My niece took her life a year ago on July 23, 2024. Hence, the Arts have been under assault.Drew Taylor Rosamond Benton told no one who she was. She understood people got jealous – and very threatened. I have a hard time grasping the truth, the neighbors I got to know, became very jealous, and full of rage. They already felt life had cheated them, and I was elected to be the anthem of their bitter complaint. They are still trying to bring me down.
In 1965 Nancy took me and Keith to Pasadena to party with the friends she made there. We went to Zorthian Ranch, and flew on the trampoline, to the song……Gloria! I was eighteen! I found my bless! As for my tormentors…..
GO FUCK YOURSELF!
John Presco
President: Royal Rosamond Press
Tara Zorthian, a granddaughter of founder Jirayr Zorthian, at Zorthian Ranch on March 28 in Altadena, California. She lived on the ranch for eight years before moving away two years ago. The Eaton fire destroyed several structures as well as vegetation on the Ranch. (Stella Kalinina for KQED)
Residents and volunteers at Zorthian Ranch on March 28 in Altadena, California. From left to right: Sam Anderson, Robert “Blobbie” Kirkhuff, Tara Zorthian, Caroline Zorthian, Ian Rosenzweig, Aslan Scardina, Billie Grey Heck (back), Moses Hamborg (front), and Solange Stefanelli. After the Eaton Fire blazed through Altadena, past and present residents of Zorthian Ranch, a bohemian art colony in the Los Angeles foothills, shared stories of the Ranch’s transformative “magic,” and witnessed the wildfire’s destruction. (Stella Kalinina for KQED)
“It woke you up in a way where you felt your humanity and you felt the humanity of the people around you. You understood what it felt like to really love people.”
I can’t stop thinking about this line from my friend Tara Zorthian. I was interviewing her about her former home, the Zorthian Ranch, which burned down in the Eaton Canyon fire.
My niece took her life a year ago on July 23, 2024. Hence, the Arts have been under assault.
John
Interviewing members of the community in the aftermath of this fire was a difficult and emotional experience for everyone involved. But in spite of the grim circumstances, I am surprised at how much cohesion emerged from what appeared to be a rather difficult and chaotic subject.
Themes like community, friendship, and love rose to the surface.
Now, after spending the last few weeks trying to document that ethereal feeling I experienced in my first visit to the Ranch in 2019, I’ve arrived at a simpler explanation for why it all matters.
The Ranch was a space where community could gather. Where artists,musicians and performers could live for very low rent. Where humans could coexist and care for the land and the plants and animals that call it home, like our ancestors did.
In a way, life at the Ranch couldn’t be more simple. But in a city that often feels trapped in the vice of late stage capitalism, the Ranch became a radical idea.
Zorthian Ranch Damaged by Fire
Posted on January 11, 2025 by Royal Rosamond Press
Help restore this Bohemian Oasis! I was close with the Zorthian family.
JRP
PASADENA — Col. Jirayr H. Zorthian, a larger- than-life painter and sculptor whose trash-strewn hilltop ranch has played host to hordes of intellectuals, artists, and naked nymphs over the past half- century, died Tuesday afternoon. He was 92.
Fire Recovery for Zorthian Ranch
Julia Zorthian is organizing this fundraiser.
Donation protected
We lost most of the ranch, the artwork that Jirayr created, retaining walls made of wood burned down, the stage collapsed, the bridge is gone. In an incredible stroke of luck, the 2 main buildings on the property remain- the main house and the “Green House” as we call it. Every other structure, shed, shipping container, and community use space are gone. The photos of the summer camp, the archives of videos, its too tragic to think if all the irreplacable pieces of history that were lost. There is going to be so much work to do just to clean up. My dad lost every thing he owned. He has no car, no clothes. We don’t want to put this land in the hands of developers. Please help us keep this place a community space for generations of artists who’ve come before, and who’ve yet to come.
My name is Julia if you don’t know me, I’ve been living and working on the property for the last 8 years of my life, I spent almost the entirety of my 20s dedicated to preserving and upholding the beauty that my family created, alongside so many other people. It hasnt been an easy or comfortable life, when I first moved there we didn’t have a bathroom or a shower to use, and for a kitchen we just had a small faulty oven with 2 burners that worked, to share among 5 people. We lived that way for a few years, and we’ve slowly, through hard work and dedication worked the ranch into a place that was finally functional and clean. We have been tending to the land, trying to restore the natural ecology of the landscape for all the bugs and the animals in the area.
All that work is gone now, but the love remains and all I want is to be sure we won’t be having to sell this land to new developers, and we can retain some energy of what Altadena was.
I don’t know what our future will hold but we are resilient, and we are going to figure it out. We will need to clean up, and we will try to rebuild as best we can. If you’ve ever been to the ranch, you know how special a place it was. I think it influenced and affected more people than we can ever know, as we tried to bring as many people in to experience it as we could. Whether you came by for a musical performance one time, a friend’s wedding, a weekend getaway, or any other number of reasons one may find themselves there; we need help.
I don’t know if it’s possible to raise this much, but we know rebuilding the bridge alone will cost over $100,000, and that’s just the beginning.
There are also 20 docents who called this place home, dedicated so much care and energy to the ranch, filled it completely with love, and lost so much- most lost everything beside what few things they could grab while also trying to protect and defend the ranch from the fire. If each person got only $5,000, that would be $100,000 just for them.
The ranch will need help with costs of clean up, a 9k mortgage that will still need to be paid monthly, meanwhile the place has no income source anymore.
We’ve never in all the years of our existance had a fundraiser, we’ve always scraped by and found ways to continue to exist, despite all the challenges. But this time, we need help. If you’ve ever come to this place, heard of this place, found magic here or felt joy here, please consider donating. We really need any help we can get.
Here’s a breakdown of what we are hoping to raise right now:
108k for the mortgage for a year
100k for ranch docents
100k for the bridge
5k for animal feed, and potentially rent to stable the animals for the next who know how long until we can figure out what to do with them. They can’t stay on the ranch at the current moment, some have been temporarily moved to other places.
92k for debris cleanup. It’s a lot.
This won’t cover everything, but it is a place to start.
Tale of Two Wineries
Posted on April 23, 2015 by Royal Rosamond Press
Folk Festival at Zorthian Ranch
Posted on February 9, 2012 by Royal Rosamond Press
In 1965 I attended a party at the Zorthian Ranch with my childhood friend, Nancy Hamren (whose grandmother owned the recipe for Nancy’s Yogurt) and Barry and Seyburn Zorthian, the daughter’s of the artist, Jirayr H. Zorthian, who was influenced by Thomas Hart Benton. Thomas is the cousin of the muralist, Garth Benton who married my late sister, the world famous artist, Christine Rosamond Benton. These four women and myself would live in a commune in San Fancisco, our rent paid by Betty Zorthian, the heiress of the William’s Shave fortune. Seyburn is an artist.
Zorthian and I discussed art up in his studio while beautiful young L.A. Godesses soared on the trampoline to ‘Gloria’.
We also partied at Betty’s mansion in Pasadena where she kept horses. We dropped LSD that was legal at the time. I did a psychedelic cowboy shoot-out routine with Toby Zorthian’s gun he had for quick-draw lessons he was taking. I did the slow-mo-draw, where the bullet would come out of the barrel real slow, and do very curious things on the way to a cosmic target where it was swallowed up in a parallel universe. I had folks in stiches in my peace-time play on a deadly weapon turned into an instrument of Cosmic Love!
Nancy dated Stanely Augustus Owlsley, and with Christine, they went on a date with Nick Sands who was also a manufacturer of LSD.
Jirayr Zorthian was the Grand Marshall of the Doo Day Parade that may have inspired the Eugene Celebrations Parade. The New Los Angeles Folk Festival reminds me of the Eugene Folk Festival. Our Mayor should declare Altadena our Sister City and conduct a culture swap. Hip folks could stay in L.A. while those folks stay in Eugene.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_j7i_ZVfxw
In this video of Them, note the sour look on some folks faces who understand this is black blues music from America. This look is shot at President Obama by Catholics who believe condoms should not be discussed in public, because it dulls the flow of their halos.
Jon Presco
PASADENA — Col. Jirayr H. Zorthian, a larger- than-life painter and sculptor whose trash-strewn hilltop ranch has played host to hordes of intellectuals, artists, and naked nymphs over the past half- century, died Tuesday afternoon. He was 92.
Zorthian’s reputation as an eccentric artist and socialite has grown into myth over the last decade, as he celebrated each new birthday surrounded by nude models who dangled grapes into his mouth.
“He was alive. He was a living person who was bouncing and curious and excited about life,’ said his widow, Dabney, who married Zorthian in 1957. “He made my life quite marvelous.’
Zorthian’s health has been failing for the past several months. In early November, he hosted the coronation of the Doo Dah Queen at the Zorthian Ranch in Altadena. He spent most of the evening seated by the bonfire, watching delightedly as contestants stripped, flashed, danced and sang amid a festive atmosphere of music and alcohol.
He was admitted to the hospital shortly thereafter, and missed the Doo Dah Parade. He was readmitted on Saturday night, and died shortly after noon Tuesday of congestive heart failure.
“He was the most fun-loving madcap sprite I have ever known,’ said Pasadena spokeswoman Ann Erdman, who has been to many parties at the ranch over the past 10 years.
“Pasadena without Zorthian that doesn’t make any sense right now,’ said Tom Coston, director of the Light-Bringer Project, and coordinator of the Doo Dah Parade.
Funeral arrangements are pending. In addition to his wife, Zorthian is survived by a brother, Barry, five children, Barry, Seyburn, Toby, Alan and Alice, and several grandchildren.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blT1C-pyM7E&feature=related
The locally fabled yet relatively unknown Zorthian Ranch in Altadena served as the idyllic pastoral venue for Saturday’s New Los Angeles Folk Festival, a one-day event that brought together 28 bands and solo artists and included the emerging and established as well as the traditional and experimental from L.A.’s folk music scene and beyond to the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains.
The 45-acre ranch, home to eclectic artist Jiryar Zorthian until his death in 2004, was for decades a bohemian haven frequented by local celebrities, artists and musicians, but has sat largely neglected for the last few years. That wasn’t the case this weekend.
The lineup, which featured headliners Spindrift, Amanda Jo Williams, Frank Fairfield and Djinn Aquarian, offered traditional folk fare while challenging the notion of what defines the genre. “People talk about punk music as the DIY scene, the alternative scene, the underground scene, but I think this is just as important. And to me, folk and punk are almost the same thing, just remove some symbols,” festival founder Daiana Feuer said regarding the festival’s defiance of conventional parameters, one that extended to the location.
After a 10-minute hike up to the hillside retreat (for those who didn’t want to brave the precarious ride up the narrow road in the festival shuttle), attendees walked through the ranch’s vast sea of junkyard treasures, stopping to contemplate the numerous curiosities that filled the landscape from decrepit trucks and weathered midcentury farm equipment to purposeful installations that included Zorthian’s best known structure, an elephant constructed from burlap, rope, buckets and a fire hose, featuring a papier-mâché missionary’s head inside the animal’s stomach.
