Quest Magazine

Printed in the  Spring 2020  issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation:  Leland, Kurt, "The Multiple Masters of Cyril Scott " Quest 108:2, pg 21-27

By Kurt Leland

Several years ago, I was contacted by Desmond Scott, son of the British Theosophist, author, and composer Cyril Scott (1879–1970), about contributing to an anthology of essays about his father’s life, books, and music. I was asked for chapters about Scott’s chamber music and writings on the occult, including such classics as Music: Its Secret Influence throughout the Ages (1933) and the so-called Initiate series: The Initiate: Some Impressions of a Great Soul (1920), The Initiate in the New World (1927), and The Initiate in the Dark Cycle (1932). This anthology, The Cyril Scott Companion, was published in 2018. Since then, I have continued to explore the relationship between Scott’s life and work, including the autobiographical background of the Initiate series, which I have come to see as a vast panorama of the spiritual path as described in Theosophical teachings, developed from Scott’s personal encounters with various teachers he perceived as Masters.

The Initiate series is neither a fully truthful memoir nor completely imaginary fiction. It would be a stretch even to call it semiautobiographical. Perhaps it could be labeled as “creative nonfiction,” a relatively new literary genre. But perhaps it is best to think of it—and of Scott’s multiple Masters—as life enhanced into truth.

Cyril Scott was born near Liverpool, showed early aptitude for music, and as a teenager studied piano and composition at a famous conservatory of music in Frankfurt, Germany, from which he graduated at the age of eighteen. He began his musical career in Liverpool, moved to London, traveled extensively in Europe, and  toured America for five months in 1920–21. He spent the rest of his long life in London and in villages in the south of England.

As a composer, Scott achieved the height of his fame before the First World War and was largely neglected thereafter. As a writer on the occult, however, he became increasingly well-known. The Initiate series has remained continuously in print to the present day. 

Brought up in the Church of England, Scott passed through a period of agnosticism as a young man. He became interested in Theosophy after hearing Annie Besant speak in 1904. He soon discovered Indian yoga philosophy and practices, found an Indian guru, and began calling himself a yogi. He joined the Theosophical Society in 1914, at the age of thirty-five, and remained a member for the rest of his life.

Central to Scott’s personal beliefs, writings, and music were the notions of Masters, initiates, and initiation—and this was true, in a sense, even before he encountered Theosophy. While studying in Germany, he met the German symbolist poet Stefan George, who admitted him to an exclusive circle of personal disciples who thought of him as “the revered Master.”

Mystical yet autocratic, George was fastidious in his taste in literature, art, and music, and basked in the hero worship of the young, exclusively male artists, poets, and philosophers who surrounded and emulated him. Scott composed music to George’s verses, and George sponsored performances of his music. But around 1900, Scott fell from grace, ostensibly for arrogant and immature behavior, and was banned from the circle. Scott was devastated. In 1904, he was readmitted, only to be ejected again about ten years later, in part because of his interest in Theosophy.

Luckily, Scott was able to maintain a close lifelong friendship with the Art Nouveau painter, book designer, and stained-glass worker Melchior Lechter, another member of George’s group. Thirteen years older than Scott, Lechter was also called “revered Master,” though not because he wanted disciples. Although deeply spiritual, he thought of himself as a master craftsman in the tradition of the German medieval guilds—and dressed the part. His enthusiasm for The Secret Doctrine goaded Scott to begin reading the book in 1905. Lechter joined the Theosophical Society in 1910 and traveled to Adyar that year to meet Annie Besant.

In 1901, Scott met the next of his multiple Masters in Liverpool—the now forgotten French poet and socialist Charles Bonnier. Thirty-seven years older than Scott, Bonnier was a professor of French literature at the University of Liverpool. Tired of depressing boarding houses and bothersome landladies, the two became housemates on the basis of their mutual love of art. Bonnier encouraged Scott to compose poetry as well as music. Under Bonnier’s guidance, Scott produced several books of poetry, including translations of Charles Baudelaire and Stefan George. Here, then, was the Master as artistic mentor and taskmaster. Scott called Bonnier “a great soul, and a great artist in spirit” on the basis of his being “pronouncedly unselfish” (Scott, Years, 54, original emphasis). He was a good foil for the vanity of Stefan George.

 About 1906, Scott began acquiring spiritual Masters to add to his pantheon of artistic ones. Robert King, a clairvoyant Theosophist, made a deep impression on him. King had joined the Theosophical Society in 1892. He was also a member of the London Spiritualist Alliance and lectured extensively for both organizations. He became a darling of the London social scene, a favorite at the salons and dinner parties of spiritually minded hostesses.

