 Welcome to a very special episode of Esoteric Atlanta. By viewer request, today we are going to be taking a deep dive into the Crescian unity. The Crescian unity came up in our first episode regarding the theories of Hollow Earth. But before we go any further, as always a very, very special thank you to all of our patrons. We have continued to collect more patrons on this channel and I am incredibly grateful to all of you. And I do look forward to getting to know each of you better. If you would like to join our Patreon program, as always there is a link down in the description box below. Cyrus Reed Teed was born on October 18, 1839 in Trout Creek, New York. He was born to Jesse Teed and Sarah Tuttle. Although his extended family was quite wealthy, Cyrus's immediate family was not. Being one of eight kids, at the age of 11, Cyrus dropped out of school to work as a mule wrangler to help support his family. This was done on the Erie Canal. And the technical term for his position, again at 11 years old, was the Erie Canal hoggy. Now of course the Erie Canal was a 363 mile long canal that went across New York State for easier trade routes. So at 11 years old, Cyrus Teed was basically working as a modern day delivery driver. Of course the 19th century is very different from our time today. But this position was quite common in the 19th century for young boys especially to take these delivery positions to help financially support their families. Now Cyrus Teed was born to a Baptist family, a very religious Baptist family. His mother's father was in fact a Baptist preacher. It seems that Cyrus Teed was a very charming talker, could pretty much talk to anybody. And so his family and friends did expect him to follow in his maternal grandfather's footsteps and become a Baptist minister. But you see, Cyrus Teed was always a very inquisitive child. And while he was working on the Erie Canal, he had a lot of time to read. You see I guess delivering products back and forth across the state of New York on mules gave him time to let his mind wonder. He read a lot of books on philosophy and it inspired him to study medicine. In 1859, 20 years old, with only an eighth grade education, again different times, he began to study medicine in Utica, New York with his uncle, Dr. Samuel F. Teed. Now at this point in history, many people learned through apprenticing. And as I have also done some deep dives into the Federal Reserve and our modern day educational system, I actually think the way they did it back then was way better than the way we do school now. In fact back then, there was less of this idea of brainwashing and indoctrination like we have in our school systems today. In fact back in Cyrus Teed's era, people, kids in their general education were learning Greek and Latin. And as I said, by the age of 11, while working as an Erie Canal hoggy, this little boy was reading books on philosophy. In my opinion, our modern educational system has dumbed us down. Why don't fault this whole apprenticeship thing? I think that this is actually something we probably should go back to in our modern society. The type of medicine that Cyrus Teed was studying and would go on to perform as a physician was called eclectic medicine. This was an American form of medicine that made use of herbs and botanical remedies and also the use of physical therapy practices to heal patients. They were opposed to such things as bloodletting and they were also opposed to pharmaceuticals. Now interestingly enough, as I've said on this channel many times, my mother's family, the Bryce's, where I get my first name, yes my first name, is my mother's maiden name. Well the Bryce family comes from a long line of doctors and we actually still have a blood-letter device that one of my ancestors used in the 19th century. This of course was a very common practice of trying to bleed out diseases. Well Cyrus Teed in this eclectic medicine group that he was practicing was very much against this idea of bloodletting or pharmaceuticals. Of course now we know that bloodletting is not necessarily the smartest practice to do. In fact not at all. It doesn't do anything. And of course now we're starting to wake up that pharmaceuticals are not that smart either. So Cyrus Teed was definitely on to something. This could also be considered a form of alternative medicine to us today. This type of medicine also included such things as alchemy and faith healing. In 1860 Cyrus Teed married a distant cousin of his named Fidelia Rowe. And very soon after Fidelia and Cyrus got married they had one son named Douglas Arthur Teed. Around this time the American Civil War was starting in 1862. Cyrus Teed decided to put his medical studies on hold and he joined the Union Army in the Civil War. By 1863 Cyrus Teed was discharged from duty due to some health issues. By 1868 he had finished his medical school with a doctorate from the Eclectic Medical College of the City of New York. He then moved his family to Deerfield which is located in Central New York to open up a practice. He was so against the practice of pharmaceuticals that he had a sign on his clinic that read He Who Deals Out Poison Deals Out Death. I personally believe that Cyrus Teed was way before his times because I do agree with that statement that he who deals out poison deals