The rusted relics stood in stark contrast against an awe-inspiring panoramic view of surrounding canyons as children slid down a giant water slide and splashed in the ranch pool. Small crowds of parents, aging hippies and young hipsters gathered around the festival’s four stages, which were spread throughout the ranch and naturally provided by the property itself.
Performers led by local experimental artist Nicole Disson, dressed in a medley of overalls, velvet jackets, large-brimmed hats and feathers, dubbed themselves the “Zorthians” and spent the afternoon playing practical jokes on visitors as a welcome to the ranch. A horse corral, a chicken coup, llamas and goats completed the nostalgic rural setting, taking attendees back to a slower-paced, easier time where the deer and the antelope played, so to speak.
And that was just the mood Feuer was hoping to evoke by holding the event at the Zorthian Ranch. Now in her second year organizing the festival, which she co-founded with James Cartwright, Feuer sought to take attendees out of their daily lives by holding the musical celebration in an unusual setting. “I want to create experiences that feel like a mini-vacation but within Los Angeles,” Feuer said.
Psychedelic country fare from Spindrift and Stevenson Ranch Davidians was juxtaposed with the urban-folk sound of Emily Lacy and the pop-folk grooves of Radical Face. Legend Ruthann Friedman was followed by electronic composers and singer-songwriters Julia Holter and Ramona Gonzalez, a.k.a. Night Jewel.
“New folk, or what I call new folk, is experimental music,” Feuer said, “The female songwriters I have here, they use electronics, they use acoustic, they use objects. It’s not about doing anything old-time. It’s about making good music that brings people together. That’s how I would define folk music, music that really gives people that space to be themselves and to feel good.”
Echoing Feuer’s sentiment, musicians playing the festival seemed to embrace the genre’s evolutionary progression. “Folk music comes from people, for people so it’ll always change,” reflected Amanda Jo Williams, a local staple of the local country-folk scene. “It’s not an old thing. It’ll just ride along. It can be new and it can be future.”
The story of Buttonwood Winery originated many years ago when founder Betty Williams left her New Orleans home and moved west to California. She lived in Pasadena in Southern California and eventually earned a law degree from USC. She also married and raised a family of three children and became an expert horsewoman. At one point, Betty Williams chose to escape the rigors of hurried city life and was charmed by the exquisite bucolic ambiance of the nearby Santa Ynez Valley.
In 1968, Betty found a piece of land that suited her purpose and Buttonwood Farm became a reality. She chose the name Buttonwood (another name for the Sycamore tree) in homage to the number of trees that dotted her new property. Always on the eye for a good usage for the farm, Betty initially thought the property well suited for growing grapes, a belief at the time that wasn’t held by many in the area.
Meanwhile, Betty’s daughter Barry, a medical doctor, had married Bret Davenport, whose career involved personal business management and investment projects. At one point, Bret got together with Betty and his sister-in-law, Seyburn Zorthian, and the trio decided to begin planting vines on an unused mesa on Buttonwood Farm. That was in 1983, and three separate thirteen-acre parcels were put under vine to get the new business started.
http://www.goldmedalwineclub.com/newsletters/gold_series/newsletter_191.php
One of the curiosities in American cultural life is that for many of the East Coast intellectual publications, California is where the readers are. We traveled regularly to the coast for panels, seminars, and the cultivation of our subscribers and donors, and I often brought our leading lights to Solvang to meet Betty. Victor Navasky was her friend, as was Jonathan Schell, and I brought Christopher Hitchens around in the days when he was associated with the magazine.
But the landscape of our friendship was really the interior world of Buttonwood, a beautiful stretch of Santa Ynez horse country starting on the flat land fronting Alamo Pintado Road and riding to the crest of an adjoining ridge. It seems looking back that the grasses on those hills were always a tawny color, no matter the season. The scrub and live oaks that dot the open fields, and stand in their own shadow at the height of the day, are for me among the most distinctive features of the California coast. There were a number of these trees on Betty’s land. I think that at first she was raising quarter horses, but one day when we were walking across those hills surveying her land she announced she was going to plant a vineyard. I recall thinking that it would take years to develop a vineyard before it started producing wine, and how remarkable it was for a 65-year-old woman to declare such faith in the future.
I had a friend in New York publishing who kept a collection of photographs depicting parts of himself in pictures that featured other people he had known. His arm and Norman Mailer walking down a Manhattan street, for example. I always thought it was an amusing premise for a memoir, and it was also in a sense how I thought of myself in relation to Betty. Over the years we would leave the ranch for lunch or supper at one or other of her favorite places in the area, and she would tell me about a battle she was having with this or that local politician or environmental group. I don’t think I ever really got the full story, or if I did, by the time of my next visit I’d have lost the thread or the issue would have been resolved. She’d introduce me to people she knew in shops and restaurants, and although I retained impressions of the local places and personalities that made up her life I would struggle to make coherent sense of the snippets obtained from these encounters.
But once inside the circumscribed world of Buttonwood the memories are etched in vivid Technicolor. Always on arrival I would pull over in front of the building that housed the farm offices, to say hello to whoever was working there and take stock of the changes that had taken place since my last visit. There would be new horses, or a new herd of goats. The plantings would have changed, with blooming bushes or a new row of fruit trees. For years Betty continued to experiment with different strategies for the ideal use for the lower fields. Sandra and I had been market gardeners in upstate New York and far west Texas, and whenever Betty’s plan for this part of the ranch involved a crop or the production of organic vegetables we would spend a few hours on the elusive economics of the project.
But the change that transformed Buttonwood and dazzled the eye and the senses of the periodic visitor was the introduction of varietal grapes all long the fallow surfaces of the ridge. The vineyard added to its acreage each year, a new section of perfect symmetrical rows following the contours of the hillside. We would drive up from her house and stroll along the access roads or stop for a picnic at the edge of the pond. She was tall and had stayed thin and wore long-sleeved shirts and trousers, and as she walked between rows of meticulously planted and slowly maturing vines at the epicenter of one of the best-regarded wine producing regions of the world, she seemed unfazed that she had realized her dream.
Next to appear was a winery, and inside the vertical racks began to fill up with wooden barrels. Then stacks of white cardboard cases collected against the walls. And one year, impossibly, a new tasting room on the flats below the Buttonwood vineyard was brimming with visitors eager to sample the sauvignon blancs and the syrah roses from one of the celebrated winemakers of the Santa Ynez Valley.
Betty lives in my memory, implacable, curious, firm, mannered, just, Southern, practical, appreciative of gesture; a lover of words, aristocratic, egalitarian, private. Though I had just seen her and knew she was failing, I was grief-stricken by the news of her death, and by the end of such a long and cherished friendship. She occupied an important place in my life for so many years, always connected in my mind with that drive up from L.A., the pass at the top of the ridge overlooking that breathtaking valley — otherworldly for an easterner — the goings on alongside Alamo Pintado, those vine-covered hillsides, and the anticipation of an encounter with the sinewy, nimble, tough-hearted woman at the end of the long journey. I will miss her always.
The 2nd New Los Angeles Folk Festival is a fun filled day of music and entertainment taking place at Zorthian Ranch, a surreal hideaway at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains, just fifteen miles from downtown Los Angeles. Guests will follow a map across this 45 acre estate of junkyard treasures to experience live music on natural stages provided by this unusual property. This is a rare opportunity to visit Zorthian Ranch and see almost thirty bands that define what new folk music is all about.
Our Kickstarter goal brings us closer to making the Folk Fest possible. The more we raise to cover costs, the more event proceeds we’ll be able to donate to I Love Mountains, an organization dedicated to protecting mountains against mountaintop removal (ilovemountains.org). However, there are many obstacles associated with putting on a big show in an apocalyptically exotic setting. The Ranch has seen better days and we’re eager to apply some TLC to help restore some of its historic lustor.
We need your support to accomplish all this. Operating as a do-it-yourself entity has its excitement and its challenges, but the Folk Fest thrives because people want to see it flourish. Thank you for helping us preserve the art forms that bring people together!
About Zorthian Ranch:
Zorthian Ranch is a 45-acre mountainside retreat built by Jirayr Zorthian in 1945. It has horses, llamas, chickens, dogs, goats, and an overgrown yard. Up until Zorthian’s death, the ranch served as a haven of bohemian life and a backdrop for his artistic expression—salvaged wood, bed springs, rusted vehicles, broken concrete, movie set pieces, beer bottles, old props, more than one kitchen sink, and other junk he could recycle into various sculptures and architecture. He fortified rock walls with discarded telephone poles and railroad ties, tires, and bowling balls. He built towers, inlaid bridges, walkways, and built a pool on the side of the mountain. Jirayr hosted legendary parties attended by the famous and freaky, artists, musicians, nobel prize winning scientists, movie stars, playmates, writers, and kindly neighbors brought together for festivities host most describe as a bohemian Socrates wearing long red underwear who had women dressed up as nymphs dance around him for his birthday. A little research supports that his two favorite things in life were pigs and women, and the nymphs fed him grapes.
“As time went by and my forays up the mountain became more frequent, and under the influence of atmosphere and setting, I began to think of Zorthian as the genuine article: an authentic bohemian. I came to recognize that he was one of the few among us who was truly interesting. And slowly I began to understand that his entire life was being conducted as an ongoing work of performance art.” —The Last Bohemian, RIP
by Paul J, Karlstrom, L.A. Weekly
compliments to The New LA Folk Fest:
“The L.A. urban folk scene has slowly grown over the last decade from a cluster of mutual friends to a small community of bands to its own mini-alt-country music organization, The New Los Angeles Folk Festival.” —L.A. Times
“Everyone agreed that this night was special. It was more than just a concert. It felt like an experience. We were transported by the visuals and the music and the environment and the funny delivery of a story by the hostess…All this makes me look forward to anything The New L.A. Folk Fest does.”—L.A. Record
“Whomever organized all this…really had their shit together.”—StompBeast
“The New Los Angeles Folk Festival has been doing a fine job of bringing that wide-open spirit to the city.” —NBC Los Angeles
“The Los Angeles Folk Fest is doing some really cool and unique shows that are definitely worth checking out.”—Argot & Ochre
“LA’s freakiest folks…The New LA Folk Fest”—The Coachella Valley Art Scene
“It’s a beautiful thing for LA. Seems to be washing away a lot of the pretense that gives L.A. a bad name.” —RT N’ The 44’s, interviewed by The Red Alert
“The New LA Folk Fest…has been designed to mimic the effects of leave-in conditioner on your life…The bands selected represent the folky best of what’s happening in L.A. There are many among us drawn to voices reminiscent of ghosts and cartoons, toys and tap dancing and beards and congas.”—co-founder Daiana Feuer interviewed by OC Weekly
JIRAYR ZORTHIAN: I think, perhaps, it might be interesting for me to give you a slight — just a small history of it. You know, I’m from the East originally. Was born in Turkish Armenia. Came to this country when I was 12 to New Haven, Connecticut. Was educated there. Went through Yale school of Fine Arts. I won a fellowship to study there. And I won a fellowship to study in Europe. On my graduation – came back and did many, many murals throughout the country. Most of them in the East Coast. And, I was interrupted by the Second World War. I spent three and a half years in the Army. With my first wife, whom I married just before I got into the Army. She was from New Orleans. She, however, was educated in the East, Sarah Lawrence. And when the war ended, I had done enough long distance murals . . .
