Category: Blog

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.

There is a moment in the life of every serious soul, when things which were before unseen and unheard in the world around him become visible and audible. This startling moment comes to some sooner, to others later, but to all, who are not totally given up to the service of self, at some time surely. From that moment, a change passes over such an one, for more and more he hears mysterious voices, and clearer and more clear he sees apparitional forms floating up from the depths above which he kneels. Whence come they, what mean they? He leans over the abyss, and lo! the sounds to which he hearkens are the voices of human weeping and the forms at which he gazes are the apparitions of human woe; they beckon to him, and voices beseech him in multitudinous accent and heart-break, “come over, come down, oh! friend and brother, and help us.”  Then he straightway puts away the thoughts and things of the past, and girding himself with the things and the thoughts of the divine OUGHT and the almighty MUST, he goes over and down to the rescue.

Thus opens the second chapter of Archibald Henry Grimke’s 1891 biography of the abolitionist hero William Lloyd Garrison.   Reprinted last year by Cambridge University Press in its Cambridge Library Series, Grimke’s first book is an expression of hero-worship that reveals as much about its author as its subject.  Preparations for the history preconference of the Church of Light have led into research on the Grimke family, because Archibald’s wife Sarah Stanley Grimke was one of the crucial figures in our history.  Abolitionism was intertwined with Spiritualism, and Archibald’s family had been involved with both reform movements.  This passage gives a taste of the Spiritualist element in certain abolitionist rhetoric.)

One of the most colorful figures in New York society of the late 19^th century  was Albert Rawson’s host for a seven week visit to Cyprus in 1874.   Luigi di Cesnola was appointed US consul in Cyprus in 1865, and while there he became interested in archaeological digs around the island.   According to his 1971 biography The Glitter and the Gold, he became “consul for three other nations, Greece, Russia, and one he never named.”(p. 89)   This involvement in diplomacy in the eastern Mediterranean places him in the milieu of several important figures associated with the Theosophical Society founders.   James Peebles was also a US consul in the Ottoman Empire during the same time period, while Raphael Borg was British vice-consul in Cairo and Richard F. Burton was British consul at Damascus.   In the next blog post I will discuss Greek involvement in the same milieu.

Rawson was invited to Cyprus to help catalog the finds, and his artistic work is still visible in the book published by Cesnola in 1877.  Before returning to America  Cesnola made efforts to sell the Cypriot antiquities to the Hermitage and Louvre museums.  But ultimately the collection would be sold to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and Cesnola became its founding director when the museum opened in 1880.  The  Cyprus collection made him rich and famous, but later led to severe criticism that undermined his reputation and that of the Met.  Nonetheless he kept his job until his death in 1904, and defied his critics with full support from the Museum board. 

In Rogues Gallery: The Secret Story of the Lust, Lies, Greed, and Betrayals that Made the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Broadway Books, 2009), Michael Gross begins his narrative of the Met with a 43-page chapter on Cesnola, who is introduced as “an expatriate Italian, a minor aristocrat, and a soldier of fortune who’d survived the Austrian and Crimean wars, a passage by ship to New York, years in poverty, and a suicide attempt before distinguishing himself as a Union officer in the Civil War.”(p. 23)  Although he was neither a count nor a general, he claimed both titles and was widely known by the latter.  Having no training in archaeology, Cesnola’s methods of acquiring and restoring objects  were far from what are now professional standards.  Gross concludes of Cesnola that he is “remembered, if at all, as a cultural criminal who looted and pillaged and stole not just objects but an irreplaceable opportunity to learn about the past.”(p. 64)

Cesnola adopted Louis as a first name soon after reaching the United States, and as Louis di Cesnola he comes up with some interesting hits on Google.  No spiritual interests are mentioned explicitly, but the Garibaldian theme and links to Italian and Greek immigrant communities in New York are relevant to the early days of the TS in New York.  More on Cesnola is found on this website in an attractive format.  Albert Rawson claimed acquaintance with Garibaldi dating back to the 1850s, highly relevant as a point of common interest in that Cesnola had been closely associated with the the Italian leader.

On June 22, 1878, L’Opinione Nazionale of Florence published a letter from HPB in which she comments of Olcott that “our President, as representing the opnions of our Society, is taking a very prominent part with the Republicans of the Italian Colony in this our country in inaugurating a monument to Mazzini…The commission would like me to make an address in the Russian language; but with all the love and admiration that I avow for Mazzini I have had to refuse. “(BCW I:392)   TS founder Herbert C. Monachesi was a member of the Mazzini Commission presided over by Dr. G. Ceccarini.   The members of the Ionian TS in Corfu, the first branch outside New York, showed similar interest in the Mazzini celebrations in New York.  My next blog post will explore the Ionian TS as a factor in the establishment of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor.