out death. Well Cyrus Teed started to specialize in electro alchemy. This could be considered a form of shock therapy. However in 1869 even though Cyrus Teed was a bit of a rubble when it came to his medical beliefs for that time he still was formally baptized by his grandfather as a Baptist believer. In 1869 would go on to be a very big year for Dr. Cyrus Teed. In that same year while tinkering around in his office he believed he found the Philosopher's Stone. The Philosopher's Stone is an alchemic experiment turning metal into gold. During this same night while he was messing around with his electro therapies Teed knocked himself unconscious. While laying there passed out on the floor from his own experiment Teed claimed that he had an experience with God. At first he heard the voice of God. Although according to Teed this voice was not masculine but feminine. Then when he saw God he said that God was female. Teed said that God told Teed that he was the divine son Horus of Osiris and Isis and that he had been on this earth and many incarnations to try to save humanity. However in his past incarnations he had failed but this time he was not going to fail. After Teed got up off the floor he brushed himself off assuming that he had just had a weird dream a weird reaction to his own experiment. He went and got back into bed with his wife but that night he was woken three times by hearing chariots fly over his house. At this point Teed decided that he was the promised Messiah. This was around the time that he decided to start going by the name Koresh. Koresh was Hebrew for Osiris and he decided that he was going to create a new religion. A religion with the foundation of Christianity but with some clarity that only a Messiah could bring. This new religion was called Koresh Anatee. The doctrine of Koresh Anatee is as follows. The God was a perfect benign being with both male and female aspects. That Cyrus read Teed was the male aspect of the Godhead incarnate and the Messiah. He had been reincarnated several times as Adam, Enoch, Noah, Moses, Elijah and of course Jesus. This according to Cyrus was his seventh incarnation and was to be his last. Men and women each representing a portion of the Godhead were equatable but not equal. Sex and marriage made women the slaves of men which destroyed any equality between them. Consequently everyone should be celibate and unmarried. Sexual urges should instead be pushed into the worship of God or God's Messiah, Dr. Cyrus read Teed. Of course they also believed that the end times were soon to be upon us. Once the refocused sexual energies had charged Teed's anthropostic battery his consciousness would expand and he would unite with the feminine Godhead recreating the perfect benign form of God here on earth. The new God would destroy our corrupt capitalist society, transform everyone into perfect hermaphrodites, banish death and usher in a new golden age. This could be accomplished because matter and energy were one and the same and one could be destroyed to create the other. By energy he meant not only electricity and magnetism but also spiritual energy. The Bible was the true expression of the divine mind but was written in a symbolic coded way that had to be interpreted by a prophet for mass consumption. Heaven and hell were not literal places but spiritual conditions that existed solely within the mind. After death souls were not rewarded or punished for eternity but reincarnated in new physical shells. The cycle would only be broken by conquering death itself and achieving physical immortality. In the meantime people should live like primitive Christians. All property should be shared communally and men and women should live apart. And of course one of the main beliefs of Greshian Anity was the belief of a hollow earth. Cyrus Teed or Gresh at this point called his hollow earth theory cellular cosmogony. Now his hollow earth theory is very different from the hollow earth theories we have been examining on this channel. All the other theories, all the other claims people like Admiral Byrd have made come from the idea that there is a universe, a kingdom, a world inside of our earth that we are literally walking on top of another universe. But Dr. Cyrus Teed believed that we were the hollow earth, that we were literally middle earth, that we were inside of a hollow shell. In his cellular cosmogony he believed that the shell of our earth was a 17 layered crust that was about 100 miles thick. The outer layer is pure gold and we humans live in the innermost layer. And the center of this innermost layer of this hollow earth is apparently a battery that powers everything. And the sun, the moon, the stars, all the stuff we see up in the sky above us is just an illusion. Teed did not believe that the universe was infinite. In fact he believed that believing the universe was infinite was also denying the existence of God. I still don't see how he connected those dots. As Teed started to develop his new religion and started to talk to people in his town of Deerfield about this new religion, many of the people of Deerfield started to whisper about Teed being slightly crazy. Apparently one of Teed's brothers also had the propensity to talk to spirits, and so many people in the town dismissed him as a complete nut job. Because of