Cyrus Reed Teed (October 18, 1839 – December 22, 1908) was a

U.S. The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

eclectic physician and

alchemist Alchemy (from Arabic: ''al-kīmiyā''; from Ancient Greek: χυμεία, ''khumeía'') is an ancient branch of natural philosophy, a philosophical and protoscience, protoscientific tradition that was historically practiced in Chinese alchemy, C ...

turned

pseudoscientific Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that claim to be both scientific and factual but are incompatible with the scientific method. Pseudoscience is often characterized by contradictory, exaggerated or unfalsifiable claim ...

religious leader and self-proclaimed

messiah In Abrahamic religions, a messiah or messias (; , ; , ; ) is a saviour or liberator of a group of people. The concepts of ''mashiach'', messianism, and of a Messianic Age originated in Judaism, and in the Hebrew Bible, in which a ''mashiach'' ...

. In 1869, claiming

divine inspiration Divine inspiration is the concept of a supernatural force, typically a deity, causing a person or people to experience a creative desire. It has been a commonly reported aspect of many religions, for thousands of years. Divine inspiration is ofte ...

, Teed took on the name Koresh and proposed a new set of scientific and religious ideas which he called

Koreshanity Koreshanity is the set of religious pseudoscientific beliefs put forth by Cyrus Teed (also known as Koresh). Followers of this belief were called "Koreshans", and most of them formed a utopian communal society called the Koreshan Unity. Main bel ...

, including the belief in the existence of a concave, or "cellular",

Hollow Earth The Hollow Earth is a concept proposing that the planet Earth is entirely hollow or contains a substantial interior space. Notably suggested by Edmond Halley in the late 17th century, the notion was disproven, first tentatively by Pierre Bougue ...

cosmology Cosmology () is a branch of physics and metaphysics dealing with the nature of the universe. The term ''cosmology'' was first used in English in 1656 in Thomas Blount (lexicographer), Thomas Blount's ''Glossographia'', and in 1731 taken up in ...

positing that the sky, humanity, and the surface of the Earth exist on the inside of a universe-encompassing sphere. In New York in the 1870s, he founded the

Koreshan Unity The Koreshan Unity was a communal utopia formed by Cyrus Teed, who took the name "Koresh", the original Persian form of his name Cyrus. The Koreshans followed Teed's beliefs, called Koreshanity, and he was regarded by his adherents as "the new Mes ...

, a commune whose rule of conduct was based on his teachings. Other similar communities were established in Chicago and San Francisco. After 1894, the group concentrated itself in the small Florida town of Estero, seeking to build a "

New Jerusalem In the Book of Ezekiel in the Hebrew Bible, New Jerusalem (, ''YHWH šāmmā'', YHWH sthere") is Ezekiel's prophetic vision of a city centered on the rebuilt Holy Temple, the Third Temple, to be established in Jerusalem, which would be the c ...

" in that locale, peaking at 250 residents during the first decade of the 20th century. Following Teed's death late in 1908 the group went into decline, finally disappearing in 1961, leaving the

Koreshan State Historic Site The Koreshan State Historic Site is a state park in Lee County, Florida located on U.S. Highway 41 at Corkscrew Road. It was also added to the National Register of Historic Places on May 4, 1976, under the designation of Koreshan Unity Settlemen ...

behind.

Biography

Model of the universe according to the Koreshans

Early years

Cyrus Reed Teed was born October 18, 1839 in Trout Creek, New York to Sarah and Jesse Teed. Cyrus grew up in

Utica, New York Utica () is a Administrative divisions of New York, city in the Mohawk Valley and the county seat of Oneida County, New York, United States. The List of cities in New York, tenth-most-populous city in New York State, its population was 65,283 ...

and, after leaving school at age 11, went to work on the

Erie Canal The Erie Canal is a historic canal in upstate New York that runs east-west between the Hudson River and Lake Erie. Completed in 1825, the canal was the first navigable waterway connecting the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes, vastly reducing t ...

as a driver of the animals that pulled the boats along. Cyrus was a distant relative of

Joseph Smith Joseph Smith Jr. (December 23, 1805June 27, 1844) was an American religious leader and founder of Mormonism and the Latter Day Saint movement. When he was 24, Smith published the Book of Mormon. By the time of his death, 14 years later, he ...

, founder of the

Latter Day Saint movement The Latter Day Saint movement (also called the LDS movement, LDS restorationist movement, or Smith–Rigdon movement) is the collection of independent church groups that trace their origins to a Christian Restorationist movement founded by Jo ...

. Teed studied medicine before opening a medical practice in

.William Alfred HInds, ''American Communities and Co-operative Colonies.'' Second Edition. Chicago, IL: Charles H. Kerr & Co., 1908; pg. 471.

Koreshanity

As a young eclectic physician, Teed was always interested in unconventional experiments, such as

alchemy Alchemy (from Arabic: ''al-kīmiyā''; from Ancient Greek: χυμεία, ''khumeía'') is an ancient branch of natural philosophy, a philosophical and protoscientific tradition that was historically practiced in China, India, the Muslim world, ...

