Walter Siegmeister

Walter Isidor Siegmeister (1903 – September 10, 1965), also known as Raymond W. Bernard, Robert Raymond, and Uriel Adriana, was an early 20th-century American alternative health advocate and esoteric writer, who formed part of the alternative reality subculture. He is credited with the merger of the Hollow Earth theory and religious beliefs about UFOs. He also founded several fruitarian or vegetarian utopian communes in several countries.

Walter Isidor Siegmeister was born into a family of Russian Jews in Manhattan, New York City, probably in 1903. His parents were both born in Russia. Siegmeister had a younger brother named Elie Siegmeister who was a famous American composer.

Siegmeister graduated from Columbia University in 1924, and received his Masters (1930) and Ph.D (1932) degrees in education from New York University. His Ph.D thesis was titled Theory and Practice of Dr. Rudolf Steiner's Pedagogy (New York University, School of Education, 1932). Under the name Bernard, Walter later settled in Florida. Siegmeister went by a variety of names, including Raymond W. Bernard, Robert Raymond, and Uriel Adriana.

Siegmeister was a natural hygiene and raw food advocate. He authored many books on dieting and nutrition such as Meat-Eating: A Cause of Disease (1956), Super Health Thru Organic Super Food (1958) and Health Through Scientific Nutrition (1960). He was alleged to have practiced breatharianism and a fruitarian diet. However, it was noted by H. Jay Dinshah that he was actually living as a vegan.

He founded several fruitarian or vegetarian utopian communes. He led colonists of these communes to join with false promises, in one instance claiming his Brazil commune would be safe from radiation after an atomic war; this was not true. He got into trouble after he sold "questionable health products" using the US postal system, and an assistant at one of his communes admitted they would sell farm animal feed at much higher prices claiming it was health food.

Siegmeister was a proponent of the hollow earth concept and UFOs. His ideas were never taken seriously by academics and have been dismissed as pseudoscience. He is credited with the merger of the Hollow Earth theory and religious beliefs about UFOs.

Siegmeister wrote of his search for the safest place on Earth from radioactive fallout in order to build a paradise. The idea was later developed in the writings of Johnny Lovewisdom and then Viktoras Kulvinskas.^{[citation needed]} He went to Ecuador in 1941 where he met John Wierlo (pen-name: Johnny Lovewisdom, aka "the Hermit Saint of the Andes") who had arrived in 1940, where they spoke of plans for a paradisian utopia and a super-race in the Ecuadorean jungle.

Many of his works copied from other authors, much to their chagrin. His Hollow Earth books were published under the pen name Raymond W. Bernard. In 1960, he published Flying Saucers from the Earth's Interior, largely basing his arguments on the works of Ray Palmer; Palmer's claims about UFOs were false, and even Siegmeister included Palmer's statement that a source he had worked from had been "falsified". However, he did not include Palmer's statements about how the alleged North Pole flight within the Earth was also fake, citing it as evidence for his theories. After the publication of the book, Palmer complained that he had been copied and stolen from, and that Siegmeister had "quoted and misquoted" him "entirely out of context and many times falsely". He also said that he owed him money for advertising fees which he had not paid, and accused him of real estate fraud; writer Daniel Loxton said these claims were "apparently true".

In 1964, he found a New York publisher for another book, The Hollow Earth, which was based on Flying Saucers from the Earth's Interior. The book describes a purported conspiracy to conceal the existence of the hollow earth and its access points at the poles. Siegmeister claims that the North Pole flight was covered up by "certain secret agencies", which is an influential theory to Hollow Earth believers. Siegmeister's hollow earth ideas are mentioned in detail in Alan Baker's Invisible Eagle, 2000. Loxton described this book as "probably the best known source on the subject".

On returning to the USA, Siegmeister, now called Robert Raymond, continued to sell his books, before returning to South America. Walter moved to Brazil in 1955 or 1956, in order to buy land and create a super-race. In Brazil, he renewed his interest in aliens, Atlantis, UFOs, tunnels and the hollow earth concept. Siegmeister believed Brazil contained the entrances to the tunnels leading to the hollow earth.^{[citation needed]} Siegmeister died of pneumonia in 1965.

Daniel Loxton described him as "a shady operator" and "an untrustworthy character" in his piece on Hollow Earth theories.

• Apollonius the Nazarene: The Life and Teachings of the Unknown World Teacher of the First Century. Lorida, Fla.: New Age Publications, 1945.
• Escape from Destruction: How to Survive in an Atomic Age. Mokelumne Hill, CA: Health Research, 1956.
• Super Health Thru Organic Super Food (1958)
• The Serpent Fire: The Awakening of Kundalini (Mokelumne Hill, CA: Health Research, 1959)
• Flying Saucers from the Earth's Interior. Mokelumne Hill, CA: Health Research, 1960.
• Health Through Scientific Nutrition (1960)
• Meat-Eating: A Cause of Disease (1956)
• The Hollow Earth. New York: Carol Publishing, 1969 [1964].
• Creation of the Superman. Mokelumne Hill, CA: Health Research, 1970.

• Baker, Alan (2000). Invisible Eagle: The History of Nazi Occultism. London: Virgin Books. ISBN 978-1-85227-863-2.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
• Folk, Holly (2021). "Raymond W. Bernard, Hollow Earth, and UFOs". In Zeller, Benjamin E. (ed.). Handbook of UFO Religions. Brill Handbooks on Contemporary Religion. Leiden: Brill Publishers. pp. 312–325. doi:10.1163/9789004435537_015. ISBN 978-90-04-43437-0. ISSN 1874-6691.
• Lewis, James R., ed. (2002). "Hollow Earth (Inner Earth)". The Encyclopedia of Cults, Sects, and New Religions (2nd ed.). Amherst: Prometheus Books. pp. 398–399. ISBN 978-1-61592-738-8 – via Google Books.
• Loxton, Daniel (2015). "Journey Inside the Fantastical Hollow Earth: Part Two". Skeptic. Vol. 20, no. 2. Altadena. pp. 65–73. ISSN 1063-9330.
• Regal, Brian (2009). "Hollow Earth". Pseudoscience: A Critical Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara: Greenwood Press. pp. 81–84. ISBN 978-0-313-35507-3.
• Whitsel, Brad (2001). "Walter Siegmeister's Inner-Earth Utopia". Utopian Studies. 12 (2): 82–102. ISSN 1045-991X. JSTOR 20718317.