Albert Rawson in How the Arabian Nights Inspired the American Dream, 1790-1935 by Susan Nance

This 2009 book from UNC Press explores  the marketing of Arab and Middle Eastern cultures in America during an era when “playing Eastern” provided a livelihood to many entrepreneurs.   The book jacket describes them:  “Over the course of 150 years, until the Great Depression, generations of native- and foreign-born actors took on lavish North African, Middle Eastern, or Indian costumes, accents, and names…in ways that could be controversial or celebrated but always had to be financially viable.”   Among those who scrambled to make a living as intermediaries between east and west, none is more fascinating than Albert Leighton Rawson.  Much of Nance’s third chapter discusses Rawson and the Shriners.  What made it possible for an American like Rawson to travel to Egypt in the 1850s, and meet there Russians and Britons who shared his interest in the cultures of the Eastern Mediterranean?  Nance sheds light on the changes of the period:

Growing personal wealth for some as well as blooming communication and transportation industries that integrated the telegraph, postal service, publishing, and rail with the new international steamer service made a Middle Eastern visit much more doable for Americans in terms of time, money, and health  risks, than, say, India, Rhodesia, or the Philippines.  For instance, in 1860 over 19,000 Americans would cross the Atlantic, and five hundred of them toured Egypt.  A typical route saw Americans voyage in winter to Alexandria by ship, south through Egypt by boat on the Nile and back, then by camel and horse caravan across the Sinai, to Palestine, Syria, and perhaps Anatolia…a large minority of these tourists had the skills with which to compose publishable travel narratives and the business or social connections with which to secure publication deals.(p.34)

Nance concludes her discussion of Rawson with a summary of his complexity:

Rawson’s work for Harper’s, his appeal to Biblical scholars, and his esoteric mystical pursuits beg the question of which performance was the real Albert Leighton Rawson, and how he could shift back and forth between a Protestant-friendly persona of Holy Land scholar and illustrator and the complex guise of a brotherly Muslim mystic and confidante to chivalrous Arab warriors.  Rawson presented himself to successions of different people, each in a slightly different way, more or less mystical, more or less Protestant, more or less Masonic, more or less Muslim, to serve his entrepreneurialism and the Ex Oriente Lux message he might need at any given moment. (p. 97)

In 1853 he was already lecturing to the YMCA in Boston about his knowledge of the Holy Land, so marketing himself as an expert began in his early twenties.  His painting career was moderately successful but engravings seem to have been his livelihood.   Rawson was one of eleven founding members of the American Watercolor Society and a fair sampling of his art  is viewable online.  A recent sale of his work  shows a respectable price.  Rawson was recently discussed in Jay Kinney’s The Masonic Myth (HarperCollins 2009), with emphasis on his role in creating the founding myth of the Shriners.  He calls Rawson “something of a fringe Masonic confidence man” since he “claimed to have translated the original rituals from the Arabic and to have provided the new organization with actual contacts with Eastern brotherhoods, most notably the Bektashi order of Sufis.”  This makes for an “elaborate mythos concocted by Rawson and a few others intent on fleshing out the Orientalist motif.”(p. 77)   Another recent book in which Rawson is discussed is Roderick Bradford’s D.M. Bennett: The Truth Seeker (Prometheus, 2006).  Rawson’s involvement with Bennett in the Free Thought movement developed in New York but extended to Europe where they appeared jointly at an 1880 Free Thought conference in Brussels.  Rawson and Bennett were equally targeted during this period by crusading moralist Anthony Comstock, who exposed Rawson’s history of an 1851 larceny conviction and charges of bigamy.  John Patrick Deveney has deftly unraveled some of Rawson’s automythologizing in a series articles published in Theosophical History, which Nance and Kinney draw upon in their portrayals of him.   His Bible engravings were the greatest part of his published body of work, yet he was openly disdainful of Christian orthodoxy and played a public role in the Free Thought movement.   It is hard to imagine him taking Sufism or Islam seriously while creating such a mockery as the Shrine rituals.   But in 1893 he gave his full support to yet another venture, and perhaps the real Rawson in old age is to be found in this final legacy.

