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Many historical books have been digitized by Google books.  But sometimes the only digital copy of a book is on archive.org, a treasure trove for researchers.  1899 was an important year for Astro-Philosophical Publications of Denver, in that its founders Henry and Belle Wagner both published books of their own, followed in 1900 by the new second volume of Burgoyne’s The Light of Egypt and the Esoteric Lessons of Sarah Stanley Grimke.  The Duality of Truth  is the major work of Henry Wagner, M.D., and bears the imprint of his involvement with the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor. An excerpt:

Immortality is born — a new Cycle entered upon — a new day dawns for mankind. Man realizes his relation to God as His child — inheritor of Wisdom, Knowledge and Truth — and, understanding himself, knowing himself with that consciousness born from intellect ripened into intuition which enables him to worship God in spirit and in truth. No longer bound by limitation he is free. His spirit can not be chained or imprisoned forever. Change, eternal change, brings light, love and life out of darkness, death and decay. Harmony out of discord. Eros out of chaos, two in one, God manifested in forms, male and female — positive and negative.(p 30)

From the preface to Volume II of The Light of Egypt (1900)

God is present in all ages and races, manifesting His love and wisdom throughout infinite creations, and that He records, in His own way, the most detailed record of any event which takes place, thus giving to man a complete history of His works and will, for man’s enlightenment, so that he, too, may cooperate intelligently with the God in every way that intelligence wills to manifest. Prehistoric history is not blotted out from Nature’s laboratory. The Astral Book of Karmic evolution will one day reveal its hidden treasures to mankind as the recording angels give up those gems of truth they have so jealously guarded for untold cycles of time, simply because the time was not ripe for its divulgence.

There is a time for everything, and when that time arrives all past history of our planet’s evolution will be written in an intelligent manner for the illumination and education of man as the masterpiece of the Living God. In this way man will worship Deity and perfect his God-nature, even to Angel-hood.

The second volume of The Light of Egypt was presented, and has been understood, as the product of a channeling process by Belle Wagner contacting the spirit of Thomas H. Burgoyne after his death.  This led me to assume that its literary and intellectual qualities would have deteriorated in the second volume, but such is not the case.  Volume II is actually better written and more appealing than the 1889 edition, and one of the keynotes of the Astro-Philosophical Publishing authors was a pro-science, pro-technology enthusiasm about the future that Henry Wagner in particular expressed repeatedly.  Some of their hopes of “unlocking the secrets of evolution” have indeed been fulfilled in the human genome project.

The 1900 edition of The Light of Egypt included a new Volume II, and “Zanoni” of the 1889 edition was identified as T.H. Burgoyne, who had passed to the subjective plane, from which he dictated the new volume to Belle Wagner, his successor as Secretary of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor.  In earlier blog posts I have explained reasons for skepticism about Burgoyne’s reported death in 1894.  Still, I had always assumed that the second volume of The Light of Egypt consisted of his manuscripts edited by Wagner.  There are however other possibilities, one of which is that it is largely the work of Genevieve Stebbins.  In the publisher’s preface, Henry Wagner wrote:

“The Tablets of Aeth” is a great and mighty work, as it contains the very quintessence of Occult and Hermetic philosophy, as revealed by spiritual law. “Penetralia” is a new revelation, and invaluable to Occult students, as it is the personal experience of a developed soul.

To all lovers of Truth we respectfully recommend this Book of Books, at is has justly been called by many who are competent to criticize its teachings….

“Book of books“ from my incompetent perspective suggests that instead of having a single author, The Light of Egypt, more so in 1900 than in 1889, is a compilation of the work of several.  The Tablets of Aeth have a very different “voice” than Burgoyne’s in the 1889 edition.  Its introduction is among the more haunting passages in HBofL literature:

Accept it then, even as it is given unto you.  My friends and brethren, accept it as Zanoni’s last work on earth—his legacy to you, and may the spirit of the All-Father-Mother, the ineffable spirit of Life, Light, and Love, – the Unknowable, whom men call God, rest upon you and be with you now and forever.

This editorial appeared May 20, 1841 in the National Anti-Slavery Standard:

Thus in the Anti-Slavery Reform, the central Idea was that no one man had the right to make property of another man. “Stop there” minds applied it only to negro chattels, “go ahead” minds saw it in various collateral bearings…in America, women heard it announced, and repeated, that every human had the right to full and free opportunities for the development of all their powers…A large and stirring class of minds asked, “Why has woman nothing to do with politics? Is she not bought, and sold, and brutalized, by laws which politicians make and sustain?” While they paused for a satisfactory answer, Angelina Grimke and her sister came among them…Curiosity, combined with better motives, brought crowds to hear the Carolinian sisters; and it became necessary to ask the use of churches to accommodate them. With many clergymen this became a really troublesome question of conscience; and many were willing to use it as such to veil their hostility to anti-slavery. “Stop there” minds looked back anxiously to St. Paul to arrest the progress of this innovation.

(Lydia Maria Child Reader, 194-5)

The alliance of abolitionism and feminism was still a factor in the environment of Sarah Stanley Grimke in the 1880s, but we see in this passage how early the two causes were linked by the activism of Sarah Moore Grimke and her sister Angelina Grimke Weld.  Lydia Maria Child  is one of the major sources for the writings of Emma Hardinge Britten, and was personally well acquainted with the Weld and Grimke families.

In his 1896 publication Celestial Dynamics, Thomas H. Burgoyne wrote:

“Past earth lives” and the cumulative effect of a previous karma upon the mental, moral, and financial status of the present embodied individuals are, of all the speculative follies in which the undeveloped human mind has indulged, the most insidious and ensnaring, especially to the half awakened souls who possess a natural love for occult and metaphysical studies; they see as through a glass darkly, and feel satisfied that the half understood subtleties of oriental dogmas rationally solve the problem of good and evil, mental genius and mediocre brains. (p. 50)

This passage is one of many that could be found in the literature of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor.  In the Church of Light, opposition to reincarnationist teaching is more politely stated, but still consistent.  When we look to earlier sources for explanations, the most emphatic anti-reincarnationist writings which were familiar to the HBofL founders were those of Emma Hardinge Britten.  Spiritualism continues to be divided between opponents and proponents of reincarnationism; whereas in the wider field of the occult the anti-reincarnationist view has apparently become that of a small minority.

“The Early Theosophical Society and the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor” is the title of a presentation I gave in absentia in late June, at a conference on Esoteric Traditions in the Ancient and Modern World, held in Greece.  Most presentations are being placed on Youtube so readers of this blog  may find others of interest in links from this one. Marc Demarest’s study of Godfrey Higgins, “The Armchair Occultist,” is well worth hearing. While appearing in absentia in Greece, I was also making a presentation live at the 16th Melungeon Union, hosted by the Melungeon Heritage Association, of which I am Vice President.

Spiritualism is as significant as Theosophy and New Thought as sources of ideas found in the Church of Light.  The role of Spiritualism in transmission of Hermetic themes is discussed in Cathy Gutierrez’s 2009 study from Oxford University Press, Plato’s Ghost.  The conclusion of her third chapter on medicine offers two paragraphs worth contemplating for contemporary Hermeticists:

The Spiritualists were the inheritors of the Renaissance worldview, indebted to hermeticism in general and Kabbalism in particular, that viewed the natural world as utterly shot through with the divine. With the universe as the infinite replication of the divine man, the human body itself took on a central importance as a representative of the image of the cosmos and the vessel for the influx of the universal material or fluid… Many scholars have noted that Spiritualism was at the forefront of democratizing American Christiantiy; believers inveighed against Calvinist election, fought for the equality of the sexes and something approximating equality for the races, dispensed with hell, and threw heaven open to all religions….Spiritualism refused to accept a model whereby the body was the temporary prison of the soul, and argued insted for a form of enspirited matter in which the soul cast the light in the map of the body.(p. 141)

The first copy of The Light of Egypt I owned was the Spanish translation,  found in Monterrey, Mexico in 1991: La Luz de Egipto, the 2^nd 1978 paperback edition from Editorial Kier in Buenos Aires, Argentina.  In 1968 the first Kier edition had appeared in hardcover, and represents the translation by Emma B. MacDonald of the 1963 edition published by Wagner descendants in Denver.  That edition refers to the book having been out of print for sixty years.  In addition to many puzzles about its authorship, The Light of Egypt has a publication history that also includes mysterious elements.  The Spanish translation, now out of print, is of the most recent new edition of the book; there have been several reprints of that and earlier editions.  While C.C. Zain praised the book and its authors as authoritative earlier statements of the Brotherhood teachings, there was little emphasis on it in the CofL in his lifetime and less so thereafter.  The Argentinian publisher Kier is a mainstream firm, which included La Luz de Egipto as part of its “collecion pronostico.” Preliminary searches have yielded no evidence of the Spanish translation being cited elsewhere, nor discussed by any Spanish speakers online, but there must have been some perceived market for the book in the 1960s and 70s.  Why and how the book came back into print in Spanish translation is a subject about which I hope to learn more in future.

Fifteen years have elapsed since my last book on metaphysical and occult subjects. The intervening years have entailed a shift of emphasis to racial and political dimensions of 19^th century America. In 2010, a chapter examining Quakerism and abolitionism in my mother’s family history was published in the collection Carolina Genesis. Two years earlier, Pell Mellers explored my father’s family roots among Southern Unionists and colonial mulattoes. While working on these multigenerational family history projects, I took a half dozen different DNA tests in a decade of investigation. Each test measured in various ways my kinship to different groups of people; sometimes with crystal clear answers to research questions but often with confusing and ambiguous results. In this post I will propose DNA as a metaphor for different ways of exploring kinship among different spiritual groups. This University of Utah site explains the four types of DNA.

