The Early Years

When I returned home from Vietnam in 1970, I found Baltimore supporting a thriving community of New Age and alternative philosophies and religions. I became a regular at the Aquarian Age Bookstore, Grandma’s Candle Shop, the Green Earth food co-op and the Theosophical Society, among others. I attended many courses at the Aquarian University of Maryland (AUM) in the early 1970’s. AUM was the only New Age University licensed by the State of Maryland (in 1969) to dispense certificates in esoteric studies. In the beginning, the classes were held in a row house in downtown Baltimore, but later they were held at Savitria, a New Age commune. These were mainly courses in astrology, tarot, and Kabbalah. The best course I took was an esoteric astrology course taught by Judy Miller. The worse was a tarot course taught by the well-known Rolla Nordic, whose coloring book approach to the tarot left me cold. The best tarot course was taught by AUM founder Bob Hieronymous, and his draw your own tarot approach was augmented by a slideshow of his own tarot, with the cards full of energy and brilliant contrasting colors.

I was living in an apartment in the Charles Village area near the Johns Hopkins University, otherwise known as the Hopkins student ghetto from the large number of Hopkins University students living there. Bob Hieronymous lived about four blocks away, on the southern edge of the student ghetto, with his girlfriend. Although I never ran into Hieronymous in Charles Village, as a result of a small coincidence, I met his girlfriend later.

While I was getting tear-gassed at the 1971 May Day Antiwar Demonstration at the Washington Monument in Washington, DC, I met a fellow Baltimorean who turned me on to an underground Baltimore newspaper called ‘Harry.’ Shortly after I started to write for ‘Harry,’ most of the staff was arrested when the police raided their commune late at night and found some pot. ‘Harry’ had published a series of articles about police corruption and the police badly wanted to shut it down. After they arrested the staff who lived in the Twenty-fifth Street Commune where ‘Harry’ was printed, the cops came back early the next morning while the staff was still in jail, and broke the door down. I was across the street at a corner grocery store, waiting to see if any of the staff would show up. After the cops broke into the commune, I went around back and watched in horror through a back window as the cops committed their latest crime, taking a crowbar and hammer to the printing press. When several members of the Harry commune showed up later that day after being released from jail, I heard them talking about what had happened. The general opinion was that a local journalist who had worked for Harry had turned stool pigeon after having been caught by the police smoking pot.

That was the end of ‘Harry,’ but through ‘Harry’ I had met a girl who became my girlfriend. I found out that she knew Hieronymous’ girlfriend because they grew up living on the same block. One day, my girlfriend appeared at my apartment with a petite red-headed Leo - Hieronymous’ girlfriend, or I should say, ex-girlfriend. In a sad little voice, she told me her tale. She had gotten pregnant, and when she asked Bob how he felt about having a child, he told her that it would interfere with his “mission” in life. So she had moved back home to the biting criticism of her ultra-conservative parents. In due course, she delivered a daughter she named Laylah. Hieronymous, however, was still on her mind, and she went to every public appearance he made just to watch him. Years later, she was still doing this and raising Laylah without a father.

I met Hieroymous personally when I went to Savitria to visit their large library of occult books. Bob was sitting cross-legged in a large circle of awe-struck young women, holding forth on the occult significance of the Great Seal of the US. I listened for awhile, thinking this was the lecture I had read years before as a Rosicrucian with AMORC, when I was startled to hear Bob explain how he had personally made these discoveries. Deciding discretion was the better part of valor, I ignored this and asked him instead a question I had about Enochian magick. I was slightly stunned when he blew me off without answering my question. I walked out of the room thinking he wasn’t the occult authority I had believed him to be, and he just didn’t want to admit he didn’t know something in front of his adoring fans.

Outside, I was examining the six-foot high wooden pyramid Bob had had built so he sit inside of it and meditate. A few members of the commune who were also less than thrilled with their Guru Bob regaled me with stories of Bob’s all too human foibles. Their favorite one was how Bob wouldn’t let anyone in the commune eat meat, while he kept hotdogs hidden in the refrigerator and came to the kitchen late at night to eat them when he thought no one was looking. Although disappointed in Bob Hieronymous personally, I continued to respect him as a fellow occultist until the Witchcraft scandal.

It seems Hieronymous had gathered information on Witches in Maryland by registering with Circle of Wisconsin as the Maryland contact for Witches. Circle sent him the names and addresses of Maryland Witches so he could alert them to attacks on Witchcraft, and then he turned around and published an article in the newspaper describing Witchcraft as black magic and Satanism. It was his deceitful attack on Witches that caused me to sever all connections with AUM.