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Elbert Hubbard in the Brotherhood of Light Lessons

Books by Hubbard, Elbert (sorted by popularity) – Project Gutenberg

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Hugh A. Robinson in the Brotherhood of Light Lessons

Hugh Armstrong Robinson (1882–1963) | Missouri Encyclopedia

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Thomas E. Dewey in the Brotherhood of Light Lessons

Dewey became New York governor in 1943 and was the Republican presidential candidate in 1944 against Roosevelt and in 1948 against Truman, losing each contest but remaining governor until 1954.

This was first posted in February, but on the 123rd anniversary of his birth I am adding a link to a 2014 book from Cornell University Press, Politics as Usual and his portrait published on a state website featuring New York governors.

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John S. McGroarty in the Brotherhood of Light Lessons

John Steven McGroarty Poems > My poetic side

He served two terms as a Democratic congressman, representing California’s 11th district from 1935 to 1939. This continues to include San Francisco.

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Noel Coward in the Brotherhood of Light Lessons

Two books published in 2008 in England are the best biographical sources I found so far:

The Letters of Noel Coward – Google Books

Noel Coward In His Own Words – Google Books

This is the 42nd post in two years about astro profiles in the BofL Lessons. This is less than a quarter of the total but includes the ones most relevant to readers today, still famous enough that books and videos about them are readily available online. Nine more are ahead in 2025.

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Billy Sunday in the Brotherhood of Light Lessons

Here is a research guide from the Library of Congress.

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Mohandas Gandhi in the Brotherhood of Light Lessons

https://www.mkgandhi.org/

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Jesse James in the Brotherhood of Light Lessons

A PBS documentary on The American Experience about James appeared in 2006.

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Amelia Earhart in the Brotherhood of Light Lessons

This is a 2019 documentary from PBS.

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‘Abdu’l Baha in the Brotherhood of Light Lessons

https://www.bahai.org/abdul-baha/life-abdul-baha

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Alice Faye in the Brotherhood of Light Lessons

https://www.upress.state.ms.us/Books/A/Alice-Faye is the only biography from a scholarly press.

An informative fan website is here.

Packing and moving chores will take all my time and energy through spring, so I posted the Aries, Taurus and Gemini entries today. Since Cancerian Tesla was already shared, next up will be Leo Amelia Earhart.

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Harry Houdini in the Brotherhood of Light Lessons

The most acclaimed recent biography is Joe Posnanski’s The Life and Afterlife of Harry Houdini, 2019.

He was featured in a documentary from The American Experience on PBS in 2000.

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Earl Warren in the Brotherhood of Light Lessons

Here is one more Piscean featured in the Lessons, profiled in history.com.

Encouraging news about interest in this blog: January 2025 was the first month ever to reach over a thousand views. They came from 157 readers in 18 countries.

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Luther Burbank in the Brotherhood of Light Lessons

His accomplishments are memorialized at this historic site

Luther Burbank Home and Gardens, Santa Rosa, CA

and explained in this praise for his role as a botanist

NIHF Inductee Luther Burbank and His Hybrid Plants

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Benjamine Family History

The tall young man in the upper right of the class photo is Elbert Benjamine, son of Will Benjamine and grandson of Elbert Benjamine, born Benjamin Parker Williams. Elbert Senior and Will parted abruptly during WW2 following the death of Elizabeth Benjamine, and Will founded a short-lived rival group with his wife Ann. Twins Norman and Zilla, youngest children born after Elbert and Grace were divorced, kept the Williams surname and stayed in southern California, as did Elbert’s first wife Grace, mother of his five children, who died in 1986 at the age of 103. Their oldest son Ben Williams remained in Iowa as best I can discern from records, perhaps because next in line to help his mother run a chicken farm when his parents divorced in 1909. Apologies for the lack of citations, but my subscriptions to ancestry.com and newspapers.org have expired so I cannot retrieve them.

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Divination by Tarot Cards by Elbert Benjamine, Current Astrology, Winter 1946

The entire winter quarterly from 1946 is available here at IAPSOP.com.

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Tallulah Bankhead in the Brotherhood of Light Lessons

Tallulah’s book was a big success when published in 1952. As the daughter of the Speaker of the House of Representatives she campaigned for FDR in the 1930s and 40s. She campaigned on behalf of Harry Truman in 1948 and she would go on to endorse Adlai Stevenson, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon Baines Johnson in subsequent elections. Here is a photograph taken with Harry and Bess Truman in 1948, from the Truman Library.

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Lew Ayres in the Brotherhood of Light Lessons

Throughout 2024 most of the natal charts from the Brotherhood of Light Lessons shared in this blog have been of US political and literary figures, with a few involving foreign world leaders. Most of the remaining BOL charts of people who are still well-known are those of entertainment celebrities. Here is a Capricornian for the Winter Solstice.

Here is the only scholarly biography of Ayres, published by the University Press of Mississippi in 2012 and still available on their website.

https://www.upress.state.ms.us/Books/L/Lew-Ayres

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Will and Elbert Benjamine in World War II

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Elizabeth D. Benjamine in the Brotherhood of Light Lessons

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Thomas H. Burgoyne in the Brotherhood of Light Lessons

The first natal chart to be published in the Brotherhood of Light books is that of Thomas H. Burgoyne, followed by that of his astrological co-author Sarah Stanley Grimke.

His last appearance in the historical record was in 1891, but in 1892 he married Genevieve Stebbins as Norman Astley. A Saint Louis news story from that year shows her to be famous but controversial as she attains national fame. She is called “Mrs. Stebbins” and no husband is named, but by this point her decades long collaboration with Astley was underway.

By 1897, in addition to managing Genevieve’s New York School of Expression and her lectures and demonstrations across the country, he was managing their investments in timber, farming, and gold mining. This story reports a successful gold strike in North Carolina.

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Robinson Jeffers in the Brotherhood of Light Lessons

What Jeffers as a known or likely acquaintance of the Astleys, the Sinclairs, the Londons, the Steinbecks, the Benjamines, and the Steffenses reveals to us is the magical atmosphere of the Monterey Bay region attracting people from around the nation after the first world war.

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Winston Churchill in the Brotherhood of Light Lessons

Here is one British Sagittarian who became an honorary US citizen, bestowed by John F. Kennedy in 1963. He was the son of an American mother Jennie Jerome and a close friend of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman.

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Louisa May Alcott in the Brotherhood of Light Lessons

On 11/27/2021 this was posted in reference to the first decanate of Sagittarius which includes the November 29 birthdays of Bronson Alcott and his daughter Louisa May. Subsequently I noticed that Louisa’s full natal chart had been published in a different volume, so am reposting and adding that below the original post.

