The Asseverants

The Asseverants are a branch of the New Thought movement that got Sundered. They were founded by Ephriam P. Mossgelder (1887—1974), a farmer and son of a farmer, occasional alderman, and Sunday school teacher in Bugtussel, Iowa.  He was a loyal, if only hazily orthodox, member of the town's Baptist church.

Physically frail, Mossgelder developed shamanistic abilities at age 17, after a near-death experience, and shortly after becoming enamored of New Thought. He was convinced the New Thought affirmations enabled him to live through the typhus that caused the NDE.

While practicing his New Thought affirmations in shamanistic astral projection, he developed abilities to cast luck and karma and eventually ka-based wishes (all of which he called "blessings"), all attributed to his brand of New Thought, which he called Asseveration.  (Mossgelder only had a high-school education, but made the most of it and had a champion vocabulary.)  The name signifies the idea of making something true by saying it, by insisting on it.

Mossgelder’s cultural background included hoodoo/powwow/root-work and similar folk-magic, which he freely incorporated into Asseveration.  As a result, Asseverants produce lucky charms in the form of John the Conqueror Root, copies of The Long Lost Friend, and so on.

Mossgelder was a nice guy.  He used his powers to help people, and felt he should teach them to help themselves and others.  So started the Asseverants.  Mossgelder tried to teach his students his own powers, as he understood them, sometimes did teach them, and insisted on two rules: (1) never use their powers to harm, and (2) always speak the truth.  Obvious complications:

There are four levels of Asseverants distinguishable:

  1. The unSundered, who are indistinguishable from other New Thought devotees, except they have a higher chance of getting Sundered.
  2. The Sundered, who encounter the weirder stuff of the deeper levels of Asseverants and, of course, esoterica generally.  Some groups of these realize there is a Sundering and others don't; the latter just think they've been lucky/blessed to encounter more signs and wonders that they relate to unSundered admirers.
  3. Those who have actually developed the ability to generate some amount of luck (for which I have game mechanics).  These can also detect the presence of "luck charges" on others and on objects.
  4. Those who have reached Mossgelder's level of astral projection.  A lot of them branch off into other aspects of wizardry.  They are also the ones likely to vanish into pocket realities they have found or created, in their efforts to make the world (or a world) as they would wish it.

Since Mossgelder's death, the group has been shrinking and dispersing into the general esoteric community.


Return to Inkliverse
Return to Wind Off the Hilltop

Copyright © Earl Wajenberg, 2020