King and Scott were both aware of Besant’s and C.W. Leadbeater’s famous book Thought-Forms (1905), which included images of how music was clairvoyantly perceived in shapes and colors. Born into a family of chimney sweeps and completely uneducated about music, King claimed to have this ability. We do not know how King and Scott met, but Scott once explained in an interview that he would often improvise for King at the piano and King would tell him what he saw clairvoyantly. When Scott joined the Theosophical Society, King was his sponsor. Years later, Scott would refer to King as an initiate.

In 1905, Scott had become enamored of the writings of the late Swami Vivekananda. About 1907, he met Swami Abhedananda, an associate of Vivekananda who had taken over the Vedanta Society, founded by the latter in New York City. Scott thought of Abhedananda as a genuine Mahatma (“great soul”), a person “of irreproachable character and wisdom-fraught saintliness,” an exemplar of “benignity, compassion and tolerance” (Scott, Years, 152).

Abhedananda had come to England to establish a local chapter of the Vedanta Society. Scott became involved in the project, which sadly failed. He was forlorn when his guru, who had taught him various yogic practices, returned to America. However, Scott had also begun to experience mystical states of peace and joy as a result of his exposure to yoga and sought ways to portray these states in music. Scott saw his guru as a spiritual Master and himself as a disciple, a yogic initiate. He recorded some of his guru’s teachings in two anonymously published books, The Real Tolerance (1914) and The Way of the Childish (1916).

Women also played a role in Scott’s occult development. First, there was Henrietta Louisa Stevenson, who had married the brother of the famous author Robert Louis Stevenson. She was recently widowed when Scott met her at a fashionable coastal resort in France in 1902. Scott was briefly in love with her daughter, but was also deeply influenced by philosophical conversations with Mrs. Stevenson about love and marriage. She had learned her unconventional views from her husband. Scott called her “the apostle of non-jealousy” (Scott, Years, 63, original emphasis).

 Mrs. Stevenson’s views could easily be dismissed as advocating free love, or open marriage, or even a form of what is now called polyamory, an agreement between committed life partners to consider their relationship as central but to allow for and not to interfere with satellite relationships that might be more transient—and to maintain complete transparency with everyone involved. Scott seems to have received these views as eminently practical and compassionate means of negotiating the waywardness of the human heart and the social, legal, and psychological traps that people constantly fell into. These included socially approved but loveless or sexless marriages, romantic passions that subsided all too soon after marriage, and the jealousy that resulted from perceiving a partner as a possession to be controlled rather than a person to be understood with tolerance and forgiveness. Scott wove some of Henrietta’s teachings into The Real Tolerance.

Another influential figure in Scott’s development was a medium named Nelsa Chaplin. She and her husband, Alex, ran an alternative health resort called The Firs in rural England. Robert King frequented the place, as did Scott’s future wife, the novelist Rose Allatini. Perhaps she and Scott met there.

	Cyril Scott in 1913, a year before he joined the Theosophical Society

At The Firs, founded in 1910, Theosophical topics such as auras and thought forms were often under discussion. Nelsa and Alex joined the TS in 1919. Alex was interested in color and sound therapy. Nelsa was a musician and improvised at the piano, often in trance. As a child, she was able to perceive nature spirits (elemental beings such as gnomes and fairies) and devas (“shining ones”—a term borrowed from Sanskrit to refer to angelic beings). Devas were said to communicate to each other in a language of color and sound. Nelsa was supposedly able to “bring through” such beings in her music. She told Scott that he too was a channel for the music of nature spirits and devas. For the rest of his life, Scott experimented along these lines, developing a symbolic means of representing nature spirits, humans, devas, and Masters with specially colored harmony and scales.

For Scott, the most important aspect of his friendship with Nelsa was that she claimed to speak for Master KH (Koot Hoomi), a member of the Occult Hierarchy described in Theosophical teachings and a sponsoring founder of the Theosophical Society. A light-skinned Kashmiri with a Western education, Master KH was said to reside in Tibet. He too was a musician, and played a custom-made instrument installed in an internal wall of his home. It had a piano keyboard on one side and an organ keyboard on the other. Scott thought of himself as a disciple of KH. Music: Its Secret Influence was largely made up of material channeled by KH through Nelsa.

By 1916, Scott had become aware of the teachings of an American yogi named Pierre Bernard, whose life and contributions to the development of yoga in America were chronicled in a biography by Robert Love, The Great Oom: The Improbable Birth of Yoga in America (2010). Bernard taught a form of Tantric (sex polarity) yoga. He had an ashram for the wealthy in the Hudson River Valley, and was frequently in trouble with conventional morality and the law. One of his students had come to England to proclaim the Gospel of Oom, and Scott spent a year or so in training with him. In 1920–21, Scott toured America for several months as pianist and composer and visited Bernard’s ashram.

This brings us to the 1920 publication of the first book in the Initiate series, The Initiate: Some Impressions of a Great Soul. Once again, Scott concealed his identity as author—the byline read “by a Pupil.” In a later volume in the series, published in 1932, he called the narrator “Charles Broadbent” and identified him as a poet. Finally, in 1935, Scott admitted he was the author of the series, though he claimed that by that time this fact was an open secret.

