World Famous Cults and Fanatics (16 page)

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Brother Twelve

With Brother Twelve – whose real name was Edward Arthur Wilson – we again encounter the paradox of a messiah who cannot be dismissed entirely as a self-receiver.
Born in 1878 in Birmingham, England, Wilson was the son of “Irvingites”.
Edward Irving was a Scottish minister who was appointed to the Caledonian Church in London’s Hatton Garden
in 1822; convinced that the Second Coming was imminent, he induced in his congregation tremendous transports of religious fervour.
When, in 1830, they offered up prayers for some “sign”
or miracle, his congregation began “speaking in tongues” – that is, in strange languages, sometimes gobbledegook, but sometimes foreign languages with which they were unfamiliar.
The “voices” told Irving that he was to be the new Isaiah, and that in forty days’ time, he would have the power to work miracles.
But the forty days passed, and the miraculous
power failed to descend.
General disillusion followed; in 1833 he was dismissed, and in the following year died of tuberculosis.

As to Edward Wilson, born almost half a century later, he had been “in touch with super-physical beings” from an early age, but this did not prevent him from going to sea and working
as a “blackrider” – transporting kidnapped negroes to Turkey where they were sold as slaves.
In 1912 he deserted his wife and children and became a wanderer.
And twelve years
later, at the age of forty-six, he found himself in a village in the south of France.
On 19 October 1924, he woke up and saw a “Tau” – a cross with a circle on top –
suspended at the end of the bed.
Thinking it was some kind of after-image, he closed his eyes and looked again; now there was also a five pointed star below it.
Slowly, they faded away.
But as he
lay in the silence, he heard a faraway voice, “clear and wonderfully sweet”, which told him that he had been a pharaoh in Egypt (the Tau, or ankh, is the Egyptian symbol of life), and
ordered him to prepare his heart for illumination.

In the following year, he began to practise “automatic writing”, whose author identified himself as a “Master of Wisdom”, a spiritual being who, according to the teaching
of Madame Blavatsky (founder of the Theosophical Society), is part of a Great White Lodge whose purpose is to guide human destiny.
The result was a book called
The Three Truths.
This Master
gave Wilson the name “Brother Twelve”.
When he sent an article called “The Shadow” to the
Occult Review
in London, it was immediately accepted, and when it appeared
in 1926, it created a considerable stir.
Wilson foretold that a new age would begin in 1975, but that before that the world would have to struggle through an abyss of horror – a prophecy that
was, on the whole, remarkably accurate.

In May 1926, at the time of the General Strike, Wilson went to London, and called on the
Occult Review.
The editor was so impressed by him (Wilson was a small man with a pointed beard,
twinkling eyes, and a manner of self-evident sincerity) that he accepted a book called
The Message
, and lost no time in printing it.
As its fame spread, Brother Twelve began to acquire
disciples.
In January 1927 he informed thern, (through a “general letter”) that he had been ordered by the Master to go to Canada.

In Ottawa, Wilson lectured to a packed meeting of the Theosophical Society, where he announced that the Masters had ordered him to form an “Aquarian Foundation” and to prepare for
important work.
The talk was received with enthusiasm, and dozens of members announced their eagerness to join.
It was the same when he lectured in Toronto, where – to the disgust of the
Theosophical Society – crowds of members signed up.
In Windsor, Ontario, his charm won over a publisher who agreed to act as intermediary between the messiah and his growing audience.
In
Vancouver he was met off the boat by another admirer, a lawyer, and was soon living in a small rented house and selecting members for the governing board of the Aquarian Foundation (seven of them,
including himself).

Appeals for funds brought a flood of donations to build a Centre in Nanaimo, British Columbia.
This was run by Wilson and his common-law wife Elma.
Their aim, he told members, was to fight the
Empire of Evil that had been engineering catastrophes for mankind since ancient times – it had caused the downfall of Rome, and its latest effort was Bolshevism.
Brother Twelve also shared
with Hitler the conviction that the Jews were part of an international Communist conspiracy.
But his detestations were impartial, and included the Roman Catholic Church.

As the money poured in, Wilson decided to buy four hundred acres on nearby Valdes Island, and build an “ashram”.
He also made a determined attempt to become a political force,
sending his representatives to talk to US senators, and publishing pamphlets urging the importance of forming a “Third Party”, to be called the PPL, or Protestant Protective League.
But
the attempt to gain the support of a minority group called the Prohibition Party foundered at a Chicago convention in 1928, and Wilson reluctantly relinquished his political ambitions.

When he returned to the Centre he took with him a mistress he had acquired on the train journey, Myrtle Baumgartner.
But she was quickly hustled off to Valdes Island where – Wilson told
his closest confidants – she would give birth to a child who would be the new Christ.
When the other disciples found out about her, there were murmurs of indignation – the first sign of
the dissension that would destroy Brother Twelve’s empire.
They even refused to be convinced when he told them that he and Myrtle had been married in ancient Egypt.
Elma Wilson – the
discarded wife – was sent off to Switzerland to organize another Foundation.
But her rival’s days were numbered – after two miscarriages, she was also sent packing.

Meanwhile, an article in the Foundation newsletter expounding Brother Twelve’s inspired revelations on “spiritual marriage” caused even more hostility.
A few days later, the
other six “Governors” told Brother Twelve that they had decided to dissolve the Foundation.

Ironically, it was Wilson’s talent for organization that had proved to be his Achilles’ heel.
The disciples had worked and contributed money – sometimes a fortune.
Naturally,
they felt they had a say in what happened.
Moreover, by law, the assets of the Foundation had to be distributed among the seven Governors.
Wilson was understandably indignant – after all, he
was the founder – but at least he had recently collected another $25,000 from a rich admirer called Mary Connally.