Whether the subject was Theosophical Mahatmas, Edgar Cayce’s Akashic Records, or my father’s legendary ancestor Chief Cucklemaker, the results of my investigations have tended to demythologize stories that some people prefer to take at face value. This caused some rejection of each book, due to the politically inconvenient or embarrassing aspects of what they reveal. But in each case another, unexpected group of readers ended up appreciating the work in ways that succeeded beyond my greatest hopes. Most vividly, this occurred with two branches of my father’s family in recent years. Pell Mellers opens with a chapter called In Search of the Dunlows, and closes with one called Johnson Reunions.  Beginning with a quest focused on one family, I ended with an unexpected connection to another.  Searching for Dunlows, but finding Johnsons, is related to specific differences between two types of knowledge available through DNA testing.  While there is no genealogical difference in degrees of cousinhood with descendants of common ancestors, there is a genetic difference in the knowledge we can have of our kinship.  Tests of Y and mitochondrial DNA yield precise assignments to haplogroups which can be traced through millennia.  But autosomal tests show the approximate ethnic blending that has occurred in recent generations, and give far less consistent and reliable results. Of eight great-grandparents, only one of each gender carries the sex-linked traits: one’s father’s father’s father, and one’s mother’s mother’s mother. The other six contribute to the autosomal DNA only.

Last summer I was interviewed by North Carolina Public Radio about Melungeons, and went into considerable detail about both autosomal and sex-linked DNA tests and what they reveal about Melungeon heritage. In terms of the spiritual ancestry of the Church of Light, “Hermetic” has the specificity and clarity of a Y or mitochondrial haplogroup, while “occult,” “metaphysical,” or “Theosophical” have the same fuzziness and confusion of autosomal test results. That is, the collection of inherited traits that are used to define occultism, or metaphysics, or Theosophy, tend to overlap and combine in random ways. Whereas the memes that define Hermeticism are more traceable in a specific line to a particular time and place. There will be more to say on this in future posts, but I will close this one with a passage from Sarah Stanley Grimke’s 1886 First Lessons in Reality that seems eerily suggestive of the double helix of DNA:

The fact that Ariadna’s twist of thread symbolizes this inner, intuitive Ray, is evident from the derivation of the word twist, as well as from the formation itself of a twist. Thus the Greek work skiza is a twist, a torch, a flame. Our word scissors is also derived from this same word.

Again, in its formation, a twist expresses the mystery of this Law, thus the twist is composed of two strands (each strand double), which are first twisted in opposite directions, then by being doubled back upon each other, the two strands fly magically into one manifestion.

I have added Catherine L. Albanese’s A Republic of Mind and Spirit to the recommended reading list, joining Gary Lachman’s The Quest for Hermes Trismegistus and Mitch Horowitz’s Occult America as valuable recent secondary sources about esoteric traditions in which the Church of Light is grounded.  Each of these books provides intriguing accounts of many characters and groups in the tapestry of 19^th-20^th century “alternative religious movements”.  Due to their breadth of coverage and depth of research, any of these books will expand the knowledge and increase the understanding of readers. Albanese’s style and target readership are more scholarly, but all three authors are historically reliable and insightful.  Albanese emphasizes metaphysical religion, while Horowitz traces the more diffuse field of “the occult” and Lachman pursues the thread of Hermetic wisdom.  All these are relevant to the Church of Light’s identity, seemingly equally so.

Nevertheless, “occult” and “metaphysical” strike me as basically different categories than “Hermetic,” reflecting a looser family resemblance and kinship.  Occultism and metaphysics seem antiquated as frameworks for spirituality in the 21^st century, whereas Hermeticism is ready for major rediscovery.  “Occultism” as hidden traditional knowledge is rooted in two millennia of persecution of pre-Christian practices and beliefs. When Hermetic teachings emerged into semi –public view in the late 19^th century, it was in the form of secret societies due to the legacy of oppression.  But having begun as an adaptation to real danger of persecution, by the 20^th century occultist secrecy was exalted into an inherent value– and justified by imaginary enemies.   When 19^th century occultism and metaphysics defined themselves in terms of opposition to  “materialist science and dogmatic religion” they became inevitably dated.  In the 21^st century science and religion are far more expansive and diverse, and Hermeticism need not (and will not) define itself as oppositional to them.    

In a sense the Church of Light is both occult and metaphysical. One “parent” group—the male dominated and hierarchical HBofL, manifested occult secrecy to far greater extent than its parent group the Theosophical Society.  But another group in the CofL’s ancestry, the female dominated Light, Truth, Love was purely in the metaphysical lineage of Christian Science and New Thought, and had a more informal style.  Indeed, anti-authoritarianism was the basis of its founders’ secession from Mrs. Eddy’s ranks in 1881.  Albanese’s thesis is that 19th century American occultism and metaphysics, as exemplified by Blavatsky and Eddy among others, are a revival of Hermeticism.  The Church of Light, although not mentioned by Albanese, is even more illustrative of her thesis than Theosophy or Christian Science, because in this case the Hermetic element is clearly acknowledged and celebrated as the defining basis for belief and practice.

In 1896, a small book was published by Astro-Philosophical Publishing Company of Denver,  Celestial Dynamics: A Course of Astrological Study, identified as having been written by “the author of The Language of the Stars and The Light of Egypt.” He was identified by the penname Zanoni and the swastika symbol.  The introduction states that “it was the intention of both the author and publisher to give the reading public Celestial Dynamics shortly after the publication of `The Language of the Stars’ in 1892, as announced on the cover of that book, but circumstances over which we have had no control, caused the delay until now…The time for Celestial Dynamics is now.  May it ever find those ready for its teachings, prepared to realize its sublime truths so ably stated by its author whose motto is `Omnia Vincit Veritas.'”(pp. 17-18)  There is no mention here of Thomas H. Burgoyne being dead, although in the 1900 second volume of The Light of Egypt he was thus described, and a death date of 1894 had been attributed.  As readers of this blog know, my interest in Sarah Stanley Grimke’s writings inspires investigation of her possible contributions to anonymous or pseudonymous publications.  Celestial Dynamics ranks high among such possibilities. Kessinger Publishing reprinted the book in 2003 and listed the authorship as Anonymous.  But the last previous edition, from Health Research in 1966, listed the author as Thomas H. Burgoyne.  In the future I will post about comparisons of this book with Grimke’s astrological writings, but for now just want to announce the availability of the reprint and the different attributions.  Closing with an excerpt that I found revealing and inspirational:

As there are no special laws relating to any individual,  no private legislature possible in the Divine economy of creative law, we must be a part of all that transpires in the action and inter-action of the planetary and stellar worlds.  Cosmic law must affect us in proportion to our state, as it does the dazzling worlds of space. This being so we must first of all look to those primary centers of force and grasp their power before we attempt to bind and measure the reactions of those powers as they become manifest in ourselves.

With the foregoing before us, we can see that those powers which mould and guide the life of the physical man are the vibrations received from the forces which mould and guide the destinies of worlds, the only difference being the length of the orbit of action; in our own case, a few fleeting seasons only, in the case of worlds, embracing untold millions of ages.(pp. 17-18)

Cyrus A. Bartol, the Unitarian minister who married Sarah Stanley and Archibald Grimke in 1879, had been Sarah’s philosophy professor at Boston University.  Family correspondence shows that Bartol was delighted by the marriage, which Sarah’s father attributed to her being led astray by “insane theorizers” of Boston. 

Bartol was best known as a transcendentalist, and his influence on Sarah Stanley Grimke was based on his philosophical and theological writings, The Rising Faith (1874) being current at the time of their first acquaintance.  But he had become known many years before as author of travel literature. His Pictures of Europe, Framed in Ideas (1856) is the most notable of his early works.

As pastor of West Church in Boston from 1837, and sole pastor from 1861 through retirement in 1889, he was the most visible exponent of Transcendentalism in that city in a career spanning five decades.

This portrait was found on the informative bostonunitarian blog.

A Republic of Mind & Spirit (Yale University Press, 2007) by Catherine L. Albanese is the most valuable recent book on American religious history for background on the roots of the Church of Light.  The author is former president of the American Academy of Religion, currently professor and chair of Religious Studies at the University of California- Santa Barbara.  This book was hailed as “a monumental synthesis,” very well received by reviewers, which augurs well for “metaphysical religion” as a dimension appreciated by American historians.  I encountered it first as a source of detail about Elizabeth G. Stuart, a major influence on Sarah Stanley Grimke, and thereby on the Church of Light.   Albanese includes abundant material on Theosophy, Christian Science, and New Thought, but is especially valuable in tracing Hermetic elements through all these traditions.  Future posts will explore Stuart further, but here I will suggest four layers discernable in Sarah Stanley Grimke’s literary influences:

1) abolitionism from her own Stanley family heritage as well as her husband’s Grimke/Weld family history

2) transcendentalism from her education at Boston University, especially from Cyrus A. Bartol, her philosophy professor and the Unitarian clergyman who married her and Archibald Grimke in 1879

3) New Thought feminism in the entourage of Mrs. Stuart, Emma Austin Tolles, and others, starting in the early 1880s and continuing throughout her life

4) Hermetic astrology through her collaboration with Thomas H. Burgoyne and association with Dr. Henry Wagner, her publisher

Although Grimke reached Hermeticism as the final stage of her journey, Albanese’s account shows Hermeticism as an inspiration from the very beginnings of American metaphysical religion.  Here is the passage most succinct in summarizing that theme:

Along a spectrum from occultism to mind cure and the transformation of the Self, we can spot the familiar signature of correspondence, the drawing down of energies of Mind and Spirit, and the strong intent to heal.  In the terms of this narrative, too, we can watch the easy glide from a (material) magic, resonating, however unconventionally, with the magical practice of a past Hermeticism to a newer, mental Magic characterizing Christian Science and New Thought.  Here a simpler work of mind and imagination prevailed; and the esoteric turned—as in Spiritualism—exoteric.(p. 259)

Horatio Dresser’s history of New Thought, quoted in my last entry, linked the teachings of Sarah Stanley Grimke to those of Elizabeth G.Stuart.  But until visiting the Moorland-Springarn Research Center at Howard University last month, I had not known that Stuart’s involvement with Grimke and her daughter Angelina had lasted for many years.

Of special relevance to Church of Light roots is evidence in the Grimke letters concerning Stuart’s group “Light, Truth, Love” which operated into the 20^th century. First person references to slavery in Grimke’s Esoteric Lessons seem to transfer the rhetoric of abolitionism to the cause of feminism.  No doubt influences behind this include the Weld/Grimke family into which Sarah married, all of whose eminent members had connected women’s rights with the anti-slavery movement.  Mrs. Stuart’s public statements are few, but she significantly gave an address at an event that did precisely that— connect the liberation of women to that of black slaves– the International Council of Women held from March 25 through April 1, 1888, sponsored by the Woman Suffrage Association.  Note the prominence of Frederick Douglass in the proceedings.  Here is Mrs. Stuart’s address, given on the final day:

THE POWER OF THOUGHT.

