Marie Russak

Born on October 7, 1865, in the small city of Four Corners, Butte County in northern California, she studied music at Mills College in Oakland.

[1] Russak continued to work in the Theosophical Society and was contacted in California by Harvey Spencer Lewis, who in 1915 had founded AMORC.

She transmitted much of the esoteric knowledge that she had acquired, and she collaborated with the elaboration of some rituals, which were similar to those made of the OTRC.

One of her buildings, Moorcrest (probably completed in 1921) was rented by Charlie Chaplin before its sale in 1925 to the parents of Mary Astor, Mr. and Mrs. Otto Langhanke.

[3] She married first, professor, author and later Pulitzer Prize winner Justin Harvey Smith on May 22, 1892, in Boston, Massachusetts;[4] they divorced in 1895.