… after looking at the “Spiritual Warrior” retreat, where three died in a “sweat lodge” …
Authorities said about 60 people were inside the sweat lodge Oct. 8. The event left three people dead and more than 20 ill. The Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office announced last week that investigators were focusing on [personal-development guru James Arthur] Ray and anyone else involved in organizing the ceremony, as they tried to determine if negligence caused the deaths. [...]Participants had each paid more than $9,000 to congregate with Ray and were isolated in the woods outside Sedona without food as part of a “vision quest” for about 36 hours before the sweat-lodge ceremony began, Schmidt said. [...]
Schmidt said most of the attendees at Ray’s retreat had participated in other events with the spiritual-financial guru in the past; they had developed a sense of trust in Ray’s teachings to fight through obstacles to achieve a higher realm of spirituality.
… that absolutely none of the 60 people in that sweat lodge that day are regular members in good standing with any mainstream American Christian or Jewish denomination.
Comment by SDN on 10/21 @ 8:33 pm #
Darleen, Enoch_Root over at Dan Collins’ blog has been all over this. He was friends with one of the victims, who sounds like a good guy. And the organizer sounds like he’s almost as Native American as Ward Churchill…. and about as honest.
Comment by happyfeet on 10/21 @ 8:41 pm #
That’s $540,000.
Comment by happyfeet on 10/21 @ 8:42 pm #
I have a little calculator button on my keyboard I got for my birthday from my friend P is how I can tell.
Comment by Mikey NTH on 10/21 @ 8:43 pm #
Unless you do not count Episcopalians, Darleen, then I will agree with you.
The New Age stuff is very mainstream in the mainline protestant denominations.
BTW – a sweat lodge is just another type of sauna, and one should beware of heat exhaustion and heat stroke – and other heat-related trauma. I get plenty of ’sauna’ when I do the USCG Aux patrols in the summer while wearing the ODU and a life jacket, thank you very much.
Comment by newrouter on 10/21 @ 8:49 pm #
they died for ray’s sins. how stupid
Comment by newrouter on 10/21 @ 8:52 pm #
ray O! oh ray O!
Comment by Darleen on 10/21 @ 8:53 pm #
SDN
I’ll go take a look, but I hope you understand I’m not saying the people who are Ray’s victims are bad people, just vulnerable.
Comment by newrouter on 10/21 @ 8:54 pm #
baracky hussien obama hmm, hmmmmm, hmm!
Comment by SBP on 10/21 @ 8:54 pm #
Are Episcopalians included in the Pope’s recent “Be an Anglican, get Catholicism ABSOLUTELY FREE!” deal?
Comment by Seth on 10/21 @ 8:55 pm #
No matter how hard you try to deny the spiritual aspect of Man, you’re always left with a searching for the spiritual. Sometimes this manifests as a sucking hole in the center of your life.
Comment by newrouter on 10/21 @ 8:56 pm #
“are bad people, just vulnerable.”
save the stupid now with baracky’s stash
Comment by newrouter on 10/21 @ 9:00 pm #
“Are Episcopalians included in the Pope’s recent “Be an Anglican, get Catholicism ABSOLUTELY FREE!” deal?”
only if they approve for 12 months @ $66.6 with a dropping of gays in iran at a height of 30 meters.
Comment by happyfeet on 10/21 @ 9:02 pm #
$9,000 is a lot of pumpkin pie.
Comment by happyfeet on 10/21 @ 9:07 pm #
brb. They have pumpkin pie next door plus also I need cash cause guess what???? Kogi truck be in mah hood tomorrow!!! I’m always scared it will be the last time and I haven’t tried everything yet.
Comment by newrouter on 10/21 @ 9:14 pm #
you folks don’t like obamacare!!!11orwhatever
Comment by geoffb on 10/21 @ 9:15 pm #
At the Anchoress.
So yes is the answer I would guess.
Comment by newrouter on 10/21 @ 9:23 pm #
“American Episcopalians are said to number some 2.2 million.”
and many are spineless bastards
Comment by Lamontyoubigdummy on 10/21 @ 9:38 pm #
Jews don’t sweat.
It’s the 11th Commandment.
The Vatican, having already approved a co-op, will soon offer Anglicans a public option.
Comment by JohnAnnArbor on 10/21 @ 10:01 pm #
And the organizer sounds like he’s almost as Native American as Ward Churchill…. and about as honest.
I’m guessing real American Indians really hold a special kind of hate for white guys like Ray appropriating bits and pieces of their heritage, then twisting it completely beyond recogntion.
Comment by Joe on 10/21 @ 10:02 pm #
If you are going to do the whole vision quest thing like Richard Harris in A Man Called Horse, well what do you expect. 3 out of dozens of candidates, really not that bad. These people denied themselves food and especially water for 36 hours before going in some 150 degree sweat lodge in Sedona. Yeah, someone is going to get a little parched before it is over.