Mrs. Stuart. I come before you as a member of the organization known as Humanity: passport to that organization, Spirit of Truth; basis of work, Common Sense; theory, Evolution. What is truth? Pythagoras said, “Truth is so great a perfection that if God were to render himself visible to man, he would choose Light for his body and Truth for his soul!” Truth is one, with infinite expressions; expression implies limitation, while truth is unlimited. Truth rests upon the law of identity, established through the law of polar or real opposites and its twin sister, the law of contradictories, revealed to man by the science of numbers. It is to that science man must look for a solution of the problems of life in their varied relations.

No science of ethics, which exempts the physical, can be true, since it makes man dependent upon the conditions of the body. No system of physics can be true which strikes from its premises the spiritual law, since it degrades morals to a dependence upon the physical. Man as a unit is governed by one law through his entire being, spiritually, intellectually, and physically, ever in the one order from the higher to the next lower.

The imaging faculty is the highest known to man; through it he expresses the ideal, and it is the means by which he expresses to the senses whatever intellect accepts, thus forming the relation between mind and body. Through that open door fear enters and stamps upon the body distorted, untrue mental images, which physicians name, then proceed to try to erase from the body by physical means.

It is a self-evident absurdity that a picture in mind can be removed by rubbing the body. Fear in the mind, from any cause, increases the heat of the body; and, as the thermometer rises higher and higher, we see the different degrees known as first inflammation, then congestion, ulceration, and so on.

“As a man thinketh, that he becometh.” As is the mind, so is the thought; as is the thought, so is the image expressed in form externally. Let him keep his picture-gallery free from impurity, who would have pure blood. Whatever he does not desire to appear in the external, must be watchfully kept out of the mind; once there, its picture hangs upon the inner walls, ready for the favorable moment to appear. The imaging faculty is both cause and cure for all bodily discord.

The first history of the New Thought movement, published in 1919, mentions Sarah Stanley Grimke, relating her thought to that of Mrs. Elizabeth G. Stuart.  My latest research has found that their association lasted for many years and had great significance in the life of Grimke and her family.

One of the earliest of the mental science writers, Miss S. S. Grimke, in a book bearing the curious title Personified Unthinkables, 1884, interpreted the practical idealism with special reference to mental pictures and their influence. This emphasis on mental pictures was characteristic of Mr. Quimby. In fact, Quimby sometimes described the mental part of his treatment with reference to the pictures he discerned intuitively in the patient’s mind, and the ideal pictures in connection with which “the truth of a patient’s being” was established in place of the “error or disease.”(1)

Q. In a letter sent by H.P.B. to the President of the Ionian branch of the Theosophical Society she expresses interest in knowing what is the situation regarding Mazzini bust. Why H.P.B. was interested in Giuseppe Mazzini? What was the connection of HP.Blavatsky with the Carbonari?

A. Blavatsky claimed to have fought and been injured in the 1867 battle of Mentana, and speaks of knowing the Garibaldis who could vouch for her.  Admiring references to Mazzini are found in other TS founders sources like Charles Sotheran and Herbert Monachesi, and of course Olcott. Later Rene Guenon described HPB as having been involved in the Jeune Europe movement which had been established by Mazzini. He was passionately anti-clerical and promoted a spirituality that would be more liberal and inclusive than that of the Catholic Church.  Hence Blavatsky’s resonance with Mazzini’s ideas could have been equally political and spiritual.  Likewise her admiration for Cagliostro and his “Egyptian Masonry” which also seems to have been common among the several TS founders.

Q. In a letter of Alessandro Rombotti (Naples, June, 1878) he mentions the following: Mr. Lambro Papagiorgin delivered to him in the presence of other persons a letter from Olcott, leaving without even to shake his hands. Have u ever heard about Mr. Lambro Papagiorgin before?

A. I have not heard his name, but am curious about the “Greek gentleman” described by Emma Coulomb as having been secretary of HPB’s Societe Spirite in Cairo.  We can add this name to the list of people who need further investigation.

Q. In a letter dated of 6th June, 1878 (Naple, Italy) Alexander Rombotti mentions the following in reply to a letter from H.P.Blavatsky: As I have no friends in France and so find it impossible to get information about the Buddhist priest, who is a Professor of Sanskrit in Paris, I venture to ask you if you have an opportunity after of finding out his address, or that of any other, to let me have it I shall be much obliged to you.In another letter he also mentions the following: Corfu 23, 4th April, 1878. I send this to tell you that I am entirely convinced of the truth of your theories, and that I have decided to embrace the religion of Buddha. Though not having the original letters that H.P.B. sent to them, is obvious she mentions about Buddhism and also a Buddhist priest who is a Professor of Sanskrit in Paris, do you have any idea who was this teacher she refers to?

A. There were several institutions in Paris at the time who taught Sanskrit but I cannot identify any non-Westerner among their faculties, nor any Buddhist priests. Abel Bergaigne was Professor of Sanskrit at the Sorbonne from 1878 through his death, and presumably the person mentioned by Rombotti was known to him.

Q.Who was Agardi Metrovitch and what the nature of his relationship with H.P.Blavatsky?

A. Metrovitch was an opera performer with whom Blavatsky traveled in eastern Europe in the 1860s, and who had been politically active against the Austrian imperial government.  He appears to have died in a shipwreck en route from Greece to Egypt which Blavatsky survived.   HPB’s cousin Sergei de Witte and her friend-then-enemy Emma Coulomb both described the relationship as marital (or quasi-marital) but no other evidence has emerged to confirm or contradict this description.

Q. Do you think Yuri was H.P.B.’s son?

A. There is too little evidence on which to base an informed opinion, but the fragmentary references to him suggest that this is probable.

Q. In your book you mention that Paulo Metamon was H.P.B’s first occult teacher in Egypt. Mirra Alfassa’s claim that Max Theon taught H.P.B.  Do you think that Paulo Metamon could have been Max Theon?

A. No, because Max Theon is well established as having been of Polish Jewish origin and to have been younger than Blavatsky.  Since he apparently spent time in Egypt in the early 1870s, it is possible that he was acquainted with Metamon at the time which gave rise to later misunderstandings.

Q. Who was John King and what was the nature of his influence on H.P.B.?

A.    John King was frequently claimed as a spirit guide by a succession of Spiritualists beginning with the Davenport brothers in 1850 and continuing well into the early 20th century with Eusapia Palladino.  He claimed to be the spirit of Henry Morgan, a Caribbean pirate who became governor of Jamaica in 1673.  HPB claimed to be in communication with John King in her early years in New York, and this presumably helped give her credibility with Spiritualists.  She told one Spiritualist that she had been in daily communication with John King for fourteen years, and wrote to another that he had twice saved her life.

Q. Could you tell us about the Brotherhood of Luxor and the H.B. of L: in your opinion they were the same organization? If yes which are the evidences to sustain that?

A. They were definitely not the same organization.  The Brotherhood of Luxor was an imaginary organization first reported by Kenneth Mackenzie in his 1877 Cyclopedia of Freemasonry, then endorsed by HPB in Isis Unveiled later the same year.  Apart from these two allegations no evidence of its existence has ever surfaced. The Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor was a real historical organization created in England 1884 and combining the names of two fictitious entities described by Mackenzie’s Cyclopedia, the other being the “Hermetic Brothers of Egypt.”

Q. Since the publication of  your book “The Masters Revealed” have you find more evidences to sustain the hypotheses that Ranbir Singh, Maharaja of Kashmir was “Master Morya” and Sirdar Takar Singh Sandhanwalia- founder of the Singh Sabba (Punjabi ally of the T.S.) -was “K.H.”?

A: I have not pursued further investigations on those lines, but would encourage readers to examine The Durbar in Lahore, HPB’s only book that has never been reprinted in book form.  It is now available online and reveals Blavatsky in a light that readers of her English language works might find rather different. It would be more correct to state that Ranbir Singh and Thakar Singh were respectively prototypes for M. and K.H. rather than that they were these individuals.  They correspond in some details to the portrayals of these Mahatmas, and no other plausible candidates have emerged since my books were published.  But the nature of the evidence is such that any conclusive identifications are probably impossible.  The one book by HPB that prominently features Ranbir Singh is the only one that has been generally unavailable for Theosophists and others to examine.  I would urge anyone seeking background on the subject to read it carefully.

Q. When was the last time a letter from the Mahatmas was received (before the 1900’s one) and in your opinion which was the reason the letters stopped.

A.    This is difficult to answer because it presumes that some letters were actually received from Mahatmas.  I find the evidence insufficient to justify accepting that presumption—or denying it.  If we amend that to “allegedly” received, the circumstances after the Hodgson Report were not advantageous to any further public claims about phenomena, including Mahatma letters, after the
end of 1885.  The last received to Sinnett as recorded in the Mahatma Letters volume is dated 1885.  But Olcott received an alleged Mahatma letter aboard a ship in 1888, and Annie Besant’s belief and then disbelief in such letters coming through William Q. Judge created a crisis in the TS in the mid-1890s.

Q. Hume made a great work to India while Sinnett passed away in relative obscurity, making séances trying to contact the Masters. Do you think there is a kind of wrong judgment (between theosophists) regarding these two personalities?

A.     Sinnett was credulous while Hume was incredulous at the claims being made on behalf of the Masters.  Sinnett’s credulity sought other outlets after his relationship with HPB deteriorated.  HPB and the Mahatma letters criticize the attitude of credulous believers who accept pronouncements on authority—which is exactly the attitude displayed by Sinnett, and indeed was encouraged on his part.  Hume strikes me as a much better role model, focusing his energies constructively on positive social change rather than fantasies about mediumistic contacts with adepts.  Because the Mahatma letters treat Hume as a villain for disbelieving in their authenticity, and treat Sinnett as a hero for championing the cause of the Masters, Theosophists have tended to regard them in the same light.  But I hope that Hume’s character might be better appreciated in the future.

