The Shaman’s Secrets. [Previously] Ever on the lookout for occult phenomena, and hungering after sights, one of the most interesting things that Blavatsky had seen in India, was the phenomena produced by a poor traveling Bikshu (monks.) She was taken to visit the pilgrims by a Buddhist friend, a mystical gentleman born in Kashmir, of Kutchi parents, but a Buddha-Lamaist by conversion, and who generally resided at Lhasa. “Why carry about this bunch of dead plants?” inquired one of... Read more
THE MAT BATS ON THE MOON In 1833 Greeley found himself lodging at a “Graham House,” that is, a boardinghouse modeled on the precepts of Sylvester Graham.[1] The Graham House also met a specific need, functioning as Abolitionist hotels, they catered to activists, both black and white, who were not welcomed anywhere else.[2] Here Greeley adhered to a strict vegetarian diet, and practiced a vigorous regimen of cold baths, temperance, and other “self-purifying” acts of discipline that helped him... Read more
UPRISING It was a time of great social change; earlier in 1831, for example, the Boston social activist, William Lloyd Garrison, began his Abolitionist journal, The Liberator.[1] “While I could not withhold from these agitators a certain measure of sympathy for their great and good object, I was utterly unable to see how their efforts tended to the achievement of their end,” Greeley would say. “Granted (most heartily) that Slavery ought to be abolished, how was that consummation to... Read more
GREELEY’S GOTHAM By 1820, New York was becoming something of a “colony of New England.” Central New York (like Oneida) had already become practically as “Yankee” in population as Connecticut in 1800. More literate than the average New Yorker, the Yankee wrote most of the editorials and set most of the type in the printing houses. These “cocksure invaders” did not hide their contempt toward the “churlish, ignorant, and unenterprising” Germans and Dutch. These old New Amseterdamers fired back... Read more
Charles Johnston, Tolstoyans, And “Rambles In Russia” In the late summer of 1888, just before leaving for India, Charles Johnston went to Russia to meet his wife Vera’s family. “I have never seen anything more beautiful and original than Moscow in all of Europe,” Johnston would state.[1] Of this brief period, we know little, except that he attended mass in the Cathedral of the Savior.[2] It is possible that Johnston met (Madame Blavatsky’s cousin,) Count Sergei Yulyevich Witté at... Read more
In 1747 a Quaker offshoot known as New Lights began in Manchester, England. They held that revelation from God was progressive and believed in both an “Eternal Mother” and an “Eternal Father.” In Shaker cosmology, there were two Christs, one male and one female, who were the progeny of the two great Eternal Beings.[1] The New Lights were a particularly zealous group and held noisy meetings that offended those of the established church. (This is why they came to be... Read more
In January 1882 Oscar Wilde went to America to produce his first play, “Vera or, The Nihilists,” at New York’s Union Square Theatre, and embarked on a nationwide lecture tour.[1] The country soon embraced the “Aesthetic Fad,” as Wilde was the leading figure of the Aesthetic Movement. (Wilde praised the beauty of the sunflower while touring America, which led to its adoption as an emblem of the movement.)[2] Wilde, an Irishman, was born in Dublin to Sir William Wilde (a... Read more
The mummy case in question in the catalogue of the British Museum was No. 22,542. The mummy that it originally covered, however, was never brought to England. This is what W. T. Stead told Frederick K. Seward at the ship’s saloon table. Though the immediate purpose of the veteran English journalist’s visit to America was to aid in the New York campaign of the Men and Religion Forward Movement, Stead talked much of Spiritualism, thought transference, and the occult.[1] Any... Read more
In 1819, Andrew Jackson, and a company of his soldiers, made their way from Nashville to Robertson County, near Red River and Elk Fork Creek. Their destination, the Bell House, was only forty miles away from Jackson’s estate, “The Hermitage.” The wagon was loaded with a tent, provisions, etc. They were bent on a good time investigating the witch named “Kate.”[1] The men rode on horseback, following along in the rear of the wagon, discussing all the while how they... Read more
While still in America (receiving money at intervals from her father) Blavatsky tried her hand at gold prospecting in California, near Sacramento.[1] Then she went to Peru, traveling with an Englishman whom she had met in Germany, and a Hindu “Chela,” whom she came across at the Mayan ruins at Copán, Honduras.[2] Questions were being asked about the “first peopling of America.” Some claimed that the Native Americans were a separate race, “not descended from the same common father with... Read more
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