When his treasurer, Robert England, defected, and took with him $2,800 that he considered Brother Twelve owed him in wages, the angry messiah swore out a warrant for his arrest on a charge of
embezzlement.
England was intercepted as he was leaving the country and jailed.
Next, Wilson appointed four of his supporters to the now depleted Board of Governors, so he was able to outvote the
remaining four.
These promptly obtained an injunction freezing the $45,000 assets of the society.

Brother Twelve was becoming paranoid.
Disciples noted that he had changed for the worse, and attributed this to the fact that after he had taken the “Sixth Initiation”, Brother
Twelve had come under the influence of a Black Adept on the spiritual plane.
When Robert England was set free by the court, Wilson was furious; soon after that, England vanished, leaving all his
effects behind.
There is no proof that Brother Twelve had anything to do with his disappearance, but it remains a distinct possibility.
At this time, Brother Twelve was found not guilty of
appropriating $13,000 of the society’s funds.

On 6 December 1928, Brother Twelve gave a demonstration of what certainly looked like magical powers.
An ex-disciple was suing him for $450 in back wages.
As one witness stood up in the box, he
began to shake, and crashed to the floor.
At the same time, several people at the back of the courtroom fainted.
And when the prosecuting lawyer rose to his feet a few minutes later, he stared
blankly in front of him, then began to stammer.
He finally managed to gasp: “This is ridiculous, but I’ve forgotten what I was going to say.”
He shuffled back to his seat looking
puzzled and bewildered.

The judge awarded a verdict in favour of Brother Twelve.
But there was a general feeling that his days were numbered.
And when one of his followers was arrested for raping a cinema usherette,
newspapers predicted that his career was finished.

Ignoring these prophecies, Brother Twelve and the remaining faithful disciples set up a colony on Valdes Island, where a millionaire disciple named Roger Painter came to join him, bringing a
red-headed volatile woman named Mabel Skottowe.
She and Wilson soon became lovers; Painter beat her brutally, and was ordered to leave.
Mabel changed her name to “Madame Zee”, and moved
in with the messiah.
But her bad temper – she carried a riding crop and used it unsparingly on the disciples – caused mutterings of rebellion.
By now Wilson had purchased the
neighbouring De Courcy Island, which had a harbour, and Mary Connally also presented him with a 160-acre property in San Bernardino, California.

When Wilson and Madame Zee moved to De Courcy Island, leaving the disciples behind, real disaffection began to set in.
The disciples were expected to work long hours at building and gardening,
and many of them looked forward to the day when they had enough money to leave.
When he learned about this, Wilson preached an impassioned sermon about greed and treachery, and cowed them into
handing over their savings.

Towards the end of 1929, Brother Twelve and Madame Zee took a year-long holiday in Europe.
The island dwellers were glad to see them back – until they realized that Brother Twelve was more
paranoid than ever.
There were sudden and unprovoked “purges” of disciples, and when his “wife” Elma returned from her proselytizing expedition in Switzerland, she was
forbidden to rejoin the colony.
Even Wilson’s benefactress Mary Connally was made to do domestic chores and farmwork.

Brother Twelve seemed to be developing his own brand of sexual mysticism; he ordered disciples to “pair up”, because sex was part of the process of “initiation”.
One new
female disciple, Isona Supelveda, became his mistress, but was upset when her thirteen-year-old daughter was raped by one of the males.
Another daughter had to flee in the middle of the night from
the middle-aged man who had been assigned to be her lover.
Brother Twelve took in her attractive fourteen-year-old son Dion and allegedly seduced him.
When Wilson grew tired of Isona, she fled the
colony and reported the rape to the police.
That night, Dion stole a speedboat from the mainland and tried to return to Brother Twelve – he declared later that he had been hypnotized and
ordered to return at whatever cost.
(One disciple was to describe how she had seen Madame Zee exercise “mental power” over Dion; the boy was running towards Brother Twelve’s cabin
when Madame Zee stared after him and mentally ordered him to stop; Dion stopped in his tracks – an episode that suggests that Madame Zee may have been responsible for the problems in court.)
But the rape charge was dropped, and, incredibly, the Sepulveda family returned to the island.

In the following year, 1932, an increasingly paranoid Wilson ordered the disciples to stop construction work, and to start building fortifications.
He also purchased a case of carbines and some
ammunition.
But the siege he expected – the state government was considering criminal charges – never materialized.
Instead, some bewildered and exhausted disciples fled to the
mainland, while others presented Wilson with a letter telling him that they were at the end of their tether.
Wilson flew into a rage; then decided to cast off the rebels; he began taking them back
to the mainland in small boatloads.
Those ejected from Eden included Mary Connally.

This was the last straw.
The homeless ones went to a local law firm and instituted proceedings.
In April 1933, Mary Connally was awarded $26,500, and another litigant, Alfred Barley (one of the
earliest disciples) $14,232.

But it was too late.
Brother Twelve and Madame Zee had already absconded with the cash.
They moved to a farmhouse in Devon, then to Neuchâtel in Switzerland.
And on 7 November 1934, Wilson
died in his apartment there.
Madame Zee had him cremated, then left Neuchâtel.
With the remainder of Brother Twelve’s fortune (about $400,000), she seems to have spent her remaining
years in comfort in luxury hotels.

The defectors in Vancouver refused to believe the news – they were certain that Wilson had “fabricated” his death.
But in spite of a number of alleged sightings, Brother Twelve
was never to reappear.