Q. Is the H.B. of L an offshoot of the Orphic Circle? Could you tell us about the Orphic Circle, how was created who were the persons involved why and when was dissolved.

A. The term Orphic Circle originates with Emma Hardinge Britten, who late in her career named three individuals: Edward Bulwer Lytton, the astrologer “Zadkiel” Richard James Morrison, and the inventor Philip Henry Stanhope as part of the group of occult investigators with whom she worked as a young clairvoyante.    Lytton became an enthusiast of magic, astrology, and Rosicrucian lore early in his writing career, and by the late 1830s had associated himself with the Morrison and Stanhope in a private study circle.  It was never formally created or disbanded, but was an informal association of fellow explorers.  Stanhope’s death in 1855 seems to be the end of the association.

Q. Edward Bulwer Lytton was high regarded by Blavatsky and Emma. Was he a member of the H.B. of L. or of the Orphic Circle? Did Blavatsky meet him at all?

The HBofL was created years after his death, but he was the central node in the network described by Emma as the Orphic Circle.  One hypothesis about HPB’s meeting of a Master in London is that it was Bulwer-Lytton who was being described, this from the most popular biography to date, by Marion Meade.  A doctoral study in Denmark concluded that Bulwer-Lytton had strongly influenced the content of Isis Unveiled.  But there are no definite claims that HPB met him, only a mass of evidence that she was passionately interested in his writings. 

Q. In the 19th century there was an extensive use of literary pseudonyms,  prototypes, fictionalizations in almost endless variations. Which attempts were made -up today- to trace the personalities behind the endless pseudonyms used during that period?

A. Robert Matthiesen and Marc Demarest have pursued solutions to the mystery of “Chevalier Louis,” narrator of Ghost Land, both based on extensive research.    Demarest’s prototype for Louis is the more persuasive, in my opinion, but both are examples of investigations of literary pseudonyms.   My own research at the moment is focused on the book The Light of Egypt, pseudonymously authored by “Zanoni”.  At this point in the investigation, there seem to be three women and at least one man who all contributed to that work, and it may take years before the story is unraveled. 

Recently published materials that delve into these questions are few, but a new book has just appeared from Theosophical Publishing House—Wheaton that I consider valuable.  Sufism and the Way of Blame by Yannis Toussoulis is the work of an author with many years of experience both as a scholar and practitioner of Sufism.   He delves into the question of Gurdjieff’s “Sarmoung Brotherhood” and my own hypothesis that Prince Esper Ukhtomsky was the original for Gurdieff’s “Prince Lubovedsky.”  Toussoulis’s book is worthwhile for many other reasons than its discussion of this pseudonym, but is groundbreaking as the first book by a Theosophical publisher to comment on such matters in recent years.  His analysis of Meetings with Remarkable Men does not discuss any others among Gurdjieff’s legendary mentors, but that mysterious book is a perfect example of the many remaining puzzles involving pseudonyms in the literature of occultism.

Q. What originally led you down the path of the occult and Theosophy?

I grew up in coastal Virginia, with relatives who had known Edgar Cayce as a friend and neighbor.   One cousin wrote a book about him in the late 1960s, and Virginia Beach was becoming a New Age Mecca by 1977 when I discovered the large collection of Theosophical books at the A.R.E. (Association for Research and Enlightenment) Library and Conference Center.  This inspired a decades-long interest in Blavatsky and Olcott as well as many later Theosophical and metaphysical writings.  In the 1980s and 90s I was intermittently active in local Theosophical and Search for God (A.R.E. sponsored) groups as well as  Integral Yoga satsangs, Fourth Way and Sufi study groups.  All these inspired historical curiosity about the links among these traditions.  HPB’s links to Gurdjieff and Sufism were the initial inquiries that led eventually to my books about the Masters.

Q. Are you an active member of the Theosophical Society?

A. No, my only active membership in a spiritual group is with The Church of Light.

Q. Do you think the foundation of the Theosophical Society was part of a ‘hidden political’ agenda?

A. Some of the founding members were notoriously political in their other motivations and involvements, with Charles Sotheran the most extreme case, but others appear to have more moderate and less politically motivated, e.g. the Brittens.   Overall I do not see Russian or American political hidden agendas of much importance in the founding of the TS.  But its various Masonic and British diplomatic links, and the associated agendas are highly significant factors from the start of the TS.   There are also multiple indications that Italian and Greek nationalism were highly significant in the very beginning years of the TS and intertwined with spiritual and occult pursuits.   But the most significant political associations of the TS did not develop until its move to India.

Q.     What do you think about the work of the Theosophical Society today?

A.    Having had little contact in recent years, all I can say is that I am full sympathy with the Objects of the Society, and am very grateful for the support and assistance of many Theosophists in my research.

Q. In your book The Masters Revealed you present a series of hypotheses regarding the identity of the Theosophical Mahatmas, what led you into this kind of academic research?

A. When Leslie Price inaugurated the Theosophical History Centre in 1985, I was among the initial subscribers to the Theosophical History journal which he edited, and presented papers at Theosophical history conferences in London in 1986, 1988, and 1989.  After the Gurdjieff/Sufi inquiry, the second historical puzzle I wrote about was the relationship between HPB and Albert Leighton Rawson.  Freemasonry, and particularly Italian and Egyptian political associations in the mid-19^th century, was also related to HPB in a paper I presented on “Metrovitch and the Carbonari Connection.”  But the project of identifying Theosophical adepts, Masters, or Mahatmas with historical prototypes did not begin to take shape until the end of the 1980s.  In early 1990 I traveled to India and France to spend several weeks in historical research about Blavatsky’s sources.

Q.      Which member of the Ionian Branch of the T.S. intrigues you most and why?

A.      Otho Alexander is an intriguing figure for several reasons.  Since I am a member of the Church of Light which descends from the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor, I’m especially interested in Alexander’s distribution of letters from HPB which allegedly supported the HBL position about her exchanging one set of Masters for another.  But Alexander also reverted to loyalty to the TS in his later years, which raises questions about his disaffiliation with the HBL.  There are two aspects of Alexander’s career that are particularly relevant to the question of mysterious adepts behind the scenes of the early TS.  He was a vice-consul in Corfu for the United Kingdom, at a time when British diplomats in the Eastern Mediterranean figured in Blavatsky’s network of sponsors, for example Richard F. Burton and Raphael Borg.  The Ionian TS was the very first branch outside New York City, which again suggests important early links between Alexander and HPB, heretofore unexplored.  She described visiting Greek friends with Metrovitch en route to Egypt in 1871, and of course the identity of “Hilarion Smerdis” remains unknown.  This leads me to think that eventually Corfu will provide some useful clues to understanding the network of adepts that were behind the scenes of the early TS. (to be continued)

As I delve into the history of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor, one theme that becomes more and more apparent is that each of the major players in its early years brings his or her own special emphasis and knowledge. Yes, in the broadest sense “the tradition” is Hermeticism and all agree on that foundation. Yet Max Theon brings a specialized background in Kabbalah, Thomas Burgoyne is a practicing astrologer, Peter Davidson a Freemason, Genevieve Stebbins a student of yoga. All these streams flow into the HBofL tradition, but the one of greatest interest to me at present is New Thought, also known as mind cure or mental science, because Sarah Stanley Grimke came from this school of thought to the HBofL. New Thought was engaged in the 1880s in a struggle with Christian Science for primacy in the field of mental healing. Mary Baker Eddy demanded credit for more originality than New Thought writers were willing to grant her, and while her movement gained more adherents at the time, various New Thought groups now have greater influence and membership than her shrinking church.

A little-known figure who deserves more attention from historians, James Henry Wiggin was one of the original founders of the Theosophical Society, listed eighth in the Adyar membership roster.  Evidently he approached the topic with a sense of humor from the start, as this 1875 article Rosicrucianism in New York attests.  After its first year, Wiggin seems to have had little interest in the TS but he gained permanent recognition as the man who rewrote Mrs. Eddy’s Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, and edited her other writings for several years before a parting of the ways.  This article from The Coming Age opens with a biography of Wiggin which I excerpt below for passages of special relevance to contemporary readers.

The Rev. James Henry Wiggin was born on the 14th of May, 1836, in the historic North End district of Boston. In early life he was exceedingly delicate, his parents sometimes despairing of their eldest child’s life. He possessed, however, a good constitution—a priceless legacy bestowed by his sturdy New England ancestors, who since the settlement of New England had preserved the simple and austerely democratic habits of life so conducive to health and longevity. His childhood was cast at a time of great theological activity and controversy in New England. A religious revolution was then in progress whose far-reaching influence we are yet unable adequately to measure; and it is an interesting fact that in the life of Mr. Wiggin we have a concrete illustration of the mental and religious state of Boston when he was born. Indeed, we may say that in him we see, in a very real way, the legitimate product of the old New England mind, tempered by the larger life of our century… In 1850 he graduated at the Boston Dwight Grammar School, after which he entered a military academy in Vermont. On returning to Boston he had an opportunity to visit the Provinces on a sailing vessel, and with the love of the ocean which seems born in the New England lads, he eagerly embraced the opportunity. Nor did this experience satisfy him, for on his return, when the position of captain’s clerk was tendered him on a bark bound for the East Indies, he gladly accepted the offer. This journey was rendered exciting by many stirring incidents, not the least of which was a fire on board the vessel. The flames, however, were controlled, and the voyage duly finished. The boy had ever possessed a vivid imagination. All that was dramatic and picturesque had from his earliest memory appealed to him in an irresistible manner. Hitherto nature had spoken to him chiefly under her sterner guises. He had loved the rough and rugged coast of New England, and her wonderfully picturesque valleys and pine-clad mountains had filled his heart with strange and indefinable emotions, which he had never even sought to analyze; but now before him in East Indian waters was a new heaven and a new earth—the marvelous blue of the sky studded and jeweled with stars of matchless brilliancy, the soft, heavy, and soothing breeze that bore the bark to the Javan shores, and later the wonderful lands of the orient! Ah, who shall describe the witchery of the first days and nights in the lands of the Hindoo, Chinaman, and Malay: Here he saw for the first time nature in the wild abundance of tropical luxuriance. Such vegetation as he had never even been able to picture in his mind was now before him with its profusion of gorgeous blooms and its wealth of fragrant and delicious fruits. Here were trees of rare beauty, whose every bough was laden with perfume; here were birds of rare plumage, and strange and curious animals. He remembered that he was now in the land of mystery and wealth, about which long, long before Marco Polo had written, and of which Columbus dreamed when he sailed toward the setting sun, in the finding of which Magellan lost his life, and whose riches Vasco da Gama discovered to Portugal and western Europe, after he had doubled the cape and crossed the Indian sea. To the vivid imagination of the New England boy this land of the rising sun presented a revelation which enriched the mind and added much to that broad culture that constitutes so much of life’s purest enjoyment. To him India was indeed a dream of spring actualized…The vessel had been absent thirteen months when it came again in sight of the green-tufted islands that, guard the harbor of Boston, and right glad was the boy to reach his home once more. The voyage had been rich in experience. He had learned much, perhaps more than during any two years of life, and his imaginative faculties and emotional nature had been stirred and moved as never before….During the fifties the question of a profession confronted him. He had always been deeply religious, and the ceremonialism of the church appealed to his emotional nature almost as irresistibly as the liberalism of the rational wing of Unitarianism appealed to his reason. At last he decided to enter the ministry. Accordingly, after preparatory study, he attended Tufts College, but at the age of twenty-two he left this institution and entered the theological college at Meadville, Pennsylvania, from which he graduated in 1801.

