Eye of Amara Society - 136 E Saltonstall St
The Eye of Amara is a small, openly occult society making perfunctory gestures of respect to Christian belief to pacify the neighbors. Its members tend to be dilettantes, writers, artists, and other outlandish sorts who crave to harness the magics that they intuitively believe exist.
Membership is by invitation only and costs $50, plus annual dues of $25. Members must attend a minimum of ten of the monthly meetings, some held on nights such as Hallowmass and May Eve, and a member can be expelled at any time by majority vote. Membership in other mystic societies, such as the Masons, is strictly forbidden.
Meetings are mostly discussions. Few of the members believe enough in material magic to try to achieve anything except the same charismatic influence over others that their original leader, Jason Gaspard, held over them. Illegalities are rare; even alcohol is barred from the meetings.
This Society boasts a heritage extending as far back as the 1920s, when it was founded by self-pronounced mystic Jason Gaspard. Whether or not Gaspard truly attuned himself to the wisdom of the “Secret, Sacred Masters” and ascended to a higher plane of being is unknown; regardless, his memory is revered by the current Society, with the highest ranking members known as “Gaspardians.”
Gaspard himself dropped out of sight in the 1940s – some assert that he moved to England to assist witches there with spells to protect Great Britain from German bombers, while others may have learned the truth that Gaspard fled to Canada to avoid the Internal Revenue Service; while taking in member dues and living reasonably well off them, Gaspard never paid taxes.
The Society has enjoyed a boom in membership during the 1950s as the decade has spawned intense interest in Eastern mysticism and Western occultism.
The Eye of Amara Society is a haven for esoterically-minded artists, writers, academicians, and white-collar professionals. Group leader Jennifer Vance claims to be the daughter of Society founder Jason Gaspard, but this claim goes unverified. Like her twenties-era predecessor, however, Vance has found living off of the membership fees of adherents to be a very comfortable way to exist while she keeps them coming by hosting weekly meetings on every esoteric subject imaginable.
Unbeknownst to the Society members, Vance has been selling off valuable copies of the group’s library through auction businesses. Already several very expensive and potentially dangerous texts have fetched high prices. Vance has used them for a down payment on a nice sports car. Before Vance, the Eye of Amara library held copies of the Liber Ivonis, the Sussex Manuscript, the Ponape Scriptures, the Eltdown Shards, Frasier’s Golden Bough and Murray’s Witch-Cults in Modern Europe. Which of these remain and which have been released to buyers, some local, remains a mystery for now.
As it has since its founding, the Eye of Amara is headquartered in a beautiful but aging Victorian house. Vance contracts outside workers to keep up repairs and mow the lawn, but she is not overly fastidious in her care of the structure. Other Eye of Amara Society members are wondering where all the membership fees go. They’ve noticed Vance’s new car and also the fact that she does not seem to have a regular job. So far dissenting voices have only whispered, but discovery of the book sales may transform said whispers to shouts of furious, open dissent and calls for Vance’s ousting.
Type
College / Academy
Parent Location
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