Quest News is produced to introduce you to our staff and faculty and as well to pass on exciting information about the upcoming Esoteric Quest Conference and Post Conference Tour. Our main conference will explore The History and Renewal of the American Soul. The Quest will be taking place August 24-28 just outside of Woodstock, in Phoenicia, New York. The conference will be followed by an optional journey to Esoteric Upstate New York and the Hudson Valley where we will discover Iroquois Nations, Feminists, Utopians and 21st Century Esotericists. Please see http://www.esotericquest.org/ for more information.
Scholarships and Work Study Available
We know that this is a challenging time financially for many of us, and so we are very pleased to announce that we now can offer a greater number of scholarship and work study positions at this year's Esoteric Quest conference. For those of you who feel deeply drawn to the content of the quest for Inner America, we strongly encourage you to visit our website at www.esotericquest.org , or click on this link ( www.esotericquest.org/america/clientData/siteoptimized/file/scholarshipform.pdf ) to download a scholarship/work study application as soon as possible.
Faculty Spotlight
Sally Roesch Wagner, Ph.D. is a feminist pioneer, activist and author of several books including Sisters in Spirit: Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Influence on Early American Feminists . She is a founder of one of the nation's first women's studies programs and appeared in Ken Burns' documentary 'One Woman, One Vote'. She is executive director of The Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation .
You are the author of the book Sisters in Spirit: Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Influence on Early American Feminists which is about the influence of the Haudenosaunee people on the early feminists, particularly on Matilda Joslyn Gage. This is not a widely known fact. Can you tell us more about this?
Haudenosaunee women modeled the vision of women's rights for United States women feeling their oppression in the 19th century. “It could be this way for you, too”, they beckoned, by the way they lived in their communities. It is not the natural lot of women to live under the thumbs (and heels) of men.
How did the role of women in Iroquois culture differ from the role of women in America in the 19th century?
Imagine the world turned upside-down: spiritual authority rather than spiritual silencing; economic independence, not dependence on an individual man; children in the female line versus fathers having absolutely authority over their children, to the point of taking children away from mothers and appointing someone else the guardian of them. Arrested for the crime of voting in her own nation, Gage was adopted into the Wolf Clan of the Mohawk Nation, where she, she wrote, would have a say in the choosing of the chief under the consensus form of government they practiced -- and the clan mothers appointed and held in place the chiefs.
On our post conference journey we are going to visit the house of Matilda Joslyn Gage. Can you tell us more about her and her own differences with other feminists regarding the separation of church and state?
Susan B. Anthony wanted to create a united front of everyone who wanted women's suffrage - whatever their reasons. That included the religious evangelists of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union who wanted to get the vote to put God in the Constitution, Christ as the head of the government and their fundamentalist beliefs as the cornerstone of a theocracy. Gage labeled their attempt to destroy the wall of separation between church and state as the greatest danger facing the country, saying that it wouldn't matter who voted if religious freedom was destroyed. She and Anthony battled for the direction of the woman's movement and Anthony won. Gage left the organized suffrage movement and formed her own organization, the Woman's National Liberal Union, to fight to maintain the separation of church and state and hold the fundamentalists' feet to the fire for their using religion to hold women in a second-class position. As a result, she was systematically written out of woman's rights history by the increasingly conservative suffragists who saw her as an embarrassment. Her speech at the founding convention of the WNLU, "The Dangers of the Hour" (available through the Gage Foundation website at http://www.matildajoslyngage.org/giftshop/ ) reads like it was written today..
Matilda Joslyn Gage was also a Theosophist and the mother- in-law of L. Frank Baum (author of The Wizard of Oz). Can you tell us more of her relationship with Theosophy and Frank L Baum?
She read Blavatsky, joined the American Theosophical Society, and represented Frank and Maud Baum when they joined the organization. Maud was her favorite child and Matilda grew very close to Frank, spending every winter with the Baums after her husband's death in 1884 until her death at the Baum home in 1898. Maud said it was her mother that told Frank to write and publish the stories with which he entertained their four sons, and Baum scholars are convinced that she gave Frank his feminist utopian vision which permeates his 14 Oz books, as well. The Gage Foundation pamphlet, "The Wonderful Mother of Oz," documents Gage's influence on Oz.
At the conference Sally will be presenting a plenary - Dead Women Do Tell Tales
Upcoming Events
A Series of Talks on Inner America at the NY Open Center : The History and Renewal of the American Soul
As a prelude to the Open Center 's summer conference An Esoteric Quest for Inner America, we are offering a series of talks on the deeper spiritual history of this country beyond the normal bounds of conventional religion. At a time when the potential for social, political and cultural renewal is great, join us for an investigation into some half-forgotten dimensions of American spiritual life.