Thanks to everyone at CofL headquarters for getting the DVD of conference and preconference presentations out to members.  My slides for The Light of Egypt Mystery were already posted here, so I have transcribed my opening and closing remarks to give a sense of some of my motivations for pursuing these questions, for those without access to the conference proceedings.

Opening:

You all may recall that a couple of years ago I told you that I had sworn off writing about occultism. Never again, and I had completely changed my topic of interest, which has been genealogy and local history mostly.  If not for Marc I would have kept that resolution.  I have gotten in some hot water (applause) for writing about some people who have personality cults and who have followers that are offended by people asking too many rude questions about them.  But… pseudonyms are just like catnip to me (laughter) any author that strews their writings with pseudonyms… that is just like an open invitation to guess… and that’s what I did with Blavatsky in the case of Morya, Koot Hoomi, and other Mahatmas, and when I saw Marc doing this with Emma and Louis and Sirius, this revivified my interest in this whole field, and I have stumbled on a whole new set of pseudonym mysteries.

Closing:

Marc sees the big picture, and all these subtleties.  I think like a genealogist.  I just want to find out grandma and grandpa’s dirtiest secrets.  Because of that, there has been a lot of misunderstanding..not trying to undermine spiritual teachers, no!  But what I’ve learned as a genealogist is that every family passes down legends that are full of misinformation… people forget names of siblings and get things all mixed up, and disinformation…whenever a family has a scandal or embarrassment, they always cover it up by editing the story to make everybody look better.  And what I see with Burgoyne becoming Astley is very much the kind of thing that we all find in our family histories if we dig deep enough.  To say that our families have handed down misinformation and disinformation is not to attack our families—they’re our families.  So when I say “our Thomas,” like “our Emma,” we don’t need them to be perfect exemplars of anything to be ours.  Just as… here’s my last book.  The ancestor that ends up on top of the cover is the one that had an illegitimate son that lived next door to his legitimate family, who fought for the Union in the South and then deserted, who had black ancestry, who murdered a man and got away with it.  These are the ones that genealogists love the most.  And so I see Thomas Burgoyne in our spiritual family the same way.  He’s ours, and …we are the spiritual heirs of all these people and we don’t need to evaluate them on levels of perfection.  We just need to appreciate their endless creativity, their willingness to defy every social convention and live lives in such a way that, especially for women, was just inconceivable a generation before… I think that the change from Brotherhood of Light to Church of Light was a very important shift because it’s gender neutral.  The mythology, whether it’s about Emma or Helena, is of women as instruments of these mysterious male figures who taught them everything they know and without whom they would be nothing.  The reality is one of brilliant female authors using every man they’ve ever known in their lives as fodder, as characters in their books.  So this is the  brotherhood and sisterhood of light.

Sir Aurel Stein: Archaeological Explorer  by Jeannette Mirsky

This 1977 book arrived as a Christmas gift from a friend who knew of my interest in nineteenth century explorers.  What he could not have known is that in the first chapter it sheds new light on a person who was prominently featured in The Masters Revealed.  In 1871, German Sanskritist George Buhler had requested access to a manuscript collection in Jammu, India, which was denied by the ruling Maharaja Ranbir Singh (1830-1885).  Four years after the death of Ranbir Singh, young archeologist Aurel Stein tried again with his heirs.  Biographer Mirsky writes: “The manuscript’s owner who had coldly refused Buhler had since died; three of his heirs had cut the manuscript, divided it, and were resolved to maintain the policy of their predecessor.  But Stein was not to be denied…he approached a pandit, member of the Kashmir State Council….”  This led to an official order by the maharaja to reunite the manuscripts, and Stein found:

I saw to my delighted surprise that the collection gathered from all over India by the late prince had been underestimated by me: it contains no less than about 8000 items including many old and important manuscripts.   I spent from six in the morning until about two P.M. looking throught he manuscripts brought to me and making notes.  Then I had an audience with the Maharajah who received me in the open Durbar [public audience].  Surrounded by his councilors and the entire court, he asked me to describe his father’s treasures and the state of European Sanskrit Studies.  I had the seat of honour on his right, Price Amar Singh on his left, and before us, on the carpet, the entire court sat.  Twelve of the most learned Pandits had been summoned at the Maharajah’s express wish, and I had to discourse in Sanskrit with them and also recite Vedic verses from the books printed in Europe which I presented to him.  In half an hour the audience was over.  On my entrance and departure the guards fired a salute which, an undeserved honour, made my elephants restless.”(p. 37)

A website devoted to Stein’s work with Kashmiri religious traditions is found here.

In a recent issue of Theosophical History, Michael Gomes reports on all of Olcott’s annotations in the margins of his personal copy of the English translation of Blavatsky’s Caves and Jungles of Hindustan. (He never read the book until after HPB’s death, as in her lifetime no translation was available.) In response to Blavatsky’s words “a gigantic rajput . . . Gulab-Lal-Sing” Olcott writes in the margin  “a Master unseen-M.”  While I had noted abundant internal evidence connecting the Caves and Jungles character Gulab-Singh with Mahatma Morya of the Mahatma Letters, there was only one piece of external evidence comparable to this annotation, a letter from Blavatsky to Prince Dondukov-Korsakov in which she identified Gulab-Singh as Morya.  Finding Olcott repeat the Morya/Gulab-Singh equivalence leaves no alternative to pursuing Blavatky’s writings in Russian for further clues to Morya.  As of the TS move to India, the historical Maharaja Gulab Singh of Jammu and Kashmir had been dead several years but his son Ranbir Singh occupied the throne and supported the TS founders financially and spiritually.  Olcott’s visit to his court in 1883 provides one of the most colorful passages in Old Diary Leaves.  (Cambridge University Press has reprinted the 1883-1887 fourth volume of Old Diary Leaves this year, another example of their excellent reprint series previously noted with reference to Archibald Grimke’s major work. ) The Masters Revealed noted Ranbir Singh’s enthusiasm for collecting sacred manuscripts, which might have inspired him to share material with Blavatsky and Olcott.  The Durbar in Lahore, the first book-length narrative published by Blavatsky in Russian, has never appeared in book form in English.  It is a nonfiction tale, or at least less fictionalized than Caves and Jungles, of a journey to a grand meeting of the Viceroy Robert Lytton in 1880, with Ranbir Singh most prominent in the story among several rajas and maharajas associated with the Theosophists.  Although never published in book form, Durbar was translated for serial publication in 1961 and the text is now available online here thanks to the efforts of Theosophist Mark Jaqua.

 The Coming Man.

Dr. Henry Wagner.

SCIENCE has demonstrated that every form of energy is derived from the sun. That life on our earth would soon become extinct if it were not for the sun’s rays animating and vivifying life in its infinite manifestations. The atmosphere, which gives manifestation to lightning, terrestrial magnetism and the aurora borealis, is one of the same vivifying forces that express themselves in vegetable, tree, animal and human life. They are all the same under different manifestations of power.

The sun comes to us as heat and he quits us as heat, but between his entrance and departure the multiform powers of our globe appear; they are all special forms of solar power.

History repeats itself in cycles of time regulated by the Sun’s change of polarity from one zodiacal sign to another, which requires 2,160 years to complete, therefore the present cycle will manifest the full and complete influence of the sun in Aquarius, the sign through which he is now operating or manifesting. This sign represents Man in the zodiac and corresponds to Man in Nature as the highest manifestation of intelligence organized in form. As the thinking animal, man is the supreme expression of the Infinite mind, capable of analyzing the sun’s vibrations through science, philosophy, religion and kindred subjects, which must and will be consciously evolved to his reason and understanding through and by means of the sun’s vibrations in Aquarius which will give a new expression of thoughts and ideas on all of these subjects, and this will be purely the outcome of this solar force in this sign of the man.

Aquarius is an airy sign, the lowest of the airy triplicity, and governs those vibrations from the sun’s rays that externalize vapors, gases and forces such as compressed air, liquid air, hydrogen and nitrogen in all their relations to vapor and air. The coming man will naturally vibrate to these subtle, dynamic influences and naturally evolve the potentialities hidden and concealed under this symbolism. The scope of its science and philosophy is so vast and momentous as to take in all that pertains to the chemistry of photography as revealed by the camera and magnetic needle and this sums up the history of mankind on our globe as revealed by geology and archeology, two sciences that picture humanity in its mutations and transmutations, its involutions and its evolutions as the thinking part of matter and force or intelligence. Man is the highest expression of matter and force in organic form on our earth and expresses intelligence that is in keeping with his relation to nature in all her varied departments of manifested and unmanifested life both visible and invisible, material and spiritual. As he finds himself related to both and in the solution of himself, he has the key to unlock the universe.

