What first brought me to the bit of property in the near middle of the Texas prairie known as Mount Carmel was a curiosity bordering on the lurid that had as fuel a long-standing interest in millenarianism, a widely publicized and lethal confrontation, a lecture, an unexpected academic appointment, and the possibility of a day trip in a new home state. In 1980, I graduated with a BA in anthropology and philosophy from Reed College. While at Reed, I joined a long line of anthropology majors before me in coming under the spell of the formidable Gail Kelly, who was herself under the spell of the anthropology of millenarianism. Enough said, except that Professor Kelly was under its spell for what she unabashedly regarded as its primitivism, its exoticism and its irrationalism – the binary opposite, thus, of all that she regarded herself to be (exoticism excepted). I was not thus bewitched. In 1990, I returned to Reed to teach in the anthropology department and in the program in the humanities. On March 2 or 3, 1993, I was slated to offer a lecture in the humanities program on early Christian millenarianism. Some three days prior to that lecture, agents of the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms raided the Branch Davidian compound and engaged those inside in a gun battle that left four of the agents and six inside the compound dead. A standoff ensued.