For the record, the modern occult revival that fostered the emergence of groups of ceremonial magicians like the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and Ordo Templi Orientis, was notably influenced by the American utopian movement of the 19th century especially in terms of a post-Mechanistic mysticism and radical social views including an embrace of a nascent polyamory. Figures like Ida Craddock and Pascal Beverly Randolph emerged from this movement and groups like the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor found it to be a hospitable environment and relocated to the United States.
One of the earliest utopian groups was a nominally Christian group who came to be known as the Shakers, who emigrated from England in the late 18th century. Known primarily by mainstream society for their commitment to celibacy and handicrafts (the iconic Shaker furniture), they held a number of recondite doctrinal stances and a radical renunciation of Materialism. Of course, a group dedicated to celibacy can’t breed future members in house, relying on promulgation and this group notably cut itself off from contact with mainstream society.
The New York Times recently profiled the last two living Shakers. Yes (to paraphrase Leonard Cohen) it’s come to this. An excerpt states:
The Shakers have been breaking bread in this manner since before the Revolutionary War. In 1774 a blacksmith’s daughter named Ann Lee led a small group of refugees from Manchester, England, where they had been jailed and beaten for following her heretical teachings: that God was both male and female, a Father-God and Mother-God. She taught that true virtue required sacrificing individual desires for the collective good, including total celibacy. She preached pacifism and the equality of the sexes and races. (Black Americans were welcomed as early as 1790, and communities purchased freedom for their enslaved members.) Her followers lived together in largely self-sufficient communal villages, everyone a brother and sister to one another.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/05/magazine/shakers-utopia.html.