Umar F. Abd-Allah is the author of A Muslim in Victorian America: The Life of Alexander Russell Webb, published by Oxford University Press in 2006.   Webb had been US consul in the Philippines in 1887 when he encountered Islam, which he embraced the following year.  Webb created the American Mission as the first Islamic institution in the U.S.   Abd Allah writes that Webb wrote “numerous books intended to introduce Islam to Americans, started the first Islamic press in the United States, published  a journal entitled the Moslem World, and served as the representative of Islam at the 1893 World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago.”  Rawson enters the narrative as an important ally of Webb’s enterprise: “One of his distinctive organizational principles was the creation of study circles `of five persons each…for study and improvement, and with the view of bringing the desired moral influences to bear upon evils now prevalent’…the most productive organizer of Webb’s circles was A.L. Rawson, a convert from Woodcliff, New Jersey, with close ties to [William Henry] Quilliam.  Rawson eventually formed his own American Moslem Institute as a branch of Quilliam’s society, although he contributed to the Moslem World, which duly announced the foundation of Rawson’s organization.”  Quilliam was the first native Briton to become a Muslim convert and propagandist, and his Islamic Institute in Liverpool was quite successful in attracting converts.  Quilliam created an Islamic Press active in the UK from 1893 through his immigration to Turkey in 1908.

Rawson’s travels present a series of puzzles for the historian, and his 1874 Eastern Mediterranean journeys included a long stay in Cyprus with a host who soon became powerful in the New York art world.  My next blog post will explore the career of Luigi Palma di Cesnola, founding director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  Rawson’s artistic talents were applied to cataloging an archaeological dig that made Cesnola highly celebrated in New York while denounced as a looter in Cyprus.

For illumination of the origins of  The Church of Light, the most intriguing scholarly biography of the past decade is The Lives of Sri Aurobindo by Peter Heehs (Columbia University Press 2008).  The collision of Eastern and Western spiritualities in the 19^th and 20^th centuries is nowhere more vividly illustrated than in the life of Mirra Alfassa.   Heehs places her in context of the life of Aurobindo Ghosh, the Bengali philosopher and yogi in whose ashram she spent the last half of a long life.  Mirra is important to the Church of Light for an association that preceded her travels to India; she is by far the most celebrated disciple of Max Theon, spiritual guide of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor.

Peter Heehs has devoted almost four decades to preservation and study of the legacy of Sri Aurobindo, having resided in India since 1971.  His website links to several reviews of the biography, and I can add nothing except to concur with those who find his research exemplary, his writing clear and engaging, and his conclusions reasonable.   Disgraceful attacks based on false accusations have been made by some disciples, and an attempt is underway to have him expelled from India as a result of the biography.  As an author I encountered some personality-cult behavior from Theosophists and Cayce disciples, and observed similar reactions within other spiritual movements toward those who write about their founders in less than hagiographic adoration.   But nothing like the torrent of abuse that has been directed at Peter Heehs!  The Church of Light is noteworthy for its freedom from worshipful attitudes towards its human founders, or combativeness toward their critics.  We have been very fortunate in having independent scholars produce the HBofL compilation; no “message control” issues interfered with the production or reception of that invaluable work.  The CofL does not worship Burgoyne, Davidson, Theon, Zain, or any person.  But if adoration or worship of Mirra Alfassa are not part of our attitude, respect and honor are definitely merited by her remarkable life.

Blanche Rachel Mirra Alfassa was born in Paris in 1878 to Sephardic Jewish parents.  Her father was originally from Turkey and married her Egyptian mother in Alexandria.  In 1897 she married painter Henri Morriset, and became a painter herself in the early years of the 20^th century.  She was drawn into the Theons’ mouvement cosmique by her brother Matteo, and became one of its most active exponents from about 1903 through 1907.  The peak of her experience with the Theons was a three month visit to Algeria in 1906.  The pages directly addressing Mirra’s connection with Theon and his wife Alma include this passage:

During their three month stay, Mirra underwent a profound inner development, but this was due more to Theon’s wife that to Theon himself.  Madame Theon was `a marvellous woman from the point of view of experience,’ although her intellect was rather ordinary.  Theon, on the other hand, had comparatively little experience, but an encyclopedic knowledge of things occult.  A few lines from him was enough to inspire his wife to write pages and pages of what today might be called channeled writings.  But these revelations, according to one French critic, were `written in such a bizarre manner that even the most cultivated men (unless they were themselves `Cosmic’) quickly abandoned the attempt to read them.’ Mirra was aware of the deficiencies of Madame Theon’s writing, but felt that this extraordinary woman was in contact with genuine sources of knowledge.”(253)