PAUL KARLSTROM: What do you mean by that?
JIRAYR ZORTHIAN: For instance, I did 11 murals for the [Tennessee]state capitol in Nashville in this studio in New York. And when they were finished, transported them over there and put them up. And I felt . . . I had never really acclimated myself to the East. And I always felt that if I was gonna be an American artist, I should go West. Go West, young man, go West. And, believe it or not, Betty and I chose . . .
PAUL KARLSTROM: Your wife’s name was Betty?
JIRAYR ZORTHIAN: Betty. That was this wife.
PAUL KARLSTROM: What was were maiden name?
JIRAYR ZORTHIAN: Her maiden name was Betty Williams.
PAUL KARLSTROM: Williams.
JIRAYR ZORTHIAN: She was from New Orleans from a very affluent family. She had 30 suitors after her. She was an heiress. But she and I started having children in the East and decided that we — first, one of the reasons I — we — got this place was — first, we didn’t trust supermarket food and we were very particular about what went into our children’s stomachs and we decided to have some land where we could grow our vegetables, our own — have our own chickens and slaughter our own animals, even though both of us had never done this before. And we bought 10 acres of land outside of San Antonio, Texas and I felt San Antonio was an excellent place for me to fulfill this idea I had of doing murals — it’s centrally located in the country. Now, for instance, if I wanted to do something for . . . and I loved Mexico, too, that was another reason. The southern part would have been Mexico, I could go to Mexico frequently. If I wanted to do something for Chicago, it was a short trip to Chicago. To New York, to San Francisco, to Los Angeles. However, my — as time went on, it was almost impossible to find a place in San Antonio to live. We lived in the East waiting for a place to even rent.
http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-jirayr-zorthian-12635
The mural placed in the post office by the federal government and done by Jirayr, H. Zorthian of New Haven, Conn. is now in place. It graces the west wall of the the public lobby. The scene is blended but readily separates into three panels representing periods of development from the coming of the white trader up to the Revolutionary period.
The left panel is a typical trading post scene in which the white trader is dealing with the Indians. There are a few trade goods but the principal commodity is that sure and effective liquid which was the base of all barter–the rum keg. Through an open window, a glimpse of the valley is given which is cleverly drawn to suggest Mohawk Valley landscape. This is true of the whole mural. Artist Zorthian spent enough time here last year to catch a clear impression of valley scenery. A touch of purple here and there shows that he did not overlook that peculiar color element which creeps in all along the distances here in the valley, growing in volume as the fall frosts appear. In the trading group are four Mohawk Indians, two sober, and two more or less jingled. A squaw is seen seated tipping the bottle with evident relish. His Mohawk Indian is faithfully executed. He did not make the mistake of incorporating Sioux Indians for Mohawks. The trader is well dressed as were the early traders who sought o impress the savages with their importance. Later the trader dressed more and more like the savages, but the first ones were in fact merchants from Albany.
In the center is a young mother and babe. Here again the artist escaped a popular pitfall. He did not dress his characters like New England Puritans. There were German immigrants and the sons and daughters of immigrants and their costumes, language and architecture bore the imprint of the Palatines of the Rhine Valley. A prominent group in the middle foregrounds consists of a land owner a Mohawk chief, a Dominie, a frontiersman and a Mohawk maid. The are discussing matters of policy in a peaceful and amicable manner. Here we have the distinctive difference in matters of Mohawk valley Indian and frontier policy. Our settlers bought their land and lived at peace with the Indians. They came in as settlers and not conquerors. They learned the Indian language and taught and preached to the Indians in their own language. One of the best friends of the whites was King Hendrick who lived at Indian Castle. His likeness was selected for the Indian in the picture. Back of this group the Mohawk Valley spreads out with its church and mill and stone fort in the distance. In the extreme right hand corner is that heart rending scene which so often was enacted in this bloody valley. The return of the young husband and wife to their destroyed home after the invasion of the enemy during the Revolution. Here stands the skeleton fireplace and chimney amid the burned ruins of the home which they had built with hope and happy dreams. A dead horse signifies the end of their hard earned property values. And a real touch of genius was the incorporation in the picture of the grave stones of Henry Klock and Christian Nellis, the earliest known graves of our pioneers.
The features for the various characters were found among the photographs in the St. Johnsville room at the Margaret Reaney Memorial Library. The artists has succeeded very well in creating a type suited to Mohawk Valley stock. On the whole the mural is well executed from a purely mechanical point of view. The artist is a master craftsman. But more than that he has caught the spirit and atmosphere of the Mohawk Valley, for which we are grateful. There is a notable absence of the “spiritual” and allegorical type of mural. The work is literal and adapted to the environment of St. Johnsville. And that is as it should be.
Artist Zorthian has done many murals and is making a name for himself. Some of his work is in the state house in Nashville and in the new Light Building in New Haven. His work was shown in color in a recent issue of Life magazine.
My Malibu Masterpiece
Posted on January 11, 2025 by Royal Rosamond Press
Capturing Beauty
My Malibu MasterpiEce: An Art Piece
by
John Presco
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
My childhood friend, Nancy Hamren Van Brasch took me to meet Jeryl Zorthian at his ranch in Altadena – that is still burning.He was working on a painting, and we had a brief conversation. We would live with his two daughter in a cimmune in San Francsisco called ‘The Idle Hands;.
It is 2:53 A.M. January 11, 2025. I awoke early with the notion the Zorthian family would like me to do a Fire Painting-Sculpture at the ranch. Below is a painting I did when I was sixteen, and a new arrival to LA. I understood I was living in a desert, and rendered our apartment building on Midvale – melting! The other buildings look like they have been destroyed by fire. A year later I drive up the coast past Malibu in a rain storm, park my car, and carry a canvas easel, and colors out to a grassy hill overlooking the sea, and do a painting in the rain that went with me when I hitchhiked to New York.
Days after Drew Taylor Rosamond Benton, died, I began a search for Rosemary’s jewelry box. I asked Damien Bosley if he had it. I was going to put Drew’s cremated remains in it. I want that box. I asked Shamus Dundon for it. He said my nieces were fighting over it. I believe he lied – as usual! He hid from the Bullhead Police.
Our childhood friend, describes my paintings as being “dark” in Rosamond’s bad biography. Today the lives of ten thousand people have all but been destroyed. Their grief is unfathomable. The image of the bleak lifeguard reminds me of the painting I did in the bachyard of Glendon of the duck hunting shack near the Bay Bridge in Oakland. Vic’s wife is standing on a barren hill – screaming at each other. Is that smoke coming their way. Dee-Dee chased my father around the house, and shot him in the back.
TO BE CONTINUED
WARNING! 4:34 AM…UCLA students have just been put on possible evacuation. No one is helping me. Casey Farrell is a parasite and cut off from me and all that is mine. He is trying to loot my family legacy. My aunt and uncle Rise went to UCLA. Vincent was my art patron.
Drew Benton Was On “Kill List”
Posted on September 26, 2024 by Royal Rosamond Press
Yesterday I communicated with someone who loved my niece. He was very respectful of my feelings – and privacy, Like me, he did not think much of Damien Bosley whose primary concern is for me to get authorization for him to come to the mortuary in person – and get Drew Benton’s death certificate! No matter what I said, he comes back to that DC. I just reread his text – before I had a sip of coffee. He says he’ll mail me anything I want. So far, he hasn’t mailed me a thing I asked for. When his brother called and told me Damien was clearing out my niece’s apartment, my mother’s jewelry box popped in my mind – like a vision! I had asked Drew’s cousin Shamus Dundon for the box when he asked if there was anything I wanted from his mother’s estate.
“Screw the jewelry box! Tell us about the “KILL LIST!“
Cameron Bosley told me Drew was……”hearing voices!” Daimen never mentioned the….”voices”.
“Shut up already about the voices. Are you going to tell us about the damn “KILL LIST”
Today is my late mother’s birthday. Rosemary Rita Rosamond, was the third girl born to Royal and Mary Magdalene Rosamond. When someone dies in your family all members of the immediate family come to mind. Damien and Cameron could care less. Drew co-signed a financial agreement, and Damien needs proof of death to get out of the contract. He’s promising me a lot. He even went down to the Morturary – and pounded on the door! He promises to spread Drew’s ashes at the place – she wanted them spread….IF I get him that DEATH CIRTIFICATE! Did Drew see the end of her life – was near?
What his kind, caring, and respectful friend of Drew told me, was that my niece went on leave from her job at Walmart, because she feared for her life. Two years earlier a fellow employee went to prison for making a “KILL LIST” and Drew’s name was – AT THE TOP! After getting out of prison, he stops by the store. A member of my family was utterly terrified something bad was going to happen – just before some truly awful happened to her! Why didn’t the Bosley Brothers tell me about Drew’s……
STALKER?
Why didn’t officer Holstrom mention DREW’S STALKER? Maybe Drew told me about the ex-convict? Maybe I knew the asshole? Perhaps he wanted something from Drew, and all she had to do was
COMPLY!
Here are The Family Names on Drew’s Death Certificate.
Drew Tylor Benton
Garth Benton
Christine Benton
John Presco
Drew saw Rosemary’s Jewelry box every time she came in the front door. Drew and Vicki Presco were roommates for several years. That’s a [photograph of Vicki and Drew peering over the top of the painting I did when I was sixteen. Drew’s cousin promised he would mail it to me – five years ago? I am still waiting for the mailman. And I’m still waiting for the police report from the Bullhead City Police Department, so I can read it, and KNOW who I should be WATCHING OUT FOR!
I did not ask for the name of Drew’s Stalker. Does he check in on her Facebook? Has he
CHECKED ME OUT? DOES HE KNOW WHERE I LIVE?
John Presco
President: Royal Rosamond Press
EXTRA! I can’t help but wonder aloud. THE KILL LIST consisted of employees of Walmart. Does Damien work at Walmart? Maybe THE STALKER wants proof Drew is dead, and is not faking it? Was there a story about Drew’s alleged suicide in the newspaper? How about in T.V.? Maybe Walmart has a motive for shutting down all dark rumors about………THE KILL LIST?
Are you hearing voices……..too?
