The Occult Nineteenth Century: Roots, Developments, and Impact on the Modern World [1st ed. 2021] 3030553175, 9783030553173

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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN NEW RELIGIONS AND ALTERNATIVE SPIRITUALITIES

The Occult Nineteenth Century Roots, Developments, and Impact on the Modern World Edited by Lukas Pokorny Franz Winter

Palgrave Studies in New Religions and Alternative Spiritualities Series Editors James R. Lewis School of Philosophy Wuhan University Wuhan, China Henrik Bogdan University of Gothenburg Gothenburg, Sweden

Palgrave Studies in New Religions and Alternative Spiritualities is an ­interdisciplinary monograph and edited collection series sponsored by the International Society for the Study of New Religions. The series is devoted to research on New Religious Movements. In addition to the usual groups studied under the New Religions label, the series publishes books on such phenomena as the New Age, communal & utopian groups, Spiritualism, New Thought, Holistic Medicine, Western esotericism, Contemporary Paganism, astrology, UFO groups, and new movements within traditional religions. The Society considers submissions from researchers in any discipline. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14608

Lukas Pokorny  •  Franz Winter Editors

The Occult Nineteenth Century Roots, Developments, and Impact on the Modern World

Editors Lukas Pokorny Department of Religious Studies University of Vienna Vienna, Austria

Franz Winter Department of Religious Studies University of Graz Graz, Austria

Palgrave Studies in New Religions and Alternative Spiritualities ISBN 978-3-030-55317-3    ISBN 978-3-030-55318-0 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55318-0 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the ­publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and ­institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: The cataleptic state, 19th century. Credit: Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

For Karl Baier

Contents

1 Introductory Remarks  1 Lukas Pokorny and Franz Winter Part I Mesmerism  13 2 Carl August von Eschenmayer and the Somnambulic Soul 15 Wouter J. Hanegraaff 3 Priest-Doctors and Magnetisers: Mesmerism, Romantic Medicine, and Catholic Thought in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century 37 Maren Sziede 4 Animal Magnetism and Its Psychological Implications in Hungary 59 Júlia Gyimesi 5 From Fluidum to Prāṇa: Reading Mesmerism Through Orientalist Lenses 85 Dominic S. Zoehrer

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Contents

Part II Occultism in America and Europe 111 6 Total Recall: The “Panoramic Life Review” Near Death as Proof of the Soul’s Timeless Self-Presence in Western Esotericism of the Nineteenth Century113 Jens Schlieter 7 Stages in the Development of an Occult Linguistics139 Olav Hammer 8 The Art of Esoteric Posthumousness159 Marco Pasi 9 Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie and Sexual Regeneration177 John Patrick Deveney 10 The Theosophical Maitreya: On Benjamin Creme’s Millenarianism195 Lukas Pokorny 11 Martial Arts Spirituality in Sweden: The Occult Connection221 Per Faxneld Part III Occultism in Global Perspective 245 12 A Study into a Transreligious Quest for the Ultimate Truth: Indian, Muslim, and European Interpretations of the Upanishads247 Franz Winter 13 Occult’s First Foot Soldier in Bengal: Peary Chand Mittra and the Early Theosophical Movement269 Mriganka Mukhopadhyay

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14 Re-Imagining an Ancient Greek Philosopher: The Pythagorean Musings of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (Osho)287 Almut-Barbara Renger 15 African and Amerindian Spirits: A Note on the Influence of Nineteenth-Century Spiritism and Spiritualism on Afro- and African-American Religions319 Hans Gerald Hödl Part IV Occultism and Modern Yoga 345 16 Sri Sabhapati Swami: The Forgotten Yogi of Western Esotericism347 Keith Edward Cantú ̄ s´a: The 17 Tracing Vivekananda’s Prāṇa and A kā Yogavāsiṣṭha and Rama Prasad’s Occult Science of Breath373 Magdalena Kraler 18 Guru and Messiah: On the First Yoga Handbook in Polish Language: Wincenty Lutosławski’s The Development of the Power of Will by Means of Psychophysical Exercises (1909)399 Marlis Lami Index425

List of Contributors

Keith Edward Cantú  Ph.D. candidate in Religious Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA John Patrick Deveney  Independent Scholar, Memphis, Tennessee, USA Per  Faxneld Senior University, Sweden

Lecturer

in

Religious

Studies,

Södertörn

Júlia  Gyimesi  Senior Lecturer in Psychology, Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Hungary Olav  Hammer Professor of the Study of Religions, University of Southern Denmark, Denmark Wouter J. Hanegraaff  Professor of History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands Hans Gerald Hödl  Associate Professor of Religious Studies, University of Vienna, Austria Magdalena  Kraler  Ph.D. candidate in Religious Studies, University of Vienna, Austria Marlis  Lami Adjunct Professor of Religious Studies, Jagiellonian University, Poland

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Mriganka  Mukhopadhyay Ph.D. candidate in History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands Marco Pasi  Associate Professor of History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands Lukas Pokorny  Department of Religious Studies, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria Almut-Barbara Renger  Professor of Ancient Religion and Culture and their Reception History, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany Jens Schlieter  Associate Professor for the Systematic Study of Religions, University of Bern, Switzerland Maren  Sziede Ph.D. candidate in Religious Studies, University of Fribourg, Switzerland Franz  Winter Department of Religious Studies, University of Graz, Graz, Austria Dominic S. Zoehrer  Ph.D. candidate in Religious Studies, University of Vienna, Austria

CHAPTER 1

Introductory Remarks Lukas Pokorny and Franz Winter

Contrary to past practices, scholars no longer see the nineteenth-century “occult” as a marginal phenomenon. In recent years, many studies have demonstrated that it had important repercussions, be they cultural, historical, political, religious, or aesthetic. This volume contributes to this growing recognition by bringing together 17 contributions dealing with a variety of topics and with American, European, Indian, and East Asian “occult” currents and their intersections with diverse facets of nineteenth-­century culture, religion, and politics. Among other things, the volume treats Naturphilosophie, Romanticism, spiritualism, mesmerism, Theosophy, and occultism, alongside elements of Hindu, Buddhist, and Afro- and AfricanAmerican thought. In particular, many of the contributions introduce hitherto barely known figures whose importance is highlighted and it includes case studies from a mix of countries that are often not well represented in the existing literature (Hungary, Poland, and Sweden).

L. Pokorny (*) Department of Religious Studies, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria e-mail: [email protected] F. Winter Department of Religious Studies, University of Graz, Graz, Austria e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 L. Pokorny, F. Winter (eds.), The Occult Nineteenth Century, Palgrave Studies in New Religions and Alternative Spiritualities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55318-0_1

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Consequently, the importance of this volume lies in the individual contributions that stand on their own. Yet, there is also an important general framework, which is the basis for the book’s structure. This will be elucidated below alongside a succinct presentation of the contributions. The point of departure and one of the most significant aspects of this volume is the importance of mesmerism as a highly influential but overall frequently neglected tradition, especially with a view to the formation of modern occultism (but even beyond that, thereby clearly following the scholarship of Karl Baier; see, e.g., Baier 2009, 2015, 2020). Initially developed by the Austrian physician Franz Anton Mesmer (1734–1815) in the eighteenth century, this very special system of “healing” influenced occultism and continued to be popular throughout the nineteenth century across the world, eventually contributing, among others, to the evolution of hypnotism (Baier 2019; Gripentrop 2015; Méheust 2006: 78–79). The impact of mesmerism should not be underestimated, for even key notions of the later occult tradition were coined, developed, or at least expanded within this particular strand for the first time (e.g., the notion of fluidum; see Baier 2016). In addition to the close entanglement of mesmerism with occult concepts, contributions on the occult tradition itself are at the centre of this collection comprising two sections. These sections strikingly show how influential occult concepts were in the nineteenth century and also examine their interpretation in the subsequent centuries. Therefore, a key theme of this volume is the reverberations viz. the impact of the nineteenth-­ century occult in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and its influence on the culture of modernity. As major traits of the history and importance of occultism have been already examined on various levels, including the influence of occultism on literature, the arts, and politics (for specific examples and an overview, see, e.g., Bauduin and Johnsson 2018; Bauduin et al. 2018; Partridge 2015; Hanegraaff 2013: 146–156; Pasi 2013; Owen 2004), these contributions might serve as additional material enhancing our knowledge of particular areas and introducing new figures within this important strand. The volume concludes with a section on modern yoga introducing important nineteenth-century exponents and their engagement with the occult. To a certain extent, this last section links directly to the first (i.e., on mesmerism) as the examples show the particular importance of patterns and tropes that emerged within the mesmerism-occultism cluster. What is commonly known as “yoga” today has become almost a

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ubiquitous phenomenon, generally assumed to be an ancient Indian spiritual-­physical practice. Although it has been documented by important recent studies (e.g., Baier 2013a, 2013b, 2016, 2018; Bogdan and Djurdjevic 2015; Djurdjevic 2014; de Michelis 2004), the close links between the mesmeric-­occult traditions and modern yoga are not widely recognised. Hence, the guiding theme of the volume is the triad of mesmerism, occultism, and yoga. It might be interpreted as a dense and closely interwoven system of patterns, references, and even practices that should not solely be studied on their own. Their globalised dimension will become more than evident in the subsequent description of the individual contributions. Indeed, this might be viewed as one major outcome of this collection as well as one of its key themes: taken together, the contributions show that it is impossible to talk of a “Western” occultism that is entirely distinct from “Eastern” or other forms. Hence, the close interrelation between the various strands and developments will also become rather apparent by the volume’s strong emphasis on examples from not only South Asia but also Latin America and East Asia. Accordingly, the four sections of the volume contribute to a more detailed understanding of the historical development and interweaving of these currents in modern times and in diverse international contexts. In addition to the value for a better historical understanding of the close entanglement of “East” and “West,” the contributions are also related to a rather recent trend in the study of occult and esoteric traditions: namely questioning the overall focus on the “Western” and seeking a new approach towards the relevant terms in a comparative perspective (e.g. Baier 2021; Asprem 2014 for general methodological considerations; Granholm 2014; also see the remarks in Hanegraaff 2015 on the recent discussion; Roukema and Kilner-Johnson 2018). The contributions brought together in this volume are chiefly works of history, although some interdisciplinarity is easily discernible. There are contributions to the history of science and medicine, cultural history, South Asian studies, sociology, religious studies, theology, and philosophy. Regarding the order of the contributions in the four sections of the volume, we tried to follow, as far as this was possible, a chronological structure. In some cases, this is easier than in others as some of the contributions are dealing with individual protagonists, whereas others try to find larger trajectories within a much wider temporal frame. The volume begins with the contributions on mesmerism in Part One. Notwithstanding its indubitable importance, this is a vastly understudied

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area that requires a lot of scholarship that will have to deal with the various actors and their approaches. The contributions in this section can be interpreted as a starting point for precisely such an endeavour. In the first contribution, Wouter J.  Hanegraaff portrays Carl August von Eschenmayer (1768–1852), the important Souabian Naturphilosoph, pioneer of Romantic psychology, and advocate of magnetic somnambulism. The contribution, which is the first academic study on von Eschenmayer in English, gives a general overview of his life and oeuvre. In addition, a special focus is put upon von Eschenmayer’s psychological theory, which he built on German idealist foundations and around the role of animal magnetism—and particularly somnambulic trance. The high importance of mesmeric tropes is evident throughout this contribution. In the following contribution, Maren Sziede draws on two significant but lesser-known German figures whose works espouse mesmerist ideas: Karl Joseph Hieronymus Windischmann (1775–1839) and Johann Nepomuk Ringseis (1785–1880). Both perceived themselves as Roman Catholic authors who tried to devise an all-encompassing, conservative Catholic anthropology, thereby placing their efforts within the broader scope of the nineteenth-century Naturphilosophical and Romantic approaches. Their ideas did not only encompass mesmerism; they also aimed at providing a religious foundation of medicine in an environment where medical theories competed and were superseded in the course of a few decades. The result was a fascinating mix of concepts that sought to offer theoretical grounds for what they perceived as the ideal physician, described in terms of a priest—the “priest-doctor.” Júlia Gyimesi continues with a portrait of the Hungarian magnetiser János Gárdos (1813–1893), who was greatly influential in his days. Gárdos identified magnetic phenomena as the result of the hitherto unknown capacities of the human psyche and promoted a systematic research in the field. However, his contemporary representatives of early hypnosis research rejected his theory and identified it as part of a magico-mystical, “superstitious” worldview. Gyimesi’s contribution outlines Gárdos’ life and work, illuminating his significance within and beyond the context of animal magnetism. It is a fine example of the vital presence and significance of mesmerist concepts in Central Europe. In the concluding contribution of this section, Dominic S.  Zoehrer addresses the close interrelation between specific mesmerist-derived European currents and the growing importance of Asian concepts at the

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end of the nineteenth century, with the Theosophical current as the crucial mediator. He traces how the originally mesmerist idea of the so-called fluidum qua main transmitter of power between bodies became related to the Indian concept of prāṇa. Seminal interpreters include early Theosophical thinkers such as Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831–1891), William Walker Atkinson (a.k.a. Ramacharaka; 1862–1932), and Annie Besant (1847–1933). Additionally, Zoehrer draws on the subsequent developments by referring to important figures of the twentieth century, such as the Chinese-Filipino spiritual entrepreneur Choa Kok Sui (Samson Lim Choachuy; 1952–2007) and his internationally successful Pranic Healing programme, which was clearly inspired by concepts purported by the aforementioned writers and deeply rooted in nineteenth-century occultism. Zoehrer’s study is a bridge to both the subsequent and the concluding sections of the volume, where many contributions follow the same pattern, namely searching for major trajectories within a larger temporal frame. Selected specimens of occultism and the significance of occult currents and concepts in America and Europe make up Part Two of the volume, whereas Part Three addresses occultism in a larger global context. The fascinating subject of the “near death experience” is the focus of the contribution by Jens Schlieter. An important aspect of the popular classic “near death experience” narrative was developed largely among various esoteric thinkers in the nineteenth century, namely the “panoramic life review”: that is, to recall or re-experience scenes, acts, and thoughts of one’s life in a highly condensed and accelerated form. For various discourses of the nineteenth century—including those of spiritualists, occultists, mesmerists, and transcendentalists—this aspect became extremely important. Purportedly it was a kind of key evidence of the soul’s ability to enter into a state of timeless self-presence and full awareness of everything following its separation from the body, including the current life and former ones. In this contribution, the development of this specific trope is placed within a larger framework of other crucial concepts, such as drug experience, “magnetic sleep,” new technologies of panoramic images and photography, and practices of autobiographical writing. Olav Hammer follows with a perceptive contribution on a development referred to as “occult linguistics” that became important particularly within the Theosophical Society, starting already with Blavatsky herself. Hammer shows the close relation of these early endeavours with important developments in the academia of that time, which eventually led to the birth of the discipline of linguistics. The so-called “young

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grammarians” devised basic rules for a comparative approach towards languages that were closely entangled with theories on the origin and the history of humankind. Although drawing on these early endeavours, Theosophical thinkers rejected major results and developed their own approach vis-à-vis this issue. In a very innovative way, Marco Pasi is dealing with a far-ranging topic, that is not only relevant for the study of esotericism but also for literature and art history, namely “posthumousness” viz. “esoteric posthumousness.” This specific concept, defined as “the inability or unwillingness to have one’s work promoted and recognised during one’s life, which projects the work into a temporal limbo that may last decades or even forever,” is applied to the work of three women artists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries who were deeply inspired by esoteric ideas and practices. From various perspectives, the paintings of Georgiana Houghton (1814–1884), Hilma af Klint (1862–1944), and Emma Kunz (1892–1963) are characterised by an approach to “posthumousness” and its various ramifications within the history of esotericism. Next, John Patrick Deveney draws on a delicate topic, which was nevertheless at the centre of attention for many occult writers in the nineteenth century: sexual energy as a vital force that helps humankind to unfold its hidden potential and transform the individual that might even survive death with the various techniques taught therein. The major figure portrayed is Kenneth Sylvan Launfal Guthrie (1871–1940), a classicist and known for his translation of the writings of Plotinus. Guthrie, however, was also a prolific occult thinker and writer who developed his own theory of “regeneration” through various sexual techniques that should bring humanity to the primordial state of Adam before the Fall. Lukas Pokorny adds another crucial figure to this array of occult and esoteric writers who is highly understudied so far: the Scottish esotericist Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) who made a reputation as the most sedulous proclaimer of Maitreya’s imminent messianic coming. Creme averred to be the heir of Blavatsky and, in her succession, Helena Roerich (1879–1955) and Alice Ann Bailey (1880–1949), heralding the soon-tounfold Age of the Group. Following a brief introduction to Creme’s bio-/ hagiography, Pokorny traces the Maitreya(-cum-World Teacher) narrative from its Buddhist inception across the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Theosophical appropriations, culminating in Creme’s most vocal millenarian account. His millenarian programme is eventually assessed through a theoretical lens, adding important insights to the wider field of Millennial Studies.

