Hello everyone! This is a friendly reminder that any of these fun places we may visit, we are a guest at. Please treat both businesses and trails with the utmost respect. We here at Hidden California follow the 'Leave no Trace' mantra, meaning whatever you bring with you comes back with you. If you see trash on a trail, please do your part to help remove it. Remember, we are not picking up trash from another person but instead cleaning up for Mother Nature. Happy adventures!
Permits must be obtained through the MVTA to hike this trail
NOTE: MVTA has a long-standing agreement with the Society, allowing our members access to the property in exchange for regular efforts to help keep the trails clear and reduce fire danger.
Dog-Friendly: Yes Kid-Friendly: Yes
Article & Photos by Allison Morgan:
The Esoteric Fraternity is an order founded in the 1880s by self-proclaimed prophet of occult wisdom, Hiram Butler, in Boston, Massachusetts. The order was founded for the purpose of “the study and unfoldment of the inner and true sense of divine inspiration, the interpretation of the Scriptures – all Scriptures.” 
Over the years, Esoteric Fraternity/Hiram Butler helped invent popular astrology, printed over 30 books and booklets and (after a bit of a sex scandal) moved his small band of followers to Applegate, California, where the last member still lives on the grounds of their communal homestead.
Like many fraternal orders, membership numbers always decline… but even more so if a key tenet of your faith is that total celibacy is the key to Enlightenment.
Published in 1887 and still in print today, Butler’s most famous publication was Solar Biology, which is the basis for today’s horoscopes and astrological charts.
Hiram passed in 1916 and leadership of the order passed to Enoch Penn, who continued to stress sexual repression in his 1926 book, The Order of Melchisedek: “In the Second Degree there is not only the effort to overcome the generative impulse and its results in the body, but to learn of and avoid all those sensations, impulses, emotions, thoughts, and relationships that lead up to and cause these impulses…The neophyte must so shut his sympathies from all who belong to generation as to not share in their life-currents and desires.”