EXTRA! EXTRA! Make THE VOICES….stop! Perhaps none of Drew’s relatives responded my niece’s death, because they knew all about THE KILL LIST.…And THE TRIAL! And, THE CONVICTION. And the threats to…..ALL MEMBERS OF DREW’S FAMILY?
Just thinking aloud!
Rosemary’s Jewelry Box
Posted on September 5, 2019 by Royal Rosamond Press
Here is my dead mother’s jewelry box that Shamus Dundon said Drew Benton and Shannon Rosamond are fighting over. Rosemary kept mementos from her four Children in it. There is nothing about her grandchildren.
Shamus did not call me and tell me my mother was dying. He was punishing me for asking questions about chasing lizards – when he said he had a headache! He ended up with Rosemary’s treasured Mustang. I didn’t get anything. Robby called and asked me if I wanted my painting. I had him send it to Vicki when I attempted to go foreward for the sake of my daughter and grandson. Heather was my Trustee. She and her lover called me a parasite because I get food stamps and SSI for my PTSD, and my Childhood Head Butting?
I asked Shamus for the Stuttmeister marriage certificate.
For a quarter of a century I have struggle in confusion to understand why my family does not know what a Artistic Legacy is. They see no value in my post on Joaquin Miller and Emma Hill that enhances Rosamond’s creative legacy – and my own! I told my Doctor I think my family is jealous of the two Creative siblings in their midst. Now I conclude they are greedy ingrates, savages, who need to claim all the shiny things they see, and eliminate The Shiny Ones. For sure, these are The Enemies of Art and Literature, and thus they have value. They are………The Perfect Examples!
John Presco
Copyright 2019
Family Treasures
Posted on April 21, 2016by Royal Rosamond Press
Here are some family treasures Vicki Presco owns. Included is the marriage certificate of Rudolph Stuttmeister. Instead of scanning it and making it available to the rest of the family, Vicki hoards it. She helped create our late sister’s imposter and art forger, and allows Stacey Pierrot to title herself ‘Caretaker’ which is like a ‘Curator’. Vicki showed me Christine’s autobiography that was kept from the public.
Rosemary kept her children’s achievements in her jewelry box. I did a painting of Midvale Avenue in Westwood when I was fifteen.
Jon Presco
Copyright 2016
The Getty Villa survived LA’s firestorms while the area around it burned, revealing a key lesson for homeowners
Jessica Orwig and Morgan McFall-Johnsen
Jan 9, 2025, 9:25 AM PSTShareSave
- The Palisades fire has burned thousands of acres in Los Angeles.
- Buildings in the area that have survived include the Getty Villa art museum in Pacific Palisades.
- The villa isn’t your average home, but homeowners can learn from the Getty staff’s fire prep.
The Palisades fire in California has burned through thousands of acres since breaking out Tuesday between Malibu and Santa Monica, but the iconic Getty Villa, which lay in its path, has remained standing with minor damage, even after homes and trees around it went up in flames.
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“We deeply appreciate the tireless work and dedication of the Los Angeles Fire Department, Los Angeles County Fire Department, and other agencies,” the museum said in a statement Wednesday morning.
The Getty Villa is part of the J. Paul Getty Trust, which includes the largest endowment of any museum in the world, estimated at more than $8 billion in 2023. It houses the trust’s collection of Ancient Greek and Roman art.
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Fire departments used “state-of-the-art air handling systems” to help protect the building, Katherine E. Fleming, the president and CEO of the Getty Trust, told USA Today.
Moreover, builders designed the galleries with double-walled construction, which also helped protect the precious art inside.
But it wasn’t just expensive architecture and state-of-the-art firefighting that helped. Getty staff members have been consistently clearing brush from the surrounding area all year as part of its fire-mitigation efforts, the museum said.
Moral Rights Art Preservation Law
Posted on October 4, 2011 by Royal Rosamond Press
Without a doubt, the muralist, Carl Morris, was infkuenced by my kinfolk, Thomas Hart Benton, whose cousin sued his freinds, Ann and gordon getty for painting over a murral he did for them in their home. Garth Benton worked nine months on the murrals he did for the Getty Villa, with the help of my niece, Shannon Benton, the daughter of my late sister, the world famous artist, Christine Rosamond.
Yesterday I talked with my sister Victoria about our niece, Drew Benton. Her father suffered a stroke a week ago, and may not be able to render more of his famous murals. We wondered if Drew would pick up the gauntlet when alas Garth lays down his brush.
I am seeking a legal opinion on whether it is moral and legal for murals rendered for public consumption, can be sold into private hands, especailly when the monies paid to the artist for his, or her efforts, was paid for by a Federal Program with express purpose of being enjoyed by the public in a public place. Until a legal decision can be reached, and or, a Federral Law passed to protect the moral intergrity of the Artist, and said Government Program, I highly suggest this pending sale be postponed. Morris’s murals represent the real history of other family members, John Fremont ‘The Pather Finder’ and his wife, Jessie Benton-Fremont who helped author the first journals of the Willameet Valley.
Garth Benton is the cousin of Thomas Hart Benton who was Jackson Pollock’s mentor. Senator Thomas Hart Benton was the Administrator of the Oregon Territory and sent Fremont to secure Orego from the British who had desings on it.
I am going to found an originzation of people who will oversee and preserve public murals that are imprissoned in vacant buildings waiting to be sold to the highest bidder, like a slave.
Our Founding Father’s founded a nation of thirteen states, that were colonized and improved upon by British and Dutch sujects of a king. The other thirty seven states were founded by Pioneers like my kinfolk who built a thousand cities without the help of any king, and any of his subjects! Kings and millionaire bankers have come to own much the world’s art. The Tea Party Fakeriots want to give them billions so they own that much more!
Oh sure, they will let us come see their art, but only if we have hat in hand, and are bowing at the knees!
Jon Presco
California Art Preservation Act
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The California Art Preservation Act is a 1979 California lawthat provides legal protection for artists’ moral rights. The law is currently codified at California Civil Code§987. The law has since been amended in part. The California Art Preservation Act was the first major law to specifically address artists’ rights in the United States.
Portions of the law may overlap with the provisions of the Visual Artists Rights Act, in which case the California law is preempted.
Content
The Art Preservation Act provides for civil penalties and injunctive relief for the intentional or grossly negligentdestruction or mutilation of a work of fine art, defined in the statuteas any original painting, sculpture, or drawing that is of “of recognized quality.” Fine art, as used in the law, does not include works prepared for commercial use by the purchaser.
The Act also provides artists the right to claim authorship and disavow modifications to works of fine art.
The rightsgranted under the act subsist for the life of the author plus 50 years.
See also
Kent Twitchell won the largest settlement ever under Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA) and CAPA for $1.1 million dollars against the US Government and 12 other defendants. His mural of Ed Ruscha was painted over without his knowledge or consent.
Visual Artists Rights Act
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Resident Scholarship at The Villa
Posted on June 20, 2023 by Royal Rosamond Press
I am working on two letters to Governor Newsom. I will ask if he can get me a honorary residenet scholarship at the Villa, being I am a high school drop-out.
John
Dear Governor Newsom.
The Getty Scholars Program supports researchers in advancing knowledge of the arts and humanities and producing cutting-edge scholarship that contributes to the understanding and preservation of cultural heritage. While in residence, scholars have the opportunity to spend significant time at one of the world’s premier art history collections while contributing to an international community committed to intellectual exploration and exchange. Scholars may be in residence at the Getty Center or Getty Villa.
The Getty Scholars Program at the Villa supports researchers in advancing knowledge of ancient arts and cultures through cutting-edge scholarship that contributes to the understanding and preservation of cultural heritage. While in residence, scholars have the opportunity to spend significant time at one of the world’s leading art collections, where they join an international community of scholars, staff, and visitors committed to intellectual exploration and exchange. Villa Scholars are in residence at the Getty Villa near Malibu, the site of the Getty Museum’s collection of Greek, Etruscan, and Roman art, antiquities conservation labs, and a research library dedicated to the ancient Mediterranean world.
Dear Governor Newsom. Today is June 19th. and I am inspired to make a proposal to you and the people of California, where I was born – during an amazing star-shower! Earlier today I made a proposal to Notre Dame de Namur asking for creative and just sanctuary, after learning more of my ancestors were dug up out their graves – and relocated. This has left me with deep and stressful feeling of impermanence that hurtles beyond the feelings of enlightenment I have enjoyed via literary meditation. I believe I own the largest blog in the world – that needs protection – too.
I am kin to John and Jesse Fremont who authored the first emancipation of slaves. John was the first candidate for the Republicans’ Abolitionist Party. I want to declare my candidacy for Republican President – but I don’t feel safe. I’m too poor to move. There is no room for bodyguards. This is why I’m asking for the immediate construction of a sound stone home like the one I found on the internet. The Fremonts had their Black Point home taken from them by the U.S. Military. There was a court case that compensated most of the offspring of homeowners, but the Fremont home was not one of them.
I would like to see a tower – with large clock – honoring the Forty-Eighters, and the German Turners who went South with the Union Army and helped defeat the Confederacy. I have uncovered some amazing history about the Getty family, that are my kin due to the marriage of Christopher Wilding to Aileen Getty I m kin to Ian Fleming. From this tower I will direct cyber warfare against Putin and his brain. Mark Twain was a frequent visitor to Black Point. Consider his story; A Connecticut Yankee at King Author’s Court. I will be the caretaker of the San Francisco Magic in the years I have left. This proposal will be a part of The Great Story.
John Presco
President: Royal Rosamond Press
Copyright 2023
The Villa J. Paul Getty Built but Never Saw
Ancient and modern history intertwine at the Getty Villa
KENNETH LAPATIN | APRIL 10, 2018 | 4 MIN READ
J. Paul Getty (at left) views a model of the Getty Villa at Sutton Place, his home in England, in 1971. The Getty Research Institute, Institutional Archives.
Ironically, J. Paul Getty never saw the Getty Villa. He died two years after his museum opened to the public in January 1974 in a new building modeled on an ancient Roman luxury home. It was not until after Getty’s death in June 1976 that he returned from his estate in England to his “ranch” on the Pacific Coast: he is buried there at the edge of the property on a private plot overlooking the ocean, alongside his eldest and youngest sons, George and Timothy, both of whom predeceased him.
Following a renovation and reinstallation of the galleries, the Getty Villa opens a new chapter in its history. Although Getty never set eyes on his creation, the story of how he built the Villa and assembled his collection pervades the galleries even today. A suite of revamped rooms—Galleries 105 to 108—share this history. Featuring ancient works of art Getty bought himself along with archival documents, the new displays place the objects in their cultural contexts and shed light on Getty’s personal relationship to his museum and final resting place.
From a Ranch House to an Ancient Villa
Getty bought the 64-acre ranch—once part of the Rancho Boca de Santa Monica, an early-nineteenth-century 6,656-acre Mexican land grant—just after the end of World War II, intending it as a weekend retreat where his fifth wife Theodora (“Teddy”) could ride horses and he could display his growing art collection.