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In the concluding contribution, which also nicely leads to the following section, Per Faxneld provides intriguing insights into the close relationship between (mainly) East Asian martial arts and important occult currents in Sweden, both in regard to their history of Western reception and also their origin. He points out that some of the popular styles, such as Aikidō and Kyūdō , are heavily influenced by Western esoteric concepts, which made it easy to present them to the interested Western public after their invention in Asia. The “martial modernity” was closely linked to the notion of a “mystic east” as demonstrated by Faxneld who mainly examines the situation in twentieth-century Sweden. Part Three places occultism in a wider international spectrum with a focus on the Indian as well as the Afro- and African-American contexts. It is thus in direct continuation with contributions of the preceding section and shows the various transformations taking place in new locations. So far scholarship in this particular field has mainly dealt with South Asia, but there are a couple of examples outside this cultural horizon. The first contribution by Franz Winter is primarily concerned with the history of the first interpretation of the Indian Upanishads as proposed by the influential Oupnek’hat (published 1801–1802). It was composed by the French philologist and historian of religion Abraham H. Anquetil-­ Duperron (1731–1805) in regard to his predecessors to place its main patterns and interpretative frames in a transreligious context by expanding the models applied for the elaboration on “Western” esoteric concepts. As is shown by Winter, both Indian Advaita Vedānta traditions and the first Muslim interpretation of the Upanishads by the Mughal prince Dārā Shukūh (1615–1659) used parallel interpretative trajectories that became important for the nineteenth-century European reception. Consequently, the question whether the notion of “esotericism” has a transcultural and transreligious validity is addressed. With the Upanishads and their first translation in the European context, we are already concerned with South Asia, an area of interest in the following contribution by Mriganka Mukhopadhyay, who introduces Peary Chand Mittra (1814–1833), considered to be one of the most eminent intellectuals of nineteenth-century Bengal. Mitra was celebrated for his social activism and his writings, both deeply influenced by several religious transformation processes throughout his life. Born and raised in an upper-caste Hindu Bengali family of Calcutta, he was an atheist in his early youth. He later joined the Brahmo Samaj and became interested in spiritualist circles after his wife’s death in 1860. In 1877, he received the

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diploma of the Theosophical Society making him the third Indian and the first Bengali to become a Theosophist. Mukhopadhyay sheds light on the close spiritualist and occult network that enabled this specific transformation process in nineteenth-century Calcutta, providing an example of the transcultural dimension of occultism at the time. India remains vital in the next contribution as well. Almut-Barbara Renger expounds on the “Pythagorean” dimension of the well-known twentieth-century global “guru” Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (a.k.a. Osho; 1931–1990), and its early traces in the works of the French esoteric author Antoine Fabre d’Olivet (1768–1825). By styling himself as the “new” Pythagoras, Bhagwan clearly drew on concepts of a perennial philosophy, of which the Greek philosopher became one of its major representatives in the course of early modern European intellectual history. Bhagwan’s Philosophia Perennis (1978/1979) is basically a commentary on the Golden Verses published by d’Olivet with a specific interpretation. Once again, the transcultural context of esoteric currents is brought to the fore. The last contribution in this section broadens the geographical and historical horizon by introducing aspects of the history of esotericism— particularly in the nineteenth century—in the context of African- and Afro-American religions. Hans Gerald Hödl walks hitherto untrodden paths when likening the impact of Kardecian spiritism on the religious landscapes of Brazil, Cuba, and Puerto Rico as well as of spiritualism in New Orleans based spiritual churches. He does so through the unified lens of Brazilian, Caribbean, and Americana (Louisiana) Studies. This is yet another instance which demonstrates the immense importance and the influence of nineteenth-century occult traditions on a global scale. The volume is concluded with Part Four, which provides a transcultural bridge towards India and its rich religious tradition, thereby focusing on the history of modern yoga whose reception is clearly shaped by specific occult tropes. Keith Edward Cantú introduces the Tamil Śaivayogi Sri Sabhapati Swami (c. 1828–1923/4) who was highly influential in nineteenth- and twentieth-century South Asian and Western esoteric movements. As his work has not been studied thoroughly thus far, Cantú’s contribution introduces Sabhapati’s life with special reference to his specific fusion of yoga and Theosophy that resulted in a rather unique system. By identifying the various impacts on this concept, the global validity of specific esoteric tropes and trajectories carried by certain networks once again become clearly evident.

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Another perspective on the importance of the prāṇa topic is provided in the contribution by Magdalena Kraler by focusing on the highly influential work of Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902). As it is clearly shown, the way prāṇa and the closely intertwined term ākāśa are conceptualised in Vivekananda’s work is deeply shaped both by his specific reading of important Indian philosophical works as well as by Theosophical patterns of thought and interpretations of Indian philosophy and religion. Hence, the interconnectedness of Asian and Western esoteric concepts is demonstrated. Marlis Lami calls attention to another (internationally) hardly known figure: the Polish philosopher, author, and socio-political activist Wincenty Lutosławski (1863–1954). Among his various works on different subjects, Lutosławski published the first handbook on yoga in the Polish language in 1909, entitled Rozwój potęgi woli przez psychofizyczne ćwiczenia (The Development of Will Power by Means of Psychophysical Exercises). It was meant as a therapeutic instruction book but clearly draws on several tropes of the early reception of yoga in the West. These tropes are notably mingled with a specific religious and nationalist agenda as initiated by the philosopher and religious activist Andrzej Towiański (1799–1882), who is considered to be one of the leading founders of Polish messianism and was himself seminal to Polish Romanticism. With its diverse contributions, the volume provides glimpses of the multi-faceted gamut of the occult nineteenth century, its roots, and its echoing into the realms of religion, philosophy, culture, and politics. “Occultism” here serves as an umbrella term encompassing religious strands and their exponents, which were placed by the mainstream at the fringe of or even outwith the religious or spiritual panorama of its days. Notwithstanding this general perception and the concomitant negligence in academe, the occult tradition clearly shows a certain vigour and strength, which renders it an elementary component of modern religious history, both in Europe and worldwide. As the contributions in this volume demonstrate, the impressive global occurrence of major occult themes and tropes has a flexibility, which made and still make them easily applicable in non-European contexts, that is, South Asian, East Asian, Afro- and African-American. The whole process more often than not has a reciprocal effect on the reception of specifically Asian religious and cultural traditions that were perceived as directly compatible especially with European developments. This close and mutual relation of Asia and the West (to use highly generic terms) is also a vital sign for major trends and changes that

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constitute the phenomenon often referred to as “globalisation.” One of the many implications of this term is the growing interconnectedness of former long-distant cultural, social, and religious contexts that literally “grew together” and consequently crave for a common ground of explanation. Taken from this angle, “occultism” for some of its proponents served as a kind of common bond and master interpretational key that inspired an impressive network of thinkers, activists, and authors. In addition to this specific result of the contributions in this volume, there is another feature of the occult tradition that is being emphasised: mesmerism appears as a more or less integrating and foundational aspect of occultism in the nineteenth century. It will always be the invaluable legacy of Karl Baier—to whom this volume is dedicated—who has shown how crucial this vastly ignored strand (which was, if at all, ordinarily perceived as one of the many aberrations within the seemingly linear development to “modern” science and technology) is for understanding major developments within the religious history of not only Europe but also the world at large. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (viz. his librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte) mentions the pietra mesmerica (the “mesmeric stone”) in his famous opera Così fan tutte of 1790 in an obviously comical and ironic way, likely indicating its already then disputed reputation in society. Had he known the further development and the impact of the mesmeric tradition, he might have reconsidered this somewhat snide remark.

References Asprem, Egil. 2014. Beyond the West: Towards a New Comparitivism in the Study of Esotericism. Correspondences 2 (1): 3–33. Baier, Karl. 2009. Meditation und Moderne. Zur Genese eines Kernbereichs moderner Spiritualität in der Wechselwirkung zwischen Westeuropa, Nordamerika und Asien. Vol. 2. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann. ———. 2013a. Der Magnetismus der Versenkung: Mesmeristisches Denken in Meditationsbewegungen des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts. In Aufklärung und Esoterik: Wege in die Moderne, ed. Monika Neugebauer-Wölk, Renko Geffarth, and Markus Meumann, 407–440. Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter. ———. 2013b. Mesmeric Yoga and the Development of Meditation within the Theosophical Society. Theosophical History. A Quarterly Journal of Research 16 (3–4): 151–161. ———. 2015. Mesmer versus Gaßner: Eine Kontroverse der 1770er Jahre und ihre Interpretationen. In Von der Dämonologie zum Unbewussten. Die Transformation der Anthropologie um 1800, ed. Maren Sziede and Helmut Zander, 47–83. Berlin: De Gruyter.

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———. 2016. Theosophical Orientalism and the Structures of Intercultural Transfer: Annotations on the Appropriation of the Cakras in Early Theosophy. In Theosophical Appropriations: Esotericism, Kabbalah, and the Transformation of Traditions, ed. Julie Chajes and Boaz Huss, 309–354. Be’er Sheva: Ben-­ Gurion University of the Negev Press. ———. 2018. Yoga within Viennese Occultism: Carl Kellner and Co. In Yoga in Transformation: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, ed. Karl Baier, Philipp A. Maas, and Karin Preisendanz, 387–439. Göttingen: V&R unipress. ———. 2019. Von der Iatrophysik zur romantischen Psychologie des Unbewussten. Eine Einführung in den Mesmerismus. Entspannungsverfahren. Zeitschrift der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Entspannungsverfahren 36: 101–132. ———. 2020. Romantischer Mesmerismus und Religion. In Finden und Erfinden. Die Romantik und ihre Religionen, ed. Daniel Cyranka, Diana Matut, and Christian Soboth, 13–54. Würzburg: Königshausen& Neumann. ———. 2021. Esotericism. In The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to the Study of Religion, ed. Robert A.  Segal and Nickolas P.  Roubekas, 2nd ed. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell. Bauduin, Tessel M., and Henrik Johnsson, eds. 2018. The Occult in Modernist Art, Literature, and Cinema. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Bauduin, Tessel M., Victoria Ferentinou, and Daniel Zamani, eds. 2018. Surrealism, Occultism and Politics: In Search of the Marvellous. New York and London: Routledge. Bogdan, Henrik, and Gordan Djurdjevic, eds. 2015. Occultism in a Global Perspective. New York and London: Routledge. Djurdjevic, Gordan. 2014. India and the Occult: The Influence of South Asian Spirituality on Modern Western Occultism. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Granholm, Kennet. 2014. Locating the West: Problematizing the Western in Western Esotericism and Occultism. In Occultism in a Global Perspective, ed. Henrik Bogdan and Gordan Djurdjevic, 17–36. London and New  York: Routledge. Gripentrop, Stephanie. 2015. Vom Mesmerismus zur Hypnose. Schlaglichter auf die Geschichte einer religionsverdächtigen Praxis im 19. Jahrhundert. In Von der Dämonologie zum Unbewussten. Die Transformation der Anthropologie um 1800, ed. Maren Sziede and Helmut Zander, 233–253. Berlin: De Gruyter. Hanegraaff, Wouter J. 2013. Western Esotericism: A Guide for the Perplexed. London and New York: Bloomsbury. ———. 2015. The Globalization of Esotericism. Correspondences 3 (1): 55–91. Méheust, Bertrand. 2006. Animal Magnetism/Mesmerism. In Dictionary of Gnosis & Western Esotericism, ed. Wouter J.  Hanegraaff, 75–82. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Michelis, Elizabeth de. 2004. A History of Modern Yoga: Patañjali and Western Esotericism. London and New York: Continuum.

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Owen, Alex. 2004. The Place of Enchantment: British Occultism and the Culture of the Modern. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. Partridge, Christopher, ed. 2015. The Occult World. Abingdon: Routledge. Pasi, Marco. 2013. Aleister Crowley and the Temptation of Politics. Durham: Acumen. Roukema, Aren, and Allan Kilner-Johnson. 2018. Editorial: Time to Drop the “Western”. Correspondences 6 (2): 109–115.

PART I

Mesmerism

CHAPTER 2

Carl August von Eschenmayer and the Somnambulic Soul Wouter J. Hanegraaff

Bei weitem leichtgläubiger und kritikloser als Justinus Kerner war sein Freund und Landsmann Eschenmayer, der Arzt und Philosoph, als welchen ihn zwar die wissenschaftlich gebildeten Philosophen nicht gerne wollten gelten lassen, da er überwiegend aus dem Gefühl heraus grübelte. Mit seinem guten, versonnenen Gesicht ist er doch eine bemerkenswerte Erscheinung unter den schwäbischen Naturphilosophen. Im hohen Alter ließ er sich von einem Scheider, der in den Augen auch der nachsichtigen Beurteiler ein Trunkenbold und frecher Gaukler war, mit vorgespiegelten Ekstasen hinters Licht führen, so daß selbst Kerner nicht umhin konnte, den Kopf zu schütteln. Indessen sind seine Werke über Naturphilosophie und Magnetismus reich an feinen und tiefsinnigen Anschauungen. Huch 1951: 608

Nobody has done more than Karl Baier to restore the study of consciousness to a central place in the modern study of Western esotericism. Among W. J. Hanegraaff (*) University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 L. Pokorny, F. Winter (eds.), The Occult Nineteenth Century, Palgrave Studies in New Religions and Alternative Spiritualities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55318-0_2

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the many highly relevant, fascinating, but sadly forgotten key figures discussed in the first volume of Baier’s magnum opus Meditation und Moderne (2009), we encounter the Souabian Naturphilosoph, pioneer of Romantic psychology, and advocate of magnetic somnambulism Carl August von Eschenmayer (1768–1852).1 When Ricarda Huch described him in her classic book on Romanticism, she was clearly echoing Karl Immermann’s (1796–1840) popular satirical novel Münchhausen (1841), where Eschenmayer and his buddy Justinus Kerner (1786–1862) are lampooned as a comical duo of superstitious fools named “Eschenmichel” and “Kernbeisser.”2 And yet, Huch admits that Eschenmayer’s writings about Naturphilosophie and animal magnetism were full of “delicate and profound” observations. So who was Eschenmayer, and how do we explain these conflicting assessments? While a few good discussions are available in German and French,3 it seems typical of the near-total oblivion into which Eschenmayer has fallen that this chapter happens to be the very first one about him in English. I will provide a general overview of Eschenmayer’s life and development, with special attention to the psychology he built on German Idealist foundations and to the role of animal magnetism and Somnambulic trance in that context.

From Philosophical Idealism to Animal Magnetism Born in Neuenbürg on July 4, 1768, young Eschenmayer was destined by his father for a commercial career, but finally managed to get himself accepted as a student of medicine at the Carlsakademie in Stuttgart. After his father’s death in 1793, he transferred to the University of Tübingen where he continued his medical studies but devoted himself to philosophy as well. A decisive influence on his later career came from reading the works of Ernst Platner (1744–1818), a follower of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) whose writings were important also to Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) and Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805). In his Anthropologie (1772), Platner presented man as a unity of body and soul who, therefore, could only be understood in terms of a philosophical 1  Baier 2009, vol. 1: 207–209. Eschenmayer’s first name “Adolph” was never used, and there is no basis for the name “Adam” that has been often attributed to him (Malkani 1994a, vol. 2: 229 n. 1). 2  Immermann 1841, vol. 2: 129–189 (Book 4: “Poltergeister in und um Weinsberg”). 3  For Eschenmayer’s biography I rely mainly on Malkani 1994a, b. See also Kerner 1853; Erdmann 1982 [1853]; Holstein 1979; Maier 2009; Schulze 1958; Wuttke 1966.

