And She Was A Spiritual Princess

a strange in-memoriam article I found from the back catalogue of "American Culture"

A note from the editorial team: The following article was set to be published in our quarterly edition of American Culture, but due to the unexpected passing of John Garret, our longtime contributor and lifetime friend of the editor, it is now available in our online magazine, free of charge, in his honor. What was expected to be a standard study on modern-day New Age Spiritually, unfolded into a tender love letter– something only Mr. Garret could execute so seamlessly. 

John Garret. 1968 to 2023. Heart attack. Survived by no children. 

In all my years of high-risk investigative journaling, I had only been injured twice, the first time in 2006, reporting for VICE, on a jon boat off the coast of Somalia, grazed by a pirate’s bullet on the left shoulder; and in 2017, during a coffee run for [redacted] in which I slipped and fell in a Dunkin Donuts and was rewarded with a $15,000 settlement. The former, more-so than the latter, obviously inspired an acute sense of mortality. But never, not even in that punishing African sun, had I doubted my vocation in life. This was not until trudging through the Amazon, legal pad in hand, following our for-hire shaman and my new friend: Annalise Hale, the Divine Princess of Southern California. Mother Superior and Marilyn Monroe.

We first met at a smoothie bar in Orange County. When she told me to meet her here, I had not expected a dress code in the non-establishment establishment: nearly everyone was pierced, tattooed, dreadlocked, and tank-topped. I felt rather silly in my button down, although I suppose if this was a documentary and not a print-piece, that fish-out-of-water quality would add to the visual pleasure of the scene. Even the men my age seemed to immediately identify me as a square, looking at me inquisitively, thinking I didn’t notice, and then ordering their kava. Little of course did they know that I myself had drunk ceremony-grade kava on the beaches of Melanesia in the mid-nineties, far before the west had tokenized it as “better than marijuana”.

When Annalise arrived (ten minutes late, to my annoyance, but this was my German sensibilities clouding my California judgment), I was immediately hit by that lingering Mary Jane covered not-so-effectively by notes of vanilla and peppermint. To the untrained eye her hair was a mess. But the synthetic clip-ins, the multicolored dreadlocks, and intricate braids betrayed to me that her appearance was carefully crafted. The artist at work. I immediately complimented her hair to build our good will. She repeated it back to me, with a pebble-ish voice that was forced into the higher, child register.

Obviously I was immediately attracted to her, as all journalists ought to be with their female subjects, lest their reporting become dry and shallow. I leaned in towards her to get a better whiff of that vanilla and bud, then settled in my chair, clicking my pen: “So tell me about yourself, Annalise.”

Annalise was born in the Appalachians but not destined to a life of poverty. Her father was a successful evangelical preacher, creating a faith-based homeschool curriculum that quickly took off in popularity among fundamentalist groups. Wanting to build on momentum, Mr. Hale moved the family to Richmond, Virginia. And then, wanting to produce a video-portion of curriculum, to Los Angeles, California. 

“He wanted to be a movie star, secretly. Like Reagan. Most people who are still on this level want to be celebrities or movie stars. But it’s not about that.” She told me, revealing her tooth gems and upper-gum piercing as she spoke.

“I’m surprised you know who old Ronald Reagan is, you’re so young.” I quipped. “What do you mean by this level, Annalise?”

What she meant by this level was our reality, our day to day, the grocery store trips and the interpersonal drama and the student loans and the presidential elections. Now, there were ways to learn how to “level up”, but in the tradition of Mr Hale, that answer cost four easy payments of $19.99. I had of course bought these lessons on her Patreon, dubbed “The Divine Princess Club”, and poured over the material over the course of several days. What I found was a muddle of new-age concepts: the starseeds, the karmic cycle, the white supremacist garbage, the gnostic teachings, the anti-semitic dog whistles, and the attention to sex (which piqued my interest the most). 

Annalise saw herself as the reincarnation of several historical figures. Marylin Monroe, Mother Theresa, Heath Ledger, Joan of Arc, Genghis Khan, Jesus Christ, and Gene Wilder to name a few. Oh, but how I didn’t care at all about any of these quirks when sitting in her presence. She had D-Cups and a 26-inch waist. I was more than happy to platform her, and took diligent notes as we spoke.

