing colony
at Cedar by the Sea. And the headlines kind of follow this logic of like Carthage Missouri man helps BC man
Reborn Egyptian God
They're very like kind of sensationalists. They really trade on like how how weird the whole thing is
Yeah, there's a lot to kind of sink your teeth into in this story if you're like a reader of the error, right?
Right, okay, and of course this is a, this article's a hatchet job,
it includes quotes from his article from the chalice about marriage,
so all the controversial stuff.
Ooh.
It makes it all the way to California, the story,
because there's relevant people, right?
Yeah, yeah.
And it also serves to kind of, I guess, make Nanaimo.
The city of Nanaimo, it starts to make them like look over their shoulder
in a way they weren't.
One guy said, I thought it was an aquarium.
I thought it was the aquarium foundation
I thought that it was rich people here interested in studying
It's so dumb it's smart and the court cases still going on about dissolve in the foundation who gets why that's still very much happening.
Yeah, the the financial dispute. Yeah, and in this court case the
Prosecutor despite many times of the judge and the defense trying to put a stop to it the prosecutors able to make it so that the story of
That midnight train from fucking Seattle, Dishikago with the sixth initiation initiation. Right, yeah. A real, probably a hot train ride.
Mm-hmm, steamy.
Hot and long.
They had, they got some shit in.
They did, they were productive.
That comes out, and of course, McElvy covers it,
and it's a big, uh, it's a big to do.
And it also comes out that, what's his name?
Brother 12, you still live in BC, right?
Oh yeah, oh, right, yeah, the secret truth.
The secret truth.
Like all these stories come out of like,
he was a stage hypnotist, he preached at the church
better than any pre-trive ever seen,
he was able to persuade alcoholics to stop drinking, cold.
Woo!
And the big hit, his big star witness,
because it's kind of looking a little wavy
for Brother 12, but he's able to convince Mary Connolly,
Lady Mary to come up from Asheville, North Carolina.
Oh.
And one of his tactics that he'd done in order
to have some money liquid, because everything was frozen
with the injunction.
Right.
He was able to convince Lady Mary to write a letter
saying that she had intended it for his sole use.
And so in so doing, he was able to get access to that money
and she comes up and she's basically like, I wish I donated more money. I believe that much in him
Wow the end result is that the case gets postponed to a sizes
Which basically means it gets redirected to the provincial Supreme Court
So now because of this the provincial government will properly investigate brother 12 in the aquarium foundation
Okay, but you know
Well brother 12 he's able to rally,
he gets more funds from the American members,
he's able to get the injunction dissolved,
so he gets access to the Aquarium Foundation finances again.
The other thing that happens that's kind of interesting here
is that,
follow sizes, this continuation of this case
at kind of a provincial Supreme Court level,
comes and Robert England,
who is one of the central figures
in this, because he took out that $2,800 that set off this flurry of litigation right
around that time.
Right, yeah.
They were supposed to be tried separately, but I think that it was the prosecutor.
One of the lawyers argued that they should be tried together, and so they are.
Okay.
Because they're intertwined.
He's disappeared.
Robert England has completely disappeared.
No one knows where he is.
No one knows how to find him.
Oh.
And partially because of that, the result of this is no bill. The result of the court case is no bill,
which is basically it's good for brother 12.
Oh.
So he kind of, he doesn't have to kind of lose it much at all.
I don't know. That sounds like brother 12 may have been involved with Robert England's
disappearance per chance.
Well, it's funny, you should say that.
The big story, coming out of the case,
isn't really that Brother 12 got this no-bill verdict.
It's that Robert England has disappeared.
Yeah, a pivotal figure.
Yeah.
The last time he was seen was by a woman named Nelly Little,
who was working at the general store.
Flashtra, a shit ton of cash, he may have just showed her all the money he had, which is not a good thing. The scene was by a woman named Nelly Little, who was working at the general store.
Flashed her a shit ton of cash,
he may have just showed her all the money he had,
which is not a good thing.
I mean, I see how you got disappeared
if that's what you're going around you,
and not to victim blame.
And he tells her that he thinks he's being followed.
Oh.