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synthesis comprising the sciences of physiology and psychology (Platner 1772; see also Platner 1793). Another major influence was Kant, whose philosophy Eschenmayer studied in private sessions with his professor Jakob Friedrich von Abel (1751–1829), whom he would later succeed. Of major importance for Eschenmayer’s thinking were von Abel’s Einleitung in die Seelenlehre (Introduction to the Doctrine of Souls, 1786) and his Philosophische Untersuchungen über die Verbindung der Menschen mit höhern Geistern (Philosophical Investigations about Humanity’s Connection with Higher Spirits, 1791). From these titles alone, in combination with Platner’s work (not to mention Kant’s Träume eines Geistersehers, 1766), it is evident that Eschenmayer’s interest in the human soul and its relation to the Geisterwelt (spirit world) began early and was anything but idiosyncratic. Eschenmayer’s medical dissertation of 17964 caught Schelling’s attention, which led to an intense correspondence and collaboration between the two philosophers (Gilson 1988; Durner 2001; Roux 2005). Today, Eschenmayer is generally seen as one of Schelling’s most significant sparring partners during the latter’s decisive years around 1800: Schelling developed his early Natur- and Identitätsphilosophie in a context of intense discussions with Eschenmayer, even claiming ownership for several crucial insights that he had actually taken from the latter. Particularly important in this regard is Eschenmayer’s article “Spontaneität = Weltseele” (“Spontaneity = World Soul,” published in Schelling’s Zeitschrift für spekulative Philosophie in 1801) and Die Philosophie in ihrem Übergang zur Nichtphilosophie (Philosophy in its Transition to Non-Philosophy, 1803). Schelling responded to it with his Philosophie und Religion (Philosophy and Religion, 1804), but it finally caused a break between the two philosophers. The essential difference between them was that Schelling believed philosophy to be capable of understanding the Absolute through intellectual analysis, whereas Eschenmayer held that the Absolute (God) transcended the capacities of the human intellect altogether and could only be grasped by faith. Put very briefly and simply, Schelling insisted on the primacy of philosophy whereas for Eschenmayer ultimate fulfilment could only be achieved in Christian belief. This should not lead us to think that Eschenmayer responded to Schelling with expressions of Christian piety—on the contrary, we are dealing with an extremely technical debate 4  Eschenmayer 1796. Significantly, the dissertation was followed immediately by an application of its theoretical framework to the phenomena of magnetism (Eschenmayer 1798).

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at the highest level of philosophical sophistication as practised during this period. In addition, Eschenmayer tried reaching out to a wider audience by means of a philosophical dialogue “about the Sacred and History” titled Der Eremit und der Fremdling (The Hermit and the Stranger, 1805), in which he argued that philosophy needed to accept the concept of the Fall.5 Eschenmayer wrote these works while making his living as a physician in Kirchheim unter Teck, but went on to pursue an academic career. He became an extraordinary professor of medicine and philosophy at the University of Tübingen in 1811 and was offered an ordinary professorship in philosophy one year later. His first major book written while occupying this academic position appeared in 1816: Versuch, die scheinbare Magie des thierischen Magnetismus aus physiologischen und psychischen Gesezen tu erklären (An Attempt to Explain the Apparent Magic of Animal Magnetism from Physiological and Psychical Laws). One might be surprised that Eschenmayer chose to launch his official academic career with this particular topic, but in fact it makes perfect sense. Whereas his first Versuch about magnetism (published in 1789, immediately after his dissertation) had been focused on the strictly physical manifestations of magnetism, this second Versuch now addressed its strange “spiritual” counterpart. This twofold approach followed logically from the principles of a broadly Schellingian Naturphilosophie, grounded in a dialectical polarisation of the Subject of knowledge (Man) and its Object (Nature). In this framework, the human subject is defined as the principle of absolute Freedom (Spirit) and objective nature as that of absolute Necessity (Matter). Caught in this polar dynamic, the soul has an inborn tendency pulling it up towards Spirit/Freedom while the bodily organism has the contrary tendency of pulling it down towards Matter/Necessity. From these principles, it follows that speculative philosophy must be particularly interested in the ambiguous point of “mediation” (or Indifferenzpunkt, indicated as o) between the positive spiritual principle (+) and its negative material counterpart (−). It is in the living organism (whether that of the macrocosmic world or that of man as its microcosmic parallel, both understood as embodied soul = animated body) that this paradoxical encounter takes place. The Indifferenz (o) is the very principle of life, “the unifying bond of nature” (Eschenmayer 1817: 20), and its central manifestation is 5  As explained by Faivre (2008: 209–210), the basic understanding of Fall and reintegration in the milieu around Kerner and Eschenmayer was grounded in Christian Theosophy.

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what we refer to as consciousness or, more precisely, self-consciousness (Selbstbewußtsein). Eschenmayer believed that it could be studied empirically and even experimentally in the phenomena of animal magnetism—an assumption that might seem like a stretch to us but was in fact quite logical. Mesmer’s theory, after all, had emerged from his own observations of a polar magnetism active in the human organism (reflecting the polarity of the earth), and this made it a natural match for Schelling’s polar dialectics. Moreover, from the same Natur-philosophical perspective, it made perfect sense that animal magnetism seemed to demonstrate the enormous, “seemingly magical” feats that the soul should be expected to possess under conditions of relative liberation from the habitual constraints of natural law. What we find here is a conceptual framework that would become central to the Romantic doctrine of the “nightside of nature”: a perfect reversal of common Enlightenment assumptions about the “light of reason” and its relation to the “darkness of the irrational” (Hanegraaff 2012: 260–266). While the spirit and the body are active and awake, the laws of necessity are predominant over the spiritual principle of freedom, and hence the soul is rendered passive. However, as the body is in a condition of sleep or trance, this allows the spiritual principle of freedom to liberate itself from the constraints of necessity, and its mysterious powers can become manifest. The internal logic is compelling indeed.

Eschenmayer’s Psychology Eschenmayer’s work must be seen in the wider context of a tradition known as Erfahrungsseelenkunde (literally, “psychology of experience”). At its origin stood Karl-Philipp Moritz (1756–1793), the famous author of the first German psychological novel Anton Reiser (1785–1790). Moritz’s Magazin zur Erfahrungsseelenkunde, published from 1783 to 1793 with the motto Gnothi seautón, is considered the first psychological journal in Germany (Geyer 2014: 21–23; cf. Béguin 1939: 21–45; Bell 2005: 89–105, esp. 94–97), and it is this field that Eschenmayer was teaching at the University of Tübingen since 1811, as the first professor in Württemberg for psychische Heilkunde. In Schellingian terms, the laws of Nature were modifications of spiritual laws that were to be found in the thinking Subject; and because Nature and the Subject had to be ultimately identical on the level of the Absolute, one had to assume profound analogies (rather than causal connections) between the two realms. Thus one

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could arrive at not just the possibility, but the necessity of a foundational science that would unify the Natural Sciences and the Humanities. As Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961) would do much later (Shamdasani 2003: 15 and 18–22; Hanegraaff 2012: 285–286), Eschenmayer argued that this science could be nothing else than psychology, the study of the soul (Wuttke 1966: 263). Eschenmayer’s hefty book about that topic was first published in 1817, followed by a second revised edition in 1822. It was divided into three parts devoted to “empirical,” “pure,” and “practical” or “applied” psychology. Eschenmayer was the first to admit that the final part remained sketchy and insufficient (Eschenmayer 1982 [1822]: xiii), and I will not go into a detailed discussion of it here. His “pure” psychology amounted to a speculative philosophy of consciousness that seeks to analyse the logical essence of its three basic functions (thinking, feeling, and willing) from an a priori point of view (for a short analysis, see Erdman 1982 [1853]: 267–269). The “empirical” part of psychology was based upon the same triad, but now approached from an a posteriori perspective, and it is this part that most closely resembles what we would describe as psychology today. True to the basic dialectical principles of Eschenmayer’s Schellingian Naturphilosophie, the soul should be seen neither as an object nor as a subject. Its true essence had to transcend the very domain of philosophy as such, because its ultimate foundation was in the mysterious realm of the Absolute to which only faith gives access. All this is clear from the very first lines of Eschenmayer’s book, which deal with the object of psychology: The soul is the singular primal force from which emanates our entire spiritual existence. All our spiritual capacities and functions are just manifestations, directions, externalizations of the one undivided primal force. But these capacities and functions are ordered along a scale of dignity. The closer they are to the primal source, the more excellent, the more free, and the more universal they are. To the extent that they distance themselves from it, and become subject to reflexes, they become murkier, less free, and more empirical. Right from the outset, we can consider the soul from two main directions:

(1) According to her urbildliches Leben in which, according to Plato, she is pure and untroubled by the connections of a planetary life in time, and beholds the ideas of Truth, Beauty, and Virtue.

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(2) According to her abbildliches Leben, where she is bound to a body, chained to a world of phenomena, and subject to multiple reflexes and troubling forces.6

The Platonic foundations of Eschenmayer’s Psychology are evident. Its entire structure is based upon what is traditionally known as the “three transcendentals” (also, of course, the objects of Kant’s three Kritiken, as Eschenmayer must have known very well): the Good, the Beautiful, and the True. However, the manifestations of this triad are ordered according to the polar opposition of “Freedom” (the essence of Spirit) versus “Necessity” (Natural law) at the heart of Schelling’s Naturphilosophie. The soul has descended from the ideal realm of freedom into the material realm of necessity, but its inherent drive is to move upwards from necessity to freedom, from matter to spirit, from the real to the ideal. It is on this basis that Eschenmayer builds his structure of a developmental psychology (an Entwicklungspsychologie) in five stages: from baby to child to adolescent to maturity to old age (see Fig. 2.1). As man7 develops physically through five stages between birth and death, psychologically he develops through the five analogous stages of Sinnen, Intellekt, Gemüt, Sittlichkeit, and Religion: a baby responds only to sensual stimuli; the intellect begins to develop in childhood; the emotions of the heart begin to flourish in adolescence; to be adult means to develop moral consciousness; and as the old man gets close to death, it is time for him to cultivate religion. Within this framework, Eschenmayer then proceeds to discuss 15 psychological capacities (Seelenvermögen), resulting in a psychological table of correspondences reminiscent of modern and contemporary “cartographies of consciousness” (Hanegraaff 1998: 246–255): • Our inherent drive towards knowledge of the Truth, which puts us in the direction of ever-increasing freedom, leads us to successively develop our capacities for: empirical sensation (Empfindung); imagination (in the specific German sense of Vorstellungsvermögen, the 6  Eschenmayer 1982 [1822]: § 1, 18–19. In Eschenmayer’s Platonising perspective, Urbild means the original or primordial image or archetype, while Abbild refers to a secondary copy (cf. ibid.: § 2–3, 19–20). 7  In Eschenmayer’s discussions, Mensch always means Mann, and women play no part in the narrative, resulting occasionally in amusing statements such as “so steht endlich der Mensch frei als Mann in der Welt” (Eschenmayer 1982 [1822]: § 22, 32).

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Fig. 2.1  Developmental psychology in five stages according to Eschenmayer

capacity that allows us to synthesise the multiplicity of sense impressions into a unity; Eschenmayer 1982 [1822]: §59, 60); mental or intellectual understanding (Verstand); reason (Vernunft); and finally conscience (Gewissen). • In analogy with this, our inherent drive towards Beauty (which, again, leads from necessity towards ever greater freedom) causes us to successively develop: the basic sense of perception (Anschauung); the productive and reproductive imagination (Einbildungskraft: “the [reproductive] capacity to reproduce earlier representations even if we do not presently perceive them, and the [productive] capacity to create new forms and images and make them present to the soul”; Eschenmayer 1982 [1822]: §62, 61, slightly adapted for better comprehension); feeling capacity (Gefühlsvermögen); fantasy (Phantasie; Eschenmayer 1982 [1822]: §127–129, 108–109)8; and higher vision (Schauen). 8  Not to be confused with the two forms of “imagination” (Vorstellungsvermögen and Einbildungskraft): “Fantasy is the capacity for the Ideal[s] … The Ideals carry the imprint of the universal, whereas the forms and images of the Einbildungskraft are rooted in the soil of

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• Finally, our drive towards the Good (which, once again, means ultimate freedom), leads us to successively develop: our natural instinct or drive (Naturinstinct or Trieb); our capacity for lower desires (Niederes Begehrungsvermögen); our heart (Gemüth, obviously understood here in a psychological sense; Eschenmayer 1982 [1822]: §99–100, 88–89)9; our will (Wille); and finally our capacity for faith (Glaube). If we compare the three columns in the Table above, we see how everything culminates in an ideal vision of religious morality. All of this concerns the structure of our “spiritual organism” (+). Eschenmayer also discussed its physical counterpart, our “bodily organism” (−), which I need not discuss here in further detail; and finally, as required by the very nature of his dialectical Naturphilosophie, he came to speak about the “middle part,” representing the Indifferenz (o) where these two organisms met in what he called a “mixed organism.” It is here that he discusses the three basic “states of consciousness” known as wakefulness, sleep, and dream. But in addition to these well-known states, somnambulic trance is highlighted here as the example par excellence of how the Indifferenzpunkt of Spirit versus Matter (our spiritual and our bodily organism) manifests itself in our world. This point was made most clearly in the new journal Archiv für den Thierischen Magnetismus (Archive for Animal Magnetism) that Eschenmayer launched (also in 1817) together with two other university professors, Dietrich Georg von Kieser (1779–1862, Jena) and Christian Friedrich Nasse (1778–1851, Halle). Here we find the same core conviction about the central importance of Somnambulic trance to a scientific study of nature (including human nature) grounded in Naturphilosophie: the singular. The form or image is just the finite reflection of the ideal, and relates to it as finite relates to infinite. If the Idea of reason is Truth, the Idea of fantasy is Beauty. … Common as it may be to give primacy to reason, I am not ashamed to place fantasy above it, just as the feeling stands above the concept, the ideal above the principle, and altogether the beautiful above the true, as well as art above experience.” 9  Clearly Eschenmayer refers to what in English we might call capacities of the heart in a metaphorical sense: “What we call gratitude, respect, love, benevolence, magnanimity etc. emerges and forms itself only in the heart … [It] is among the most important human capacities, because everything great and sublime, beautiful and noble that must occur in the world must pass through it. He who wins someone’s heart can be sure of the entire person. An appeal to the intellect or the feeling capacity is either cold or transient. Only the impressions of the heart are deep and permanent, such as for instance true friendship and love.”

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[I]f the general perspective on Nature that philosophy gives us is true, then it follows that everything which lies within the sphere of Nature must be susceptible to being explained from this perspective. Since animal magnetism presents us with that which no mortal eye has seen and no waking mouth reveals; since its phenomena appear ever more strange and surprising, and, while making a mockery of all merely material explanations, open up for us a spiritual world in which the spatial and temporal limitations of the earthly world almost vanish, and since it is in animal magnetism that Nature opens up to us its most secret depths and speaks like the oracles of ancient times restored; therefore if we follow its phenomena with an open mind and without prejudice, we may hope to attain results in psychology, physiology, and pathology that illuminate for us the still so dark field of knowledge of man’s soul, and thereby open a sure road to perfection in the highest knowledge concerning man (Eschenmayer et al. 1817: 2).

According to Eschenmayer, somnambulic trance should not be seen as just “sleep” but as a kind of higher wakefulness; hence somnambulic visions could not be dismissed as mere delusionary dreams but had to be recognised as ideal visions of a higher world: they clearly pertained to the highest levels in his cartography of consciousness. More than anywhere else, it was in somnambulic trance that the visual material world and the invisible spiritual world could be seen to interconnect in an extremely delicate organic balance between the opposing principles of matter and spirit.

