17 Apr The Mount Helios Love Cult
The neighbors found Edith suspicious on account of her hair being “bobbed in true radical style.” They fussed about “weird proceedings reported to be of lurid character.” The misfits over there on Mount Helios flew a “crimson love flag,” and participated in “revels and weird rituals.” Further evidence of dubious activity was that a red light was kept burning in the window overnight.
Edith Maida Lessing (born TX 1875- died 1939 in L.A.) was an accomplished composer, lyricist, songwriter, and poet. Two of her popular songs were “Just as the Ship went Down” and “Oh! You Circus Day.” Books of her poems and sheet music are still available on Amazon today.
Ms. Lessing was also the founder and leader of the Mount Helios “love cult” which flourished in the early 20s atop a hill in Glassell Park, a neighborhood of Northeast L.A. Edith’s radical views included her belief that free love would replace marriage, and the rightness of the communal ownership of property. At Mount Helios, people lived in tents and shacks, with Edith presiding over dressed in a purple gown trimmed with gold. Edith proclaimed that she had control over 1000 men, although what kind of control she meant (sexual?) we don’t know.
According to a report in the Los Angeles Herald, in 1921 police began investigating “the extent of her radical beliefs.” Another suspicious neighbor testified that Mount Helios had presented a play in which “the men wore loin cloths and the women only thin draperies.” In 1922, Edith Maida Lessing was found guilty of criminal syndication for sending “obscene” material through the mail. She was sentenced to two years in the Reformatory for Women in Missouri. Thus the Mount Helios experiment in radical living was effectively brought down and ended.
Buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Glendale
Sunrise Slope, Map 1, Lot 5788, space2
This is an excerpt from Catherine Auman’s book Guide to Spiritual L.A.: The Irreverent, the Awake, and the True
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