There are rumors that he disappeared
on the ferry from the Nymo to Victoria,
that his luggage arrived there, but he didn't.
Oh. Either way, he didn't. Oh.
Either way, never seen again.
Oh!
Just gone.
Just gone.
Some of the people, including some of the very first people that went there in that group
with the Barley's, start to want to leave, but they're scared of Brother 12 and his
dark magic.
They have been taught that this guy can leave his own body. He can pass in
corporeally through locked doors. He can listen to private conversations that he should have
no way of hearing. Yeah. So you better not have any bad private conversations, no bad vibes,
mind your own business. Right. Oh God. Yeah. Or you will be prosecuted. Yeah.
There's another lawsuit, an unpaid worker, one of many. And in the courtroom it's being litigated
and people just start fainting,
like at key moments in their testimony,
the faint people in the audience start fainting.
At one point, the lawyer gets up to say something
and he's just like halfway through his sentence.
He's like, I have no idea what I was saying.
And the judge kind of gives him a little bit of a,
oh, you were talking about this man.
Yeah, let me give you a box.
And he's like, no I don't know.
His mind has just gone completely blank.
Every time the judge talks, Brother 12 will bark at him.
And it freaks him out so much that he calls the court.
He's like, we're done.
Oh, whoa.
Brother 12 wins.
And this whole incident is seen as examples of him truly using his powers of mind control
to fuck up this court that was against him.
And so all the followers are even more scared of him than they've ever been,
because now they have like evidence of this in action.
Right, yeah, and like it's not some hoax that's happening in a space that is not designed for that too.
Exactly, it's like when the alien starts blowing the FBI guys around with its mind
You know what I mean? That's how you know shit's getting real. Yeah real
Another person who kind of comes into the story more formally now is Mary Connolly lady Mary
Okay, this is the 60 year old the 60 year old out of North Carolina
Although apparently when she was in court
She gave her addresses Reno and everyone was very scandalized because it was like known for being a divorce colony
at the time.
Oh, there's like, my mailing address is like
Reno and I was like,
Oh my, she did love it.
So it's like, it's like, wow.
Reno, let's go there.
Maybe, maybe, but her sweet Reno.
Yeah.
So Mary Connolly, she moves now to,
and he's still extracting money from her.
She's got a fuck ton of money
Right, and she's she's happily forking it. She loves it. Yeah, she moves to
Cedar oh, and she gets put in charge of my hertle who's a total fucking mess by this point. Yeah
Oh, and brother 12 is no help at all apparently he was just like well you two girls have fun and didn't want to deal with Mertle kind of anymore.
Yeah.
So Mertle ends up going back to Toronto to seek formal help.
Her husband who was still technically
with her this whole time, divorcees her.
And that's the last we know about Mertle Bongartner.
Oh, poor thing.
Oh, RIP.
She'll have died one way or the other, yes.
Yeah, that's what I said.
RIP. The next big died one way or the other, yes. That's right. That's right.
The next big thing that happens at the settlement is they decide that they want to set up
what's called a brother's center on DeCorsi Island.
And DeCorsi is an island.
It's in between Vancouver Island and Gabriola Island.
Okay.
Just like, it's between Vancouver Island and the broader landmass of North America, let's
say.
Around now, it starts to become a little bit of like a hierarchical situation where like
if you are a dabbler, cedar, if you're a neophyte but you want to like become spiritually
stronger and you're really committed to the work. Yeah. Always remember the work.
Mm-hmm.
Valdas Island.
Okay.
If you're a real hard-line mother fucker disciple and we will be going into the sixth sub-race
with you, DeCorsi.
Okay.
So hierarchically, like everyone sort of begins to aspire to go to DeCorsi because it means
that you're like really held in good esteem as like a spiritual worker.
Okay.
Mm-hmm-hmm. that you're like really held in good as steam as like a spiritual worker. Okay. Hmm.
Yeah, nothing better to elicit more work
and more money from people than creating hierarchies.
Oh baby.
They're actually able to purchase DeCoursey Island
and and rucks near by Rucks Nell,
which they sort of use as like the dog house.