The World of Spirits Halfway between the two editions of his Psychologie, Eschenmayer made an accidental discovery that, for better or worse, would prove crucial to his later career. In a two-part article published in his Archiv (Eschenmayer 1820) he discussed a collection of protocols containing first-hand descriptions of the healing practice of Johann Joseph Gaßner (1727–1779), the famous Roman-Catholic exorcist who had already been investigated by Mesmer himself. Karl Baier has published an excellent study of the controversies around Gaßner, and summarises Eschenmayer’s perspective with perfect clarity: For Eschenmayer, all healing is based on a liberation of the non-material healing power that is inherent in man. This power is a bodily expression of the soul, and identical with the spiritual power that builds and maintains the organism as a whole. Eschenmayer defines it as a plastic power that comes

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from the feeling of self, which is the innermost core of the feeling capacity. As regards the activation of this power, Eschenmayer distinguishes between three levels. The lowest level of healing is occupied by the “art of the scientifically educated physician,” which works on the material systems, functions, and organs of the body and uses medicaments to remove the material obstacles that stand in the way of healing. This involves no change of everyday consciousness in the patient. The procedure is dominated by reason and the will. The second level is that of mesmerism. It works directly on the feeling capacity and the nerve system that is subject to it. Rational thinking and will are incapacitated, the habitual state of consciousness is abandoned, and the plastic power of the soul is activated. “That which during the waking state remains hidden in the ground of one’s feelings, and remains obscure, is now illuminated and reveals its inner nature”. This procedure heightens the efficience of the therapy, for in this manner, the healing power hidden in the unconscious is liberated more rapidly …. However, the highest stage of healing is exorcism: the method of healing based on faith in the name of Jesus as practiced by Gaßner. “The patients fell into a state without will and consciousness …” Where the active faith of the exorcist meets with an attitude of trustful surrender, “a divine breath permeates the soul, and in a most profound experience of awe, man feels the miracle of a heavenly power.”10

Eschenmayer’s discovery of Gaßner’s exorcism is extremely important for understanding the direction that his career was about to take. It should not be seen as a radical departure from his earlier work but as its natural conclusion, because it completed the overall picture: above and beyond the realm of experience, which could be understood scientifically in terms of a Naturphilosophie with mesmerism at its heart, it now included an even higher “non-philosophical” dimension, at the centre of which was not reason but Christian faith. This was exactly the “transition from philosophy to non-philosophy” that had been central to his controversy with Schelling. Because faith was the highest level in Eschenmayer’s system,11 10  Baier 2015: 73–76. On Gaßner and his importance to the Romantic reaction against the “false Enlightenment,” see also Grassl 1968: 131–171 (Gaßner) and 424–428 (Eschenmayer). Cf. Midelfort 2005 11  Or more precisely, faith in Eschenmayer’s system provides access to a transcendent “reality” that is above our capacity for understanding, including its thinking in terms of higher or lower “levels.” In fact, the Absolute is not a “higher level” of reality, but the only true reality from a divine perspective incomprehensible to the human mind.

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he began to emphasise it ever more strongly as the “worldly” opposition of unbelievers against his philosophy grew. From around this time, it is clear that Eschenmayer began distancing himself ever more clearly from the rationalist “coldness” of Enlightenment rationality while moving towards the emotional “warmth” of an Evangelical Christianity typical of Württemberg Pietism. The pivotal moment came in the spring of 1827, when he travelled to Weinsberg to meet with his medical colleague Justinus Kerner and his somnambulic patient Friederike Hauffe (1801–1829). Kerner is remembered today as one of the minor poets of Württemberg Romanticism, and had been working as town physician of Weinsberg since January 1819. Eschenmayer must have read his book about two somnambulist patients, published three years earlier (Kerner 1824). He may have reached out to his colleague because, while “sitting in the midst of an unbelieving Faculty,” he too had been treating two somnambulic girls.12 At meeting Friederike Hauffe, however, he discovered that she represented a whole new level of somnambulic virtuosity. She had been ill for five years, suffering from a complicated combination of symptoms that seem to have had their origin in some severe psychological trauma, probably including sexual abuse during childhood.13 She was in a terrible condition, her body tormented by recurring high fevers and extreme cramps while her consciousness kept shifting uncontrollably in and out of trance states. Her desperate family finally brought her to Weinsberg—since Kerner claimed to have been successful with his previous somnambules, perhaps he would be able to cure Friederike too. During the two and a half years that followed, she stayed in Kerner’s house (which served as a kind of small hospital), where eventually she reached some degree of stability while developing from a very sick patient into a somnambulic trance visionary. By the time Eschenmayer came to Weinsberg, Friederike was already well known for her spectacular supranormal abilities,14 and Kerner was busy preparing a book about her. Understandably impressed by  Eschenmayer letter to Kerner, 1 February 1827, in Gruber 2000: 256–257.  See Hanegraaff 2001: 223–225; for the much more detailed version of this article in German, see Hanegraaff 1999/2000 and Hanegraaff 2004 (here: 240–242). The essential clues are a sentence on p. 30 in the first edition of Kerner’s Seherin that was deleted from all later editions, almost certainly at the request of her family, as well as an elusive passage in a contemporary publication by the psychiatrist Ernst Albert Zeller (1830: 90–92), who must have been privy to information not accessible in print. 14  See e.g. Eschenmayer to Kerner, 29 April 1827, in Gruber 2000: 257–258 (here 258). 12 13

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Eschenmayer’s credentials, he must have been happy to leave the task of theoretical explanation to this university professor trained in philosophy and psychology. Thus, when Die Seherin von Prevorst was published in 1829 (around the time of Friederike’s death on 5 August 1829, but with her blessing), it contained an extensive section by Eschenmayer about her famous “solar circles” and “circles of life,” connected to an “inner language” and an “inner arithmatic.”15 To the considerable irritation of Kerner’s brother and his friend Uhland,16 this chapter could also be read as a short overview of Eschenmayer’s own Naturphilosophie. Eschenmayer saw Friederike’s circles and his own theoretical framework as a perfect match, and rejected the idea that he was imposing his own ideas on her: he had always sent his manuscripts to be checked by her, he protested, and had accepted any corrections she made.17 For him, it was rather the other way around: Friederike had opened his eyes to the truth. Eventually, he came to think of her as the very embodiment of his own philosophy, as he explains in a letter to Kerner: As in my psychological lectures I moved closer to the chapter of Magnetism, I made the sudden decision to present a newly designed theory. With help of the Seherin [here E. seems to mean Kerner’s book], I succeeded in a way that surprised even myself, so that one phenomenon always explains another one, up to the highest level. I am giving these lectures right at this moment, in a lecture hall that is filled to capacity. A crowd of listeners is copying them. What I used to propose as theory has now become little more than a mere introduction. And yet there is space for a larger work, namely the theory of the circles. Every day I must have more admiration for this woman, but I must also regret all that we neglected to ask her. She should come back! But I believe that she is with me—for it is only now that everything becomes clearer to me, and in the end my whole philosophy slips over into this woman and looks back at me through her seeress-eyes [am Ende schlüpft meine ganze Philosophie in dieses Weib hinüber und guckt aus ihrer Seheraugen wieder hervor] (Eschenmayer to Kerner, 18 February 1832, in Kerner 1897, vol. 2: 28; cf. 18 May 1828, in Gruber 2000: 266).

15  Kerner 1846, vol. 1: 241–266. For the inner circles, language, and arithmetic see Hanegraaff 1999/2000: 31–35; Hanegraaff 2010: 262–263. 16  Ludwig Uhland to Kerner, 29 June 1829, in Kerner 1897, vol. 1: 573. 17  Eschenmayer to Kerner, 4 November 1828, in Gruber 2000: 269–270. This is indeed borne out by the correspondence published in Gruber’s study.

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As Eschenmayer had predicted (Eschenmayer to Kerner, 4 November, 1828, in Gruber 2000: 269–270), Die Seherin von Prevorst found a large audience. However, neither he nor Kerner may have expected or have been prepared for the degree of hostility and ridicule it evoked. The book created a huge controversy in the popular press,18 resulting in a swift polarisation between rationalist opponents on one side and Christian-­ Pietist Romantics on the other. While Kerner’s defenders never created the “occult academy” that Christian von Hesse-Darmstadt (1763–1830) was longing for in 1830 (Fabry 1989, vol. 1: 309; von Hesse-Darmstadt to Meyer, 24 February 1830), they did create a close network of friends and sympathisers. Central participants included Johann Friedrich von Meyer (1772–1849), Johann Franz Ehrmann (1757–1839), Gotthilf Heinrich Schubert (1780–1860), Johann Karl Passavant (1790–1857), and to a lesser extent Franz von Baader (1765–1841) and Joseph Görres (1776–1848) (Fabry 1989: 209, 361, 363–364). They thought of themselves as Wahrheitsfreunde (Friends of Truth) or Freunde des inneren Lebens (Friends of the Inner Life) and formed the nucleus of authors writing for a journal edited by Kerner from 1831 to 1839, the Blätter aus Prevorst, and its successor, Magikon (1840 to 1854). The hostile camp of critics included Hegelian theologians, most notably Heinrich Eberhard Gottlob Paulus (1761–1851) and Eschenmayer’s former student David Friedrich Strauss (1808–1874), literary figures such as the editor of the Stuttgart Morgenblatt and Literaturblatt Wolfgang Menzel (1798–1873), and philosophers such as Friedrich Wilhelm Carové (1789–1852) and Kant’s successor Wilhelm Traugott Krug (1770–1842). Many opponents did not even bother to take the matter seriously at all: when Eschenmayer asked Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834) what he thought of Kerner’s book, he was told that “he had leafed through it, but such books he left to his wife” (Eschenmayer to Kerner, 13 October 1830, in Kerner 1897, vol. 2: 9–10).

Decline As a professor of philosophy at the University of Tübingen and the chief theoretician among Kerner’s friends, Eschenmayer was particularly vulnerable to the scorn of rationalist critics who were content to ridicule the 18  On the controversy, see Fabry 1989, vol. 1: 360–364, and 597 n. 1771 for the journals involved; Malkani 1994a, vol. 1: 95–101.

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whole endeavour as an obvious case of irrational superstition. The oft-­ repeated, quite reasonable, but never successful response by Eschenmayer and his friends was that these critics simply refused to even examine the empirical evidence out of rationalist prejudice: Mesmeric somnambulism was dismissed a priori on theoretical grounds. How quickly the controversy exploded can be seen from the fact that Eschenmayer published his chief defence of the Seeress as early as 1830. Under the title Mysterien des innern Lebens (Mysteries of the Inner Life), it contained chapters responding to Carové, Görres, Hegel, Strauss, and the psychiatrist Ernst Albert Zeller (1804–1877). The battle lines were drawn, and what could have been a serious discussion about strange and unexplained phenomena degenerated quickly into vicious ad hominem polemics fought from entrenched positions. Eschenmayer, for his part, got ever more deeply alarmed by the rising tide of Hegelian philosophy (Eschenmayer 1831, 1834), and more specifically by the notorious Life of Jesus (1835–1836) of his former pupil David Friedrich Strauss. Strauss had observed the Seeress at first hand (Strauss 1839) but had become fiercely critical of Eschenmayer, who responded by denouncing his work as the theological parallel to Judas’ betrayal.19 Eschenmayer’s growing obsession with demonic possession and exorcism, which he shared with Kerner, is evident from his long chapter about “Possession and Magic” published in the latter’s Geschichten Besessener neuerer Zeit (Eschenmayer 1835b). But whereas Kerner always kept a good measure of soberness and common sense, not to mention a sense of humour, while emphasising empirical research rather than philosophical speculation, Eschenmayer became ever more credulous and paranoid. His all-embracing theoretical framework led him to see the controversies in terms of a metaphysical battle that was ravaging European culture as a whole: the satanic forces of modernisation and extreme rationalism were destroying the soul of the Christian religion. Kerner tried in vain to keep the ageing Eschenmayer from publishing a book about his own ­experiences with possession and exorcism entitled Conflict zwischen Himmel und Hölle (Conflict between Heaven and Hell, 1837, with yet another attack on Strauss; Fabry 1989, vol. 1: 377–381). Its contents made it embarrassingly clear that the author had been duped by a con man posing as an

19  Eschenmayer 1835a; and cf. the interesting contrast with Strauss’s earlier and remarkably positive article (Strauss 1839).

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exorcist; none other than the “drunkenbold and stage magician” mentioned in Ricarda Huch’s quotation at the beginning of this chapter. This ill-advised publication sealed Eschenmayer’s fate. Ever since his appointment as professor at the University of Tübingen, whose Medical Faculty was otherwise “remarkably immune against Romantic speculation in a Schellingian vein” (Grüsser 1987: 2), his high flights of metaphysical speculation had often annoyed colleagues and students with a more sober attitude.20 It was easy now to frame his writings about mesmeric somnambulism and demonic possession as the predictable outcome of an irrational philosophy that had been misguided from the very beginning. Eschenmayer kept publishing books until his death, but his reputation was in shatters. His final years—like Kerner’s—were marked by disappointment and depression: Next year I turn eighty years old. A long experience lies behind me, which contains better times at least than those that now threaten us from all sides. I am gripped by pain and indignation as I watch the general deterioration breaking loose like a great flood, and see those on the side as mere onlookers who do nothing to stop the hole in the dam (Eschenmayer to Kerner, 11 June 1847, in Kerner 1897, vol. 2: 297).

The revolutions of 1848–1849 inspired Eschenmayer to issue dire prophecies of the coming apocalypse, which would be preceded by general religious confusion: “human beings will put on religions and put them off again the way one changes clothes, and nobody will be happy with the change, and so they will just keep searching for something different but never find it” (Eschenmayer to Kerner, 13 January 1852, in Kerner 1897, vol. 2: 363–365). Finally, at some moment in the 1860s, the Antichrist would appear. And then? “Ask the book of Revelation” (ibid.). It is in this mood of despair that Eschenmayer died of a throat illness, on November 17, 1852.

20  Robert von Mohl (1902, vol. 1: 92, referring to his experiences as a student in Tübingen around 1817) found Eschenmayer deeply disagreeable (ungenießbar). Wilhelm Hauff’s satirical description of an unnamed professor in Tübingen around 1820, who is building a “Jacob’s Ladder” of airy speculation (Hauff 1826/1827, vol. 1: ch. 1) is undoubtedly about Eschenmayer. Eduard Zeller (1875: 581–582) writes that his philosophy had always been a meaningless play with analogies and mathematical formulas.

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Eschenmayer’s Relevance From the perspective of the study of Western esotericism, Eschenmayer’s oeuvre is a prime example of “rejected knowledge” (Hanegraaff 2012). It deserves to be recovered for several reasons: as a significant and intellectually impressive product of the speculative imagination; as one of the earliest attempts at a comprehensive theory of psychology; and as a crucial manifestation of the German Romantic theory of “nocturnal consciousness.”21 One of the most poetic descriptions of its internal logic comes from Eschenmayer himself: In the extraordinary state [of magnetic trance], it is as if we gaze into another world. And isn’t our nocturnal side worthy of greater attention? Do we not see millions of suns pass by at night, while during the day we see just a single one? More infinite and far nobler is this spectacle, which leads us far beyond the limited sphere of just one solar system. This is how it is with animal magnetism. That which is written on the darkest ground of the soul now shines out with the brightest splendour, while the common daylight sun is being extinguished. Only in such states does the gate of fantasy open, and we see her Ideals pass by like the fixed stars.22

Eschenmayer’s Naturphilosophie looked like a dead end to nineteenth- and twentieth-century academic philosophers and psychologists who were unable to see more in it than a hodge-podge of irrational superstitions. This judgement is in need of revision. Historians of cognitive research focused on alterations of consciousness might be able to see Eschenmayer’s oeuvre in its true light: as an impressive theoretical system of remarkable internal consistency, produced by an obviously brilliant and original mind whose treasures deserve to be rediscovered and assessed.