Aurobindo is remembered now as a yogi and philosopher of spiritual evolution, but it is only in the latter half of his long life that he reached that phase of his existence, after several years as a prominent Freedom Movement leader.    Heehs follows his career from an Indian childhood, through an education in England, to his involvement in political activism in Bengal.  But his 1910 retirement  from politics and settling in Pondicherry was the emergence of the Aurobindo known today, as his writings focused more and more on bringing the Supramental into human experience.  The result would not be a “universal religion a system, a thing of creed and intellectual belief and outward rite”; rather, it would be based on “the growing realization that there is a secret Spirit, a divine Reality, in which we are all one, that humanity is its highest present vehicle on earth, that the human race and the human being are the means by which it will progressively reveal itself here.  It implies a growing attempt to live out this knowledge and bring about a kingdom of this divine Spirit upon earth.”(Heehs p. 290, citing The Ideal of Human Unity.)  In The Human Cycle, Aurobindo predicted a future age in which humans “will develop progressively a greater spiritual, supra-intellectual and intuitive, perhaps in the end a more than intuitive, Gnostic consciousness.”(292)  The extent to which Aurobindo’s spiritual mission was influenced by Mirra’s former association with Theon is not readily discernable from the Heehs biography, but until Theon’s teachings are better understood no historian will be able to appraise their impact.

In 1990 when my historical quest for the Theosophical Masters took me to India, Pondicherry was the last place I visited and the Aurobindo Ashram left a stronger impression of holiness than any other place I saw in six weeks in the country.  And yet there was also something stale and cloying in the atmosphere, a feeling that the sacred had come and gone and people were worshipping only memories.  The atmosphere of the ashram very definitely equates the Mother in status with Aurobindo in reverence.   The religious intensity of the devotion made me uncomfortable, but I had a far more favorable impression of Auroville, where the dreams of all the internationalist occultists I had been following around the world found concrete expression in a late twentieth century community.   If one wishes to capture the remarkable spirit of Mirra Alfassa, the best place to do so is Auroville, “a universal city in the making.”  The future, not the past, is the focus of reverence in that Utopian experiment.

THE LATE LORD LYTTON AND THE MASTERS

(The Theosophist, October 1884, p. 17, newly published on www.theosophy.net along with the entire first five year run of the journal, thanks to the labors of Marc Demarest, David Reigle, and Joe Fulton among others.  I mention these three because they will be attending the 2011 Church of Light preconference on Emma Hardinge Britten, Marc as featured presenter.)

 The World says that the Life of Lytton promises to be very interesting, though it is naturally very Bulwerian. “One of the most curious passages in the Biography will be that (yet to come) which relates to Lytton’s researches in the occult world, partly described in Zanoni, the Strange Story, &c. He thoroughly believed in the powers with which he invested Mejnour, and practised the art of divination with a curious, and to me unaccountable, success, an example of which will be found in this first installment of the work, Vol II. pp. 328-9).

It appears that in 1860, he cast the horoscope of Disraeli, who was at that time in one of the darkest eclipses ofhis life. He had enjoyed a brief taste of office, but was doomed to a long exclusion from it–from 1859 to 1866.  In 1860, then, Lord Lytton cast his nativity, and declared that the ‘figure’ surprised him, ‘it is so completely opposed to what I myself should have augured, not only from the rest of his career, but from my knowledge of the man.’ Among other things he predicted that Disraeli would gain honours ‘far beyond the most favourable prospects that could be reasonably anticipated from his past career, his present position, or his personal endowments;’ ‘he will leave a higher name than I should say his intellect quite warrants, or than would now be conjectured’ ‘his illnesses will be few and quick, but his last illness may be lingering. He is likely to live to old age, the close of his career much honoured;·’ ‘he will die whether in or out of office, in an exceptionally high position, greatly lamented, and surrounded to the end by all the magnificent planetary influences of a propitious Jupiter ;’. ‘.he will bequeath a repute out of all proportion to the opinion now entertained of his intellect even by those who think most highly of it  and so on. Who would have believed all this  of Disraeli in 1860 ?

Whatever may be the differences of opinion regarding Disraeli’s political views, it  cannot be disputed that he predicted with accuracy the present position of parties and politics.  He had himself something of the old Hebrew seer in him, and unknown to himself he was the subjected of a very remarkable study by one who still claims the mysterious brotherhood of India as a member of their own body, although he never avowed his connection with them.

Perhaps he is not the only one who has been “the subject of a remarkable study by the mysterious Brotherhood in India.” Who knows?– Ed. 

KPJ comment: This appears as an unsigned article in The Theosophist and appears to have had no byline in the World from which it is quoted.  The references to the Masters are quite mysterious and elliptical.  CofL readers will be intrigued by this confirmation that EBL was “addicted to astrology” as he described himself from a very young age.  I will be hoping to find out more about this article but wanted to share it immediately in celebration of the availability of The Theosophist 1879-1885 at theosophy.net.