Now do the stand all night, followed by hanging in the sweat lodge from eagle talons in your pecs, now that is old school vision quest. These Sedona bunch were a bunch of poesers.
Add some peyote tea followed with some herb mixed in with the sage smuge pots and you have a real party.
Comment by Joe on 10/21 @ 10:11 pm #
Excuse me, Return of a Man Called Horse.
or was it Siouxsie and the Banshees?
Comment by Joe on 10/21 @ 10:16 pm #
And here is one for Patterico. Here’s another.
Comment by geoffb on 10/21 @ 10:33 pm #
Different movie, “Altered States”.
Comment by Charles on 10/21 @ 10:41 pm #
Does anyone have the link to the Darwin Award Nomination Form?
$9,000, cooped up for 36 hours, no food? Is “Vision Quest” the new euphemism for air travel?
Comment by ThomasD on 10/21 @ 10:48 pm #
I’m guessing real American Indians really hold a special kind of hate for white guys like Ray appropriating bits and pieces of their heritage, then twisting it completely beyond recognition.
Bah, Ruskis, Finns, etc do it too, they just call it banya and follow it up with a plunge into a frozen over river, followed by smoked fish and shots.
FWIW I did a couple sweats while living on the Blackfeet Rez working for the IHS. I was in my late twenties, and used to climbing mountains on the weekends. A ‘real’ one is small and dark, maybe big enough for eight or so, but you are going to be sharing your perspiration. The dry heat is not so bad, it’s when someone pours water on the hot stones that the suffering begins. Thirty minutes seemed like eternity. I cannot imaging how that many people lasted even as long as they did.
Comment by Purple Fury on 10/21 @ 11:00 pm #
“… that absolutely none of the 60 people in that sweat lodge that day are regular members in good standing with any mainstream American Christian or Jewish denomination.”
Because heaven knows no one belonging to a mainstream church ever died by doing something stupid.
There’s an awful lot of intelligent writing on this blog. This post is not part of it.
Comment by Snowcone on 10/21 @ 11:06 pm #
Haha,
My primitive superstition is so much more classy than your primitive superstition?
These religious pissing matches just looks like midget wrestling to me.
Comment by Charles on 10/21 @ 11:24 pm #
#28 – And yet, I’m pretty sure that Darleen’s right, unless they were looking for a message from Melchizedek.
I’m really not in the mood to pick a fight, but I just have to say, that truly would be a hallucination.
Comment by geoffb on 10/21 @ 11:40 pm #
The lies they flow like sewer water after a downpour out of RD.
Comment by Adriane on 10/22 @ 12:24 am #
The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.
G. K. Chesterton
Comment by Joe on 10/22 @ 12:36 am #
Charles and Snowcone
Comment by RD on 10/22 @ 12:49 am #
Good golly.
The RNC, the GOP in general, and many individual Republican candidates are getting killed on fund raising. Even Redstate admits it.
I’m not sure how “exceeded Democratic expectations” counts as a good thing.
____
Comment by Don on 10/22 @ 2:49 am #
I’ll wager that there weren’t any Muslims invovled.
Comment by SDN on 10/22 @ 3:20 am #
Darleen, I knew that you weren’t doing that; I just figured you might want to see some more info from a source that’s a) known to a number of people here and b) has info beyond what the media’s got.
Comment by teh kitteh on 10/22 @ 3:33 am #
“The RNC, the GOP in general, and many individual Republican candidates are getting killed on fund raising. Even Redstate admits it.”
Oh, Redstate! I’m glad my life isn’t so empty and pathetic that I lurk and troll on on the blogs of the political opposition. But thanks for keeping us abreast of what you find in your sad little cyber life.
Comment by Salt Lick on 10/22 @ 4:56 am #
What do you get when you cross a Unitarian with a Jehovah’s Witness?
Somebody who walks around the neighborhood knocking on doors, but they’re not sure why.
Comment by Rusty on 10/22 @ 5:14 am #
Ya wanna sweat and get all tired? Go build a house.
What’s next? Drinking the shamans urine?
Comment by -Ed. on 10/22 @ 5:18 am #
Good bet, Darlene. But as watered down and Oprahfied in their teachings as many mainstream churches and synagogues have become, I wouldn’t bet the farm on it.
Comment by SBP on 10/22 @ 5:22 am #
Somebody who walks around the neighborhood knocking on doors, but they’re not sure why.
Did you hear about the radical Unitarian group?
They go around burning question marks on people’s lawns.
Comment by SBP on 10/22 @ 5:25 am #
#17 Thanks, I was wondering about that. I knew that the Episcopalians were connected to the Anglican communion, but wasn’t sure just how closely.
Comment by JHo on 10/22 @ 6:41 am #
Not to engage snojob but the opportunity shouldn’t go ignored: Midget wrestling, to use the idiot’s choice of words, would be the chronically a-spiritual forging even a single comment on the spiritual, the breadth and depth of which it’s never considered, much less comprehended.