Like if you're bad, you get sent to Rucks Nell.
Ooh, time out.
And they get Lady Mary to buy the islands
for the aquarium foundation. Oh, thank you. So they. And they get Lady Mary to buy the islands for the Korean foundation.
So they now-
I need Lady Mary.
Who don't we all?
Yeah.
And the rules of the, you know how we've got all these rules.
If you're going to be in the brother's center on decor,
you got to surrender all of your possessions
to brother 12 in the spirit of equitable brotherhood.
Oh, right, right, yeah.
Some of us are more equal than others, so it goes,
and you must surrender all other interests and activities,
and you have to work uncompensated
and the way that they enforce that is you sign a petition
that you're there as a guest and not an employee,
so you cannot demand wages,
because they have this piece of paper saying
that you're not an employee and that you signed.
Oh, shit.
Oh my god.
And this is fucking hard work.
Come, and I don't like, at one point in a brother 12 accidentally since it sets a waste
paper basket on fire.
And so he's like, I don't like all this moss around my house.
It's flammable.
It's gonna start another fire.
You scrape all that moss off all of these rocks and cart it somewhere else.
Okay, so just a name.
Yeah.
Moss does not really catch fire.
Not when you remove it and cart it away.
Focus on the work, Josie.
Sorry, sorry.
I forgot about the work, yeah.
He'll send workers to DeCourse Island
with like a thermos and some sandwiches
to build stuff up, and then you'll just kind of forget
them there for three days.
Oh shit.
Oh, whoa.
I have Roy Alsta.
He did.
Yeah, very bad.
There's a picture here of a woman who is demonstrating
how he made her paint a shed
And it's on the side of like the world's steepest rock face. Oh God. Oh
My God no ropes no nothing. Oh, if you fall you'll like break your leg
George your covered demonstrates how she was forced to paint a shed at the edge of a cliff on Decoracy Island
Risking serious injury should she fall to the rocks below five.
Yeah, no good.
And if you're not doing that, you're like out plowing
some field or chopping something or washing something
or it's just like really, really hard labor.
Yeah, I'm washing rocks.
Yeah, exactly.
Go what these rocks are dirty, go wash them.
Yeah.
And he's also got a bad habit of stealing.
So he's like stealing people's cigarettes,
stealing people's eggs, stealing people's,
he'll just like walk into the store and take some eggs
and people be like, you can't do that.
And he'll be like, oh, I'll bring him back.
Mabel Scatto is from Lancashire, England.
She moved to Saskatchewan in 1890.
She fits General Profile of Everyone in the story.
She's interested in religion, cult,
her spiritual name that she's chosen is Z,
although she is Canadian, so...
Z.
Feels like a little bit of a trail, yeah.
She meets and marries a known womanizer who's been married five times already, his name
is Roger Painter, he's the poultry king of Florida as well as a stage hypnotist.
He's the poultry king of Florida, and that's how I like...
I repeatedly refer to him as poultry king throughout rather than his name because I think it's more fun.
Roger Payton, though, decent name.
He sells the chicken business and moves to BC with his wife to go in and amongst the aquariums.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
Just like the rest of them.
Try to get up to Valdez Island, that's the hotspot, which one?
DeCorsi.
You want to be in DeCorsi where you're scraping moss off the rocks and painting death sheds. Right. That's where you want to be. That's where the money is. Yeah.
There is no money, but that's where the money is.
You have legally released us from paying you.
It's interesting, Mabel and Roger get to the Aquarian Foundation and they are instantly greeted with great warmth. In fact, Brother 12 is like, oh my god, your brother 9 and she's brother 3.
That's crazy.
By the way, anytime he replaces people on the board, I think he maybe kind of gives them
the same spiel because he gave that to the original board and then they all were forced
out.
Yeah, and so now I was wrong, new brothers.
Whoa, give me your name tag back.
Exactly.
Before you leave.
And he specifically says that Roger Painter, the Poultricking,
he and brother 12 knew each other in a past life
when they were both knights in Malta.
Yeah, yeah, I hate what happened.
Ooh, I forgot to mention when I was talking
about the Egyptian stuff, he was big into Akanaten.