Scott and his wife separated during the Second World War, and she lived the rest of her long life in close companionship with Janet Melanie Ailsa Mills, a Theosophical writer whose pen-name was H.K. Challoner. Scott himself settled down with Marjorie Hartston, a clairvoyant who was said to be able to perceive and communicate with Master KH.

Discouraged by declining interest in his music, Scott decided to cease composing—but a message from his Master told him there was still work to do in this genre on behalf of humanity. He spent his remaining decades producing dozens of musical works, many of them unperformed during his lifetime, as well as a series of books on alternative healing.

Before beginning our tour of the spiritual path outlined in Scott’s Initiate series, I should clarify several things. The initiate that is the first book’s subject is named Justin Moreward Haig. Throughout The Initiate, Scott refers to him as Moreward. In later books, he is called MH (New World) or JMH (Dark Cycle). I will use JMH from this point on.

Scott’s schema of occult initiation is far less specific than that presented in Leadbeater’s The Masters and the Path. Scott refers to pupils, disciples, initiates, great initiates, adepts, and Masters without explaining differences in degree of occult mastery. For Leadbeater, a pupil is not yet an initiate but may be studying under one. A disciple is an initiate studying under a Master. Initiates are of four degrees, and those who have completed the fourth are called Adepts. Masters have passed through the fifth initiation—and there are several initiations beyond that.

As the Initiate series progresses, JMH’s occult responsibilities expand. In The Initiate, he works locally and has a pupil, the narrator. He could therefore be a first-, second-, or third-degree initiate in Leadbeater’s schema. In New World, JMH has an ashram of disciples and is capable of performing miracles. He may now be an adept, a fourth-degree initiate. In Dark Cycle, he begins to work internationally, perhaps in the final stages of training to become a full-fledged Master.

In An Outline of Modern Occultism (1935), Scott listed some characteristics of initiates and Masters. They are free of vanity and selfishness, full of tolerance and understanding, as well as “unconditional love for Humanity.” They see everything “through the eyes of wisdom” and participate in “an unconditional consciousness of joy” and want others to “share in that felicity.” Furthermore, they are “guides and teachers—not dictators” (Scott, Outline, 20).

Scott dedicates The Initiate to “the Great Soul [i.e., Mahatma] whose name is concealed under the name Justin Moreward Haig.” Probably Scott means Swami Abhedananda. But JMH is almost certainly a composite character: the social setting of the book suggests the milieu of Robert King, and some of JMH’s teachings are traceable to Henrietta Stevenson.  

The first half of The Initiate is a hilarious spoof of Georgian social conventions. There is no plot, just a series of vignettes in which JMH appears in various social situations and dissects people’s physical, familial, emotional, mental, and spiritual dilemmas with disarming directness and delicious irony.

The second half of the book, “The Circuitous Journey,” is a somewhat plodding parable of the spiritual evolution of two souls, Antonius and Cynara, who alternately help and hinder each other’s spiritual awakening as they struggle to understand why they are together and where they are traveling to. They spend many days (representing lifetimes) passing through various scenes in which they either succeed or fail to learn some lesson, and periodically encounter spiritual teachers who do or do not help. When they have finally learned the difference between selfish and unselfish love, they are ready to be taken under the tutelage of their Master, Pallomides, who has been guiding them from behind the scenes during the entire journey. They are given the task of getting married and having a son who will become a great spiritual teacher. Throughout “The Circuitous Journey,” Scott has presumably been describing the trials of the probationary path, the set of trials through which aspirants must pass to prove themselves ready for the teachings of a Master.

The Initiate in the New World (1927) begins with an introduction in which Scott discusses the aftermath of publication of The Initiate—reams of mail speculating on the identity of JMH or demanding personal interviews with him. Scott reminded his readers that he had told them at the end of The Initiate that his Master “had gone to another part of the world and left him no forwarding address” and was now “thousands of miles away from my home” (Scott, New World, viii).This was true—Swami Abhedananda had returned to India in 1921. Thus it is not surprising that personal characteristics and yogic teachings of Scott’s new guru, Pierre Bernard, have been added to those of Abhedananda. JMH’s teachings now center on yoga, relationships, and sexuality, as we might expect of a Tantric guru such as Bernard. But there is a graveyard scene involving JMH’s work with the lost soul of a child—likely a tribute to Robert King.

Unlike its predecessor, New World has a plot. The poet Charles Broadbent is confronted with a dilemma. He has fallen in love with Clare Delafield, a vivacious blonde resident of the ashram (which Scott has relocated to Boston). However, JMH tells Broadbent that he should enter into an “occult marriage” with the serious, dark-haired writer Viola Brind. The Masters wish that such a marriage should take place to bring a special child into the world. After much inward and outward struggle between the three, Charles and Viola decide to acquiesce in the Masters’ wishes.