Think of this unrelenting phenomenon of arrogance, ignorance, and folly to be akin to the myriad pleas collectivists make of their masters, all of it based on a profoundly blinkered and corrupted view of the nature of faith, power, the spirit, and that moldering state of being that amounts to collectivist salvation.
The irony there is thick but the failure is impenetrable. Why? Because it’s willingly so, and typically proudly.
Comment by Trimegistus on 10/22 @ 7:11 am #
I have to disagree. I’d bet money (well, Monopoly money) that _all_ of the victims were members of Protestant churches — though not Evangelical ones. My guess is a mix of Methodists, Presbyterians, and Episcopalians, with maybe a Lutheran outlier or two. And they were locked in a room dying of heat exhaustion precisely because their existing religions don’t satisfy their spiritual needs. A truly non-religious person (raises hand) would find a Sunday morning sermon and a New Age spiritual retreat equally dull and pointless. Only religion junkies looking for a bigger fix would shell out 9 grand to be bored, yelled at, and put through varying degrees of physical discomfort.
This is, paradoxically, why I am a strong supporter of organized religion despite my own lack of belief. Obviously a great many people _need_ something to believe in. Given that, I think it better to supply them from existing, established faiths which have had time to mature in theology and practice. If people are going to waste their time and money seeking God, I’d rather they do it in a church. The death rate is much lower there.
Comment by serr8d on 10/22 @ 7:50 am #
This ’sweat lodge’ (from Ray’s Flickr photostream) gives you an glimpse of the sort of folks who were attracted to James (Guru) Ray’s line of bullshit. A ‘real’ sweat lodge is covered with fabrics that ‘breathe’ (animal hides and the like); this monstrosity was built to suffocate. What maroon would fall for this sort of idiocy? I’ll tell you: the sort who pays $10K to hear some powerful personality tell them how to get off their asses and get busy. Hmmmmph.
Comment by JD on 10/22 @ 8:10 am #
Why would you pay to not eat for 36 hours? Couldn’t you do that for free and just stay at home? Hell, alphie/snotnose/parsnip/sniffles/monkeyboy regularly goes 3 or even 4 days without eating when he cannot find a good dumpster.
Comment by Lamontyoubigdummy on 10/22 @ 8:21 am #
Homer Simpson moved his whole family to work for Hank Scorpio.
Hank Scorpio didn’t need a sweat lodge.
Comment by Lamontyoubigdummy on 10/22 @ 8:39 am #
The first link in #45…
Looks like a bad episode of HBO’s Real Sex.
$9K to not eat for two days, and then sit in a plastic covered incinerator while some idiot explains the book The Secret to you.
Then I guess group sex or whatever.
Also, how do you have $9 grand to burn and not run for the hills the minute you hear the word “guru”?
At a company deal one time I had to sit through a Deepak Chopra seminar.
Afterwords I punched him in the face until he paid me $9,000 dollars.
Comment by JD on 10/22 @ 8:50 am #
I do know this much … These people might be great people, wonderful parents, etc … but if they were silly enough to pay $9000 for something like this, then they were too stupid to have that money in the first place.
Comment by John53 on 10/22 @ 10:56 am #
I don’t know $9,000.00 for a weekend with little food and a sweatlodge doesn’t sound to me to be a great way to spend my weekend, no matter how spiritual. Sound to me like someone put some chlorine in the gene pool.
Comment by McGehee on 10/22 @ 11:29 am #
A fool and his money soon draw a crowd.
Comment by Cowboy on 10/22 @ 1:13 pm #
I know it’s “low hanging fruit,” but maybe we should avoid writing about what dupes these people were. Should Enoch, or even Dan come across some of these comments, they might be unnecessarily hurt.
Comment by Lamontyoubigdummy on 10/22 @ 1:56 pm #
I don’t mean to hurt a friends friend Cowboy, but if I wanted to sweat heavily while motivated, I’d just have my boss follow me around Houston in July.
62 fucking people in a plastic covered sweat lodge?
Death. Trap.
$9k each death trap.
I had a better time at the Lilith Fair Concert.
And all the vaginas were very angry at the menfolk that day.
But, I only paid $42 dollars to get in.
Comment by Rusty on 10/22 @ 5:11 pm #
For 9K I’ll let you starve to death.
Comment by meya on 10/24 @ 7:05 am #
” … that absolutely none of the 60 people in that sweat lodge that day are regular members in good standing with any mainstream American Christian or Jewish denomination.”
Does this include reform jews you might think too lefty and thus “secular” or have you dropped your whole simplistic view of that?
Comment by Rusty on 10/24 @ 12:42 pm #
#55
Too bad you weren’t there. You could tell us. Sign yourself up for the next session.
Pingback by Liberty, choice and the nature of “ought to” [Darleen Click] on 10/24 @ 12:59 pm #
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