The, the, the, the Pharaoh from, we talk a bit about Akanaten in episode 50. He was another one where I was talking about the Egyptian stuff. He was big into Akanaten. The... Oh no.
The Pharaoh from, we talk a bit about Akanaten in episode 50.
He was another one where I was like,
what are you doing here?
Yeah, just a revolving door of cameos, huh?
Mm-hmm.
And speaking of revolving doors, for other 12,
it starts to fuck meable.
Oh, I mean, yeah, we knew that.
She has a little tent that she's staying in,
apparently he likes to sneak in and give her the old house a mystery
You know what I'm saying?
Maybe a shinscript, I'm good off the bus
Now it was great. I did a little like a fist pump there to you a dick-like fist pump
Roger painter apparently goes into the tent when I beats the shit out of me
So he gets sent back to Florida. With the poultry king?
The poultry king.
Why does he beat her up?
Because she's fucking Brother 12.
Well, um, he's a brother 12?
Yeah.
He's holy.
Oh.
He's one of the brothers.
I'm so she, so she!
I, yeah!
That bond from Malta was too strong to break.
Yeah.
He leaves for a bit, but he actually ends up like kind of coming back with a new wife named Leonan and everything's...
Well, everything is not, as we'll find out, but he is re-accepted into the community sometime later.
Okay, him and Leonan, wow.
This is also around the time that Elma has finally had enough the Scottish wife.
Oh, right, right, I forgot about Elma.
So did he.
Yeah.
She ends up going back to the mainland and kind of leaving the story.
I already even know she was on the island.
Neither did he.
Oh my God.
It's tough.
But I don't think she's, she meant to like leave him forever, but he divorces her kind of by shock when she's out of the picture.
Because he's such a guy.
Yeah.
And it's also around this time that Mabel Scotto, who is now served to call herself by the name that she's more infamously known as Madam Z. She's added, she's gone up in the world, she's Madam Z now.
Poultriching is out of the picture, Elma's out of the picture. Madam Z no longer needs to stay
in her little tent and keep up this pretense. Okay. She moves in with Brother 12. And by the way,
I don't know if I've mentioned this or maybe it hasn't happened yet in the narrative,
but it will eventually be the case that like brother 12 for whatever reason is really big on splitting up families
And he makes the men and the women's state and separate dermatories and he'll just like take that like he'll just take your kid and you know
Yeah, yeah, no, I can see no. Yeah separating people from their families to makes them a little bit more vulnerable
Yeah, you see the break easier to
Manipulate exactly either way, he says of madame z. She
is my eyes, my ears, and my mouth. Her orders are my orders. Whatever she says, you
are to take it as coming from me. And madame z takes full advantage of this. She
walks around with a riding crop, which she is not frightened of using. Oh no. And
she really becomes his like kind of nasty enforcer
who's always hurling abuse at everybody
and beating everybody up and publicly humiliating people,
et cetera.
Oh.
And Rose.
And specifically, she hates other women.
And she hates any woman who she thinks
might be attractive to Brother 12, which is everyone.
Yeah, because that would jeopardize the power that she had.
Exactly. And how many wives have we seen this guy chuck away now, you know? God, yeah. brother 12 which is everyone. Yeah, because that would jeopardize the power that she had. Exactly,
and how many wives have we seen this guy check away now, you know? God yeah. And so he says the next big
thing is we're gonna build onto Corsi. We're gonna build a palatial mansion called Greystone. And
again, the money for this largely gets sourced from Mary Connelly because he like really, he's like,
we're gonna put your mansion right next to my mansion. Yeah. It's gonna mean thick. And she loves it as always. She's like,
oh you've done it again. Yeah. And truly he has. And it's also around this time that he starts to
like really publicly search for success or he'll be like, if there's a child out there born in 5.20
a.m. between this longitude and this latitude in North America, you need to contact me right now.
Oh god. Because you are Horace.
Oh, no.
Brother 12, he finally, once Greystone is complete,
he moves to DeCorsia, and with Madame Z,
and he starts to kind of withdraw more
from the rest of his followers.
