Uploaded by Cali, Documentaion sent by Robert O. Zimmerman. American Illustrated History of The Hermit of the Wissahickon Johannes Kelpious and the Chapter of the Perfection….. Including Johan Jakob Zimmerman 1642 By Ernest Schell Not long after William Penn founded Pennsylvania as a haven for the persecuted, a group of Devout Peiests came from Germany to settle in the Wissahickon woods near Philadelphia and await the end of the world ( which was the theory J.J. Zimmerman had to save his Family and Friends, He was responsible for obtaining the funds and voyage and land in the America’s, but he died in Rotterdam Holland,. Before the ship sailed. Leaving a wife and four children on the trip.) Dressed in white robes and calling themselves “The Chapter of Perfection”, this band of Forty men practiced a variety of mystical and cabalistic rites adapted from the ROSICRUSIONS and the Essents of Antient Syria. They spent their days in solitary study and communal prayer, taught mathmatics, astronomy, music, and religion to the peple of nearby Germantown, practiced medicine, and gained a wide reputation as seers and clairvoyance. Living on in both fiction and folklore, this early Utopian community was one of the most fasinating religious experiments in early America. The leader of this Mysticical company when it came to America was a young man named Johannes Kelpious, Small, thin, nervous, with a beatific face rendered odd by a paralyzed eyelid, Kelpiuos was born Romanian provice of Transylvania in 1673, the son of a clergyman( so he was cir 21 years Old when he arrived.) He Graduated from the University of Altdorf at the age of 16, master of five languages and a brilliant young philosopher and theologian. Within a year of his graduation , however, Kelpious abandoned his fledging carreer as a scholar to join a theosophical community of teachers headed by Johan Jacob Zimmerman, a former Luthran Preacher, turned mystic who prophesied the imminant approach to Armageddon. Zimmerman in preperation for the Final Event, that he calculated would come in the Fall of 1694(Looks like the signs where there back then too} Zimmerman had formed the nonsectarian Chapter of Perfection to contemplate the infinity of God., the one perfect thought. Those who reached highest degree of devotion where known as perfect, Hence the name. The Biblical Book of Revalation, Chapter Twelve, tells of the flight into the wilderness of a symbolic woman, “clothed with sun, with the moon under the feet, an on her head a crown of Twelve stars”. Taking this text as a guide, Zimmerman proposed that the followers make their pilgrimage to the Wilderness. Since William Penn was employing a number of agents to travel through Germany at this time to attract settlers to his New Colony, it is not at all surprising that Zimmerman soon planned to lead his Chapter of Perfection to a new home in Pennsylvania One of Penn’s agents granted them 2,400 acres of land at a nominal rent, and even offered them a ship for passage. Unfortunately Zimmerman never made it to Penn’s Woods. After leading the group on foot to Rotterdam where they were to board ship. Zimmerman died in Aug. 1693, at the age of forty-nine., Which makes him cir 1644, assuming he had his Birthday the year he died. Kelpious, the most brilliant of the remaining Peists, was quickly chosen as the next leader, and the group sailed the next day, only to be detained in London for six month’s by bad weather and the dangers of the sea during King William’s War. It was Feb. 1694 when the froup finally departed to the New World. Though the Piests had been persecuted for practicing occult rituals, Kelpious, like many other religious pilgrims headed for America, believe that his was an exalted mission rather than a flight from oppression. “Unto whatever land I come,” he wrote in his journal,” I come to my own. There is no Banishment, every country is my country and every where , there is good”. When the Peists reached Philadelphia on the evening of June 23rd 1694, they staged a jubilant celebration at Fairmount on the out skirts of the city to commemorate their arrival, observe the rites, observe the rites of St. John’s Eve, and mark the summer soltice. Huge bonfires blazed on the hillside as Kelpious and his Brethren chanted their prayers. The next day the Peists marched to Germantown, their procession attracting the attention of the local populace they made their way dressed in the habits of the Mystic and the monk. Each carried his few possessions in a sack on his back as Kelpious with Staff in hand, led the brethren to their new home. In Germantown their neighbors, struck by vision of the Biblical verses that had inspired the Peists’s Pilgrimage dubbed “The Society of the Women in the Wilderness”, a name the mystics themselves never used. Some also reffered to them as “The Hermits