From Course 10-1, 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. (Volume 10-1, Chapter Two)

Louisa’s natal chart was published in Course Twenty The Next Life, following Chapter Six:

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Mark Twain in the Brotherhood of Light Lessons

Shared well in advance of his birthday, another post about American writers before the focus will shift to international sources in 2025. Although Twain is known mainly for fiction, his nonfiction books are among my favorites, especially the first and last: The Innocents Abroad (1869) and Christian Science (1907.)

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Carmel and the Brotherhood of Light (1918-1932)

This 1916 photograph of a Carmel landmark appears on a timeline of historic photographs on the admirable website of the local visitor center.

The epilogue below appears in the new reprint of The Quest of the Spirit.

The Brotherhood of Light was headquartered in Los Angeles throughout its fourteen years of public work, led by Elbert and Elizabeth Benjamine and Fred Skinner. Writing of the 21 volume Brotherhood of Light lessons and private meetings commenced in 1914, with public work beginning on November 11, 1918, the Armistice Day that ended the first world war.

Its successor organization The Church of Light was formed the week of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s election to the presidency in November 1932. The Brotherhood of Light lessons were complete by 1934, although revisions continued until Elbert’s death in 1951. Its predecessor organization the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor had splintered in America due to divisions among the leaders, but continued in France, Algeria, and Israel as Max Theon’s Cosmic Philosophy for decades. Genevieve Stebbins returned to her native California in 1917 after more than thirty years in the eastern United States and England.

She returned with a second husband, Norman Astley, whom she had married in 1892 in Boston and who became the manager of her New York School of Expression and collaborator in its programs until they retired to England in 1907. Her first husband, Joseph Thompson, was the brother of her business partner Mary Thompson. The marital and business partnerships dissolved by 1892; Norman Astley filled both vacancies admirably, managing her investments and artistic endeavors with equal skill.

Their choice of Carmel-by-the-Sea as a place to retire after a life of international travel raises questions related to Astley’s former life as Thomas H. Burgoyne, who had collaborated there as a co-author with Sarah Stanley Grimké. His later life, in which he spent forty years as husband of Genevieve Stebbins included the lifespan of the Brotherhood of Light, whose lessons reflect his writings as well as hers and those of Grimké.

Elbert Benjamine’s writings reflect not only the influence of his mentors the Astleys, but also literary figures in the Monterey Bay milieu, including permanent residents Lincoln Steffens and Robinson Jeffers as well as Jack London and Upton Sinclair who visited the area and wrote about it.

Thomas Henry d’Alton (Dalton, Alton) was born April 14, 1855 in Douglas, Isle of Man. He was the son of chiropodist Thomas Henry d’Alton and Emma Rice, who had him christened in Grisham, Lancashire on July 1. He married Betsy Bella Prince May 12, 1878 in Lancaster, Lancashire and was the father of a son Thomas and a daughter Veda in Burnley, Lancashire when he adopted the pseudonym T.H. Burgoyne in 1884. Soon after Burgoyne was named Secretary of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor, it was revealed by Theosophists that he had convicted in 1883 of obtaining money under false pretenses in West Riding, Yorkshire and had served six months in prison. Leaving his wife and children, he arrived in White County, Georgia as Burgoyne with Peter Davidson and family in 1886. Burgoyne’s periodical writings appeared solely in HBofL-related publications between 1885 and 1888: first The Occultist and The Occult Magazine in England and then Thomas Moore Johnson’s The Platonist.

After the first edition of The Light of Egypt was published in Chicago by Religio-Philosophical Publishing House in 1889, Burgoyne was published exclusively by Astro-Philosophical Publications of Denver, which released Celestial Dynamics in 1896 and Language of the Stars in 1892. All three were published as works of Zanoni, identified finally as Burgoyne only in the 1900 expanded edition of The Light of Egypt. The influence of Burgoyne’s writings was greater in continental Europe than the English-speaking world, with translations and paraphrases of The Light of Egypt in French, Russian, German, and Spanish, and the Paris occultist Papus promoting Burgoyne’s astrological teachings in his own works. Burgoyne’s letters to Thomas Moore Johnson published in Letters to the Sage are significant evidence of HBofL practices and teachings, but later he becomes the subject of others’ letters that reveal the confusion unleashed by revelation of Burgoyne’s real name and history. Theosophical leaders saw it as a way to discredit a rival organization, and the ensuing controversy destroyed the HBofL in England, but not in France where it continued to thrive, nor in America where Peter Davidson pursued his studies in Georgia independently of Council President Johnson and Secretary Burgoyne.

Zanoni was a pen name derived from a Rosicrucian themed 1842 novel by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, in which the adept teacher of the title character was named Mejnour. Peter Davidson, Provincial Grand Master of the North of the original HBof L, had written in the Scottish Highlands under the latter pen name. On July 12, 1886 the HBofL Council met in Kansas City without Burgoyne present to deliberate on evidence that d’Alton and Burgoyne were the same person. They agreed unanimously that they were identical and advised all members to avoid contact with Burgoyne and Davidson until further investigation. In St. Louis they met again on September 5, reinstating Burgoyne who was present this time as a member. Peter Davidson, on the other hand, is never mentioned again by Johnson and colleagues in the letters. This evidence implies that Burgoyne escaped the ostracism of his colleagues in the HBofL, but Davidson was blamed for the pseudonymous intrigues. Burgoyne first traveled to California in 1887, after visiting Topeka, Kansas with HBofL board member W.W. Allen, and in Denver with what was becoming the largest local group of members. He became a United States citizen in Shawnee County, Kansas in 1887. Ten years later in 1897 he obtained American citizenship as Norman Astley in New York City.

Meanwhile, in early 1887 Sarah Stanley Grimké had sent her daughter Angelina to live in Massachusetts with her father, after which she appears to have spent at least the next year in California. She left abruptly for New Zealand in 1888 before publication of her collaborative project with Burgoyne. The precise contribution of Grimké to The Light of Egypt was later described by Elbert Benjamine as assisting with The Science of the Stars portion of the 1889 edition.

One of the most salient echoes of Chevalier Louis in The Light of Egypt is Zanoni’s claim to have made “personal investigations, extending over a series of years in England, France, Germany, Austria, and the United States, with various types and phases of mediums.” In The Key to Theosophy, Blavatsky notes the continuity of adepts “used as sledge-hammers to break the theosophical heads with” which “began twelve years ago, with Mrs. Emma Hardinge Britten’s `Louis’ of Art Magic and Ghost-Land, and now ends with the “Adept” and `Author’ of The Light of Egypt.” [H. P. Blavatsky, Key to Theosophy, 239.]