From other sources, we know that Master KH, as channeled by Nelsa Chaplin, had encouraged Scott to marry the dark-haired writer Rose Allatini, a frequent guest at The Firs. The ostensible purpose was to facilitate reincarnation of Scott’s beloved Swami Vivekananda. In the end, the Scotts’ first child was a girl who manifested few characteristics of spiritual adeptship. Though their second child, Desmond, became well-known as a theater director and sculptor in Canada, he also was probably not the reincarnation of the swami.

It should now be clear that “The Circuitous Journey” was written to sort out Scott’s feelings about this occult marriage before the actual civil marriage took place in 1921. If Viola Brind was Rose Allatini, then who was Clare Delafield? I have identified her as an earlier love of Scott’s, a vivacious blond opera singer from America named Maud Le Vinson Roosevelt (a distant cousin of Theodore Roosevelt), whom Scott had met in Paris around 1905. Maud’s chaperone was a female cousin who, like Rose Allatini, was a writer. For several months, the three went about together, much as Charles, Clare, and Viola do in New World.

Maud apparently rejected Scott as a romantic partner, though the two became close friends and confidantes. She died in 1912, and Scott memorialized her in a book of poems. Perhaps the competition between Clare and Viola in New World was Scott’s attempt to exorcize his unrequited love for Maud in preparation for his marriage to Rose Allatini. Be that as it may, New World seeks to portray the inner and outer lives of pupils of an initiate as they learn to live and work together and set aside personal desire in favor of altruistic service to humanity.

The Initiate in the Dark Cycle (1932) begins with an introduction in which Scott once again complains about the often unintelligent, even ridiculous demands of letters from his readers. He also quashes a rumor that JMH is James Ingall Wedgwood, a bishop and founder of the Liberal Catholic Church.

The first chapter is a touching and amusing posthumous portrait of Nelsa Chaplin, who died in 1927, and life at The Firs, here called “The Pines.” In the book, Scott dubs her Christabel Portman, “the deva Initiate.” We learn something of her early life, clairvoyant powers, and selfless service to humanity as healer and counselor. We are also given a chance to eavesdrop on the conversations of eccentric residents of The Firs and messages from Master KH as channeled by Nelsa. Charles Broadbent has a new sidekick, Lyall Herbert, a spiritually inclined composer—another alter ego of Scott. And of course JMH reappears to provide teachings on various subjects.

We also meet the droll astrologer “David Anrias” (Brian Anrias Ross), through whom Scott continued to receive messages from Master KH after the death of Nelsa Chaplin. The “dark cycle” of the title reflects astrological predictions made by David.

The book includes discussions by various initiates and Masters on how the Theosophical Society should rebuild itself after a major crisis. Promoted by Annie Besant as an embodiment of the next World Teacher (something like the second coming of Christ), Jiddu Krishnamurti unexpectedly renounced this role in 1929, causing a collapse in membership of the organization. Discussion of the aftermath is one aspect of a larger theme—the national and international political work of the Masters.

The highlight of Dark Cycle is a trip to a mysterious Tudor mansion where Broadbent and Herbert meet one of the two “English Masters” mentioned in Blavatsky’s writings. “Sir Thomas” is probably intended to represent the sixteenth-century philosopher and Catholic saint Sir Thomas More, often put forward by Theosophical speculators as one of the English Masters. Curiously, Sir Thomas wears a skullcap—as did Scott’s literary master Charles Bonnier. Sir Thomas’s fictional home is modeled on a castle in Harlech, Wales, built by Charles Davison, a wealthy former executive of the Eastman-Kodak Corporation, ousted for his socialist/anarchist views. Charles Bonnier was also a socialist (hence the skullcap).

During the First World War, Scott spent summers at Harlech Castle, along with a number of artistic, musical, and literary colleagues. The castle included a piano/organ combination like Master KH’s. Scott was known to play the instrument at Harlech—and Herbert plays its fictional equivalent.

At the end of the book, Broadbent is commissioned by the Masters to write Dark Cycle. Herbert is commissioned to compose a new type of music, guided by the Masters. Master KH appears in a vision, improvising celestial music on the Tibet instrument, and Broadbent and Herbert are passed from JMH to KH as accepted disciples, thereby becoming initiates themselves. JMH prepares to go into seclusion for an extended period—ostensibly to finalize his progression from initiate to Master but also to put him more or less permanently out of reach of the letter writers plaguing Scott for JMH’s whereabouts.

