Nehaveigur

As you hike the Pacific Crest Trail from Mexico to Canada, for many days you catch glimpses of Mt Shasta between the trees. As you drive through the empty plains of Northern California, it beckons on the horizon. As you take a flight into San Francisco crossing the Sierra Nevada, you see it rise to the north. The prominence of its snow-covered slopes may be the reason why it has attracted the attention of cranks and religions gurus. A lot of the myth-making surrounding Mt Shasta happened in the 1930s, although the idea that it is a mythical place may have originated with a book first published in 1905.

In my neighborhood, people often leave items they no longer want in front of their houses, free for anyone to take. I recently came across a pile of books someone had put out, including a few beautifully bound volumes from the 1940s by Eugene E. Thomas. One of them was called The Brotherhood of Mt. Shasta, which turned out to be a novel about a man going on a spiritual quest around, on and in the mountain. He encounters secret caves, mystical beings and spiritual masters.

This story is clearly inspired by a man called Guy Ballard, who claimed to have encountered the Count of St Germain on the slopes of Mt Shasta in 1930. By then, the count had been dead for a century and a half, which didn’t stop him from revealing ancient wisdoms to Ballard. The St Germain movement, the Great White Brotherhood and related cults use these revelations in their teachings. They believe that underneath Mt Shasta are hidden the remnants of a lost civilization called Lemuria.

Where there is a lost civilization, there is lost treasure. In 1934, a man called J. C. Brown claimed to have discovered caves under the mountain that contained golden tablets and the giant skeletons of Lemurians. He convinced 80 followers to sign up and fund an expedition, only to disappear shortly before they had planned to set out, never to be heard from again.