Toward Ecosophy

A remarkable (and also remarkably odd) resource has become available recently:  the complete correspondence course offered by the Mayan Order, one of the more colorful American occult correspondence schools of the twentieth century.

The Mayan Order -- that's its emblem on the left -- was the creation of Rose Dawn (mundane name Isabelle Taylor). Born in Indiana in 1898, she was a showgirl and singer in her youth, thus the "Rose Dawn" moniker -- that was her stage name.  Later on she took up astrology and turned out to be very good at it. She and her third husband, William Perry Taylor, settled in Del Rio, Texas in the early 1930s, where she broadcast a daily program on the radio and launched a successful career as an astrologer by mail. In 1935 she and her husband proceeded to create their magnum opus, the Mayan Order.

This was a more than usually creative take on the standard New Thought-influenced occult correspondence course of the time. Members were attracted by magazine advertisements like the one below on the right -- yes, that's Rose Dawn as Supreme Scribe of the Order -- and paid a modest initiation fee and monthly dues. In return they got lessons by mail: 308 of them, if they persevered through the entire course.

The content of the lessons is an interesting blend of New Thought positive-thinking material, metaphysical philosophy, and American vernacular Christianity with an esoteric slant. Does it have anything to do with the teachings of the ancient Mayas? Not as far as I can tell -- but it's by no means certain that Rose Dawn knew this. In the early twentieth century it was a common belief in some parts of the occult scene that there would be no authentically American occultism until someone succeeded in picking up the contacts, as the phrase was, of the ancient Mayan mysteries. My reading of the lessons suggests to me that Rose believed that she had done this, and was in contact with an inner plane teacher who passed on to her a version of the ancient Mayan wisdom updated for the use of modern American students.

Be this as it may, the entire collection of Mayan Order lessons is available for free download on the IAPSOP website:

http://iapsop.com/archive/materials/wing_lessons/mayan_order/

And also on Archive.org:

https://archive.org/details/MayanOrderRevelation/Mayan129/

Over and above the value of all this as a fine bit of esoteric Americana, this course (and many others like it) offered the kind of basic training in occultism that almost everyone in the American occult scene had a century ago and almost nobody has now. It won't be to everyone's taste -- notably, if you're not comfortable with a certain amount of Christian symbolism and teaching, this course will probably not be your cup of Texas tea -- but if that's not a barrier, you can provide yourself with an experience of a kind that few people have these days: simply download the lessons, print out one each week, read and study it, and do the exercises included. Six years later, you'll have a solid background in New Thought and a well-developed skill set in practices such as affirmation, concentration, and ritual, and you'll have that basic training mentioned earlier.

Regular readers will know that there's also the Order of Essenes lessons -- not to be confused with the Modern Order of Essenes material I'm passing on these days; if something less Christian and less ritualistic turns your crank, you can find the whole Essenes course here:

http://iapsop.com/archive/materials/wing_lessons/order_of_the_essenes_florida/

It'll be interesting to see if any more correspondence courses of this general type end up becoming accessible in the years ahead.

Brief Additional Note: as I noted above, Rose Dawn's material doesn't seem to have much of anything to do with the actual teachings of the ancient Maya. Maybe I need to repeat myself, because I immediately fielded a couple of trolling posts angrily insisting that Rose Dawn's material doesn't seem to have much of anything to do with the actual teachings of the ancient Maya. Why, yes, and reading comprehension is apparently a lost skill in some circles, too. Any further trollage along these lines will also be deleted.