The Ranch House prior to renovation, between 1920 and 1945. The Getty Research Institute, Institutional Archives
He knew the area well, for he already owned a small house on the beach in nearby Santa Monica, just steps from the sprawling complex his friend and rival collector William Randolph Hearst had built for the actress Marion Davies. (The Davies estate is now the Annenberg Community Beach House, while Getty’s beach house has been replaced by a large modern condo complex, 270 Palisades Beach Road.)
After buying the property, Getty remodeled the low-slung “Ranch House,” adding a second story and several Spanish-style features. Although Getty left the United States permanently in 1951, leaving Teddy and their son Timmy behind, he continued to fill the Ranch House with works of art, and in 1954 it opened it to the public as the J. Paul Getty Museum.
Large antiquities gallery in the Getty Ranch House between 1957 and 1974. At the far end of the gallery stands the Lansdowne Hercules. The Getty Research Institute, Institutional Archives
Over time he added to the building to accommodate his growing collection, and by the late 1960s it needed to expand further. Getty’s architects drew up several proposals in a variety of styles—Spanish, European, and modern—all of which he rejected. Ultimately, he decided to construct a replica of the ancient Villa dei Papiri at Herculaeneum, which was buried in the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in AD 79.
Ancient and Modern History Meet
Several newly reinstalled galleries on the first floor of the Getty Villa feature objects that speak to both their ancient and modern histories. Gallery 105, known as the Hall of Colored Marbles, is dominated by a marble statue of Venus. Getty readily admitted that he “enjoyed the company of women,” and when the Villa first opened in 1974 an entire gallery was devoted to images of the goddess of love.
When planning the new display we therefore decided that the first of two built-in vitrines in this gallery would focus on representations of Venus in various media: terracotta, marble, and bronze. The smallest object in the case, a finely worked bronze head of the goddess, once attached to a larger figure, is remarkable for the preservation of a golden earring with a single pearl. Pearls were highly prized in antiquity, as they are today, and fetched vast prices.
The largest object in the case, a terracotta group of a Woman Reclining on a Couch with Cupids, is still more intriguing. It is the first “antiquity” that Getty purchased. In 1939, when he was in Rome courting Teddy, who was studying to be an opera singer, he placed a number of absentee bids on items being sold from an aristocratic collection in London. He was particularly interested in the tapestries, but on the same page of the auction catalogue as some of the objects he most desired was the listing for this terracotta. It was associated with similar ones found at the Greek site of Tanagra in the late nineteenth century. These artworks were popular among collectors for the vivacity of their compositions and the insights they seemed to provide into daily life in the ancient world.
Statuette of a Woman Reclining on a Couch with Cupids, 1875–90, probably made in Greece. Terracotta, pigment, and gold, 7 5/16 × 10 5/8 × 4 5/16 in. The J. Paul Getty Museum, 78.AK.38. Digital image courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program
Detail of J. Paul Getty’s personal copy of the Sotheby’s auction catalogue of items from Cam House, London. The Getty Research Institute
As with all his purchases, Getty was canny, seeking to get the best possible price. But his annotated auction catalogue, rediscovered in the collections of the Getty Research Institute library by former Getty Museum curatorial assistant Laure Marest-Caffey (now the Cornelius and Emily Vermeule Curator of Greek and Roman Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) reveals that Getty himself had doubts about its authenticity. In the margin beneath the entry he wrote, “modern?” The terracotta belonged to a venerable English collection, so Getty was willing to take a chance. His low bid of £10 prevailed, but his first antiquity turned out not to be an antiquity at all.
History on Display
This story and others about J. Paul Getty and the growth of his collections are told in an innovative display in Gallery 107. Building on the ongoing installation J. Paul Getty: Life and Legacy at the Getty Center, this interactive program, installed alongside some of Getty’s favorite ancient sculptures, allows visitors to explore hundreds of archival photographs, maps, graphs, and other resources relating to Getty’s family, business, travels, development of his collections, decision to build the Villa, and lasting legacy.
The Lansdowne Hercules, about A.D. 125, Roman. Marble, 76 3/16 × 30 1/2 × 28 3/4 in. The J. Paul Getty Museum, 70.AA.109. Pictured in the Temple of Hercules (Gallery 108).
Gallery 108, known as the Temple of Hercules, meanwhile appears much as it did before the reinstallation, but it now features improved lighting and a smaller seismic isolator underneath the famous statue of the Lansdowne Hercules. This change enables more of the splendid polychrome marble floor to show; it’s a replica of one of the first finds by well-diggers who discovered the Villa dei Papiri in 1750. The ancient villa is itself the focus of a newly installed cubiculum just off the Atrium, Gallery 101C, and it will be the subject of an international loan exhibition in the summer of 2019.
While Getty never visited his Villa, his legacy continues to endure. From his architectural choices to the objects he collected, his twentieth-century history blends with that of ancient times, yielding stories that captivate us even today.
Gavin Newsom For The Arts
Posted on May 12, 2021 by Royal Rosamond Press
On cue, Governor Gavin Newsom held a press conference and announced massive aide for the Homeless and The Arts. I had just sent my business proposal to the City Government of Belmont, who have no Arts Program that I am aware of. I had talked with a friend about getting Grace Slick to do paintings in Charlatan Square as part of my Cultural Package for the Belmont that needs to get the Governor’s attention, being, I am kin to Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor, as is Belmont Pioneer, Carl Janke. Michael Wilding married Aileen Getty, and thus Carl Janke is in the Getty Family Tree. This Getty Tree For The Arts adopted Gavin when he was a teenager. The J. Paul Getty father and son moved to England. Junior was Knighted by the Queen and was titled “Sir” after he became a British subject. Liz Taylor was Knighted by the Queen for her contribution to the Film Industry that made California great.
John Presco
President: Belmont Soda Works
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I Am American Avatar
Posted on March 2, 2024 by Royal Rosamond Press
Am American Avatar. AAA
Yesterday, Oregon Lawmakers…….
It is 10:21 and a minor miracle has just happened? I googled the Loading Zone song ‘No More Tears’ so that I can can compare it to ‘Heartache Following Me” and Revelations 21 came up. Wow!
Yesterday, I talked to Peter Shapiro, and Christine Wandel, who were born in Boston. They were lovers in College in 1965. I met them in 1967 when Keith Purvis, James Taylor, and myself moved into a large Victorian weeks after my death. Christine said my blue eyes glowed in the dark hallways, and members of the band ‘The Loading Zone’ were in awe of me.
I was considering going to India to find enlightened men who could tell me what happened to me – and repair me. Christine had to have me, and the amazing energy she felt. She came to my bed, naked, and I was no longer a virgin. I was twenty, and would be twenty-one in a few months.
I can only BEGIN to tell you this sex act complicated – EVERYTHING! We were banished to Mount Tamalpias. Hitch inking up from Stinson Beach, the song ‘The First Time’ played on the radio, Dan Brown made a billion dollars on a book and movie about Jesus-God having sex with Mary Magdalene. My grandmother is Mary Magdalene Rosamond. There is no name like it. Christine went on a tour of Europe with one of the laeding manufacturers of LSD, who was a good friend of Tim Scully, and Owsley. I found Rick’s website four days ago. Now – EVERYTHING can be told. Apparently IAM the Alpha and Omega. What does this mean? Timing is everything. It appears the End Time – has arrived. Shall I do Revelations, now. Or should I WAIT for the one who comes after me.
Sad eyed lady?
Below is a video of Rick talking about The Christ and the death of Meher Baba – who did not come back to life, even as Lazarus. My family and friends – are dying. They exist because their parents had sex. According to Three Seers, I own a IMAGE of my parents CREATING ME, just before I died and saw……THE KINGDOM OF TRUTH
Why me? I love playing chess. Twice I played chess with a man with a gun threatening to shoot my friends. Twice someone tried to shoot me, and their gun jammed.
The women I have loved. The women who have loved me. The Popes used to control armies with weapons. Rabbis condone the atrocities in Gaza. Pregnant women are borning children in the streets. Chapman speaks about the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, and is a prime reason Baba forbid forming a religions around him, and why Baba kept his mouth – shut!
God – Speaks? Oh momma! Is this really the end?
LIFE….What a _______ ordeal! I wish all who are alive, the very best!
Above is a image of GLORIA and I on Mount Tamalpias. We lived together for three years. She tolerated my love for Meher Baba. She was an agnostic.
John ‘The Nazarite’
EXTRA! I forgot what I wanted to say. Oregon has passed a law making soe drugs illegal again. I was living with the Zorthian sisters in a famous SF commune when LSD was made illegal. A year earlier I watch beautiful young women on a trampoline at the Zorthian Ranch, flying high to ‘Gloria’. The worlds love affair with LSD, and Marijuana – HAD BEGUN!
“Alpha – baby! Who made you – so free?”
“Tis a dream – within a dream! So, as all dream come t o an end…spell put her name, over and over again.” And know, women were finding God on LSD, and being the Goddess with their lovers. Goodbye to the idea of attainments. Why do we only hear the words of Dead Jesus when he admonishes Paul killing his devotees – and then makes him the head of his church? Are you kidding me!!! Any student of the Indian Religion knows this – IS BLOODY IMPOSSIBLE! Speak up! Stop hanging with the
BIG LIE!
OMG! I just noticed the cave on the beach in the movie ‘The Seventh Seal! Now do you believe me?
Revelation 21:4-6King James Version
4 And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.
5 And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful.
6 And he said unto me, It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely. Read full chapter
Gloria is the anglicized form of the Latin feminine given name gloriae (Latin pronunciation: [‘gloːria]), meaning immortal glory;[1] glory, fame, renown, praise, honor.[2]
The name, as Maria de Gloria, was in regular use in Spain by 1700, one of a number of Titles of Mary in use for Portuguese and Spanish girls. Maria de Gloria was a name often given to girls born around Easter.
Throughout His life, Avatar Meher Baba spent various periods of time in what He called “seclusion.” After 1958, Meher Baba discontinued His world travels and most public darshans (gatherings where He gave His followers His blessing in person)* as part of His seclusion.
Meher Baba withdrew into an increasingly strict seclusion for the purpose of what He called His “Universal Work.” While on occasion, He referred to the “strain” of His Universal Work, He rarely if ever explained what the work meant. This seclusion work continued throughout the 1960s.
The forms of His various periods of seclusion varied, but generally He asked for no correspondence or other contact from His followers. At times, His mandali or close disciples would also be in seclusion. This seclusion work, which often included fasting, was hard on His physical body.
“’In 1968, while doing his strenuous seclusion work in Guruprasad [in Pune, India], Baba said that listening to the music of Jim Reeves was his relaxation,” noted Mani S. Irani, Meher Baba’s sister and close disciple. “While Baba was having breakfast, we always began with ‘There’s a Heartache Following Me.’’” [1]
Jim Reeves Was One Of Meher Baba’s Favorite Western Recording Artists
One Meher Baba’s favorite Western recording artists was American country and western singer Jim Reeves (1923-1964).