Letters to the Sage includescorrespondence from Burgoyne mailed in Monterey, California in the late 1880s, but none thereafter. He did, however, live briefly in Mendocino County and advertised a forthcoming book with a Cummings mailing address in 1891. When Norman and Genevieve Astley began acquiring property in North Carolina, they were described in a February 1894 Morganton newspaper story that mentions his having lived on a California ranch, which he claims to have owned. Bureau of Land Management records for patents, which are purchases of land directly from the federal government rather than from an individual owner and show that in January 1891 160 acres of ranch land in Mendocino County was patented to a John H. Burgoyne. The land is in the northwestern portion of the county, and just twenty miles as the crow flies from Cummings where he was receiving mail in 1891.

Born in San Francisco in 1857 the only child of a lawyer James Cole Stebbins who had relocated there from upstate New York with his young wife Henrietta, Genevieve lost her mother in infancy and was cared for by her aunt Louisa. She became a successful actress in New York in her twenties and by thirty had become an acting teacher. After further studies in England and France she emerged as a public figure, becoming the most prominent American teacher of the Delsarte method of elocution and acting. She combined Delsarte methods with yogic breathing learned from a swami at Oxford, as well as exercises involving stretches and postures adapted from yoga. With her marriage to Astley in 1892 he became her business manager and in addition to running the Manhattan school they traveled up and down the east coast giving classes and performances. Between 1894 and 1906 the Astleys owned property in the Blue Ridge mountains.

After her retirement in 1907 Stebbins traveled with Astley, settling in England for several years before returning to the US in 1917. Norman Astley is far more elusive than his famous wife, and no record prior to their marriage can be solidly linked to him. We find the couple in a boarding house in Asbury Park, New Jersey in the 1900 census. Retiring first to Dittisham, Devon in 1907, they moved to St. Peter Port, Guernsey by 1911 and by 1913 were living in Slindon, Sussex which was listed as their most recent residence in the 1917 ship passenger list that recorded their return to the United States. Documentation of the Astleys’ American travels and citizenship provides dozens of such pieces of evidence of a man living more than fifty years as Norman Astley, leaving traces in five states as well as England. Thomas Henry Burgoyne, on the other hand, leaves far fewer traces, being recorded as name of an author of books and letters but appearing in no public documents other than those described above.

The thesis of Mark Singleton’s Yoga Body is that “the reciprocal influence of `harmonial’ gymnastic systems (like the American Delsartism of Genevieve Stebbins…) and modern hatha yoga is enormous.”ii While Stebbins is remembered now almost entirely as a pioneer in the history of women’s exercise and dance, the “gentler stretching, deep breathing, and `spiritual’ relaxation colloquially known in the West today as `hatha yoga’ are best exemplified by variants of the harmonial gymnastics developed by Stebbins…and others— as well as the stretching regimes of secular women’s physical culture with which they overlap.”[Mark Singleton, Yoga Body, 71.]

Stebbins’s Dynamic Breathing and Harmonic Gymnastics: A Complete System of Psychical, Aesthetic, and Physical Culture (1892) is as described by Singleton “a combination of calisthenic movement, deep respiration exercises, relaxation, and creative mental imagery within a harmonial religious framework. It is, in Stebbins’s words, `a completely rounded system for the development of body, brain and soul,’ a system of training which shall bring this grand trinity of the human microcosm into one continuous, interacting unison and remove the `inharmonious mental states’ that lead to discord.”[Ibid, 160.]

The Quest of the Spirit argues that “a true philosophy of life is the work of the future, in which the great philosophical systems of the past will form but a very subordinate part of the structure. We are convinced that the chief foundation-stones will be discovered in the works of Eucken, Bergson, and James.” Henri Bergson and William James were not just philosophical colleagues but close friends, and James was intending to write the introduction to the English translation of Bergson’s Creative Evolution but died before it was completed. The language about creation and evolution in the Brotherhood of Light lessons is strongly reminiscent of Bergson’s vitalist themes, and Bergson’s younger sister Moina Mathers was one of the founders of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Like James, Bergson was interested in parapsychology; at the time of James’s death, Bergson was president of the British Society for Psychical Research. James was evidently a personal friend and not just an admired philosopher, in light of the Astleys’ residence in Boston in the early 1890s and longstanding interest in psychical research. Researcher Kelly Mullan reports that James became a friend of Stebbins at a Chautauqua conference where he and Genevieve were both speakers.

In the appendix to her magnum opus, written for this 1892 edition, Stebbins summarizes the conclusions reached in her decades as a teacher in a nine-point “my credo” of which the first three are quoted below: First—All faculties lie deep within the soul and are there potential as the oak in the acorn. Second—These faculties cannot be manifested without the cooperation of the brain, each portion of the brain having its own function. Third—Through the nervous system is established communication between brain and body; each function in the brain sympathizing with some part of the body, and corresponding surfaces also having corresponding meanings,—the upper with the upper, the lower with the lower, the anterior with the anterior, the posterior with the posterior, and so on. [Genevieve Stebbins, Dynamic Breathing and Harmonic Gymnastics, 146]

Poetics of Dance by Gabriele Brandstetter, first published in German in 1995, explains that “Stebbins’s main contribution to modern dance– her emphasis on the dynamics of dance movement– is still underestimated even today. She was the first to no longer regard dance from the perspective of dance technique, muscular training, or the systematic development of articulation, emphasizing instead its energetic principles. Stebbins’s elaboration of the Delsarte system heralded a paradigm shift in modern dance in an attempt to redefine dance movement on the basis of a vitalist understanding of dynamics. [Gabriele Brandstetter, Poetics of Dance, 4.]

Genevieve’s death in 1934 coincided with the completion of Benjamine’s Brotherhood of Light lessons and Norman’s immediate remarriage ushered in a period of discord and confusion in his personal life. He married the nurse who had cared for Genevieve within a week of her death, and his new wife Nellie Dougan immediately moved to seize his assets and declare him mentally incompetent. They relocated to Devon where she died five years later, leaving Norman to survive until 1943 living first in Plymouth and finally dying in Gloucestershire.

Carmel Neighbors

Donna Marek’s Crème de Carmel is a charming guide to local history.  She reports: “The first Spanish mission in the area was the Presideo Chapel built in 1770 in Monterey, but the following year it was relocated on the Carmel River and renamed the Mission San Carlos de Borremeo.” [Donna Marek, Crème de Carmel, 8.]  Monterey became the capital of both Californias in 1770, and continued as capital of only Alta California under Spanish rule in 1804, continuing as capital under Mexican sovereignty from 1822 through 1846. Carmel remained undeveloped except for the Carmel Mission and nearby ranches until 1888 when eighty acres in Carmel Woods was subdivided into lots. The community of Carmel-by-the-Sea was created in 1903 and rapidly developed with home sites and businesses. It was incorporated as a town on October 31, 1916.