his now new reputation, he started to lose patience to other doctors and eventually the Baptist church kicked him out even though he had just been baptized. Without any work and with no credibility in his hometown, Teed moved his wife and his young son to his wife's hometown of Binghampton, New York. At this point the Teeds were living off of his wife's family's money. While there, Teed made friends with another doctor called Dr. Abel W.K. Andrews or Abbey for short. Abbey was very fascinated by Teed's discoveries in all his thoughts on the universe. Abbey was what you would consider a regular doctor who used bleeding techniques and pharmaceuticals. And here was Dr. Teed who was complete opposite of Abbey, this new guy in town who was also claiming to now be the Messiah who had these ideas about spiritual enlightenment and the fact that we lived inside of a shell of a world. Well, Abbey became Teed's first convert to this new religion of crashanity. Abbey would also end up becoming Teed's closest friend, his BFF, and would continue to advise him for the rest of his life. Over time Abbey and Teed and Teed's wife and son would get moved out of even her hometown of Binghampton and this pattern happened over and over and over again. They would land in a new town and they would be run out as being nutjobs. But never once did Teed think that maybe his ideas were not good. No, instead he just kept growing his faith more and more and more. He and Abbey would study communal living like the Shakers and the Harmony Society to understand how economically this could be done. And in fact I read that Teed even tried to infiltrate the Harmony Society and be their new leader. But they politely just asked him to leave and like gave him a hundred bucks. At this point the only members of crashanity besides Dr. Cyrus Teed himself which I guess wouldn't be a member because he's the messiah. I don't know how that works but you get what I'm saying. Abbey, Dr. Andrews and Emma and Oliver Teed, two of Cyrus' siblings. It is said that he could not even get his wife or his son to convert to this new faith. In the 1870s Fidelia, Cyrus Teed's wife developed tuberculosis. Of course at this point tuberculosis was deadly. And she moved her and her son in with her sister. This is when Cyrus Teed and his wife Fidelia parted ways. Now apparently people that are fond of the faith will tell you that they continue to support each other but there's some evidence to show that probably wasn't the case. He hardly ever wrote to his wife, hardly ever saw his son. And when his wife eventually succumbed to the tuberculosis instead of coming to get his son Douglas, he allowed his son to be taken in by a wealthy widow. By 1877 Cyrus Teed made his first attempt at creating a commune. He decided to create the commune in Moravia, New York at his parents house. Eventually his father Jesse Teed put a stop to his son's nonsense and kicked out this very small commune at this time. By 1878 the Teed family had opened up a mop business. Cyrus Teed got the job of managing this business and encouraged three women to leave their husbands and join his cult. Because of Teed's appreciation of women in the sense that he believed women were equal to men, Teed was very popular amongst the women. They felt like their voices could be heard, that they could be taken seriously, that they weren't just an instrument of baby making for their husbands. Unfortunately it wasn't too long that gossip started to spread around the town because Teed had managed to get himself involved with a whole slew of married women. Of course, according to the religious beliefs of the Christian unity or Christianity, Teed was not allegedly sleeping with these women. He was just encouraging them to be equal participants in this new commune. As you may probably guess, in the late 1800s this was not acceptable. As tension and gossip started to spread around this cult leader with his new faith, there were whispers of a potential lynch mob. This happened a lot during this time. This is not the first time that this will happen. Teed and his group of ladies and a few men packed up and got out of town. The next stop for them was Syracuse, New York. Once in Syracuse, New York, Teed set up another practice where he could practice his eclectic medicine and make some money for his new commune. But it wasn't too long before he found himself in a bit more trouble. People were accusing him of taking money fraudulently while being his patients. Once again, Teed and his disciples packed up and got out of Syracuse. By 1884, Teed decided that his problem with growing his new religion was that he had been in the wrong towns. If he wanted to start a new religion, then he would need to be in a big city. So with that being said, he packed up his bags and he moved the few people he had with him to New York. Teed rented an apartment on 135th Street. But eventually the needs of the apartment were not being met and rent was late. Seeing the realities of what it was like to live with a cult leader, a few of the women decided to pack it up and go back home to their husbands. Around this time, Teed met a Brooklyn woman who was a spiritualist. She decided to introduce Teed to her group and eventually, like he had tried to do with the Harmony Society, he infiltrated and took it