We do, therefore, declare for the coming Man a very high degree of knowledge in every branch of science, history and philosophy, as well as in religion; he will show himself master over the elements of nature by harnessing them and compelling their obedience to his will His knowledge of himself as the only organized expression of Deity, in material form, will enable him to manifest his God nature and shine forth as he has never done before on this earth, by reason of his larger growth of mental capacity, fuller development of his latent potentialities and the hidden attributes of his spiritual being which he is beginning to recognize as his real self. This knowledge, together with the more perfected condition of the earth on which he lives, will enable him. during the present cycle, to wield a power and produce a race of mental giants capable of great intellectual force expressed in an infinite number of inventions, mechanical devices and scientific demonstrations of the power of mind over matter, which is of itself positive evidence of their relation to each other as the dual expression of the one truth and one supreme power and deific intelligence governing all. ,

The sun is the motive power of every force and intelligence, including man as the highest and best developed of all its evolved creations or manifestations of intelligence. He is only in his young manhood as yet and will gradually mature into the perfect man as the sun progresses farther into the sign Aquarius to evolve forth his full powers of expression and intelligence. We may look forward for 2,160 years and say in advance what is more than likely to transpire upon earth regarding man and his unfoldment physically, mentally and spiritually as the sun’s vibrations externalize the potential powers and attributes hidden under the symbol of the man.

A race of intellectual giants is certain to be the fruitage of this cycle as the personified wisdom of the sun manifested in the son of man. The old conditions of past cycles are passing away and will continue to decay until they are no more.

Nations are but the aggregations of individuals composing them. They have their birth, life and death, the same as individuals,the only difference being in the cycle governing them. Each cycle expresses its own latent powers and intelligence, which is always natural to the sign through which the sun is passing and cannot be forced into any expression but its own. This law is as fixed and unalterable regarding the cycles as the law governing trees, animals or men. Therefore, it is easy to say in advance what will be expressed by man during this cycle of the . man and what the coming man will be, that he will be an intellectual giant and mental genius, capable of self government by reason of his mental development and control over himself and the elements that environ him, is self-evident. Government must conform its laws to this high end, as the mental growth of the race will demand it. Liberty of speech and action will shape themselves as justice requires to every demand made upon humanity in evolving its latent powers of mind and muscle. Mind, the superior force, will control and manifest the Aquarian characteristics of intelligence in every department of human thought. Muscle must obey the demands and behests of the mental force and work out its supreme will through every avenue of expression. Labor and capital should have but one interest and one aim in expressing thought through invention and scientific discoveries. There is no law for man as a unit, apart from the whole race, therefore, he must obey the highest law of racial development and conform his individual efforts to the racial evolution.

The pioneers of a new country are always in advance of those who come after them as they must cut down the timber, burn the stumps and underbrush, plow and till the soil before its latent properties can be turned to profit, just so with the pioneers of this new cycle upon which the race is fairly entered. They must endure the fatigue and hardships of battle in the overthrow of the old conditions that belong to the past cycle. The sun’s passover from Pisces, the fisherman, into Aquarius, the man, will overthrow all of our creeds and dogmas of theology and medicine as well as politics and this is the real cause for all the disturbance the race has witnessed in these departments of human thought since 1881, the entry of the sun into the sign Aquarius. The tearing down and cutting off by wars, famines and disease as well as the conflict engendered in science, philosophy and religion has its correspondence on the mental plane as well as the physical; they go hand in hand in nature’s evolution. Therefore, the coming race will utilize every condition for the influx of the sun’s vibrations that will manifest its highest expression in human thought on every subject requiring the exercise of mind. We must look Nature’s operations squarely in the face amd not try to impede or obstruct her onward, upward march as she will slough off all fungus growth of whatever kind and nature that man in his ignorance and selfishness opposes as barriers to her onward march. Race succeeds race in cyclic expression as naturally as crop succeeds crop of fruit or cereal. We are apt to deplore the operation of Nature’s law in this manifestation as it applies to mankind while we extol the same law when it is confined to the products of the earth.

This appeared in 1907 in The Mountain Pine, published in Green Mountain Falls by Chrystola Publishing Company.  More to come on this publication and the Colorado Spiritualist scene.

Lately I’ve been looking into the lives of Henry Wagner, M.D., and his wife Belle Ewing Wagner. Both were Ohio-born, but lived almost their entire married lives in the West, where for thirty years they were the leaders of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor and publishers of related material via Astro Philosophical Publications. Here to the left is a brief summary of Henry’s life as I have stored data on ancestry.com, from his marriage through his death.  He had received a medical degree in 1871, age 21, from Bellevue Hospital Medical College, then returned home to Ohio to marry.  Below is the Bing bird’s eye view of the address of the Wagner home as listed in the 1910 census,  which would have been HBofL headquarters at the time Benjamin Williams first encountered the Brotherhood.

One reason the title of this blog refers to adepts is that it has always seemed to me a healthier way of thinking about spiritual exemplars than the related term Masters.  Another is that this terminology has been preferred in the Church of Light tradition, in reference both to our sources and our aspirations. It has long been apparent that belief in and willingness to serve “the Master” or “the Masters” evokes something in believers that is willfully blind to the human limitations of the idealized figure.  Erich Fromm calls this masochistic dependency: 

The passive-authoritarian, or in other words, the masochistic and submissive character aims — at least subconsciously — to become a part of a larger unit, a pendant, a particle, at least a small one, of this “great” person, this “great” institution, or this “great” idea. The person, institution, or idea may actually be significant, powerful, or just incredibly inflated by the individual believing in them… This masochistic and submissive individual, who fears freedom and escapes into idolatry, is the person on which the authoritarian systems — Nazism and Stalinism — rest.

Adepts are by definition such by virtue of their accomplishments and abilities, not due to positions as authority figures in hierarchies.  Masters imply disciples or slaves.  Perhaps this accounts in some part for the aggressive, cruel behavior seen in Masters-based belief systems that have been considered “destructive cults.”  Fromm explains the sadistic aspects of authoritarianism:

More difficult than understanding the passive-authoritarian, masochistic character is understanding the active-authoritarian, the sadistic character. To his followers he seems self-confident and powerful but yet he is as frightened and alone as the masochistic character. While the masochist feels strong because he is a small part of something greater, the sadist feels strong because he has incorporated others — if possible many others; he has devoured them, so to speak. The sadistic-authoritarian character is as dependent on the ruled as the masochistic -authoritarian character on the ruler. However the image is misleading. As long as he holds power, the leader appears — to himself and to others — strong and powerful. His powerlessness becomes only apparent when he has lost his power, when he can no longer devour others, when he is on his own.

The Authoritarian Personality, the article in which these passages are found, was first published in 1957.  It makes the crucial distinction between rational authority and irrational authority.  Here perhaps lies the psychological difference between studying the wisdom of the adepts, and following the guidance of the Masters:

Rational authority is the recognition of authority based on critical evaluation of competences. When a student recognizes the teacher’s authority to know more than him, then this a reasonable evaluation of his competence. The same is the case, when I as the passenger of a ship recognize the authority of the captain to make the right and necessary decisions if in danger. Rational authority is not based on excluding my reason and critique but rather assumes it as a prerequisite. This does not make me small and the authority great but allows authority to be superior where and as long it possesses competence.

The spirit in which Church of Light members study the Brotherhood of Light lessons seems to be very much in tune with Fromm’s prescription of rational authority.  But there is another kind of authority that is irrational:

Irrational authority is different. It is based on emotional submission of my person to another person: I believe in him being right, not because he is, objectively speaking, competent nor because I rationally recognize his competence. In the bonds to the irrational authority, there exists a masochistic submission by making myself small and the authority great. I have to make it great, so that I can — as one of its particles — can also become great. The rational authority tends to negate itself, because the more I understand the smaller the distance to the authority becomes. The irrational authority tends to deepen and to prolong itself. The longer and the more dependent I am the weaker I will become and the more I will need to cling to the irrational authority and submit.

What then should be the goal of spiritual exploration, if not finding and serving authority figures?

But I do not want to close without emphasizing that the individual’s goal must be to become his own authority; i.e. to have a consciousness in moral issues, conviction in questions of intellect, and fidelity in emotional matters. However, the individual can only have such an inner authority if he has matured enough to understand the world with reason and love. The development of these characteristics is the basis for one’s own authority and therefore the basis for political democracy.

A correspondent of Emma Hardinge Britten during the writing of Ghost Land, Wittgenstein has emerged as a person of interest in the search for Chevalier Louis de B–.  This portrait is from an online royalty guide.

A Spiritualist convert in the 1860s, he published many reports of his experiences with the paranormal, including this letter written in French to his parents:

Warsaw, July 17th, 1867. It seems an age, my dear parents, since I have had any news of you; my mother’s last letter was dated June 5th. I have occupied myself much with Spiritualism of late, and my mediumistic faculties have developed themselves in an astonishing way. I write often with great facility in various kinds of writing; I have had direct communications from the spirit which haunts Berlebourg, a woman of our family who killed herself 102 years ago. I have, moreover, obtained a very singular result. One of my friends, Lieut-General Baron de Korf, deceased some months since, manifested himself to me (without my having thought of him the least in the world), to enjoin upon me to indicate to his family the place where his will had been maliciously hidden ; that is to say, in a chest of drawers in the house where he died. I did not know that the family were looking for this will, and had not found it. Well, they found it in the very place which the spirit had indicated to me. It is a document of great importance for the management of his property, and for the settlement of questions which will arise when his children attain their majority. Here a testimony to stand criticism.

Britten writes about him at length in Nineteenth Century Miracles:

Amongst the many notable personages who aided to maintain the prestige of Spiritualism in Russia, not only by his admirable life, but also by his openly avowed interest in the movement, and the unbounded influence which he exercised over the mind of his friend and master the late Czar, was Prince Emil de Sayn Wittgenstein. This noble gentleman not only held high rank in the Russian army and served as aide-de-camp to the Emperor during the unhappy war with Turkey, but few of those who approached His Imperial Majesty’s person, enjoyed the royal confidence in the same degree.  In a correspondence maintained during some years with the author of this volume, Prince Emil asked for and obtained a number of volumes of the best American literature for the Emperor’s library.  Previous to the fatal war with Turkey the Emperor and Prince Wittgenstein both received assurances through Mrs. Britten’s Mediumship that their lives would be spared during the conflict, but be sacrificed—the one to the insurrectionary spirit at home, the other to the feverish effects of the deadly  campaign, into which he was about the plunge.  Both these gentlemen placed implicit faith in these prophecies…[i]

[i] NCM, 363.