By the late 1920s the atmosphere had changed, as it was no longer an artist colony but a popular beach resort, as reported by biographer Justin Kaplan. It continued to attract famous writers but Kaplan reports that by 1927, when Lincoln Steffens arrived, “the real colony had disappeared” but Steffens welcomed visits from Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein. “Steffens also knew John and Carol Steinbeck, and suggested that Steinbeck write a series of articles for the San Francisco News about the Oklahoma migrants and how they were treated in Monterey County. Over the next four years, those articles led to Steinbeck’s writing The Grapes of Wrath.” [Justin Kaplan, Lincoln Steffens,]

Robert Louis Stevenson had lived for several months in Monterey in 1879 and wrote articles for the Monterey Californian.  Carmel is featured in Treasure Island.  The poet Robinson “Jeffers moved to Carmel in 1916 where he and his wife raised their two sons…Jeffers built their home—called Tor house—near the ocean, an undertaking that took five years.” [Donna Marek, Crème de Carmel, 30.]

The Benedict Cottage in Carmel on Scenic Drive was the site of evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson’s 1926 scandal. The stories that surfaced about her affair threw Carmel into the national limelight.”[Ibid, 31.]

The Sea Lion Point Trail at Point Lobos is the most easily accessible short walk to scenic overlooks where the rocky shoreline and sandy beaches can be viewed from above.  The name Point Lobos would seem to imply that wolves inhabited the area, but the Spanish term for what we call Sea Lions translates to Sea Wolf, which Jack London used as a title for a book about seafarers based in the central California coast. [Jerry Emory, Monterey Bay Shoreline Guide, 254-55.]

Lincoln Steffens relocated to Carmel-by-the-Sea several years after the Astleys moved there. He is not often associated with “the occult” but his biographer Justin Kaplan commented “Despite his later claim that he had shunned the fraternities as all bunk and pretension, Steffens was glad to belong to Zeta Psi, the oldest of Berkeley’s Greek-letter societies.  And it was on his urging that Frederick Willis, his closest friend in college, also joined. Willis was interested in theosophy, the survival of the soul after death, ‘sacred occultism,’ and parapsychology, and considered himself an expert mesmerist. Like many other students he has given himself over to the passion that motivated William James, in 1884, to establish an American Society for Psychical Research with its various committees on Thought Transference, hypnotism, and Apparitions and Haunted Houses.  In the Zeta Psi fraternity house near Bancroft Way, Steffens took instruction from Willis and began his own experiments with mesmerism, clairvoyance and thought transference.” [Justin Kaplan, Lincoln Steffens, 30.]

When Steffens was an undergraduate, Berkeley was not the thriving intellecual community it later became. Kaplan reports that “as an intellectual community, as a breeding place for philosophers, William James had said in 1883, ‘it’s a poor place’; and some of his disciples who had been invite to teach there with a sense of going into exile. Yet it was at Berkeley, fifteen years later, that James, reading his paper ‘Philosophical Conceptions and Practical Results,’ first announced pragmatism as a theory of truth and formulated his subsequent creed. (Ibid, 29.]

Sources Cited:

Helena P. Blavatsky, The Key to Theosophy. London: Theosophical Publishing House, 1889,

Brandstetter, Gabriele, Poetics of Dance. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.

Emory, Jerry, Monterey Bay Shoreline Guide. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.

Kaplan, Justin, Lincoln Steffens. New York: Simion and Schuster, 2013.

Marek, Donna, Crème de Carmel. New York: Roberts Reinhardt, 1994.

Singleton, Mark, Yoga Body. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Stebbins, Genevieve, Dynamic Breathing and Harmonic Gymnastics. New York: Edgar S. Werner, 1892.

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Elbert Benjamine in the Brotherhood of Light Lessons

Although he authored the entire BOL book series, Elbert devotes little attention to himself compared to scores of others whose natal charts are featured, either in full or in part. As always, his entry focuses solely on progressions coinciding with major life events.

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Reincarnation in the Brotherhood of Light Lessons

Elbert Benjamine generally avoided polemics and propaganda when discussing spiritual and occult movements of his time. But “those who use the brilliancy of their intellects to suppress truth and to foist ignorance and superstition on society that they may profit by its exploitation” does express his feelings about the influence of Theosophy in the occult scene in the early twentieth century. (And fits my experience of four different Theosophical organizations reacting to academic historical publications in the late twentieth century. kpj) However, in the second passage quoted he explains that what is now called the Earlier Theosophical Society of 1875-1878 in New York taught quite different doctrines of the afterlife.

Volume 10-1, Chapter 1:

Volume 2, Chapter 7:

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Dwight D. Eisenhower in the Brotherhood of Light Lessons

As the fall equinox approaches, a successful Libran president might be in our near future. Like John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon, Eisenhower was president after the death of Elbert Benjamine, but had risen to national prominence during his lifetime, hence their inclusion in the BOL charts.

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Greta Garbo in the Brotherhood of Light Lessons

When Elbert Benjamine mentions that a California celebrity of the 1920s-40s is a personal acquaintance, it helps explain how their natal chart ended up in the Lessons. There are plenty of California politicians, writers and movie stars in the BOL charts, but we cannot assume that Elbert knew them personally unless he tells us so, which he says about several. The most surprising Virgo birthdate I found in the BOL Lessons was Greta Garbo, as the data is from the very outset of her career in the mid-1920s when she is just leaving her teens, and she was already a personal acquaintance of the Benjamines or their advisors on the lessons. Here is a clip from one of her last silent films Love (1927.) Based on the Tolstoy novel Anna Karenina, this silent was soon followed by a 1928 sound version that used the original film and added a soundtrack. The better known and more successful second sound version, Anna Karenina was released in 1935.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfrYs–P4pI

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Warren G. Harding in the Brotherhood of Light Lessons (and Upton Sinclair’s fiction)

Starting in January of this year, the blog has featured all the US presidents of the Brotherhood of Light era 1918-1932 (Wilson, Coolidge, Hoover) except Warren G. Harding about whom there is much less commentary in the Lessons. Subsequent presidents Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, and Nixon have also been examined in light of later Church of Light publications. Upton Sinclair was profiled last year in terms of his natal chart, but he is also discussed by the lessons in other ways.