One of the most visible leaders of Spiritualism in 19^th century America, James Martin Peebles was also a pivotal factor in the intersecting histories of the Theosophical Society, the Arya Samaj of India, and the Buddhists of Sri Lanka.  This occurred in 1877 when he introduced  (via correspondence) Col. Olcott and Madame Blavatsky to various spiritual leaders he had met on a recent trip to South Asia.  As the story goes according to several biographers, Peebles recognized Arya Samaj leader Moolji Thackersey in a photograph on the wall of the New York apartment the Colonel shared with Madame Blavatsky.   This photograph had been allegedly taken on a transatlantic voyage from New York to Liverpool in 1870, where Olcott met Moolji and another Indian traveler named Tulsidas, long before the formation of the Arya Samaj.  Peebles is largely a marginal figure in Theosophical Society history except for this single day, when he gave Olcott the Bombay address of Thackersey, with results that eventually led the TS to relocate to India.   Here is the biographical sketch of him from a website maintained by his most recent biographer.

He condemned Blavatsky and supported her accusers the Coulombs during the SPR investigation of the TS, but after her death was on collegial terms with Olcott on an 1897 return trip to South Asia.  While Peebles was both a Spiritualist and a Buddhist during his public career, his political and Free Thought involvements are equally important to his role in the history of the adepts. In 1869 he became US Consul in Trebizonde, Turkey, and en route to his assignment he participated in a Free Thought conference in Naples.  Noteworthy in terms of the 1870s themes of the Theosophical Society is correspondence read from Garibaldi, the presence of his “chaplain,” and the Italian nationalist rhetoric of Peebles’s address to the group.   His association with diplomatic service in the eastern Mediterranean connects him to a network of early Theosophical Society supporters, most strikingly Richard Francis Burton.  Peebles described visiting the great explorer in Trieste in his first round the world trip.  This 1874 article describes all the connections he made while in Europe, including the London Archaeological Society, of special interest since Burton was a major player in that organization.

In his travel memoir Around the World (1874), Peebles describes meeting Brahmo Samajis in Calcutta, one of whom had translated Emma Hardinge Britten’s Spiritual Commandments into Bengali and distributed it as a pamphlet.  October 1873 is the last appearance of Peebles in ship passenger lists I can find for the 1870s.  This coincides with the chronology in Around the World, copyright 1874, and contradicts Olcott’s claim that Peebles had “just arrived” from India in 1877 when he saw a picture of Olcott with Indians taken in 1870.  I found no appearances of any Olcott, Tulsidas, or Thackersey in ship passenger lists from 1870 or adjacent years.  The story of Thackersey and Olcott meeting on board ship was possibly unfounded, which would explain why Olcott got caught in an apparent contradiction when later telling Richard Hodgson that he’d never met a Hindu before he went to India.

Peebles claimed to have met Blavatsky in Cairo and seen her again with Olcott at the Eddy farmhouse.  In fact, he spent an entire two weeks at the Eddy farmhouse during the period that Olcott and HPB met there.  Like Emma Hardinge (not yet Britten) and other Spiritualists, he travelled to Salt Lake City.  Their acquaintance dates back to at least 1870, and they remained friends until Emma’s death in 1899.  In search of historical background on Peebles, I found a letter to abolitionist author Sojourner Truth from Oliver Johnson at the Anti-Slavery Office, NYC , 7/29/1863, which begins with the words “Yours by the hand of J.M. Peebles came promptly.”  I found more on the Peebles/Sojourner connection here.  Peebles seems to be one the most ubiquitous of the 19th century occultists, perhaps more of a central node in the larger network than anyone else including Emma Britten and Helena Blavatsky, involved with Spiritualism, Theosophy, Free Thought, Buddhism, and Abolitionism.

Marc Demarest’s unfolding research has suggested to me at various points that American Spiritualists had as much influence on Emma’s evolving beliefs as did the earlier European associates she memorialized as the Orphic Brotherhood.   For the history of the Church of Light, these are very helpful puzzle pieces enabling us to reconstruct the history of the adepts.  One of the keynotes of the CofL has been an outspoken progressive/reformist political stance, which reflects the New Deal environment in which Zain lived his most productive years.   It seems odd that a group so American in spirit, so focused on progressive political values of US origin, grew out of an English occult group that drew largely on European and Middle Eastern inspiration.  But when we see Emma Hardinge Britten as mainly influenced in the 1850s/60s by American progressive reformers, Zain’s emphases of the 1930s/40s appear as a reflection of the 19^th century Spiritualist roots of the body of teachings.

Peebles continues to be an important founding father for contemporary Spiritualists, and is regularly consulted by mediums as can be seen in a variety of online sites.

In January I will write about the new biography of Sri Aurobindo by Peter Heehs, but in the meantime wanted to share a link to this excellent article by Christine Rhone that just appeared online about Mirra Alfassa, which is clearly written and well researched on the subject of her teacher Max Theon.

