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HPB AND HER 'MASTERS' OF THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY

THE ANGELIC MASTER

THE MAKING OF A MASTER

ISIS UNVEILED

THE INFLUENCE OF ROSICRUCIANISM

LEMURIA AND ATLANTIS

SEE MASON WILL TRAVEL

INDIA

THE ADYAR YEARS

THE HODGSON REPORT

THE ESOTERIC SCHOOL

 

AN EXTENDED FAMILY: EXTRAMURAL MASTERS

William Stainton Moses and Imperator

At this point it is worthwhile to limn briefly those entities whose existence was claimed by, and whose beneficence was afforded to, esotericists in Blavatsky's and Olcott's acquaintance, and which could be considered either cognates of the Masters or who suggest a certain air de famille. The first, previously mentioned, is 'Imperator' and others of the spirits whose post mortem revelations were vouchsafed to the Reverend William Stainton Moses (1839-1892). In 1872, Moses, an Anglican curate and avid Spiritualist, discovered that in a state of self-induced meditative trance he was able to transmit the teachings of a small cabal of spirit guides through the technique of automatic writing.  Of the mass of necromantic revelation which grew in the wake of Spiritualism, the 'Spirit Teachings' of 'M. A., Oxon.' (Moses' preferred nom de plume) are quite unusual in so far as they were profoundly dialectical and reasonably internally consistent with regard to cosmology and theology.  Imperator (together with such associates as Magus and Prudens), espoused a neo-Gnostic cosmology and anthropology with some profound similarities to various of the treatises from the Corpus Hermeticum:

It may well be, good friend, that the noblest destiny of the perfected spirit may be union with the God into whose likeness it has grown, and whose portion of divinity, temporarily segregated during its pilgrimage, it so renders up to Him who gave it.

It was Imperator's claim that a new dispensation had begun. The spirits had previously attempted to influence the progressive development of humanity, but the time had not been ripe: 'Efforts have been made from time to time to pour in advanced knowledge; it has been found that the time was not come, and the effort has been withdrawn'. Now, however, humanity itself had developed sufficiently well to make it receptive to the presence of the spirits:

In America, the land from which dates this movement in your days, there are many who have been so far developed as to lead a dual life, and to hold face to face intercourse with us.  We have even now a band of workers there who are achieving results which we cannot command here through faithlessness of mind, materiality of interests, and even grossness of atmospheric surroundings.

One of the central tenets of this new revelation was a form of relativism which denied Christianity its customary claim to exclusivity. Jesus, but one of a chain of messianic figures (beginning, importantly, in India), had himself undergone 'His preparatory training' in Egypt. Furthermore, Jesus' post-resurrection appearances were reconstrued as archetypal figurations of the self-abnegating munificence of the spirits:

His resurrection was symbolic of the change that passes on the risen life of spirit ... He was animated by that most potent law of spirit which you may trace in all the ways of spirit-influence - the law of love ... So the souls who voluntarily linger around your earth are those whose motive-spring is love, or they whose mission is animated by the same master principle.

The similarities between Moses' Imperator and Olcott's Serapis are immediately apparent.  Both claim an exalted spiritual message, and both speak of a small contingent of humanity now sufficiently advanced (though in what way or ways remains at this point unclear) to accept this lofty wisdom.  But for all these superficial similarities there exist very real points of divergence.  While both Serapis and Imperator select the written word as their means of contact with their charges, Moses' communications require him to act as sole amanuensis; whatever their provenance, the Masters' letters qua letters retain a freer dynamic of reception. Indeed, no small part of the Theosophical Society's attraction for potential converts was the possibility, however remote, that such aspiring chelas might receive similar correspondence themselves. Another significant difference between the two entities devolves upon the associations which they will have suggested; while Imperator is wholly associated with Spiritualism, and thus subject to such accusations as having been the product of the suggestibility, vanity or outright fraud of his medium, Serapis is cut from new cloth: he is self-determining, invariably - indeed, attractively - abstruse, and hints (in accord with Godwin's 'provocation theory') that he and his confreres are themselves the originators of Spiritualism, a claim which robs Imperator and others like him of any independent ontology. Though various Theosophists over the years would be accused of having created counterfeit Masters' letters, nonetheless the scope, geographical diffusion, variety of script, quantity of both recipients and reputed authors (a range of Masters), and the sheer volume of correspondence would, rightly or wrongly, mitigate against claims of single-handed and unmodulated fraud.

