16 Sep The Secrets of Krotona
Today it’s a bit tacky, run-down, run-of-the-mill apartment building in the Hollywood Hills, Beachwood Canyon to be exact. But in its heyday, the Krotona Apartments were a hotbed of occult activity hosting a temple, a metaphysical library, a vegetarian cafeteria, a theater, a “magnetically charged” meditation room, and a fascinating cast of characters such as Charlie Chaplin and Annie Besant. It was the headquarters of the Esoteric School, the Temple of the Rosy Cross, and the Order of the Eastern Star.
Begun by the Theosophical Society in 1912, the Krotona community consisted of eleven acres in Beachwood Canyon hosting homes for about 500 people. The 17-unit Krotona Apartments were its center. The complex was to be an institute of higher learning and research on the subtler aspects of science including psychology and psychic phenomena. After all, the Theosophical Society’s mission was to “explore the inexplicable.”
In 1926 the community relocated to Ojai citing the growing influence of urban Hollywood. The Krotona Apartments have continued to be populated by artists, hipsters, and spiritual explorers ever since. In the 60s and 70s there were reported LSD parties around the courtyard’s lotus pond, and guitar sessions with the likes of members of Jimi Hendrix’s band. It is rumored that Quentin Tarantino crashed on the couch of a screenwriter resident for seven months. Plus, the hundreds of intriguing characters whose names we will never know.
If you visit, you can still see the lotus pond resting quietly in the center court, keeping any previous occult or bohemian activity a secret. Upstairs you’ll find a building with a Moorish-style dome and a circular stained-glass window. That symbol is a Rosicrucian seal, and the door is to the former Grand Temple of the Holy Cross. Very little other information offers itself, and the mind wanders to fantasies of what may have gone on inside these walls. Or what’s going on inside them today, for that matter.
2130 Vista Del Mar Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90068
© 2020 Catherine Auman
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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