Kelpius, Johannes (1673-1708)

Johannes Kelpius, the founder of the first occult group in North America, the Chapter of Perfection (also known as the Society of the Woman in the Wilderness), was born 1673 in a German community in Halwegen, Transylvania. He received a good education and at the age of 16 wrote a treatise on natural theology. He subsequently wrote several learned texts that eventually brought him to the attention of Johann Jakob Zimmerman, a scholar and Lutheran pietist leader. Pietism was a movement that grew within Lutheranism at a time when the state church emphasized the more formal aspects of worship and church life and tended to be aloof from the religious needs of individuals. Across Germany numerous informal groups developed, centering on prayer, singing, and encouragement in the spiritual life. While many of these groups were quite orthodox, others veered off into mysticism and occultism. Such was the group that gathered around Zimmerman, who wished to find a means of combining science (including astrology ), Christian theology, and mystical occultism.

In the late 1680s, encouraged by increasing government disapproval of pietisim and by his own expectation of the imminent return of Christ, Zimmerman planned for his followers to migrate to the British American colonies. Pennsylvania was already the home of a number of German religious refugees. However, before the group could leave, Zimmerman died, and his successor, Kelpius, oversaw the migration of the small body to Germantown. They arrived in June 1694.

Kelpius secured land on Wissahikon Creek (now a park in Philadelphia), where they built a forty-foot cube, which became the all-male group's headquarters and home. Discovering the local children were without a school, he founded a school and became their teacher. He also set up an astrological laboratory where members of the chapter watched the heavens for astrological and other signs of Christ's coming. He developed tuberculosis in the harsh weather, but hoped for Christ to return before he died. Meanwhile, he and the brothers gained some income from providing various healing and occult services for the surrounding community.

When Christ did not appear, Kelpius grew increasingly disappointed, a condition not helped by his failing health. In bed during most of the winter of 1706-07, he composed his most substantive writing and the hymn "A Loving Moan of the Disconsolate Soul in the Morning Dawn." Kelpius finally succumbed to tuberculosis in 1708 at the age of 35. He was succeeded by Conrad Matthai. Because the hope for Christ's return was the only force that held the group together, as that hope died, the group disintegrated. Some of the men who stayed in the area continued as healers, astrologers, and occult practitioners and their presence gave rise to what became known as powwow, or hexing, the peculiar form of folk magic practiced in southeastern Pennsylvania.

Sources:

Sasche, Julius F. The German Pietists of Provincial Pennsylvania. Philadelphia, 1895.