over. Around this time, as we know, eclectic medicine is starting to become big. This idea of alternative healing. Well, people also started to become very fascinated with the powers of the mind and the powers of the human spirit. This is common for us today in our modern times, but for the late 19th century, this was new and groundbreaking work. This allowed him to become a lecturer, a regular lecturer at the Faith Healing Institute and eventually caught the attention of Cynthia Leonard, who was a suffragette. Again, Teed was very appealing to this new movement in women's rights. He said all the right things to women who wanted to vote, who wanted to have equal responsibility and equal rights as their male counterparts. Through Cynthia Leonard, he met a woman named Elizabeth Thompson. Now, Elizabeth Thompson was a bit older, but she was a socialite in the area. And this socialite loved science and philosophy. And one of the sources that I researched for this video, it said that she collected science and philosophy like a lot of other socialites at that time, collected art pieces. It seems that Elizabeth Thompson, though, was more focused on the idea of free love than Teed was seeing that Teed believed that there should be celibacy. Things went south. Elizabeth Thompson also wanted to put her name on any of Teed's work. If she was going to be financially backing him, then she wanted credit for all of his studies. This relationship ended up crumbling and Teed had to call his dear friend Abby to get him enough money to get a train ticket out of town. Due to all the connections that Teed had made in New York City, people started learning about him all the way over in Chicago. And by 1886, Teed was asked to start speaking in Chicago about the idea of mental science at the National Association of Mental Science in Chicago. Again, this idea that the mind caused all of our suffering perhaps was a director of our own diseases was very new and very groundbreaking at the time. As soon as Teed arrived to start his speaking engagement in Chicago, he did what he has been doing and probably does best. He infiltrated it. He eventually became the president and started to change up the way the National Association of Mental Sciences worked. This would be the first really big leap in Cyrus Teed's new religion of Christianity. He built an assembly of Covenant Church and of course it attracted a lot of women. Chicago was a growing city at this time. We're building up to such things as the World's Fair. All eyes are on Chicago. What a wonderful place to be to start a cult. In 1888, the Crescian Unity held a convention at Chicago's Central Music Hall and it picked up 40 more people. A woman named Annie Ortaway was a student at the World College of Life that was associated with the National Association of Mental Sciences. Teed decided that she was his consort, his equal, his divine half in this Godhead. Now again, this wasn't a sexual divine half. This was just a divine half of male and female from his very first vision that he had of God when he electrocuted himself back in his clinic in New York. And in fact, people say that Annie and Cyrus Teed were exact opposites. Not only was he male and she female, but he carried a lot of effeminate qualities and she herself carried a lot of masculine qualities. Where he was likable, she was not likable. Where he was bad with money, she was good with money. Where he was more of a visionary and a creative type, she was all about business. Teed christened her as Victoria Gradia. She was his dual associate and preeminent. As the Koreshian unity started to grow in Chicago, he decided to start sending out missionaries. He sent people to Baltimore, Detroit, Denver, D.C. and all the way to San Francisco. He started to debate other religious leaders like the religious leader of the up-and-coming Jehovah's Witnesses. Teed was definitely gathering a more public name for himself. His most successful conquest outside of Chicago was in San Francisco. A commune was set up in the Castro district called Ecclesia. This commune eventually closed down due to scandal and Teed moved the 60 residents in San Francisco to Chicago. Apparently, Teed made a pass at one of the gentlemen's wives in San Francisco associated with this cult and even though she said it was okay because he was basically the Messiah and he was God, her husband wasn't too happy about that and that's why the San Francisco cult fell apart. But nonetheless, again, as I said, the 60 members were then moved to Chicago. By 1893, everything was going on in Chicago. Again, there was the World's Fair, so much was happening and by this time, his cult was growing more and more and more. The Chicago Evening Journal encouraged citizens of Chicago to take up vigilance to keep the Corression people out. Once again, things were getting tough for Cyrus Teed. He decided to head to Florida to look for land and to also spread the message to start lecturing and teaching down in the South to spread his new religion. Why not? I mean, he is, according to himself, the Messiah. He ended up finding some land in Estero, Florida. He was able to purchase this land for $200. As of today, $200 in 1893 would be about $6,000. That's not bad for 300 acres of land. Over time, all of his disciples from Chicago moved down to