Before he was mingling in and amongst,
now he's like, I need solitude,
and he explains that he's working
with a powerful red ray, like a psychic ray,
that could destroy you
psychically if you are too unpsychic. Okay, okay. Pretty much just like leave me the
fuck alone. Yeah. Mind-drawn business. I have a sadistic new wife to take to
that was a mystery. Yeah. I'm gonna continue to use that. I'm gonna have to use that. In 1929, the society, the Aquarium Foundation,
finally dissolves.
Oh my God, they're still together.
Very protracted court battle.
Yeah.
But it dissolves in such a way that
Brother 12 doesn't lose much and is pleased with the decision.
The government looks into him a bunch for a bunch of things.
Can't make anything stick.
He goes back to London with Madame Z to go
by a sailboat called the Lady Royal and they sail back home from England.
Oh long trip. Yeah. They get into like a bit of trouble in the Caribbean. They end up
having to kind of be rescued, which of course is its own story, right? That this
got has rescued the sailboat and they kind of come back to after after matcha do come
back to Nanaima with all of this. Oh, I love it. Yeah, damn. This is also around the time that the
poultry king comes back with his new young wife. Oh right, Nana. It's not so hot for Leona.
As you might imagine, Madam Z in particular not super stoked on the young bride of her ex-husband even if she doesn't like him.
Yeah, yeah totally.
And for whatever reason, the Barlies, you remember the Barlies.
I remember them.
Lady Mary and Leona, they are all living on Decoracy and they get told you're coming right now to
Valdas Island. Leave your shit. Leave it. You're going right now.
Oh, you've been demoted, essentially.
You've been demoted.
That's exactly how they all take it.
Lady Mary says that she felt sick.
She couldn't sleep.
She wanted to die.
She was so upset.
She's gonna pull all her money.
Well, part of it is that she doesn't really have
that much money left,
so we can't ring anything out of her anymore.
Oh, no.
And because she was donating all
of this money and because she had this like kind of regal upbringing, she wasn't working. She was
never to lift a finger in her whole life and here the same because she has money that we can
take for her. Now that she doesn't have money. She's washing rocks. What happens is, Madame Z goes up to Lyona,
who's Lyona and...
Paul Tricking.
Yeah, the Paul Tricking is, they've been split.
They're separated.
Oh.
Because he's separating the men from the men.
Right, yeah, you're always separated, yeah.
And so Lyona's kind of Mary's mind,
and them and the Barley's just get dropped off
with all their fucking furniture,
and they have to like hike.
It's like a difficult hike and
Annie Barley the wife and lady Mary are elderly.
Oh my god. They've gone through the forest like we were today. Looking for orange slips of paper
tied to trees. Yeah, and Madamzi hates Mary because she's a woman and she hates Mary because she
hasn't worked. So she makes Leona refuse to help her. She's like, if I get where that you've done anything for her, other than drive her as
hard as you physically can, I will be livid.
And also, by the way, you might get to see your husband again, which prior to this, they've
told her that if Leona, that if she, except with her husband, the pull-trieking, she will
lose her soul.
Oh!
So.
Wow. has been the the pull-trieking, she will lose her soul. Oh! So, wow.
But if Elle goes according to plan and you're just like really drive this old woman
until her point of breaking, maybe you can see the pull-trieking again, I don't know.
Wow.
So she drives Mary hard as hell.
Oh, it'd be layer-shown.
And there's all this other shit that they do to fuck them up.
Like, at one point, the bar-lees leave.
And then when they come back,
all of Mary's furniture is in their house. And like what the fuck? And they're like,
yeah, you have to switch houses.
Whoa. All the furniture is on the ceiling.
Yeah. And it looks like they make Mary and Leona move into this like shitty warehouse.
They're doing like the most awful labor, like Mary in per-l lady Mary in particular is like just doing the like finger bleeding
finger bleeding fucking hike an hour over here got this heavy thing did it it'll like she like
really really hard work she never worked in life right right and after three months to struggle
they tell Mary and Leona you're going back to cedar. Oh, they've been even more to moody. You fail the test. Whatever the test was, you failed it.
Oh my gosh.