By far the most significant, if also the most obvious, difference between Imperator and Serapis is that the former is dead and latter was, at least putatively, alive. This last point signals the ultimate break between Theosophy, as the teachings of live adepts, and necromantic Spiritualism.  A foundational dogma of the latter pursuit had always been that the aperture which occasioned spiritual and extra-mundane insight was opened only after the death of the physical body. Theosophy's radical alternative was to postulate a tremendous paradigmatic shift in the means by which meta-empirical insight was able to penetrate the earthly sphere. No longer did the esotericist await death as the great occult initiation, for, with the Masters, progression to an elevated spiritual elite was not only possible in the human frame, but regarded as an essential, if not the essential, raison d'etre. Significant in this altered esoteric soteriology, though somehow ignored by scholars, is the inference that the wane of Spiritualism (as far as many esotericists were concerned) was occasioned, not so much by its regular exposure as fraudulent, as by the fact that post-mortem spiritual enlightenment was apparently available to all and thus neither required nor really encouraged any ante-mortem individually-driven change in ethical, moral or spiritual attitudes. In fact, it could easily be argued that several of the most celebrated spirit guides, such as Katie King, appeared to be - morally at least - wholly undeserving of such spiritual accolades. The primary appeal of the Theosophical Masters was that they offered themselves as living exemplars of the heretofore hidden possibilities of rapid human advancement.  That Serapis Bey appears less than saintly is not nearly as significant as his consistent inferences of an adept brotherhood peopled by recondite sages who have achieved their exalted status by their own efforts. Such a proposition also conveniently both justifies and entreats Theosophists to a zealous evangelism; Spiritualism had no such direct mission as its credo devolved upon a simple faith position regarding the immortality of the soul and its contact with the living through various necromantic technologies. Theosophists' commitment to the Masters, in contrast, was also a concomitant commitment to their own conscious spiritual advancement through such religiously-normative means as spiritual apprenticeship, obedience, submission to a hierarchy, and abnegation of personal will.

Another, and supremely utilitarian, by-product of the Masters' self-presentation and Blavatsky's later decisive published formulation of Masters-based occultism, was the capacity for this sagacious brotherhood to claim other spiritual teachers and teachings as having emanated from their fraternity.  This exercise, which exceeds normal esoteric syncretism (and invariably leads to accusations of outlandish historical revisionism), can be discerned in an early manifestation as the 'provocation theory' wherein Spiritualism was deigned to have been a Masters-generated phenomenon.  Such a tendency was also evident in the wholesale absorption of other Masters-cognates into the Theosophical pantheon. Thus Olcott was able to claim that Moses' guides were Masters, not spirits:

Who 'Imperator,' its agent, was, I known not - I do not even know who H. P. B. really was - but I have always been inclined to believe that he was either S. M.'s [Stainton Moses'] own Higher Self or an adept; and that 'Magus' and others of S. M.'s band were adepts likewise.

Indeed, even the Theosophical Master Koot Hoomi later claimed in one of his letters to A. P. Sinnett that Moses' spirits were in fact adepts like himself.  
 