 See discussion in Hanegraaff 2012: 260–277.  Eschenmayer 1816: 64. Cf. Eschenmayer to Kerner, 18 May 1828, in Gruber 2000: 264–266, where he continues the logic of his argument by distinguishing between two suns: the physical sun illuminates our daylight world, whereas the spiritual Zentralsonne illuminates the inner world of the soul. The latter should be understood here not in a metaphorical sense, but in an ultimately Platonic one (with evidently Swedenborgian overtones). That is, as referring to the larger and deeper all-encompassing metaphysical reality of which Eschenmayer believed our world to be merely a secondary reflection or Abbild. 21 22

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References Primary Sources Abel, Jacob Friedrich von. 1786. Einleitung in die Seelenlehre. Stuttgart: Mezler. ———. 1791. Philosophische Untersuchungen über die Verbindung der Menschen mit höhern Geistern. Stuttgart: Mezler. Erdmann, Johann Eduard. 1982 [1853]. Eschenmayer. In Psychologie in drei Theilen als empirische, reine und angewandte, ed. Carl August Eschenmayer, 257–273. Frankfurt am Main: Ullstein. (Original in Erdmann, Versuch einer wissenschaftlichen Darstelllung der Geschichte der neuen Philosophie 3:2 [1853], 276–291). Eschenmayer, Carl August. 1796. Principia quaedam disciplinae naturali, inprimis chemiae ex metaphysica naturae substernenda. Ph.D. thesis, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen. ———. 1798. Versuch die Gesetze magnetischer Erscheinungen aus Sätzen der Naturmetaphysik mithin a priori zu entwikeln. Tübingen: Heerbrandt. ———. 1801. Spontaneïtät = Weltseele, oder das höchste Prinzip der Naturphilosophie. Zeitschrift für spekulative Physik 2 (1): 3–68. ———. 1803. Die Philosophie in ihrem Übergang zur Nichtphilosophie. Erlangen: Waltherschen Kunst- und Buchhandlung. ———. 1805. Der Eremit und der Fremdling. Gespräche über das Heilige und die Geschichte. Erlangen: Walther. ———. 1816. Versuch die scheinbare Magie des thierischen Magnetismus aus physiologischen und psychischen Gesetzen zu erklären. Stuttgart and Tübringen: Cotta. ———. 1817. Allgemeine Reflexionen. Archiv für den thierischen Magnetismus 1 (1): 11–34. ———. 1820. Über Gaßners Heilmethode, I–II. Archiv für den thierischen Magnetismus 8 (1 and 2): 86–135–861–99. ———. 1830. Mysterien des innern Lebens; erläutert aus der Geschichte der Seherin von Prevorst, mit berücksichtigung der bisher erschienenen Kritiken. Tübingen: Guttenberg. ———. 1831. Beleuchtung der Ansicht Hegels über Weltgeschichte. Blätter aus Prevorst 1: 132–170. ———. 1834. Die Hegel’sche Religions-Philosophie verglichen mit dem Christlichen Prinzip. Tübingen: Laupp. ———. 1835a. Der Ischariothismus unserer Tage. Eine Zugabe zu dem jüngst erschienenen Werke: Das Leben Jesu von Strauß. Tübingen: Fues. ———. 1835b. Einige Reflexionen über Besitzung und Zauber zu den vorstehenden Geschichten. In Geschichten Besessener neuerer Zeit: Beobachtungen aus dem Gebiete kakodämonisch-magnetischer Erscheinungen, ed. Justinus Kerner, 120–189. Karlsruhe: Braun.

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———. 1982 [1822]. Psychologie in drei Theilen als empirische, reine und angewandte. Frankfurt am Main: Ullstein. (Reprint of the second edition 1822; originally published 1817). Eschenmayer, Carl August, D.G.  Kieser, and F.  Nasser. 1817. Plan und Ankündigung. Archiv für den thierischen Magnetismus 1 (1): 1–8. Hauff, Wilhelm. 1826/1827. Mittheilungen aus den Memoiren des Satan. Vol. 2. Stuttgart: Frankh. Immermann, Karl. 1841. Münchhausen: Eine Geschichte in Arabesken. Vol. 4. 2nd ed. Düsseldorf: Schaub. Kerner, Justinus. 1824. Geschichte zweyer Somnambülen, nebst einigen andern Denkwürdigkeiten aus dem Gebiete der magischen Heilkunde und der Psychologie. Karlsruhe: Braun. ———, ed. 1832–1839. Blätter aus Prevorst: Originalien und Lesefrüchte für Freunde des innern Leben. Vol. 12. Karlsruhe: Braun. ———, ed. 1853. Magikon. Archiv für Beobachtungen aus dem Gebiete der Geisterkunde und des magnetischen und magischen Lebens. Vol. 5. Stuttgart: Ebner & Seubert. ———. 1846. Die Seherin von Prevorst. Eröffnungen über das innere Leben des Menschen und über das Hereinragen einer Geisterwelt in die unsere. Vol. 2. 4th ed. Stuttgart: Cotta. ———. 1853. Carl August v. Eschenmayer. Magikon 5: 383–422. ———. 1897. Justinus Kerners Briefwechsel mit seinen Freunden. Herausgegeben von Theobald Kerner. Vol. 2. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlagsanstalt. Mohl, Robert von. 1902. Lebens-Erinnerungen. Vol. 2. Stuttgart and Leipzig: Deutsche Verlagsanstalt. Platner, Ernst. 1772. Anthropologie für Aerzte und Weltweise. Leipzig: Dyck. ———. 1793. Philosophische Aphorismen, nebst einigen Anleitungen zur philosophischen Geschichte. Leipzig: Schwickert. Strauss, David Friedrich. 1839. Justinus Kerner. In Zwei friedliche Blätter. David Friedrich Strauss, 3–57. Altona: Verlag von J. F. Hammerich. Zeller, Eduard. 1875. Geschichte der deutschen Philosophie seit Leibniz. 2nd ed. München: Oldenbourg. Zeller, Ernst Albert. 1830. Das verschleierte Bild zu Sais, oder die Wunder des Magnetismus. Leipzig: Weidmann.

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Transformation der Anthropologie um 1800, ed. Maren Sziede and Helmut Zander, 47–83. Berlin: De Gruyter. Béguin, Albert. 1939. L’âme romantique et le rêve. Essai sur le romantisme allemand et la poésie française. Corti: Paris. Bell, Matthew. 2005. The German Tradition of Psychology in Literature and Thought, 1700–1840. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Durner, Manfred. 2001. Einleitung. In Zeitschrift für spekulative Physik, ed. Friedrich W.J. Schelling, vol. 2, ix–xlvii. Hamburg: Meiner. Fabry, Jacques. 1989. Le théosophe de Francfort. Johann Friedrich von Meyer et l’ésotérisme en Allemagne au XIXe siècle. Vol. 2. Bern: Peter Lang. Faivre, Antoine. 2008. “Éloquence magique”, ou descriptions des mondes de l’au-delà explorés par le magnétisme animal. Au carrefour de la Naturphilosophie romantique et de la théosophie chrétienne (première moitié du XIXème siècle). Aries 8: 191–228. Geyer, Dietrich. 2014. Trübsinn und Raserei. Die Anfänge der Psychiatrie in Deutschland. München: C. H. Beck. Gilson, Bernard. 1988. Présentation. In La liberté, et controverses avec Eschenmayer, ed. Friedrich W.J. Schelling, 7–74. Paris: J. Vrin. Grassl, Hans. 1968. Aufbruch zur Romantik. Bayerns Beitrag zur deutschen Geistesgeschichte 1765–1785. München: C. H. Beck. Gruber, Bettina. 2000. Die Seherin von Prevorst. Romantischer Okkultismus als Religion, Wissenschaft und Literatur. Paderborn: Schöningh. Grüsser, Otto-Joachim. 1987. Justinus Kerner 1786–1862. Arzt—Poet— Geisterseher. Berlin: Springer. Hanegraaff, Wouter J. 1998. New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought. Albany: State University of New York Press. ———. 1999/2000. Versuch über Friederike Hauffe: Zum Verhältnis zwischen Lebensgeschichte und Mythos der “Seherin von Prevorst (Pt. 1)”. Suevica. Beiträge zur Schwäbischen Literatur- und Geistesgeschichte 8: 17–38. ———. 2001. A Woman Alone: The Beatification of Friederike Hauffe née Wanner (1801–1829). In Women and Miracle Stories: A Multidisciplinary Exploration, ed. Anne-Marie Korte, 211–247. Leiden and Boston: Brill. ———. 2004. Versuch über Friederike Hauffe: Zum Verhältnis zwischen Lebensgeschichte und Mythos der “Seherin von Prevorst (Pt. 2)”. Suevica. Beiträge zur Schwäbischen Literatur- und Geistesgeschichte 9: 233–276. ———. 2010. Magnetic Gnosis: Somnambulism and the Quest for Absolute Knowledge. In Die Enzyklopädik der Esoterik: Allwissenheitsmythen und universalwissenschaftliche Modelle in der Esoterik der Neuzeit, ed. Andreas Kilcher and Philipp Theisohn, 259–275. München: Fink. ———. 2012. Esotericism and the Academy: Rejected Knowledge in Western Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Holstein, Klaus. 1979. Die Psychiatrie A.K.A.  Eschenmayers (1768–1852). Ein Beitrag zur Entstehungsgeschichte der Psychiatrie in Deutschland. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Huch, Ricarda. 1951. Die Romantik. Blütezeit, Ausbreitung und Verfall. Tübingen: Rainer Wunderlich. Maier, Sonja. 2009. Der Einfluss der Fichteschen Philosophie in der Medizin bei Adolph Karl August Eschenmayer. Ph.D. thesis, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Germany. Malkani, Fabrice. 1994a. Carl August von Eschenmayer (1768–1852) et le magnétisme animal: Contribution à l’histoire de la Naturphilosophie. 2 vols. Ph.D thesis, École pratique des hautes études, France. ———. 1994b. Carl August von Eschenmayer (1768–1852) et la Naturphilosophie: Contribution à l’histoire des idées en Allemagne à l’époque Romantique. 3 vols. Ph.D. thesis, Université de Rouen, France. Midelfort, H. C. Erik. 2005. Exorcism and Enlightenment: Johann Joseph Gassner and the Demons of Eighteenth-Century Germany. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Roux, Alexandra. 2005. Éclaircissements et commentaires. In La philosophie dans son passage à la non-philosophie de Carl August von Eschenmayer, ed. Introduit, traduit et annoté, 9–149. Paris: J. Vrin. Schulze, Wilhelm August. 1958. Eschenmayer und Blumhardt. Theologische Zeitschrift 14: 261–281. Shamdasani, Sonu. 2003. Jung and the Making of Modern Psychology: The Dream of a Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wuttke, Walter. 1966. Materialien zu Leben und Werk Adolph Karl August von Eschenmayers. Sudhoffs Archiv 50: 255–296.

CHAPTER 3

Priest-Doctors and Magnetisers: Mesmerism, Romantic Medicine, and Catholic Thought in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century Maren Sziede

Introduction In the early 1820s, Catholic thinkers started systematically adopting mesmerist Naturphilosophical theories, and occasionally mesmerist practices. Mesmerism, or animal magnetism, as I understand it, is a set of healing techniques, religious practices, and, more specifically in its nineteenth-­ century German tradition, theories of Romantic Naturphilosophie. It was of far-reaching influence throughout the late eighteenth and in the nineteenth centuries. Franz Anton Mesmer (1734–1815), an Austrian physician who had claimed to have developed a technique for healing nervous and other illnesses that became famous in the early 1780s in France, is acknowledged as the founder of mesmerism (Darnton 1968). One of his students, Amand Marc Jacques de Chastenet, Marquis de Puységur (1751–1825), added a most important element to Mesmer’s practice which he called “somnambulism.” Puységur described a somnambulist as

M. Sziede (*) University of Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland © The Author(s) 2021 L. Pokorny, F. Winter (eds.), The Occult Nineteenth Century, Palgrave Studies in New Religions and Alternative Spiritualities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55318-0_3

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someone who had been magnetised and whose perception and state of consciousness subsequently was said to be altered to a heightening of some perceptual faculties and a decline of others (Puységur 1784, 1786). Interpretation of mesmerism in the early nineteenth century in the German-speaking countries was, to a large extent, shaped by Naturphilosophie. Achieving a somnambulist state and ordering its characteristics was a major concern for mesmerists, such as the German author Karl Alexander Ferdinand Kluge (1782–1844), whose classification became a commonplace in German literature on mesmerism (Kluge 1811: 105–245; Weder 2008: 19–108). Some other aspects of Naturphilosophical mesmerism reminded more of a Mesmer-school approach, such as the theories on subtle fluids running through the nerves (Nervengeister) that were believed to be at the root of all magnetisability (Faivre 2008). Naturphilosophie embraced much of German academic culture in the first decades of the nineteenth century. Building on the works of post-­Kantian philosophers such as Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775–1854) and Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814), as well as Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) later on, Naturphilosophie thinkers introduced idealist principles into the study of nature. As a result, Naturphilosophie imagined nature to be a spectrum of materiality and immateriality, the non-material therefore still being part of the natural (Kaulbach 1984; Rothschuh 1961). Particularly strong had been the influence of Naturphilosophie on medicine in the first decades of the nineteenth century. Most of the different and often competing medical schools at the time, which in the early twentieth century came to be identified with the collective term “Romantic medicine,” were deeply embedded in Naturphilosophical thought (Koschorke 2004; D’Orazio 1997; Wiesing 1995). This chapter will explore the works of two Naturphilosophical physicians, Karl Joseph Hieronymus Windischmann (1775–1839) and Johann Nepomuk Ringseis (1785–1880), and their adaptation of mesmerist concepts. Their works are not only based on mesmerism but aim at providing a religious foundation of medicine. In an environment where medical theories competed and were superseded in the course of a few decades, these Romantic Catholic authors sketched medical theories based on an all-encompassing, conservative Catholic anthropology. One element of their medical systems will be of particular importance: their description of the ideal physician in terms of a priest—the “priest-doctor.” Having its roots in antiquity and following the topos of the Christus medicus, the belief that spiritual and healing power might be connected

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was popular in medieval times and the early modern period (Schott 2006; Gollwitzer-Voll 2007). Following the differentiation of sciences into disciplines, pastoral medicine—that is, understanding medical issues as part of pastoral care—was established during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in German and French Theology (Pott 2002: 85–99; Bruchhausen 2007: 188–190). In the eighteenth century, priests in Catholic regions and pastors in Protestant regions who brought medical knowledge to rural areas that lacked medical personnel became themselves a measure of public health policies and contributed to an Enlightenment popularisation of medicine. As Robert Heller (1976) has shown, rural clergy in France (from the late seventeenth century onwards) and, later, in the British Isles, Switzerland, and Germany, had been involved in supplying medication (especially during epidemics), providing knowledge on hygiene, and, around 1800, persuading their parishioners in favour of vaccination.1 These priests and pastors assisted public health agendas. However, Windischmann’s and Ringseis’ writings intended to reverse the link between medicine and religion, namely arguing for a medicine in the service of religion (Bruchhausen 2007).

Windischmann’s “Christian Healing Art” Windischmann was a German physician and a philosopher of Naturphilosophical orientation. He was born in 1775 in Mainz, where he studied philosophy and medicine, and later continued his studies in Würzburg. Among his teachers was Samuel Thomas von Sömmerring (1755–1830), who became famous for his contributions to neuroanatomy and the debate on the soul organ around 1800 (Schott 2002). Having been awarded a medical doctorate, Windischmann spent a year studying in Vienna before returning to his native city as a practicing doctor. In 1801, Windischmann was appointed court physician in Aschaffenburg by Friedrich Karl Joseph von Erthal (1719–1802), the Elector of Mainz, and shortly thereafter began teaching philosophy and history. Windischmann’s philosophical thought had been much influenced by Schelling, whose Naturphilosophie revolutionised the scientific academic culture in Germany in the nineteenth century (Bach 2005; Ffytche 2011). Windischmann’s early contributions to medical discourses attest to his 1  This has been shown by Rössler 2006 for Protestant areas in Germany, and by Roos 2014 for Scandinavia.

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interest in a Schellingian-imbued medicine: aiming at finding the “primary cause” (Grundursache; Windischmann 1800: 290) of the “existence of things” (Existenz der Dinge; ibid.: 291). Windischmann proposed to go back along the chain of causes and effects in order to find the ground of life itself. The question of life, by defining its specificity and the differentiation between the living and the inorganic, was addressed by Windischmann in his earlier Versuch über die Medizin (1797; Essay on Medicine), in alignment with many of his contemporaries (Windischmann 1797).2 As many influencing Romantic figures in the mid-1810s, Windischmann orientated towards a restorative Catholicism that was critical of Enlightenment ideas, with an interest in the Middle Ages and mysticism (Baier 2009: 222). More than 10 years later, Windischmann himself dated his “conversion” to Catholicism back to 1813; his transition into an orthodox Catholic writer, however, probably occurred over several years (Schrörs 1922: 364–365).3 In 1814, Windischmann presented an anti-­ Enlightenment and anti-Protestant interpretation of Hegelian history (Lauer 1962: 19; Windischmann 1814)—ergo his reputation as a “bigot and mystic” (Frömmler und Mystiker) among his contemporaries (Wohler 1989: 108, 210). In 1818, he was appointed to the Catholic professorship of philosophy at the newly founded University of Bonn. Significantly involved in the appointment procedures was David Ferdinand Koreff (1783–1851), who campaigned for representatives of mesmerism in Berlin and Bonn, leading to the formation of mesmerist centres at both universities (Artelt 1966: 445–467).4 In Bonn, Windischmann was one of several professors ­interested in and teaching about mesmerism, the others being: Christian Friedrich Nasse (1778–1851), a leading figure in the publication of 2  One of the most famous accounts on defining life around 1800 was Johann Christian Reil’s (1759–1813) essay Über die Lebenskraft (On Life Force; 1795). Cf. Heinz Schott (1998) on the notion of “life force.” The transformation of the concept of a “life force” to that of a psychophysical unconscious is retraced by Stefan Goldmann (2005). 3  The death of his oldest daughter in 1813 might have also played a role in Windischmann’s transformation to an orthodox Catholic (Wohler 1989: 53). 4  Bruchhausen (2007: 187), however, stresses that Koreff’s influence in Bonn was less than usually acknowledged since he did not succeed in several other proposals for chairs. Wohler (1989: 84–85) mentions explicitly only the appointment of Joseph Ennemoser as a result of Koreff’s politics in Bonn. Koreff moved to France in 1822 and became a famous propagator of mesmerism and a magnétiseur, one of his magnetic cures having been recorded by himself (Edelman et al. 2009).