Another excellent way to get better acquainted with Mirra Alfassa is through this interpretation of her natal chart by Peter Stockinger.

The newest book to shed light on historical adepts is a biography of an Algerian Sufi Sheikh, Abdelkader, whose final years were spent in Damascus where he became the close friend of Richard Francis Burton and his wife Isabel.  John Kiser’s Commander of the Faithful: The Life and Times of Emir Abd el-Kader was acclaimed in the New York Times as “a dramatic story of quarreling tribes, of Sufi sects and brotherhoods, of treacherous Ottoman officials, rival French generals, secret negotiations, broken truces, terrible atrocities and new forms of insurgency and counterinsurgency warfare.”  All those subjects are addressed in the first half of Kiser’s book which is set in Algeria, as was his award winning Monks of Tibhirine.   Abdelkader rose to fame as the leader of Algerian tribes, but the second half of the military hero’s life  was as an exile increasingly recognized for his noble character and spiritual studies.  He became increasingly admired in French exile before being moved to Turkey and then Damascus.  While in Damascus his involvement rescuing victims of anti-Christian riots brought him international acclaim including a gift from Abraham Lincoln.   When Richard and Isabel Burton arrived at a British consular post in Damascus, they soon found and befriended the Emir.  Another eccentric English traveler, Lady Jane Digby, was part of the Burton entourage during this period.

My first published investigation of Madame Blavatsky was a 1986 booklet on possible Sufi connections between her teachings and those of Gurdjieff.  The next focus of my investigations was the American artist Albert Rawson who promoted a variety of fringe Masonic groups in the US.   Leslie Price of the Theosophical History Centre in London encouraged my research and published the resulting articles.  By the time The Masters Revealed was published in 1994, I had learned of an international cast of characters involved in related Masonic activity in Egypt and the Near East.  Richard Francis Burton emerged as a node in the social network of early TS supporters.  Rawson and Burton have continued to be mentioned in new books about individuals they knew and whose lives were entangled with theirs.   The combination of Masonic and Islamic themes and memes is found in both their works, and I recently learned of an 1892 article in which Rawson recounts decades of acquaintance with Burton.

Of the figures profiled in chapters of The Masters Revealed, Burton is the one who has reappeared in various contexts relevant to the roots of The Church of Light.  About a year after joining the CofL I was invited to participate in Donna Zuckerbrot’s documentary film  which has seen on four Canadian cable networks from 2008 through the present.  The subtitle of the documentary Madame Blavatsky: Spiritual Traveller was taken from my remarks, quoted at the end to the effect that HPB “created the model” of the spiritual traveller, whose search for truth was global in scope. After seeing  it, I realized that she was just the first person to use a global search for spiritual truth from many sources as the basis of a new movement. But Burton is more deserving of accolades for creating the model that she exemplified, which later inspired such explorers as Alexandra David-Neel.   He was the most celebrated British explorer of the mid-19th century, and first met Blavatsky in Cairo in 1853 as he was preparing for his great trip to Mecca.  In 1878 he joined the British Theosophical Society, but recent research by Marc Demarest indicates that he had been introduced to occult studies in England in the 1840s as a member of the so-called Orphic Brotherhood led by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Richard James Morrison (Zadkiel), and Philip Henry Stanhope.

Albert Rawson, who introduced Burton to Blavatsky, claimed four extensive journeys to the Middle East, in one of which he became acquainted with John Varley II, a painter whose family was very prominent in British astrological and occult circles from the beginning of the 19th century. Varley and his wife Isabella, the aunt of William Butler Yeats, were members of the short lived Inner Group of the London TS lodge* and lifelong Theosophists. Varley traveled extensively as a landscape painter, best known for his depictions of Egypt.  The header of this blog is detail from a Varley street scene of 1870s Cairo.  James Peebles, who introduced Olcott and Blavatsky to leaders of Sinhalese Buddhism and the Arya Samaj, was another American globetrotter with connections in the Free Thought movement as well as Spiritualism.   Peebles in Egypt will be the subject of a future blog post in 2011, but the next entry will focus on Hurrichund Chintamon who was involved with the Arya Samaj, Theosophical Society, and Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor.

Here is the link to Albert Rawson’s piece on Burton, “Personal Recollections of Sir Richard Francis Burton, KGMG, FRS, FRGS,” and it runs from pages 565-577, with the story of Burton’s meeting Blavatsky on 573-4.  John Patrick Deveney demonstrated, in two articles published in Theosophical History, that Rawson is quite untrustworthy on chronology in his memoir of acquaintance with HPB. But this new find from Rawson conflicts with that previously known article about HPB, and fits what Deveney found to be plausible times when he might have been in the Middle East. Rawson not only claims to have introduced Burton to Blavatsky (in context which makes it clear that it occurred in 1853, conflicting with his 1851 date in the Blavatsky article) but quotes Burton thanking him for an introduction to Abdelkader.