“I am thirsty.”
Posted on February 25, 2012 by Royal Rosamond Press
The first words I spoke after I came back to life, after lying in my room for two days, was’
“I am thirsty. I would like a glass of water.”
Tim Scully’s sister had approached me, knelt, took my hand, and asked me what I wanted. Tim was a member of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, as was my friend who was with me when I died on a powerful dose of Orange Sunshine, of which I had an hour before taken another dose so I could get back into my body. There were about five members of the Brotherhood present who had heard of my death. I never met them.
When I took a few sips of water from the crystal goblet, I said this;
“With this water I swallow, I wash the drug LSD from my system, into my urinary track, and I need to use the toilet, where I will flush this drug into the sea, and dilute it, take it from you forever. The game is over.”
And I rose, and did just that. I purged Orange Sunshine from my body, and a movement I was a part of. Later, I would tell two young men who were preparing a batch of LSD for Europe;
“The cops are outside waiting for you.You’re going to get busted.”
Most of the Brotherhood got busted – after the powerful king-like entity that was inside me, rebuked them, with permission of the Lord of Truth I beheld on McClure’s Beach February 11, 1967. I was being asked to be a anti-war Messiah. The LSD I took, did not go with me where I saw my sisters adorned in the jewels of heaven. Back here on earth, I was adorned in precious jewels with wisdom beyond compare. LSD was doing damage to a very delicate God-consciousness that I have been attuned to most of my life. You can say this is where the Holy Spirit dwell, the Councilor.
In 1990 I was told by Seers that I go to the Cathedral of Souls while I sleep where I have a reserved seat at a great table. There is a hooded figure standing behind me.
We are not talking about God-Jesus, who was the embodiment of King David the Redeemer. He was just a man, the king of the Jews, and unto the Jews that was everything. The evangelicals are waiting for the Jews to restore the Kingdom of David so they will be saved. The core of their religion depends upon it. Meanwhile they wage war on Hippie. I laugh, because – I am Hippie! Am I in David’s family tree?
Peace – brother!
I have been asking folks whether Jesus established a Democracy, and no one has risen to this challenge. In a democracy we do not allow kings to rule over us. However – there is God and the Holy Spirit……………..the Gift of God!
When I lost everything, I was twenty years of age, and virgin. My new life, was impossible I began a sipriitual work – without rewards. My isolation has been exrtreme. I have been the scapegoat for a generation of sins. I turned many around, towards the ways of the Lord.
When I read the Bible for the first time, and Jesus’ last words “I am thirsty” I was in deep deep, water, and trouble. Who would believe that I have been touched by the soul of God?
I own one great fear, being, when it is time for me to die – I won’t die! For I have seen Heaven! And I have seen The Kingdom of God. It’s right here, under our feet! What a beautiful place, if we all allow God to rule our beautiful spirits. Be reborn – now!
After I purged alcohol from my system in 1987, I baptized myself in the McKenzie River after taking the vow of the Nazarite.
Jon the Nazarite
This phrase is interpreted by many Christians to mean that Jesus has existed for all eternity or that God is eternal. Many commentators and dictionaries ascribe the title “the alpha and the omega” to both God and to Christ.[6] Barnes’ Notes on the New Testament (1974) claims: “It cannot be absolutely certain that the writer meant to refer to the Lord Jesus specifically here … There is no real incongruity in supposing, also, that the writer here meant to refer to God as such.”[7] Most Christian denominations also teach that the title applies to God (Jesus, the Father and the Holy Spirit).
In Hebrew, the word emet (אמת, meaning “truth”), is referred to as the “Seal of God.”[8][9][10] [Cf. Isaiah 44:6[11]] The word is composed of the first, middle, and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet.
Stop Rendering Me The American Messiah!
Posted on January 1, 2023 by Royal Rosamond Press
Defying the Boston Mafia
Posted on February 12, 2014 by Royal Rosamond Press
He was a member of the Hitler Youth, which should have disqualified him from ever being Pope. For whatever he says about that time, he was certainly no Lichtenberg.
“Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas on Friday said landmark high court rulings that established gay rights and contraception rights should be reconsidered now that the federal right to abortion has been revoked.
Thomas wrote that those rulings “were demonstrably erroneous decisions.”
I did not believe in our democracy – until my attorney introduced me to the Mayor of Boston who shook my hand and said;
“It took a lot of guts to stand up those people!”
I had survived a hit by the Boston Mafia who paid two thugs to murder me. They killed a Labrador puppy – in my place. Then they came after me with bloody knives. I have been in therapy for two years dealing with my PTSD that is causing me to be VERY THIRSTY. We looked at my death on McClure’s Beach. Two days later a woman asked me what I wanted. I said this;
“I am thirsty. I would like a glass of water, please!”
My PTSD was triggered by my last post when I talk about MY THIRST.
In my theological novel in the works, I contend Jesus DID NOT DIE ON THE CROSS, but underwent a ritual Opera based upon Pslam 31. David took the Nazarite Vow – and so did his descendant, Jesus, who was very INCLUSIVE in the Four Gospels. But, when you get to Acts, you are introduced to the Religious Soap Opera of Saul-Paul – who is very EXCLUSIVE. He claims he tortured and murdered members of the first Christian church – then was forgiven BY JESUS – and INCLUDED AS AN EQUAL to the original Disciples. Paul – who never met Jesus – then EXCLUDES the Judaizers from becoming FOLLOWERS of the INCLUSIVE JESUS!
In the last thirty years we have heard THE FALSE ACCUSATION that the Liberal Left is trying to take Jesus away from believers, who were encouraged to become Republicans, so THE GRAND HEIST will be grounded in SECULAR REALITY.so the Liberal Left can be accused of trying to DESTROY THE CONSTITUTION, and keep Loyal American Christians from enjoying Democratic Freedoms. This is THE CORE SOAP OPERA of Ginni Thomas’ accusations. The Democrats are Evil People involved in The Great American Heist, that translates to million of Republican Christians, as..
“The Satanic Democrats are trying to ERASE THE AMERICAN HISTORY OF JESUS so our children will notworship him! Oh God – and the Supreme Court – HELP US!”
And lo the Supreme Court made The Hobby Lobby Law – for starters.
After repealing Roe vs Wade, Clarence Thomas gleefully did a victory dance by going after LGBTQ and contraceptive rights. Does Thomas know the U.S. sent troops to destroy a very EXCLUSIVE MONSTER who put homosexuals’ in concentration camps next to Jews, who were ruled Un-Followers of Jesus by the Nazi Catholic Leaders? The Catholics church is a product of Paul, and made a thousand laws in order to STOP people from being a believers, and EXCLUDE them if they do not believe – properly! American Christian Leaders are comparing the Democrats to the Communist followers of Stalin. This is why Ginni and her ilk own such an urgency to SAVE AMERICA FROM THE GREAT HEIST – that if successful, will result in Stalin-like Murder Squads, breaking down the door of churches. THE COUP IS NOT OVER, because it is…..RELIGIOUSLY MOTIVATED! The Christian Nationalists are a very EXCLUSIVE lot. They always have been.
Clarence Thomas minimalizes the ruling of Liberal Judges, while pushing the sick idea that Democrats hate Civil Rights, and are indeed like the Nazis in that they collectively conspired to make abortion legal, so more women will get an abortion- and murder the innocent unborn. Clarence and other Justices claim they are CONSERVATIVES as if this was a Papal Appointment. Here is a real Papal Appointment who was more than a conservative. He is pushing Democracy and Fair Treatment – FOR ALL – knowing it will get him MURDERED! I know no Leftist who wants to murder a Christian – even after being called dirty rotten traitors and thieves!
“He protested in person to Nazi officials against the arrest and killing of the sick and mentally ill, as well as the persecution of the Jews. At first, the Nazis dismissed the priest as a nuisance. Father Lichtenberg was warned that he was in danger of being arrested for his activities, but he continued nonetheless.[6]
In 1941, Lichtenberg protested against the involuntary euthanasia programme by way of a letter to the chief physician of the Reich, Minister of Public Health Leonardo Conti (1900-1945):
I died when I was twenty. There is an electrical energy around me in a photo taken when I was twenty-six. Below me is a pic of Pope Benedict who just dies – as a member of Nazi Youth – who believed Jews were INNHUMAN, as were Gypsies, and Homosexuals’.
Our Congress just made Judgements about Victimless Crimes, committed by Non-Perpetrators. Aborted babies can not be murdered, just as puppies can not be murdered. Religion has just gone up on trial – and there is not mention of this fact in the Jan.6 Com. Is that – intentional?
Two months ago I talked with my therapist here in Oregon about taking psilocybin as part of my therapy. i suspect Ginni Thomas has taken LSD. After OUR TRIAL, I will challenge Ginni to The Great White Acid Test, because, she and her ilk just put our Democracy through one – and the free world!
I suspect Ginni Thomas is seen as the Heir, or/and leading Disciple of Tim LaHaye who came to own a large Christian voting block who pray for the Rapture and End Time. I believe Trump knows this, and was told to keep the truth – A BIG SECRET – for the very reason, to REVEAL THE TRUTH, takes away their power. It is obvious to me – and others – Clarence Thomas and the Trump Justices – are ENHANCING the Rapture Base. Clarence – is enhancing his wife’s religious beliefs – and he may not be a Christian. If so – why is he doing it? I suspect Clarence has concluded the End Time Cult will take control of American History, and run it for many years. Clarence wants to be a big part of history. I believe this is JUDICIAL SUBTRAFUGE. In putting my case together, I would like to see my legal team press Ginni and Clarence to offer – SOME PROOF – there is a God. I have done so in my blog.
1. Deception used to achieve an end: tried to get her to sign the contract by subterfuge.
2. A deceptive stratagem or device: The meeting was a subterfuge to get him out of his office while it
was searched.
In regards to not rendering me a Messiah, or Savior, I believe….God’s hand is being forced! His will, will be done. Fear God!
It is 4:23 on January 1, 2023, and it is my ruling as a Nazarite Judge, that THE JEWS DID NOT MURDER JESUS, or contribute to his death, only his mock death – while the famous Jewish Choirs, sang…….PSALM 31…..after they sang Psalm 51
Jesus DID NOT DIE FOR EVERONE’S SINS! He underwent a ritual death in order to CLEANSE the office, the Dominion of the Jewish King. I am going to Copyright these two Psalms in regards to my book about the Nazarites, not that I want to take something for myself, but, to keep The Twisters of The Word from using it – to their own end!.The very important history our Congress has made a record of – forces my – and God;s hand. Timing – is everything!
This far, and no further ( as the choir sings) That Great Lie – has had its day.
