Author: Paul Johnson

This concludes the series of Letters to the Sage correspondents by decanates. From The Last Eighteen Decanates Analyzed:

PISCES—3rd Decanate. The last decanate of Pisces is pictured among the constellations by CASSIOPEIA the Queen on her throne. It is the sex decanate of the sign of imprisonment, and mythology attributes the imprisonment of her daughter to the pride of this queen in her beauty. However, in another story she is the queen who furnished her children with the Ram that bore the golden fleece and carried them to heaven.

Therefore, we find those born under this influence to have eventful lives, and to be capable of entering upon and succeeding in a wide variety of careers. It is the last section of the zodiac, and they seem often to recapitulate in their lives the events and conditions we expect from many other decanates. They are unusually adaptable, are likable people, and require excitement and change. They reach their highest value in psychical research, and in adopting and advocating such a life as will prepare man for existence after the change called death.

Sir Richard Burton, the famous traveler, who was so expert at disguise and as a linguist that he passed as a native in many lands, was born when the Sun was here. Evelyn Nesbit Thaw, actress over whom her husband shot Stanford White, and whose life has been filled with drama and pathos was born with her Mentality in this decanate. And Empress Frederick of Germany, mother of Kaiser Wilhelm of world-war notoriety, was born with this section of the zodiac on the Ascendant. It is the decanate of VICISSITUDES.

Note—With a few exceptions, so that the students may have easy access to the charts cited and thus study the other factors contributing to character and accomplishment, I have used as examples persons whose charts may be found in The Book of Notable Nativities.

From Letters to the Sage, Volume One”

            William B. Shelley—born on March 17, 1825—was one of the eight children of Nathan and Dorcas Shelley, prosperous farmers in Gaines, Orleans County, New York. In 1850 he was single and working as a clerk in Rochester. By 1860 he was still in Rochester, married to Caroline, with whom in 1880 he shared the household of James and Josephine Cables in Rochester. He became president of the Rochester TS lodge in 1883 and a member of the Board of Control the following year. In 1886 he was found guilty of spousal abandonment but the judgment was reversed on appeal to the New York Supreme Court. He died January 29, 1892 in Grenville, Ontario, and was buried in his hometown of Gaines, New York. His letter in this volume is the official announcement Johnson received about the creation of the Board of Control.

Rochester

 June 8, 1884

Dear Sir and F.T.S.

            It is with pleasure and by request of Wm Q. Judge I enclose the within letter and rule relating to the interest of Theosophy in America.

            Seven persons are named to form an American Board of Control, yourself, one of them. How and when can they be together to organise and mature plans for the responsible work. Geographically, Rochester is the center and Mrs Cables cordially invites the members to meet at her house No 40 Ambrose St. time to be fixed by correspondence with all members. An early meeting is desirable. Sickness and death in Mrs Cables house has prevented earlier attention, and also delayed the issue of our publication, the “Occult Word—“ devoted to the interest of Theosophy after reading and considering please reply with such suggestions as in your judgment will best promote the object to be attained  –

            Fraternally yours

            WB Shelley

            President

            Rochester Branch

from The Last Eighteen Decanates Analyzed:

PISCES—2nd Decanate. The second decanate of Pisces is pictured among the constellations by ANDROMEDA—the Princess chained to the rock for the sea monster to devour. It symbolizes the earthbound condition of the human soul that passes to the spirit side of life obsessed with the desire for material reincarnation. It also represents those noblest of all mankind who suffer persecution and imprisonment that the rest of humanity may prosper.

The lives of persons born under this section of the sky are usually filled with restrictions and limitations. Often these conditions are assumed voluntarily as the price enacted by the world for the sake of assisting in its progress. When living at their best they are readily impressed by those on the spirit side of life, and are often chosen to carry out some important mission on earth. They grasp more readily than others the true meaning of universal brotherhood, and they get the most out of life through alleviating the physical and mental suffering of their fellowman.

Nicholas Copernicus, who was largely responsible for the adoption of the present system of astronomy, and suffered for his apparent heresy, was born with the Sun here. Charubel, author of Degrees of the Zodiac Symbolized, a seer and worker in behalf of the esoteric wisdom, had his Mentality in this decanate. And T. H. Burgoyne, author of Light of Egypt, and adept in the highest sense of the word, who suffered persecution for his views, was born with this part of the zodiac on the Ascendant. It is the decanate of SELF-SACRIFICE.

From Letters to the Sage, Volume One

            Sylvester Clark Gould, born March 1, 1840, was a New Hampshire editor and publisher, well-known for his knowledge of both New Hampshire history and esoterica. Gould entered the publishing industry as a newspaper printer in 1862, and in the following year he became a part-owner of and writer for the same newspaper. Although, starting in 1870s, Gould found stable employment as a depot manager for Concord Railroad, he maintained his interest in publishing and in 1883, with his brother Leroy, he began the journal Notes and Queries, which would be a popular periodical for fraternal, fringe math and science, and esoteric topics. This was followed 1907 with a new journal of the same type, the Rosicrucian Brotherhood. Gould himself was a member of over three dozen fraternal and esoteric groups, including the Massachusetts College of the Societas Rosicruciana, the Theosophical Society, the Order of the Sufis, the original H.B. of L., and a later group known as the Hermetic Brotherhood of Light. He often held leadership positions in these organizations, and was put on the H.B. of L. Committee of Seven in September 1886. He died July 20, 1909, leaving a wife and daughter, Annie.

            Gould’s letters are primarily valuable for demonstrating his initial connecting with Johnson in 1885, and his reconnecting with him just prior to his 1908 claim that Johnson was still a member of the Order of Sufis. They also reveal that in later years Gould—who in 1883 Alexander Wilder described as someone who “hears everything”[1]—was somewhat out of the loop of Theosophical circles. In his December 27, 1906 letter, Gould asks if William Throckmorton—who died in 1893—is still living.

Manchester, NH

December 15, 1885

Friend Johnson—The enclosed letter speaks for itself—I have been for years a student of some of the mysteries. But not until I fell in with friend Peter Davidson did I discover an avenue to be escorted into the door—I had read “Isis Unveiled”. and noted the reference on page 308 of Vol II.[2] Also the M^ckenzies Cyclopedia page 309. H.B. of L. invoice but did not know how to proceed—

I now await orders—[3]

Please rehand the letter of the Private Sec—Burgoyne—

I have read the Theosophist from beginning. And many others of kindred nature—not omitting The Platonist)—(No. 8. Vol. II. just at hand)

I am now about half through Godfrey Higgins’ “Anacalypsis”[4]—a remarkable work—

I am sure glad you are to—give us the “Dogma et Ritual” and “Denudota.”[5]             “the Perfect Way or the Finding of Christ”[6] &c.(4to)—has just reached me—  

I found in Boston last week a neat copy of “Hymns of Orpheus” from the original Greek with—Pre. Dis. on Life and Theology of Orpheus” London 1792[7]—pp 227.

I suppose you have all three books—but I only mention them as I have not the opportunities that some have to pick them up—they please me and all add interest to the subjects which interest me

            I have but few mystical works—perhaps 200—

            But more anon —

            Fraternally yours

            SC Gould

Office of Notes and Queries, S.C. Gould, Editor and Publisher

Manchester, NH

December 18, 1906

By Dear Sir and Bro—

            Having had some correspondence with our mutual co-laborer Dr. A. Wilder, he incidentally mentioned you. I had not heard from you for quite a long time, and really did not know whether you was still with us yet on this sphere. However, I am now, and always was, glad to hear your name mentioned.

            I gladly send you the last volume of N & Q,[8] free, and will send the 1905 volume if you care to have one for old friendship sake and pleasant memories.

            I send you also the first nos of The Rosicrucian—a new venture.

            I even now read The Platonist with great pleasure, and remember the many past [illegible] editions from you.

            Always yours

            S.C. Gould

Office of Notes and Queries, S.C. Gould, Editor and Publisher

Manchester, NH

December 27, 1906

My Dear Sir and Bro—

            I am delighted to again hear from you, and read your good letter just at hand. I always did. and do now, admire the head of Plato, Homer, and many others. I could name, and I had to first gaze at that head of Plato.

            I am glad to be corrected on the Concordance[9] author. I have had some knowledge of Platonic literature, had Thomas Taylor’s works and was surprised at the volume when I find it that I had never seen or heard of it. And so started the surprise and when I scrutinized my list of his works published by in Vol XI. p. 21 and did not find it (I send you that number now).

            Well. I thank you and shall published my mistake. But first I shall try and find who this Thomas Taylor was. And ascertain the facts

            When the Concordance came from London, I said to myself what a poor Concordance it was, and not any of our Thomas Taylor’s handi-work. I am glad for the information of the Alcott piece and will make a note of it. etc.

            This leads me to send you an advance sheet. of same Greek lines. and ask you to give me a free translation of them at your leisure

            I send you vols. 1905. and 1901. and some other pamphlets. reprints mostly as I frequently run off some for friends.

            You can have more of the later vols. if you wish as I have a good supply at present. I formerly sent N. and Q. to you. But when your name got off I know not. unless in reviewing the list at some time.

            I have been very free with the N. & Q. There is no money in it now. There is such a immense lot of stuff now published by machinery and so much is distributed free (sample copies) that many more get their reading free by the asking.

            Anyway vol. XXV, 1907, will round out 25 years. and the Matter in N. & Q. has out-grown title. and if I am spared and health[y] the second series will be under a new name and somewhat different in matter.

            I, being an old printer, have set nearly all my type and hence the saving in issuing the N. & Q. The Rosicrucian is a side issue for a while to I am writing answers to letters of inquiry—as to the RC.

            Some of the articles will also appear in N. & Q. in 1907.

            Dr Wilder’s art. in the R.P. Journal in the ’80’s will be the leader in July No. now in type.[10]

            Gen. E. N. Buford’s  lecture in Chicago in the ’80’s will be the leader in the April No 1907.[11] It is on “the Philosophers Stone”. But really it is a review of Gen E.A. Hitchcock’s works, a list of which will appear the article.

            Some way it seems to me there are but few platonic students now compared to former times or at least I do not know of them. Is Throckmorton still living?

            Good H.K. Jones has passed beyond several years ago. Dr Wilder is with us yet. I hear from him about once a month. I once had a few students here, but they have flown, or back slidden.

            Well, enough now—

            Always yours S.C. Gould  

Office of Notes and Queries, S.C. Gould, Editor and Publisher

Manchester, NH

August 30, 1907

Dear Sir and Bro—

            Your card at hand, and in answer will say, that the address of The Tantrik Order[12] is not given as to Box, or Street. My notice gives all, except that the journals are $2.00 a copy to be had of G.E. Stechert & Co. 129-133

West 20^th St. New York City

I will loan you my copy, and do hereby send it by mail. You can have it a month or more

I shall be in New York City about Sept 12, 1907, and shall call on several whom I am in touch with and shall try and obtain more information about it, and if I do more than stated in the Journal I will enlighten you—and if you should obtain more light, please let me know—

            Always yours

            S.G. Gould

Tantrik Journal goes same mail as this Aug 30, 1907 11 a.m. 

---

[1] Alexander Wilder to Johnson, July 31, 1883.

[2] In which Blavatsky explains that Mackenzie was correct to note the existence of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor, but was incorrect in asserting it was Rosicrucian-based, an idea most likely derived from Rev. James H. Wiggin (see H.P. Blavatsky Collected Writings (hereafter, BCW) (Wheaton , Illinois: Quest Books), 1:121).

[3] This language seems to imply, curiously, that Davidson directed Gould to Johnson and not Cables, as might have been expected, since Gould was a member of Cables’ Rochester lodge and Davidson was also Cables’ guru, while Johnson’s guru was Ayton.

[4] Godfrey Higgins’ (1772-1833) posthumously-published two-volume tome that compares the world’s religions and myths with the intention of proving the existence of a since ancient, universal religion. Its full title is Anacalypsis: An Attempt to Draw Aside the Veil of the Saitic Isis or an Inquiry into the Origin of Languages, Nations and Religions (1833).

[5] The Kabbala Denudata (1677-78) by German cabalist Christian Knorr von Rosenroth (1636 -1689). The first English translation was made by S.L.M. Mathers in 1887, nearly two years after Gould’s letter.

[6] An 1881 book by Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland.

[7] This was written by Thomas Taylor.

[8] Gould’s journal, Notes and Queries.

[9] Gould had incorrectly assumed this to beThomas Taylor’s Concordance to the Holy Scriptures.

[10] The only article by Wilder to be published in Gould’s journal that year was his “The Rosicrucians,” which appeared in the September issue. So far, we have been unable to find the original in the Religio-Philosophical Journal.

[11] It in fact appeared in the August issue.

[12] Established by the American yogi Pierre Bernard on the US West Coast in 1905.

This is the first newspaper mention I have found of the Brotherhood of Light.

It has been quite a learning curve, moving from author and editor to publisher and there is still a lot to learn. But one principle I have learned is that it is OK to share for free public access small PORTIONS of a book but not the entire publication. (The former promotes the financial interests of Amazon/Kindle, the latter undermines them.) Hence, the prologues or prefaces to the Grimke Collected Works, the Wilder Letters to Thomas Moore Johnson, Chintamon’s Gita commentary, and my own Pell Mell, are all now uploaded to the academia page at—

https://independent.academia.edu/KennethJohnson24/Books

This blog and academia.edu both provide statistical reports which are certainly of interest to me, and may be of interest to readers of the blog. Over the year the average number of readers is about 500 per month. No breakdown by nationality is provided, but for academia we see more detail, while the annual visit numbers are about a typical month here on History of the Adepts.

Rounding out the series of spiritual ancestors by decanates, Pisces appropriately concludes with some of the most important characters. At the dawning of the sign of Aquarius, I will devote this post to the only Aquarian in the correspondence and then in February report relevant news about the entire field of inquiry, with international ramifications.

From The Last Eighteen Decanates Analyzed:

AQUARIUS—2nd Decanate. The Flying Horse —PEGASUS—pictures among the constellations the Mercury decanate of Aquarius. The wings pictured upon the symbol of mind indicate the ability to leave the material body and travel in the super-physical world in the astral form. This may take place volitionally, or quite unconsciously so far as the objective mind is concerned, during sleep. And those who can bring through into the objective state the information so contacted have a never-ending supply of interesting material that they often are able to present in a fascinating manner.

People under this decanate possess naturally the ability to gain information from invisible sources. Consequently, they have unlimited resourcefulness in imaginative creation. And they are able to present their conceptions in a most dramatic manner. So, by all means, they should follow some occupation where the mind has power to exert itself. And when not inclined to literature they should read much and learn to express their thoughts in conversation. They convey their ideas to others in a most convincing manner, and through this faculty lies their greatest good, both to themselves and to humanity.

Charles Dickens, the famous novelist, was born with his Individuality here. H. Rider Haggard, another famous novelist, had his Moon in this decanate. And Robert Louis Stevenson, still another wonderful writer of romance, had this section of the zodiac on the Ascendant at his birth. It is the decanate of INSPIRATION.

From Letters to the Sage, Volume One:

            William Austin Kelsoe was born February 1, 1851 in western Illinois, where he was raised by his maternal uncle’s family. After earning his bachelor’s degree at McKendree College, he spent about two years at the University of Heidelberg, where he studied philology, history, literature, law, and physics. Upon returning to the US, he obtained a master’s degree and began working for St. Louis newspapers. Kelsoe soon became a prominent newspaper editor in the city as well as an active member of the community, participating in numerous literary and fraternal organizations, and helping found St. Louis’ Ethical Society. Kelsoe died in St. Louis on March 9, 1932.

            Kelsoe was one of the first members of the St. Louis Theosophical Society,[1] so his letters to Johnson add details about Johnson’s relationship with the group and therefore give a better glimpse into how organized Theosophy began to spread in the US Kelsoe was also friend of Alexander Russell Webb, the famous Muslim convert and former resident of St. Louis who, with Kelsoe, joined both the Society for Psychical Research and the local TS in the 1880s. His letters, therefore, help give insight into Webb’s own network of religiously experimental friends just before his 1888 conversion.

[undated, probably late 1884/early 1885]

Mr. Johnson—I owe an apology to you for running off from Memphis. We (Mrs. K. and myself) had been wanting (all day) to get away that night, but until 11 o’clock at night did not know that we would be able to get the necessary letter from Mr. Rogers, the railroad passenger agt. in charge of the excursion. We had a very pleasant trip and went as far south as Key West. When you come to the city, pay us a visit. We live at 827 Tayon avenue (South 18^th Street) and take Fourteenth street car line on Washington avenue (passes by door) or Fourth street Clouteau avenue line get off at Tayon avenue and walk one block north. You can find me at “Republican”[2] office any time between 1 pm and 3 am.

I wish to subscribe for the “Platonist” and have also two other subscribers for you. Send paper to following addresses for one year commencing with last number:

Thomas M. Knapp

818 Gratiot Street St. Louis, M.

Graham Young

“Mo. Republican”

St Louis, Mo.

W.A. Kelsoe

827 Tayon Avenue

            (South 18^th St)

St Louis, Mo.

If I mistake not, the subscription price is $2. If more, let me know and I will send the rest. Our T.S. meetings are now held Wednesday evenings. You are an officer, but I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting you there yet. I think you ought to take a run over here to get acquainted with your brothers.

Fraternally Yours

W.A. Kelsoe

“Mo. Republican”

St Louis, Mo.

St. Louis

May 21, 1885

Dear Sir—Glad to hear from you. We are not going to the press association’s meeting this year, nor going on the excursion to Macinac. We just returned from a trip to Mexico and must wait a year before we can take another. Can’t afford two in one year. But that shouldn’t prevent our meeting each other. The convention opens Tuesday, June 2.[3] You must arrange it so that you can spend Sunday, May 31, with us. You can leave here Monday evening, and that will give you two days here, one with my wife and myself and one in which to run around and see Mr. Throckmorton, or, Field,[4] Mr. Page and other theosophists. Our society now numbers about 30 members, most of whom are regular attendants at the meetings. We meet Wednesday evenings. On your return from the editorial excursion you may be able to stop over here and attend one of them. If I mistake not, the intention is to get back to St. Louis Wednesday, June 10, and if so you could attend our meeting that night and go on home next morning. We had a very pleasant trip in Mexico, but I will save myself the trouble of telling you about it by sending you the account of it published in the “Republican”. We still live at 827 Tayon Avenue (also called South 18^th street). Mrs. K. sends regards.

            Yours fraternally

            W.A. Kelsoe

November 12, 1886

My dear friend and Brother—

I have found the “Platonist” sent me intensely interesting and am anxious to secure the print volume, as many numbers of it as possible. I hope you will not discontinue the publication of the paper. I think I can secure you new subscribers from time to time and I know that if you keep it up long enough, it will be more than self sustaining. I send you $3 for the eleven minutes[5] you have of the first volume. At the end of the present year, I will have the two volumes bound together.

            In haste

            Your friend and brother

            Theosophically

            W.A. Kelsoe

            827 Tayon Ave

            (or South 28^th st)

            St Louis, Mo.

Mrs. K. sends best regards and we would both be glad to see you. We are having interesting theosophical meetings now & are experimenting psychologically with success.

            Kelsoe

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

November 30, 1910

Dear Friend,

            Many thanks for the copy of Proclus’ Metaphysical Elements.[6] I have your sketch of Proclus’ life and found it very interesting. The “Elements,” however, are too deep for the time I can give to them at present.

            In translating Proclus’ words, you have, I am confident, conferred a lasting benefit on mankind. Without being able to grasp the subtleties of Plato philosophical writings, I am an admirer of the great philosopher himself, the more so, perhaps, because I was once a member of a “Platonian Literary Society”.

            Your book is dedicated, I see, to Dr. W.T. Harris, and you also mention Prof. Thomas Davidson. Both were my personal friends and Davidson I first met when I was a student in Germany and Harris’ acquaintance I made soon after beginning my newspaper career here in St. Louis in 1874.

            The Post -Dispatch’s story about you was received from some correspondent of the paper (I think an Oseola man, but am not sure as to that) and I understand he also sent the picture. I enclose two clippings of this article, and one cut from the Detroit Free Press of Nov. 29, which may interest you.[7]

            Yours truly

            W.A. Kelsoe

---

[1] William Austin Kelsoe TS membership, entered April 28, 1884, Theosophical Society General Register Vol. I, http://www.theartarchives.org.

[2] The Missouri Republican newspaper.

[3] What kind of convention this was is unknown.

[4] George Hamilton Field; TS membership entered March 17, 1884, Theosophical Society General Register Vol. I, http://www.theartarchives.org.

[5] It is uncertain if this is the word Kelsoe was actually writing.

[6] This was Johnson’s translation, published in Osceola in 1909.

[7] We were unable to locate the Post-Dispatch article on Johnson. The Detroit Free Press article was most likely “Every Religion Ends in Dogma” (page 8), which reports on a lecture of a Prof. Wenley of the University of Michigan who argued, following Hegel, that all religious and philosophical movements will eventually be overcome by opposing types.

The three authors included in the History of the Adepts series were all published under their own names in the 1870s and 80s.  But unlike Alexander Wilder, Sarah Stanley Grimke and Hurrychund Chintamon were also involved in writing under aliases while associated with Thomas Henry Burgoyne. The debut of this blog was greeted in 2010 by denunciation from a trio of Blavatsky experts writing under the pseudonyms Hari Hamsa, Jaigurudeva, and Padma, aroused specifically by rancor at Chintamon. Their site vanished in December 2014 without anyone ever identifying them to me. There is also a longstanding Blavatsky oriented website in which one person writes under three names, two of which, Terry Hobbes and David Green, specifically targeted me (by Hobbes in 1993) and the late Gregory Tillett (as Green starting in 1998) while defrauding dozens of members of online discussion groups.

A common thread in the lives of these authors using literary pseudonyms is that it always has unintended consequences. Emma Hardinge Britten creates Chevalier Louis de B_ out of a half dozen or more acquaintances in Europe and America; Blavatsky then outdoes her both in terms of the number of acquaintances in India and the aliases she gives them.  Thomas Henry Dalton is recruited into the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor, adopting a pseudonym under the influence of Hurrychund Chintamon and Peter Davidson who are also writing under aliases.  But his existence as Burgoyne lasts only five years, from 1886 to 1891 after which he becomes Norman Astley for the rest of his long life. Yet his publishers the Wagners appropriate his material, declare him dead, and publish what he had entrusted to them as channeled from a spirit. Hence his remaining unpublished manuscripts pile up for two decades at the end of which his wife edits and publishes excerpts under “A Pilgrim of the Way.” She did a very creditable job as editor but the book had little or no impact on readers at the dawn of the first world war, at the end of which the Astleys came to California. The unintended consequence of becoming Burgoyne in 1886 is that his literary light is under a bushel, permanently, and the same is true for Grimke when writing with him as Zanoni. But Blavatsky’s unintended consequence for alias games was far greater, the Society for Psychical Research investigation and her forced departure from India.  Britten tries to revive Chevalier Louis in 1892 in a new volume, but it is never published in book form. Hence indulging in aliases early on came back to “haunt” all three of them at the end of their writing careers.