Florida. According to the locals at the time, it was a bit comical to see these Northerners trying to set up a farm. But over time, they built their quarters and created their own homestead down in Florida. By 1894, they started to make money on oranges. Just so happens that Florida still has a great orange economy. At this point, too, he started to run more experiments to try to prove to humanity that we actually live inside of a hollow earth. By 1897, the farmer who sold the land to Cyrus Teed started to get suspicious of this new cult and wanted his farm land back. But by 1904, Teed had started the journey of incorporating this area as its own town. This was a way for him to get money from the government. And speaking of government, he started to invest his time into local politics. He started his own progressive liberty party. Commune also became more and more successful, with schools on the property, a post office, general stores, and the people, the Carescians, were pretty much liked by the locals. They didn't cause a lot of trouble, and because they had such a good schooling system, many of the locals would send their kids to their school. However, not everybody was completely happy with these newfound neighbors who were trying to get involved with their civic duty down in Florida. At the train station, a fight broke out. This also had a lot to do with some political back issues, scandals going on between the progressive liberty party and the local democratic leader. A lot of the Carescian men were beaten up, including Teed himself. A lot of his injuries, unfortunately, were not able to heal. And over time, he got sicker and sicker and sicker and sicker until he was eventually bedridden. On December 22, 1908, Teed died. Because they expected him to rise again, they put his body in a tub with zinc. For days, the commune sat watching for Teed to rise, but he did the opposite. His body started to decompose. Eventually, the government had to step in and issue a death certificate. They buried Teed in a tomb on the land. They did not give him a birth date or a death date on this tomb because, again, they believed that he was the Messiah and he would come back. In 1921, sadly, the tomb was washed into the gulf during a storm. The cult eventually just kind of disintegrated. Again, there was no tragic ending to this cult. No massacre, nothing like that. Maybe it was because they practiced celibacy. Maybe it's because they weren't ready for some of these ideas. Who knows, but they eventually just died out. The land is now owned by Florida. You can go and visit and see some of these structures left over from the Crescent Unity. It's also interesting to note that Cyrus Teed's son, Douglas, ended up becoming a very talented artist. He did make contact with his father later in life. To show some of his artwork. However, there was definitely a scuffle when his father did not pay him for the artwork that he promised he would pay him for. After that, the father and son never spoke again. Now, what's interesting about Cyrus Teed is that a lot of his ideas, I believe, are actually pretty legitimate, especially dealing with the mind. No, I don't actually believe we live in a hollow earth and I'm not so sure about the whole Hermaphidite thing and I don't believe that we should all be celibate because that's how humanity continues. But as far as his spirituality, as far as some of his other ideas with the mental sciences, with the alternative medicine, I am 100% behind. Could it be that Cyrus Teed was a man before his time? Maybe, maybe not. I do also believe that Cyrus Teed probably suffered from a little bit of narcissism and seemed to develop a little bit of megalomania towards the inn there, as most cult leaders do. But it does seem that he was relatively good to his disciples. Again, many people from the town said his disciples were very kind people and it doesn't seem like he was forcing anybody to stay. We all know that time is relative. And sometimes we don't understand God's workings and sometimes the plan that God has for us goes awry when our own opinions and personalities and ego get involved with the delivery of the message. Perhaps with the case of Cyrus Teed, we can look at his life in shades of gray. Instead of black and white, we can see that there was some value in what he was saying. Maybe because he was up against a different time, his points were manipulated and executed in a different sort of environment than they would have been if it was, say, done in our modern time. But regardless, next time I am in Florida, I do plan on visiting his commune and seeing the place for myself. Once again, Cyrus Teed's cult is the only cult that I stumbled upon in my research of the hollow earth that based its whole beliefs around this idea that our earth is hollow. And he's definitely the only person I have stumbled upon that believes that we are actually the people living in Middle Earth, that we are a gartha. Don't forget to join us next week for part four of our Hollow Earth series. I hope you guys enjoyed that deep dive into the Corression Unity, into Cyrus Teed and his vision of hollow earth. If you would like to purchase our opening song, there is a link down in the description box below. I hope you guys have a wonderful day and I will talk to you soon. Bye.