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periodicals on animal magnetism around 18205; the botanist and physician Christian Gottfried Daniel Nees von Esenbeck (1776–1858), who succeeded Nasse as co-publisher of the Archiv für Thierischen Magnetismus; and the Tyrolian Joseph Ennemoser (1787–1854), whose Geschichte der Magie (History of Magic) was of enormous influence for Blavatskian Theosophy in the late nineteenth century (Ennemoser 1844; Ennemoser and Howitt 1854; Baier 2009: 258–259). Windischmann’s influential and highly paid academic position was part of the faculty of philosophy, but he also lectured in the faculty of medicine, including teachings on the “critical history of animal magnetism” (Schrörs 1922: 363; Dyroff 1916: 38). In 1823, he wrote Ueber Etwas, das der Heilkunst Noth thut: ein Versuch zur Vereinigung dieser Kunst mit der christlichen Philosophie (On Something that is Necessary to Medicine: An Attempt to Unify This Art with Christian Philosophy). This treatise was first published in the Zeitschrift für die Anthropologie, edited by his professorial colleague in Bonn and fellow mesmerist proponent Nasse, and an offprint of the text was released a year later (Windischmann 1823, 1824). In this text, Windischmann proposed a medicine based on his religious assumptions, defining diseases as consequences of the primordial sin and the corrupted nature of humanity. He therefore recommended ecclesiastical performances as highly effective remedies, such as prayers, the various sacraments, or exorcist rites. The publication of this book is associated with an interesting biographical incidence. In 1821, a chronic eye condition that Windischmann had suffered from for some time was apparently healed by the then-famous priest and proclaimed healer Hohenlohe (Dyroff 1916: 104). Prince Alexander Leopold Franz Emmerich von Hohenlohe-Waldenburg-­ Schillingsfürst (1794–1849), as was his full name, had a far-reaching reputation of working healing miracles. In 1821 and 1822, many people, among them the Crown Prince Ludwig of Bavaria (1786–1868), came to Hohenlohe for relief from minor and major illnesses. The alleged successes or failures of Hohenlohe’s healing prayers were widely discussed— among other publications in Nasse’s Zeitschrift für die Anthropologie, only two issues before Windischmann’s essay—and then prohibited by the 5  Nasse co-published the Archiv für den Thierischen Magnetismus (Eschenmayer et  al. 1817–1824), a periodical dedicated to the study of magnetism and information sharing among practicing magnetisers, between 1817 and 1820. He quit due to differences with the chief publisher, Dietrich Georg von Kieser (1779–1862), and concentrated his work on animal magnetism in his Zeitschrift für psychische Ärzte (1818–1822) and the Zeitschrift für die Anthropologie (1823–1826) (cf. Scheuerbrandt 1999: 231–232).

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Bavarian government as well as Pope Pius VII (1742–1823; pp. 1800–1823) (Reusch 1880; Ulrich 1823). Windischmann’s interest in Romantic popular religiosity (as this visit to Hohenlohe probably indicates) also led him to an encounter with the well-known nun Anna Katharina von Emmerick (1774–1824) (Bezold 1920: 161). Emmerick was said to have shown stigmata—wounds on the hands, feet, torso, and forehead that imitate the crucifixion lesions—and to have had religious visions since 1812 (Engling 2011). Emmerick had been supervised by a physician and official commissions, making her case well known to readers of German papers (Hümpfner 1973). Since 1819, Clemens Brentano (1778–1842), German Romantic poet and a friend of Windischmann, had been closest to Emmerick, spending several hours a day for a period of about 6 years (1819–1824) at her bedside (Engling 2009; Wohler 1989: 85). Windischmann’s concept of a new medicine was based on his affinity to a Catholicism of a mystical, Romantic, and restorative character. Following his Naturphilosophical position, Windischmann reproached physicians for being too empirical and not sufficiently philosophical— “empirical” being here a deprecatory characterisation.6 The philosophical part stood, in Windischmann’s account, for a medical “art” that is based on a biblically derived concept of human health and illness. Disease, in Windischmann’s exposition, is the direct consequence of the biblical fall of humankind, with paradise being equal to perfect physical and mental health (Windischmann 1823: 331).7 Illness, therefore, is regarded primarily as a moral evil and a result of desire, melancholy, laziness, or selfishness, which is why he discarded “material” ways of healing as not addressing the underlying cause (ibid.: 83–91). The true cause of illness for Windischmann lied always in the soul, and the best medication is therefore the immaterial remedy of a “Christian life” (ibid.: 93). Hence, religious practices are a means of healing the body much more effectively than medication ever could (ibid.: 378–379). Consequently, an integral part of Windischmann’s new “healing art” was its leading actor, whom he imagined as a union of a physician and, given the alleged healing power 6  This was not a commonplace only in Romantic medicine, as the remarks of the philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) on Ernst Platner (1744–1818) and his “empirical” (instead of the preferred “philosophical”) work demonstrate (Euler 2007: 24). 7  The understanding of disease as sin or as the consequence of sin was a common theme in medieval times and the early modern period; often, however, in the more concrete sense of a specific illness being the consequence of a certain undesirable deed (Vollmer 2011).

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of religion, a priest. In Windischmann’s account, sacraments, prayers, and exorcisms—Windischmann here inserted an apology for the ritual of exorcism that he believed to be misunderstood by his contemporaries (ibid.: 509–510)—are the best and most effective remedies for whatever illness, and it is advisable for the physician to be at least well acquainted with this religious pharmacy (ibid.: 510–511). Ideally, the priest-doctor should act as a mediator bringing health, morality, and holiness to the realm of human life marked by diseases and misery, with health being the equivalent of salvation and the work of a medical doctor resembling a sacramental act. Windischmann’s model for this priest-doctor were his descriptions of ancient Greek religions, a point of critique by Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749–1832) who firmly believed in medical progress (Lauer 1962: 105–106). Windischmann’s ideal physician acted less from his medical knowledge and more through his intuition (Windischmann 1823: 42, 407–417).8 A major premise for this “Christian healing art” in Windischmann’s definition is mesmerism, which he called the “entrance hall to this new [healing] art” (Vorhalle der neuen Kunst; Windischmann 1823: 77). He believed that his entire concept could be explained similarly to mesmerism or other forms of “intuitive healing” (such as the “miracle healer” Hohenlohe), namely through imagination and “natural relations” “below consciousness” (ibid.: 74–76).9 Accordingly, mesmerism is not merely the preparatory stage in Windischmann’s medical concept. In fact, it must be interpreted as the blueprint on which he modelled his ideas of a Christian medicine—in a similar way as he moulded his reception of Indian philosophy onto his understanding of mesmerism in his later work Die Philosophie im Fortgang der Weltgeschichte (Philosophy in the Course of World History; Windischmann 1827–1834; cf. Baier 2013: 218–219). Windischmann developed his concept of a Catholic medicine against the backdrop of mesmerist theorising—the “relations below consciousness” referring to a Naturphilosophical understanding of the rapport concept.10 8  Intuition and intuitive medicine had already been a topic in Windischmann’s earlier work; the intuitive doctor in Ueber Etwas, das der Heilkunst Noth thut is an embodiment of his earlier conception of an intuitive medicine (Windischmann 1809; Hirschfeld 1930: 31). 9  ‘Vieles aber ist […] in dem unterhalb des Bewußtseyns und der psychischen Imagination wirkenden Naturbeziehungen selbst gegründet‘ (Windischmann 1823: 76). 10  Rapport, the French word for ‘relation,’ is in this context a technical term coined in 1785 by Puységur and Jean-François Fournel (1745–1820). The term was used in mesmerist literature to designate a specific close relation between the magnetiser and the magnetised

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The analogy to mesmerism is apparent in (at least) three more aspects: 1. Windischmann believed his “healing art” to be the state-of-the-art explanation and systematisation of what might otherwise be called “the magical.” Under the label “magic,” he subsumed—just like his colleague in Bonn, Ennemoser (1819; Baier 2009: 257–290; Hanegraaff 2012: 268–274)—ancient healing practices, such as charms or incense (Windischmann 1823: 73–75). This strategy of legitimisation, an actual “invention of tradition,” is the same Kluge used in 1811 in his widely read Versuch einer Darstellung des animalischen Magnetismus, als Heilmittel (Essay Towards a History of Animal Magnetism as a Remedy; Kluge 1811: 15–30). 2. The somnambules were at the centre of much of Naturphilosophical mesmerism. Mostly women, they were described as mystics, leading to cases like that of the allegedly stigmatised and visionary Catholic nun Emmerick being debated in terms of somnambulism; or that of Friederike Hauffe (1801–1829), the “Seeress of Prevorst”, inspiring pastoral practice (Bährens 1816; Gissibl 2006). The alleged somnambulist clairvoyance is in Windischmann’s account only a prerequisite of real mystical vision (Windischmann 1823: 420–421). This attitude was later elaborated in detail by Joseph Görres (1776–1848) in his Die Christliche Mystik (Christian Mysticism; Görres 1836–1842; Neumeyer 2015). 3. Last, but not least, the case of the “priest-doctor”: what distinguished mesmerism from other therapeutic systems was the personal role of the magnetiser in contrast to a physician, the latter being confined to making diagnoses and applying the appropriate medication. The magnetiser’s personality was deemed essential for the success of the technique, encompassing an assumed force at work that the magnetiser was required to possess, as well as moral integrity.11 Windischmann’s ideal physician had both components: the moral distinction of the priest-like physician, and the healing power that may flow from his determining will (a typical Puységurian feature of the magnétiseur) (Windischmann subject. Naturphilosophical mesmerists reinterpreted the concept of rapport as a psychophysical form of communication via the nervous system (Schott 2014: 595–616). 11  Gmelin (1791) discussed at length whether the magnetiser loses his own life force during the magnetising process. See Koschorke 2008 on the broader medical and anthropological background of this belief. The claim that moral integrity is a prerequisite for somnambulism (e.g., Tardy de Montravel 1785: 71–72) emerged from—appropriate or not—polemics against “sexual magnetism.”

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1823: 433). Four years earlier, Joseph Ennemoser, Windischmann’s colleague at the University of Bonn and fellow mesmerist author, imagined a priest-doctor in a very similar way in his comprehensive work on mesmerism (Ennemoser 1819). Ennemoser suggested that those who lead a real Christian life might no longer need medical assistance at all.12 Similarly to Windischmann’s idea of paradisiac health, Ennemoser was convinced that moral health shall in return lead to a healthy body. In his account, the priest-doctor is only an auxiliary agent, and his capacity of healing a direct result of his own soul’s health and tranquillity (ibid.: 473–474). With his book on a new “Christian healing art,” Windischmann became the pioneer of a Catholic, Naturphilosophically based medicine that was later described by historians as “religious,” “mystical,” and “magical” (Wohler 1989: 208; Hirschfeld 1930: 30–31). The impact of mesmerism on Windischmann’s medical theories cannot be underrated. His reception of mesmerist ideas is obvious in many of the conceptual premises of his work: the implicit and explicit use of mesmerist key concepts such as the rapport; the integration of somnambulist clairvoyants into his theory on mystical vision; and, most importantly, his concept of an ideal physician, the “priest-doctor,” in analogy to the image of a magnétiseur. Thus, Windischmann became a leading figure of a Catholic reception of mesmerism (Sawicki 2002: 156). Windischmann was read, among many others, by Görres who used mesmerism as a blueprint for his conception of mysticism (Görres 1827, 1829, 1836–1842): Görres believed in the clairvoyant faculties of mystics, explaining them by using mesmerist theories while inserting a clear-cut hierarchy between the “true” Catholic visionaries and the less refined and less reliable somnambulists. Görres applied to mysticism the model that Windischmann had invented for his medical concepts. Windischmann’s speculative ideas on a “Christian healing art” paved the way for more comprehensive attempts of reconciling restorative Catholicism with medical art, such as the work of Johann Nepomuk Ringseis. 12  “Ist dem Menschen Ernst, in einen unbedingten Gehorsam gegen Gott und in einem lebendigen und thätigen Glauben sich zu Gott zu bekehren und in Gott zu leben, dann ist Gott sein Arzt und er braucht dem zeitlichen Arzt nicht mehr in die Hände zu fallen; das heißt, sobald die Seele vollkommen gesund ist, so breitet sich diese Gesundheit der Seele auch in dem Körper aus” (Ennemoser 1819: 473).

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Ringseis’ Medical System Ringseis was born in 1785 and studied medicine at the Catholic University of Landshut, being a student of the famous Andreas Röschlaub (1768–1835) (Wormer 2003). Röschlaub’s medical concepts had been influenced mainly by Schelling’s Naturphilosophie and the Brunonian system of medicine that was built upon the theories of the Scottish physician John Brown (1735–1788), who regarded diseases as a result of a lack or an excess of excitation. When Ringseis studied with Röschlaub, the latter had already been very critical towards these influences and represented a more pragmatic form of medicine drawing on Brown’s ideas (Tsouyopoulos 1982). After completing his academic studies in 1812 and following educational journeys to Berlin and Vienna, Ringseis settled down as a practicing doctor in Munich, where he almost immediately gained a solid reputation—among his patients being Franz von Baader (1765–1841) and Schelling. Soon, he became court physician and a close acquaintance of the crown prince Ludwig (later Ludwig I of Bavaria), a position he made use of much later in favour of the appointment of Görres at the University of Munich (Wormer 2003; Lindermayr 1936: 10–14). Just like Windischmann, Ringseis represented a type of restorative Catholicism, strongly influenced by Romanticism. As he described much later in his Erinnerungen (Memories), he dated the formation of his religion-­political views back to his reading of Count Friedrich Leopold zu Stolberg’s (1750–1819) Geschichte der Religion Jesu Christi (History of the Religion of Jesus Christ; 1806–1818), and, among other Romantic literature, Gotthilf Heinrich Schubert’s (1780–1860) Ansichten von der Nachtseite der Naturwissenschaft (Views of the Night Side of Natural Science; 1808; cf. Ringseis 1886a: 65–69). As a young physician in Munich, Ringseis became interested in the Catholic revivalist movement taking place in Southern Bavaria and beyond since around 1796. This movement, named Allgäuer Erweckungsbewegung, was inspired by Johann Michael Sailer’s (1751–1832) reform of pastoral theology and Pietist practices. However, it was already declining when Ringseis came in contact with it (Weigelt 2000). A country estate near Landshut belonging to the Baron of Gumppenberg was one local centre of Bavarian revivalists, to which Ringseis was introduced by his teacher Röschlaub in 1815 (Ringseis 1886a: 206–217; Weigelt 2000: 98). Gumppenberg, later followed by Ringseis, was a representative of the

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rather “ecumenic” (as Ringseis called it) wing of the movement, with close ties to Pietist groups—a fact that Ringseis later, in his Erinnerungen, tried to conceal by stating that he had never left the sturdy ground of the Catholic faith (Ringseis 1886a: 227). Having already read writings by the medieval mystic Johannes Tauler (c. 1300–1361) during his studies, whose books were popular among Catholics in the early nineteenth century, and commentaries on the French Theosophist Louis Claude de Saint-­Martin (1743–1803)13 by Baader, Ringseis was well acquainted with the revival of mysticism and Theosophy among contemporary Romantic Catholics (Ringseis 1886a: 225, 257, b: 106; Clark 2013: 51). With such religious socialisation—coming from a Catholic background, interested in Theosophical and mystical writings, and (loosely) participating in revivalist movements—Ringseis’ early life was typical for a young intellectual during the Romantic period. He was similarly well acquainted with mesmerist practitioners and their writings. Schubert, whose works had so much shaped Ringseis’ early intellectual life, had dedicated an entire chapter on the topic (von Schubert 1808: 326–360). Ringseis actively quoted mesmerist literature. Among them were the latest volumes of Blätter aus Prevorst (Leaves from Prevorst; Ringseis 1841: 290), a periodical of late mesmerism published between 1831 and 1839 by Justinus Kerner (1786–1862), the author of the Die Seherin von Prevorst (The Seeress of Prevorst; 1829, cf. Kerner 1845), which popularised a strand designated as mystical magnetism, that is, mesmerism (Kerner 1831–1839; Gauld 1995: 141–162). Ringseis was also in direct contact with Johann Karl Passavant (1790–1857), a major representative of mystical mesmerism, himself a Protestant, although he was regarded as an almost “Catholic” writer by his Catholic contemporaries (Baier 2009: 210–218). In 1841, eighteen years after Windischmann’s Ueber Etwas, das der Heilkunst Noth thut, Ringseis published his System der Medizin (System of Medicine), a compendium of Naturphilosophical medical thought that received praise by Görres and became Ringseis’ entry card for the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities (Ringseis 1841; Görres 1841). He was by then a full professor at the medical faculty of the University of 13  Here, Theosophy does not refer to the Theosophical Society founded in 1875, but to the earlier Christian Theosophy, with its roots in Lutheran theology and Paracelsianism. Saint-Martin is regarded as a central figure of late eighteenth-century Theosophy. His writings were of enormous influence during the Romantic period (Faivre 2005).