John ‘The Nazarite Judge’
“Text exchanges with Meadows that were obtained by the January 6 Select Committee and reported by Woodward and Costa show the degree to which Ginni Thomas was all in for the Big Lie. In a November 10, 2020 text, for example, Justice Clarence Thomas’ wife told Meadows, “Help This Great President stand firm, Mark!!!…You are the leader, with him, who is standing for America’s constitutional governance at the precipice. The majority knows Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History.”
“Again, David pleads for cleansing. He asks the Lord to purge him with hyssop to make him clean and to wash him to make him whiter than snow. To purge meant to purify by removing a stain. Hyssop was a plant that the priests used in ceremonial cleansings. They dipped a bunch of hyssop in the blood of a sacrificial animal and then sprinkled the blood on the person who required cleansing. Leviticus 14:4–7 refers to the use of blood-dipped hyssop in sprinkling seven times the person who is to be cleansed of leprosy
“Later, knowing that all was now completed, and so that the Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, “I am thirsty.” 29 A jar of wine vinegar was there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant, and lifted it to Jesus’ lips.John 19:28-29″.
7Purify me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;
Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
8Make me to hear joy and gladness,
Let the bones which You have broken rejoice.
1Do not cast me away from Your presence
And do not take Your Holy Spirit from me.
12Restore to me the joy of Your salvation
And sustain me with a willing spirit.
13Then I will teach transgressors Your ways,
And sinners will be converted to You.
14Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, the God of my salvation;
Then my tongue will joyfully sing of Your righteousness.
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas on Friday said landmark high court rulings that established gay rights and contraception rights should be reconsidered now that the federal right to abortion has been revoked.
Thomas wrote that those rulings “were demonstrably erroneous decisions.”
The cases he mentioned are Griswold vs. Connecticut, the 1965 ruling in which the Supreme Court said married couples have the right to obtain contraceptives; Lawrence v. Texas, which in 2003 established the right to engage in private sexual acts; and the 2015 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, which said there is a right to same-sex marriage.
Thomas’ recommendation to reconsider that trio of decisions does not have the force of legal precedent, nor does it compel his colleagues on the Supreme Court to take the action he suggested.
But it is an implicit invitation to conservative lawmakers in individual states to pass legislation that might run afoul of the Supreme Court’s past decisions, with an eye toward having that court potentially reverse those rulings.
That is the tack conservative lawmakers took in multiple states, where for years they passed restrictive abortion laws in the hopes that a challenge to them would reach the Supreme Court and open the door for federal abortion rights to be overturned as a result.
Posted on January 6, 2014by Royal Rosamond Press
Who are the Magi, and why have they come to behold a infant born under a star? When one sees the Pharisees as being allied to Jesus – they putting him to a favorable test – then one must wonder if Jesus is a Parthian. If you replace the Pharisees with the Magi, who are presenting a Savior, the meaning of the name Jesus, then one sees the Magi were the earliest Christians whom Saul-Paul persecuted, he claiming he had papers to pursue these early followers into Damascus. How did Paul recognize them? Well, they had very large noses, and they may have been Scythians.
Jon Presco
“I am thirsty.”
Posted on February 25, 2012 by Royal Rosamond Press
The first words I spoke after I came back to life, after lying in my room for two days, was’
“I am thirsty. I would like a glass of water.”
Tim Scully’s sister had approached me, knelt, took my hand, and asked me what I wanted. Tim was a member of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, as was my friend who was with me when I died on a powerful dose of Orange Sunshine, of which I had an hour before taken another dose so I could get back into my body. There were about five members of the Brotherhood present who had heard of my death. I never met them.
When I took a few sips of water from the crystal goblet, I said this;
“With this water I swallow, I wash the drug LSD from my system, into my urinary track, and I need to use the toilet, where I will flush this drug into the sea, and dilute it, take it from you forever. The game is over.”
And I rose, and did just that. I purged Orange Sunshine from my body, and a movement I was a part of. Later, I would tell two young men who were preparing a batch of LSD for Europe;
“The cops are outside waiting for you.You’re going to get busted.”
Most of the Brotherhood got busted – after the powerful king-like entity that was inside me, rebuked them, with permission of the Lord of Truth I beheld on McClure’s Beach February 11, 1967. I was being asked to be a anti-war Messiah. The LSD I took, did not go with me where I saw my sisters adorned in the jewels of heaven. Back here on earth, I was adorned in precious jewels with wisdom beyond compare. LSD was doing damage to a very delicate God-consciousness that I have been attuned to most of my life. You can say this is where the Holy Spirit dwell, the Councilor.
In 1990 I was told by Seers that I go to the Cathedral of Souls while I sleep where I have a reserved seat at a great table. There is a hooded figure standing behind me.
We are not talking about God-Jesus, who was the embodiment of King David the Redeemer. He was just a man, the king of the Jews, and unto the Jews that was everything. The evangelicals are waiting for the Jews to restore the Kingdom of David so they will be saved. The core of their religion depends upon it. Meanwhile they wage war on Hippie. I laugh, because – I am Hippie! Am I in David’s family tree?
Peace – brother!
I have been asking folks whether Jesus established a Democracy, and no one has risen to this challenge. In a democracy we do not allow kings to rule over us. However – there is God and the Holy Spirit……………..the Gift of God!
When I lost everything, I was twenty years of age, and virgin. My new life, was impossible I began a sipriitual work – without rewards. My isolation has been exrtreme. I have been the scapegoat for a generation of sins. I turned many around, towards the ways of the Lord.
When I read the Bible for the first time, and Jesus’ last words “I am thirsty” I was in deep deep, water, and trouble. Who would believe that I have been touched by the soul of God?
I own one great fear, being, when it is time for me to die – I won’t die! For I have seen Heaven! And I have seen The Kingdom of God. It’s right here, under our feet! What a beautiful place, if we all allow God to rule our beautiful spirits. Be reborn – now!
After I purged alcohol from my system in 1987, I baptized myself in the McKenzie River after taking the vow of the Nazarite.
Jon the Nazarite
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The Hippie Mafia: Brotherhood of Eternal Love
By TheAllSeeingI | Published: January 25, 2011
Thirty nine years ago, the biggest raid that had ever been staged in America’s war on drugs took place when a task force of state, local and federal law enforcement agencies combined to take down a secretive group of hippie acid dealers and hashish smugglers known as the Brotherhood of Eternal Love. On August 5, 1972, cops in California, Oregon and Maui arrested dozens of people, sending an even larger group scattering around the world in pursuit of an underground life that in some cases lasted decades.
By then, the Brotherhood, better known among cops as the “Hippie Mafia,” had become America’s biggest hash smuggling network, with a direct pipeline to Kandahar, Afghanistan. They were also the country’s hardest-working distributors of LSD who even had their own trademark version of the mind-altering drug, Orange Sunshine. They operated their own storefront, Mystic Arts World, in Laguna Beach, where many members lived. After befriending ex-Harvard psychology professor Timothy Leary, they lured him to Laguna Canyon and later, to a mountain ranch in Idyllwild, California. Members, including the group’s charismatic leader, John Griggs, slept in tipis and ate vegetables from their own garden – all with the aim of creating a self-sustaining utopia.
That dream ended in August 1969 – the same month that saw Woodstock, the Manson murders and the first moon landing – when Griggs died of an overdose of synthetic psilocybin. By then, Leary had been busted for marijuana possession, and not long after Griggs died, he went to prison. That’s when the BEL pulled off one of the most spectacular stunts in American counterculture. They raised some cash and paid off the notorious anti-war radicals, the Weather Underground, to bust Leary out of prison and help him escape to Afghanistan, where he was finally arrested in 1973.
During the early 60’s Griggs and his crew were a gang of itinerant surfers, custom car enthusiasts, junkies and petty crooks known as The Street Sweepers. In ’66 they came into a stash of LSD (a substance they knew nothing about and which was ironically still legal at the time) through armed robbery. This would be the watershed moment: a week later Griggs “threw away his gun and was running around hollering, ‘This is it.’ That’s how it all began.”
Legally incorporated in 1966–ten days after LSD became illegal–in California, the tax-exempt organization declared a dedication “to bring to the world a greater awareness of God through the teachings of Jesus Christ, Rama-Krishnam Babaji, Paramahansa Yogananda, Mahatma Gandhi and all true prophets and apostles of God.” Some of their nascent ideology was reflective of Timothy Leary’s east coast League of Spiritual Discovery, but the BOEL were headquartered in Laguna Beach, California, “a sleepy little township and artists colony and resort thirty miles south of Los Angeles.” As for membership, “there were no fixed rules for joining; no name signing or ritual. But there was one basic rule among the Brothers–they believed in taking as much of the psychedelics as possible, the largest doses of LSD they could buy.”
“There was a lot of grass and there was a vibe that you could make it with love and digging each other. It was cheap and it was fun. You know the bond, the thing that tied us up together was surfing and dope and balling.” The focus went from grass to LSD and large quantities of hash rather quickly, it seems, and before long, a “hippie mafia” (as it was labeled by local law authorities and then Rolling Stone magazine) was in effect. But before then, for just just a couple years, the Brotherhood were at the center of “a Haight-Ashbury on the sea.”
The Brotherhood’s products/sacraments did not stay free for long. Linked with (in)famous Grateful Dead-associated LSD (al)chemist Owsley Stanley up in San Francisco, and with Leary on the east coast, the Brotherhood’s operations got grandiose and risky. Cash was everywhere, ranches were bought, surfboards full of hash were made and mailed around the world, an infamously incoherent Jimi Hendrix film was financed, and at one point a tentative offer was tendered to the government of France to buy a tiny Pacific French island to become “the world’s first independent state based on LSD.” Timothy Leary’s son, at a Laguna Brotherhood gathering, torched one of many $1000 bills, and when Leary called to apologize for his offspring’s behavior, he was told “Hey, Uncle Tim, we all wanted to burn a thousand-dollar bill. It was a great thing he did, very enlightening.”
Legal authorities were not so enlightened or amused. In Laguna Beach–which sits in Republican stronghold Orange County, just up the coast from Nixon’s West Coast White House–longhairs started to get busted for just being there, and suspicions were aroused by the presence of money and Leary. Still, the Brotherhood funded Leary’s famous escape from California prison and supported him with an extra $25,000 while he was the exiled guest/hostage of Eldridge Cleaver in Algeria. State, Federal and and international investigations got underway as well. Mystic Arts World burnt to the ground in a 1970 fire widely viewed as arson that was approved, if not committed, by local authorities. By the time a couple of founding leaders has overdosed or been arrested (including Leary, who turned out to be more liability than leader) trouble was everywhere for the Brothers. A big bust became pretty much inevitable, and in 1972 it came. “Between 1966 and 1971 the Brotherhood was virtually untouchable, but in the course of the investigation 750 members had been identified in a business the IRS estimated to be worth $200 million.” Such estimates tend to be inflated, but no matter, the BOEL Corporation was assessed over $70 million in back taxes. Which seems odd to me considering the feds had already granted them tax exempt status, but whatever. Members rolled over and turned one another in to avoid doing time. A government report estimated that the Brotherhood was held responsible for 50% of all the LSD and hash to be found in the United States.