* not the Inner Group of Blavatsky’s final years, but a pro-HPB group within the fragmented London Lodge of 1884

Emma Hardinge in the 1850s

The shared roots of the Theosophical Society and the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor have become better understood in recent years. In The Unseen Worlds of Emma Hardinge Britten, Robert Matthiesen draws a distinction between what he calls the Earlier and Later Theosophical Societies:

“Only in 1879 did a reorganized Theosophical Society once again begin to meet in India and elsewhere, but only about four of the founding members ever took much part in its activities. The large majority of them kept their distance from it, and a few of them, above all Emma Hardinge Britten, eventually became severe critics of its undertakings. Because of this great discontinuity of membership, I am inclined to speak of two Theosophical Societies (the one of 1875-76; the other from 1878 on) as separate organizations, which I shall call the Earlier and the Later Theosophical Society. The insistent claim of the Later Theosophical Society (in all its variant forms) to be the legitimate heir of the Earlier one, and the true custodian of its heritage, may have some basis in law, but it can easily obscure any profound historical examination of the Earlier Theosophical Society on its own terms…Unlike the Later Theosophical Society, the Earlier one was the joint creation, in varying but still significant ways, of most or all of its founding members.”(pp 32-34)

Emma Hardinge Britten was the most prominent of the Earlier TS authors, her Modern American Spiritualism (1870) making her the preeminent Spiritualist historian of the 19th century.  Her Art Magic and Ghost Land were the first two books published by a TS Founder, and lay the groundwork for much that came after: e.g. claims of mysterious adept co-authorship and use of the term Theosophy to describe a body of teachings that can be traced back to antiquity. But Emma was so unhappy with the direction taken by the Later TS that she eventually wrote that its new claims and theories rested “at most, on the authority of a `band of brothers,’ who are of no more authority than any other band of brothers, of whom there are hosts in the East, as elsewhere, and who singly or severally are only authoritative– beyond their particular sphere of discipleship– in as far as their teachings correspond to such laws, principles, and facts, as are already proven, or are capable of being proven.” (Nineteenth Century Miracles, p. 303.)  Six years later in her journal The Two Worlds, Britten was sharper in her criticism of the Theosophical Mahatmas: “The most unfortunate feature of all these claims is, however, that there is not one shadow of evidence given of its truth, except that it is the teaching of some unknown `Mahatmas,’ of whose existence again there is not even a shadow of proof, and of whose supposed doings three parties have publicly asserted the whole story to be a fiction, and the result of gross imposture.  If there are `Mahatmas,’—if these Mahatmas, can give any authoritative proof of their existence even, why is not that proof forthcoming?  Meanwhile, against the possibility of any such proof, first comes the pamphlet of Madame Coulomb, then of the exhaustive researches, also published, of Dr. Richard Hodgson, and finally the tremendous and disgraceful revelations made in the New York Sun, as late ago as July 20^th.”  (9/12/1890, p. 519)

Britten wrote in Nineteenth Century Miracles that “as long as the Society existed in that city on its original lines, the author’s name was retained as a member of the first council.”(p. 302) In the same section she describes those original lines later abandoned by Blavatsky and Olcott: “…it was deemed desirable to conduct the proceedings on the basis of a secret society…results attainable only to those who could, and would pursue, their studies, to the innermost depths of nature’s laboratories.”(p. 296)  The Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor emerged in Great Britain in 1884 to offer what the original TS had provided briefly but then abandoned: instruction in practical occultism within the framework of a secret society.   An Esoteric Section within the TS was created by HPB partly in response to the success of the HBofL recruiting prominent Theosophists, especially in America and France, and William Q. Judge’s pleas for a competing alternative.  Emma lent tacit support and the HBofL regarded her Art Magic and Ghost Land as foundational documents — the “stones rejected by the builders” of the Later TS.  She denied authorship of the HBofL’s major doctrinal work The Light of Egypt, but endorsed its value:

“We deeply regret that other matters of pressing moment have, of late, occupied our columns to the exclusion of those notices of books, pamphlets, and tracts, which we have received in great numbers, and which we hope yet to call attention to.  This apology relates especially to the noble, philosophic, and instructive work, published by George Redway of London, entitled “The Light of Egypt.”  We had hoped to have found space to give abundant quotations from this admirable treatise, one which supplies not only fine suggestive views of planetary cosmogony, but also furnishes a good corrective, founded, on the basis of science, fact, and reason, to the groundless assertions of theosophy, some of which appear in quotation in this numbers Leader.  Ere we close this merely preliminary notice that we have been favored with a copy of “The Light of Egypt,” we would call its author’s attention to the fact that a certain American editor of a Theosophical Magazine, entitled The Path, after venting on this fine work all the abuse, scorn and display of ignorance and insolence that his malice could dictate, ends by adding that this book is “by Mrs. Emma Hardinge Britten.”  We trust it needs no open disclaimer on our part to assure the gifted author of “The Light of Egypt” that this rude and uncalled-for piece of mendacity could only have been designed by the writer to add injury to insult, and compel the Editor of this journal to express her regret that she has not the smallest claim to stand in a position implying ability far beyond her capacity to attain to.  It is hoped that this public disclaimer will be sufficient to atone for the intended injury to the esteemed author of “The Light of Egypt,” and explain to him the animus with which his comments on the fantastic theories of the day are received by a prominent Theosophical journalist. (The Two Worlds, August 18, 1889, p. 481.)

The bitter tone of Britten’s remarks about the TS in later life reflected disappointed expectations, in the opinion of Robert Matthiessen.  Her support of the HBofL was presumably based not only on doctrinal agreement (anti-reincarnationist in the later TS sense) but on support for its pursuit of practical rather than theoretical occult study.  The HBofL made the same kind of confusing assertion that the Later TS made, claiming to be the same Brotherhood of Luxor that had really been a different entity. The British HBofL leaders claimed that their work had begun in 1870 in Egypt. But as best historians can tell, there was never any HBofL as a formal organization before 1884; the previous Brotherhood of Luxor referred to an informal network of associates in early 1870s Egypt.  Hence, when the Later TS leaders attacked the HBofL as an upstart group falsely claiming to have existed fourteen years earlier than it actually was created, they were justified. But then so were the HBofL leaders equally justified in arguing that the TS after its move to India was not at all the same organization it had been– and that their own teachings were more in line with those of the original TS.   More than a century since these organizations diverged, we have considerable historical evidence available to disentangle the conflicting claims.

 The Alexandrian Library

The Church of Light renews a tradition that has gone through many phases in its two thousand year history. Hermetism flourished in second-century Egypt, and its earliest known texts are in Greek. Its central figure, Hermes, is an amalgamation of the Greek God Hermes (the planet Mercury) with the ancient Egyptian god Thoth. He is called Hermes Trismegistus, or thrice-great Hermes, for his mastery of three fields of study: astrology, alchemy, and magic. The Corpus Hermeticum is the collection of sacred texts that define early Hermetic teachings. Hermetism in its original form is defined as a religion, but from the beginning it incorporated elements of philosophy and science. Although it became extinct as a religion, the philosophy and science of Hermetism survived as an underground current influencing the history of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism.

The Greek manuscript of the Corpus Hermeticum was rediscovered in 1460 and first translated into modern languages by Marsilio Ficino, thereby becoming a major influence on the Renaissance. This rediscovery and new influence is called Hermeticism, which flourished in 16th century Christian Europe. At the time it was believed that the text dated to hundreds of years before Christ and that Hermes was a contemporary of Moses. But its alleged antiquity was undermined by scholar Isaac Casaubon in 1614, who found persuasive evidence that the Corpus dates to the early Christian era. Thereafter Hermetic teachings went back underground. However, recent scholarship has found increasing evidence of Egyptian roots of the Hermetic teachings. Discovery of the Nag Hammadi library in 1947 provided modern students of Hermetism with a hitherto unknown text, On the Ogdoad and the Ennead. Professor Gilles Quispel explains that “This work shows without any doubt that the Hermetic believer was initiated into several grades before transcending the sphere of the seven planets and the heaven of the fixed stars (the Ogdoad.) Then he would behold the God beyond and experience Himself. It is now completely certain that there existed before and after the beginning of the Christian era in Alexandria a secret society, akin to a Masonic lodge. ” (The Way of Hermes, p. 10)

The Church of Light is a renewal of the Hermetic tradition as a religion, with grades of initiation modeled on the original three fields of study: astrology, alchemy, and magic. It continues the work of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor, founded as an organization in England in 1884, but derived from adepts who met in Egypt around 1870. Connecting these phases was Max Theon, a spiritual guide of the HBL but uninvolved in its public work. The Hermetic tradition is the common property of humanity, and no organization can contain it. The Church of Light is devoted to applying the Hermetic teachings today. The insights and information in the Hermetic tradition provide a tremendous source of spiritual guidance for seekers now and far into the future. Guided by the Hermetic axiom “As above, so below,” the Church of Light brings astrology, alchemy, and magic into daily life.