Nothing in the transition from Benny Williams to Elbert Benjamine to C.C. Zain was comparable to this, in that his name was legally changed after he married Elizabeth. It was understood that Zain was a pen name for Benjamine, no secret.  The name change was a matter of public record and newspaper coverage at the time, explained by the Williamses opposition to his work with the Brotherhood of Light. [The fact that his mother Emma visited LA right before this and was sister in law of the governor of Iowa at the time suggests it was Elbert’s maternal relatives who were most opposed.] But when his children came back into his life by moving to California, one adopted Benjamine as a surname and the other three did not. Now his descendants (one grandson was named Elbert Benjamine) include both Williamses and Benjamines, a peculiar unintended consequence indeed.

The term occultism has problems in the 21^st century and esotericism is the preferred label among academic scholars.  My observation of the difference is that there are opposite approaches to secrecy and transparency. Esotericists have always been generous and constructive to me, while occultists have often approached historical research with four dangerous proclivities: obscurantism (the practice of deliberately preventing the facts or full details of something from becoming known), obstructionism (the practice of deliberately impeding or delaying the course of legal, legislative, or other procedures), obfuscation (the action of making something obscure, unclear, or unintelligible), and ostracism (exclusion from a society or group.)  Occultist types hoard, hide, misrepresent, and even destroy historical evidence seeking power through secrecy. Esotericists collect, explain, publish, and preserve literature from past secret traditions, not feeling bound by an ethos of secrecy or religious rivalry.

History of the Adepts was chosen first as the name of this blog and then as a series title for books for two reasons. 1) The focus is always primarily on historical evidence about sources or influences apparent in the Brotherhood of Light lessons. 2) My book The Masters Revealed had chapters about 18 Adepts and 14 Mahatmas, but the sectarian noise surrounding “the Masters” being equated with only two pseudonymous “Mahatmas” has drowned out all the historical signals in my research.   “Adepts” does not evoke the same level of smears and disinformation. Calling these people and associates adepts does not imply any judgment about their interior spiritual qualities or status; it describes their historical accomplishments in esoteric studies. One striking difference between Wilder, Grimke, Johnson, Stebbins, Astley, Chintamon, and their contemporaries in the worlds of Theosophy and Spiritualism is the prioritization of philosophical wisdom and scientific knowledge over religious belief in their writings. We see this reflected in the work of Benjamine throughout the BOL lessons, making for a more Aquarian Age flavor in this twentieth century organization than in its Piscean Age belief-based nineteenth century ancestors.

My Seven Years in Occult Los Angeles with Manly Palmer Hall is the subtitle of Tamra Lucid’s beautifully written memoir, Making the Ordinary Extraordinary. My own seven years of annual visits to occult Los Angeles lasted from 1981 to 1988, coinciding roughly with the period in which Tamra and her husband as newlyweds were involved in Hall’s Philosophical Research Society and its library.  I wish I could have known them then, but this book makes readers feel as if we have.

Instead of a biography of Hall and or his wife Marie, or an autobiography, what we have is a series of colorful anecdotes, humorously retold, about a diverse cast of characters in a unique subculture of eccentrics. The humor becomes an alchemical transformation of lead into gold, in which the author tells the story of these seven years with the benefit of thirty years of hindsight, finding many levels of meaning that were not apparent at the time.

My last trip to the LA area in any official capacity was to speak at the 1988 Secret Doctrine Centenary in Pasadena which had Mr. Hall as the featured keynote speaker, the same day I spoke about the Chaldean Book of Numbers.  In the 1990s I had a comparable amount of experience with occult Virginia Beach. The tragic circumstances of Hall’s death resonated among the milieux of Cayce and Blavatsky fans I had met; his PRS Library was the closest analogue to those in Virginia Beach, Altadena, or Wheaton I had consulted where his name was instantly recognizable, along with his magnum opus The Secret Teachings of All Ages.  Grace Knoche, Leader of the Pasadena TS which organized the event spoke of him by first name as a personal friend before this event and was the convener of the conference.

The astrology-savvy readers of this blog will appreciate Tamra’s frequent astrological references.  Chapter nine, Pluto, describes Ronnie Pontiac’s initiation into the mysteries of astrology: “Of course, Edith knew about the astrology challenge, and gave Ronnie a carefully chosen list of books, including several early editions from C.C. Zain’s Religion of the Stars set. She wanted to see our charts for herself so we got another lesson in interpretation.  She got a kick out of blowing our minds.”

I am mentioned in reference to Marie Hall’s infamy in my native southeastern Virginia on page 74: “Marie upset the locals.  I know she traumatized the town because of friend of mine, Paul Johnson, was a young man there when it happened.”  Marie Hall’s psychic visions told her and dozens of fanatical followers that Bruton Parish church yard in Williamsburg contained not just the original manuscripts of all Shakespeare’s works in Francis Bacon’s handwriting, but various kinds of other buried literary treasures revealing all the secrets of the universe.  Years of legal harassment and vandalism against the good people of Williamsburg ensued. 

Both Halls fell into the hands of unscrupulous characters among the motley crew they had collected, as described by Tamra: “And so I met many casualties of spirituality gone wrong. The seekers of wisdom who were actually seeking dominion. The ceremonial magicians who opened portals they could not close into realms they could not understand. The positive thinkers whose shadows erupted into inexplicably negative predicaments.” The most ominous line appears on page 109: “his name was Daniel Fritz, and he claimed to be a reincarnated Atlantean priest.” He claimed a great many other things, and did tremendous damage to the organization, but very soon after his appearance on the scene, Tamra and Ronnie were shown the door. “Mr. Hall asked Ronnie to see him at home, not PRS.  ‘Ron,’, Mr. Hall said, `I want you to go.’  Naturally, Ronnie wondered why.  Mr. Hall explained that all those wonderful elders, including himself, who had shown such kindness weren’t long for this world.  He did not want us to witness the demise of PRS.  ‘This is my flock,’ he told Ronnie, and I have to take them home.’

Readers of this blog may recall that my enthusiasm for Thomas Moore Johnson and Alexander Wilder was largely inspired by Ronnie’s 2013 Newtopia articles about them and Hiram K. Jones.  Very soon after reading them, I learned that Patrick Bowen had obtained permission to transcribe and publish the entire voluminous incoming correspondence to Johnson, with Wilder the most prolific correspondent by a wide margin.  Now Ronnie’s research into Johnson, Wilder, Jones, and associates is part of a forthcoming book which I will feature here when it appears. Both Tamra and Ronnie have vivid “authorial voices” which is something I have tried to avoid in a lifetime of scholarly writing with mostly academic publishing outlets. Making The Ordinary Extraordinary deserves the popular and critical success which is inevitable (or deserves to be so in my estimation.) In addition to being a book, it will also become an audiobook and subject of several podcast interviews to which I will give links in the comments. Her “voice” needs to be heard.

https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Making-the-Ordinary-Extraordinary/Tamra-Lucid/9781644113752

Mysteries of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor– Ronnie Pontiac

(Henceforth I will post two chapters per month– editorial comments will appear in February about the first half of the book)

CHAPTER TWO-BEING A BRIEF SURVEY OF SOME OF THE FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS

§ l.  Time:  Space:  Movement:  Form:  these are the cardinal features of the eternal reality. Time and movement are the same, viz.: Duration. Form and Space are the same, that is, imply each other; and the whole, inter-related, and co-dependent, are relative terms to express the one ultimate and fundamental fact of existence- which is Life. These cardinal features are accepted as undeniable facts of  experience. A metaphysic that would deny the reality of any one of them is unworthy of any sane thinker. Nevertheless, we are reminded that there are those who would question each and all. “Doubting Castle” is no myth, but a mighty fortress in the wilderness of the mind, and many there be who dwell therein. There   is   also   in   that strange  and “hollow land” a great shrine most wondrously fashioned by cunning craftsmen, called the Cave of Solipsism, in whose sub-mundane gloom there is reflected nothing but the images of self. Each worshipper, being his own idol, is blind to everything but the phantasmagora of his own creating.  The atmosphere is mephitic! Let us pass on!  We have not forgotten the days of captivity on “Devil’s Island,” and need a breath of pure ozone from the sea.

§ 2. What am I myself?  We think of organic life, and at once, the matter of fact mechanical intellect answers, “An organism.”    Quite true, an apt word, a rhythmic expression that sounds so   grand, comes   so   near · to   the   body, and yet carries the mind so far beyond.  And we ask, what kind of an organism? Turning the spiritual light of intuition upon the lens of intellect, we dimly see, through their penetrating rays, the machinery at work behind the outward screen of matter. So viewed, man is an individual vortex of vital activities in the psychical stream of life-a microcosm within the macrocosm of Being- a living centre of self-consciousness upon  the shoreless  ocean  of the  sub-conscious­ a focus, wherein myriad rays of the intermingling relationships of the world converge, react upon this psychical vortex, and  create a living light. This illumination is “the magnetic field” of consciousness, or sphere of mind, wherein memory, thought, and feeling have their birth.

We are dazed with the vision! We are in the presence of one of the innermost secrets of life I But, before we can grasp its meaning the whence? the why? it is gone. The movement has escaped us. A veil is thrown across the sight.  The intellect reassumes control. And there remains unanswered, the age-long question: “Whence?” whose apparent simplicity marks a problem of world-wide complexity.

Myself! How shall we question this microcosm of mystery, and bring this self-conscious organic unity of spirit and matter to an inward revelation of itself?  Some things, or features we already know, and some, as yet, we only feel through that subliminal sense of inward evidence. We have before us a form, constantly changing as a whole, yet retaining a continuous identity of self-hood. Subject to dissolution as a unit in the struggle for existence, yet possessing the possibility of survival through measureless eons of time which can only be voiced in words as the gift of immortal life. Verily we have much to learn. That ancient Delphic command: “Know thyself” is the task of Eternity.

§ 3. What is the consciousness of myself?­ that which sits enthroned upon the egoism of the I? There is no permanent unchangeable I; no imperishable ego of the self. This is the great illusion-to be more fully considered in a later chapter.

Reflect! The child thinks as a child, lives in the mental atmosphere of pure innocence and acts in consequence. Later he is a different being; he has become a youth, has all the romantic dreams of youth. Experience in the world has tarnished the mirror of his mind.   In no sense of the word can these two be caIled the same individual. There is only one link that continues the identity.  In manhood, again, the youth has disappeared. He has become to a great extent disillusioned. The romantic possibilities of earlier years turn out to be the impossible, and are relegated for safe keeping to his castles in the air, to be dreamed over again when he has reached that second childhood that hopes for their realisation in his children’s children.

Remember this:   There is an eternity behind us, as well as an eternity before us. If the indestructible ego is a fact, this monad must, also, have existed from all eternity; must have already passed through innumerable existences; hence, without change, must be the same in child­ hood, youth, and manhood.   This we know is not a fact. We are distinctly different in thought, deed, and ability. There is but one link which binds the changing states from infancy to age into one continuous identity, and that is memory. We have no memory of  any previous state of existence; therefore this I of myself is a very fleeting personality.   The consciousness of the I of myself is limited to the memorable period of the life which I now live; and this consciousness is growing and changing daily, nay, every minute of existence. It is not a. static ego looking on; not .an indestructible monad gathering experience in the world, to be sealed and signed, and then stored up in the pantechnicon of the sub-conscious for future use.

The I of my conscious self is memory; that which we remember is a part of this self; and the charioteer which is the centre around which these memories drape themselves is the only ego we possess in a conscious form. The form of. this consciousness is that magnetic field of psychical awareness of which we have already spoken. But there is a deeper, much more fundamental self than this surface field of awareness, and questions regarding this sub-conscious self, and our relations with the subliminal order of being will come before us anon.

§ 4. What is Truth? Truth, like life, assumes many forms. Truth is a conception, an idea. of consistency in statement.   It is the observation of a fact, or of the co-ordinated result of a series of facts.  It is a perception of the meaning of the facts of experience to ourselves. Every truth, under whatever form it appears, is founded upon some order of facts. For instance, the psychical facts of religious experience- are just as true, on their own plane, as the physical facts of science are upon theirs.  Natural appearances are more real to our senses than are the abstract realities behind them to our intellect. In the fervour of religious ecstasy, the saint may have visions. They may be real in the sense of being visions of a super-physical order of reality, or they may be the hallucinations arising from pathological conditions. Under any circumstances they are true for the seer as a form of experience. Finally, Truth is the expression of Reality to the mind.

§5.  What then to us is reality in a world of relativity? The answer is simple and direct:­ Reality is Life. There is no reality in the universe apart from the changing complex movements which are the  manifestations  of  life; and the meaning of life for each living soul can only be found in that centre of our being wherein lieth the Kingdom of God.  The whence, the why, and the whither can only be surveyed from that centre. The wider our horizon, the broader the view, and the deeper we can extend our feeling of life, the greater is the grasp of Truth.

Truth and Reality, for man here on earth as a centre of consciousness, consists in the flow of life in the appearances of things as they surge to the surface of his sphere of awareness, and materialize themselves into the facts of experience. It is quite true that below, or behind this flux of phenomenal appearance, there is a deeper reality- the   ceaseless   push   of the invisible spirit-the ever-changing impetus of life as it arises from the psychical ground of Nature. But this ground is no unknowable mystery; it is what the appearances proclaim it to be  a continuum of infinitely complex movements and relationships in which we are carried along, unconscious of the whirl, through the majestic shadow-land of  Nature.  And these shadows are to us the realities of Life; for our conscious centre is our only direct, unimpeachable witness as to the truth, or falsity of things; our only undisputed view-point of the world and its content. From this standpoint, it is seen that things are true and therefore real, only upon the plane of their appearance, whatever that plane may be: The idea of there being some arcane centre of Reality at the “back o’ beyont,” where all appearances disappear, and the fundamental truth, alone, comes to the surface, we have already judged to be  metaphysical absurdity, or  mystical  delirium.  The universal life has no centre apart from the psychical centre of each self-conscious being.

§  6.  Are there “Things in themselves “?

Let us re-state the question squarely. We mean a thing in itself and by itself, apart from its relationship with the rest of things. If the atomic theory of matter which postulated the eternal duration of the separate individual atoms, had been an absolute truth, then, these atoms would have been “things in themselves” independent of any series of relation they might form with the rest of the world; hence, static and unchangeable, so far as structure and qualities are concerned.

In other words, the atoms of physical science were “things in themselves” reduced to a conceptual point. We now know that they are not simple elements, but on the contrary possess a highly complex organisation. So far as material bodies are concerned, the “things in themselves” have vanished into the ether of space.  There are, however, other and more subtle conceptions of the reality of “things in themselves.”

One of the central ideas of Kant, and the foundation of much of his metaphysics, is that we cannot know things as they really are, that we live in a purely noumenal world, from which all true knowledge of the objective reality is excluded.

“Nothing,” says Kant, “which is intuited in space is a thing in itself.”    He further declares “that space is not a form which belongs as a property to things; but that objects are quite unknown to us in themselves; what we call outward objects, are nothing but mere representations of our sensibility, whose form is space, but whose real correlate, the thing in itself, is not known by means of these representations, nor ever can be.” (The italics are ours.)  Here the “thing in itself” means, of course, the original object, as it is, independent of the thinking subjects cognition.  “For instance, a tree or a waterfall is not a thing in itself, but the appearance of a thing in itself. The colours of the rainbow, in fact all colours, sky, clouds, rocks, or living beings are sensations only. They are subjective appearances representing objective realities, but they are not those realities themselves. The world of sense around us is woven into the web of consciousness from the warp and weft of our sensations. It is mere appearance. This is not a question concerning which there is any doubt; it is simply a matter of fact.  But the question arises: Can we know things as they are independent of sensation? Science is engaged with the problem, and with strangely remarkable results. Take colour, for instance: light is a sensation of vision; but what is the objective process that takes place when the human eye perceives light? This question, the physicist answers, by eliminating in his mind the sense element, and by describing the facts of the process in terms of matter and motion. Objectively considered, his answer is: A certain vibration in the ether.” But the truth of such an answer depends not only upon the reality of the ether, but upon many other things besides which are purely hypothetical. “In this instance, we may reasonably suspect that the physicist is simply substituting an intellectual conception for the sense impression; whereas, the reality of the subjective image depends only upon the indisputable fact that appearances appear, and that these appearances correspond with objective form. To the senses, the reality of a thing consists in that feature of its existence which we call matter; but it is not the matter, but the form this matter assumes that  makes  the   thing   that   which   it really is. That objective phenomena can be described   in   terms of form, or process, Kant himself would not have denied, but his fundamental error consisted in thinking  that  the formal quality of nature was purely mental and merely subjective.

Not one word can be said against the statements of Science as to the modus operandi whereby the objective world becomes known to us through our sensory organisation. All serious thinkers have long ago abandoned the idea that there is an independent entity incamated within; [1 Dr. P. Carus], that the eyes are the windows of the body through which the soul looks out upon the extemal world; and that this metaphysical entity is the thing that thinks through the medium of the brain as its organ, or sounding-board. All such conceptions, together with the various schemes of metempsychosis, must be relegated to the obsolete intellectual transcendentalisms of the past. But what must be protested against is the substitution of a scientific conception of process for the reality behind the appearance, and then calling the appearance a sensation merely, an illusion of the senses. By this scientific and philosophical method, pure conceptions are given for things, and replace direct experience with ideas of causes. To cap the climax, these intellectual models of process are held up as the reality of the phenomenaI world. We know the appearance to be real upon the plane of its appearance- there is no psychical illusion going on within the lens of a camera.   But we do not know and we have no certain means of knowing, that the conceptions of science are anything more than a. working-model of possibility, a. rational explanation of process in terms of matter and motion. As time advances, they may, and in all probability will, turn out to be, like so many other cherished ideas of the great, “a figment of the brain.”

Let it be understood, distinctly, that process of becoming is not the same thing as that which becomes- that the operations of Nature are not barely mechanical, but psycho-mechanical-that motion is one sort of reality and the product quite another. For instance, the physicist’s explanation of the so-called reality behind the sensations of light is only (if it be a. fact) the reality of the modus operandi, and not the thing in itself. The true reality is the light itself.

And all that the light means to life must be included in a true conception of the whole reality.

The web of woven tapestry is entirely different from the loom and raw material from which it came; the physiological process of vegetable­ growth different from the resulting vegetation. The process in the oak and the blade of grass is the same, but the reality is widely different. To try to make reality out of an operation, and fiction out of the product, is to ascribe “The Origin of Species ” to a process of physiological activity, and the mind and soul of Darwin to an imaginary appearance.

Appearances appear; and these appearances, within our conscious centre, possess an unique reality of their own of which the process behind is only a small part of the whole. Neither process nor appearance are things in themselves, but a complex, being of one tissue with the whole continuum of Nature.

As we write these words, a brilliant rainbow spans the sky. We look, and to our sense of sight and feeling, it is a beautiful and wonderful thing, yes, a reality; a snap-shot with the camera confirms belief in its objective existence.   The form is something   more than a   subjective image; it is a formal reality of relationships; for, apart from sun, cloud, sky, and an invisible ethereal medium, the rainbow would have no objective existence.   But the rainbow, as it shines within our own sphere of consciousness, is indescribably more than sun, cloud, sky, and vibration in the ether.   The majestic arch spanning the heavens- the glorious bands of colour with their inter­mingling divisions, realised in the mind-though invisible to the sight- the  richness  of  effect upon the entire environment, which words fail to express, surely, all these must be weighed. Now, while the objective reality before us embraces these features-is indirect relation to them, there arises within us an invisible but richer content: wonder, grandeur, mystery, and thetic pleasure. These must ever be included in a true measure of the whole of the reality to which the object gives birth. Before we realise the true meaning of reality to conscious being, a synthetic vision of the whole, together with our thoughts and emotions, must be taken.

Features or qualities abstracted from things, are not things, but only features and qualities;  so that the final abstract of these abstractions, far from being the inmost reality of the thing in itself, is only the skeleton of a reality-and not even a  real skeleton,  but  only the  conception of a skeleton, utterly unreal to the whole of  the object dissected.

In order to get down at once to the root of the subject, we will illustrate our meaning:  Let us admit for a moment that we have a piece of gold before us, the reality of which, beyond all knowledge, appears to be a thing in itself. Very well! How shall we prove the absurdity of this conception! Only by asking ourselves what are the qualities of gold! And we know these qualities because we have associated certain features of matter together and given them names which express to our mind certain definite qualities, so that when we find a certain particular group of these qualities in combination, they always pre­ sent the same form of substance. Now, the subjective object of our consciousness must correspond, in every important particular, with the objective reality, because, under every possible change of time and place, gold, when it appears, always presents the same features. This permanent correspondence could not obtain without equally permanent reality behind it- could not appear to our consciousness as the same. All word-jugglery aside, this is a fact! The reaIity of everything in existence, in the same manner, can be known through its formal qualities.  Begin to eliminate in your mind colour, density, ductability, etc., one after the other, and  the thing we call gold instantly disappears from sight; ceases to exist, because those features which made it what it was vanish with the abstractions; and with such disappearance, the thing in itself is reduced to an unsubstantial idea. The subjective images in the conscious centre are true reflections, particular features of the objective world of the realities in space.   Name, form, and quality are the psychical garments in which reality arrays itself before the conscious mind. Without these, there is nothing. The abstract movement is not the reality itself, but the vital impulse from which reality is born.   The “thing in itself ” has no existence outside of the heads of those who think it.

There is, however, a still deeper and richer content in the psychical reality of our conscious awareness than we can find in the abstract, bare appearance of the objective thing. This deeper life is the flow of the sub-conscious strata of our being. This is ever rising to the surface to mingle with and enrich the illuminated centre of the mind with countless ramifications  of   thought  and [This is not “Parallelism,”] feeling connected with the direct object in view. But this is a noumenal embroidery- a world of our very own- having no existence, in the form we perceive it, outside of ourselves; though it is as real and complex as the greater world to which it is related, and of which it forms an indissolvable part.

In summing up our thought upon this triune riddle of appearance, reality, and things in themselves, we are convinced, beyond the shadow of a doubt, of the existence of an external objective world which corresponds in all its important features with the world of our sensations. We are, also, equally certain that the psychical element- the sphere of consciousness enriches and idealises much that it receives from without, and that the mighty abyss of our sub-conscious self, also, adds to and improvises, so to say, with forgotten experiences of the whole of our racial past, whenever some objective reality attracts that self to the surface, thus enabling it to well up and be recognised by the conscious centre.         At the same time, undoubtedly, our limitations of sensibility leave out of our direct cognition a wealth of content existing in the whole of the objective reality-a richness of existence that we  may never be able to fathom.