In the rarely-seen Volume II of Ghost Land, Emma Hardinge Britten predicts a future religion that sounds like a neopagan revival of Hermeticism:

In this Spiritual Sun and its spheres, like the spheres of earth and other planets, are conserved all the beauty, perfection, and deathless spiritual life of the physical parent sun. Here the glorious and perfected souls of solar men become the deific and tutelary lords of creation. They are the angels of the entire solar system, and in their ascending spheres become archangels, gods, “thrones, dominions, powers,” ruling and governing the planetary worlds of their own system until time shall be no more.

Here let us rest.

Even if my readers will follow me into this revival of the ancient teachings upon the problem of Deity, they may tire of stretching the forces of mind up and away to the solar roads of infinity. They may shrink also with conventional, though all too unreasoning disgust, from what it has become the cant of sects to call “Heathenism, Paganism, or Fire Worship.”

We know that the views of antiquity concerning Deity, now reproduced in these Spiritual teachings, will be indignantly rejected by those who have been accustomed to image forth their God as a huge man, seated on a huge throne, listening to hymns of praise from the saints in Heaven, or to shrieks of agony from the tortured in Hell to all eternity.

It matters little to me, however, what men think now or what they accept or reject for to-day. In the years that shall be, humanity will all worship with me the Central Spiritual Sun, with its Elohim, tutelary gods, angels, and guardians of this solar system, and bend their mortal lives on earth, only to be worthy to join these hosts of Heaven. Meantime, I write because I have heard THE VOICE, and obey the command it implies, “Be still, and know that I am God.” It is a strange and significant fact that all religious systems upon the face of the earth originated in solar worship, most commonly in the acceptance of the physical sun as the sign and symbol of a Spiritual sun. So taught, so worshiped India, Egypt, Chaldea, Persia, Greece, and Rome. So believed, so wrote, though mostly in Cabala, the wandering Jews. So did the Cabalistic writers of the Jewish Scriptures imply, when they put into the mouths of the Elohim the words—”Let us make man in OUR image “; when they gave the Jewish nation in charge to one of the Elohim, “ Jah “ or “ Jehovah “; when they filled their Scriptures with a thousand figures of speech, all indicative of Deity in the brightness of solar glory, or the obscurity which hid that brightness in clouds and darkness from sinful men. So wrote the Cabalists in imaging forth the fall of Spirit through the creative sunbeam in the fall of man and the origin of sex. So, in a word, will all the original mysteries of theology be yet explained, and the subtle webs of priestcraft be broken and swept away.

Gary Lachman has written many valuable books about esotericism that combine erudition with a sense of spiritual and intellectual adventure.  Ouspensky, Jung, and Steiner have been subjects of some of his earlier works, and he is currently working on a study of Blavatsky.  His new book is essential reading for any student of Hermeticism, but very engaging for the non-specialist with an interest in history.  A recent review  featured on his website gives an excellent summary of the content.  Lachman provides an excerpt in this blog post. I have added the book to the recommended reading list for the site, and will post more about it after a second reading. This is a book to treasure, and ponder.

Following up on a July blog post  from Marc Demarest, Prince Felix Nepomuk de Salm-Salm was the first person to be named as the original of Chevalier Louis de B-, in an 1876 review of Ghost Land.   More details about these allegations will appear in the forthcoming edition.  His Wikipedia biography reveals some obvious parallels with certain aspects of Chevalier Louis.  But Louis was alleged by Emma to be alive in 1872, 1876, and 1892, while Salm-Salm was killed in battle during the Franco-Prussian War in 1870.  If anyone authorized Emma to use his likeness as a model for Ghost Land, it would have to be his widow.  Agnes Joy de Salm-Salm has inspired several recent biographies, the two most recent of which, Soldier Princess, and the Prince and the Yankee, I have ordered and will soon read.

The obvious problem with Salm-Salm as a model for Louis, other than his death date, is his very minor interest in Spiritualism.   In the fourth chapter of her memoir, set in 1863, Agnes describes her explorations in Spiritualism, under the guidance of Mrs. James Speirs:

Another lady from whom I received much kindness, and whom I remember with great pleasure, was Mrs. James Speirs, the wife of a wealthy broker. She was an English lady of very good family, and I became much attached to her. She was very lively, and at that time an enthusiastic spiritualist.

The spiritualistic epidemic was then commencing to rage in America. One heard of nothing but of spirits and of mediums. All tables and other furniture seemed to have become alive, and you could not sit down upon a chair without a spiritual suspicion.

When I became acquainted with Mrs. Speirs she was still in her first flush of enthusiasm, and most anxious to convert every one to her new creed, which upset our long-entertained notions, and was in direct contradiction with the teachings of my religion. I therefore treated spiritualism as heresy, and defended myself against its contagious power. The more I doubted, however, the more eager became Mrs. Speirs to convince me. Her husband being, like most brokers, more of a materialist than of a spiritual turn of mind, treated these new-fangled things as deception and humbug, but being also a well-trained husband he let Mrs. Speirs have her way, comforting himself with the hope, supported by experience, that this fashionable fancy would die out with time, and give place to some other less dangerous to the brain.

I have been told that spiritualism originated in Germany, like mesmerism, which has been connected with it. Though this belief seems to have died out in Germany, it is still in full bloom in America and in England, where spiritualism, in all its many different shades, counts its believers in thousands, in spite of common sense and religion.

It would be almost impossible, and lead me too far, to describe all the nuances of this sect, which includes mesmerism, somnambulism, free-love people, &c. The leading feature of this creed is, however, at least as I understand it, the belief that the spirits of the dead do not pass from this earth, but that they remain here amongst us unseen, occupying different spheres, and fulfilling more or less high duties according to their more or less virtuous life in the body. Some who did evil have become bad spirits and oppose the good ones. Which duties are allotted to all these spirits of the different spheres, I could not exactly make out, for I cannot think that making strange noises, causing tables to dance and performing all kinds of useless and childish tricks, should be their only occupation. Though I, as I said before, resisted this epidemic on the ground of religion and common sense, I could not help becoming interested in this strange aberration, and feeling tempted to witness some manifestations of spiritualism. The Prince, however, tried to dissuade me from such an attempt, as he was afraid that the excitement would act too strongly on my imagination. I therefore abstained from visiting some of those public exhibitions of professional spiritualists, but did not resist the entreaties of Mrs. Speirs to have some spiritual entertainment at home, against which good Salm had no objection….

We had several of such private spiritual entertainments, which amused me much. Though I did not believe in anything supernatural, I was puzzled as to how the things I had witnessed were produced, for what I had seen and heard was indeed surprising and wonderful, and well calculated to turn weak or imaginative brains.

Sometimes things would not go on in the regular way. The questions were answered all wrong, and the whole spiritual world seemed thrown into confusion. The mediums were not at a loss to explain this state of things. They ascribed it to the influence of the evil spirits who counteracted the doings of the good ones, and we were requested to assist the latter in their struggle with our magnetic influence. We succeeded; the evil spirits were driven from the places they had usurped, and things went on in the regular spiritual manner….

I tell the facts as I saw them. They are indeed strange, and I cannot explain them, but these knocking and noisy and sawing spirits are too absurd. When I soon afterwards went to Washington, Miss Sugden gave me a letter of introduction to a celebrated tipping medium, and once when Salm visited me there we invited that lady to entertain the company with her spiritnal performance. The lady sat down to play at a very heavy piano, which, after some time, commenced moving, two of its feet being lifted some inches from the ground. We were astonished, but the gentlemen present laughed, and Salm said that he was also a tipping medium, and could perform the same feat without the spirits. He sat down, and after having run over the keys the piano moved in the same manner as before. He had simply pressed his. knees under it, and lifted it on one side an inch or two. The detected medium received her five dollars, and retired somewhat confused.

One of the many enjoyable aspects of looking anew at Ghost Land is seeing it in terms of the sequence of the author’s works.  Its predecessor, Modern American Spiritualism, is crucial in identifying parallel passages in Book II of Ghost Land, set mainly in America. This volume, never seen in book form, details Chevalier Louis de B–‘s adventures in America after the European and English occult odyssey depicted in Part I and the Indian melodrama of Part II. But for most of Ghost Land, the crucial parallel work is Nineteenth Century Miracles (1884). Here, on pp. 90-91, is found what seems to be an expression of regret about the mysterious circumstances under which Art Magic and Ghost Land were published:

In America, where the sources of popular power are derived from the people, Spiritualism may be found more generally represented by the rank and file of Society, than among the wealthier classes.

In Europe on the contrary, where the governing power centres in an hereditary and influential aristocracy, the people derive their opinions as they do their laws and fashions, from the ruling classes, and it is chiefly among these that Spiritualism flourishes.

It is not claimed that this wonderful movement is confined to any class in either hemisphere. It will be found in the hut, and the palace; in the mining camp, and the halls of legislation. Nevertheless its greatest prevalence is ever with the ruling power. Since then Spiritualism in Europe takes the deepest hold of those whose rank and station induces them to shrink from subjecting their personal experiences to public criticism, the author too frequently becomes the recipient of valuable testimony which cannot be made available, because the communicants insist on withholding their true names and addresses. “Miss E.” and “Mrs. D.;” “Captain A.” and “My Lord X,Y.Z.” are impersonals, whom no one places any confidence in. There is no satisfaction in offering such shadowy testimony to those who are asked to believe in occurrences of an unprecedented and often startling character. Resolving as we have done, not to demand credence for phenomenal incidents upon any testimony open to the charge of unreliability, we feel obliged to relegate an immense mass of interesting matter of this kind to the obscurity which unauthorized statements justly incur.

(END QUOTE)

This is quite an 1884 about-face from the 1876 promoter of Chevalier Louis de B– and his [spoiler alert] father-in-law John Cavendish Dudley in two books. In addition to blowback from the Louis character and claims on his behalf, Emma is undoubtedly here reacting to the behavior of her former colleagues Olcott and Blavatsky in India. The former enthusiast of adeptic pseudonyms sounds very disillusioned about the practice here, written the year of the Emma Coulomb revelations. But in 1892 she is once again writing on behalf of Chevalier Louis, so has apparently had third thoughts about the practice after the second thoughts revealed in this 1884 book.