, often involving dangerously high levels of

electricity Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter that has a property of electric charge. Electricity is related to magnetism, both being part of the phenomenon of electromagnetism, as described ...

. In the autumn of 1869, during an experiment he was badly shocked, and passed out. During his period of unconsciousness, Teed believed he was visited by a divine spirit who told him that he was the

. Inspired, once he awoke Teed vowed to apply his scientific knowledge to "redeem humanity." He promptly changed his first name to "Koresh," the

Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...

version of "Cyrus". Teed denounced the idea that the Earth revolved around the sun and instead pioneered his own theory of the Universe, known as the Cellular Cosmogony. According to this theory, human beings live on the inside of the planet, not the outside; also, the

sun The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect ball of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core. The Sun radiates this energy mainly as light, ultraviolet, and infrared radi ...

is a giant battery-operated contraption, and the stars mere refractions of its light. Teed's ideas, called

, caught on with others. Koreshanity preached cellular cosmogony, alchemy, reincarnation, immortality, celibacy, communism, and a few other radical ideas. Teed started preaching Koreshanity in the 1870s in New York, forming the

, later moving to Chicago.

Communal leader

One of Teed's fundamental principles involved the gathering of his most devoted followers into communal living groups. A first commune was formed in Chicago in 1888. By 1902 a second Koreshan community was established in that city. Other followers of the so-called Koreshan Unity formed a short-lived community in San Francisco, which lasted from 1891 to 1892. Small church groups existed in other towns. In 1894 Teed's followers began to congregate in a small

Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...

town called Estero, where Teed planned to form a "

." The two Chicago societies, including the group's printing plant, were subsequently shut down and moved to Florida. The colony was extensively landscaped and bedecked with numerous exotic tropical plants. The Koreshans built extensively, establishing a bakery, general store, concrete works, power plant, and "World College of Life" in the community. They also published their newspaper from the site, called ''The Flaming Sword.'' The "golden age" of the Koreshan Unity in Estero was 1903 to 1908, when they had over 250 residents and incorporated the town, its territory embracing some 110 square miles — the fifth largest area of any city in the United States at the time. They tried to run several candidates for county government against the local Democratic Party, but were never successful.

Death and legacy

On October 13, 1906, while meeting the 1:30PM Atlantic Coast Line train from Baltimore, a group of Koreshans got into a fight in front of R. W. Gillams' grocery store in Ft. Myers, Teed tried to break it up and he was severely beaten by a Marshal Sanchez, suffering injuries from which he never recovered. He died on December 22, 1908. Teed's followers initially expected his

resurrection Resurrection or anastasis is the concept of coming back to life after death. In a number of religions, a dying-and-rising god is a deity which dies and is resurrected. Reincarnation is a similar process hypothesized by other religions, which ...

, after which he and his faithful would be taken up to heaven as he had predicted in his book ''The Immortal Manhood.'' They kept a constant vigil over his body for two days, after which time it began to show signs of decay. Following Christmas the county health officer stepped in to order his burial. After his death the group went into decline. In 1921, a hurricane destroyed his tomb on the southern end of

Estero Island Estero Island is an island located in Lee County, Florida, on the Gulf coast of Southwest Florida. It is bordered by San Carlos Island to the north and Big Carlos Pass to the south. The Matanzas Pass Bridge is on the northern end of the island ...

and washed his coffin out to sea. The last remaining follower, Hedwig Michel, deeded the colony to the State of Florida in 1961. It is now the

. Cyrus Teed's son,

Douglas Arthur Teed Douglas Arthur Teed (February 21, 1860 – May 23, 1929) was an American painter. He was the only son of the founder of Estero, Florida, and self-proclaimed messiah, Dr. Cyrus Teed. Teed was noted as an experimental artist, who explored virtua ...

, was an

American Impressionist American Impressionism was a style of painting related to European Impressionism and practiced by American artists in the United States from the mid-nineteenth century through the beginning of the twentieth. The style is characterized by loose b ...

painter, but not a follower of his father's teachings.

Footnotes

Works

''The Immortal Manhood: The Laws and Processes of Its Attainment in the Flesh.''
Chicago, IL: Guiding Star Publishing House, 1902.
''The Cellular Cosmogony; or, The Earth a Concave Sphere.''
With Ulysses G. Morrow. Estero, FL: Guiding Star Publishing House, 1905.

External links

Koreshan State Historic Site
official web page.
Unofficial Koreshan State Historic Site
unofficial web page.

Brief overview and great bibliography of works, if slightly dated.

Examination of the Naples Experiment, and why it failed.

Earlier experiments of Ulysses Grant Morrow

* ttp://koreshan.mwweb.org/teed.htm Biography of Cyrus Reed Teed {{DEFAULTSORT:Teed, Cyrus Reed 1839 births 1908 deaths Hollow Earth proponents Founders of new religious movements Pseudohistorians Self-declared messiahs Founders of utopian communities American alchemists People from Estero, Florida 19th-century alchemists 20th-century alchemists