§  7.   MATTER:         It seems almost unnecessary to say anything regarding the problem of matter after denying the existence of things in themselves. We will, therefore, only add that it is a concept to account for the physical reality of the cosmos. Matter is that part of the universal movement that appeals to our consciousness through the physical senses as solid and real by reason of its inertia and resistant qualities. Upon this plane of its action it is quite true. Speaking comparatively, matter is a descending, condensing movement; life, on the contrary, is an ascending, expanding movement.            Flowing in opposite directions, there arises resistance, friction, struggle, and its consequences.

Matter is the dying energy, the defeated residuum of the cosmic strife, slowly sinking into the tomb of time to weave the crystallised garments of equilibrium and death.  In this mausoleum of matter lie the vanquished forms of the fight, sleeping until the day of resurrection shall come.

But Life- the eternal victor- conquers, only to save. The formative mother-spirit broods over the vanquished and from the congealing shroud of death snatches the reeling forms of inertia, and transforms them into living substance from which she weaves the organic web of life. So the victor slays, only that she may bring forth a higher form, a greater life.   Life, the spinner of the web, is ever at work to realise itself. The web of existence, from single cell to sphere of self-consciousness, is the cosmic tapestry of Expression that issues from the living looms of time.

§ 8. COSMOS OR CHAOS? What then, in view of the foregoing, are we to think of the world order? Is it a cosmos, or a chaos?

As a whole, it is a cosmos of unknown limitations and innumerable dimensions of activity-a. psychical whole. Our own world of matter and sense is limited to one aspect only- a universe of three dimensions. But there are other dimensional aspects of reality to which our ideas of time, space, and motion do not apply. To the mortal mind of humanity, the nature of the ground is such that it would, perhaps, be more correct to describe this cosmos as chaos, because of the turmoil, contradictions, and unpredictable contingencies that are ever surging to the surface in Nature.

According to our conception of the terms, in life, there is neither logical sequence nor mathematical movement. What we know and describe as disorder, disease, suffering, and failure are as natural and firmly rooted in the ground as order, health, pleasure, and success. This ground, as before stated, is alogical and subconscious. Good and Evil, in themselves as such, are our own creations, arising from our consciousness of difference in relative states of being. But this difference is real, not imaginary. It is the expression of the strife and resistance of opposing forces, or interests, if you will, in which might alone is victor. Disorder in Nature is only some­thing which differs from our conception of order. Everything in existence, by virtue of such existence, is endowed with the inalienable right to continue to live. Below the state of self-consciousness, there is neither cruelty nor immorality in themselves. Selfishness, on this plane, is merely the struggle to survive. It is the ground immediately below the human attainment; and it is from this realm of being that the great conflict between mind and matter arose which terminated in the victory of mind.

When self-consciousness dawned in the bra.in of primitive man, a new order of energy was born into the world: henceforward there was a spiritual power of purposive direction towards definite ends.

So the universe, ever in a state of Becoming, is ever more conscious, and its operations more rational.

§ 9. The survival of the human personality beyond the grave now craves our serious attention. To the writer the question:  “Is it possible for the individual consciousness of the soul, to continue in a super-physical state of being after death?” can no longer arise.    It was answered in the affirmative many years ago; under circumstances which rendered self-deception, telepathy or fraud upon the part of others utterly impossible.      Here we must be personal. This experience came at a time when thoughts and work lay in a wholly different direction: when spirit communion, if it occupied a place in the mind at all, was certainly in the back-most of the back seats of the brain; for the “I” was entirely unconscious of entertaining such ideas. A brief statement of all the necessary facts of the experience will be found in Appendix I “A case of Spirit Identity.” It is only necessary here to point out, that coming without prejudice, as it did, with no self-seeking wish to father the issue, there was no self-deception. There was no tricky form of mediumship; no dubious clairvoyance describing symbolic images that might have any meaning and be construed to any end. On the contrary a genuine vision was perceived by a normal person in good health. A clearly defined personality appeared almost as objective as any other of the surroundings. I distinctly heard the voice speaking, (or I imagined I did) giving names, dates, and other important items, not necessary to recount here.  And the result? a complete verification of every detail. In view of proposition “7” that Reality is the verification of experience. I accept this and affirm as sincerely as I can affirm any experience in my life that the communication received was a reality; that the soul of a departed person did appear- hence   survived   death.      What is possible in one instance is possible in others.  Since that time scores of instances of identity have crossed the path of my research, but none that stands out so clearly as this. This is the one unique gem in a vast collection. But it has one tiny flaw. It is not perfect  when  studied  from an orthodox religious point-of-view. For purposes unknown to us, some other order of spiritual intelligence may have impersonated the mother. But the absence of any conceivable reason for deception, and the fact that the message was fraught   with   momentous consequences and formed the turning-point  in  a  career,  compels  me to reject any idea of deception. The consequences, at any rate, have been nothing but beneficial to those concerned.

The possibility of the survival of the human peronality beyond the grave, then, is assumed in the chapters which follow; and this tremendous fact makes all the difference in the world to the philosophical attitude of a thinker’s mind.

A philosophy of life which neglects to take account of the super-normal facts of psychical research, together with the facts of religious experience, fails most lamentably to justify its name. Ere the close of the present century it will become as obsolete as medieval scholasticism.

§ 10. We now come to the final and so far as the writer is concerned, the central and only vital problem of the quest for truth. “What shall I do to inherit   eternal   life?”-Mark   x.  17.     

A long familiarity with, and study of various oriental forms of mystical and religious philosophy convinces us quite clearly that each race must work out its own redemption along the special lines of its own psychical evolution.  The Vedanta, the Sufi, and the Buddhist philosophies are adapted exclusively to what may be called the Asiatic temperament.      We may cull precious gems from each form of thought, but the spiritual fabric for the European mind must be fundamentally Gothic (to use a metaphor) in its psychical structure.  Though the end to be attained is the same for each, their racial idiosyncrasies are radically different and demand religious conceptions that are in perfect harmony with that special psychical constitution of mind which has been evolved through long ages of thought, work and environment. In the last part of the book we have attempted to give the essence of a spiritual truth that will reveal the results attained to those who have eyes to see.

The language used there is necessarily allegorical. Only in images which require spiritual interpretation can spiritual things be spoken of.

“The King’s Highway,” far from being fiction, is the outcome and record of a spiritual experience. It is the mystic “way of the cross” entered upon only by those who, in addition to an unbiased mind, have proved through experience, the worthlessness of the purely material rewards which the world of to-day has to offer in exchange for life.   It is the “Path of Light” for the soul free from the greatest of all earthly illusions: the illusion of self.

To know, and to be able to feel that the human soul is not a separate unit of existence, but one with the soul of the universe, is to obtain a deathless grip upon the universal reality, and realise that there is nothing absolute but LIFE-the Formless.    All below this pure spiritual principle is manifest through form, and all forms are relative. The human soul is but a living chalice in which coruscations of the spirit rise to the surface of consciousness. As forms of consciousness, we are one with the forms in so far as the spirit of life manifests through us; yet separated from, though related to all other forms of being.   He who grasps this idea will apprehend the writer’s meaning of infinite unity in a world of relativity. Perceiving this, the illusion of ” things in themselves” will vanish. The soul is then free.   It may enter the “Path of Light” and partake of “The Gospel which is glorious!”

Major changes in the publishing landscape this fall have resulted in a lot of new publications and formats on Amazon/Kindle. The Sarah Stanley Grimke Collected Works, originally published as public domain in 2019 in paperback, is now out of print in that format and available as a hardcover and ebook copyrighted by Patrick D. Bowen and myself with more original content. Newly in print in paperback for the first time is Hurrychund Chintamon’s Commentary on the Text of the Bhagavad-Gita, published prior to his involvement in the origins of the Theosophical Society, Arya Samaj, and Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor and hence not part of the series. I have also created a hardcover of this book. The 2018 second volume of Letters to the Sage in paperback, and both hardcover and paperback editions of its condensation as Letters to Thomas Moore Johnson by Alexander Wilder, are part of the series. My own Pell Mell is listed as a related title, prequel to the series, since it deals mainly with the 1860s-70s whereas the series titles focus on the 1880s and 1890s. As for the twentieth century Brotherhood, I will be issuing The Quest of the Spirit, edited by Genevieve Stebbins and authored by “A Pilgrim of the Way” in 1913, in serial installments here as blog posts in 2022 rather than in book format.

Otherwise, there is so much happening with living authors, younger authors, that my 2022 blog posts will feature them rather than any of the defunct 19thc authors heretofore featured, but the Astleys in the 20thc and their influence on Elbert and Elizabeth Benjamine will also be a theme in 2022.

We have only one January Capricorn and one Aquarius February birthdate in the Letters to the Sage, but much else to report in 2022, so am sharing this one in December.

From The Last Eighteen Decanates Analyzed:

CAPRICORN—3rd Decanate. The Southern Fish—PISCES AUSTRALIS—is the constellation picturing the Mercury decanate of Capricorn. It is shown as eagerly drinking the water that flows from the urn of Aquarius. This symbolizes the conception that through the cultivation of the higher emotions it is possible to communicate volitionally with those who have passed to the spirit side of life. Also, that those on earth are, to an undreamed of extent, the recipients of love and wisdom poured down upon them by those who are of earth no more.

People born under this decanate have natural ability to grasp the ideal and express it in concrete form. Their power of imagination is marked, and is united to the faculty of intensive labor. They can follow clerical lines, but to develop their highest talents they should be permitted to develop and execute plans of their own. They readily contact the interior planes and draw valuable information from that source, even when unconscious of the origin of their ideas.

Joan of Arc, who under spirit guidance led France to victory, was born when the Sun was in this decanate. George Eliot, who attained fame through the ideals expressed in her novels, was born with her Mentality here. And Michelangelo, the greatest sculptor and artist of all time, was born with this portion of the zodiac on the Ascendant. It is the decanate of IDEALISM.

From Letters to the Sage, Volume One

T.H. Pattinson

            Thomas Henry Pattinson was born in Tranmere, England on January 11, 1851 and died in 1939. By the 1880s he had settled in the borough of Bradford in Yorkshire where he worked as a watchmaker and jeweler. Interested in esotericism, he joined the Society Rosicruciana in Anglia (SRIA) and was an early and leading member of both Bradford’s Theosophical Society lodge[i] as well as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Pattinson was also a friend of the important British H.B. of L. leader Rev. William Ayton—whom Pattinson made an honorary member of Bradford’s Golden Dawn Horus Temple—although Pattinson himself was rejected by the H.B. of L.[ii]

            Pattinson’s letters to Johnson are important because they reveal details suggestive about both Johnson’s early involvement in the H.B. of L. and the early interest in the Tarot among Western occultists. The earliest of Pattinson’s letters, dated August 18, 1884, shows that by that time he, Johnson, and Ayton had all been corresponding on the subject of the Tarot. Pattinson was preparing to send Johnson Tarot cards (which he appears to have drafted himself) as well as, at the instruction of Ayton, a manuscript and book on the subject, both of which were probably authored or edited by Kenneth Mackenzie.[iii] The fact that the letter from August—which was presumably written before the H.B. of L. was known to any of these men—indicates that the Tarot was the main shared interest between Pattinson, Johnson, and Ayton at that time, which suggests that Ayton and Johnson’s relationship may have started due to this shared interest. Ayton—the eager occultist and Theosophist who had been interested in Lévi for several years—undoubtedly read the Platonist and took great interest in the Lévi translations.[iv] This pre-H.B. of L. occult connection with Ayton would explain why it is that Ayton—as opposed to Burgoyne or Davidson, who had been the early promoters of the H.B. of L.—became Johnson’s guru for the group’s teachings. Meanwhile, Pattinson’s letters to Johnson also reveal that the latter had taken an interest in magic mirrors prior to joining the H.B. of L. and he may have also wanted to use an ancient Hebrew type of ephod for magical practices—something that does not seem consistent with what is known about H.B. of L. magical ceremonies and therefore may be indicative of Johnson being involved with another occult group (perhaps a precursor to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn) or possibly attempting to privately pursue Jewish mysticism.

T.H. Pattinson. Jeweller

6, Piccadilly, Late Manchester Road. Bradford, England

18 Aug. 1884

Dear Mr. Johnson

            I must apologise for not answering your letter enclosing 11/-8 for the Taro Cards sooner.

            Since you wrote I have been mostly away from home and amongst other places I have visited is W^m. Aytons he spoke of you and I promised him seeing he is so busy to supply you with all the necessary manuscripts of the Taro. I have studied this subject from an occult point of view now for almost 3 years and It is undoubtedly a very difficult subject to get into. But I will do my best in my next letter to put what I can of it before you. It will take one about a week to put the Hebrew letters on the Cards and get you the Papers ready.

            It will give me very great pleasure indeed to send you the Cards & M.S any thing I can do for an occult friend is always done with pleasure and a sense of duty.

            I am only sorry that more prompt attention to your letter could have Been paid. However I will at once get them out of hand for you

            Yours fraternally

            TH Pattinson 

T.H. Pattinson. Jeweller

6, Piccadilly, Late Manchester Road. Bradford, England

2 Nov.[v] 1884

Dear Mr. Johnson. I received your letter of octob^er – 10 and waited a week hoping you would again send acknowledging the receipt of the Taro Cards which were sent off same time the M.S Book was. I[t] is possible the custom house officers have the cards and will confiscate them unless duly duty is Paid upon them. I sent them unregistered and as papers the postage was so heavy I believe the postage of the 2 was 8/ or 9/- the cards would have cost 9/- by themselves. If sent as registered letter. If you have not yet got them request and also let me know.

            I send you the Book on the History of Cards[vi] mentioned in my last letter do not be in any haste to return it. I have no immediate use for it & you can return it at your leasure.

            I have several little bits of information I have got told of lately in reference to cards which I will send on to you in the course of time. But first I must get hold of the cards, which I respect shortly.

            Referring to the magnetic mirrors. I will put one in hand for you in about a week I shall send it on to you. I am at present trying some experiments on the Black mirrors and If one I made yesterday is what I think it is. I will send you one on also.

            Friar no doubt wants money and will use any kind of knowledge for the purpose. I do not remember the Book you refer to. (that he is about to publish.) If you will let me know I will give you all the information I can about it. But any thing he sells is charged 5 times to much money.

            I have a good lot of occult Books and any Book I have I will lend you with pleasure. I have the devine Poimander (original Edition) of Hermes and some of Aggrippa’s works. I am anxious to read Randolph Works which Friar advertises. are they as expensive in America as in England. If not I should like have Eulis and several others and If they are cheaper will you kindly let me know. Friar asks 20/- & 12/- for some of the minor ones. Are they worth reading? in your opinion.

            Anything I can do for you will be done with pleasure at any time

            Yours Fraternally

            TH Pattinson

T.H. Pattinson. Jeweller

6, Piccadilly, Late Manchester Road. Bradford, England

1 Nov. 1885

Dear Sir.

            Do not be bothered about the Books it is not so very particular and I will let you know in due course, if you have not done with it keep it a little longer.

            I want you if you will to kindly send me the Feby 1884 No of the Platonist I have noticed a very important translation from Eliphas Levi which I think throws a great light upon The practical working of the Taro,[vii] I have enclosed this translation and I think I shall be able to find out the use of the number Cards. If you Can give me any more translations of a similar nature. I shall be gratefull and no doubt in turn it would come back in other form. That is if you are interested in Taro researches.

            Referring to magic mirror I do not want to charge you so much money for a thing that is useless. The 2 mirrors I made for you at the time turned out no use.[viii] So I did not send them. I[f] you still do wish for one of these metallic one[s] I will make you one with pleasure. or any thing else I can do for you

            I have fished out the correct dress of the High priest (cabbalistic) and have got an artist friend to paint it on paper for me.

            The 12 stones of the Ephod and their correct colours are shown also the correct colours of the dress.  

            If you would like to have this I will get one done for you. I do not know what the cost will be. I could let you know after I you though it worth your while.

            Yours obediently

            TH Pattinson

---

[i] His TS membership was entered February 15, 1889, Theosophical Society General Register Vol. I, http://www.theartarchives.org.

[ii] Godwin et al., HBL, 3 n. 1.

[iii] See Ronald Decker and Michael Dummett, A History of the Occult Tarot, 1870-1970 (London: Duckworth, 2002), 47-48.

[iv] For Ayton’s early interest in the Tarot, see Decker and Dummett, A History, 47-48; for his early involvement in the Theosophical Society, see ODL, 2:4-9 and BCW, 1:410, 421.

[v] Pattinson’s handwriting is a little unclear here. We have assumed that this is November based on the following: A) the way he wrote “Nov.” in his November 1, 1885 letter is very similar to the month he seems to have written here; and B) this letter was almost definitely sent after August, considering that in his August 18, 1884 letter he is promising to send Johnson Tarot cards and in this letter he is explaining why they have not yet arrived.

[vi] This was probably the A History of the Playing Card that Mackenzie had possibly helped edit, as mentioned in Mackenzie biography and the introduction to this volume.

[vii] Pattinson is referring to Doubleday’s “Kabbalistic Doctrine of the Spirits,” which Johnson published in the January and February 1884 issues of the Platonist.

[viii] See his letter for November 2, 1884.

This book consists primarily of Hurrychund Chintamon’s commentary on an English translation of the Gita but its opening pages provide a glimpse of his interests as an early “global esotericist” familiar with Freemasonry and Spiritualism as well as Indian religion. Sanskrit passages in the original were removed and marked by ellipses because OCR after scanning left them illegible. The entire book is available here and many other online sites, and is now being published in paperback.

PREFACE.

What little philosophy the reader may find in these pages is not that of Patanjali, or Epicurus, of Lucretius, or Kant, of Berkeley, or Cousin; let me call it the philosophy of common sense, and so appeal to all for its consideration. Its chief object is the cleansing of spiritual truth; for as in the material world gold and precious metals have at all times existed, but mixed with dross and dirt, and requiring purifi¬cation in the furnace of the refiner, so spiritual truth has likewise always existed in the world of knowledge, but has ever been mixed at first with some debasing alloy of ignorance or superstition, which must be removed by the refining influence of Reason.

The whole dictionary of ancient religion is made up of metaphor. Polytheism is but the polyonomy of religion; mythology is the baby talk of religion. The fault is ours if we now misunderstand that early speaking of a child to a child.       .

Various successive religions answer the purpose of God in proriding suitable meats for various digestions. Nor are the worshippers in every religion but one excluded from salvation.

“WHAT new thing is contained in this?” is the common question of those who are careless or incapable of understanding the importance of philosophical inquiry, when any work on the philosophy of religion is produced. There is no new thing contained in this work. The author of the sacred song, its subject, did but endeavour, as many before and after him, to raise the veil of ignorance and superstition from the heart of man, and so enable him to read the characters written there by Reason in her own fair hand. The old saying of the Greek sage “Know thyself,” is here, as everywhere, all-important. Man, who finds delight in the reason of others, must find yet greater delight in his own— still greater delight in considering that its origin is from God, and that it is the only path by which to approach Him. As man, before he can love God, whom he has not seen, must love his brother, whom he has seen, so, before he can know and feel pleasure in God, he must know and feel pleasure in himself.

The Indian pundits, from the age of Kapila, the modern Descartes, to that of Krishna Dwaipayana, whether they have been Nishvara or Seshvara, Charvaka, or the disciples of Atmabodha, care as little for the thirty-three millions of gods which people the Hindu Pantheon, as the educated ministers of the Church for the Saints of the Anglican Calendar. But the policy of priests in Asia, as in Europe, has ever been to hide knowledge from the vulgar, as nurses hide knives from children—not to throw pearls before swine, or that which is holy before dogs. In Hindustan, as in England, there are doctrines for the learned, and dogmas for the unlearned; strong meat for men, and milk for babes; facts for the few, and fictions for the many; realities for the wise, and romances for the simple; esoteric truth for the philosopher, and exoteric fable for the fool. The Chandala knows no more of Sanscrit than the French peasant of Latin, yet it is in these languages only that it is given to them respectively to know the mysteries of heaven,—in these, and in idle, if imposing, rites and ceremonies, and in profane and old wives’ fables, against which Timothy was cautioned by Paul. Divine service may be divided, therefore, into knowledge of external fable or ceremony, and knowledge of internal fact or truth. The latter finds fit audience, though few; the disciples of the former are the world at large.

I need not, I think, warn those for whom this book is intended, not to reject as nonsense that which is merely new, or to consider that which is barbarous, therefore bad. I presume they will judge for them-selves, like the old Berseans, whether these things are so; and if they are not, I shall at least have had the credit of assisting in the detection of error. Nor is the philosophy contained in this book difficult to understand. Its object is simply the removal of those mists of error which hide from man the beauty of his own spiritual nature; its end is to attract and reduce them to nothing by the warm, radiant light of Reason, in a time when the icy chains of error and superstition which have circled him so long and with so cold a clasp, are being fast melted by the increasing heat of education and intelligence.

The text, with the aid of the commentary, will, it is to be hoped, be sufficiently plain. One or two observations only, which seemed out of place in the notes, may be made here.

First, it is worth while to remark that pithy climax of Arjuna’s creed: after he has addressed Krishna as the formless form, mortal and immortal, indivisible and divisible, being and non-being, motion and rest, the great omnipresent and everlasting God, with whom one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day, he ends his hymn of praise with those sublime and impassioned words, “ Thou All I” The “Bhagavad-Gita” describes Him, in whom we live and move and have our being, and without whom nothing is, as the origin of all birth, death, might, wisdom, and goodness. It says He receives no one’s virtue or vice; that is, it is a matter of indifference to the Supreme whether man or any other animal be what man calls good, or what man calls bad. It is the pride of humanity alone which considers itself worthy of the notice of God…

The reader will notice especially the following opinions of philosophic latitudinarianism. Indifference to doctrines will be the result of escape from delusion. God is to be worshipped without any religious form. In the end, as Paul preached to the Corinthians, God is to be all in all. The real philosophical Nirvana is to be the final state, after all vicissitude and misery, of everlasting and supreme repose. Knowledge is throughout represented as power, and the worst form of poverty as the poverty of wisdom. Learning is more than loveliness, more than hidden treasure, a companion and a consoler. It distinguishes between what is transitory and what is eternal, and so subdues sorrow; it shows the sturdy tree carried away by the flood which passes by the bending rush, and so prevents pride; it teaches that religious ceremony cannot alone absolve from sin. It is the path by which man may pass from the unreal to the real, from night to dawn, from death to immortality; it is the ladder which leads to God.

I have only, in conclusion, to add my obligations to Mr. J. C. Thomson, whose excellent translation of the “Bhagavad-Gita ” into English—the best that is known to me—I have taken the liberty of choosing as the subject of my Commentary; and to Mr. Brockie, from whom I have borrowed some excellent remarks. I have also had throughout in my book the assistance of a distinguished English scholar, whose modesty, I regret to say, forbids my rendering my work more valuable with his name.