What are we to make of all this? First, the Initiate series is great fun to read—all the more so when we know something of the parallels with Scott’s life and the ingenuity and humor that went into creating the trilogy’s semifictional world. Second, Scott had an unusual capacity to admire anyone who could teach him something about the spiritual path. He may have been overly credulous at times, as in the case of the reincarnation of Vivekananda. Yet his books contain many insightful pages, derived from multiple “Masters,” about such things as love, marriage, art, and humor that are worth considering as useful spiritual teachings—especially the chapter entitled “The Permanent Love-Consciousness” in New World.

But the true value of the series is its panorama of the “circuitous journey” of human spiritual development—the Path of Initiation, as it is called in Theosophical teachings. As “life enhanced into truth,” this panorama transcends the genres of semiautobiographical novel or semifictional memoir to become a quasi-archetypal portrayal of this path.

The stage of “average humanity” is represented by the unenlightened and convention-bound inhabitants of English drawing rooms (Initiate). Then we have the clueless but aspiring Antonius and Cynara, slowly awakening to the lessons about selfishness and selflessness that comprise the Probationary Path (Initiate).

The narrator of the first half of the Initiate is at the stage described in the phrase, “When the pupil is ready, the Master will be forthcoming” (Scott, Initiate, ix). In New World, the narrator is fully committed to the spiritual path, studying under an initiate and learning to negotiate relationships, marriage, sexuality, and “love-consciousness.” Clare, Viola, and Charles represent three development levels within the pupil stage: beginner, experienced, and advanced.

In Dark Cycle, Broadbent and Herbert, as advanced pupils, progress to learn how to serve to humanity through the arts. Christabel Portman, the deva initiate, demonstrates a more advanced stage of such service, using music for healing. Christabel also illustrates one means by which the Masters communicate to their students across a great distance, such as that between the Himalayas and England. She consciously steps aside from her physical body so a Master can temporarily use it to provide direction. David Anrias demonstrates a less advanced means of such communication by tuning in to the Masters via meditation or sensing their presence and hearing them inwardly, even without such tuning in. We could perhaps position Anrias as a first- and Christabel as a second-degree initiate.

Higher yet, we have JMH. We see him serving humanity in all its forms, from average souls in London drawing rooms, perhaps as a third-degree initiate (Initiate), to lost souls wandering after death and living pupils in an ashram, now at the fourth degree (New World), and finally advanced pupils, about to be accepted as disciples of a Master (Dark Cycle). In New World and Dark Cycle, we witness the range of spiritual teachings and powers available to him as an adept preparing for the fifth initiation that will make him a Master.

The Masters themselves finally appear in Dark Cycle—one in the flesh (Sir Thomas) and the other in a waking vision (KH). We see them working as members of the Occult Hierarchy that guides the evolution of the world. Not only do they provide perspective and dole out missions to their human agents on earth, but they are responsible for advancing pupils to the disciple stage and initiates to the Master stage.

To complete this portrait gallery of the Occult Hierarchy, a “Dyan Chohan” (“Lord of Meditation”; Scott’s spelling) briefly appears in New World. This exalted being, representing a level higher even than that of the Masters, is clairvoyantly perceived by Viola. He gives his blessing to Broadbent’s intention to write this very book.

Valuable as this portrait gallery may be as a contribution to understanding the path of initiation, the greatest teaching of the Initiate series is not to be found within any of the books. It lies in the process of artistic combination and spiritual transformation that took people Scott knew in real life and reimagined them as examples of each stage. Whether it was their ability to love (Mrs. Stevenson) or their knowledge of art making (George and Lechter), their exuberant life (Maud Roosevelt) or their joyful service to suffering humanity (Nelsa Chaplin), Scott was able to see the Master in them and be taught.

The initiates and Masters of the trilogy may have been literary inventions, but they were constructed of whatever is best in us. We may be surrounded by our own multiple Masters waiting to teach us how to become initiates—our best and highest selves.

Sources

Scott, Cyril. The Initiate in the New World. York Beach, Maine: Weiser, 1991.

———. My Years of Indiscretion. London: Mills & Boon, 1924.

———. An Outline of Modern Occultism. London: Routledge, 1935.

Kurt Leland lectures nationally and internationally for the Theosophical Society. He recently released an expanded edition of Otherwhere: A Field Guide for Astral Travelers and is currently working on a little book on clairvoyance for Martin Firrell’s series Modern Theosophy. He has been invited to submit an essay on Annie Besant for a special issue of the British Journal for the History of Philosophy on nineteenth-century women philosophers writing in English, to be published in 2021.

Printed in the  Spring 2020  issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation:  Sender, Pablo, "Members’ Forum: The Online School of Theosophy " Quest 108:2, pg 10-11

By Pablo Sender

The Online School of Theosophy (OST) has been launched as a cooperative effort between the Theosophical Society in America and the Krotona Institute of Theosophy. Pablo Sender, one of the chief designers of the program, answers some questions.

What is the OST?