They have to work a three acre field tirelessly every day to provide food for the destitute.
Oh my gosh.
And the other people at cedar are told that these two have such bad vibrations that anyone coming into contact with them will be spiritually harmed.
So we are to like ignore and shun these people. Who's handing down this bird or this?
Mademzee probably. Okay. Yeah. Because brother 12 is kind of a bit more
of a maplies now. Yeah. He's on his own right now. Yeah. And mademzee is sort of his arm. Yeah. Okay.
The barlie is on the other hand. They get sent back to decoracy and then 10 days later. Oops,
back the other way. Oh my gosh. The people on decoracy involved as far as much as those
are seen as like the desirable spots,
they're still doing like a back breaking finger,
clenching labor.
Yeah.
There's a family called the Sepulveda's that arrives.
Of course, he immediately starts having an affair
with the mom.
Z and brother 12 take their son, Dion, for themselves
to work on the lady royal.
The daughter and the family ends up getting raped,
really sad shit.
And the mom ends up like rowing across the street
to Shamaynus to file charges with the police.
Oh, okay, good, this is good.
And then when they're in Shamaynus,
Dion is like, I don't know why,
but I need to go back to Decorsion.
He like goes down to the harbor
and gets caught stealing a boat
so he can go back to Decorsion.
He gets kind of returned to his folks
Whoa, and later he finds out that he was hypnotized by brother 12 that you must return to Decoracy Island
If anyone tries to take you away
Wow
Esbuke and that's the thing when he was doing his like stage shows apparently is like stage hypnotism shows brother 12
Apparently he was really good at it and he would make like the miners would get up and
Daychipnichism shows, but at 12, apparently he was really good at it and he would make like the minors would get up and do shit and then later like when it was over they'd get angry
and be like, I didn't do that, I didn't do that in the audience would be like, yes you did,
yes you did.
Oh wow.
So he's like a talented hypnotist.
Yeah, yeah, he's got some skills.
In June 1931, for at 12 changes his name to Amiilda Valdez and six months later,
Madame Z becomes Zura de Valdez.
His name changes her meaning list and don't come up again in the story.
He's hoarding mace and jars full of gold coins that he's constantly
burying, digging up and re-baring in different places.
There's the very treasure.
Mm-hmm.
He starts building snipers' nests on the island because he's afraid of the authorities coming in
because the cops have visited a few times now as well as like reporters and people
are sniffing around.
And he ends up dynamiting, or has I would assume some of his indentured servants dynamite
trees across the channel to kind of block entry points to the islands and people who have
missed it.
Oh, damn.
Meanwhile, he's making people ration food for no evident reason.
There's all kinds of islands, all kinds of back breaking labor. Madame Z tries to get 178-year-old disciple to drown herself by falling
backwards off a robot and they go out and try to do this like three times and the woman
doesn't like can't do it. Yeah.
Can I say a word? Yes, five will go kick in and.
Whoa, riding crap. Yeah, riding crap time. And finally, everybody gets sent back to Cedar
and the de Corse island colony is abandoned
except for Z and 12 living there together.
Oh.
And it's around this time that back in Vancouver,
lawyer's office, who should file into the lawyer's office,
but Roger Painter, the poultry king, Mary Connolly,
the Barley's. Everyone who was demoted and then demoted again. office, but Roger Painter, the poultry king, Mary Connelly, the barlies.
Everyone who was demoted and then demoted again.
All the demotes, they rule in and they have of course all, and it's this lawyer, Victor
Harrison, who actually came to see it with the reporter.
Right, right, and got all the dirty scoop.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, who's related to William and Harrison, they go to him.
Oh yeah.
They all want to bring action against Brother 12, but they're like, he can practice dark magic,
and he might kill you.
Like us.
Yeah.
They're really scared.
They're legitimately still believe in him
as like a spiritual entity,
even though they think that he's like
a spiritual energy that's been corrupted
by one of these black adapts,
as opposed to like a, a charlatan.
Right, yeah.
The way he goes about it,
he's like, what kind of magic is this?
And Roger Painter, the poultry can goes Egyptian magic, the most virulent kind.