QUESTIONS ON UNIVERSAL THEOLOGY.

SINCE my arrival in this country I have visited several places both of amusement and of instruction, and have been astonished at the stride of progress in both ; but in the department of self-improvement, or that department which is the most vital and fundamental to mankind, the religious instruction communicated to the public in several denominatory institutions has, in this civilized country, in no small degree surprised me, and I have been at a loss to understand the aims and objects of these institutes; hence, I earnestly desire to be enlightened on the following few Questions:—

1.       Is not God, the creator of the universe, one without a second?

2.       Does not the fatherhood of God establish the brotherhood of mankind?

3.       Is not mankind in all countries and nations virtually the same, though differing in form, colour, dress, and speech?

4.       Is not reason a natural gift to all, by which men are superior to other animals?

5.       Since reason has the quality of discrimination, does it not presuppose the existence of the evil of ignorance?

6.       On what grounds are the differences in belief to be defended?

7.       On what ground is the conclusive opinion of the sole authenticity of each to be supported, and how can the pride of its supporters be upheld?

8.       Should such beliefs be allowed to remain—sources, as they me, of hatred in humanity, and stagnation in progress?

9.       If universality of belief and nationalization are to be united, what means are best conducive to the attainment of this end?

MORAL PRECEPTS.

1.       O MIND! desires are bad, and lead to sin, Keep these without, and bind good thoughts within.

2.       O Mind! forsake desires, to truth adhere;

For from desire come sorrow, suffering, fear;

And who of men such fruits as these holds dear?

3.       O Mind I away with anger, from which grew First grief; away with lust, whose child is pain;

Away with pride and envy; peace ensue, Sweet as in sultry tides the summer rain.

4.       O Mind! be constant always, and forbear

Vain talk, which murders time, of talk the worst. 0 Mind! let all your words be clean, and fair,

And sweet, to satisfy the hearers’ thirst.

5.       O Mind! how precious is good fame ! It is The ointment of sweet savour, like the wood

Of the brown sandal tree, perfumed is this, Living for ever, and for ever good.

6.O Mind! who in this world of woe Rests happy in hamlet or on throne ?

Alas! we reap what seed we sow; The hands that smite us are our own.

7.  Mind! be not afflicted, be not grieved;

Be not afraid, be not forlorn, O Mind!

Peace is by reason in the heart received, By perfect reason grows rash man resigned.

8. O Mind! One grieves for his brother’s death, and he Dies; loud ambition has no lodging here, Or should have none; it fills the bond and free With rage and lean remorse and quaking fear, And guilt that ever looks behind, and lust, Those idle passions of the child of dust.

The Occult Nineteenth Century | SpringerLink

Your name, respected Sir, is well known among all intelligent Spiritualists in America. Personally I have heard much of you and your studies from Mrs. Emma H. Britten (a member of the Council of our Society) and Mr. J.M. Peebles. I have also read what has been contributed by your pen to the London Spiritualist. Your views upon the Spiritual States […] so coincide with those of our revered colleague and teacher Mme. H.P. Blavatsky, that the Council have instructed me to respectfully request the privilege of enrolling your name among our Corresponding Fellows […].

You live so far away from here, and it requires so much time to exchange letters, that I will venture to transmit your Diploma without waiting to hear from you; at the same time expressing the hope that it may please you to retain it

—H.S. Olcott’s letter to Peary Chand Mittra, dated June 5, 1877 (TS Adyar Archives, Adyar, India. Accessed 3 January 2019)

One of the most positive developments of recent years for my research interests is a veritable avalanche of new publications about nineteenth century international occultism. In addition to several contributors to Oxford’s 2020 Imagining the East and SUNY’s 2020 Theosophy Across Boundaries, the October history conference I was involved in was attended by a contributor to an even newer similar book, Palgrave’s 2021 Occult Nineteenth Century.

Occult’s First Foot Soldier in Bengal: Peary Chand Mittra and the Early Theosophical Movement | SpringerLink

I was in touch with Mriganka Mukhopadhyay just after my research on Bengal Theosophists was complete and his was ongoing with multiple projects. His page on academia.edu lists quite a few. What most impresses me is that before completing his PhD he has already made so many scholarly contributions all of which seem to be only prologues to a magnum opus that will be a comprehensive overview.

Mriganka Mukhopadhyay | University of Amsterdam – Academia.edu

From The Last Eighteen Decanates Analyzed:

SAGITTARIUS—2nd Decanate. The Eagle—AQUILA—symbol of transmuted sex, and the power of the higher mind to make lofty flights through the rare atmosphere of the spiritual world, pictures among the constellations the Aries decanate of Sagittarius.

The migratory instincts of Sagittarius are given a trend toward pioneering. Consequently, we find people born here to be unusually successful in searching out new fields of endeavor, physical, mental, and spiritual. They are usually restless. Their minds are constantly alert for new facts. And in order that they shall not become discontented it is very essential that they have at all times some definite work to accomplish, and that this work is of a nature to be well worth their best efforts. Confinement and restrictions are most depressing to these people, and if forced to be idle or to follow some uncongenial occupation they become rebellious and hypercritical. They require some task of importance to call out their wonderful executive ability.

Alfred de Musset, whose searching mind grasped the merits of both the classic and the romantic schools and welded them into a system of his own, becoming famous as a poet, playwright, and novelist, was born when the Sun was here. Alice Le Plongeon, author, and co-worker with her husband in his explorations among the ruins of Yucatan, was born with her Mentality under this decanate. And Dr. Sven Hedin, the great geographical explorer, had this section of the zodiac on his Ascendant. It is the decanate of EXPLORATION.

From Letters to the Sage:

Henry Liddell 

            In the short autobiographies that he sent out for publication in various books in the early 1900s, Henry Liddell claimed to have been born to a Henry George Liddell and Barbara W. Greetham in England on December 3, 1843 and educated at a “Burdis Academy, King Edward VI Grammar School, Newcastle-on-Tyne.” Unfortunately, none of this can be verified by external records, nor can his claims of having authored several books in the 1870s. However, records from the 1870s do exist that support his claims of having lived in Japan and of having been a member of that country’s Asiatic Society. In the early 1880s, when records of his American activities first appear, he was working as a book agent and writer of articles concerning Chinese and Japanese society. In 1887, Liddell married Eva L. Barnes in Boston and soon moved to New York City and claimed to have become a physician. Liddell was made a member of both the Theosophical Society and the H.B. of L. in 1886,[1] and an 1887 advertisement has him inquiring about books written by Britten and Randolph, but there is no trace of his esoteric interests after the latter year, and no trace of Liddell himself after 1910.

            Liddell’s letters to Johnson—replete with suggested Californian and Coloradan subscribers to the Platonist—are significant primarily because they reflect the Western US concentration of the American esotericist community and its early connection with mind cure/New Thought.[2] Furthermore, they reveal the importance of that western community for creating a cross-country network with which traveling esotericists could connect to reaffirm their affiliation with the growing American esotericist network. Finally, Liddell’s mention of Alexander Russell Webb is the only known preserved reference to Webb in a TS-authored letter in the 1880s.[3]

A. Roman, Agent, Publisher and Bookseller

San Francisco

August 3, 1884

Dear Sir,

            I beg to thank you for your kindness in forwarding me copies of your excellent brochure, “The Platonist,” which I have perused with great pleasure.

            I am a litterateur, and generally on the move. For this reason, I cannot well subscribe to The Platonist at present, but I am thinking of settling down for awhile, either here or in New Orleans; when I shall certainly do myself the pleasure of subscribing.

            I enclose you a list of names of persons to whom it may be worth your while to forward sample copies of your publication. My experience as a journalist tells me that it is not of much use sending a copy of one’s paper without an accompanying note. If you have time, or the necessary help, to enable you to do so, you might possibly increase your subscription list by sending copies.

            I have resided in China and Japan for some years, and may be able to send you an article or two on certain forms of philosophy, &c., in vogue in those countries, and adjoining territory, that may prove interesting; if they are not out of your line.

            I should feel under a further obligation to you if you would send me what information you have with respect to the Theosophical Society, and the American Akademe. I am a student of the occult sciences, and desire to ally myself with those bodies; particularly the first-named. Is there any branch of the Theosophical Society in San Francisco or Oakland?

            With best wishes, I am, Sincerely yours Henry Liddell

Prof. H.C. Gibson, Jones St., San Fran., Cal.

Hon. T.H. Rearden, San Francisco, Cal.

W.A. Lawson, Editor Bee, Sacramento, Cal.

Marysville, Yuba Co., Cal.

Judge Craddock,

Hon. Phil. N. Keyser,

Hon. E.A. Davis,

Jno. H. Jewett, Esq., Banker,

Chas. H. Brooks, Rideout’s Bank,

Dr David Powell,

Dr C.E. Stone,

Rev. E.M. Mott, (Episcopal)

Rev. Bishop O’Connell (R.C.)

Rev. Bishop Manogue (R.C.)

Rev. Father Coleman, Smartsville, Cal.

Rev. Father Hines, Chico,    ––“––

Rev. Father Graves, Sacramento, ––“––

(Please do not mention my name. I will send you a list of names for China and Japan, if you desire it.)

A. Roman, Agent, Publisher and Bookseller

San Francisco

September 13, 1884

Dear Sir,

            Your esteemed favor of the 11^th ult. Reached me only two days ago, owing to your having omitted to address me “c./o. A. Roman”, the building 120 Sutter St., being a very large one, with a number of tenants. Please note this.

            I am exceedingly obliged for your kind offer to have me proposed a member of the American Akademe, and gladly avail myself of it. The copy of bye-laws you enclosed does not mention the amount of the initiation fee, but whatever it is I will forward it on hearing from the secretary. My full name and address is:

            Henry Liddell,

            (Profession) Litterateur

            (Member of the Asiatic Socty. Of Japan)

            c./o. A. Roman,

            120 Sutter St.,

            San Francisco, Cal.

            I have not yet had an opportunity of calling on Dr Docking of Oakland,[4](whose name you kindly sent me), with reference to the Theosophical Society, but will do so. I hope to be in St. Louis about Novr., on my way to New Orleans, where I shall do myself the pleasure of calling on you at Osceola.

            I enclose you a short list of names of persons in China and Japan likely to appreciate the Platonist;[5] will send you a further list later on. Also an article or two that may prove of interest to your readers. Being on the point of leaving the city for the South, I have not much leisure for outside affairs.

            I have seen something of both Chinese and Japanese (alleged) magicians, but am not in a position to say just how much chicanery there is in their exhibitions.

            Sincerely yours Henry Liddell

San Francisco

October 4, 1884

Dear Sir,

            Your esteemed favor of 23^rd ult. came duly to hand, and contents have been noted. I gladly accept you kind offer to have me proposed as a member of the Pioneer Theosophical Society of St. Louis. This is an opportunity I may not otherwise have. It is not quite certain that I shall be in St. Louis as early as November, but I presume the will not matter greatly, so long as I am now posed and accepted. Very many thanks for your kind offer.

            I shall take with me into the country the sample copies of the Platonist you kindly sent, and “talk up” the journal wherever favorable opportunity occurs.

            Faithfully yours

            Henry Liddell

Col. Hollister, Santa Barbara, Cal.

Hon. J. Fernato, Santa Barbara, Cal.

Pioneer Club. Santa Barbara Cal

Dr Shaw Santa Barbara Cal

San Francisco, Cal

Pacific Club

Union Club

Loring Club

Bohemian Club

A. Roman, Agent, Publisher and Bookseller

San Francisco

November 19, 1884

Dear Sir,

            I beg to enclose you a postal note for $2, for a year’s subscription to The Platonist ending with Decr. (next month), as you have been good enough to forward the copies monthly for some time past. In the beginning of the coming month, I am to start for British Columbia, and as I shall be away from civilization for some time, and out of reach of the mails, I will not trouble you to continue providing the Platonist, after that time. I have lost no opportunity of putting in a good word for your excellent journal, and trust it may have had effect. Business on this coast is frightfully dull, and money very scarce. We have had a good harvest, but wheat is so low that farmers are obliged to hold on to their crops, and there is thus no coin in circulation.

            I regret to say that my plans for a visit to St. Louis during the present month will have to be foregone, as business interests require my presence north, this winter. Under the circumstances, therefore, I shall not need to trouble you to have me proposed for membership in the Pioneer Theosophical Lodge of St. Louis, as you kindly offered to do. Should the proposition have already been made, it will not matter I suppose; I shall certainly be able to visit your state next Spring. Theosophy is beginning to excite a great deal of interest in San Francisco.

            I received, a few days ago, my certificate of membership of the American Akademe. Many thanks to you for this.

            Believe me, Fraternally Yours

            Henry Liddell    

Denver

January 14, 1886

Dear Sir,

            I beg to thank you for copies of The Platonist for months of Augt. and Septr. last, forwarded on from San Francisco, and to hand only yesterday. I have been continually on the move since last April, having traveled from San Francisco to British Columbia, and thence through Washington Territory, to Idaho, Montana, Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado. I shall remain in Denver only about two weeks longer, and then go on south via St. Louis, probably as far as the City of Mexico. Should I come anywhere within a hundred miles of Osceola, will do myself the pleasure of calling on you. I hope the St. Louis branch of the Theosophical Society is still in existence, that I may avail myself of your kind introduction, and become a member thereof. As soon as I can get back to San Francisco, I mean to have a complete set of the Platonist; am glad to note that you have reprinted those nos that were out of print.

            I do what I can to push your admirable publication, wherever I go; but, as you know, the number of persons who appreciate such a journal is but small. Am pleased to see you intend publishing a translation of Eliphas Levy’s “Dogme”; I know it; it is a valuable work. Have you seen the Chevalier De Mousseaux’s[6] two famous books, “La Magie de la XIXme Siecle”, and (exact title forgotten— “de la Haute Magie”)? As soon as I get settled, I intend sending you an article on Chinese and Japanese Magic.

            I am trying to get up a class of 20 or more persons here, for a course of lectures on Occultism. Should I succeed, will not neglect the opportunity to recommend the Platonist. The people of Denver are at present greatly exercised over Mind Reading and mind cure. A man named J. Randall Brown[7] gave an entertainment in the Grand Opera House here a week ago, and took in $2,000. A professor Sherman[8] came from Boston lately, to instruct a class of 40 persons in “mind cure”, at $100 a head, and departed inside of two weeks with $4,000 in his gripsack. I have a young, Englishman with me who can do all the feats performed by the first-named.

            Below, you will find names of a few persons interested in Occultism; you might, if you wish, send them sample copies of the Platonist—with best wishes,

            Believe me to remain, faithfully yours

            Henry Liddell

(Don’t mention my name.)

Thos. Fell, Esq., Victoria, British Columbia.

Prof. J.E. Clayton, Territorial Geologist, Salt Lake City, Utah.

Prof. Aughey,        ­­–––“––––––––“––––––“––  Cheyenne, Wyoming.

Rev. Dr Rafter,   Cheyenne, Wyo.

T.W. Peters, Esq. Cheyenne, Wyo.

Rev. T.J. Van Hess, Denver, Colo.

Rev. C.J. Adams, So. 13^th St., Denver, Colo.

Mrs Prentice,[9] Curtis Street, Denver, Colo.

Mrs Hall, Metaphysician, Denver, Colo. (address so.)

Mrs Mason, –––“––––––––“––––––“–– (address so.)

Dr Russell,  –––“––––––––“––––––“––

Prof. J. LeConte, Berkeley University Oakland, Calif. “Overland Monthly Maga. San Francisco, Cal.

St. Louis

November 4, 1886

Dear Sir,

            Your favor of yesterday’s date is to hand. Mr Page returned from Cincinnati yesterday, and I found him every whit as good a man as you represented him to be. Mr Webb I have not yet met. Shall perhaps see him (and Mr Kelsoe) tomorrow. From a hint dropped by Mr Page, I should judge the St. L. branch of the T. Soc. will soon cease to be. They meet on a week from next Sunday. Should have met tonight. As soon as I get settled somewhere, would like to have what other MSS. in connection with the H.B. of L. you can spare.

            As to the books I have to dispose of: “Albertus Magnus”,[10] “The 6^th and 7^th Books of Moses”,[11] and “Formulas for White and Black Magic,”[12] are all in German. I do not think you would care for Albertus Magnus, but the other two are well worth going to the expense of translating. “The 6^th and 7^th Books of Moses” contains over 100 diagrams, and figures, and has a lengthy introduction culled from Ennemoser, on the “Magic of the Israelites.” I have also a copy of Dr C.N. Roback’s “Mysteries of Astrology and Founders of Magic”,[13] containing the formula for the Elixir of Youth, from “Hermippus Redivivus”. Price $5 (out of print, and scarce.) “Tractatus De Fasciuatione”, by Johanne Christians Frommann, Korimbergae, MDCLXXV, is a volume of 1067 pp., quarto, rebound in cloth, with a plate and several small cuts. It is a thoroughly exhaustive work on white and black magic, in every conceivable phase, and judging from the references made to it by other writers of mediaeval times (on occultism) seems to be a sort of test-book of magic. What it has not got to say about magic is not worth learning, I should judge. I fear you would not care to say the price for it; I want $25 for it. I shall take it to Cincinnati, and think Dr Buck will take it; or Robb. Clarke and Co. For the Aldus Manutius, 1589, “De Naturae, De-Monum”, I ask $15. It is worth it. It is small but good. I have a great many other books, but you would probably not care for them.

            Yours Henry Liddell

P.S.—I think I shall leave for Cincinnati next week.

---

[1] However, he was not officially entered as a member of the TS until June 30, 1887, at which point he was staying in Denver; see the Theosophical Society General Register Vol. I, http://www.theartarchives.org.

[2] See the introduction to this volume.

[3] That is, besides Webb’s own 1887 letter to Josephine Cables, which was published in Cables’ Occult Word journal; see Alex. R. Webb, “A Letter from a Friend,” Occult Word 3, nos. 3&4 (1887): 13.

[4] For more on Docking, see the introduction to his letters.

[5] We have not included these names.

[6] Roger Gougenot des Mousseaux (1805-1876), a French Mason and esotericist.

[7] A popular mind cure stage performer.

[8] Another popular mind curer from the period.

[9] Alice L. Prentice, TS membership, entered August 29, 1886, Theosophical Society General Register Vol. I, 94, http://www.theartarchives.org. She, along with another H.B. of L. member, Ernest Sasserville, was one of the founding members of Denver’s TS lodge in 1894; see “Theosophy in Denver,” Daily News (Denver), May 19, 1894, 2.

[10] Liddell is referring to a German edition of Albertus Magnus: Being the Approved, Verified, Sympathetic and Natural Egyptian Secrets: White and Black Art for Man and Beast, which was falsely attributed to the thirteenth-century Dominican philosopher, Albertus Magnus.

[11] Another book spuriously attributed to Albertus Magnus. Liddell is referring to Johann Scheible’s 1880 German edition published in New York.

[12] It is unclear as to which Albertus Magnus-attributed book Liddell is referring.

[13] Published in Boston in 1854

From The Last Eighteen Decanates Analyzed:

SAGITTARIUS—1st Decanate. The Harp of Seven Strings—LYRA—such a harp as David played upon to soothe the spirit of King Saul, pictures the Jupiter decanate of Sagittarius. The constellated instrument portrays the soul which places itself “In Tune with the Infinite,” and becomes responsive to the thoughts radiated by the Cosmic Mind.

Those born under this influence, when true to themselves, are the most religious of all and are capable of attaining Cosmic Consciousness. But their religion need not be tinctured with orthodoxy, and is often most expressed through their kinship with Nature and their love and sympathy for all living creatures. They live at their best, and accomplish most, when they constantly feel the abiding presence of the Cosmic Intelligence and place implicit trust in Its guidance. They then feel impressed to fill a definite mission, and if they follow the dictates of the “Inner Voice” they seldom err in judgment. But either in matters of spiritual progress or in mere worldly affairs, they must rely upon their own judgment, for when they take the advice of others they most signally fail.

Comment by KPJ: Bronson and Louisa share the same birthday, November 29, 1799 and 1832 respectively. They died two days apart in 1888.

William Blake, poet and painter, author of Books of Prophecy and designer of illustrations to The Book of Job, was born with his Individuality here. Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace, whose research led him independently to the theory of evolution so ably expounded by Darwin, and who was famous as a naturalist, and who embraced the cause of spiritualism in spite of the ridicule of his contemporary scientists, was born with his Mentality in this decanate. And Abraham Lincoln, man of destiny, deeply religious and the instrument through whom human slavery was abolished in America, was born with his Personality under this section of the sky. It is the decanate of DEVOTION.

From The Last Eighteen Decanates:

SCORPIO—3rd Decanate. Unlike the crown of spikes that pictures the last of Virgo, CORONA AUSTRALIS—the Southern Crown—is the laurel crown of victory. Picturing among the constellations the Cancer decanate of Scorpio, it reveals the potency of sex when sublimated to carry the soul to the loftiest summit of physical and mental achievement.

Adjacent to the religious sign Sagittarius, and under the subinfluences of the sign of domestic life, Cancer, those born here have intense emotions and vivid ideas. When the spirit of chivalry is developed and they sense their value to country and home they are capable of lofty effort. But for the greatest success it seems essential that they have some person of the opposite sex to stimulate their ambitions and ideals, and for whom they strive to make a success of life. Social life, therefore, is always, an important factor contributing to or detracting from their usefulness to society.

Franz Hartman, who wrote Life of Paracelsus, Magic White and Black, and achieved other success along occult lines, was born with the Sun in this decanate. Thomas Moore, whose social grace and patriotism were second only to his achievements as a poet, had his Mentality here. And the chivalrous Benjamin Disraeli, who became Prime Minister of England, was born with this part of the zodiac on his Ascendant. It is the decanate of ATTAINMENT.

From Letters to the Sage:

James M. Pryse

            James Morgan Pryse, Theosophical author and printer, was born November 14, 1859 in New London, Ohio, the son of a Welsh-born minister. His childhood and youth were spent in the Upper Midwest and his early work life included periods as a teacher, photographer, newspaper editor, and printer in various small towns. Pryse began corresponding with Johnson after having recently arrived in Los Angeles from New York where he was active as a Theosophist and closely associated with William Q. Judge and “Jasper Niemand” (Mrs. J. C. Ver Planck), editors of The Path. With his brother John he traveled to South America before being called back to New York where they started the Aryan Press in 1889. Later that year he was summoned to London by Blavatsky where he established the H.P.B. Press and lived under the same roof until her death in 1891. In the TS secession crisis of 1894-95 he sided with the Judge faction. His career as an author began in Dublin with the 1896 publication of The Sermon on the Mount. His second book in 1900 was Reincarnation in the New Testament published by Elliott Page in New York. In 1901 he married Jessie Mayer in Galesville, Wisconsin, and returned with her to Los Angeles in 1904, spending the rest of his life in southern California. There he wrote for Katherine Tingley’s Universal Brotherhood and its successor Universal Brotherhood Path. His later books were Prometheus Bound and The Adorers of Dionysos (1925). He was widowed in 1928 and died in Los Angeles on August 27, 1942.