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Munich with an influential position as a medical consultant in the Bavarian government (Wormer 2003). Even more than Windischmann, Ringseis drew extensively on Naturphilosophical and mesmerist ideas for his conception of medicine. He had a Naturphilosophical, vitalist stance on the categorial difference between the organic and the inorganic; one that was stressing a fundamental difference between life and non-organic material. Ringseis believed in a life principle, the Bildungstrieb (formative force), which is located in the blood of humans and animals (Ringseis 1841: 60–83). Furthermore, he was well acquainted with mesmerist concepts and vocabulary. He devoted an entire chapter of his System to “somnambulism,” where he speculated about perception without senses (ibid.: 99)—the term “extrasensory perception” had been coined much later, with the rise of parapsychology. Substituting sensory organs, Ringseis proposed the “electric Nervengeist” as the perceiving agent in somnambulism (mittelst des elektrischen Nervengeistes; ibid.: 108). According to Ringseis, the active part in somnambulism—and other non-conscious (bewußtlos) bodily activities—is the ganglionic system, a set of nerve ganglions in the upper belly and, following its anatomic and functional description by Johann Christian Reil, a classic topos in mesmerist theory (ibid.: 78, 109, 559, inter alia; Reil 1807). Although Ringseis is rarely acknowledged as a mesmerist representative, the explicit references in his System prove his in-depth knowledge on the subject, as well as the importance he ascribed to mesmerist concepts to explain specific medical problems (e.g., Ringseis 1841: 153). As with Windischmann’s writings, mesmerism featured as a blueprint for Ringseis’ entire medical system. This is most conspicuous in the parts of his System where he stipulated a decidedly Catholic medicine. He credited sacraments, notably the Eucharist, with the power of healing, as well as prayers (Ringseis 1841: 150–152, 489–490). Not least, Ringseis required physicians to be devoted believers in order to properly fulfil their job (ibid.: 517–518). This ideal is clearly a reference to Windischmann’s (and Ennemoser’s) priest-doctors.14 Additionally, that model of a physician whose practice consists of ritual gestures, words, and certain psychological requirements must have reminded Ringseis’ contemporaries of the magnetisers with their habitualised “magnetic passes” and the classic Puységurian slogan “believe and will” (croyez et voulez; Puységur 1809). 14  Ringseis (1841: 490) explicitly quoted Windischmann on attributing healing qualities to religious rituals.

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Magnetic practice and the resulting somnambulism are framed by Ringseis as being related to the non-material, although not yet spiritual, dimension—an in-between, “sideric region” (siderischen Region; Ringseis 1841: 99). This belief is related to his Naturphilosophical view of reality as a continuum between the material and the spiritual, with no clear boundaries. Similarly, Windischmann’s “mesmerism as entrance hall” alluded to mesmerism as being located in-between a materialistic and a religious medicine. However, Ringseis’ conception of disease is innovative compared to Windischmann. First, Ringseis believed health to be of relative dimensions, never fully achieved—this is in stark contrast to Windischmann’s view of health as an absolute, paradisiac ideal condition (Ringseis 1841: 189–192). Second, Ringseis suggested all attacks on health as coming from the outside. Illness was not regarded by him as inherent to the body, as it might be from a Brunonian or a classical Galenic viewpoint, but as an external cause, an “ill germ” (Krankheitskeim; ibid.: 205). This again is far more concrete than Windischmann’s speculations on moral defects. In accord with the Naturphilosophical model of reality, which supposed a continuum of material and spiritual, these germs are seen by Ringseis as either material or imponderable (non-weighable) (ibid.: 145–157). Both aspects—the relativity of health and being affected by outer germs—are in line with a contemporary notion of illness that is more compatible with modern medicine. It is an interesting fact that Ringseis later in life felt that he was confirmed in his assumptions by the discoveries of Rudolf Virchow (1821–1902), who was acknowledged as the “founder” of modern medicine (Ringseis 1891: 398–401). Ringseis might therefore be regarded as an example for a historiography of medicine that underlines the continuity between modern medicine and its Naturphilosophical precursors. Nonetheless, Ringseis’ notion of a disease as the consequence of an outer causa morbifica is only superficially opposed to Windischmann’s idea of illness as inherent to human existence. In their reasoning they both depended on a theological anthropology: the inherent bodily fragility of humans is for both of them the result of the expulsion from a paradise of everlasting health; Ringseis’ outer “ill germs” came into the world with the fall and death, being, as he wrote, “the consequence of a chronic disease beginning with life since the fall.”15 15  As Ringseis (1841: xx; cf. 182–186) summarised: “Der Tod [ist] Folge einer seit dem Sündenfalle mit dem Leben beginnenden chronischen Krankheit.”

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When Ringseis wrote his System der Medizin, the conceptual background he drew on—that of Naturphilosophie—was already in decline. Vitalist and Naturphilosophical approaches were replaced by a more empirically oriented medicine, such as Rudolf Virchow’s studies on the cellular pathology. However, Ringseis’ writings were well-received in a restorative Catholic environment, in which medical theories that not only accepted theological premises but were based on them were appreciated. Ringseis went as far as asking a colleague of his, a theologian, if his writings were compatible with Catholic doctrines and proudly confirmed the positive answer in the introduction (Ringseis 1841: ix). In doing so, Ringseis probably had in mind the recent statements by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome, which declared in 1840 (and again in 1847) the application of mesmerist practices as not entirely prohibited but allowed under certain circumstances (Walter 1904: 229–233). Ringseis’ theoretical mesmerist content did not seem to be prone to objection. On the contrary, its use as a link between medical and theological assumptions was approved.

Conclusion Windischmann and Ringseis presented medical works that aimed at placing their Catholic faith of restorative, anti-Enlightenment character at the centre of medicine—or, rather, at its beginning, the “entrance hall” (to use a more appropriate metaphor). Reinterpreting disease as a consequence of the fall of humankind, they both located issues of health and illness in the realm of religious competence. For this purpose, they drew heavily on mesmerist concepts and topoi to render their accounts plausible to contemporary readers well acquainted with mesmerist literature. Mesmerism served as a blueprint for their religious-medical systems, or as a means to their actual aim, that is, overcoming what they perceived as “materialistic” and establishing a religious medicine in its place. Unlike most mesmerists from Protestant backgrounds, these Catholic authors— Görres even more pronounced than Windischmann and Ringseis—created a clear hierarchy with everything Catholic at the very top, reinterpreting mesmerism as a means to access higher realms. Both authors, particularly Windischmann, sketched a medicine subordinated to religion, not only on an abstract, anthropological level (humans as sinful and therefore prone to illness), but in the practical dimension of how to handle a concrete disease as well; that is, through prayer, eucharist,

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or exorcism rather than pharmaceuticals. Windischmann’s account of a religious medicine, like that of Ringseis, is an example of the newly found self-confidence of theologians regarding medical issues that Bruchhausen (2007: 193) has shown. With the secularisation and the withdrawal of the Churches as state and society actors, the clergy no longer fulfilled the role of “medical assistants” (ibid.: 191). Bruchhausen (ibid.: 193) called this the transition from a religio ancilla medicinae to a medicina ancilla religionis: instead of a religion that serves medical interests, a medicine in the service of religion was propagated. The subordination of medicine to religion (mostly) in Catholic regions in Germany in the early nineteenth century, as well as the widespread plausibility of mesmerism, made writings such as those of Windischmann and Ringseis credible to their readers. This newly developed self-consciousness of Catholics in the first half of the nineteenth century was not limited to the field of medicine. This development is part of a larger picture leading eventually to the emergence of a restorative, anti-Enlightenment, and anti-rationalistic ultramontane Catholicism (Weiss 2004). Along with the ultramontane political programmes, Catholicism in the first half of the nineteenth century was shaped by piety practices, such as pilgrimages and the veneration of saints or famous mystics, partly being heavily impacted by mesmerism (Gissibl 2004, 2006; Priesching 2004; Weiss 2011; Götz von Olenhusen 1995), making the Catholic mesmerist physicians, above all Windischmann, the precursors of Catholic mesmerism (Sawicki 2002: 156–157).

References Primary Sources Bährens, Johann Christoph Friedrich. 1816. Der Animalische Magnetismus und die durch ihn bewirkten Kuren. Mannes: Elberfeld and Leipzig. Ennemoser, Joseph. 1819. Der Magnetismus nach der allseitigen Beziehung seines Wesens, seiner Erscheinungen, Anwendung und Enträthselung in einer geschichtlichen Entwicklung von allen Zeiten und bei allen Völkern wissenschaftlich dargestellt. Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus. ———. 1844. Geschichte der Magie. Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus. Ennemoser, Joseph, and Mary (Botham) Howitt. 1854. The History of Magic. Trans. William Howitt. London: H. G. Bohn. Eschenmayer, Carl August, et  al., eds. 1817–1824. Archiv für den Thierischen Magnetismus. Leipzig: Herbig.

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CHAPTER 4

Animal Magnetism and Its Psychological Implications in Hungary Júlia Gyimesi

Introduction It is well-known today that the different branches of Western esotericism influenced and saturated early psychology in many ways (e.g., Brottman 2011; Gauld 1992; Gyimesi 2016a, b; Wolffram 2009). One of the reasons of their interconnection was that, in numerous cases, esoteric theories and practices functioned as a sort of psychological knowledge, aiming at describing psychological contents, identifying the way of personality development, or differentiating between normal, healthy (and thus desirable), and abnormal psychological functioning. It is easy to discover the parallels, yet, it is very complicated to identify the specific ways through which Western esotericism fertilised psychological thinking. Did some trends of Western esotericism (such as spiritualism) serve as a precursor of the psychological theories of the unconscious (Gyimesi 2016a)? Can we I would like to gratefully acknowledge the comments and suggestions of Karl Baier that significantly improved this chapter.

J. Gyimesi (*) Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Budapest, Hungary © The Author(s) 2021 L. Pokorny, F. Winter (eds.), The Occult Nineteenth Century, Palgrave Studies in New Religions and Alternative Spiritualities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55318-0_4

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reach the conclusion that Western esotericism was one of the intellectual antecedents of modern psychology? In the case of animal magnetism, the latter seems rather valid. Although the significance of animal magnetism is much less emphasised in present-­ day history of science compared to spiritualism, it is obvious that theories and practices of animal magnetism not only inspired the representatives of early psychology but actually served as one of the antecedents of dynamic psychology and psychotherapies (Ellenberger 1970; Crabtree 1993; Gauld 1992). As Adam Crabtree (1988: historical introduction) summarises: Animal magnetism is little known today. Most historical scholars would probably be hard pressed to write more than a brief paragraph about Franz Anton Mesmer (1734–1815) and his discovery. Yet, for approximately seventy-­five years from its beginnings in 1779, animal magnetism flourished as a medical and psychological specialty, and for another fifty years it continued to be a system of some influence. When one examines the history of animal magnetism and its offshoots, it seems incredible that this once powerful system is now almost completely forgotten. That animal magnetism is no longer practiced is hardly surprising. The theory of animal magnetism in its original form would be difficult for most moderns to accept. What is puzzling is that the story of animal magnetism is so neglected. Animal magnetism is not comparable to certain medical fads which flourished for a time and then died out. Such crazes did not significantly shape medical or psychological theory and practice, nor did they significantly affect the evolution of those disciplines. Animal magnetism, on the other hand, had a profound impact on medicine, psychology, and psychical research (today called parapsychology), as a brief examination of its history will show.

Henri F. Ellenberger (1970: 69) stresses the significance of animal magnetism in a very similar manner: It is an open question as to whether Mesmer was a precursor of dynamic psychiatry or its actual founder. Any pioneer is always the successor of previous ones and the precursor of others. There is no doubt, however, that the development of modern dynamic psychiatry can be traced to Mesmer’s animal magnetism, and that posterity has been remarkably ungrateful to him.

It is primarily due to Ellenberger and Crabtree that we know much more about the psychotherapeutic significance of the discovery of animal

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magnetism today (Crabtree 1988, 1993, 2003, 2012; Ellenberger 1965, 1970). However, Crabtree is correct when asserting that animal magnetism is often ignored by historians of science. Most of the psychologists and historians of psychology or medicine are not acquainted with the details of the theory of Mesmer, nor are aware of the circumstances of its failure, and do not take into consideration its great popularity in the past. Furthermore, they do not know how indispensable animal magnetism was in the formation of the theories of altered states of consciousness and the unconscious, in the scientific research of human relationships in general, and psychotherapeutic relationships in particular. Mesmer defended his thesis entitled Dissertatio physico-medica de planetarum influxu (Physical-Medical Treatise on the Influence of the Planets) in 1766 at the University of Vienna. In this, he introduced the notion of animal gravitation, which, according to his views, connected every living organism to the stars and also guaranteed healthy bodily functioning. In his early years, Mesmer started to experiment with magnets and found his results to be convincing. Thereby, he revised the theory of animal gravitation aiming at introducing the new concept of animal magnetism. However, he soon came to believe that the magnetiser himself was a magnet, and thus capable of channelling the invisible “magnetic fluid” into the body of the sick person (Crabtree 1988, 1993). According to Mesmer, the magnetic fluid pervades the universe and creates a harmonic order. It also influences the human organism, especially the nervous system. The application of Mesmeric healing techniques redirected the fluid into the sick organ of the patient, which often led to a so-called crisis, and thus re-­ established the balance of magnetic fluid. Mesmer started to popularise his theory in the 1770s. Although he gained remarkable fame in this early period in Germany and Austria, the evaluation of his theory was not unequivocally positive. He moved to Paris in 1778 with the aim of receiving more positive feedback in medical circles. Eventually, in 1784 both the Royal Academy of Sciences and the Faculty of Medicine, and later the Royal Society of Medicine, published unfavourable reports concerning the validity and efficacy of his theory and practice (Baier 2015; Crabtree 1988, 1993). Mesmer’s fame waned after 1790, but the practice of animal magnetism survived. It did so due to one of Mesmer’s pupils, Marquis de Puységur (1751–1825), who expounded valuable theories on the function of animal magnetism with far-reaching consequences regarding psychological thinking. Puységur discovered that magnetic somnambulism, a dream-like state

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in which the patients developed unique sensorial capacities, was a distinct form of consciousness and referred to a parallel level of psychological functioning. This idea of double consciousness greatly influenced early psychology, which could be identified many years later in the theories of Pierre Janet (1859–1947), Jean-Martin Charcot (1825–1893), and Sigmund Freud (1856–1939). While Mesmer represented a more mechanical approach, in Puységur’s view some psychological aspects of magnetic healing were clearly emphasised. In his approach, the specific relationship between the magnetiser and the patient, the so-called “rapport,” gained outstanding significance. He also drew attention to some seemingly supernormal (parapsychological) characteristics of somnambulistic states (Crabtree 1988; Puységur 1807). Later on, Abbé Faria (José Custódio de Faria; 1756–1819), Alexandre Bertrand (1795–1831), and James Braid (1795–1860) carried on the ideas of Puységur. It was Braid who started to use the term “hypnotism” instead of animal magnetism, with the aim of distancing himself from the idea of a magnetic fluid. Braid considered hypnotism a psycho-­ physiological state and emphasised the power of suggestion in the healing process of hypnotism. In the 1860s, the French physician Ambroise Liébeault (1823–1901) successfully applied hypnotism in his medical practice. A medical professor from Nancy, Hyppolite Bernheim (1840–1919), was especially impressed by this technique; later they together founded the so-called École de Nancy. In this period, hypnosis was applied with great success by Jean-Martin Charcot in Paris, although he represented a more biological approach to the phenomenon. Hypnosis and the idea of split consciousness proved to be decisive in the works of Pierre Janet, Alfred Binet (1857–1911), and Eugène Asam (Crabtree 1988, 2003, 2012). It is well-known that Freud was also inspired in his early years by Charcot’s discoveries (Sulloway 1979). Animal magnetism in medicine was not only utilised as a healing practice, but also as a popular alleviative treatment. In the period of early psychology, animal magnetism had even more significant influence—it is not accidental that one of the main aims of psychical researchers and parapsychologists was to understand magnetic phenomena (Crabtree 1988). Animal magnetism was connected to early psychological research in many additional ways. By focusing on the person of the magnetiser, animal magnetism highlighted some fundamental questions regarding the necessary psychological features of the healer: what psychological and physical conditions of the magnetiser are needed for successful cures? What is the

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relationship between the power of suggestion and the emotional and moral features of the magnetiser? What psychological qualities are needed in order for one to develop into a successful magnetiser? How are these qualities related to the question of the so-called rapport? Animal magnetism arrived in Hungary soon after its conceptualisation and became a popular healing technique. However, the history of Hungarian animal magnetism, its relationship to psychology and science, and the connected demarcation processes are hitherto only scarcely known. The aim of this chapter is to introduce the little-known history of animal magnetism in Hungary and try to find answers to the above-­ mentioned questions in the Hungarian context.