Mary Craig Sinclair recalls that Upton’s 1927 novel Oil!, set in southern California, has one character loosely based on a real incident in Carmel the previous year.  The Teapot Dome scandal is the historic background for the oil industry depicted in the book, and defines the Harding presidency. (The 2007 Academy award-winning film There Will Be Blood was loosely based on Oil!) She quotes a letter from Upton on the California religious subplot composed at the time he started writing it:

“And Paul has an older brother named Eli, who becomes a prophet, a hellfire-and-brimstone evangelist—he’s going to be a male Aimee Semple McPherson. He reaps a fortune and builds a temple in Los Angeles, and then runs away with a woman, and comes back with a wonderful tale of having been kidnapped and sets the whole town arguing about whether he really did or didn’t.”(p303, Southern Belle)

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Herbert Hoover in the Brotherhood of Light Lessons

Herbert Hoover was president at the time The Church of Light was formed in Los Angeles on November 2, 1932, but was voted out of office the same week on November 8. Like Elbert Benjamine, he spent his childhood in Iowa but explored the Pacific Northwest in his teens with maternal relatives in Oregon.

His natal chart does not appear in the Lessons, but two adjacent paragraphs describe his activities in Volume 13, Mundane Astrology, among several appearances of his name in the book. His birthday was the occasion of a speech heard by thousands in person and millions on the radio in August 1928, and in February and March 1929 Elbert noted two political successes:

The best information source online about Hoover is the website of his Presidential Library and Museum.

President Herbert Hoover | The Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum (archives.gov)

Here is a natal chart from Astrodatabank

Herbert Hoover, horoscope for birth date 10 August 1874, born in West Branch, with Astrodatabank biography

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Fact and Fiction in Occult History

The boundaries between fiction and non-fiction are often physical, as in separate sections of public libraries and bookstores. But in the world of occult literature the borders are indistinct between historical novels, authentic memoirs, and fictionalized autobiographies. Most interesting to me are authors who alternate between the genres. Emma Hardinge Britten and Mme. Blavatsky both wrote fiction that was claimed to be non-fiction (Ghost Land, the Mahatma Letters) and non-fiction that discussed some of the same people under their real names (Nineteenth Century Miracles, The Durbar in Lahore.) This has caused endless confusion among Spiritualists and Theosophists, along the same lines as legendary histories of Masonic and Rosicrucian orders. 

27 footnotes were added to the new edition of Tom Clark and His Wife, because Paschal Beverly Randolph’s Rosicrucian novel is full of literary quotes, geographical information about places the author had visited, and historical detail about then-current events during the Civil War and famous people involved in them. All these require explanation to be understood by contemporary readers. Several editions are already in print but none offers any editorial content giving historical context for the 161 year old book.

Sarah Stanley Grimke and Alexander Wilder are finally getting some notice from readers and have good prospects for increasing recognition, thanks to the editorial labors of Patrick Bowen and Ronnie Pontiac respectively as well as my own. Genevieve Stebbins has had considerably more recent scholarly attention, and the new edition of Quest of the Spirit has more new information about her life and partnership with Norman Astley than has ever appeared in print.  Thomas H. Burgoyne and Hurrychund Chintamon were targeted in recent books with outright defamation based on 19th century libels, whereas Grimke and Wilder have been unjustly ignored and forgotten.  The only way to counteract misinformation and disinformation about forgotten authors is to let them speak for themselves to modern readers, which has been the motive for publishing them in new editions. 

Discussion of esoteric groups’ history is frequently distorted by two opposing forces. Propaganda is defined by Oxford Language as “Information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.” Polemics are defined by the same source as “a speech or piece of writing expressing a strongly critical attack on or controversial opinion about someone or something.” Neither correlates with historical reliability which requires a more neutral and objective tone to be credible.

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Albert Einstein in the Brotherhood of Light Lessons

Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, which he broadened into his Unified Field Theory, in which there is a single mathematical equation of eight characters for light, gravitation and electromagnetism has not worked out due to the Principle of Indeterminacy where the Quantum of Action of particles is involved. This, in turn, is due to the energies of these particles being too close to the borderline where they partake of astral properties. But Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity has now become almost universally accepted by physicists the world over and has become the foundation of the physics as taught at present in our universities. (The Next Life)

Upton Sinclair reported friendship with Einstein in southern California in his autobiography:

I had been corresponding with Einstein for some years.  He had read some of my books and had written me: “To the most beautiful joys of my life belongs your wicked tongue.”  He had promised to come to see me, and soon after his arrival in Pasadena, Craig’s sister Dolly came in and reported, “There’s an old man walking up and down on the street, and he keeps looking at the house.”  Craig said “Go out and ask what he wants.” Dolly went and came back to report, “He says he’s Dr. Einstein.”  Craig said “Go bring him in,” and called to me.  Such was the beginning of as lovely a friendship as anyone could have in this world.   I report him as the kindest, gentlest, sweetest of men. He had a keen wit, a delightful sense of humor, and his tongue could be sharp, but only for the evils of this world. I don’t like the word “radical,” but that is the word that the world chose to employ about me, and Einstein was as radical as I was.

PREFACE (to Mental Radio)

I have read the book of Upton Sinclair with great interest and am convinced that the same deserves the most earnest consideration, not only of the laity, but also of the psychologists by profession. The results of the telepathic experiments carefully and plainly set forth in this book stand surely far beyond those which a nature investigator holds to be thinkable. On the other hand, it is out of the question in the case of so conscientious an observer and writer as Upton Sinclair that he is carrying on a conscious deception of the reading world; his good faith and dependability are not to be doubted. So if somehow the facts here set forth rest not upon telepathy, but upon some unconscious hypnotic influence from person to person, this also would be of high psychological interest. In no case should the psychologically interested circles pass over this book heedlessly.

[signed] A. Einstein

May 23, 1930

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Brotherhood of Light Natal Charts by Group

Some of the nearly 200 names of people whose entire natal charts appear in the BOL Lessons are hard to identify historically, while others are hard to categorize. So there is some work ahead, but a first run through the identifiable individuals yielded a clear pattern. California residents are highly prominent, as they are included in most categories. I have italicized those who lived, worked, or wrote in California according to online biographical data.

23 Writers:

Faith Baldwin, Nicholas Butler, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Thomas H. Burgoyne, James Branch Cabell, W. H. Chaney, Irvin S. Cobb, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles Fillmore, Sarah Stanley Grimke, Elbert Hubbard, Robinson Jeffers, Jack London, O. O.  McIntyre, Sylvan Muldoon, John Henry Nash, William Dudley Pelley, Ernie Pyle, Robert E. Sherwood, Upton Sinclair, Robert B. Stacy-Judd, Ralph Waldo Trine, Mark Twain.

33 Actors, Directors, Musicians:

Mary Astor, Lew Ayres, Tallulah Bankhead, Elaine Barrymore, Ethel Barrymore, John Barrymore, David Belasco, Ben Bernie, Edgar Bergen, Montgomery Clift, Jackie Coogan,  Noel Coward, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Marie Dressler, Eleanora Duse, Douglas Fairbanks, Alice Faye, Daniel Frohman, Clark Gable, Greta Garbo, Janet Gaynor, Hedda Hopper, Eva le Gallienne, Yehudi Menuhin, Ethelbert Nevin,  Norma Shearer, Ernestine Shumann-Heink, Leopold Stokowski, Shirley Temple, Arturo Toscanini,  King Vidor, Esther Williams.

