Note 63 — Chapter V · ANN O’DELIA DISS DEBAR

“Miss Croisdale, who was one of the victims, testified that she had been initiated into the ‘Theocratic Unity,’ the sect which the Jacksons claimed to head, with a rope fastened about her; passes were made over her, she said, with a lamp, water and a saw: Jackson told her that he was Christ re-incarnated. Miss Croisdale then described the oath in which she swore she would allow no one else to hypnotize her and she would keep all the secrets under the penalty of ‘submitting myself to a deadly and hostile current of will set in motion by the Chief of the order, with which I would be slain or paralyzed without visible weapons, as if blasted by lightning.’ Mrs. Jackson (or Diss Debar) looked as if she wished to carry out the threat on the spot. Miss Croisdale further testified that Theodore had outraged her in his wife’s presence. Jackson declared he was physically incapable and demanded a doctor’s examination to prove his statement.”—Dispatch from the London Times in the New York Sun, October 11, 1901.