When most people think of tea, black or green teas come to mind. Both come from one plant: Camellia sinensis. Herbal teas don’t.
Celestial Seasonings is a company based in Boulder, Colorado that for over 50 years has featured herbal teas.
Their bestseller is Sleepytime, a mixture of chamomile, spearmint, and other herbs. It has no black or green tea, hence no caffeine.
1969: A group of self-professed ‘hippies’ gathered wild herbs near the Rocky Mountains, and they created their signature blend. .
Sleepytime was sold to food co-ops and health food stores, and it caught on.
Almost no one had heard of, let alone drank, herbal teas prior to then
They mixed many other blends including Red Zinger, and the business grew.
Celestial Seasonings is now arguably the world’s premiere herbal tea company.
Two of the founders were Mo Siegel and John Hay. They were teenagers when they began the enterprise.
Aside from a passion for herbal tea, the young men had a common interest in the New Age religious ideas found in The Urantia Book.
Chicago in the early 20th Century: Dr. William Sadler was known for exposing paranormal quackery. His neighbor, whom Sadler never identified, was a respectable man who sometimes fell into trances and spoke in tongues. During such semi-conscious episodes, a spirit would inhabit the unnamed neighbor and espouse religious beliefs.
The spirit claimed to be from another universe - a celestial being.
Over many years, the spirit’s words, which supposedly came via the doctor’s neighbor, were written into a massive tome.
The full text, over 2,000 pages, was published in 1955. It was titled The Urantia Book. No author has ever been listed… though some suggest Sadler wrote it himself.
The book purports to combine elements of religion and science. It discusses the creation of the universe, the history of Urantia (which is the celestial being’s name for Earth), and the concept of a Thought Adjuster.
The latter explains how all humans contain God’s spark which guides our thoughts.
The book also promotes evolution.
Nearly one-third of the book is about the life of Jesus Christ. It differs from the New Testament by claiming that Jesus never walked on water and wasn’t born of a virgin. Instead, Christ was the reincarnation of “Michael of Nebadon,” one of 700,000 sons of God.
Critics claim that the book promotes openly racist ideas and eugenics. One passage discusses “renovation of the racial stocks” and “elimination of inferior human strains.”
Dr. William Sadler wrote three books about eugenics.
The Urantia Book influenced Siegel and the way he operated his company.
According to Siegel, Jesus and Adam and Eve and Satan “were all extra-terrestrial beings who have visited Earth.”
Quotes which appeared on teabag tags and boxes for many years came directly from The Urantia Book.
John Hay left the operation in 1985 and founded other businesses.
Celestial Seasonings joined the Hain Food Group in 2000 to create the Hain Celestial Group, a conglomerate behind dozens of brand name health foods.
Siegel retired two years later.
He is a trustee of the Urantia Foundation, a group that bills itself as “the custodians of the Urantia Book.”
Celestial Seasonings no longer has any association with the book or foundation, as far as anyone can tell.
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