It is an online platform that allows for a comprehensive educational experience. It offers multimedia courses built with interactive features, including video lectures from esteemed Theosophical teachers, reading assignments, quizzes, and suggestions for practical exercises. Additional material in the form of articles and video and audio files will help students deepen their exploration of Theosophy. The courses follow a self-study model: students set their own pace. The program provides a well-structured format for progressive learning that students can enjoy at home and at the times that are most convenient.

Why was the Online School created?

The OST was created to address a difficulty that currently exists in the Theosophical Society (TS), which is the lack of systematic education. Since its inception in 1875, the TS has generated an enormous amount of literature, which offers a rich worldview covering deeply metaphysical subjects. A number of those who come to the TS feel overwhelmed by the abundance of teachings and often ask for some kind of guidance on how to proceed. One of the main goals of the OST is to help students navigate the wealth of Theosophical teachings.

Is the Online School meant to offer a more academic approach to Theosophy?

I’m not sure I would put it in that way. Theosophical teachings are not merely a philosophy—they are a spiritual practice and a way of life. Intellectual knowledge of Theosophical teachings alone is not enough to help us live in a different way. But certainly when spiritual practice is based on a clear understanding of the teachings, it is easier to realize the ways in which we may become caught up in one form of illusion or another. Many traditional spiritual paths place right understanding as the foundation of spiritual practice.

Does the Online School deal also with the practical aspect, then?

Currently we are focusing on generating courses on the philosophy and metaphysics of Theosophy, although even the basic courses offer some kind of meditative inquiry or practical exercise. In the future, we are planning to add courses that deal directly with spiritual practice.

Is the OST geared toward the general public or members of the Theosophical Society?

Currently there are both introductory and intermediate courses, so the OST can help those who are just beginning to learn about Theosophy as well as more seasoned members. Because the courses are taken online, the OST may be especially meaningful to those who are unable to attend an active Theosophical group in person and do not have the benefit of help and guidance in their studies.

Could this resource be used in local branches and study groups also?

Definitely. In fact, one of our aims is to support local groups. In this increasingly busy modern life, relatively few members are able to study and practice steadily enough to grasp deep Theosophical teachings in an appropriate way. The OST can help small local groups by providing access to talks from a variety of teachers from around the world, placing within their reach the best resources that the TS has to offer worldwide.

Does the OST offer some kind of interaction? In what way is it different from watching a recording?

Learning in the OST is self-paced, so it cannot offer live interaction, but it does facilitate a higher level of engagement in learning than one might typically experience by simply watching a video.

The classes begin with a video recording, but a series of creative quizzes and exercises are added whereby students can evaluate their understanding of the material. The quizzes offer feedback that helps cement the student’s understanding of the concepts. Reading assignments complement the study and multimedia materials offered for further exploration. In this way, learning is not limited to a passive intake of information, but encourages a more active participation on the student’s part.

Are OST programs limited to Theosophical teachings?

In the initial phase, the main objective of the OST is to create a solid foundation for the study of Theosophical teachings. After all, there are many sources to which people can turn to learn about other traditions, but if the TS does not educate its members in Theosophical teachings, no one else will. Ultimately, the OST intends to expand its program offerings to include courses on comparative philosophies, religions, and science, as stated in the Second Object of the TS.

How do you envision the OST in the near future?

I envision it as an international online resource for individuals and groups, which contains a wealth of courses on Theosophy and comparative traditions. The courses will be organized in various curricula, such as basic or advanced Theosophical subjects, Eastern philosophies, Western esotericism, practical spirituality, sacred texts, and so forth.

We are also considering adding some social network features so that like-minded people across the world can connect with each other in a context of spiritual education—something for which most popular social networks are not designed.

How can people take the courses?

They can go to the Online School at study.theosophical.org and create a personal account (they will find instructions for this in the website’s FAQ). Once they have an account, they can enroll in any of the available courses. At this time we are not charging for any of them, but do appreciate donations to support the development of new courses.

Pablo Sender, PhD, has been a member of the Theosophical Society since 1996 and has presented Theosophical lectures, seminars, and classes around  the world. He lives at the Krotona Institute of Theosophy in Ojai, California. He is the author of Evolution of the Higher Consciousness (reviewed in Quest, winter 2019). His website is www.pablosender.com.

VOLUME 108, NUMBER 1

CONTENTS

Savage Initiation:  An Interview with Andrew Harvey
Richard Smoley

The Multiple Masters of Cyril Scott
Kurt Leland

Initiation, Present and Absent
Richard Smoley

Avatars, Geniuses, and Channeling the Divine
Ray Grasse

The Apocryphon of  James
Kelly Johnson

Viewpoint: Initiation into the One
Barbara Hebert

From the Editor's Desk
Richard Smoley

Members' Forum: The Online School of Theosophy
Pablo Sender

Printed in the  Winter 2020  issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation:  Lindop, Grevel, "Consult the Oracle: How an Old Book on Fortune Telling Opened up a World of Magic." Quest 108:1, pg 32-34

By Grevel Lindop

My grandfather, I’ve been told, was something of a magician. At any rate, he left behind him a substantial collection of occult books. Unfortunately I never saw this collection: when he died, my parents (not from any disapproval, but simply because they had had enough of dealing with his possessions) disposed of the whole lot to a bookseller.

