Pasaquan and St. EOM
Seven acres of painted temples, pagodas and totem faces in rural Georgia, built by a self-proclaimed saint and restored for public visits.
Photo: Rivers Langley; SaveRivers / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0. Illustrative image.
Pasaquan is a restored visionary art environment near Buena Vista in southwest Georgia, built by Eddie Owens Martin, who called himself St. EOM. Columbus State University has cared for the site since the Kohler Foundation completed its restoration and gave it to the university in 2016.
Who St. EOM was
Eddie Owens Martin was born in 1908 to sharecroppers in Marion County, Georgia, and left for New York City as a teenager. According to Columbus State University, during a high fever in 1935 he received his first vision from a futuristic being who told him to change his ways and follow a new religion he called Pasaquoyanism. He took the name St. EOM.
In 1956, by his own account, another vision sent him back to his late mother's farm about eight miles outside Buena Vista. Around 1957 he began transforming the family farmhouse and its grounds into Pasaquan, and he kept building and painting there for nearly three decades, until his death in 1986.
What you see at Pasaquan
The seven-acre site has six significant structures, interiors covered with intricate mandala murals, and more than 900 feet of elaborately painted masonry walls. St. EOM filled it with temples, pagodas, shrines and walkways decorated with brightly painted concrete totem faces, whirling mandalas, snakes and figures.
He drew on what he learned about pre-Columbian Mexican, African and Native American cultures and other religious symbols, and on motifs from James Churchward's book about the legendary lost continent of Mu.
How it survived and how to visit
After Martin's death, the Pasaquan Preservation Society looked after the site. In 2014 a member of the society's board approached the Kohler Foundation, which took on the site and carried out a restoration of about two and a half years, one of the largest and most complex projects in its history. Pasaquan reopened in 2016 and was given to Columbus State University the same year; the Preservation Society continues as an advisory board.
At the time of writing, Pasaquan is open Friday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., with a suggested contribution rather than a fixed ticket, and it closes on federal and bank holidays and for the months of December and July. The address is 238 Eddie Martin Road, Buena Vista, Georgia 31808. Because hours and closures can change, check the Columbus State University Pasaquan page before driving out.
