"The Heel of God" and "Mother"
May Otis Blackburn
May Otis Blackburn's dream was to produce and direct films, but that was no easy feat for a woman at the dawn of the silent film era. Nevertheless, she founded her own production company, "Starlight," and personally financed what may have been the Oregon's first full-length movie, "A Nugget in the Rough."
The funding for this effort seems to have come largely from a series of grifts, the most successful of which was against a married lumber baron. May always cast her daughter, Ruth, as the lead of her films, but the movies failed and May soon found herself out of money and out of grifting targets, so she moved to Los Angeles with her daughter, Ruth. The mother-and-daughter duo (who often portrayed themselves to others as "sisters") were unable to break into Hollywood, and things were looking grim until the angel Michael appeared to them and announced the world was coming to an end, and that they were to the Two Witnesses of Revelation. May claimed that Michael instructed her and her daughter to write a book called "The Great Sixth Seal" which would transform humanity and user in a new golden era. She was told that she would be one of eleven queens who would rule the world from eleven mansions that would be built on Olive Hill, in Hollywood. Of course, writing such an important book took a lot of time, and required a printing press to be built, so she confided in a select few investors that they would be greatly rewarded if they'd help finance her divine effort. She also surrounded herself with followers - mostly women - who were required to sell everything they owned and to turn over all proceeds to May, with the promise that they would become a future queen of the "Divine Order of the Royal Arms of the Great Eleven." Crossing the self-proclaimed "Heel of God" was a very dangerous thing to do. Members who did so began to disappear under mysterious circumstances. In time the cult took on a peculiarly pagan aspect, replete with animal sacrifices, throne rooms, mummification, magical "concords," and nocturnal rites. Experts suggested that May's practices were decidedly non-Christian, and more close resembled those of a follower of the goddess Hecate. In 1929, the discovery of a mummified "princess" beneath the floorboards of a home brought the Divine Order into the public spotlight. |
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