Frederick Hockley and the Crowned Angel

Moses was not alone in the Spiritualist milieu for having relayed the teachings of a spirit guide who appears in significant ways to have been similar to the Theosophical Masters.  Another of Olcott's correspondents, and a man more avowedly ceremonial in his occultism than was the mild 'M. A. (Oxon.)', was Frederick Hockley (1808-1885), the renowned crystallomancer and bibliophile whose erudition in matters arcane made him something of a Victorian esoteric paterfamilias.  Just as Moses' Spiritualism can be seen as having stood on the cusp of Theosophy, so too Hockley, by seeking to reconcile two independent strains of the esoteric heritage - namely theurgic angelology and Rosicrucianism - was able to establish a synthesis with surprising echoes of the early Theosophical Masters.

Hockley's crystal scrying exemplifies an established pattern of goetic theurgy, particularly as it had developed in England. Where Hockley's methodology and technology may have accorded with that of other crystallomancers, his theoretical presuppositions were of an entirely different order.  Hockley's anthropology, as mediated to him by his favoured 'guide', the Crowned Angel of the Seventh Sphere, was profoundly progressivist. His angelic communications, comprising a vast literature, posit a highly optimistic perfectibilism whereby post mortem human souls (if necessary expunged of imperfection on a purgatorial planet)  rise through seven spheres of angelic consciousness, ultimately arriving at a 'state of bliss'.   As they percolate through the spheres such souls swell the ranks of the angels and regularly return to earth in this guise to minister to the living as Guardian Spirits:

The number of Angels from the Creation of the world down to the birth of Christ was continually increased by many good men who left the Earth ... as the population increased the number of Angels also increased from those who died ... at the present time there are about half the number of Angels as mortals upon Earth.

Hockley sought avidly to demarcate his angelic communications from the phenomenon of popular Spiritualism, a practice he believed to be diabolical.   For him, as for Moses, the spirit guide (or angel) was commissioned by the divine power to elucidate these mysteries of heavenly cosmology for purely altruistic reasons.  Such a motivation begs a further question: if post mortem progressivism is a fixed equation, then what spiritually-educative value do such revelations contain for mundane humanity?  The inferred response is that such entities as the Crowned Angel bestow soteriological and eschatological insights to the 'faithful' because, armed with such knowledge, those so informed will appreciate that spiritual progression can in fact be initiated before death.

Just as Hockley espoused a celestial progressivism, through his writings and associations he also offered recondite testimony that a similar spiritual evolution existed on the earth in the form and keeping of the Rosicrucian fraternity.  Profoundly influenced by the original Rosicrucian manifestoes, and convinced of a continuing continental tradition, Hockley inquired of the Crowned Angel whether Freemasonic initiation would be advisable in order to gain contact with initiates.  The response was not heartening:

The Society is in France and unless you went there and were installed a Brother you could not possible become one ... They study the occult sciences after an interview with an invisible power, which they have at stated times.  The Elders travel to Jerusalem ... then return to the rest of the Society with the instructions they receive from the invisible agent - upon this they act ... but in the meantime I hope you will not join an English Lodge.

Hockley evidently believed that some sort of Rosicrucian pedigree had existed in England but that the majority of contemporary claimants in his country were pretenders. Desirous of establishing a fuller picture of native Rosicrucianism he collected the books, certificates and diaries of putative Rosicrucians, and even invoked their spirits by crystallomancy. Significantly, his goetic researches indicated to him that he was able to contact the spirits of the living in his crystals as well as those of the dead, and that this may serve to explain certain of the manifestations of Spiritualism:

The most singular feature to me of these recent spiritual manifestations is, that the communicants have almost invariably announced themselves as being the spirits of deceased mortals only, and not as being spiritual intelligences who never had been embodied on earth, whilst the existence of co-existing atmospheric spirits of living mortals has never been alluded to as such, although, I perceive they have in numerous instances developed themselves in the spirit circles.