By then much of the illegal activity had shifted to Europe, as personified by a mysterious figure named Ronald Stark, who flitted around the world under various false identities (multiple fake passports were a Brotherhood specialty). Still even the more professional gangster types couldn’t survive the crushing weight of indictments nor the near religious zeal the authorities exhibited in their pursuit. It wasn’t long before the Brotherhood was gone: dead, in prison or scattered to the wind, on the lam in the far flung areas of the globe.
King Jesus Was a Nazarite
Posted on February 25, 2012 by Royal Rosamond Press
In Mark 14:22–25 Jesus indicated he took the Nazirite vow when he said, “Verily I say unto you, I will drink no more of the fruit of the vine, until that day that I drink it new in the kingdom of God.”
Scholars have puzzled why Jesus submitted to John the Baptist for baptism if he was born without sin. I believe he did so to purify his lineage from King David that the Jews had come to believe had become corrupted due to Roman rule in Judea. While on the cross, Jesus is purged with hyssop plant put in the jar of vinegar that has been prepared for what appears to be a ritual crucifixion, that has much to do with Psalm 51 authored by King David.
“Later, knowing that all was now completed, and so that the Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, “I am thirsty.” 29 A jar of wine vinegar was there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant, and lifted it to Jesus’ lips.John 19:28-29″
What scriptures are fulfilled? Was not a board nailed above Jesus’ head that read ‘King of the Jews’? He knew this ritual of the new heaven snd earth awaited him at the end of his life, where he would break his Nazarite vow by ingesting a grape product, vinigar, mixed with hyssop.
Jon the Nazarite
Copyright 2012
7Purify me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;
Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
8Make me to hear joy and gladness,
Let the bones which You have broken rejoice.
1Do not cast me away from Your presence
And do not take Your Holy Spirit from me.
12Restore to me the joy of Your salvation
And sustain me with a willing spirit.
13Then I will teach transgressors Your ways,
And sinners will be converted to You.
14Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, the God of my salvation;
Then my tongue will joyfully sing of Your righteousness.
Hyssop is also often used to fill the Catholic ceremonial Aspergillum, which the priest dips into a bowl of holy water, and sprinkles onto the congregation to bless them. To wit, the invocation in the Psalm Miserere states Thou shalt purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean:. However, researchers have suggested that the Biblical accounts refer not to the plant currently known as hyssop but rather to one of a number of different herbs.”[15][16]
The Announcement of John’s Birth
The Announcement of Jesus’ Birth
The angel Gabriel appeared to Zechariah to tell of a miraculous birth: Luke 1:11
The angel Gabriel appears to Mary to tell of a miraculous birth: Luke 1:26-27
Gabriel tells Zechariah, Zechariah, do not be afraid, for your prayer has been heard. Luke 1:13
Gabriel tells Mary, Mary, do not be afraid; you have won God’s favor. Luke 1:30
Gabriel announces the name of the child, …and you shall name him John Luke 1:13
Gabriel announces the name of the child, …and you must name him Jesus Luke 1:31
Gabriel announces the mission of the child, even from his mother’s womb he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, and he will bring back many of the Israelites to the Lord their God…preparing for the Lord a people fit for him. Luke 1:15-17
Gabriel announces the mission of the child, He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David; he will rule over the House of Jacob forever and his reign will have no end. Luke 1:32-33
Zechariah expresses disbelief and is rebuked, Zechariah said to the angel, ‘How can I know this? I am an old man…The angel replied…’Look, since you do not believe my words….you will be silenced..’ Luke 1:18-20
Mary expresses concern and is assured, ‘But how can this come about, since I have no knowledge of man?’ The angel answered, ‘The Holy Spirit will com upon you, and the power of the Most High will over you with its shadow. And so the child will be holy and will be called Son of God.’ Luke 1:34-36
John is born: The time came for Elizabeth to have her child, and she gave birth to a son… Luke 1:57
Jesus is born: …the time came for her to have her child, and she gave birth of a son, her first-born. Luke 2:6
John is circumcised and named on the 8th day: Now it happened that on the eighth day they came to circumcise the child; … ‘he is to be called John.’ Luke 1:59-60
Jesus is circumcised on the 8th day: When the eighth day came and the child was to be circumcised, they gave him the name Jesus, the name the angel had given him before his conception. Luke 2:21
Zechariah speaks the prophecy of the Benedictus in Luke 1:67-79
Mary speaks the prophecy of the Magnificat in Luke 1:47-55
John’s birth story conclusion: …the child grew up and his spirit grew strong. Luke 1:80
Jesus’ birth story conclusion: And as the child grew to maturity, he was filled with wisdom, and God’s favor was with him. Luke 2:40
. WHY DID JOHN BAPTIZE JESUS?
John baptized for repentance (Matthew 3:11). Since Jesus was supposedly without sin, he had nothing to repent of. The fact that he was baptized by John has always been an embarrassment to the church. The gospels offer no explanation for Jesus’ baptism, apart from the meaningless explanation given in Matthew 3:14-15 “to fulfill all righteousness.” Other passages, which indicate that Jesus did not consider himself sinless, are also an embarrassment to the church (Mark 10:18, Luke 18:19).
Luke, who claims to be chronological (Luke 1:3), tries to give the impression that John did not baptize Jesus. Luke’s account of Jesus’ baptism occurs after the account of John’s imprisonment (Luke 3:20-21).
C. WHY DIDN’T JOHN THE BAPTIST BECOME A FOLLOWER OF JESUS?
If John knew that Jesus was the son of God, why didn’t he become a disciple of Jesus? And why didn’t all, or even most, of John’s disciples become Jesus’ disciples? Most of John’s disciples remained loyal to him, even after his death, and a sect of his followers persisted for centuries.
The gospel writers were forced to include Jesus’ baptism in their gospels so that they could play it down. They could not ignore it because John’s followers and other Jews who knew of Jesus’ baptism were using the fact of his baptism to challenge the idea that Jesus was the sinless son of God. The gospel writers went to great pains to invent events that showed John as being subordinate to Jesus.
This vow required the man or woman to observe the following:
Abstain from wine, wine vinegar, grapes, raisins;
Refrain from cutting the hair on one’s head;
Avoid corpses and graves, even those of family members, and any structure which contains such.
It is also forbidden for the nazirite to have grape or grape derivatives, even if they are not alcoholic. According to Rabbinical interpretation, there is no prohibition for the nazirite to drink alcoholic beverages not derived from grapes.[18] According to non-Rabbinical interpretation, a Nazirite is forbidden to consume any alcohol, and vinegar from such alcohol, regardless of its source.[19] The laws of wine or grapes mixing in other food is similar to other dietary laws that apply to all Jews.[20]
The practice of a nazirite vow is part of the ambiguity of the Greek term “Nazarene”[33] that appears in the New Testament; the sacrifice of a lamb and the offering of bread does suggest a relationship with Christian symbolism (then again, these are the two most frequent offerings prescribed in Leviticus, so no definitive conclusions can be drawn). While a saying in (Matthew 11:18–19 and Luke 7:33–35) attributed to Jesus makes it doubtful that he, reported to be “a winebibber”, was a nazirite during his ministry, the verse ends with the curious statement, “But wisdom is justified of all her children”. The advocation of the ritual consumption of wine as part of the Eucharist, the tevilah in Mark 14:22–25 indicated he kept this aspect of the nazirite vow when Jesus said, “Verily I say unto you, I will drink no more of the fruit of the vine, until that day that I drink it new in the kingdom of God.” The ritual with which Jesus commenced his ministry (recorded via Greek as “Baptism”) and his vow in Mark 14:25 and Luke 22:15–18 at the end of his ministry, do respectively reflect the final and initial steps (purification by immersion in water and abstaining from wine) inherent in a Nazirite vow. These passages may indicate that Jesus intended to identify himself as a Nazirite (“not drinking the fruit of vine”) before his crucifixion.[34]
Luke the Evangelist clearly was aware that wine was forbidden in this practice, for the angel (Luke 1:13–15) that announces the birth of John the Baptist foretells that “he shall be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink; and he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother’s womb”, in other words, a nazirite from birth, the implication being that John had taken a lifelong nazirite vow.[35]
Later, knowing that all was now completed, and so that the Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, “I am thirsty.” 29 A jar of wine vinegar was there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant, and lifted it to Jesus’ lips.
John 19:28-29
When he had received the drink, Jesus said, “It is finished.” With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.
John 19:30
Jesus called out with a loud voice, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” When he had said this, he breathed his last.
Luke 23:46
Jesus’ drink of vinegar
Matthew 27:34
There they offered Jesus wine to drink, mixed with gall; but after tasting it, he refused to drink it.
Matthew 27:47-50
When some of those standing there heard this, they said, “He’s calling Elijah.”
Immediately one of them ran and got a sponge. He filled it with wine vinegar, put it on a stick, and offered it to Jesus to drink. The rest said, “Now leave him alone. Let’s see if Elijah comes to save him.”
And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit.
Mark 15:23
Then they offered him wine mixed with myrrh, but he did not take it.
Mark 15:35-37
When some of those standing near heard this, they said, “Listen, he’s calling Elijah.”
One man ran, filled a sponge with wine vinegar, put it on a stick, and offered it to Jesus to drink. “Now leave him alone. Let’s see if Elijah comes to take him down,” he said.
With a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last.
John 19:28-30
Later, knowing that all was now completed, and so that the Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, “I am thirsty.” A jar of wine vinegar was there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant, and lifted it to Jesus’ lips. When he had received the drink, Jesus said, “It is finished.” With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.
Hyssop is also often used to fill the Catholic ceremonial Aspergillum, which the priest dips into a bowl of holy water, and sprinkles onto the congregation to bless them. To wit, the invocation in the Psalm Miserere states Thou shalt purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean:. However, researchers have suggested that the Biblical accounts refer not to the plant currently known as hyssop but rather to one of a number of different herbs.”[15][16]
Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.
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New American Standard Bible
7Purify me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;
Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
8Make me to hear joy and gladness,
Let the bones which You have broken rejoice.
9Hide Your face from my sins
And blot out all my iniquities.
10Create in me a clean heart, O God,
And renew a steadfast spirit within me.
11Do not cast me away from Your presence
And do not take Your Holy Spirit from me.
12Restore to me the joy of Your salvation
And sustain me with a willing spirit.
13Then I will teach transgressors Your ways,
And sinners will be converted to You.
14Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, the God of my salvation;
Then my tongue will joyfully sing of Your righteousness.
15O Lord, open my lips,
That my mouth may declare Your praise.
16For You do not delight in sacrifice, otherwise I would give it;
You are not pleased with burnt offering.
17The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
A broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.
18By Your favor do good to Zion;
Build the walls of Jerusalem.
19Then You will delight in righteous sacrifices,
In burnt offering and whole burnt offering;
Then young bulls will be offered on Your altar.
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