Los Angeles

 November 20, 1887

Dear Sir:

            It is with much pleasure I learn that you have decided to continue the Platonist. Enclosed please find $3.00, for which send me the magazine at 89 East Pico St.

            As you say, we differ only in the position from which we regard truth.

            Of course I have no sympathy with the methods of the anarchists; yet this class, who have come to realize the evils of the industrial feudalism of this age, and yet, not knowing that all reform must begin with the inner man, (of whose desires the eternal world is but the expressions), have attempted reform through force, are morally in advance of their executioner, who do not even recognize industrial evils.

            In the study of magnetism, very little can be learned from the works of modern physiologists, anatomists, mesmerists, phrenologists, etc., for as a ruler they are hopelessly astray in regarding the brain as a sort of battery supplying nervous power to other portions of the system, also as the seat of the intellectual faculties and emotions; also in the supposition that the body is a stove, its activities being sustained by oxidation. For its proper comprehension the subject must be approached by a radically different method.

            About the first things seen in the astral light are points of flame; they vary from mere dots of light to great globes of fire. These are centers of energy in the world-soul—“elementals.” By its vibration a thought creates these little whirlwinds in the astral light. Being semi-intelligent, they are also shaped in conformity with the thoughts of the seer. Thus in the macrocosm, the akasa, set in vibration by the Logos, forms the great centers of energy called suns. Just such a center of magnetic forces is the human soul, or fifth principle. It is a sphere in action. Considering the individual as a radiant astral sphere, centering at the heart, it is easy to trace the action of the magnetic forces in their work of building the body and the brain; for evidently in the first astral stages of his existence man was but a glowing sphere with no foundational organs, and having no faculty but motion. The manas, or human soul, is the bright central spot of the magnetic globes, and is the seat of will, memory, intellection, volition, reason, etc. In producing the special organs of her body, naturally those whose functions are most essential would be formed first; their formation therefore commences with the solar plexus, the ganglia of the dorsal region, and the heart and blood vessels. The heart pumps the astral fluid through the nerves, and the blood (which is the astral fluid materialized) through the blood vessels. The ganglionic system resolves itself into consecutive magnetic poles regulating the alternate attractions and repulsions by which the bodily functions are carried and on the blue-white matter of the nerves and ganglia being positive and the red-white negative. (In the astral consciousness I see blue sparks issuing from the right eye and golden ones from the left.) The brain serves to reflect the higher faculties, as the moon reflects the light of the sun. A clue to the matter of the brain may be found by tracing it through the lower forms of animal life up to man. First the spinal cord is evolved, whose first expansion constitutes that part of the brain devoted to the animal propensities, then follow the moral sentiments, and finally the intellectual faculties. Continuing this incomplete cycle, we find the higher faculties manifested in front of the face, clairvoyance being near the nose. The yogee, taking conscious control of the forces of evolution, is said in the Gita to have “his eyes fixed in contemplation between his brows,” and again having “his eyes fixed on the point of his nose,” thus artificially completing the cycles. In the brain is a central pole, with four minor poles, alternately positive and negative, ranged about it like satellites, their axes crossing at the center.

            Placing the finger-tip in the ear, one can hear the blood coursing through the arteries, also one can, of course, easily hear the “beating” of the heart. Similarly, astral senses hear the astral light singing along the nerves and in the brain, and the musical tones of the heart.

            The soul, being a magnetic force, that has created the body, possesses complete knowledge of magnetism, though obscured by its contact with “matter;” as the occultist progresses, the soul regains its knowledge, and the developed will can free the fluidic (or astral) body from the gross body. The astral body in such a case is self-conscious. When the will is undeveloped the necessary force is lacking, and if the fluidic body is set free, the result is the same as ordinary sleep. The astral body may be liberated by creating a current in the akasa and precipitating it upon ones self, or by restraining the breaths so as to produce self-mesmeriation.

            The body may be left under any one of the three gunas; of course it should not be left except under the influence of satvas.

            Of course on this plane one must face the elementals created by his thoughts and deeds during his past, and in the resultant hades of horrors purer motive is essential. In fact, occult study must be mainly the study of motive. No motive that refers to self, on any plane, can rise above black magic and personal annihilation; for the will for nature is for unity, and the personal will that opposes it cannot endure. So the only true motive for the occultist is the desire to aid all creatures. “Near to renunciation is salvation”—the state of jivanmukta. Since illumination comes only to one who has freed himself from the fluidic body, it would seem impossible to gain the truer goal without passing through this intervening sphere. Yet here, as all through life, no two persons have precisely the same experiences, and since astral sights, sounds, etc., vary so greatly with different persons, little is written of them in mystic works.

            Doubtless much, if not all of this is stale to you: but perhaps you may find something useful in it.

            With all good wishes, I am,

            Yours respectfully,

            Jas. M. Pryse

Los Angeles

April 27, 1888

Private

Dear Friend:

            Answering yours of the 17^th, I would say that Mr. Colville[1] is a gentleman of about 28 years of age who has been for the past ten or eleven years an “inspirational speaker.” He has the reputation of being personally pure and of strict integrity. He is a spiritualist, and lectures upon the “mind-cures”, calling it “theosophy.” The plans for the institution to which you refer are as yet nebulous. It is proposed to start a “mind-cure” sanitarium, and the thousand-dollar contribution of which you speak is for that purpose; four acres at Inglewood and five at Clearwater have been offered.

            In addition to this “mind-cure” institute, Mr. Colville proposes to inaugurate a school for the study of “mind-cure”—variously termed “Christian science,” “spiritual science” and “metaphysics”—and incidentally of such branches as spiritualism and what projectors of the institution imagine to be “philosophy” and “theosophy.” No definite action has been taken in the matter; but Mr. Colville (who is now at San Diego) is to return to this city by the 7^th of next month to organize a class in “Theosophy” at a private residence, when the subject of the “mind-cure” college will be further discussed.

            Mr. C., it seems, is not a classical scholar; and it is claimed that his knowledge of “spiritual science,” “theosophy,” “philosophy,” K.T. λ[2] has come to him through his being a “medium” and “inspirational speaker,” he being rather unintellectual and having no command of language when not “inspired.” At the close of his “inspirational” lectures he improvises poems upon any subject suggested by his audience. Dr. Henry Abbot, the well-known “mesmeric healer”, a really fine mesmerist but bogus “medium”, once confessed to me that his “mediumship” was all trickery, and in explaining some of the tricks of the trade implicated Mr. Colville, claiming that the latter had been carefully educated by his mother as a public speaker and also trained to appear stupid off the rostrum. That the penitent doctor spoke truly concerning himself I am quite certain, and I incline to the belief that his statements relative to Mr. C. were equally reliable.

            To speak frankly of the whole matter, I do not think that a “school of philosophy and occultism” composed of the advocates of that spiritualism which is but spookism, and that “Christian science”, which is the product of dogmatic theology and fallacious psychology, would be in any way a success. I do not know Mr. C. personally, but am well acquainted with many of his adherents here. Professor Roehrig[3] (formerly of the oriental chair at Cornell) has had to leave the city, to work in a real-estate office in a neighboring town, not being able to earn a living here as a philologist. If the three or four members of the Theosophical Society who began the study of Sanskrit with him all became discouraged and abandoned their inchoate pursuit of “oriental literature and philosophy” before mastering the Devanagari alphabet, save Miss Off, who came to grief amid the samadhi rules. Such a school of philosophy could be successfully organized by an association of competent classical scholars, but the true mystic and philosopher is usually as impecunious as Sokrates. Doubtless, as number of scholars will spring up in the next generation or so; and in time the mysteries be taught as in ancient Greece; but that will hardly come in one day. Personally I know of but one place where the mysteries are indeed taught, and that is an ancient, half-ruined temple amid the inaccessible mountains of a “heathen” land. That I may some day be esteemed worthy to enter there is the hope of my life. Meantime, the childish antics of these people, playing blind-man’s-buff with shadows, make me sad at heart.

            If Dr. Wagner is interested in the advancement of mind-cure and Spiritualism,[4] this movement might call for his support. If he desires to aid in founding an institution for the sober study of greek and Oriental philosophy and the occult sciences, this project would not interest him.

            Yours very Truly,

            Jas. M Pryse.

Los Angeles

 May 17, 1888

Dear Friend:

             Enclosed please find the conclusion of the articles on Welsh Druidism.[5] The few lines from Taliesin’s prophetic ode are printed, to avoid the liability of typographical errors. Have the printer set it in pica, with the interlined translation in nonpareil, in the style of Silver’s classics.

            Relative to seeing fairies, etc., it is quite easy to awaken the clairvoyant faculty and attain practical knowledge of magnetic forces, but it is extremely dangerous to do so—Of this I can speak from experience. Motive, the polarity of the soul, is the one important study for occultists. And in purifying our motives there seems to be no more “sweetness and light” than may be encountered in clearing underground sewers. Thus at times when the would-be occultist is expecting words of commendation for his good qualities he is liable instead to be flayed alive for his faults. Ah! The agony and heart-ache we must endure before the brute within us is slain! And so vile has humanity become that one sees more demons than fairies in the psychic world in these degenerate days. Have you ever had the night-marish experience of meeting one of these things? The abject terror they inspire is more awful than the tortures of the inquisition. I have had this experience but a half-dozen or so times since childhood.

            I have an invitation to work for and with certain occultists in England,[6] which poverty and duties toward relatives preclude my accepting, but I hope to make arrangements to visit England and Wales for a short time during the latter part of this year.

            Yours very truly,

            Jas. M. Pryse

---

[1]W.J. Colville (1862-1917) was a spiritualist and mind curer who authored nine books, including three novels, on spiritualist and occult themes, but never created the mind cure sanitarium in California to which Pryse refers.

[2] It is unclear if this is the letter Pryse was writing.

[3] Frederick Louis Roehrig (1857-1948), an orientalist scholar who was also an acquaintance of Louise Off.

[4] This is the only reference in our letters to Henry Wagner’s interest in mind cure and spiritualism.

[5] This was published in several issues of the Platonist in 1888 under the title “Druidism and Popular Welsh Occultism.”

[6] Whom these “certain occultists in England” were exactly is unclear, but it was around this time that the occult organization called the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn—which had many of England’s prominent occultists as members—was formed. It is also possible, in light of Pryse’s invitation from Blavatsky, which led him to relocate to England in 1889 to form the H.P.B. Press, that this possibly refers to earlier overtures from Theosophists in London.

The several things that struck me most profoundly as both an “independent historian” square peg amid academicians and Theosophical believers and as a Church of Light member at this international conference:

1. “Western Esoteric Traditions” might be the labels of academic press series, which includes all my own books BUT: none of the younger European scholars like that label one bit. Participants from (either by origin or present residence) Denmark, Sweden, Austria, Greece, France, Brazil, Cuba, the US, the UK, Russia, Italy, Bulgaria, Switzerland… ALL seemed to prefer “Global Esoteric Studies.”
2. I brought this up to Simon Magus, a speaker who followed me the same day, that as an American, every schoolchild knows Atlantic is East and Pacific is West, so all this “East-West encounter” framing strikes me as Eurocentric. He replied that his scholarly focus is on ancient Egypt which has been simultaneously worshipped as the cradle of Western Civilization and the epitome of the Mysterious East, since… forever. With our Church of Light ancestry in Hermetic Alexandria, caring about West versus East seems beside the point– it was a place where they met.
3. Not only is our remote spiritual ancestry in North Africa, in Egypt, but more recently (1887) Max Theon relocated to Algeria and letters from Burgoyne to Johnson indicate some sort of initiatory relationship with an Arab or Moor there. Algeria is quite far west, Theon is a Polish Jew and his wife is an English former Anglican nun, but are their teachings Western or Eastern? [And when Theon’s disciple Mirra Alfassa, a Turkish/Egyptian French Jew, became the partner of a Bengali in “Integral Yoga” in Pondicherry, were their teachings Eastern or Western?] Global Esoteric Studies makes a better home for future writings about them so I hope it catches on. And therefore am pleased to find Africa the home of a blog that is friendly to our Tarot legacy.

It will take me weeks or months to sort out all that I saw and heard participating in a virtual conference and I promise to write up a report eventually, but meanwhile I have learned of a blog with extensive Tarot information including on Zain. Stay tuned for further background.

From the Last Eighteen Decanates Analyzed:

LIBRA—1st Decanate. The first decanate of Libra is pictured among the constellations by SERPENS—the Serpent. This is the snake that sacred tradition asserts tempted Eve to her downfall. The serpent has been used from ancient times, however, not only as a symbol of creative energy, but also of cunning. In worldly matters those native to this decanate have no need of the admonition to be “wise as serpents,” for they have the innate ability to handle people and situations.

It will be remembered that the Biblical serpent told Eve that if she would eat of the apple she would become wise—and that subsequent events verified the prophecy.

And those born under this decanate well uphold all the serpent traditions of wisdom and subtlety, and besides possess the creative energy to pioneer in the realms of human association. Such people should never seek seclusion to be at their best, but should mix in the world’s affairs and come in contact continuously with their fellow men. In this field they can wield an enormous power for good through their ability to influence the thoughts and actions of others. But they should take pains not to become too engrossed in purely material aims.

Georges Clemenceau, the “Tiger” prime minister of France, was born with the Sun in this part of the sky. Wm. Ewart Gladstone, the great statesman, had the Moon in this place at his birth. And Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria, who triumphed over so many difficult situations, was born with his Ascendant here. It is the decanate of POLICY.

From Letters to the Sage, Volume One:

Amant Henry Ohmann-Dusmenil was born September 30, 1857 in Dubuque, Iowa to French-born parents. After completing a bachelor’s degree at Christian Brothers College in St. Louis, he continued to acquire advanced degrees, including an MD and two PhDs. He was a chair of Dermatology and Syphilogy at the St. Louis College for Medical Practitioners at the time of his correspondence with Johnson. He authored several medical tomes including the 1894 Handbook of Dermatology. He died in 1919 and was buried at the Calvary Cemetery in St. Louis. Ohmann-Dumesnil’s single extant letter to Johnson is included here simply because of his connection with the early St. Louis TS, an important community in the history of American esotericism.

St. Louis

A.H. Ohmann-Dumesnil M.D.

May 5, 1885

Dear Sir:

            Some time ago I applied to Mr. Page of this city to become an unattached member of the Theosophical Society, having been referred to him by Mr. D.K. Mavalankar, of Adyar, India. Nov. 9^th 1884, Mr. Page informed me that he had received all the notes of the American Board of Control and failed to state whether the result was favorable or otherwise; but said that it was a question to be settled by myself whether I was admitted or not.[i]

            I write to you to inquire if your note upon me was conditional and, if so, why? If you can, consistently with your duty, give me information upon this point and also what your note was, I would be under lasting obligations to you, for your kindness.

            Hoping that you will favor me with an early reply, I remain,

            Very Truly Yours,

            Ohmann-Dumesnil

---

[i] Page’s October 27, 1884 letter to the Board of Control on the matter is included in this volume.

From First Eighteen Decanates Analyzed:

VIRGO—3rd Decanate. The last decanate of the northern signs is pictured by a crown of twelve iron spikes. This Venus decanate of the mental sign Virgo is the point from which the Sun passes into the winter section of the zodiac. And so the serpent, picturing the first decanate of Libra is represented with his fangs just before CORONA BOREALIS—the Northern Crown—as if to strike.

Virgo, as a whole, corresponds to the house of work. So this last decanate seems particularly given to working in behalf of others. People born here find their greatest possibilities in the realm of service. When they can lose sight of the reward, and labor enthusiastically for some noble cause, they live to their utmost. Even though the laborer is worthy of his hire, yet those born under this influence are often called upon to give up the things they would prefer to do for the sake of duty. Though the material reward is a crown of thorns, yet the gain in character and soul power always more than repays for all sacrifice.

Henrich Daath, who labored so steadfastly in the cause of modern astrology, was born with his Individuality here. Leo Tolstoy, who though born of nobility, lived so simply and made so many sacrifices in the cause of peace and purity, had his Mentality in this decanate. And Swami Triganiteti, the Vedanist teacher who was blown to pieces in his temple in San Francisco by a fanatic, while he was faithfully serving his religion, had his Personality polarized in this place. It is the decanate of RENUNCIATION.

Note—With a few exceptions, so that the student may have easy access to the charts cited and thus study the other factors contributing to character and accomplishment, I have used as examples persons whose charts may be found in A Thousand and One Notable Nativities by Alan Leo.

From Letters to the Sage, Volume One:

Anna Kingsford

            Annie Bonus, born September 16, 1846 in a section of Essex now part of East London, was left a substantial inheritance in her teens upon the death of her father. She married Algernon G. Kingsford, a Church of England clergyman and cousin, in 1867 and gave birth to their only child, a daughter Eadith, the following year. Her defiance of conventional norms began with adoption of vegetarianism and opposition to vivisection, followed by conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1870. Ten years later she completed a medical degree in Paris. Her 1882 book The Perfect Way, coauthored by Edward Maitland, provided an idiosyncratic interpretation of the Bible based on visions inspired by ether. At the time of her correspondence with Johnson she was president of the British Theosophical Society and also of its Hermetic Lodge in London, but later that year she resigned from the TS and established her lodge as the independent Hermetic Society, which survived her death by a few years. She died February 22, 1888 of tuberculosis after more than a year of declining health. Kingsford and Maitland’s correspondence with Johnson ended before the creation of either Hermetic organization spawned by the British Theosophical Society in 1884.

The Vicarage.

Atcham.

Shrewsbury.

 England.

 10 January [1884]

Sir. I have to thank you for your letter dated Oct: 15^th, in which you say you have sent me, Vol. I of the Platonist. I should have been very glad to receive this kind gift, but it has not reached me. I applied to the Post Master in London for it, giving him all necessary details, in reply to which he has written to say that “no trace of any such packet can be found, and that probably it has by this time been returned to the sender.” Believe me;  Faithfully yours,

            Anna Kingsford

The Vicarage,

Atcham,

Shrewsbury.

26 February 1884

Dear Sir.

            I am so much pleased with the “Platonist” that I have this day sent a year’s subscription for it 10/ to your agent Mr. Foulger of Patermaster Row, who will I supposed, supply it to me from January. I shall send the two surplus copies you have kindly sent, (for this year) to friends who may thereby, I trust, be induced to subscribe also. When Mr Maitland wrote to you a few days ago, we had not had a proper opportunity of studying the Platonist, and were not so fully aware of its value as we have since become We are sorry that we do not know the private address of Hargrave Jennings.[1]—your readiest way of communicating with him will be to entrust a note to his publishers.

            I am gratified to see that the Platonist intends including Kabbalistic doctrine and literature in its programme.[2] As the Kabbala represents that School of the Gnosis to which I properly belong myself, I shall hope from time to time, to be enabled, under this section, to contribute something to your pages. All exponents of the Kabbala do not, of course, agree, and the school I represent, takes a reading and view different from that of Eliphas Levi, and far more in accordance with Buddhist teaching; especially in regard to the transmigration of the Soul.

            Believe me,

            Faithfully yours,

            Anna Kingsford

Mr Maitland hopes you will not be at the trouble of continuing to post him a gratis number of the Platonist, as he will always see that for which I subscribe. We hope you will be able in a forthcoming number to give a short notice of our new little book on 1881, of which we sent you a copy.[3] I shall myself shortly bring out another and larger work on Hermetic and Kabbalistic doctrine.[4]

            AK

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[1] On Jennings, see the introduction to this volume.

[2] This is a reference to Abner Doubleday’s “Kabalistic Doctrine of Spirits” article that appeared in the January and February 1884 issues of the Platonist.

[3]How the World Came to an End in 1881 (London, Field & Tuer, 1884).

[4]The Virgin of the World of Hermes Mercurius Trismegistos (London: George Redway, 1885; Madras: P. Kailasam Brothers; Spiritualistic Book Depot, 1885). 

Both my chapter and Patrick D. Bowen’s “The Real True Yog” are included in Imagining the East from Oxford University Press, and are referred to by the reviewer who also surveys the contents of another book, Theosophy Across Boundaries from State University of New York Press– Western Esoteric Traditions series in both cases.

(2) (PDF) Two Emerging Perspectives on Theosophical Orientalism | Keith E Cantú – Academia.edu

From the first Aries decanate to the second Leo decanate, the Letters to the Sage correspondents abounded and we had examples every ten days (with the exception of the last Cancerian decanate). From August through February the pace slows considerably with fewer births, more concentrated in individual decanates. Elbert Benjamine singles out Helena Blavatsky as an example of a Sun in the second Leo decanate. Among Thomas Johnson correspondents born in this decanate, her colleague Colonel Olcott stands out as the most relevant. With an ascendant just inside this decanate, I can totally relate to this “explorer world traveler” aspect of both Olcott and Blavatsky, but for them it was a lifelong dislocation from home and family whereas for me it was a short-term detour from a life otherwise devoted to home and family history. (Four planets in the fourth in Scorpio plus two in the third in Libra equals “all the lies and truths told by our ancestors” and “everything the neighbors said about it both clarifying and muddying the record.”)

From The First Eighteen Decanates Analyzed

LEO—2nd Decanate. In the second, or Jupiter, decanate of Leo the inherent quality of dominant control characteristic of Leo is modified by the subinfluence of the sign of the higher mind, Sagittarius. The philosophical and religious elements are more in evidence, and those born here readily recognize the prevalent weaknesses both in current politics and in current religion. And what is more important, they have the courage of their convictions and the power to gain followers for their own progressive ideas.

To picture the ruthless onslaughts with which these people attack both persons and policies that seek to ravage society, CENTAURUS, a being having the lower parts of a horse and the upper parts of a man, is represented among the constellations as impaling on the end of his spear the wolf that pictures the last decanate of Libra. This wolf symbolizes those who use the brilliancy of their intellects to suppress truth and to foist ignorance and superstition upon society that they may profit by its exploitation. As those born in this middle decanate of Leo have the power to convince and lead others, it behooves them to put forth every effort to gain the truth, and to take great care that they do not disseminate erroneous notions.

Madam H. P. Blavatsky, founder of the Theosophical Society, was born with her Individuality here. Mr. J. Malcolmn Mitchel, secretary of the Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage, had his Moon in this decanate. And Martin Luther, founder of the Protestant Religion, was born with his Personality polarized to this section of the sky. It is the decanate of REFORMATION.