of the Wissahikon or “Hermits of the Ridge”, after that the woods are where they settled and the prominent hill that runs through it. The Peists new home was set in a wild and imposing countryside in the middle of one of the most beautiful and charming woodlands in the American Colonies. A combination of two Indian words meaning “colored stream “ and “Catfish Creek”, Wissahickon design designates both the woods and the stream that winds it’s way along the bottom of the ridge. >From their settlement atop the hill the Brethren could look down upon the flowing waters 200 feet below, and survey the deep gorges and wooden hills that surrounded them. Years later when English Travelor, Fanny Kemble , visited Pennsylvania, she was Struck by the Awesome splendor of the Wissahickon, Poets Through the years have sung it’s praises. The peripatetic, Karl Baedeker called the region “a miniature Alpine gorge” and it remains the same today, one of the most lovely wooded valleys in the country. The Peist Home on the Ridge was an imposing square log structure called the “Tabernacle,” built with dimensions in multiples of four, a number supposed to have deep mystical significance. Forty Feet long on each side, it contained a large assembly room, a school room, and forty tiny cells for the forty members of the community. Those who entered on the door in the south wall faced a large Iron cross on the opposite end of the main hall. Four large windows let light in from the west, while the East wall had neither window nor doors. On the roof the brethren installed an observation platform where each night they scanned the heavens for signs and portents of the expectation of the Millenium, making this the first astronomical observatory in the colonies. Crowning the observatory was an iron cross within a circle, the mystic sign of Rosicrusian order, an iron sentry that over looked the tree tops to catch the first rays of The morning sun. In the hillside nearby there was a small dugout cave lined with limestone blocks that Kelpious used as his own private cell for meditation and prayer. This damp and dismal sanctuary measured 16 feet long, 8 feet high and eight feet wide, with a doorway forty inches wide.( all multiples of four, of course). When not engaged in prayer, Kelpious sometimes used the cave to conduct experiments in alchemy, or to compose Hymns and songs. A collection of his religious music was , in fact, one of the earliest hymnals published in Pennsylvania. Other Peists were also musically adept, playing the Viol and the trumpet, and they too composed music that was published and widely distributed. The Chapter of Perfection was entirely self sufficient, cultivating Indian corn, and tending an orchard to supply food. Herbs and spices where used in their Mystical ceremonies were grown in what is believed to be the first botanical garden in North America, tended by one of the Peists in nearby Germantown. Though they devoted much of their day to meditation and prayer, the brethren also spent time (when not caring for their crops) at a variety of practical or esoteric pursuits. The most popular was conducting classes in religious instruction in the morning and evening, well attended by both children and adults from Germantown and other nearby settlements. Skilled in medicinal applications of herbs, brethren were often sought to administer cures for the sick, and they occasionally ventured forth on their own to spread their teachings. Nearby settlers were also attracted to the Tabernacle by the lure of the occult. Many came to have their fortunes read or procure amulets or talismans to ward off assorted ills and dangers, or to bring good luck. Aside from dabbling in alchemy, some of the mystics experimented with divining rods, faith healing, and even clairvoyance, all intensely appealing to colonists in the area, though they were sometimes frightened by them. One of the most famous stories chronicling the Peiest’ occult powers told of a distraught wife of a sea captain who came to seek news of her long-awaited husband from Conrad Matthai, one of the mystics. A Christ –like figure with long wavy hair and a flowing beard, Matthai went into a ghostly trance, then reawakened to inform the woman that he had just spoken with the captian in a London coffe house. Her husband, he said, assured her that he would be home within three months. The prediction was not only accurate, but ended in a startling verification. The captain, brought to Matthai by the grateful wife, identified the mystic as the very man he had met three months earlier and instructed to send home a message! ________________________________________________________________ YOU'RE PAYING TOO MUCH FOR THE INTERNET! Juno now offers FREE Internet Access! Try it today - there's no risk! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/tagj.