34 US Politicians and Military

Hugo Black, Harry Bridges, Calvin Coolidge, Edith Mary Corns, Thomas Dewey, James Doolittle, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John Nance Garner, Warren G. Harding, Herbert Hoover, Eugene Iscaluz, Hiram Johnson, John F. Kennedy, Goodwin K. Knight, John L. Lewis, Huey Long, John S. McGroarty, Douglas MacArthur, Dale H. Maple, George Marshall, Tom Mooney, George Murphy, Richard Nixon, Gerald P. Nye, Culbert Olson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, Margaret Chase Smith, Harold Stassen, Eugene Talmadge, Harry S. Truman, Henry A. Wallace, Earl Warren, Wendell Willkie.

29 Scientists, Explorers, Athletes, Aviators:

Mars Baumgart, Luther Burbank, Richard E. Byrd, Edith Cavell, Charles Coryell, Emile Coue, Dr. Allan Dafoe, Joseph DeLee, Donald W. Douglass, Vicki Draves, Amelia Earhardt, Hugo Eckener, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, Nicholas Fokker, Marjorie Gestring, Clarence A. Gilbert, Smith E. Jelliffe, Gugliermo Marconi, Charles H. Mayo, Louis Pasteur, Wiley Post, Eddie Rickenbacker, Beardsley Ruml, M. Stanley, Nicholas Tesla, Gene Tunney, George Westinghouse, Count Zeppelin.

11 World Leaders:

Bismarck, Chiang Kai-Shek, Winston Churchill, Anthony Eden, Hirohito, Adolf Hitler, Pierre Laval, Nikolai Lenin, Benito Mussolini, Philippe Petain, Josef Stalin.

12 Church of Light Leaders:

Elbert Benjamine, Elizabeth Benjamine, Maria Benjamine, Lenora Conwell, Doris Doane, Edward Doane, W.M.A. Drake, Adelaide Himadi, Vena Naughton, Enid Schultz, Margarita Silby, H.S.D. Starnaman.

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Aimee Semple McPherson in the Brotherhood of Light Lessons

Starting with October, the blog will feature one individual per month whose natal chart is included with biographical information in the Brotherhood of Light Lessons. We know that Elbert and his collaborators studied some charts of famous people who were perceived as political heroes or villains, some were Church of Light leaders, while others were in the headlines in news events like the Lindberghs.

Aimee Semple McPherson was surely studied because she was in the news, but our October born example illustrates the wild proliferation of personality cults and religious profiteers described by our September born example in his The Profits of Religion first published in 1917. It opens with a fictional encounter with someone trying to attain human levitation through meditation techniques, which reminds me of such claims from Transcendental Meditation leaders in the 1980s.

In his chapter The Face of Caesar, Upton Sinclair wrote “The thesis of this book is the effect of fixed dogma in producing mental paralysis by Economic Exploitation.” In the introduction he creates a fictional dialogue with a cultist:

“I approach one and say to him, friend, what is this you are doing?

He answers, without pausing to glance at me, ‘I am performing spiritual exercises.  See how I rise?’

“But, I say, ‘you are not rising at all!’

Whereat he becomes instantly angry. ‘You are one of the scoffers!’

But, friend, I protest, ‘don’t you feel the earth under your feet?’

‘You are a materialist!’

‘But, friend, I can see…’

‘You are without spiritual vision!’

I have heard variations of this script from many different directions, directed at me and many others in recent years, so it was refreshing to see their actual dialogue was written long ago. Upton Sinclair writes about dozens of obscure cults but also at great length about mainstream churches as evidence for his thesis about the economics of religion. His comment about the two I’ve studied at length seems prescient of how I feel about them a hundred years later as historical research subjects: “Also there are the Christian Scientists and the Theosophists, so exasperating that one would like to throw them onto the rubbish-heap, who yet compel us to sift over their mountains of chaff for the grains of truth that will bear fruit in the future.” (from the chapter Black Magic.)

Here is a recent article about Sister Aimee’s disappearace:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-incredible-disappearing-evangelist-572829/

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Astrological Twins Emerson and Bulwer-Lytton in the Brotherhood of Light Lessons

In the realm of collective biographers, Elbert Benjamine was extremely prolific in giving short life chronologies along with natal charts for famous people living and dead. I will be discussing several such lives, and new research about them. But two stand out as astrological twins, yet Elbert publishes their natal charts side by side without commenting on the identical birth dates.

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Dogmatism versus Occultism

Approaching the Brotherhood of Light lessons as documents of early twentieth century esotericism, we often find Elbert Benjamine referring to contemporary events in ways that require us to read between the lines. I have personally witnessed this phenomenon in the latter half of the twentieth century among reincarnationist followers of many different spiritual teachers:

The student upon his first approach to occult science is impressed generally with the notion that he must accept unquestioningly the dogma of human reincarnation as the foundation of truth if he is to accept any part of occult teachings. So fully has this subtle doctrine permeated western esoterics that few have the hardihood to express their opinions if these are contrary to the popular current. It is so firmly entrenched that anyone daring to present the opposite side of the question is, if possible, immediately squelched, discredited, and made an object of discountenance and suspicion. [Astrological Signatures, pp. 117-118]

For more than twelve years this blog has featured discussion of dozens of “adepts” in various lineages that can be seen as “ancestral” without any negative repercussions.  But “the Masters” or “the Mahatmas” runs up against biases that are insurmountable because “the Masters” means only two authors of the Mahatma Letters, the most sacred of scriptures.  No one can ever learn anything historical about the alleged authors, cannot seek their birth dates and places and parents’ names: no evidence and reasoning allowed.  Anyone who tries to be reasonable and evidence based thereby proves his spiritual and intellectual inferiority;  this was written in all seriousness in two official publications as “refutations” of historical research, so I understand Elbert when he writes:

Now, I am convinced it is a most dangerous omen when people permit themselves to be so dominated by any new idea, religious or political, that they fear to hear it criticized. It is an augur of approaching mental slavery. Prohibiting critical investigation has been the method employed through countless ages by religious and political autocracies, and where successful has never failed effectually to block the path of mental and spiritual progress. Error must ever be hedged and protected by a wall of prejudice and intolerance, but truth is strong enough to withstand in the open the assault of mental conflict. [Astrological Signatures, p. 118]

That final line is reassuring and sent me to Google Books looking to see recent citations of my historical research and found eight titles from 2020, eleven from 2021, and six from 2022, almost all citing my first two SUNY Press books. Not all of these would be relevant enough to feature in future blog posts, but many will be. Here are the most recent ones, from last year —

Accelerating Human Evolution by Theosophical Initiation: … – Page 399

Yves Mühlematter · 2022 de Gruyter

Performance and Modernity – Page 278

Julia A. Walker · 2022 Cambridge University Press

The Sacred Life of Modernist Literature

Allan Kilner-Johnson · 2022 Bloomsbury Press

A Woman’s Empire: Russian Women and Imperial Expansion in Asia

Katya Hokanson · 2022 University of Toronto Press

The Religious Revolution: The Birth of Modern Spirituality.