Or almost the whole lot. Because, as in all the best fairy tales, one book survived. When I was about ten years old, I found it, hidden amongst clutter in a kind of attic, the room next to my bedroom. It’s on the desk in front of me as I write, a battered old volume called Consult the Oracle, or, How to Read the Future.

Could there possibly be a more alluring title for a child to discover? I still feel a certain thrill as I look at it now, despite its desperate physical condition. The spine, which time has darkened almost to black, has split and nearly fallen off. The hard front cover (there was clearly never a dust jacket) is a shiny, grubby brown, darkened at the edges with finger marks. It shows an amateurish drawing of a priestess swathed in voluminous robes, perched atop a three-legged chair—no doubt the famous tripod of the Delphic Oracle. She raises one crudely drawn hand, whilst the other clutches a branch of some shrub: perhaps meant for laurel or olive, though it looks nothing like either. From a hole in the dais under her chair emanate curly wreaths of smoke: those vapors from the depths of the earth which were supposed to inspire the oracle’s prophecies.

Alongside her, to remind us of practicalities, is the book’s price: one shilling (today that’s five new pence, or around six cents). In March 1901, when Grandfather bought the book, that would have been cheap, but not dirt cheap. I know when he bought it, incidentally, because there’s the date, under pencilled initials, on a flyleaf which has now completely detached itself and lies loose inside the cover.

		Consult the Oracle was first published in 1899 by C. Arthur Pearson, one of Britains's leading book publishers. Written by the no doubt pseudonymous Gabriel Nostradamus, it became a best seller, going through three editions in ten months.

The title page enlarges on what’s to be found within. “A GUIDE TO THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS,” it promises, “AND TO OTHER MATTERS MAGICAL AND MYSTERIOUS: BEING THE WISDOM OF PAST TIMES AND PRESENT TIMES AS TO WHAT WILL SURELY COME TO PASS.” Who could resist that? As a ten-year-old, I certainly couldn’t. When you’re a child, the future is everything, a box of delights. Now, in my seventy-first year, I have a different idea of what will surely come to pass, and it’s not all good. Never mind. The contents page listed possibilities beyond my wildest dreams.

Indeed dreams were where the book began. The first chapter was “We Tell the Meaning of Your Dreams,” and it started with some basic tips: for example, a warning that “the gift of dreaming with truth is withdrawn from those who either tell as dreams what they never dreamt, or refuse to tell their dreams at all.” That was worth remembering. Also, “Morning dreams are more reliable than those of any other time.” Certainly I’ve often found those the most vivid, though “the most important dream of the week” is, apparently, the one you dream on Friday night. Above all, “dreams are interpreted by symbolism. The most earnest and best-informed student of the symbolical will be the most reliable interpreter of dreams.”

There followed an alphabetical list of dream images, with interpretations, some of them surprising. If you dream of an anchor, for example, then “one of whose affections you are doubtful really cares for you,” and to dream of riding a bicycle “means that for some years you will have constant change.” A stopped clock means a dangerous illness, and “should you dream of catching fish it is a sure sign of bad luck.” More predictably, “to hear whispering in a dream means that many people are talking ill of you.” Some of the topics seemed a little outré; would I ever dream, for example, of a tortoise (“You will by plodding on reach a high position in life”)? Or of watching a woman make pies (“Your experience in love is likely to prove disastrous”)? Six decades later, I’m not sure that either of these has yet cropped up.

But the details didn’t really matter. What counted was the sense that dreams were worth attention, that they had meaning. I began to recall my dreams purposefully, and to reflect on them. A few years later, in a local library, I found a book called The Interpretation of Dreams and borrowed it, expecting a more reliable guide to prophecy. It turned out to be by Sigmund Freud; it introduced me to psychoanalysis, which has played a valuable part in my life.

But there was much more to Consult the Oracle than dreams. Among the other chapters were “Lucky and Unlucky Numbers”; “Fortunes Told by Cards”; “Character Shown by Handwriting”; “Fairy Folk”; “The Wonders of the Divining Rod” and many more. Almost everything, it seemed, could have hidden meanings. The chapter on cartomancy offered what was probably a very old system for reading fortunes with ordinary playing cards; in 1901, few people outside esoteric organizations had ever heard of Tarot cards. I didn’t get far with it: memorizing the meanings of fifty-two cards, many of them apparently quite arbitrary, was too difficult (“Five of Hearts: Unexpected news, generally of a good kind; Four of Hearts: An unfaithful friend. A secret betrayed”). But it aroused my curiosity, and when I was sixteen I finally got a Tarot deck—which I’ve used ever since.

More immediately valuable were the chapters called “We May Judge Character by the Hands and Fingers” and “Fortune Read in the Palm of the Hand.” I studied my own hands closely. Easy enough to find the life line and even the lines of head and heart. But where was “the Plain or Triangle of Mars”? And what about the “Mount of Luna, or the Moon”? Not too worried about such minutiae, I scrutinized other people’s hands as well. Somehow, without ever quite disentangling all the details, I began to develop a sense of how the hand, taken as a whole, with its fingers and wrist, as well as the maze of lines on the palm, spoke of a whole person. A few years later, at teenage parties, what an asset palmistry turned out to be! What better passport could there be to sitting with a girl in a quiet corner, or halfway up the stairs, holding her hand and solemnly discussing her character, ambitions, and dreams?

 The chapter on “Fairy Folk” explained that

The Land of Faerie is situated somewhere underground, and there the royal fairies hold their court. In their palaces all is beauty and splendour. Their pageants and processions are far more magnificent than any that Eastern sovereigns could get up or poets devise. They ride upon milk-white steeds. Their dresses, of brilliant green, are rich beyond conception; and when they mingle in the dance, or move in procession among the shady groves, or over the verdant lawns of the earth, they are entertained with delicious music, such as mortal lips or hands never could emit or produce.

Apparently fairies would only be found where the grass grew “undisturbed by man.” “Once it is ploughed the spell is gone and they change their abode.” An old Scottish proverb was quoted: “Where the scythe cuts, and the sock [plowshare] rives, hae done wi’ fairies and bee bykes!”

Bee bykes, it seemed, were nests of wild bees. Indeed Consult the Oracle had a whole chapter on bees: it was called “Bees Know More than People Think,” a suggestion I still find very plausible. “Bees,” the Oracle explained, “are lovers of peace and will not thrive with a quarrelsome family.” It also warned that “if there is a death in the family,” the bees must be told, or they would leave: the correct formula was said to be “Little brownie, little brownie, [such a person] is dead.” Once this was properly done, “the bees begin to hum by way of showing their consent to remain.” It was also wise to “put a little sugar at the hive’s entrance on Christmas Eve.” “At the stroke of midnight” the bees would come out to eat it. By contrast, some passages showed the casual cruelty of the Victorians: “Not to catch and kill the first butterfly seen in spring is unlucky.” That reads shockingly now and is surely the exact opposite of the truth.

The Oracle had a good deal to say about animals generally. Cats born in the month of May, it warned, “are good for catching neither mice nor rats.” On the other hand, “the best mousers are cats that have been stolen.” Did anyone truly ever steal a cat to improve its talents at pest control? It seemed unlikely. More plausible were the notions that “horses are able to see spirits” and that it is lucky for a horse to have a white star on its forehead.

It would take too long even to hint at all the wonders the Oracle had to offer. There was “Character Shown by Handwriting” as well as “The Mysteries of Spiritualism,” “Taking a Hand at Table-Turning,” and even an introduction to astrology: “There is much to be Learned from the Heavenly Bodies.”

I could go on, but this is enough. Foolish and simple-minded much of the book certainly is, as I gradually realized. But it told me something important: that the world round me was not just a world of material objects, nor a world merely governed by meaningless chance and physical laws. It showed that there was meaning and mystery in everything; and that on the margins of mainstream thought—the kind of thinking we were taught at school—there were intuitions, dreams, visions of other and deeper things. Consult the Oracle showed me that, as the poet Paul Éluard neatly put it, “There is indeed another world—but it is in this one.”

The Oracle helped me make the transition from the fluid, metamorphic, nonrational world of childhood, into the partially (very partially!) rational and informed grown-up world —that world in which so many people are encouraged to close down their intuitive, psychic and imaginative faculties—without losing the sense of wonder and mystery. Some people—the naturally spiritual ones—may not need such support, but I did, and I was lucky to find it.

Having inherited Consult the Oracle—accidentally, as it were—from my grandfather, it would be good to report that I am passing it on to one of my own grandchildren. But that’s impossible. For—again as in a fairy tale—now that its work is done, the book is crumbling to dust. In writing this essay, I have turned many of the pages, and each as I turned it has broken away from the binding. So acidic is the paper that the leaves are brown and brittle at the margins. The edges of the pages flake off as they are touched. Soon the book will be nothing but a heap of fragments. Everything has its season, and this book’s season has passed. But it came to me at the right time, and I’m grateful. I consulted the oracle, and it spoke.

Grevel Lindop is a poet and biographer living in Manchester, U.K., where he has taught Buddhist meditation for many years. His recent books include Luna Park (poems), from Carcanet Press, and Charles Williams: The Third Inkling from Oxford University Press. His website is at www.grevel.co.uk.