THE TIMES-UNION

Albany, New York, U.S.A.

6 December 1928

(page 3)

DUKE DIRECTS MYSTIC CULT

RITES FOR N.Y. SOCIETY.

CEREMONY IN PIT IS FEATURE.

Staten Island brows are raised these days in high half-circles. Expressions of amazement are graven on the features of the good burghers of Richmond county. They have stumbled upon a unique and exotic cult, the cryptic symbols and mystic rites of which have impelled them to wonder whether the institution is nobody’s business or everybody’s business.

High in its councils is a woman whose proudest reminiscence is her close friendship with Ruth St. Denis and the late Isadora Duncan. Among the hundreds who have attended the festivals of the institution are Isobel and Peggy Stone, daughters of a former Governor of Pennsylvania.

That the organization has chosen as part of its elongated and diversified name the words “Order of the Rose” has called to mind the sensationally sinister cult of similar name founded here and abroad by Aleister Crowley, the devil-worshiper, who inveigled many into depravity and was driven from one land to another because of his orgiastic revels. His pagan rites were founded on the ancient practices of the Rosicrucian Order and the Gnostics.

MYSTIC RITES RUMORED.

Nothing of this nature has been disclosed in the Staten Island cult. There have been persistent reports, none the less, of a resplendent throne room, of the reeking of incense and the practice of mystic rites.

An investigator was apprised at the cult’s home in Arrochar that it isn’t a five-cent cigar this country needs. The trouble, he learned, is there are too many five-cent cigars and too many of the kind of folk that like five-cent cigars.

Draw a long breath and take it from Major-General County Broens-Trupp Cherep–Spiridovich, Duke of St. Seba, N.P., G.C.P., G.C.S.S., or, if you prefer, take it from the Acting High Commissioner College of Arms of Canada of the Order of the Rose of the Union of American Noblesse and Plenipotentiary of the Sovereign of the Royal Order of Piast——

PLANS TO DIRECT U.S.

The man whose name is lost in the sinuous coilings of the alphabet has announced he is the somebody who is going to do something. For one thing, he plans to create an American aristocracy. It will take over the direction of the American nation and invest it with enlightenment and culture and remove the soot of its present begrimed estate.

He is a poise of mastery. He is a poem of regal carriage. His stride is a strut, his nod is deigning gesture. His hands clasp in Napoleonic clinch. His furrowed brow is serried deep with the burdens of responsibility.

His purpose, in program announcements sent forth each week, is to foregather “harmonious people.” The Stone sisters, Isobel and Peggy, have been found harmonious. They have been invited time and again and have attended frequently the Sunday Rose Festivals that draw up to 150 persons to the large-acred grounds.

High priestess in this institution which prospective visitors are assured maintains a “mystical, romantic atmosphere,” is Mrs. Harriet J. Beauley, more appropriately listed in the prospectus as Dame.

DAME A DANCER.

Mrs. Beauley, a gray-haired woman of slight build and celestial outpourings of the soul, is a dancer and painter, divorced wife of a distinguished artist, William Beauley. For a time she essayed a school of “the expressive arts” in her mansion, but folks failed to flock and she gave it up.

In the basement is a large room that in the days of the school for expressive arts was used for “poise postures,” according to the printed history of the mansion.