The first time Otoman Zar-Adusht Hanish caught significant press attention was in 1904, when Emma Reusse—or Eloise, as she was sometimes called—was seen running from his temple shrieking and pulling out her hair. She was committed to an Elgin sanitarium after the guru and self-described doctor had advised her to juice fast for 40 days to spiritually and physically “perfect” herself. Two weeks later, she died.
Since coming to Chicago around 1900, Hanish had been preaching the gospel of Mazdaznan: a religion he’d developed based on the Zoroastrian tradition of sun worship padded with elements of Christianity and various elements of Eastern mysticism. He claimed physical and spiritual health were one and the same, and he was proof: a senior citizen who looked half his age thanks to ritual fasting, meditation, vegetarianism, yoga, breath work, and sun baths. In the religion’s most sacred text, Inner Studies, he detailed the secrets to his immaculately preserved physique and more, including a permissive attitude toward homosexuality and a belief that men and women are equal and should share power. For turn-of-the-century Chicagoans looking for anything from novelty to empowerment, there was a lot to find appealing.
Mazdaznan was frequently described as an anarchist religion, not only for some of its more progressive attitudes but also for its hostility toward the state. Women held high-ranking positions in the faith, and time was set aside for women to discuss and organize around issues affecting them at every winter Gahanbar, seasonal festivals which Hanish sometimes called “peace conferences.” During his sermon at the 1907 Gahanbar, he said the solution to society’s ills was absolute freedom from laws. “The more law, the more corruption,” he preached. “The more government, the more injustice.” At Mazdaznan’s peak around 1908, he attracted some 18,000 followers worldwide, especially society women. This allowed him to outfit a lavish temple in Bronzeville; drive one of the fastest, most expensive cars in the city; and evade most investigations into his operations.
Reusse wasn’t the first woman to starve herself sick at Hanish’s encouragement. A year or two before, a warrant had been issued for Hanish in Denver because he’d advised a woman to fast on flaxseed tea. She wound up in a mental asylum. Soon, one of his high priestesses in Lowell, Massachusetts, was fined for the same reason. People noticed other questionable things, too: he’d buy items from the ten-cent store, then repackage and sell them at much higher prices as goods from “the East.” Hanish insisted that, if a law got in your way, you should find a way around it. For example, to avoid a tariff on jewelry, “Dip it and bring it in as a fake.” Don’t want to pay a duty on silk? Weave a cotton border around it to remove after it’s been imported. Contrary to other faiths that promoted humility and simplicity, Mazdaznans did not aspire to asceticism—true physical and spiritual mastery would open practitioners’ worlds for indulgence. All it took was total control.
Hanish was haunted by minor legal troubles and rumors about his operation for years, something he was able to minimize as persecution. History shows all new and unusual ideas are met with hostility. Remember what happened to Jesus? Plus, there was some evidence he was unfairly maligned. Wealthy men were regularly outraged when their wives left them to become Mazdaznans, so they labeled the faith obscene. Reporters, too, had an obsession that bordered on jealousy with Hanish’s effect on women. In a Tribune article, one even went so far as to observe Hanish giving out 450 kisses to 75 followers in a single day, most of whom were “the prettiest women ever seen in Lowell.”
Simultaneously, they described him as too womanly and “lacking in the pronounced masculine tastes,” as one Chicago Inter Ocean article stated. He “delights in crocheting and artistic needlework . . . and even advises male followers to do likewise in order to acquire ‘sympathetic harmony with the gentler forces of nature.’ . . . As vain as any girlish beauty, he changes his raiment many times daily and boasts that the flowing and somewhat feminine robes which he wears so gracefully are designed by himself.” Hanish also cooked and cleaned “daintily” and moved with “airy, fairy gestures.” To many, this guy was super gay—but also stealing their women.
The threads began to unravel in 1911 when Hanish shepherded Elizabeth and William “Billy” Lindsay, the wife and 12-year-old son of a late construction magnate in Philadelphia. Billy had a trust worth $500,000, which would go to his mother if he died, and Billy’s aunt and uncle had reason to believe Hanish was trying to make that happen. They hired a private detective agency to locate the boy, who was discovered at the Chicago temple severely malnourished from a diet of white grapes and beer. The aunt and uncle filed for custody, but Billy and his mother fled the state. Even in their absence, the custody trial commenced, and it put Hanish and his faith in the hot seat.
By the end of the first week, much fanfare had been made about the eccentricities of the faith, but there was also a lot of insight into the group’s organization and failings. One witness testified there were three classes of followers: an outer edge of sincere believers, usually middle- to low-income people, who were of little interest to Hanish; wealthy people, who were encouraged to donate and participate liberally but kept at arm’s length if they asked too many questions; and an inner circle, who were either infatuated with Hanish or knew too much and were kept quiet with inner-circle privileges. Supposedly, everyone in the inner circle was very, very rich, though it’s unclear how much they financially benefited from the cult. There’d been almost a dozen deaths by starvation or suicide associated with Mazdaznan. However, the list of people who’d been made sick from “treatments” was seemingly endless.
One pamphlet promised high monetary rewards for joining followed by extensive fees. Earlier in 1911, the church had begun soliciting members for 40 cents per month plus ten names and addresses of people who also might be interested in joining. At that time, it had some 15,000 members. This netted the temple around $6,000 per month on top of the $100 to $1,000 people paid for treatments from Hanish and fees accrued from books like Inner Studies, which Hanish printed himself and sold for $10 to $50 depending on how much money he assumed someone had. He would also charge people $50 to $100 for weekly luncheons and banquets that included lectures on topics like “breath culture.” Donation envelopes circulated, and coins were forbidden.
Since the trial was focused on whether or not the temple was a suitable environment for a young boy, nothing came of airing these secrets. However, Inner Studies became an object of great interest, and during the trial, a federal agent was able to trick Hanish into mailing a copy across state lines in violation of the Comstock Act. Hanish faced an obscenity trial, in which the district attorney called Inner Studies “the product of a depraved and licentious mind,” and newspapers refused to print anything that even hinted at its contents. Of particular offense to the prosecution was chapter two: a long celebration of colonics. In one part, it describes constipation as a cause of uncontrollable horniness that must be cured with a colonic.
During the trial, Hanish’s father, Richard Hanisch, was found in Milwaukee. He testified that his son was a 36-year-old German immigrant who grew up in Illinois, not a 68-year-old Persian raised by Brahmin noblemen. He ran away to Salt Lake City as a young teenager, where he worked as a sheepherder and delivery boy. Eventually, he was hired as a typesetter at a Mormon newspaper, but he left to follow a Mormon defector intent on starting his own religion. They had a falling out, and Hanish began piecing together parts of various occult texts and Eastern philosophies to develop Mazdaznan. Several cities and name changes later, he landed in Chicago with a magic show promoter as his right-hand man and began his ascent as an enlightened grifter.
Hanish lost the obscenity trial. He was sentenced to six months in jail and a fine of $2,500. That was enough of a blow for him to sell the temple and leave Chicago in 1913, and relocate to Los Angeles by 1916. Over the years, several attempts were made to connect him with inappropriate behavior with children, especially young boys, but nothing came of it. It’s hard to gauge how much of this was homophobic paranoia. The most substantive charge came in 1940, four years after his death, when a woman alleged a high-ranking church official raped her at Hanish’s encouragement when she was 11. Though likely true, she lost the trial. In the end, preoccupations with Hanish as a “sex neurotic” preaching a “philosophy of lust,” as one attorney put it, seemed to distract from his obvious threats: being a fake healer and capitalist scammer who preyed on people’s vanity and exoticism.
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