And he's like, you guys forgot like the first rule of magic, which is that the magic that
is present in a soil will always be stronger than foreign magic.
And so he gives them like a cowachan artifact to hold as like a word against the foreign Egyptian magic.
Very smart, very crafty.
Yeah, yeah.
Made them on their level.
So they're-
Unfortunately using indigenous.
Well, that sounds about right for those problems.
Yeah.
So the trial plays out without
madem Z and without brother 12 they fled we don't know where they are.
When we went to go get them on decor see they weren't there.
They've gotten wind. They disappeared. But the trial continues
regardless. Roger painter the poultry king of Florida. He alleges that
brother 12 told him to kill attorney general Harry Pooley with black magic.
Yeah, yeah, the long chant. Yeah, and apparently between your eyebrows,
think it's all hard. Yeah, and force it out there. Yeah, that's what he needed.
He's like, he put him on that for this guy. Oh, God. Mary Connelly compares him
to an image of Memphis Stoffley and says, the damage that he has done to my
physical body is something that cannot be paid for. Oh, Barley and Mary get their win cannot be paid for. Barley and Mary get their win.
Specifically, Barley and Mary get their win.
I don't know what the deal is, but I think those are the ones you get through win.
Yeah, have the most convincing case in court.
Yeah, but Z and 12 are gone.
The lady royal has been blown up with dynamite and beached.
And it turns out that they went from Robert's Creek to Prince Rubert to Montreal to England.
And that's where they lived,
anonymously under false names until for whatever reason we're not quite sure why,
Brother 12 seeks some kind of medical procedure in New Shittell, Switzerland.
He died November 7th, 1934. No traces of his gold have ever been found.
Oh! There's this one story of a guy who's like he bumped his foot on something in one of the
farm hosts. He's like, this is it. I found the cash. Yeah. And he pulls it up and it's like a
it's kind of like an angry note from brother 12, like calling me. No gold for traders.
Don't you think they just him and brother 12 and Madden Z just took it and that's what they lived
down in London? Yeah, maybe. Yeah. But not all that time in the island,
they could have gone and found it all.
Well, I will tell you this.
The last time that Madam Zee is ever seen
is in the 1940s.
Okay.
In the Nimo.
She stepped out of a car kind of near the former site, right?
And she's wearing a big fur coat.
I knew you were gonna say fur coat.
Big kind of dripping with jewels and shit. Yeah. And someone sees her and I guess
recognizes and says, what are you doing here? And she says, more but curiosity gets
back into the car and we never see her again. Hmm, not the movie. The various
other people, Lady Mary, Barley, etc. They all kind of, you know, everybody's
dead. It's a story from a while back now.
Yeah, yeah. But Brother 12 has sort of lived on an infamy. Even after Brother 12's death,
there were all kinds of, oh I saw them, you know, buy an ice cream at the ice cream parlor,
oh I saw them buy donuts at the donut shop. I would like to play you a song. It is a song that I
think of as being very wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald core and it's do you know
Reck of the Edmund Fitzgerald? No, I'll listen to it after this. It's a good song. Okay, but it's like a it's sort of a folk song
The song is called the infamous devil of decoracy parentheses brother 12 song. It's by a local musician out in an IMO called
John Goggo. He's very graciously given us permission to use it on the show
So thank you very much, John you at home can hear the whole song on YouTube Spotify you can find out
more information about John at JohnGoGo.com in the meantime here's a clip What the hell's an arc of refuge for the age of Aquarius?
Who was his brother, 12, of the great white lodge?
We should have ordered him the hell out of dodge
Into this mystic world we delve to find the truth above rather twelfth.
Just to realize of course he is you for misde devil of decor, see?
The Ava is the story of Brother 12, the Arca Refuge, the Aquarian Foundation, the Great White
Lodge, the sixth subrace, the obligation, the chalice, the third party, all of it.
God, why do you think he chose B.C.?
Nice air. Nice G's. What's not to like?
Okay.
I bet of the places that he had lived.
Perhaps it just suited his temperament, who knows?
I wonder if the islands has something to do with it.