Dominic Green · 2022 Farrar, Straus, Giroux

Celebrating the Male Mysteries: Revised and Extended Edition

R. J. Stewart · 2022 Aeon Books

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Church of Light Sponsors Astrologer (Santa Rosa Press-Democrat, March 25, 1950)

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Elbert and Plans for the Western US Conference of Scientific Astrologers, December 1938 in Oakland, California

This news story from the Oakland Tribune is dated July 29, 1938:

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Elbert the Ecologist, 1929

“Nature’s Gifts,” this newspaper article from the Los Angeles Times from December 16, 1929, shows Elbert Benjamine as a trusted authority on wildlife and conservation issues in the region.

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Elbert’s Editorial Independence

The authors recently published in the History of the Adepts series associated with this blog have several features in common.  In addition to being in various ways predecessors to the Brotherhood of Light lessons, they all have been lost to literary history after being defamed, marginalized, and forgotten.  But neither of these common features would justify years of editorial labor bringing them back to life in print.  Rather, it is historical reliability and relevance that made me rescue these literary orphans (with a huge amount of help from my friends.) Historical reliability is hardly a feature of 19th century Spiritualist and Theosophical literature in general.  Emma Hardinge Britten fictionalizing her acquaintances was a Spiritualist corruption of history; Helena Blavatsky did more such damage with her Mahatma letters and various miracles on behalf of Theosophy.  Theosophists and Spiritualists might attribute spiritual authority to books like Art Magic or The Mahatma Letters, but spiritual authority has perpetually clashed with historical expertise and accuracy.

Wilder and Johnson were present at the beginnings of Theosophy and Spiritualism, and their letters provide voluminous accurate historical information about many key players.  Their communications are devoid of miracles, mystery-mongering, spirit messages, or talk of past lives.  Chintamon was also present at the beginnings and became a whistleblower on Theosophical frauds. This more philosophical than religious approach was also found in Stebbins and Grimke who were grounded in yoga and New Thought. If Theosophical and Spiritualist literature are rife with misleading distortions of history, misinformation compounded by disinformation—with Blavatsky and Britten giving highly biased versions of their sectarian warfare—how does Elbert Benjamine clean up such a toxic waste site, producing a large body of work free of such corruption? With some advice from friends of a previous generation.

The Brotherhood of Light lessons were published with complete editorial independence and control by the author, in order to protect himself and the members from unethical behavior by publishers that had severely damaged the literary careers of late 19thc authors, especially T.H. Burgoyne/Norman Astley, who was caught in the crossfire between Theosophy and Spiritualism. Others of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor in America had witnessed the confusion caused by pseudonymous writings and  literary quarrels.  From the very first small booklet, Elbert’s writings were under his own control and not subject to interference and distortions by others with dubious motives.  This gives The Church of Light a much more solid foundation than groups descending from the same era, freeing us from the endless distractions and confusion typical of most 20thc American “occultist” literature with competing claims to spiritual authority, to which historical accuracy is entirely sacrificed. (Written as the 2022 convention in Albuquerque is concluding and I count my blessings to have been associated with this group for almost 17 years.)

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History of the Adepts Book Series in Albuquerque

At the 2019 Church of Light conference I gave a presentation related to the recently published second volume of the Thomas Moore Johnson Correspondence.  In 2021 it became possible to organize a series of publications and to produce affordable hardcovers.  By the end of the year the History of the Adepts Series consisted of five titles by four authors, some paperback, some hardcover.  I have donated copies of each title to the 2022 convention and to prepare conferees would like to explain the relationships among them and my own role in each.   In order of relevance to Church of Light members, in my estimation:

  1. For the Sarah Stanley Grimke Collected Works, I am the sole editor having written all the biographical segments and done all the annotations of the text.  Elbert Benjamine’s mention of Grimke as a co author of The Light of Egypt was the first and only clue in a print book to this effect, but family correspondence at Howard University confirmed it repeatedly.
  2. For Letters to Thomas Moore Johnson, I am the co-editor, indebted to Patrick Bowen for inaugurating the Letters to the Sage project and accomplishing much before I arrived on the scene.  In the second volume, Ronnie Pontiac contributes as much biographical introduction material as Patrick had in the first volume.  For the new hardcover condensation, I am also the publisher.
  3. The Duped Conspirator: Colonel Olcott in the Hodgson Report was originally written for a collection that did not materialize, and grew into a size too large for a chapter and too short for a book.  Hence it is a small booklet featuring Hurrychund Chintamon as pivotal in the Society for Psychical Research Investigation of the Theosophical Society.  For this I am sole author.
  4. Chintamon’s A Commentary on the Text of the Bhagavad-Gita is reproduced as published in 1874 but with new fonts, spacing, etc.  and now available only in hardcover. Here I am publisher but not editor.
  5. Pell Mell: Civil War and Reconstruction in a Carolina Pocosin is not officially listed as part of the series, but the family background of Quakers, Unionists, Native Americans, and Africans in North Carolina all relates to the Grimke family legacy and hence made me sympathetic to writing about them.
  6. Not in print, but online I have published The Quest of the Spirit on academia.edu. for free public access. This 1913 book was edited by Genevieve Stebbins and authored by “A Pilgrim of the Way,” her husband Norman Astley. Before relocating to England after retirement, they had spent twelve years as part time residents of the North Carolina mountains, which ties in to my NC archives research background with Pell Mell.

In future blog posts I will comment on individual cases, but my general comment is that “Religious Studies” or any variation like “Theosophical History” is never a perfect fit for the likes of Wilder, Johnson, Grimke, Chintamon, or the Astleys, all of whom are more interested in philosophy than religion. Interaction among American and South Asian writers and their mutual acquaintances in Europe 1875-1895 about encapsulates all my scholarly expertise. After forty years of immersion in writings of this period it is more clear than ever that the mutual interest and respect was based on philosophy at least as much as religion.

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Elbert Benjamine in Fort Worth, April 23, 1950

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Brotherhood of Light library and reading room, December 17, 1929

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Benjamin Parker Williams Family Tree

For the rest of 2022 the author of the Brotherhood of Light Lessons will be the focus of most new blog posts, after 12 years of attention to his nineteenth century predecessors. For a start, here are his parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents, wives and children. Attached below is an aerial view of their hometown, Adel, Iowa.