From Letters to the Sage, Volume One:

Henry Steel Olcott

            Henry Steel Olcott, first president of the Theosophical Society, was born August 1832 in Orange, New Jersey. He attended classes at New York University for one year before going to northern Ohio in 1848, where he spent five years and became familiar with various reform movements, including spiritualism, especially through the Steele brothers of Amherst, Ohio. Upon return to New York in 1853, he worked for James J. Mapes, a spiritualist who was his professor of agricultural chemistry and soon became Olcott’s employer as editor of the Working Farmer. Subsequently his three year tenure on Horace Greeley’s payroll at the Tribune coincided with the beginning of his family life. He married Mary Eplee Morgan, daughter of a New Rochelle Episcopal priest, in 1860 and they had two sons. Olcott was admitted to the New York bar in 1868, specializing in insurance law but also continuing journalistic work. His journalistic interest in spiritualism involved him with the Eddy Brothers of Vermont through whom he met Helena Petrovna Blavatsky in October 1874. He divorced his wife in December and in the following year he and Blavatsky formed the Theosophical Society with the support of about twenty colleagues. They two left New York at the end of 1878 and established TS headquarters in Bombay in early 1879, and subsequently relocated to Madras in 1882. Blavatsky left India permanently in 1885 and died in London in May 1891. A power struggle involving William Q. Judge and Annie Besant had led Olcott to resign his office briefly in January 1892, but he rescinded his resignation in August of that year. He died in office February 17, 1907.

            The Theosophical Society expanded dramatically in India and Ceylon under Olcott’s leadership, and his letters to Johnson reflect different stages of its success. Olcott wrote four letters to Johnson in 1882, one in 1898 and another in 1902, which allows a longitudinal view of Johnson’s relationship with Olcott and the TS. He seems to have been interested in Blavatsky’s Mahatmas in Tibet only as teachers who could be reached independently of her phenomena. Olcott’s response to Johnson contains a deflection of Johnson’s inquiry on the issue and an assertion that the Tibetan Mahatmas were inherently inaccessible by normal worldly means. Olcott’s second 1882 letter reveals that Johnson had persisted in his effort to make contact with the teachings of adepts in Tibet through other channels than Blavatsky, inquiring about the “Stambroul” (a transcription of the source usually rendered as Kangyur/Tangur). In October 1882 Olcott was once again in Ceylon, one year after the publication of the Buddhist Catechism, and his activities there were over the objections of Blavatsky. Another several months elapsed before another letter in which we see evidence of Olcott admiring the Concord School of Philosophy and specifically Alexander Wilder’s contributions to its activities. Johnson’s Platonist had been intended to coincide with the first session; the session discussed in the correspondence of 1882 was the final one presided over by Bronson Alcott. 

            By 1898, several years had elapsed since Johnson abandoned the TS, and he continued to be actively involved with the H.B. of L., but he wrote to Olcott in a friendly manner as is evident from the tone of the reply. Johnson has inquired about obtaining a Buddha figure, which Olcott has attempted to do for him as reported from Ceylon four years later in 1902; the statue has not yet been provided but Johnson has presumably reminded Olcott of the promised “Buddha Rupa” and the colonel has now attended an auction but failed to find a feasible way to fulfill his promise.

Headquarters Theos. Socy[1]

Bombay

January 5, 1882

My Dear Sir.

            To our great regret Madame Blavatsky has for the moment mislaid your friendly letter of recent date respecting the means of getting to L’hassa, and she asks me to answer it in general terms by the mail.

            It is not only impossible to reach the Tibetan capital—a far inland city—by water, but also—except for initiates or their accepted neophytes of European [birth?] to get there at all. It is the present stronghold of Esoteric science, and any inroad of unmystical, not to say impure, foreigners would be Equivalent to the adepts being driven to some other and more inaccessible retreat. The devotees of material and spiritual study are incompatible with each other, and in close propinquity the less rude are crowded out as the fabled Indian was off his log by the paleface. Despite the position and resources of the British in India only three Englishmen ever penetrated to the interior of Tibet, and of these the one who really saw any thing of the kind you and ourselves are interested in—Mr Manning[2]—Kept his lips sealed until his death as to his experiences. The project, therefore, of yourself and friends for an ocean trip to Asia in search of occult knowledge is impracticable. The doors of the temple are assuredly open, but only those can enter who have learned the secret during the prescribed long course of neophism.

            Sympathising most cordially in your unselfish effort to popularize Eastern philosophy in its Platonic garb among our American people

            I am Very truly yours

            H.S. Olcott

Theosophical Society, President’s Office

Calcutta

 April 8,[3] 1882

Dear Sir

            The venerable and universally respected Balm Peary Chand Mittra[4] happened to be in my room when I read your favor of the 20^th Feb. He very kindly said he would send you copies of his three works on Spl philosophy,[5] so I gave him you address and you will no doubt hear from him. Should you review them please send him a copy of the paper.[6] His address is: Sec’y Calcutta Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, 111 Radhabazar, Calcutta. My Buddhist Catechism (English Edn)[7] is out of print here and the new edn will not be out for some months, as time will not permit my revising it. You can get a copy from Messirs Trubner and Co, Publishers, London and New York. The Raja Yoga pamphlet is not to be had.[8] The Dnyaneshwari[9] I will cause enquiries to be made about at Bombay.

            I am overworked. We now have 30 Branch Societies established in India alone, and 8 in Ceylon.

            F’ly yours

            H Olcott

Theosophical Society, President’s Office

Nellore

6 V. `82 [most likely May 6]

Dear Sir.

            Yours of Mch 19^th. The Stan-gyour is—so far as we know—not yet rendered into English. There is a translation of portions of it from the Bouriat version into Russian by the scholar Vasilief,[10] and for this you must address yourself to the Imperial Academy of Sciences at St Petersburg.

            My colleague and I thank you heartily for your sympathetic expression respecting our work in Asia. You will be glad to learn that the venomous attacks of Mr J. Cook[11] have given our Society a marvelous impetus, and that we are growing stronger every day. We have just founded a Branch at Madras with over 100 members.

            Ffy yours

            H.S. Olcott

Theosophical Society, President’s Office

 Keembiya (Ceylon)

 October 6, 1882

Dear Mr Johnson.

            Yours of Aug 15. Thanks, very much, for your approving remarks upon my answer to Swami Daynand.[12] His attack was as unexpected as would be that of a friend with whom one might be walking and who should suddenly turn and give one a whack over the head with his stick. We have “a hard row to hoe”, what with the missionaries and their friends, and the reactionists and humbugs of all sorts. But I must not expatiate to one who of course has been going through like experiences these many years.

            What a noble discourse was Dr Wilder’s at Concord! But why do not your party go back of Plato and Plato’s Master and successor to Plato’s Masters and predecessors, the sages of the Himarat Himavat? The river-source is at the mountain spring, and the river of human though came from the Asian schools.

            Ffy yours

            H.S. Olcott

The T.S. does not print the volume of my lectures. I will ask the Madras publisher to send a few copies to Colby and R[13] on sale, and you can order of them.

Ontam in South India, Negapatam

August 15, 1898

Dear Mr Johnson

            I was glad to hear from you once more after so long a break, and to feel that your vigor of body and mind is unimpaired. Yes, the T.S. is going ahead with ever increasing momentum. Last year I issued 64 new Branch charters—a larger number than in any one previous year, and our sky is more clear. You do not tell me how your Platonic movement gets on. Wilder wrote me recently and kindly offered to send me something for the Theosophist. If you are not too much engaged will you not do likewise for old times’ sake?

            I shall keep in mind the promised “Buddha rupa” and send one when I can.

            Yours truly

            HS Olcott

Theosophical Society, President’s Office

Adyar

 November 26, 1902

Dear Mr. Johnson

            Yours of 26 Oct: thanks for kind words.

            At an auction yesterday was sold a bronze sitting figure of the Buddha and I bid for it on your behalf. But the price ran up to R 28=$9 and that was too much for my purpose: besides which the weight was so great that it would have made the cost of transport prohibitive. So I let it go. When the chance appears I would shall send you a smaller statuette.

            R.C. Bary[14] was alive at last accounts, but not taking an active part in the T.S. or the Arya Samaj.

            I do not know if ever Damodar[15] will be sent back. Should not be surprised if he came at about the time when the Masters take me away.

            Yours truly

            HS Olcott

---

[1] This was handwritten.

[2] Thomas Manning (1772-1840), the first Briton to enter Lhasa in Tibet.

[3] Handwriting unclear; possibly August 4.

[4] Peary Chand Mitra (1814-1883), an Indian writer and activist, first Bengali Theosophist.

[5] That is, spiritual philosophy. These works were presumably The Spiritual Stray Leaves (1879), Stray Thought of Spiritualism (1879), and Life of Dewan Ramkamal Sen (1880).

[6] The Platonist

[7] Originally published in 1881.

[8] This was almost certainly Sabhapaty’s Vedantic Raj Yoga book; see the introduction to this volume.

[9] A thirteenth-century commentary on the Bhagavad Gita.

[10]Vasily P. Vasiliev (1818-1900) authored a three-volume history of Buddhism that was published from 1857 through 1869 in Russian and later translated into French and German; he also translated a Mongolian travel book about Tibet in 1895.

[11]The Reverend Joseph Cook, an American missionary, had attacked the TS, Hinduism, and Buddhism in public lectures during 1882 that generated press controversy in both India and Ceylon.

[12]A supplement to the July 1882 issue of the Theosophist consisted of a defense by Olcott against charges made in an attack by Swami Dayananda Sarasvati.

[13] The publisher, Colby and Rich.

[14] See his biography and letters in this volume.

[15] See his letter in this volume.

From The First Eighteen Decanates Analyzed:

LEO—1st Decanate. The first decanate of Leo is pictured among the constellations by CRATER—a furnace, or cup of fire. In this manner did the ancient masters of starry lore portray the fiery love nature of those born under this section of the sky.

Their most notable trait is the desire and ability to rule others. And unless this tendency is restrained there is an inclination to dominate. Yet always there is a powerful love nature. And as love is at the foundation of all achievement, if this love energy can be directed into proper channels, it leads on to success. But due to its strength there is danger of turning to one extreme or the other—either permitting pleasure to dominate the life, or in rebellion at the tendency toward excess to become the avowed ascetic. As neither extreme permits of proper expression of the fine qualities of this decanate the watchword should be moderation.

Hiram Butler, author of Solar Biology, who founded and ruled a colony of esoteric students whose efforts largely revolve around sex repression, was born with the Sun here. Anna B. Kingsford, who wrote The Perfect Way, Clothed with the Sun, and other works of an occult character, and whose relationship with a prominent organization was severed because of her own dominant views and teachings, was born with the Moon in this decanate. And Adelina Patti, the prima donna, who dominated the multitude through the beauty and power of her voice, was born with this part of Leo as her Ascendant. It is the decanate of RULERSHIP.

From Letters to the Sage, Volume One:

Born in 1852 in Mystic River, Connecticut, Silas Herbert Randall was the only child of Silas Burrows and Emily Frances, who relocated to southwestern Ohio in the 1860s. Silas married Edith R. DeGolyer on April 6, 1876; they had two children, a boy and a girl. Silas died in 1901 in Charlevoix, Michigan, at age 49, and was buried in Cincinnati, Ohio. Randall was an inventor, working in his father’s Cincinnati machine business, Randall & Co. Patents in his name are on file for various industrial machinery inventions.

Silas first contacted Johnson as an admirer of The Platonist in 1882. His letters reflect the fact that he was one of the most active and successful promoters of Johnson’s Platonist and of the H.B. of L. They also give a great deal of insight into the development of both the American H.B. of L. and Cincinnati’s esotericist community, which was concentrated around Silas, Buck, J. Ralston Skinner, and Elmira Y. Howard. Finally, more than any other set of letters in this volume, his reveal the wide range of literature TS- and H.B. of L.-connected esotericists were reading in the 1880s.

Silas ended the correspondence in 1886 due to his wife’s objections to his H.B. of L. activity. Unlike the examples of Olcott and Judge, whose involvement in Theosophy was ruinous to their marriages, Randall ended his occult adventures when it became clear to him that his family life was at risk.

From The First Eighteen Decanates Analyzed:

CANCER—2nd Decanate. HYDRA—the water serpent —commences as the middle decan of Cancer and extends through the sky all the distance from this home constellation to Scorpio, the constellation of death. Representing the Scorpio, or sex, decanate of the domestic sign, those born under it possess much resource and energy, as well as being strongly emotional. The serpent is the symbol of creative energy and the water in which it dwells is the symbol of the strong emotions displayed by these people. So the traditional struggle of Hercules with this monster is not without significance, for it represents the struggle with sensual desires, as well as a struggle to overcome the limitations imposed by death.

Thus we find that those born here have a natural aptitude for communion with those who have passed to the spirit side of life. And if they do not fall into the destructive forms of mediumship, but instead retain at all times full control of their bodies and minds, they are led, impressed, and guided from the spirit side of life in all their worthy undertakings.

W. T. Stead, who established the bureau for spirit communication and did so much for the spread of spiritualism, was born with his Individuality here. Dr. Luke D. Broughton, author of the well known Elements of Astrology, had his Mentality in this decanate. And Sarah M. Grimke, the fine seeress, and author of Esoteric Lessons, who contributed valuable work in behalf of spiritual enlightenment, had her Personality in this section of the sky. It is the decanate of REVELATION.

From Letters to the Sage, Volume One:

Thomas Docking

            Thomas Docking was born on July 12, 1826 in Brigg, Lincolnshire, England. The son of a miller, he spent his own youth in mills and by fourteen was already in charge of a flour windmill. Lacking a formal education, Docking used his own earnings to purchase books, and taught himself enough that, at age eighteen, he was able to obtain a job as a surgeon for immigrants in Australia, where he was introduced to homeopathic medicine by an English captain. In 1860, Docking returned to Britain with his wife and daughter and, he would later assert, formally studied medicine in England and Scotland while continuing to research the science of homeopathy and joining the Swedenborgian Church.

            Information about Docking’s life in America is sparse and sometimes conflicting. In 1900, Docking would claim that he had come to California in the early 1870s to investigate spiritualism[1] and that he studied it closely for ten years, after which he determined he could not agree with the spiritualists about the source of their phenomena. However, a September 1874 Sacramento newspaper article indicates Docking had arrived in California “a few months ago from Australia,” and afterwards moved into his brother’s Sacramento home, where he quickly irritated both his brother and several local residents who accused him of various malicious acts.[2] That same month, in San Francisco Docking was charged with mail fraud, though he was soon acquitted due to lack of evidence. Docking apparently had returned to San Francisco by the end of the year, as it was there where, in December, Randolph formed the San Francisco lodge of his Triplicate Order, and Docking was made its “Supreme Grand Templar.”[3] After spending several years joining and founding various homeopathic organizations and fraternal orders, in August 1886,[4] Docking became a member of the Theosophical Society, joining the Golden Gate lodge, and in the following year he established the Point Loma lodge, which he led for several years. Docking died on September 1, 1902.

            As discussed in the introduction to this volume, Docking’s letters help further establish that Johnson was increasingly hearing about Rosicrucians and Randolph prior to his exposure to the H. B. of L. in 1884.

Oakland

March 21, 1883

Dear Sir

            Yours of 14th inst came duly to hand yesterday and herewith I beg to acknowledge receipt of enclosed Green back again like a bad going [coin?] w^h [with?] it having realized no Play to in return permit me to acknowledge in appropriate language, how beautifully you have done this with all & how keenly I feel it. Perhaps you will permit me to ask for information as to the best english translations of Plato & specially such as will leed me to Pythagoras I w^d like to see the latters system of numerals. Do you belong to the Rosy +

With kind regards. Believe me as ever

                                    Sincerely yours

                                    T. Docking

Do you know of no other journal of the same kind in English published T.D.

821 Washington St.

Oakland Cal

December 6, 1883

Dear Sir

            I have enclosed the ½ of a Postal note for $4.⁰⁰_/100 being payment for 2 subscriptions for the “Platonist” 1 for self & 1 for W.E. Dargie Oakland he is Post master here & one of the Proprietors of the Daily & Weekly Tribune, he has been from home but returned a day or so ago I saw him in person & he promised to publish the card you sent & paid me 2.⁰⁰_/100 I lent him my Vol 1 complete & I have not been able to get it returned & as far as you can, I shall be pleased if you will make this good I will mail the other ½ note on receipt of acknowledgement or 1 N^o of the Platonist. Have you heard anything more of the Rosicrucian’s in Boston or elsewhere?

            Yours truly

            T. Docking

---

[1] Docking’s 1900 census report has his him immigrating in 1872; in a brief biographical entry (probably written by him) published in 1900 it notes 1860 as the year of his immigration, but this appears to have been an error as other evidence in the biography suggests that he was still in Britain up until at least 1868; see An Illustrated History of Southern California: Embracing the Counties of San Diego, San Bernardino, Los Angeles and Orange, and the Peninsula of Lower California, from the Earliest Period of Occupancy to the Present Time; Together with Glimpses of Their Prospects; also, Full-Page Portraits of Some of Their Eminent Men, and Biographical Mention of Many of Their Pioneers and of Prominent Citizens of To-Day (n.p.: The Lewis Publishing Co., 1890), 275.

[2] “Doctor Docking Again,” Sacramento Daily Union, September 26, 1874, 8.

[3] Deveney, PBR, 233-34.

[4] Thomas Docking, member of the Golden Gate TS lodge, entered on August 22, 1886, Theosophical Society General Register Vol. I, http://www.theartarchives.org.

CANCER— Decanate. The first decanate of Cancer is depicted in the sky by a little yapping cur—CANIS MINOR—a mongrel without courage or loyalty. By it the ancient masters sought to convey the thought that those born under this section of the sky are particularly susceptible to domestic intrigue. They have strong emotions and may easily be carried away by them. Consequently, they should put forth a persistent effort to cultivate the qualities of faithfulness and poise.

Through the activity of the emotional nature, and their sensitiveness to all that affects life, they are often capable of remarkable poetic and dramatic expression. Unknown to themselves they are the mediums through which entities on the inner planes manifest. And because they are such perfect mediums they sometimes betray the trust placed in them, for they tend to yield to the temporarily strongest influence. They should learn to be positive and firm.

Louis XII of France, who divorced his virtuous and ill-favored queen, Joan, to marry Anne of Brittany, by whom he was dominated, was born with the Sun in this decanate. Nell Gwyn, actress and favorite of Charles II, had her Moon in this place. And Lord Byron, the poet, whose love affairs were none too conventional, was born with this decanate on the Ascendant. It is the decanate of MOODS. (From the First Eighteen Decanates Analyzed)

KPJ– Although we had an abundance of Aries, Taurus, Gemini birthdates among Letter to the Sage correspondence, things slow down at the Solstice, not so much due to lack of birthdates but to how the Cancerians, Leos, Scorpios and Sagittarians cluster in a single decanate and we have only one each for Virgo and Libra. Here is the entry for Doubleday from LTS:

Abner Doubleday

Abner Doubleday was born June 26, 1819 at Ballston Spa, New York. He graduated from West Point in 1842 and served during the Mexican War in the US Artillery. His service in the Civil War began at Fort Sumter, where he was second in command when Confederate forces attacked with the opening shots of the war. Through the war his responsibilities increased with commensurate promotions, culminating in March 1865 as brigadier-general and major-general U.S.A. He retired in 1873 as a colonel and published two books in the next decade, Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie (1876) and Chancellorsville and Gettysburg (1882). Doubleday is best known for his contested role in the creation of baseball, which led to the establishment of the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, where Doubleday had been educated. He died January 26, 1893 at Mendham, New Jersey.

Doubleday joined the Theosophical Society in 1876 and was closely associated with its founders in New York. After Olcott and Blavatsky departed for India he became TS president pro tem in the United States. He was elected vice president of the TS, a ceremonial office, on April 17, 1880, and worked to keep the society alive during its dormant years in America. His correspondence with Johnson occurred as the TS was beginning to expand with new lodges in Rochester and St. Louis, and includes discussions of the Tarot and of his translation of Éliphas Lévi’s Dogme et rituel de la haute magie, which was not published in full until the 1910s when it was serialized in The Word magazine.

[undated, probably 1882]

Dear Sir

            I certainly owe you an apology for my long delay in answering yours of the [blank space] inst, but before doing so I desired to examine into the condition of the T.S. here as I had been absent from the city nearly all winter.

            Circumstances have been very much against us. Some of the difficulties which have impeded our material progress arise from the peculiarities of some of the members who have simply joined to have their appetite for wonders satisfied, but who seem to take but little interest in the philosophy which remedies the subject. I supposed when I accepted the direction of the society that I would have the cordial cooperation of those of the old members who had been associated with H.P.B. and Olcott. Of these I relied most upon Wm. Q. Judge, as he was the best informed and seems at times to receive interior communications from India. He is a pure high-minded and intelligent student of these mysteries, but like a number of others he has had all he could do to keep the wolf from his door. Several of our most valued members are struggling for a bare subsistence, and this necessarily prevents them giving that attention to our organisation which it ought to receive.

            Our financial plans—upon which we relied to give us ample means—have not succeeded as yet. With money we could establish a central office here which would be of great value in disseminating the important principles of our philosophy. As it is, we must wait for better times, and make haste slowly. I will call another meeting of the Council and see what can be done.

November 12, 1885

Abner Doubleday

Dear Sir

            What arrangement can I make to have 500 copies more or less printed of the impressions of the Magazine articles (translations Dogma and Ritual) after they have appeared in the Magazine.

Mendham, NJ

November 12, 1885

117

Abner Doubleday

Dear Sir

            What arrangement can I make to have 500 copies more or less printed of the impressions of the Magazine articles (translations Dogma and Ritual) after they have appeared in the Magazine.

            I enclose $5.00 for my subscription.

            Yours Very Truly

A. Doubleday

December 3, 1885

Dear Sir

            I am bothered about this question of publishing Levy’s book, I am not desirous of having it sent broadcast over the land but would like to confine it to those who need it and can appreciate it. It seemed to me therefore that your paper would filter it through the public mind gradually and would bring it before the right class of readers. Personally I do not desire any profit from it but I would have liked to have had a little to Wilder and Weiss for their services in aiding me in the translation and by their criticisms. Naturally all of us desire some extra copies, and yet these ought not to be used in such a way as to injure the circulation of your paper or rather to lessen it, by sending out separate portions of its contents. The extra copies if printed, might be distributed by us some time after their publication in your magazine. In this way the circulation of the Platonist could not be lessened. We all recognise its value and as for me would be very loath to do anything that would prevent its having a large circulation.

            At all events I would like an estimate as to what the extra numbers would cost.

            It seems to me too that Wilder ought to be willing to correct the work as you permit print it, if he is willing to do it proof reading; for he does that kind of work rapidly and is the only man I know that is competent for it.

            I enclose $5.00 for my subscription.

            Yours Very Truly

A. Doubleday

From The First Eighteen Decanates Analyzed:

GEMINI—3rd Decanate. A huge bear—URSA MAJOR—traveling about the pole star in a forward direction depicts among the constellations the Aquarius decanate of Gemini. The bear, whose restless activity and omnivorous nature is typical of mentality, in this case moves as does the objective mind, in the direction of events. And it is huge in size to indicate the immense power that may be exercised by thought.