It is hardly necessary to indicate that the individuals deemed to be most capable of producing such paranormal feats were also assumed to be those possessed of recondite secrets gained through occult processes: in short, Rosicrucians or their ilk.
Hockley's occult cosmosophy is unusual in that there are parallel processes of progressivism operating in the mundane and extra-mundane realms simultaneously.  Most of his energies (and questions to the Crowned Angel) were directed at mapping the celestial realm with its septenary system of graduated progress, but there are significant indications within the logic of his system that a similar process of calibrated spiritual awareness was available to the initiated elite upon the earth, and that such an elite existed in the form of the Rosicrucian or some similar fraternity.

Hockley's model of a synchronous initiatic progressivism in the terrestrial as well as the celestial spheres provides an important indication of parallel developments in the esoteric milieu of the late nineteenth-century.  That there exist resemblances between Blavatsky's Masters and analogous entities, such as those of Moses and Hockley, is important as a counterbalance against the prevalent view among religionist, and even some avowedly empirical surveys, that the Theosophical Masters were a unique development.  Where Blavatsky's Masters-esotericism differed markedly from Hockley's, however, was in the former's insistence upon an explicit and necessary interpenetration between the terrestrial and celestial strata.  Though Hockley inferred a covalent, perhaps even symbiotic relationship between earthly adepts and guardian angels - a relationship whereby both parties 'pprogressed' - Blavatsky formulated an esotericism which predicated all human progress upon the benevolence of the Masters. Consequently, the Theosophical Masters were apotheosised as an a priori precondition of human spiritual and physical development.  Clearly it could be argued that Blavatsky had 'trumped' Moses and Hockley; her incipient Masters-cosmology wholly enveloped such entities as the Crowned Angel and Imperator (placing them at her disposal as crypto-Masters), and at the same time promulgated her own Masters of Wisdom as the exclusive agents of esoteric insights and spiritual progress - with herself as the bridge.  
 

Emma Hardinge Britten and the Chevalier Louis

It is crucial at this point to recall that Blavatsky was not alone among her contemporaries in claiming a warrant for her writings from an emissary of a secret fraternity of adepts: she was not, to her obvious annoyance, the only such bridge. Emma Hardinge Britten (1823-1899), an inaugural member of the fledgling Theosophical Society, to some degree preempted Blavatsky's 'one and supreme great lodge [of adepts]' by asserting her own membership of a select secret band of adepts known as the Orphic Society. Hardinge Britten claimed to have been introduced to the group in her youth, and inducted on account of her 'somnambulistic faculties', and to have been trained in its occult technologies by a man she initially identified with the pseudonymous title 'Austria', and whom she later proclaimed to have been 'Chevalier Louis de B------'.   The Chevalier Louis remains an enigmatic figure for historians of nineteenth-century esotericism.  The temptation is to dismiss him as a convenient cipher or a romantic literary device conjured by Hardinge Britten in her desire to systematise Spiritualism and to endow it with both a sophisticated cosmosophy and a teleology. That Chevalier Louis may have been more than a fictional entity has been a rare opinion among scholars, at least until Professor Godwin's engaging researches. Yet the precise nature of the Chevalier's identity is of less significance than the fact that he is a remarkable anticipation of the Theosophical Masters; unlike the disembodied spirits of Moses and Hockley, the Chevalier is presented as a supremely talented living adept. Of equal significance here is the motif of information transference: permission has been granted by the Chevalier's associates and superiors for him to divulge to a (female) disciple hitherto undisclosed arcane secrets.  In return the disciple has pledged obedience and has vowed not to reveal the adepts' mundane identities.

