Essene Rap? You heard it here first

One of the many things I received by way of my friendship with John Gilbert was an old correspondence course in New Thought from the Order of Essenes, an American occult organization founded in the 1930s by a Florida businessman turned spiritual teacher named Burks Hamner.  The order was long defunct by the time I was initiated by John, but its traditions and some of its teachings were taken up by the Order of Modern Essenes, one of the organizations of which John was the custodian. I found the course much more practical than I expected -- I shouldn't have been surprised, because Hamner was a very successful real estate promoter who taught classes in business to young people during the Great Depression, but there it is. When I had the chance a few years ago, I put the course up online here so that people who wanted to benefit from it could do so; as in Hamner's day, it's free of charge. 

Fast forward a few years. The young man on the left is a rapper who goes by Joe Limitless. He decided to study the Order of Essene course, and found it just as helpful as I did -- enough so that he's now putting ideas inspired by the course into his rap numbers. He sent a link to one of his pieces to Sara, who manages the Order of Essenes website, and Sara forwarded it to me. I'm not generally speaking a fan of rap -- I recognize its considerable cultural importance, not least as the most important form of poetry in our society these days, but I'm well on my way to being an old fuddy-duddy and it's not usually my style. I was astonished to find that Joe's work is extremely listenable. Check it out.