I was very interested in the man of the house, and tried to steer the conversation back to Mr. Hale and his evangelicalism, but as she spoke and laughed and sometimes nearly rapped I would lose focus like a puppy watching his favorite bone waved in the air. At any rate, I decided I’d dedicate the entirety of this article to the young Miss Hale– canceling the rest of my interviews with various other up-and-coming cult leaders. 

She offered to take me to the Amazon with a few of her closest followers: a few other women (exciting) and a young man who had just emancipated himself from his family to live in Annalise’s commune (a two bedroom apartment). So, I mailed in my early-voting for the upcoming local primary and packed my bags. To Brazil we go. I booked Annalise and I first class tickets so that we could sit comfortably next to each other, and have a nice off-the-record chat.

Upon arriving in Brazil, at our rainforest Air-BnB, I noticed immediately how ruthless Annalise was with her followers. There were regular, violent beatings. In the morning, before breakfast (though, often, the group was fasting), Annalise would hit her apostles with a thin wooden switch, across the lower back and upper thighs. I asked her if she would do so to me, so that I could write about it accurately in my article, but Annalise refused since I was not baptized. Oh well. In the evenings, before bed, there was another beating. The evening beating was too violent for me to bear witness: I would go to my bedroom and put in my sleeping earplugs and get some work done on my backlog of writing.

Apart from the beatings the days were tranquil. I rather enjoyed Annalise’s sermons, which she would perform nude. 

“We are…” She’d begin the same way each time, spinning in a slow pirouette, one bare foot tracking the other, “...enlightened. Our souls, our souls are connected to what’s beyond the earth, the fourth dimension, with all the other prophets, who, just like us, aren’t from this shit hole. We are starseeds planted from a far away planet where the world is better and more perfect than down here. Not everyone is like us. Some people are from earth. Some people don’t really have anything going on to start with! They don’t think, they don’t breathe, their hearts don’t beat…” She’d look at me here. “Genghis came out of me last night and told me that the time is coming and it’s coming quickly with fire and you’re either getting on the ship or you’re getting left behind.” She’d spit on the ground. “I’m not getting left behind, are you?”

I wondered if I was getting “brainwashed” into the cult, if I was beginning to believe in her divinity. There were aspects, though, of her philosophy that I could not fully endorse– particularly those eugenicist ideals with dangerous political implications– but I wondered if I could just lull myself into it. Does it really matter so much if Jesus and Hitler were wearing blue-jeans together in the fourth dimension? God, I was so Gen-X, wasn’t I? Bad boy.

Ayahuasca ceremonies weren’t completely foreign to me. In my college days I had experimented with salvia, a similar psychedelic, and as a full-grown adult had browsed the edges of the psycho-naut movement. Annalise hired a Shaman, an old brown man with missing teeth, stereotypical fare for what you might imagine in this sort of scenario, and we set out to a more secluded area of the jungle early in the morning.  

I now had to make a decision if I would partake. I could remain sober and observe the puking bodies, rolling, screaming, sweating– or I could join in and experience spiritual fulfillment with our Princess. It was a soul torturing decision to say the least. On our hike to the ceremony ground I pulled Annalise behind a tree to privately ask her what to do: should I be a square tonight, dear Annalise?

As I should have predicted, she said she was going to pray to her ancestors about it, and encouraged me to do so as well. I pretended to humor it, but on our walk what I was truly doing in my internal monologue was appealing to logic. Eventually, moments before we arrived and the sun began to set, I made my call. No logic today. I’d live by my ‘id’.

The ayahuasca was strong and I had many personal revelations about my childhood and career and marital status. When we all got through it, together, we were all thinner and our nasal cavities felt putrid and I was aware of a new shared camaraderie. I told Annalise that this might be a good way to handle baptism. I was made aware then: it was.

I was beaten violently when we returned to the AirBnB and as quickly as my exploration into the world of Princess Hale’s cult started, it was now over. I returned with the group on the next flight back to the states, compiled my notes, and made the melancholy journey alone to my townhouse in San Francisco. The days were long and plain without hearing the squawk of parrots, the growl of jaguars, or the sermon of a charismatic woman. So maybe, secretly, I watched Mr. Hale’s video curriculum, to continue to feel connected to our Spiritual Princess’s planet, and to respectfully learn a new perspective.