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include the following from the Los Angeles Times: “Mine-Fraud Charged,” 9/8/28; “Occultist Bound Over in New York,” 12/11/29; “Daughter Allowance Asked from Author,” 7/12/31; and “Lawyer-Beating Charge Dropped,” 12/23/34. Also, “Bay Area Lecturer Arrested for Failure to Provide,” 8/7/35, The Fresno Bee. The murder of Douglas DeVorss is reported in “Rich Publisher Slain at Desk,” 9/25/53, San Mateo Times, and “Publisher Murdered; Suspect Held,” 9/25/53, Los Angeles Times. Also helpful is John Chambers’s “The Strange and Brilliant Life of Baird T. Spalding,” Atlantis Rising, No. 46. The sole record I have been able to locate of David Bruton’s death is a notice for a memorial service, which identifies his passing on March 11, 1955, and announces a service on March 27, 1955, at the Calicinto Retreat near San Jacinto, California. I am grateful to historian John B. Buescher for directing me to the census information on Spalding and to the current president and publisher of DeVorss & Company, Gary Peattie, for discussions about Spalding and Douglas DeVorss.

Swami Vivekananda is quoted from Stephan F. Walker’s delightful essay, “Vivekananda and American Occultism,” from Kerr and Crow (1986).

Sources on I AM include These Also Believe by Charles S. Braden (Macmillan, 1949); “The Great Anti-Cult Scare 1935–1945” by Philip Jenkins (1999); “The ‘I AM’ Sect Today: An Unobituary” by David Stupple, Journal of Popular Culture, Spring 1975; “Mighty I AM,” Time magazine, 2/28/38; and Psychic Dictatorship in America by Gerald B. Bryan (Truth Research Publications, 1940). The last is a controversial work by a former student of I AM who later sought to expose the organization; its basic premises and facts are affirmed by historian Braden, who knew the author and considers the book in These Also Believe. Frank B. Robinson’s comments on I AM appeared in Westbrook Pegler’s syndicated column of 12/5/39. Guy Ballard’s initial encounter with Saint Germain is described in Unveiled Mysteries, written under his pseudonym Godfré Ray King (Saint Germain Foundation, 1934, 1939, 1982). For Justice Robert H. Jackson’s landmark dissent, see United States v. Ballard, 322 U.S. 78 (1944). Key issues in the I AM case are summarized in Ballard v. United States, 138 F. 2d 540 (9th Cir., 1943) and Ballard v. United States, 329 U.S. 187 (1946).

Chapter Ten: Secrets for Sale

The timeline and events of Case’s life are drawn from federal census data, B.O.T.A. publications, and A History of the Occult Tarot, 1870–1970, by Ronald Decker and Michael Dummett (Duckworth, 2002). Though some of our dates and references diverge, Lee Moffitt’s Paul Foster Case timeline (www.kcbventures.com/pfc/documents/timeline.pdf) has been a helpful resource. The story of Case encountering the “stranger” is told by Ann Davies in Adytum News-Notes (July–September 1963). Case is quoted on Tarot meditation from his 1927 pamphlet, “A Brief Analysis of the Tarot.” The Case–Mathers–Geise correspondence appears in Mary K. Greer’s Women of the Golden Dawn (Park Street Press, 1996), one of the finest works on the occult milieu of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The International Brotherhood of Magicians meeting at which Case performed with Davies is reported in The Linking Ring magazine, Vol. 26 (1946). The Linking Ring noted Case’s cards-up-the-sleeve routine in Vol. 25 (1945). I am grateful to historian Jim Steinmeyer for providing references and material on Case’s stage career.

On the career of Benjamin Williams/Elbert Benjamine, I have greatly benefited from Christopher Gibson’s “The Religion of the Stars,” Gnosis magazine, Winter 1996, and from Decker and Dummett (2002), who trace the sources of Benjamine’s Tarot. I have also found assistance in correspondence with historian K. Paul Johnson. For the “hidden hand” theory, see: The Theosophical Enlightenment by Joscelyn Godwin (State University of New York Press, 1994); Godwin’s four-part series in Theosophical History (April, July, October 1990, and January 1991); and Christopher Bamford’s introduction to The Transcendental