This is the scientific decanate of the sign of thought. Those born under it are capable of accomplishing great things through the exercise of their minds. They tend chiefly to rely upon reason, therefore, should not only train their minds, which is readily accomplished, but should also cultivate idealism and religion. Otherwise their efforts crystallize and become self-centered.

Nero, the Roman Emperor, who had wonderful talent, but could burn Rome for his own amusement so self-centered had he become, had the Sun in this section of the heavens at his birth. On the other hand, as indicating the better qualities of this decanate, Nicholas Culpepper, author of the “Herbal” and by his friends said to be the best physician that ever lived, had his Moon here. And Jay Gould, whose manipulation of railroad securities wrecked so many others and made for himself such a huge fortune, had his Personality located in this last decanate of Gemini. It is the decanate of REASON.

From Letters to the Sage:

 Josephine Warner was born on June 12, 1843, in Litchfield, Connecticut, the only child of Elijah B. and Fanny Harrington Warner. After the death of her mother, Josephine was raised by maternal relatives and Elijah took a second wife. In the 1860s, Josephine married James T. Cables, a Civil War veteran from Litchfield County, and was living there with him as of the 1870 census. By 1880 they had relocated to Rochester, New York where the census finds future Theosophist and H.B. of L. member William B. Shelley and his wife Caroline residing with the Cables family, which also includes James’s younger sister Cherry and her husband George Garland. After divorcing Cables, Josephine married William Farrington Aldrich on April 15, 1889, one month (or several, depending on the source) after the birth of their son William Farrington Aldrich III. She relocated with them to Shelby County, Alabama where Aldrich operated a coal mine and created a model company town named Aldrich, now part of Montevallo, where they built a palatial home called Rajah Lodge. William served two terms in the US Congress (1897-1901), during which Josephine resided in Washington, DC, where she was buried in Rock Creek cemetery following her death on August 12, 1917, in Birmingham, Alabama. When her correspondence with Johnson began she was corresponding secretary of the American Board of Control of the Theosophical Society. She was one of the first recruits to the newly formed H.B. of L., pledging on April 14, 1885, but after marrying Aldrich and moving to Alabama she abandoned occult involvements and focused her energies on philanthropy. An 1893 biographical directory identifies her as vice-president of both the Woman’s National Industrial League and the Woman’s National Liberal Union. The main theme of her correspondence with Johnson is the stress and tension within the American TS as a result of the creation of the H.B. of L., and the hostility she suffered from Theosophists over her involvement in the secret society.

Rochester

[undated, probably 1884]

Dear Brother

            Yours came this morning. What shall I do send you the names of persons who I think will be interested in your work and might subscribe for it, or only even such as I know will surely  subscribe. Can you send me a sample copy, I will subscribe myself and give you the name of Emily Hobbs[1] and may send more after hearing from you again and will send the piece soon as you tell me you are ready and will write Mrs Hobbs who is in Toronto and have her do the same

            I sincerely trust you will meet with success. I would like to say more to you but time forbids but I will say just enough to let you know I have received and appreciate your letters

            Very kindly yours

            Mrs J C Cables

Rochester

[undated, probably 1884]

Dear Sir and Brother

            Please find enclosed seven (7) dollars for which please send to the Coress’ Secretary theosophical society 2 Sophia Street Rochester NY—the eleven back numbers also the issue for the year—And please send the new issue to Miss Lucy A Laing[2] Williamson Wayne County NY—the amount enclosed covers the whole as I understand it If not correct let me know—I have been ill or should have attended to it before I can not promise more than this until the books come out and are seen then I may do more

            Wishing you great success I am Yours Fraternaly

            Mrs J H Cables

            Corresponding Secretary

            Ts—

Rochester

February 12, 188[4?]

Dear Sir

Yours came this morning You made the same request of me some time ago and I did try to send the names out I am so beset with letters to know about these strange “old new things” that I am nearly killed—I suppose I ought to give you the names of those who inquire of me and I will do so I will get Mr. Shelley or my husband to look over my file of letters and draw them off, or some of them at least. We are much pleased with the “Platonist” I wish we could offer fifty copys of to loan out—I will send some of the names with this of the Society[.] Parker Pillsbury[3] address is Concord New Hampshire Any of the persons in the list of names can be reached at my place as nearly all of them are in daily communication here I have no good list made out and if I wait for the proper “moment to get it done & pass along again as it has done before

            Begging pardon for neglect and such imperfect work

            I am Humbly

            Yours

            Mrs JW Cables

Rochester

[undated, probably fall of 1885]

Dear Brother

            Send me soon as may be the copy of the Manuscripts you hold for me this you will do I know—O!! I have had such scourging about the H.B. of L. that I am threadbare. I would not care at all but I do not know—if I really did know I was right—I would fear nothing but if I should be a blind leader of the blind—Tell me truly my brother what you do think  is this the real brotherhood of Luxor & is it well to gain powers by practices and if so is this the real pure Yog_[4] I have always feared for mirror gazing—so  tell me what you think and why and I shall hold it sacred—I am lost in distress of these things I do hope you will meet with the ABC[5] next year unless you and I are both expelled before that time-  four out of nine is not a proper representation I really do need to see you so much I do so wish you could come and stay some weeks with me you are welcome I could give you a room where you could write—I do not know what will be my jurisdiction at all if you do will you tell me when you can—Let me know soon you see I have as yet no instructions to give Mr Kenyon[6] will do so soon as I get them—

            Very Fraternally

            Yours Josephine Cables   

The Theosophical Society

American Board of Control

Rochester

October 20, 188[5?]

 Dear Brother

            I was glad to get your letter this morning—and so glad that you at least are grand enough to wait and think before threatening to “publish in every paper in the union the smallness manner and fraud of the H.B. of L”.[7] please let me speak plainly to you –You are wise and great and I am obliged and expected to know all and see all from the beginning and say nothing which I have done—I hope our A.B.C. will not now make itself famous for its lack of prudence and malice and show its ignorance also—

            I have begged of Mr Page to wait and not oppose himself to a wall which will surely crush him—I did expect the teachers here to have been appointed from America—hence  the delay—Mr Davidson is unfortunate in some of his expressions and dislikes and some of them have reached some of our fellows and then he opened a very disagreeable correspondence with Mr W. Q. Judge who did not think well of the HB of L in the first place—I flew to the rescue but it was dreadfully unfortunate and I feel assured that all this present trouble has arisen from that—You know the headquarters of India are opposed to the H.B. of L. also. I don’t know what they will do with you and I but I am ready, all true masters must be friendly and to them I bend my gaze. I suppose we you and I must be as wise as serpents and harmless &c. & return soft answers as I am sorry to say some of our superiors have not done but we are all children and must grow I suppose—I hope the HB of L will give us great wisdom and teach us how to clear the clouds away by the light of Truth

            Excuse me for speaking plainly to you as I have not done to any one before and trust it as perfectly confidential

            In great haste

            Fraternally yours

            Josephine H Cables

The Theosophical Society

American Board of Control

Rochester

December 1, 188[5]

 Dear Brother

            I keep troubling you but I cannot get at things—And I neglect to ask you in my last this question—I am to accept people or only initiate them after they have been accepted abroad?[8] And what about the six mysteries?

            We haven’t them—Mr Sasserville[9] has been ill for some days or he would have copied the papers so I could have returned them but we will attend to it soon. I suppose it will take time to get regulated as it has the theosophical work—

            With Great Kindness

            Josephine H Cables

[undated, probably late 1885 or early 1886]

My Dear Brother

            The way seems dark to me but I shall not falter, I shall try to know and shall be so very careful but I have been advised by those dear to me in these words—You have thought the HB of L a good thing and have got your friends into it and to repair your wrong you must publicly declare that you renounce it and that its teachings are dangerous and will lead people into black magic &c &c &c This I cannot do without knowing. I am given to understand that I am to blame for the whole movement in America—and the blood of all will be on my head—I would not blindly lead the blind not for the universe but I must know—and I shall not be rash —I shall  wait and watch and work my brother you can see what my position is and although women are rash and impulsive—I shall not disappoint you I shall be reasonable and resolute—I want you to call me soon as you get this if you know—and you and I to judge of the Eligibitely of the candidate, are they first to apply to headquarters—(sc)[10] I have two ladies here at my house one from California and one from Montana They wish to be initiated here get their instructions &c. Now how would you proceed in such a case and how shall I know I am not encroaching upon your territory I would not do this knowingly and what about the fees and dues I am very anxious to know soon as possible as these ladies are waiting your letter—Must all candidates apply be accepted pay their fees and then come to us for initiation—please tell me this soon as possible I shall hate to trouble you for I know you must like me be oppressed with many cares but others are waiting—

            Always truly

            Josephine H Cables  

---

[1] Joined the Rochester TS lodge, entered July 27, 1882, Theosophical Society General Register Vol. I, http://www.theartarchives.org.

[2] Joined the Rochester TS lodge, entered October 12, 1882, Theosophical Society General Register Vol. I, http://www.theartarchives.org. She joined the H.B. of L. on July 9, 1885.

[3] Parker Pillsbury (1809-98) had been a Congregationalist minister when his license to preach was revoked in 1840 for his abolitionist activities. He edited two abolitionist periodicals, the Herald of Freedom in the 1840s and the National Anti-Slavery Standard in the 1860s, and later co-edited Revolution, a feminist weekly, with Elizabeth Cady Stanton. He was also active in support of the Free Religious Association. In January 1882 he was one of fourteen TS members applying to form a branch in Rochester. His memoirs, Acts of the Anti-Slavery Apostles, were published in 1883.

[4] This is the only instance in these letters in which the H.B. of L. is explicitly equated with yoga.

[5] Amkperican Board of Control

[6] W.J.C. Kenyon; see his letter in this volume.

[7] A threat presumably made by Elliott Page in a letter to Cables, in light of subsequent references to him and malice on the TS Board of Control.

[8] This indicates that Cables was acting as an H.B. of L. lodge leader at the time, which dates this letter to 1885; see the introduction to this volume for a discussion.

[9] Ernest Sasserville; see his letter in this volume.

[10] I.e., Scotland, which was the H.B. of L. headquarters until Davidson left for America.

ReplyForward

From The First Eighteen Decanates Analyzed:

GEMINI—2nd Decanate. The second decanate of Gemini is pictured in the sky by a large dog—CANIS MAJOR. This noble looking beast is the emblem of faithfulness, and through its adoration for its master also represents the worshipping and serving of Deity—for to the dog his master is God. Therefore, we find those born under the second decanate of Gemini often possess a singular and admirable faithfulness, either to their human companions or to some high ideal. They have much veneration and seek to obey the voice of their conscience implicitly.

This Venus decanate also relates to twin souls. So there is greater likelihood of those born here finding a congenial mate than is the case with most. And to make the best of life they must espouse some principle or progressive cause, and work to get it generally acknowledged and accepted.

Robert Schumann, the musical critic and composer, who was so faithful to his ideal of musical interpretation, was born with his Individuality polarized in this decanate. Miss Florence Cook, whose faithfulness to the cause of spiritualism led her to become the medium through whom “Katie King” manifested to Sir. Wm. Crookes, had her Mentality pictured by this section of the sky. And Wm. Jennings Bryan, whose faithfulness to his political and religious convictions is the best-known feature of his career, was born with his Personality in this part of Gemini. It is the decanate of FIDELITY.

From Letters to the Sage, Volume One:

Mordecai Dawson Evans was born June 4, 1834 in Philadelphia, son of William R. and Mary Hause Evans. He married Mary Graves Bringhurst on November 18, 1868 in Philadelphia and joined the Theosophical Society on November 8, 1876. A year later H.P. Blavatsky addressed a letter to him dated November 18. 1877, agreeing to a request from Evans that he visit her in New York. The first volume of Olcott’s Old Diary Leaves includes a story witnessed by both Olcott and Judge in which Evans’s street address was needed by Blavatsky and could not be found, so “she took from the table before us a japanned tin paper-cutter, stroked it gently, laid a piece of blotting paper over it, passed her hand over the surface, lifted the paper, and there, on the black japanned surface of the paper-cutter was printed in bronze ink the facsimile of the inscription on the Philadelphia blotting slip that Evans had given her in that city.”

Evans’s insurance career lasted more than thirty years, and was a founding member and secretary of the Association of Fire Underwriters. His income enabled him to support charitable causes, including the Hayes Mechanics’ Home, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. At the time of his death he had served seven years as school director of Philadelphia’s Ninth Section, and five years as its board president. He died in Philadelphia March 23, 1898.

M.D. Evans

October 25, 1884

My Dear Sir,

            Your favor of 20^th is received, and is entirely Satisfactory— I subscribe to quite a number of magazines, Harpers, &c., and I scarcely have the spare time to do them all justice—Your “Platonist” is an Exceptionally attractive journal both in its typography and literary matter, so much so that I cannot decline asking you to place my name on your list of subscribers to Vol. 2, and for which I enclose $2.00 as per your postal bill—I have however, received this year only Nos. 1,2,5, and 6, so to complete my file, would be obliged for Nos. 3,4, and 7. I trust also to get the other Nos. as issued—

            Allow me also to greet you as a Brother of the T.S. a fact of which I was only recently informed. I am a member of the American Board of Control, by recent appointment of Col. Olcott, the President Founder, in Conjunction with Professor Elliott Coues, of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., who has just retd. from Europe, and had the pleasure of traveling with Col. O. and Mad. Blavatsky over a portion of the Continent and was by them, initiated a member of the T.S.—

            Believing that “There is no Religion higher than Truth”, I cheerfully aid your literary enterprise, if ever so little, by my individual subscription—

            I am Dear Sir,

            Yours Truly and Fraternally

            M.D. Evans

            F.T.S

Mordecai D. Evans

Insurance Rooms

No. 323 Walnut Street,

152

M.D. Evans

Philadelphia

November 3, 1884

Dear Sir and Brother.

            I thank you for Nos. 3. 4. and 7 of “The Platonist” Read today—

            Under a provisional charter given by Col. Olcott to Prof. Elliott Coues of Washn. D.C., a branch of the T.S. has been established with Prof. Coues as Prest. And the writer as V.P., to be known as the “Washington Gnostic T.S.” with head-quarters in that city, and embracing the cities of Was^h. Balt^e and Philad^a.  At a suitable time a distinct branch will be organized by us in this city—

            Professor Coues has just left from Europe and hap the pleasure of journeying through England and Germany, with Mad. Blavatsky Col. Olcott. Mohini Chatterji and their friends— His impressions of “The Founders” was highly favorable, resulting in his initiation &c. into the T.S— His eminence as an author, and ornithologist as well as his rare intellectual abilities and formal merits, make him a great acquisition to our cause—

            I am Dear Sir and Bro—

            Yours fraternally

            M.D. Evans

            F.T.S

As we approach the first decanate of Gemini I have discovered this very fun and informative documentary about a man whose influence is enormous but now mostly forgotten. Noteworthy that Elbert Benjamine selects Richard Wagner as an example of an ascendant in this decanate, and that he collaborated with Edward Bulwer-Lytton whose natal Sun is there, on a six hour long opera. From The First Eighteen Decanates Analyzed:

GEMINI—1st Decanate. By means of a bear—URSA MINOR—whose restless activity and power suggest that of the mind, the ancients depicted the Mercury decanate of Gemini. And because the unconscious mind is not so obvious as the objective mind, this bear is small. So too, it travels about the sky backward. Thus must one direct his attention contrary to the trend of objective life to hear “the voice of the silence.”

Perhaps unconsciously, yet none-the-less effectively, those born in the Gemini third of Gemini tend to rely upon intuition. Their natural field of endeavor is the mental plane. They see, not merely the details of a problem, but view it completely, perceiving the proper relation of each part to the whole. And if they are not carried away by the restless desire to undertake too many things, they may become intellectual giants. For they assimilate all they contact and their deductions rise spontaneously from the soul.

Alighieri Dante, who intuitively grasped so many cosmic truths and portrayed them in his “Inferno,” was born when the Sun passed through this decanate. George Bernard Shaw, who comprehends in their entirety so many of the present-day world problems and presents them in his lucid literary style, was born when the Moon was here. And Richard Wagner, the composer, who saw and felt the great truths of nature and expressed them so adequately in music, was born when this decanate was on the Ascendant. It is the decanate of INTUITION.

Although I have not yet acquired them, these new books from academia represent a big step forward this year in what academic scholars call Western Esoteric Traditions and what this blog calls Ancestors of the Brotherhood of Light lessons. All are multi-author collections with predominantly European and Asian authors writing about European and Asian subjects. The biggest news event of the year for students of the lessons will be The Cosmic Movement, edited by Julie Chajes and Boaz Huss. The ever-mysterious Max and Alma Theon become less mysterious but no less intriguing, judging from the table of contents. From SUNY Press comes Theosophy Without Boundaries, the first new study of Theosophical history in decades in its Western Esoteric Traditions series which includes three of my own books. From Brill Publications in the Netherlands we have a new study Kabbalah in America that includes a chapter from Vadim Putzu about Thomas Moore Johnson. A fourth new book of interest is now available: this multi-author international collection released in 2021 includes a chapter from Vadim Putzu about Thomas Moore Johnson along with many other relevant contributions. This page from the Palgrave Macmillan website describes all the chapters of Esoteric Transfers and Constructions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Ancestors can be direct or collateral, and when we examine the Cosmic Movement and the Theosophical Society after various partings of ways in the 1880s, they are not direct but collateral ancestors of the work of Elbert Benjamine and he refers to them with admiration but not particular warmth. The line of direct ancestry he emphasizes is the work of Emma Hardinge Britten, Thomas H. Burgoyne, Sarah S. Grimke, and Genevieve Stebbins, none of whom is likely to be illuminated much by the new books. But a great many “spiritual cousins” will come into much clearer focus thanks to these new studies.

My own interest in the Theosophical Society has been largely on its first ten years and American followers, and for more than 25 years my research has been almost entirely about US history. But the overwhelming majority of new esoteric scholarship comes from outside the US and focuses on non-US subjects, which can only be seen as a great sign for the international relevance and vitality of the subdiscipline Western Esoteric Studies. I ran into problems trying to order the book from its Israeli publisher online but meanwhile appreciate that the co-editors have generously made their own portions available for free access on academia, seen here on the page of Boaz Huss.

The bigger picture for this blog would best be provided by a US collection along the lines of Transcendentalist abolitionists and all their esoteric/occult/mind cure enthusiasms. The Alcotts, Peebles, Cables, the Grimkes, Posts, Douglasses, Wilder, Thoreau, LM Child, JH Wiggin, so many chapter possibilities come to mind. I especially look forward to Christine Ferguson’s chapter in the new Cosmic Philosophy collection because it touches on the theme of Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s female successors.

TAURUS—3rd Decanate. The third decanate of Taurus shows the reflective influence of Saturn, its subruler. And even as the key phrase of Capricorn is “I Use,” so those born under this decanate have the ability to use physical means to attain spiritual ends. The decanate is pictured in the sky by AURIGA, the charioteer, who with one hand guides the chariot of his soul and with the other protects and ministers unto the weak and needy. Auriga pictures the one who has triumphed over his environment and physical limitations and attained adeptship. Those born under this decanate have an aptitude for true spiritual attainment. And while the progress usually is not swift; yet, once undertaken, it becomes a sure and steady climb with seldom setbacks. What they receive, however, largely depends upon the use they make of the power they already possess in ministering unto the ills of others.

Elizabeth D. Benjamine, who labored so successfully as a teacher of Brotherhood of Light classes for twenty-three years, and was one of the three founders of The Church of Light, was born with her Individuality in this decanate. Fred H. Skinner, who labored successfully as a teacher of Brotherhood of Light classes for twenty-one years, and was one of the three founders of The Church of Light, was born with his Mentality in this section of the heavens. And Immanuel Kant, whose works on transcendental philosophy have not been surpassed, was born with his Personality here. It is the decanate of MASTERSHIP.
(from The First Eighteen Decanates Analyzed)

[Alexander Wilder, 5/14/23 also has Natal Sun in this decanate and born the same month as Emma Hardinge Britten and William Oxley. All three are noteworthy for being sober researchers with a sense of accountability to standards of historical authorship; yet propagandists for Spiritualism, New Thought, and Free Thought. Elizabeth Benjamine provided the stable material foundation for The Church of Light by giving it a physical home on Coral Street. Alexander Wilder was the most steady, reliable advisor of all sixty correspondents of Thomas Moore Johnson in Letters to the Sage.–KPJ]

Emma was born May 2, 1823 in what is now London; in the absence of birth times she and Oxley could be a few minutes apart or many hours. From Letters to the Sage:

William Oxley—born to radical Methodist parents on May 1, 1823 at Doncaster, Yorkshire, England—was a prominent English spiritualist and amateur Egyptologist and Indologist. Around 1848 he married Jane Pettinger, with whom he developed an interest in Swedenborgianism, apparently without abandoning Methodism. Oxley, an inventor holding six patents for industrial processes, headed a machining and manufacturing company, Oxley and Co., which expanded steadily through the 1860s, but declined thereafter, and was bought out by one of his sons in the late 1880s. Jane died in 1893 and the company went bankrupt in 1899. Oxley died at the home of his son Henry on June 29, 1905, and is buried at St. Mary’s in Bowdon, near Altricham, outside Manchester.

            In the early 1870s Oxley became involved with spiritualism, and over the next thirty years would author several spiritualism-themed books. Oxley first became involved with the Theosophical Society around 1879, though he later renounced the organization and was briefly affiliated with other UK private occult groups, such as the Order of Light and the H.B. of L.

            The primary significance of Oxley’s letters to Johnson is that they provide information concerning the H.B. of L. One of them—dated October 23, 1884—is one of the earliest letters in this volume to mention subjects directly connected to the H.B. of L. This letter is a response to Johnson’s request to Oxley (penned on October 7) for information about Fryar’s Bath Occult Series and the person apparently connected to that series known to Johnson as “M. Theon.” Oxley advises Johnson that Fryar’s books are overpriced reprints and he promises to investigate this “M. Theon,” warning Johnson to—it seems—not rush to join up with Theon’s occult group. Perhaps the most valuable letter is that dated June 29, 1887, in which Oxley says he knew Burgoyne in England before the H.B. of L. had started, and that he (Oxley) had a fairly good opinion of Burgoyne at the time—Oxley even calls Burgoyne “one of the best” astrologers he knows.   

Higher Broughton, Manchester

7 November 1881

Dear Sir.

            I enclose po order payable at St Louis. Missouri—for 12/. for years subn. for Platonist of which you have sent me as few numbers. The book is very valuable, and I trust you will find sufficient subscribers to support the undertaking.