The Psychic Highway
Mitch Horowitz
In the 19th century, a roughly 25-mile-wide stretch of land that snakes through central New York, a place so famous for its spiritual passions that it came to be called the " Burned-Over District,?produced within a few decades Spiritualism, Mormonism, Seventh-Day Adventism, the Shakers, " spirit channeling,?and American variants of Mesmerism, Utopianism and Suffragism. This evening explores the strange history and profound impact of the Burned-Over District on America and the world.
Date: Monday, June 8, 8pm
Made In America : The Hidden History of 'Positive Thinking'
Mitch Horowitz
From the essays of Emerson to the mega-sensation of The Secret , Americans have long been fascinated with the invisible powers of the human mind-especially the question of whether thought can shape circumstance. This talk explores the history of " positive thinking?as it developed in America by considering the fascinating and unlikely careers of pioneers from Phineas Quimby and Mary Baker Eddy to Napoleon Hill, Norman Vincent Peale, and beyond.
Date: Monday, June 15, 8pm
Mitch Horowitz is the editor in chief of Tarcher/Penguin in New York and the author of the forthcoming Occult America: The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation, called " a fascinating book?by Ken Burns and " a sparkling, down-to-earth, and often deeply touching account?by Jacob Needleman.
The Transformation of Spiritual Movements in America in the 19th Century
John Patrick Deveney
When Spiritualism originated in upstate New York in the mid-19th century, there was very little in America to help students achieve personal spiritual development. By the end of that century, it was virtually impossible to open a magazine without messages from gurus, sages and masters. This talk discusses the transformation that led from Spiritualism, Mesmerism and antiquarian occultism to what we might call the occult New Thought amalgam with its ideas of personal development and unfoldment of the innate powers in the human.
Date: Monday, June 22, 8pm
John Patrick Deveney is the author of Paschal Beverly Randolph: A Nineteenth Century Black American Spiritualist, Rosicrucian and Sex Magician and, with Joscelyn Godwin and Christian Chanel, The Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor . He has published extensively on the early history of Madame Blavatsky's Theosophy.
Ancient Secrets: The Roots of Western Esotericism
Leonard George, PhD
Our world is being swept by an urge for deep change, a call to explore the inner life. But this call to explore the esoteric dimension is nothing new. Our ancestors heard it too. For millennia they probed and mapped the soul's secret landscapes.In this special series we journey in imagination back to the schools and sages of Egypt , Syria , Greece and Rome .
The Quest of Corvus: Wisdom-Paths of the Ancient World
Rome , 300 AD. Imperial armies have unified the Mediterranean world but dangers lurk everywhere. The old answers seem tired and irrelevant. In this turbulent era, just as in our own time, many seek a sacred dimension. What would it have been like to set out on an esoteric quest then? This evening we follow the itinerary of Corvus, citizen of the Empire, as he surveys his spiritual options.
Date: Friday, June 12, 7pm
The Lynx and the Ibis: Philosophy and Hermetica as Wisdom-Paths
The Wisdom-quest runs like a golden thread through the philosophical schools, from the Presocratics to the Neoplatonists. The lynx, thought to have the most powerful gaze of any creature, became the emblem for those who strove to see the Goddess of Truth who is veiled by appearances. In Alexandria , the Egyptian wisdom of the ibis-headed Thoth was fused with Greek philosophia into a vision of transformation under the aegis of the fabled Hermes Trismegistus. The disciples of Hermes learned how to find an inner shepherd who would guide them toward enlightenment.
Date: Saturday, June 13, 10am- 1pm
The Pine-Cone and the Laurel : Mysteries and Oracles as Wisdom-Paths
From Plato and Aristotle to Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius, many of antiquity's deepest minds were initiates of the Mysteries. In these rites, held at holy settings like Eleusis and Samothrace , seekers privately enacted sacred myths in order to be reborn into the Divine Life. Mystery-elements found their way into the meditation known today as the Mithras Liturgy梐 visualization of the soul's flight to heaven's edge to meet the god on high. Equally old and revered were the Oracles like the Delphic sibyl. In Late Antiquity the oracle-deities spoke from places like Didyma, Claros and Apamea, proclaiming the dawn of a new consciousness and teaching new ways to live a cosmic life.
Date: Saturday, June 13, 2:30- 5:30pm
ALeonard George, PhD , is a psychologist, educator, writer and broadcaster based at Capilano University in British Columbia . He has lectured across North America and Europe, and gave the opening address at the Open Center 's Esoteric Quest for the Mysteries and Philosophy of Antiquity on the isle of Samothrace . He has written two books and dozens of articles on such topics as Iamblichus and the Chaldean Oracles.
To register for any of the above events please call the New York Open Center at 212-219-2527 or see www.opencenter.org
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The Esoteric Quest is presented by The New York Open Center http://www.opencenter.org, is a non-profit holistic learning center offering evening events, full-day workshops, ongoing classes, advanced trainings, and graduate degree opportunities. 