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Elbert in the Twentieth Century

With many new publications in the last four years about the nineteenth century, I want to encourage readers to cite the new books rather than blog posts when discussing Grimke, Wilder, or Chintamon about whom I have been sharing information, hence posted their prefaces on academia. Here in this blog, I will turn my attention to the twentieth century and Elbert Benjamine and his associates, not doing original research but simply sharing newspaper articles, of which there are plenty involving him.

In the 1930s and 40s, most of them are about The Church of Light but in the 1920s his outdoor activities and interests often appear. Here an article mentions him as involved with the Nature Club in 1925 which continued throughout his life.

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Third Sagittarius Decanate: Elbert Benjamine

SAGITTARIUS—3rd Decanate. The third decanate of Sagittarius, the Leo decanate, is pictured among the constellations by SAGITTA—the Arrow. This is the arrow that Mithra shot against a rock and a stream of water immediately gushed forth. It symbolized the soul piercing the illusions of matter and through this comprehension of the meaning of incarnate existence being able to quench its thirst at the fountain of Divine Consciousness.

Those born under this decanate may either tread the path of pleasure, or climb the royal road to spiritual supremacy. Being the kingly section of the sign of the higher mind, when the sporting proclivities relating to the fifth sign’s influence are transmuted, they have not only the ability to perceive things in their proper relation, but also to synthesize their observations and impart this knowledge to others. They, therefore, reach their greatest usefulness as teachers and leaders of philosophical and religious thought. And when faithful to their ideals and persistent in adhering to their own conceptions they reach the highest states of consciousness possible to embodied man.

C. C. Zain—pen name of Elbert Benjamine—author of all 210 Brotherhood of Light lessons, author of over a thousand magazine articles on astrology or occultism, and one of the three founders of the Church of Light, was born when the Sun was here. Krishnamurti, head of the Order of the Star in the East, who refused to pose as an avatar, and author of At the Feet of the Master, was born when the Moon was in this section of the sky. And Maria M. Benjamine, whose wifely sympathy and constant assistance contributed markedly to all the later work of C. C. Zain, and who worked vigorously and unselfishly to disseminate The Religion of the Stars, was born with this division of Sagittarius on the Ascendant. It is the decanate of ILLUMINATION.

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A Great Soul Marches On

Thanks to Vicki Brewer for scanning and sharing this most important of all biographical and historical articles for students of the Brotherhood of Light lessons. Future blog posts will refer back to this but for now my main “take” is that Elbert was recruited by Sarah B. Anderson and Belle Wagner to fill the vacancy created by the death of Minnie Higgin. An apparent falling out between the Wagners on one hand and the Andersons and Elbert on the other came later.

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Aunt Arletta Green Clarke, First Lady of Iowa, 1913-1917

Arletta Green

The 1920 legal name change from Benjamin P. Williams to Elbert Benjamine was caused, he said, by ostracism from his relatives in Iowa motivated by religious antagonism. His Williams relatives in Iowa consisted at that point of his five children and ex-wife living on a poultry farm outside of Adel and his mother living in town, none of whom could be fairly accused of ostracizing their father, ex-husband, and son. And yet it is clear that SOME relatives wanted him change his name legally if he was determined to pursue a career as a writer and teacher of astrology, Tarot, and other things not discussed in Adel polite society.

The census records of the Williams and Benjamine families from 1910 through 1940 provide an interesting clue to events of 1920 as well as a reminder of a major mystery of 1910.

From top to bottom: 1910 census entry for Benjamin and Rita Williams, 1920 entry for Benjamin and Elizabeth Williams, followed by 1920 entry for Emma G. Williams, 1930 entry for Elbert, Elizabeth and Will Benjamine, 1940 entry for Elbert and Elizabeth Benjamine; 1910 entry for Grace, Benjamin, and William Williams, 1920 entry for Grace, Benjamin, William, Mary Grace, Norman, and Zilla Williams, 1930 entry for Grace, Zilla and Norman, 1940 entry for Norman, Grace, and Zilla

In the first entry we see that as of the 1910 census Benjamin Williams is not just divorced (as we see from his ex-wife’s status in the censuses of 1910, 1920, and 1930) but remarried to Rita or Reta, an Iowa native born around 1876, living in Steilacoom, Washington, doing odd jobs. Here is a 1910 photograph from Steilacoom looking across Puget Sound towards the Olympic Mountains.

Grace Williams was apparently opposed to her husband’s literary ambitions and interests from the start, and Elizabeth Benjamine was fully supportive of him throughout their marriage. But crucial years of his contact with the Brotherhood and beginning of public work (Denver in 1909 through Carmel in 1918) took place between the divorce from Grace and the marriage to Elizabeth, about which the best eyewitness account would be from Rita about whom we know nothing at this point other than what is in the 1910 census.

While the 1910 census raises many unanswered questions, the 1920 census points to an answer to a question– what was behind Benjamin/Elbert’s claims of being ostracized and harmed in business prospects by his family in 1920? Grace is at home on a chicken farm with five children in 1920, but Emma Green Williams is not at home in Iowa but rather staying at a boarding house on North Broadway, the main thoroughfare nearest the home of Elizabeth and Elbert in Los Angeles. We can surmise from this that she was not entirely antagonistic to her son and new daughter in law if she was willing to go to California to see what they were up to. That in the aftermath of this visit the legal name change occurred is likely related to Emma’s advice, but a new piece of evidence about her own sister’s family the Clarkes suggests where the real pressure was coming from.

Emma’s next younger sister Arletta Green Clarke was the wife of the governor of Iowa from 1913 through 1917, the period in which Benjamin fathered three more children with his ex-wife after marrying another woman. Since Rita was a native Iowan whose parents were also Iowa-born, it is likely that Iowa acquaintances of the Williamses and Clarkes and Greens knew her identity, although that story is now lost. Elbert had four first cousins in Iowa all of whom were also sons and daughters of the governor. George Washington Clarke had been Lieutenant Governor of Iowa from 1909 through 1913, so his combined tenure in the capital of eight years occurred precisely during the years when his Williams in-laws were probably setting tongues wagging in Adel and possibly Des Moines as well.

Emma Green Williams left Elbert Benjamine a substantial inheritance upon her death in 1932 which he used to build up the church of which his son Will was now an employee. Will likewise changed his surname to Benjamine, the only one of her grandchildren to do so and the only one to be publicly associated with The Church of Light. Her presence in Los Angeles in 1920 suggests that perhaps a legal name change was imposed as a condition of future inheritance, assuring that the Williams name would not be associated with astrology and occultism.

Here is a summary of Clarke’s gubernatorial career from a national database of state governors: