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As with the Levi passages, Noble Drew Ali simply recast the Anglican text with a mystico-Eastern tinge:

From the creatures of God let man learn wisdom, and apply to himself the instruction they give. (The Economy of Human Life, 1785)

From the secrets of Allah let man learn wisdom, and apply to himself the instruction they give. (Circle 7 Koran, 1927)

Never one to be cut out of the action, the redoubtable L. W. de Laurence produced his own version of this “ancient Piece of Eastern Instruction” under the title Infinite Wisdom. He advertised it inside the prominent African–American newspaper Chicago Defender. Such notices almost certainly would have caught the attention of de Laurence’s fellow Chicagoan Noble Drew Ali.

Astoundingly, this pseudo-Eastern British work of the mid-eighteenth century, which later morphed into pseudo-Egyptian versions in the hands of AMORC and de Laurence, became the moral template for Moorish Science and other urban religio-political sects that followed in its steps. Indeed, a veritable who’s who of early black-power figures joined or came in close contact with Moorish Science in the 1920s, including the elusive ideological architect of the Nation of Islam, Wallace D. Fard; the Nation of Islam’s preeminent early leader, Elijah Muhammad; and the self-declared God incarnate and spiritual teacher called Father Divine.

But before pounding a gavel of judgment on the matter, a pause is in order. It is too easy in the present day to cast terms like plagiarist in the direction of figures like L. W. de Laurence or Noble Drew Ali. In fact, many surviving religious texts stretching back to an unfathomable oral tradition have been redacted, recast, rewritten, and co-opted, ever since the great Egyptian god of learning, Thoth, was remade literally millennia later as the wing-footed Mercury of the Romans. The Caesars of Rome routinely adopted the gods and deities of those lands they conquered. Scholars observe that the Hebrews almost certainly drew upon the cultic ideas of the once-powerful desert worshippers of Baal. The early Christians clearly adapted the winter solstice and sun-worshipping festivals of the polytheists they overcame. Religious ideas travel. It is only due to the nature of twenty-first-century record-keeping that we sometimes get to see the trail. Contemporary religious innovators have no more or less innocence than those who went before them; rather, it is only our understanding of how religions get made that has changed. Laws, it has been famously observed, are like sausages: One should never watch their creation. The same could be said of religions.

“Not Even His Publisher Knows His Identity”

Marcus Garvey’s influence inspired an unusual depth of emotion in followers—and reached people from vastly different walks of life. In the early 1920s, an erudite mathematician and cosmological philosopher, Robert T. Browne, fell under the Garvey spell. “This same Marcus Garvey,” wrote Browne in Garvey’s Negro World newspaper in June 1922, “divinely inspired, heaven-sent and God-directed, formed the U.N.I.A., which is, with but one exception, the greatest spiritual force that has ever swayed the minds of men since the world began.” To Browne, the one and only force greater than Garvey’s organization was “the religion of Jesus Christ.” But this was no starry-eyed believer in the Garvey gospel. Browne was a figure worthy of an accolade too often given but, in his case, uniquely deserved: a man ahead of his time. He was among the nation’s first black esoteric philosophers and a person whose life would touch and change the fortunes of people around him.

Born in Texas in 1882, Browne attended the all-black Samuel Huston College and became a high school teacher. By his early thirties he’d ventured to Harlem, where he befriended the influential bibliophile and Freemason Arthur A. Schomburg. The two collaborated on exhibitions of Afro–American books and cultural artifacts, and Browne became president of the Negro Library Association. For several