Ghost Land shows evidence of familiarity with British occultism and American Spiritualism, both of which could be claimed by Britten. But it also includes settings and characters in India, Russia, and Germany; all countries unknown to Emma by personal experience.  The search for Ghost Land influences among the Russian nobility must start with her colleague Blavatsky, but also includes a mutual acquaintance of Britten and Blavatsky who will be the topic of a future blog post.

I’m looking into background for Ghost Land combing through Emma Hardinge Britten’s Spiritualist histories in search of parallel anecdotes or citations.  One of the anomalies of the text is that the author, Emma, is an English commoner with no personal experience on the European continent, recounting the adventures of European occultist nobility.  Many characters will be mentioned as Emma’s connections to this world, one of whom is described in a fascinating passage from a 1921 memoir by journalist Melville Stone.  This brief and colorful biography of the Baron de Palm connects him with the court of Bavaria and the scandal of Lola Montez.  It concludes with his association with the Theosophical Society, and his memorable funeral in which both Emma Hardinge Britten and Helena Blavatsky played prominent roles.  Each was later accused of plagiarizing materials left by de Palm for Art Magic and Isis Unveiled respectively, in one case Emma being the accuser and Helena the accused.  Yet nothing of a literary legacy of de Palm survives to lends support to any such assertions.  Stone’s description of him makes it plausible that he could be the source of anecdotes for either author, whether or not his writings played any significant role in their books.

Thanks to Marc Demarest, yesterday I discovered this incredible new tool at Google books, which allows one to search the frequency of various words and phrases in literature over time.  If astrology, Tarot, and Hermetic are our three most significant keywords, this diagram is instructive (click to enlarge):

There is a leap in astrology around 1920, just as the public work of Elbert Benjamine begins.  I think we can safely assume that his prolific writing had something to do with this, in that he was riding a wave of public interest in the subject.

As for the relative significance of terms describing our source traditions, Spiritualism, Theosophy, and occultism yield the following picture over two centuries:

As indicated in my conference presentation in Albuquerque, most of my energy as a researcher will be focused in 2012-2014 on Sarah Stanley Grimke, Thomas H. Burgoyne, and Genevieve Stebbins. A chapter discussing Burgoyne and Stebbins will be included in a forthcoming collection, and a new edition of Grimke’s collected writings will follow.

But first I have the great privilege and pleasure of sharing editorial responsibility for a new edition of Ghost Land.  My professional background is not as an academic scholar but a public library director, and regardless of the historical interest of any author’s work, “is it fun to read?” is high among my criteria for recommending a book.  Ghost Land is the most fun read out of the entire body of Victorian occult literature, in my opinion. Much of the entertainment  is in the convoluted plot twists featuring occult brotherhoods in Europe, England, and India. The book portrays itself as a series of autobiographical sketches, but was generally perceived as being a novel. Novels often have some factual basis, however, and Emma Hardinge Britten’s life was rich in episodes involving paranormal claims and experiments. Sorting out the fact from the fiction in Ghost Land is a task reminiscent of what the Jesus Seminar has tried to do with the New Testament. Just as Bible scholars have four gospels to appraise, each with its own perspective on Jesus, students of Ghost Land can find four different “gospels” in distinct sections of the book. For the Church of Light, these “gospels,” however fictional they might be, are the only narrative accounts of the occult brotherhoods alleged behind the scenes of our origins.

The last book I wrote for the Western Esoteric Traditions series for SUNY Press was about Edgar Cayce (1877-1945); growing up in coastal Virginia I first learned of him from family members who had been acquainted with him as a neighbor and friend. Like the Brotherhood of Light lessons, Cayce’s readings emphasize ESP, astrology, and constructive work on attitudes and emotions.  Cayce was also a close contemporary of Elbert Benjamine (1882-1951), so many of the political and social issues raised by his readings overlap with those on which Benjamine comments. Much of the work I did on the Cayce readings involved appraising their reliability (and unreliability) in various dimensions like health advice, predictions of the future, and portrayals of the past. Since hundreds of those readings address the historical Jesus, in order to appraise them I had to delve into the vast literature of the Jesus Seminar and its critics. Divergent views of Jesus as a historical figure are no less prevalent now than at any earlier time, but in the scholarly world those views must be grounded on evidence and reason, unlike the purely theological faith-based disputes of the past. No one seems to be on the verge of any major breakthrough in Jesus studies that will sway opinion in one direction or the other, but many scholars are working on various aspects of the mystery. Likewise with Ghost Land, three other scholars will contribute essays to the new edition, and do not expect to provide many final answers but rather to elucidate the mysteries associated with the text.

A central mystery of the text is the complicated relationship of the Orphic, Berlin, and Ellora Brotherhoods of adepts portrayed in Ghost Land to the later Mahatmas of The Occult World, Esoteric Buddhism, the Mahatma Letters, etc. This brings me back to a subject that I address with reluctance after being labeled as “controversial,” a “Blavatsky-basher,” and so forth. Applying reason and evidence to the subject of the Theosophical Masters was explicitly denounced in official Theosophical media by a handful of propagandists. The Mahatmas and adepts must remain forever beyond the reach of historians and especially heretics or unbelievers; even asking historical questions about them implies spiritual incapacity. Yet the  majority of Theosophical reviewers of The Masters Revealed were favorable, and the “no historians allowed anywhere near our sacred Mahatmas” stance of the leaders does not seem to convince all members. Source questions about the Cayce readings have not brought any denunciations from ARE (Association for Research and Enlightenment) quarters, but a stance of indifference toward the subject has been evident in the organization—although not  in its affiliated Atlantic University.  After Edgar Cayce in Context  I was ready to forgo any further literary investigations related to organizations preserving a public image based on historical avoidance. For the past decade my research and writing have been directed elsewhere than occultism and religion.  Through a series of events I discovered and joined the Church of Light at the end of 2005. Its lack of a personality cult around the founding figures has made for a welcoming environment for someone like me who is always seeking “light, more light,” even on subjects others want kept in the dark.

Ghost Land tells its story through four narrative voices,  in addition to that of Emma Hardinge Britten: Chevalier Louis as an adolescent in Part 1, as an adult in Part 2, and as an elderly man in Book II, plus his associate John Cavendish Dudley in the transition from Part 1 to Part 2. Each of these gives a somewhat different view of our roots, and at this point Marc and I are making no assumptions about the relative amounts of fact and fiction in different sections of the book. Emma has been far too reliable as a witness to history in some contexts, and far too unreliable in others, to allow for any a priori assumptions about her as a truthteller or fabulist.  She was both, which makes working on Ghost Land such a pleasure, as well as a challenge.  For the rest of 2011, my posts in this blog will consist of reports about different aspects of Ghost Land.  Due to the preponderance of spam in blog comments, I have turned off that feature, but welcome comments by email at kpauljohnson@yahoo.com.  Please identify yourself as a CofL member and whether or not you would like the comment posted; comments are invited from those who wish them to remain private as well as anyone who cares to do so publicly.

In closing, I recommend these comments by Elbert Benjamine about bias in the study of history, and in the press, from the book Imponderable Forces:

“…the histories of two countries about the same war, or the same crises, in which they were antagonists, are always varnished in such a way as to convince the child that his nation is vastly superior and that the other nation is filled with detestable people.  Napoleon, who made considerable history of sorts, and therefore was entitled to his opinion, decided that history is mostly lies.  That is, like so much else we read, see, and hear, its chief concern is to convince us, regardless of the actual facts, that someone was right and someone else was wrong…. I have singled out history as a single example  in the schools, and corporate propaganda as a single example in the colleges…others might be cited, all going to show that from the time a child enters an educational institution until he leaves college he is more or less under the influence of those who are not impartial in their views.  Propaganda of some kind is constantly at work seeking to sway his thinking into biased channels.”(p. 84)

Emma, whatever her virtues, was a propagandist for Spiritualism, first and always.  Helena likewise devoted her considerable writing talents to propaganda for Theosophy, much of which was anti-Spiritualist.  The fact that these two quarreling founding mothers of the Theosophical Society were propagandists for opposing belief systems should dissuade us from taking sides in 19^th century disputes.  Readers who are neither Spiritualists nor Theosophists perhaps stand to benefit most from the publication of a new Ghost Land edition that sheds new light on the origins of both.

This book published by Edward Maitland in 1896 describes one of the foremost proponents of Hermeticism in the nineteenth century.  Anna Kingsford was also one of the more colorful eccentrics in the history of the Theosophical Society.  It is surely more than coincidence that Kingsford’s Hermetic Society was created in the same year and the same country as Davidson/Burgoyne’s Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor.  Both resulted from a crisis that year in the British Theosophical Society.  Not only the controversy about Blavatsky’s phenomena, but also the imposition by A.P. Sinnett of the authority of his pseudonymous correspondents M. and K.H., caused the rupture.  Another striking parallel between the Hermeticism of Kingsford and that of the HBofL is the insistence that 1881 marked the pivotal shift into a new era.  But a major difference is that Kingsford’s beliefs were more rooted in esoteric Christianity, whereas the HBofL reflected the Free Thought leanings of Emma Hardinge Britten.

The reprinting of Maitland’s work by Cambridge University Press is the second instance of this reprint series yielding treasures relevant to Church of Light history.  Archibald Grimke’s biography of William Lloyd Garrison was the subject of a previous blog post.  This reprint is more directly relevant to the history of neo-Hermeticism; Kingsford is a precursor of the Church of Light in her ideas, although not organizationally.  Her Hermetic Society did not long survive her.

The Church of Light convention provided many opportunities to talk about history, and one of the tidbits I picked up during research seemed to really interest the members.   This online family tree  includes a list of the siblings of Elizabeth Benjamine, born Elva Elizabeth Dorris and married to Charles Morris before her marriage to Benjamin Williams– who became Elbert Benjamine.  Elizabeth’s youngest brother Elbert drowned in 1899

at 14 or 15 years old.  When her husband adopted a pen name years later, he chose the name of Elizabeth’s youngest brother.   Then for the surname he chose the French word for “youngest child in the family”– although he chose the feminine form.