The chapter from Gordon Rattray Taylor’s book I cited in a new expletive goes on to mention Father Divine. Man, that stirs up the memories. 

Back when I used to hang out in the AOL chat rooms I had this friend who was into a mix of Hoodoo, Alchemy and Celtic reconstructionism. One of the spirits that he worked with was Father Divine.

Not a lot of folks were doing hero cultus back then, and if they were it was usually for a handful of popular figures from antiquity as opposed to the more recently deceased, so this element of his practice stood out for me. We had a lot of interesting conversations which inspired some of my own first forays into hero cultus.

He ended up dropping the Celtic and magical components and became a Christian spiritist at which point we lost touch, and now it’s been close to two decades since those conversations transpired. I’ve thought about him periodically over the years, wondering if he kept up his veneration of Father Divine and if the winding way of his life ever led back to the Gods.

Father Divine was quite the character, as you can see in this brief documentary:

And here’s a video made during the early days of his mission:

Another important piece of American history they don’t teach in the schools.