?Built into the side of a hill in Fairmount Park, the "Kelpius Cave" is believed to have been home to America’s first cult of mystics to predict the apocalypse. Atlas Obscura investigates.
Although cynics suspect the structure is simply an old springhouse, tradition holds that this area along the banks of Wissahickon Creek was settled in 1694 by mystic and scholar Johannes Kelpius and his followers. Believing, based on elaborate interpretation of the Bible's "Book of Revelations," that the world was going to end that year, the monks sought to live a solitary lifestyle in the wilderness while awaiting the End of Days and the Second Coming...
When the end of the world did not come as planned, Kelpius and the monks stayed in the Wissahickon, creating art and music, studying the skies, and helping the community around them when they could. The group mostly disbanded after Kelpius’s death in 1708, though many stayed in the community as doctors and lawyers. One of the later members of the Society, Christopher Witt, painted the first oil painting in America, with Kelpius as his subject. The painting is currently housed at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
Until the 1940s, the structure dubbed Cave of Kelpius had a fireplace and chimney, which were removed due to vandalism, but do hint at its having been more than a springhouse. The cave's true identity has been debated for many years. It's marked today by a granite monolith placed outside the entrance in 1961 by the Rosicrucians (meaning "rose" and "cross"), a worldwide mystical brotherhood that claims to have secret wisdom dating to ancient Egypt, and considers Kelpius the original American Rosicrucian.
Today, you'll find the enigmatic structure located on the trails near the southern end of the 1,800-acre Wissahickon Valley Park, a section of Fairmount Park in Northwest Philadelphia. The cave is sometimes used as a homeless shelter today, so be mindful before entering.
Original source: Atlas Obscura
Read the complete story
here.