            By same post I forward you a work I have just published—price 3/6 ea. including postage entitled The Philosophy of Spirit—Illustrated by a new Version of The Bhagavat Gita.[1]

            I do not understand Sanscrit but I took Schlegels Latin version which is allowed to be the most literal—and after translating this, and comparing, sentence by sentence with Wilkins and Cockburn Thompson—(the only 2 English translations) I then put it into poetic form—and I think I have given the spirit of the work so far as our language permits.

            Perhaps you will kindly review it in your Platonist  The work can be had of E.W. Allen- Ave Maria Lane London F.C.

            I am

            Yours very truly

            Wm. Oxley

Higher Broughton, Manchester

4 November 1882

My Dear Sir.

            Yours of 16^th ult. to hand. I have succeeded in getting the 4 numbers of Herald of Progress with my articles in, and which I have pleasure in mailing by some post to you.[2]

            I find party spirit and dogmatic individuality now so high in this Country, that I feel more & more disposed to retire for peace into the recesses of my own inner world of thought and life. for, as you will see by last “Theosophist” Brahminism—as represented by its Modern Votaries, are just as dogmatic and overbearing as all other systems sects and isms. Put out a new thought or idea and you have a lot down on you at once.

            I believe you have known some in your Country for the expression of new thought. and tho you may think it sometimes leads to vagaries yet better that than the old Conservatism which ever seeks to resist innovation.

            I am

            Dear Sir

            Yours truly

            Wm Oxley

Higher Broughton, Manchester

17 September 1884

My Dear Sir.

            The receipt of the Platonist reminds me I have not paid for the new issue but I am sending the money to Foulger & Co. London to day

            Per same post I send you copy of my new work on “Egypt and the wonders of the Land of the Pharaohs”. and will feel much obliged by your reviewing it in the Platonist.

            You will see how I bring in the Platonic School—see page 243 and on. and what are important part it plays in the transitional age.

            The work and subject is treated on new lines.

            The published price is 7/6. what a pity your people place such a heavy tax on our Literature—the policy is as mischevious as it is utterly selfish. They have the run of our country & yet make us pay heavy in return

            I am

            Yours very truly

            Wm Oxley

Higher Broughton, Manchester

23 October 1884

My Dear Sir

            I am in receipt of yours of 7^th inst. acknowledging mine enclosing payment of current years sub. to Platonist

            My last number for current year 2^nd vol is for June 1884 and I have not received No 2. the number for February. will you kindly forward this No 2. along with what follows June. my last number and also kindly send me 2 copies of the number containing your Review of my Egypt &c

of the 1^st vol. I have spare numbers of No 1., 2, 4, 5, 6, 7. and if you should require these to complete sets for any of your friends you can have them.

            I do know something of the “Bath Occult Series”—which I consider simply a swindle! they are merely reprints of works that are not by any means scarce—and they could have been printed for 2/ what they are getting 21/ for.

            as to M. Theon. I am trying to get at the bottom of this thing & to know who he is. my advice is—Be very cautious! I will let you know the result of my enquiries.

Yours very truly

W. Oxley 

St Marys Parsonage, Manchester

29 June 1887

Dear Sir

            Thanks for your courtesy in sending on my letter to Miss Off. We shall see what comes of it.

            In re H.B.L. I presume you know you know the history of the collapse of the Colony scheme in Georgia- I supposed it was genuine at the time but wrote to Davidson discouraging it.

            From what I can gather with certitude the simple facts appear to be—that a youngish man real name I believe is Burgoyne—and who is without doubt an adventurer, after the collapse of Mad. B. in Madras (or perhaps before) the opportunity of trading upon the feeling which had arisen in the minds of many would be students of so called Occultism—this feeling was guided by motives which I suspect were directed towards the attainments of psychic powers! However the chief agent was this young man—Stella alias &c &c &c &c. who somehow got hold of P. Davidson an excursion in Scotland and these two concocted the scheme which bloomed out as the H.B. of L., the antecedents of Stella are not of the brightest or best—as I think there is little doubt but that he was imprisoned in Leeds for an advertising swindle—he served his time to a Grocer and his family are fairly respectable. perhaps this is the worst of him that can be said. I had him as a guest at my house several times & I found him agreeable, and was certainly surprised at the information he possessed on the occult. where or how he got it—he was too wary to impart. he knew exactly how to utilise the “mystery dodge” and all this part past when I questioned him was avoided. I would hardly go the length of calling him a clever scoundrel, but I have no hesitation in dubbing him a smart, cute, adventurer. that he has talents above the average is certain, and as an Astrologer I think he is one of the best I know—he taught me & I am of opinion that the Science is true—but overlaid by a vast mass of superstitious rubbish.

            As to M Theon. I believe that Burgoyne, Stella and Theon are one & the same person & I no more believe in the Adepts of the H.B. of L. than I do in the Mahatmas of the Theos. Society. Neither one nor the other will stand the operation of close scrutiny.

as to P. Davidson. I think he was so far committed that he could not retreat—I sent my sub. to him according to address in Georgia but my letter was returned so —the Occult Magazine is now a thing of the past

            I am

Yours very truly

            W. Oxley

---

[1] Published in Glasgow in 1881

[2] Over the course of its run, from 1880 to 1884, the Herald of Progress published far more than four articles by Oxley. He may be referring to a specific set of articles, or articles that appeared in the 1882 volume, which we unable to locate.

In light of my recent post about geographical proximity of Burgoyne to Britten, compared to how far he was from Davidson, it is significant that Oxley testifies to having met Burgoyne in Manchester which places him in Britten’s circle of Spiritualist allies opposed to the Theosophical Society at the time. Marc Demarest gathered a group of very helpful links on Oxley in this 2012 blog post.

Here is the second Taurus decanate as described in the Brotherhood of Light lessons:

TAURUS—2nd Decanate. In the second decanate of Taurus the fixity of purpose is given the analytical trend through the subinfluence being that of Virgo. Therefore, some condition in the environment is attacked and made the center upon which the physical and mental forces are focused. The result is a conflict. And this conflict may be to attain fame through literary or artistic production, to attain financial supremacy through business methods, or to rise in the field of science or politics. Thus it brings a combat for supremacy.

This thought is pictured by ORION, the most successful of all hunters, who attacked and slew the mighty bull. The bull represents material pleasures and physical limitations over which it is possible for those born under this decanate to rise supreme. They have at their command an unusual supply of electromagnetism, and can mentally attack with a force as great as the huge club wielded by the mighty arm of Orion. Thus they cause obstacles to crumble.

Thomas H. Huxley, whose work as a scientist was so painstaking and brought him so much opposition, was born with the Sun in this decanate. The Rt. Hon. Joseph Chamberlain, whose political life was spent in the struggle to gain greater freedom for the people, had his Mentality here. And another, who strove with armies, George Washington, founder of the U.S. of America, was born with his Personality in this section of Taurus. It is the decanate of STRUGGLE.

by W. Michael Ashcraft, Truman State University

This lengthy and thoughtful review appears in the current issue of Nova Religio, pp. 134-136. Re older and younger scholars, Patrick Bowen and I both contributed chapters, his directly and mine indirectly based on Letters to the Sage research. Here are the opening and closing paragraphs:

University of Copenhagen professors Tim Rudbøg and Erik Reenberg
Sand have edited a fine collection that sheds fresh light on the earliest
years of the Theosophical movement. The choice of contributors balances older and younger scholars very nicely. But be forewarned: the contributors assume that their readers know the debates among historians on early Theosophical history. The contributors demonstrate the truth of this assertion in the way they arrange the information in their chapters.(p. 134)

In the third part of the book, contributors write about interactions
between Theosophists and Indian intellectuals in the important years
between the 1880s and India’s independence in 1947. Various movements among Indian thinkers and activists fed into the stream of the greater independence movement. Michael Bergunder explores Mohandas Gandhi’s relationship with Theosophists during his years in South Africa and in India until his death. Isaac Lubelsky considers the impact that Blavatsky had on Allan Octavian Hume, founder of the Indian National Congress. Sand traces the relationship between Theosophists and members of the Arya Samaj, a reform movement that promoted the Vedas as the basis for a renewed India. And K. Paul Johnson examines Theosophical figures involved in the Bengal Renaissance. This third part of the book contains persuasive arguments in favor of a new look at the role of Theosophists in the massive cultural and social changes leading up to Indian independence. Imagining the East is a landmark collection. It could easily become one of the most important scholarly texts in the study of the Theosophical movement. Although its chronological scope does not extend past the first two decades of the twentieth century, the early years of the movement’s history are still considered the most important era of Theosophical development. There are still many questions about that era that have not been answered satisfactorily. Hopefully this book will inspire scholars to take a fresh look at older issues and conflicts.

TAURUS—1st Decanate. The masters of olden times in tracing symbolic pictures in the sky, to convey to later generations their conception of the influence of the various sections of the heavens, sometimes pictured the highest attainment and sometimes pictured the greatest obstacle to progress. In LEPUS—the Hare—they symbolize the thought that timidity is the greatest bar to advancement of those born under the first decanate of Taurus. Being the first decanate of the sign naturally ruling the house of money, there is often a tendency to devote too much energy to the acquisition of wealth. And as this decanate is particularly mediumistic, those born under it easily acquire magical powers. Hence the various traditions regarding it as a place of black magic. Yet its children become adepts at white magic just as easily if they but overcome the lust for material things. It is only when they are blinded by physical aims that the place of the soul’s exaltation becomes an adverse symbol. Those born here have great natural healing power and ability to crystallize conditions to their desires by the power of the imagination to mold astral substance.

Ulysses S. Grant, whose fixity of purpose was his most remarkable trait, was born with his Individuality polarized in this decanate, the Sun being here. G.R.S.Mead, who edited The Theosophical Review and did an immense amount of laborious work to enlighten students, had his Mentality in this decanate, it being the place of the Moon in his chart. And Jerome Cardan, who became famous as a mathematician and astrologer, had this decanate Rising at his birth. It is the decanate of DETERMINATION. (from The First Eighteen Decanates Analyzed)

No natal Sun in this decanate is in the Johnson correspondent database, but Benjamine chose a man whose Moon position is there as an example, who does appear in both volumes of Letters to the Sage. G.R.S. Mead was friendly and respectful to Thomas Moore Johnson after the creation of the Quest Society in 1909, but unfriendly and disrespectful to Alexander Wilder as an official of the Theosophical Society. And far more overtly hostile to Thomas H. Burgoyne in the same capacity in his comments on The Light of Egypt. This entails an evolution away from occultism towards esotericism in my opinion, but Wilder did not live long enough to see it and Johnson did so fences were mended and amends were made.

            William H. Hoisington was born April 10, 1813 in Buffalo, New York. His father was killed in the War of 1812 when he was eight months old. Partially blind from infancy, he was nonetheless able to earn a degree from Oberlin College and become a Congregational minister. He married Rachel Coleman in Wayne, Ohio in 1845, and his second marriage was to Lauretta H. Cutler in 1880 in Page County, Iowa. As of the 1880 census he lived in Janesville, Wisconsin where his first wife had died in 1878. At the time of his correspondence with Johnson, Hoisington, who had been a member of the TS since 1877,^[1] was residing in Altamont, Dakota Territory (now in South Dakota), but he moved to Wisconsin where he died in July 1899.

Altamont Dakota

[undated]

Dear Sir

            I have long desired to meet you for consultation on matters which naturally interest us. Although totally blind, and now seventy years of age, I am still in the lecturing field, and still able to do considerable work. I would like to give my remaing energies in this life to forwarding the object of your Platonist. I have passes over the Alton R.R. and several other large railroads. I could easily arrange to meet you at our mutual friend H.K. Jones^[2] of Jacksonville Ill if you could let me know two or three weeks beforehand what time you would probably be there. Mr Jones informs me that you were accustomed to call on him. I am sorry you were obliged to retain the five dollars I sent you through my nephew Lyman C. Draper of Madison Wis. I would at once visit you at Osceola, had I passes over roads in your vicinity. I am too straitened pecuniarily to take to far trips beyond the extent of my passes. I have taken up a homestead in Dakota in my old age in which I live.

But it is too new yet to yield me income to any amount. I have no other property except my scanty Library. I write this with my own fingers, which is corrected by my wife Please write me immediately and let me know what time you intend to be at Jacksonville. If much more convenient for you, I could meet you at St Louis, Direct to Altamont Duel county Dakota  

The enclosed hand-bill will show what has been my leading topic for the last five years. Hoping for a personal acquaintance at no distant period     I remain with sincerest respect

            Your brother and fellow laborer

            W.H. Hoisington

Altamont

October 15, 1883

Dear sir

            Yours of the 28 ult is at hand, bringing the glad tidings of the journal revival of the Platonist I was quite disappointed in not meeting you last July at Jacksonville. Can we not continue to meet somewhere before long. If you were situated on any railroad over which I have I have passes, I would visit you at once. I am pecuniarily too poor to travel beyond reach of passes. I have an anual pass over all divisions of the Chicg, Alton and St Louis RR’s I can easily go St Louis or Kansas City or any point between on the C A and St L. RR. I now call to mind but three names who, I feel sure would take the Platonist

1.Lyman C. Draper LLD. Secretary of the State Historical society. If he did not take it for himself, he would take it for the State History. 2. My friend Harry S Jones. Att at law at Sycamore Ill. 3 Also a Mr Reed at Demoins Iowa whose initials I have forgotten. His wife is an MD. practicing physician at Demoins.          When I get out lecturing I shall present the interest of the Platonist and try what I can do for it I shall leave home in about a month. If you can name any place where we can meet, please write me at once.

            Most sincerly yours

            W.H. Hoisington

Altamont, D.T.^[3]

November 5, 1883

Dear Sir.

            Your Prospectus of 2^nd Vol. of the Platonist came to hand this morning just as my husband was starting out to arrange for some courses of Lecturing  So he has left it for me to reply

            He is much pleased with your Plan or General design of Platonist will earnestly try to get Subscribers for it. It seems that a brighter day is dawning

            Yours for the cause

            Mrs. L.H. Hoisington

P.S. We shall not be in our Dakota home much this winter

            Any letters or other matter can he directed to come Lyman C. Draper Sec. of Historical S. Madison Wisconsin

---

[1] See his TS membership, entered in 1877, Theosophical Society General Register Vol. I, http://www.theartarchives.org.

[2] Hiram K. Jones (1818-1903) was founder of the Jacksonville Plato Club and later of the American Akademe in both of which Johnson was a participant; other mutual acquaintances included Bronson Alcott and Alexander Wilder.

[3] Dakota Territory

From The First Eighteen Decanates Analyzed:

ARIES—3rd Decanate. PERSEUS, with the wings of thought on his feet, the helmet of courage on his head, armed with the sword of righteousness, protected by the shield of beneficence, and holding the blood-dripping head of Medusa in one hand, pictures the third decanate of Aries. The subrulership of Jupiter diverts the aggressive energies somewhat into religious and philosophical channels. Consequently, this Sagittarius division of Aries has vast spiritual possibilities when its natives espouse some progressive line of thought, or use their restless never-failing energy in protection of the weak.

Perseus gained renown through his daring exploits in relieving oppression. And even as he severed the head of the Gorgon Medusa, which turned to stone all who gazed upon it, so the people of this decanate have the power to destroy the crystallizing influence of licentiousness, and like the David’s version of the same tradition, cut off the head of the Goliath of selfish greed. They may become the valiant heroes who wage a successful fight against the sordid conditions that oppress civilized life. In the philosophical field of endeavor they find a useful work in releasing Andromeda, the human soul, which all too often is found chained to the rock of materialism to be devoured by lust and envy.

Of those born with the Sun in this decanate I may mention the pioneer Theosophist, Wm. Q. Judge. As expressing the Mentality in this section of the heavens, George Sand, world’s greatest authoress, and spiritualizer of common sights, is a fitting example. And Dr. Rajendra Lal, whose antiquarian and research work are known far beyond his native country, India, has his Personality polarized in this decanate, which was on the Ascendant at his birth. It is the decanate of PROPAGANDA.

The intersection of Plymouth Avenue and Porter Street now looks like this:

Secrecy: Silence, Power, and Religion, Urban (uchicago.edu)

Throughout the history of this blog issues of secrecy have constantly arisen, especially since the private correspondence of a secret society of the 1880s was provided to Missouri State University, which led to their publication.  Four decades of writing experience as a historical researcher included consistently friendly, open, constructive encouragement from esotericists.  Occultists on the other hand often have behaved in precisely opposite ways.  These two terms, used frequently as synonyms, refer in my experience to opposite poles of historical honesty and accountability.  A new book, Secrecy: Silence, Power, and Religion by Hugh Urban, Ph.D., from University of Chicago Press, gives the best summary I have seen of the theoretical rather than practical difference between the two tribes:

The terms “esoteric” and “esotericism,” meanwhile, were first used in German and French literature of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries to refer to traditions that were conceived as the “inner” or hidden teaching beneath outer, mainstream religious institutions. In contemporary scholarship, the phrase “Western esotericism” usually refers to a complex body of literature that developed out of Hermetic, Gnostic, and Neoplatonic sources of late Antiquity and reached its height during the European Renaissance and early modern period.  These include esoteric practices such as alchemy, magic, astrology, as well as esoteric communities such as the Rosicrucian Fraternity, Freemasonry, and modern orders such as the Golden Dawn and Theosophy. While claiming to contain deeper “inner” knowledge, esoteric literature may or may not be “secret” in a sociological sense.

The correspondence between Wilder and Johnson and their friends is overwhelmingly that of esotericists, scholars of historical esotericism, and even though Johnson briefly led a secret society his passion was esotericism and not occultism, knowledge of the past and not predicting the future or practicing mediumship and divination in the present.  But those who appear as adversaries of these esotericists, among their Theosophist and Spiritualist associates, were better described by this second passage from Urban:

“Occultism,” then, refers primarily to a more recent current within Western esoteric traditions that developed during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in response to major transformations in modern European and American society, politics, and economics.  While the term “occult” had appeared in texts since at least the twelfth century, occultism as a modern movement amid the secularizing trends of modern science, technology, and the ravages of the industrialization; it was, in short, a search for a deeper, hidden spiritual reality beneath the increasing materialism and rationality of modern life. As Antoine Faivre put it, “The industrial revolution naturally gave rise to an increasingly marked interest in the `miracles’ of science… Along smoking factory chimneys came the literature of the fantastic and the new phenomenon of Spiritualism.”

Many of the individuals named in reference to decanates by Benjamine in the Brotherhood of Light lessons and those appearing by birth date in the Letters to the Sage were either esotericists focused on the past or occultists focused on the present and future.  Those with natal Suns in the third decanate of Aries, by far the largest single contingent, will be discussed in the upcoming blog post.

In retrospect the summer of 1994 was when I crossed the Rubicon beyond which esotericists would all be friendly and occultists would often be punitive in protection of secrets.

Born in the first decanate of Aries, Johnson was a pioneer intellectually and spiritually.

light.org | First Eighteen Decanates Analyzed provides this summary of the Aries decanate of Aries, identified with the constellation Triangulum.

ARIES—1st Decanate. To picture the possibilities of the first decanate of the zodiac the masters of old traced in the sky a starry triangle. This constellation—TRIANGULUM —symbolizes the divine fire that those born under the first decanate of Aries have the capacity to inhale. When living in their highest they are true leaders in thought; for the triangle, ever used as a symbol of flame, is also used as a symbol of mind. And again, by its three sides united into one figure, it represents the union of body, mind, and spirit—thus teaching the importance of cooperation.

The pioneer spirit of Aries is expressed in this decanate in all its fiery fullness. Zeal and enthusiasm mark the progress of its children. The Aries decanate of Aries, subruled by the aggressive lord of war, ever seeks new worlds to conquer. And when the thoughts are permitted to soar untrammeled upward, even as the triangle points to heaven, those born under this influence become the harbingers of better things. But when the lower marital power gains sway they become the avenging agents of death and destruction.

Dr. J. M. Peebles, the great pioneer of spiritualism, had this as his Spiritual polarity, having been born when the Sun was in this decanate. Emperor Paul of Russia had this portion of the zodiac for Mental polarity, the Moon being there when he was born. And Proclus, the great Greek Neoplatonic philosopher, who scaled the height of occult initiation and so impressed his thoughts upon the times in which he lived, was born with the Mars decanate of Aries Ascending, this being his Physical polarity. It is the decanate of ACTIVITY.

The alienation of Peter Davidson and his family from Thomas H. Burgoyne and the entire governing body of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor is documented in Letters to the Sage, but not explained. As president, Thomas Moore Johnson investigated issues involving Burgoyne’s birth name during which all members were told to avoid contact with both Davidson and Burgoyne until further notice. When further notice came, Burgoyne was reinstated as secretary of the order and Davidson was never mentioned again in the Johnson letters. There may be an oblique and confused reference by Alexander Wilder who warned Johnson not to get involved in a proposed Theosophical colony in Florida. This article about Davidson in Georgia suggests why the US HBL leaders parted ways with him. (Tensions between Christian and Neopagan approaches to esotericism.)

The Thomas Moore Johnson Correspondence provides sixty biographical profiles of letter writers from around the world whose letters arrived in Osceola, Missouri in the mid-1880s, before family and career responsibilities led Johnson to relinquish his role as US President of the council of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor. Reviewing three dozen of these correspondents for whom we have birth dates, including a few non-correspondents discussed in multiple letters, I see a surprising and overwhelming number of fire sign births: 8 Aries, 6 Leo, 5 Sagittarius out of a total of 38 so 50% fire. Will post every ten days with profiles and/or newspaper stories about these several dozen individuals by decanate of birth starting with Johnson himself. Grimke up next as the only second decanate Aries but the third decanate includes five notable individuals in the spiritual family tree.

Capricorn: 1/11/51 Pattinson

Aquarius: 2/1/51 Kelsoe

Pisces: 3/1/40 Gould, 3/7/57 Stebbins, 3/17/25 Shelley

Aries: 3/22/63 Mead, 3/30/51 Johnson, 4/3/50 Grimke, 4/13/51 Judge, 4/14/13 Hoisington, 4/14/55 Burgoyne, 4/17/29 McDonald, 4/17/33 Yarker

Taurus: 5/1/23 Oxley, 5/2/23 Britten, 5/14/23 Wilder

Gemini: 5/25/03 Bulwer-Lytton, 6/4/34 Evans, 6/12/48 Cables

Cancer: 6/26/19 Doubleday, 6/28/55 Kenyon, 6/30/33 Mackenzie, 7/12/26 Docking

Leo: 7/31/52 Randall, 8/2/32 Olcott, 8/5/1820 Jones, 8/9/17 Goodwin, 8/9/48 Moore, 8/11/31 Blavatsky

Virgo: 9/16/46 Kingsford

Libra: 9/30/52 Ohmann-Dusmenil

Scorpio: 11/2/20 Giles, 11/4/59 Pryse

Sagittarius: 11/20/56  Sasseville, 11/29/99 and 32, Alcotts, 12/3/43 Liddell, 12/12/82 Benjamine