Looking to the Future (Mirando hacia el Futuro) is a lodge in New York presenting itself as “a cooperative organization of businessmen, a lodge for liberty,” that invokes nefarious creatures and hides an otherworldly portal in its basement.
| Type | Lodge |
| Spanish entry | Mirando hacia el Futuro |
Public program
Founded about a year ago, it preaches liberty and free trade free of “British subjections” and promises economic recovery to make the country “truly the United States, the Americas.” It lobbies, has speakers — among them Black men and “homulatos” — holds open sessions and enrolls attendees. It aims to found “a kind of bank” linked to the bank of New York, hence its mother house in old Manhattan; its legal seat is marked by a park and a singular building.
The Residence
Meetings are held in a Residence with a session hall and podium. The leader descends a staircase to the podium and invokes, gesturing, while attendees meditate on sheets of geometric designs. Chants are sung; tea and punch are “the tea of the revolution.” The guards speak no English: “Arabs, perhaps Egyptians,” though a witness suspected Spaniards, “Latinos.” Beings with “ray-throwers and hands like tentacles” have been seen there.
The basement
Below are laboratories, elements suggesting “knowledge of other worlds,” and “a kind of portal-window,” as if looking out from a spaceship. Two months after joining, members begin to receive “very strange magic objects and charms.” One member falls sick with days-long headaches after each chanting session and has lost “part of my old strength and vitality.” The lodge has multiple hierarchical leaders and operates with “absolute liberty.”
Role
Its backers “have certain spells on people”: maneuvers and initiations on two people “supposed to be champions of the revolution.” Washington has it under investigation.
Conflicting accounts
- New York about a year ago; or, per another report, Boston — founding house, branch or confusion.
Open questions
- What “homulatos” means.
- Who the tentacled beings are: members, guards, laboratory products or arrivals through the portal.
- Where the portal leads, and whether it can be crossed.
- The leaders’ names and number; the two champions’ identity and the spell’s effect.
- The cost of joining; whether lost vitality returns.