They were like these isolated, controllable plots of land.
Yeah, that's true. You can...
People couldn't run away. People couldn't arrive.
Yeah, people couldn't like poke around, can run away. People can arrive. Yeah, people couldn't like a poke
around although it didn't stop them trying. Yeah. And I didn't know about any it much like you.
I was I didn't know this before. I was just like kind of looking for the for I was like maybe a cult.
Yeah, and was it ever yeah, do you found one, dude? Was it ever I've never done a cult on the show before.
I did like I guess if you call it breath Ary and to cult they weren't that organized these guys are proper
proper proper cult yeah cult leader named Egyptian black magic pointing at
people making their heads explode the words yeah all here in this beautiful
province of British Columbia really makes you think you know what I think I
think next week we'll be back for the...
And that is next week where every week this August, which really just means one more week
now that you're listening to this, we'll be back with our guest host, Shandelier, from
where the big boys game, which is our sibling podcast on the...
Six-O-Four podcast network?
Yeah, and we're just really excited to wrap this up in style.
Oh yeah.
All right, Betty bye. I think so. I tied, I. Me too, I'm sleepy.
Thanks for listening. If you want more infamy, we've got plenty more episodes at bittersweetinfamy.com.
Or wherever you listen to podcasts.
If you want to support the podcast, shoot us a few bucks via our coffee account.
At KO-FIN-FI-DOT-COM-FORWARD-SLASH-BITtersweet-M-THREE.
But no pressure.
Bittersweet-M-THREE is free, baby.
You can always support us by liking, rating, subscribing, leaving a review following us
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Or just past podcasts long to a friend who you think would dig it.
Stay Sweet.
The sources that I used for this week's infamous were an article on the BC Labor Heritage
Center website entitled 1947 Chocolate Bar Strike.
Posted May 2, 2023, I read an article on mental floss entitled A Brief History of the 1947
Chocolate Candy Bar Strike, written by Rob Lamy, published February 7th, 2017.
And lastly, I looked at knowledgebc.ca, a short documentary from their 150 stories that
shaped B.C.E. This was episode 4, Chocolate Bar Strype.
My one and only source for this episode was Brother 12, the strange Odyssey of a 20th century prophet.
By John Allefint for 12 House Press 2016, huge thanks to B.C.Zone, John Gogo, for letting
us use his song, The Infamous Devil of De Corsey, parentheses, Brother 12 song.
You can learn more about John at JohnGoGo.com.
You can listen to the full version of the brother 12 song which I highly recommend
because it's a hoot and a holler and it'll get stuck right in your head. You'll find that at
Spotify or on YouTube where he has a music video that includes clips from the Richard Savage
doki drama brother 12 which was released in 1969. Not only do you clips from that particular adaptation of the story appear in our bittersweet
604 intro, but you can also see footage in the music video and in the docky drama of
John GoGo's father, the great Ken GoGo, as the tall guy who stands up and begins to
walk out of Brother 12's sermon.
He sits back down though.
Each well has his books deep in there.
Clips from the intro also come from videos hosted on YouTube by Neil Parsecz, Andre Tartif,
Global News Hall, 1185, Brain Wave Entertainment HQ, and Relaxing Day, as well as the documentary
The 5-Sent More Written and directed by Philip Daniels and the First Nations Language Resource.
FirstVoices.com. Thank you to Jonathan Mountain for patting our travel
fund with his monthly coffee donation.
Bitter Sweden for me is a proud part of the 604 podcast network.
Our interstitial music was by Mitchell Collins and the song you're currently listening to
is T Street by Brian Steele.
Night Night, sweetheart.
Still not at the bedbugs bite.
I wonder how ladiesmith got their name.
There's a lady Name Smith there?
Not hard.
There's Lady Name Smith.
It births a woman named Kim Getrell.
Mm-hmm.
That's Kim Getrell's mother.
She's from Lady Smith, you know?
She's not.
She's Courtney.
No, that's Pam Anderson's mom is Courtney.
It's mixed up.
You would expect the opposite.
Courtney, no that's Pam Anderson's mom is Courtney, it's mixed up, you would expect the opposite.