In 1991, the Eulessynian Hot Tub Mystery Religion bubbled up from a unique confluence of circumstances in Euless, Texas, a stone’s throw from the Great Trinity Forest and the river bottoms. Until it left Euless in 1995, the group’s rites were celebrated in the spa area of two apartment complexes, The Vaucluse and The Village, both on Silent Oak Drive. In a sanctum sanctorum luridly lit by pink neon, the cult not only conducted secret rites and social experiments, but also planned pranks, hikes, underground publications and public celebrations of the Mysteries. Original members included artists, musicians, rocket scientists, a cyberneticist, a repentant ex-COINTELPRO agent who infiltrated the Yippies in the late ‘60s, a LINUX pioneer, and half-a-dozen men who would become Master Masons before the decade rattled to a close. The core group met through involvement with a lowbrow ‘zine, The Sophisticate, and a sub rosa Bacchanalian festival held annually in Dallas, Disturbathon.
The resultant synergy yielded another odd type of event, the Gymnasium, gymnosophy appealing to the heads and hearts of these spa-loving freaks. When Alexander the Macedonian reached the Indian sub-continent in the 4th century, he encountered the naked sages or “gymnosophists,” and dispatched the Greek philosopher Onesicritus to try to fathom their ways. The gymnosophists also knocked the socks off of Pyrrho, the founder of the Sceptics, who incorporated nudism into his philosophy. The Gymniasium of our Mysterians will be discussed at greater length at the appropriate time.
As a Mystery Religion, the HTMR embraced the ideas of individual and group gnosis over blind faith, free association over indoctrination and egalitarian discovery over hierarchical intercessory politics. The hot tub or hot spring is seen as the balance of the classical elements: earth hosting fire heating water generating air bubbles, all under the quintessential governance of spirit. Experiments were as popular as rituals. Hospitality enjoyed special emphasis, with the cult hosting traveling students, musicians and special guests. When Mysterians weren’t soaking in a rolling Jacuzzi overlooking a gentle valley, they frequently gathered at Forbidden Books in Dallas for anti-poetry, Masonic study, guest lectures, secret film festivals and hot coffee.
In 1995, the Hot Tub Mystery Religion was recognized as a fellow body by Thom Metzger of the Moorish Orthodox Church of America and editor of the Moorish Science Monitor. Once again, networks of fellowship emerging through ‘zine culture proved catalytic for the young Mystery Religion, which had its own clandestinely Xeroxed house organ by this time.
In 1997, CESNUR, the Center for Study of New Religions, welcomed two apologists from the HTMR to present at their annual conference in Amsterdam. Opposed to the idea of some mundane academic presentation, the pair opted instead for performance art inspired by the Marx Brothers film Horse Feathers. With a set of tangentially related overhead transparencies, the Mysterians riffed on Philip K. Dick’s mystical experiences, the Moorish Dr. Jabir’s idea that a network of “pleasure domes” was needed for the furtherance of mankind, and the Saturnalian social inversion offered by the European Feast of Fools. This proved to be a great favorite among students and more jovial academics while granting the HTMR’s agents unprecedented occult networking.
At this time, the Khalwat-i-Khidr (“Hermitage of the Green Prophet”) had been formally established as the Dallas branch of the Moorish Orthodox Church of America. Its launch coincided with the lack of a suitable hot tub in which to celebrate the Mysteries, so the HTMR was occluded as an Adept Chamber of the Khalwat, a flyer quoting Rosicrucian propaganda: “There are some baths in which one does not get wet.”
In 2003, a profile of the Hot Tub Mystery Religion appeared in Reason magazine, offering tidbits like:
One of the group's early inspirations was Alexander Scriabin, a Russian composer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries who dreamed of creating a work of art that would occupy every sense, driving the audience into a transcendental state. (The piece, called "The Mysterium," was to be performed in a specially built cathedral in India. It required, among other elements, "an orchestra, a large mixed choir, an instrument with visual effects, dancers, a procession, incense, and rhythmic textural articulation" -- not to mention bells suspended from zeppelins.) The Hot Tub group's installations combined music, visual art, food, and sometimes mind-altering chemicals, along with symbols from Sufism, the Cabala, and other sources. [Yehoodi] participated in an annual Halloween event called the Disturbathon, which existed somewhere in the hazy territory between performance art and a haunted house. "It involved nudism in a maze-like environment," he recalls, "and there was inevitably some kind of pit."
