Madame La Viesta and her almost real school of witchcraft and space travel (8 photos)

Every woman is a little bit of a witch and is capable of creating a salad, a hat and a scandal out of nothing. But some enterprising women are turning the occult into a very real job that brings good money.





In 1913, an interesting advertisement appeared in American newspapers.



The advertisement offered anyone a free book revealing the secrets of “the great psychic force which scientists say controls the destinies of men,” published by the Occult School of Science, located at 2075 (or 2083) Lexington Avenue at 125th Street.

The author of these interesting lectures was a certain Madame Vesta La Viesta, a famous mystic and galactic traveler.





Meeting of lovers of spiritualism, Chicago, 1906

La Viesta was well known both to lovers of spiritualism and to those who ridiculed them. In 1904, at a place called the Cosmological Center, La Viesta described her recent visit to Mars and Venus through the projection of her astral self.

Her descriptions were several decades ahead of the famous book by John Gray. The inhabitants of Venus "are most happily combined in soul-bonded couples, for they have a flexible astral or psychological tube which invisibly connects their bodies."



In 1907, she revealed to the world the secret of the "kiss of the soul" - an enthusiastic and strange indescribable form of love, which she was taught during a recent astral journey to Neptune - with an excited nervous system, cellular respiration and the transfer of love energy over a distance of many kilometers. She was so captivated by this shimmering new form of love that she wrote a song about it called “Description of a Soul's Kiss.”

In this unusual educational institution, a student could become acquainted with a range of psychic and magical practices aimed at solving practical issues of life, from finance to marriage. Among the suggestions were fortune telling, predictions and working with the subconscious.



Spiritualistic séance-concert of Madame Vesta

She was known for her unusual lectures, which she gave from her Upper West Side apartment.

La Viesta was also an ardent fan of the dew bath, in which women rubbed themselves with the morning herb, supposedly containing beauty ingredients that prevented aging.



La Viesta said, “I would take off my clothes, stand in my front yard in the dark of night, and let the dew drops collect on me until I became happy.”

In 1912, at the age of 50, La Viesta became involved with the Occult School of Science founded by Frederick Nugent. If she really was clairvoyant, she might have known to stay away from Nugent, a notorious swindler.

Nugent, also known as Professor John D'Astro, approached spiritualism from a more cynical point of view. Simply put, he wanted to get rich himself. Through his advertisements, he got people to receive "free" spiritual advice and then sent them catalogs full of useless and expensive products. An ideal scheme to make money out of thin air.



In search of the right dew

The trickster specifically targeted poor people by posting hundreds of ads throughout the United States with fictitious or fake reviews. He also joined Madame La Vieste at the Occult School, offering courses that could cost as much as $12.50 (or almost $300 today).

The occult school was not Nugent's only scam. He was apparently the mastermind behind at least six other mystical scams, including the Rainbow Order of Iris, which allegedly had over a thousand members, and a separate mail-order stone business, the Magnetic Mineral Company, which claimed to share the secrets of the Haitian leader. 18th century Toussaint Louverture.

Nugent's stones brought good luck to their owners - so his advertising claimed. He bought the stones from an unknown source for 12 cents a pound (about $3 today) and then resold the magic stones for up to $25 a pound (or about $570). Moreone win-win fraudulent scheme, bravo!

It was this scam that caught the attention of US Postal Inspectors, who arrested Nugent for using the postal system to defraud. They seized hundreds of brochures promoting Nugent's schemes and thousands of testimonials. After spending some time under investigation, he was convicted and sent to prison.



But what happened to Vesta La Viesta, Nugent's beloved mentor? Since this was not her real name, which was expected, it was not easy to track the subsequent antics of the enterprising lady traveling through the starry worlds. But apparently, she continued to share spiritual advice. In 1923, the mystic described her experience in the book “People of Other Worlds.” Perhaps she finally went to Mars and stayed there forever, now to fool the Martians or the inhabitants of other planets.