54 Biography of a YogiSloan’s The Indian Menace (1929). Of these, Mayo’s work was distinctive in that
it deals primarily with the state of things in India itself rather than with anything
occurring on American soil. However, her representation of India as a land of
filth, disease, and above all sexual perversion no doubt infected domestic visions
of anyone and anything perceived as hailing from within its borders. Mayo was,
like Reed, a historian whose academic credentials gave her voice amplified sway,
and her book was a top- ten bestseller in 1927 and 1928.
With their unsavory reputation firmly in place, Yogis quickly became stock
characters in Hollywood murder mysteries and dramas, with an occasional detour
into comedy, through the first half of the twentieth century. The Yogi (or Swami)
was often unnamed, almost always a fraud, and habitually engaged in murder,
coerced suicide, illicit rituals, and deceiving of gullible women. The consistently
suggestive titles include: The Love Girl (1916, see fig. 1.3), Upside Down (1919),
Thirteen Women (1932), Sinister Hands (1932), Sucker Money (1933), The Mind
Reader (1933), Moonlight Murder (1936), Religious Racketeers (1938), and Bunco
Squad (1950).
Yet despite the very real legal and social consequences such characterizations
had for those who wished to identify as Yogis, the mystique continued unabated.
For every slew of angry husbands looking to chase the offending Swami out of
town, there was the implied equally large slew of spiritually seeking wives who
were only too eager to receive what the mystic might have to offer. This is not to
say that the Yogi’s followers (or victims, as popular opinion would have it) were
always women, though photographs of lectures and other gatherings do reveal a
sizeable female majority. However, as in many instances, cultural anxieties were
far more effectively played out on female bodies and psyches.
As the cases of Bull and Farmer demonstrate, women who earnestly and agen-
tively pursued their interest in yogic ideas and practice were subject to aggressive
forms of social sanction. While Bull was deceased by the time that legal measures
were brought to undermine her will and Farmer, though institutionalized, was
eventually liberated by members of her community, not all women were so lucky.
The most drastic example is perhaps that of Ida B. Craddock, a prominent occult-
ist, women’s rights activist, and sex reform advocate. Craddock, who opened her
own Church of Yoga in 1899, was imprisoned under the era’s strict anti- obscenity
laws and committed suicide before facing her federal trial.10 0 Craddock is signifi-
cant in other ways, none the least of which is her incorporation of dance into her
understanding of yoga. She is one in an entire line of “dancing girls”— Bernard’s
wife De Vries is another prominent example— who would gradually take over and
transform the face of postural yoga in the United States as immigration restric-
tions stymied the influx of Indian Yogis. This would bring about a profound
transformation in the form and public visibility of physical practice. After all,