During 1876 the Brittens published two books, both putatively written by Chevalier Louis, and translated and edited for him by Emma.  The first, Art Magic, or, Mundane, Sub-Mundane, and Super-Mundane Spiritism, though for the most part a belaboured survey of late mediaeval evocatory and theurgical texts, does contain certain philosophical and cosmological reflections which to some degree anticipate the themes of Blavatsky's later work. The second work, Ghost Land; or, Researches into the Mysteries of Occultism, is an expansion of the rather truncated autobiographical sketches previously included in the six issues of the Brittens' Spiritualist magazine The Western Star.   The book is a robust tale of occult adventure which documents Louis' apprenticeship to the 'Berlin Brotherhood', his subsequent membership of the English 'Orphic Circle', and his ultimate induction as hierophant in a third, more powerful order, the 'Ellora Brotherhood'. Taken together, Ghost Land and Art Magic posit a primordial monotheism which survives at the esoteric heart of the world's confessional religions, that this true and abiding 'Cabbala' was honoured in ancient Egypt as the source of manifest magical power, and that its origins lie far to the east in India.  According to this occult scheme, no single divine incarnation is required: Jesus becomes one of a number of advanced souls whose life, interpreted allegorically, provides paradigmatic proof for the evolution of consciousness. The leitmotif of evolution from the simple to the ever more complex resides at the core of Hardinge Britten's cosmosophy; there is a dual emphasis on the horizontal evolution of the anthropos (as representative of the human collective) from elemental spirit, to human as presently constituted, and ultimately thence to angel and planetary spirit, and the perpendicular evolution of the individual from an unenlightened to an enlightened state.  The former process, that of general human development, operates in aeonic time; the latter, of personal conscious evolution, in single lifetimes.

Significant in this scheme is the inference, never fully enunciated, that the point of intersection between the horizontal axis (collective evolution) and the vertical (personal evolution) is occupied by the lodge of adepts, in this case the Ellora Brotherhood.  The adept, alone aware of the true dimensions of this progressivist dynamic, is able to influence the former by concentration on the latter.  The adept's task is to purify, govern, and exalt his will; the rewards which accrue to his efforts are the meta-empirical powers he is granted.  Such powers are neither mere conjurings nor the playthings of a preternatural elite, but are to be used sagaciously for the furtherance of collective human evolution, both spiritual and physical. It is the Ellora Brotherhood's task to employ their individual and collective gifts to inculcate a progressivist occult current within human society.

Godwin has suggested that '[t]he two books [Art Magic and Ghost Land], taken together, are the first authoritative statement in English on the distinction between spiritualism and occultism'. It is certainly true Chevalier Louis asserted that communication with supra-and submundane entities (angels, elementals, and so forth) was equally as possible, and desirable, as the necromantic activities sponsored by Spiritualism, wherein commerce was restricted by and large to the spirits of the 'unprogressed human dead'. It is also the case that occultism, as mediated by Hardinge Britten's Chevalier Louis, promotes the conscious development of an active will in concert with a technology of human-spirit commerce which emphasises heightened consciousness rather than a passive receptivism, as was customarily the case with Spiritualism. This noted, the tension between the Spiritualist and occultist gnosiologies is never satisfactorily resolved in Hardinge Britten's thought. In her Spiritualist writings, Hardinge Britten is emphatic that physical death provides the crucial launch into the graded hierarchy of the celestial spheres; indeed, angels and the like are deprived of their customary orthodox ontology as a unique created order, and become, rather, the manifestations of post-mortem spiritual evolution.   If the aperture to genuine spiritual enlightenment is opened for all at death, how, then, are the efforts of mundane esoteric orders such as the Ellora Brotherhood to be valued or validated?  Having comprehensively rejected terrestrial reincarnationism, Hardinge Britten leaves unaddressed the consequent paradox: the underlying purpose of ante-mortem conscious evolution through occult means is comprehensively undermined if death remains the primary catalytic agent for spiritual progress.

 

go to:

 

HPB AND HER 'MASTERS' OF THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY

THE ANGELIC MASTER

THE MAKING OF A MASTER

ISIS UNVEILED

THE INFLUENCE OF ROSICRUCIANISM

LEMURIA AND ATLANTIS

SEE MASON WILL TRAVEL

INDIA

THE ADYAR YEARS

THE HODGSON REPORT

THE ESOTERIC SCHOOL

 

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