The Onset of Animal Magnetism in Hungary The doctrine of Mesmer was from early on known in Hungary due to German and French influence (Tarjányi 2002). Animal magnetism soon became a popular practice, but it raised several questions and doubts. The first, rather critical note on animal magnetism written in Hungarian was included in the translation of the book of the German physician Christoph Wilhelm Friedrich Hufeland (1762–1836) on the art of extending human life (Hufeland 1799). This was published in 1799 and the translator was Mihály Kováts (1762–1851), the author of the first Hungarian book on chemistry. It was also Kováts who first translated a work of the German philosopher, physician, and psychologist Carl August Eschenmayer (1768–1852) on animal magnetism into Hungarian (1818; cf. Eschenmayer 1816). Thus, he provided the first comprehensive work on mesmerism for the Hungarian-speaking audience. Interestingly, Kováts also attached his own work to the translation, in which he offered a systematic repudiation of mesmerism. His aim was to publish a so-called balanced explication on the subject and highlight his own concerns regarding the spread of magnetism. In his view, animal magnetism was just as dangerous as sorcery, originating from the denial of God: “The science of animal magnetism originates and develops in atheism and materialism, in the denial of every religion, in the denial of Christ, in the denial of the soul, and now it causes many damages, as I have showed. I warn every patriot! Be careful! Not to yield to the temptation! That is why every good Christian must pray to God every day!”(Kováts 1818: 254). Kováts’ vehement criticism was due to the growing popularity of mesmerism in Pest. According to his account, by 1818 animal magnetism was

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just as widespread in Pest as it was in Paris or Berlin, although no works in Hungarian were published on the subject.1 As an example, he mentioned the physician Ferenc Bene (1775–1858), a popular magnetiser in Pest, who learnt the technique from Karl Christian Wolfart (1778–1832) in Berlin. Translating Eschenmayer’s book and complementing it with his own criticism seemed to Kováts as the proper way of informing the broader audience. Contrary to Kováts’ hopes, animal magnetism continued to be a popular practice in the capital—and in Hungary in general. In the first decades of the nineteenth century, critics proved to be less vehement than Kováts, while the number of supporters increased. Even the most acknowledged physicians promoted the usage of magnetic techniques. Enthusiastic reports “proved” the effectiveness of the new cure and internationally recognised Hungarian representatives contributed to the development of mesmerism in Europe. Furthermore, while preserving its original lure, animal magnetism merged with folk healing methods and spiritualism in the nineteenth century.

Animal Magnetism in Hungary Within and Outwith Medicine Several of the earliest proponents of animal magnetism in Hungary were physicians who considered magnetism to be an especially effective healing method in numerous (mostly psychologically or neurologically based) diseases. One of the most influential early representatives of animal magnetism in Hungary was Mihály Ignác Lenhossék (1773–1840). Lenhossék was a respectable physician, a university professor, the chief physician of Hungary, and an eparchial counsellor. He was an outstanding figure of contemporary medicine and, besides his other merits, played a fundamental role in the introduction of smallpox vaccine in Hungary. His son, József (1818–1888) and grandson Mihály (1863–1937) were also prominent physicians; his great-grandson, the physician and biochemist Albert Szent-­ Györgyi (1893–1986), received a Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine in 1937. In 1817, Mihály Ignác Lenhossék published an introductory article on animal magnetism in Hungarian. He was convinced that his publication 1  Kováts did not know about Mihály Lenhossék’s article on animal magnetism that was published in 1817.

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was the very first one on mesmerism in Hungarian, as he did not know about Kováts’ note in Hufeland’s book. Lenhossék fully accepted the genuineness of magnetic influences. Besides outlining the history of mesmerism, he aimed at systematising the phenomena of somnambulism and implicitly identified animal magnetism not with classical mesmerism, but with somnambulism. As a practicing magnetiser, Lenhossék summarised all the necessary criteria of successful magnetic cures, including the desirable physical and mental features of the magnetiser; neither malevolence nor physical illness could characterise him: “Deep faith, pure and determined heart is needed to work with this unknown and wonderful power and to help the miserable sick” (1817: 39). According to Lenhossék, simple magnetic states could be provoked by passes, the expiration, the gaze, or the psychological power of the magnetiser, however, the induction of complex magnetic states would require the usage of magnets. Building a harmonic relationship with the patient, that is to say, a positive rapport, was deemed a fundamental aspect of magnetic practice. While outlining the use of magnetism in the medical practice, Lenhossék proved to be rather moderate. He was obviously convinced about the far-­ reaching positive consequences of using animal magnetism in the case of nervous disorders, such as hypochondria, hysteria, melancholia, or other disturbances that were supposed to be connected to the nervous system. Yet, he was also aware that magnetism alone was not an effective cure of several physical problems. Nevertheless, he was a devoted follower of animal magnetism, and—as an eminent and powerful representative of contemporary science—influenced many others. Count Ferenc Szapáry (1804–1875), for instance, who was probably the greatest representative of early animal magnetism in Hungary (see further below), was one of his disciples. Besides the growing popularity of animal magnetism in this early period, critics also expressed their views regarding the true influence of this method. One of them was the physician and podiatrist August (Merei) Schoepf (1804–1858), a prominent scientist of his time. By 1835, he considered animal magnetism a failed theory and declared that the supposed effects of magnetising were due to other, psychological causes that originated in the close relationship between the magnetiser and the patient (Schoepf 1835). Ferenc Kölcsey (1790–1838), a poet, politician, and the composer of the national anthem, also expressed his views on magnetism; however, his criticism was much less aggressive than Schoepf’s (Kölcsey

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1960 [1828]). Many others—such as the physician Imre Simonyi (1819–1864)—accepted the theory of animal magnetism, but called attention to its frequent misuse (Simonyi 1846). Criticism notwithstanding, the popularity of mesmerism did not decline. István Csanády (1814–1876), for example, another enthusiastic representative of mesmerism in Hungary, aimed at demonstrating its overwhelming medical significance. He was a landowner with great experience in agriculture, a jurist, and an autodidactic physician. He played an active role in the 1848 war of independence, for which he was arrested following the failure of the revolution and spent a few years in prison in Vienna. During this period, Csanády learnt English and trained himself in medicine and mesmerism. After his time in prison, he spent a year in London and deepened his knowledge in the field of magnetism. Later on, he settled down in Debrecen and opened a private practice in mesmerism and medicine with great success. Moreover, he published a comprehensive work on animal magnetism in Leipzig. Apparently, he did not receive any medical degrees neither in Leipzig, nor in Budapest, although he was a practicing physician. In 1876, upon his return from a trip to Italy, he committed suicide (Szentgyörgyvölgyi 2011). In his work Medicinische Philosophie und Mesmerismus (Medical Philosophy and Mesmerism, 1860), Csanády gave a detailed account on his views regarding the physical and biological background of animal magnetism. His main objective was to put an end to the prejudices against and misunderstandings about mesmerism. Hence, he tried to reframe animal magnetism and the process of healing referring to the naturalistic, atomic, molecular origins of magnetic powers. He summarised his results as follows: Thus, the first result of this work is the recognition of the existence of the primal forces of nature. 2. The clarification of the so far mystical theory of sensation and consequent mental capacities. 3. The deriving proper concept of the inner human life and consequently the true grounding of psychology and philosophy. 4. As a result, the complete amelioration of education and human rights. 5. The more precise understanding of the affecting power of human organism. 6. The essential knowledge of life-principles such as the principle of health, illness, death, recovery and healing, in short the true foundations of medical science. Finally, the true justification of mesmeric healing, as one of the greatest blessings of divine providence (Csanády 1860: 441–442).

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Csanády’s comprehensive ideas might have had significant influence on Jósa Oroszhegyi (1822–1870), one of the earliest representatives of the theory of od in Hungary.2 Oroszhegyi was also imprisoned in Vienna after the revolution of 1848; during his confinement, he met Csanády and learnt about his theory on magnetic forces. Interestingly, György Komáromy (1817–1872),3 who was declared to be a close friend of Mesmer, was also in the Josefstadt prison in Vienna in these years. There he had met Oroszhegyi, who became his close friend. Originally a physician, politician, journalist, and gynaecologist,4 Oroszhegyi published an enthusiastic work entitled Az ód és életdelejség közéleti értéke (The Public Value of Od and Life-Magnetism) in 1858 (Oroszhegyi 1858). In this he combined the ideas of Karl Ludwig Reichenbach (1788–1869)5 with his own discoveries, providing an alternative medical treatment for neurological diseases. His book was based on his manifold experiences in the field. Oroszhegyi gave very precise descriptions of the magnetic passes focusing mainly on neurological symptoms and the functioning of the female organism. He complemented his medical observations with religious interpretations: he identified od as the “world-force” of the universe, a divine power that would infiltrate the world. The aforementioned representatives of mesmerism in Hungary obviously had great influence in regard to the practices of animal magnetism, but it is still difficult to identify the nature of this impact. It is very likely that, as an outstanding physician, Lenhossék had considerable influence within the academic medical field; yet, we do not know much about his followers. Csanády was also an eminent representative of mesmerism, but his book in German was not referred to by further representatives of mesmerism in Hungary. It is also difficult to identify in a precise way the 2  The theory of od was developed by the chemist Karl Ludwig Reichenbach (1788–1869). The theory maintains that a vital energy, the so-called odic force, radiates from all substances and permeates plants, animals, and humans. The odic force was supposed to be connected to electricity, magnetism, and heat. 3  György Komáromy was a wealthy landlord and, according to the historian Bertalan Reiner, the first Hungarian who published an article on Mesmer (1891). According to Reiner, the article was published in the Wiener Allgemeine Literatur Zeitung; however, I did not find any reference to Komáromy in the journal. 4  Oroszhegyi was the head of the female education institute of Ágnes Röszler (Röszler Ágnes No ̋nevelointézet) ̋ for five years. 5  Reichenbach’s book was published in Hungarian in 1922.

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impact of Oroszhegyi’s work. Nevertheless, as authors of extensive works on mesmerism, it is very likely that the above-mentioned scholars designated the framework of animal magnetism in Hungary. In fact, in the mid1800s, it was Count Ferenc Szapáry’s influence regarding the theory and practice of animal magnetism that proved to be far-reaching.

The “Magnetising Count”6: Ferenc Szapáry and his Followers Count Ferenc Szapáry, a member of a well-known noble family, conducted his first experiments on animal magnetism in Abony, a small town in central Hungary that belonged to the family property. According to Béla Tóth (1857–1907), a journalist, philologist, anecdote-collector, and historian, during this period Szapáry experimented with animal magnetism on his peasants. Later, he opened a magnetic hospital in Dresden with a befriended physician. Despite his great success and good reputation in Germany, Szapáry had to leave Dresden due to severe disagreements with local physicians. He returned to Hungary and in the 1840s continued his magnetic work in Budapest with great success. He opened a private clinic in the house of his father-in-law in the centre of Budapest. According to Tóth, who characterised him as the most altruistic and sincere albeit somewhat addlepated Hungarian magnetiser, Szapáry worked free of charge. In these years he took some courses with Lenhossék; before he had learnt the foundations of mesmerism from György Komáromy (Tóth 1899). Szapáry was a truly convinced proponent of mesmerism; his aim was to highlight the medical and philosophical importance of mesmeric states which he declared to be transitory between the dreaming and waking states. In one of his earliest works, he investigated the case of “Fräulein Therese von B-y,” a young somnambulist from the village of Vásárhely (Szapáry 1840). Later he re-evaluated his results and complemented them with his latest discoveries based on his observations with another somnambulistic patient, Auguste Kachler, a sixteen-year-old girl, who allowed Szapáry come to a new understanding of magnetism. According to the new findings, and contrary to Mesmer’s claims, no special talent is needed to become a magnetiser; rather, anybody could magnetise. For the purpose of making magnetism accessible to the public, Szapáry collected and 6

 A popular nickname of Szapáry (Tarjányi 2002).

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published all the basic principles and methodologies of magnetic healing (Szapáry 1845a, b). In 1848, he moved to Paris and gained remarkable success with his magnetic healings. In 1900, Adolf Ágai (1836–1916), a talented humourist, editor, and physician, published an essay on Szapáry in which he labelled the Count as the Hungarian Hansen.7 Moreover, he depicted Szapáry’s success in Paris in a rather enthusiastic tone (Ágai 1906: 244): The glorious guise of the Count, his rank, his wealth that guaranteed his independence, his devoted, true faith in magnetism were all such antecedents and characteristics that prepared him for success, but could not assure the success. He spent 12 years there uninterruptedly, he gave talks at several conferences, led a magnetic clinic and diligently wrote his magnetic catechism, the leading books of the magnetic cure.

In this period, several outstanding representatives of the Parisian cultural life belonged to Szapáry’s closest circle, such as Pierre Jean de Béranger (1780–1857), Alexandre Dumas (1802–1870), Isaac Pereire (1806–1880), Prosper Mérimée (1803–1870), and Jules Gabriel Janin (1804–1874). Even Jules Verne (1828–1905) attended his presentations in Paris (Tóth 1899).8 From this period on, Szapáry significantly merged the theory on animal magnetism with the latest discoveries of spiritualism (Szapáry 1850, 1854a, b, c). He returned to Budapest in 1850 and settled down in Abony where he lived until his death in 1875. During the last years of his life, he was focusing mainly on theoretical problems and avoided the public (Reiner 1891; Tarjányi 2002; Tóth 1899).9 Szapáry’s influence proved to be far-reaching in and outside Hungary. It is very likely that Count János Mailáth (1786–1855), another distinguished magnetiser in Hungary, was also Szapáry’s disciple (Kolos 1938). Mailáth was born in Eger, a town in northern Hungary, and he studied law; however, he worked only for ten years due to his poor health and 7  Carl William Hansen (1872–1936) was an eminent Danish occultist, an expert in alchemy and astrology. 8  According to the historian Gábor Szentgyörgyvölgyi, the figure of Docteur Antékirtt in Verne’s novel Mathias Sandorf (1885) was inspired by Szapáry himself (Szentgyörgyvölgyi 2011). 9  It is less known that Szapáry combined magnetic passes with massage that he learnt from peasant women. Accordingly, he was probably the earliest representative of medical massage in Hungary (Szentgyörgyvölgyi 2011).

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eyesight. He was a well-educated thinker, dealing primarily with history, literature, and mesmerism. He left Hungary before the 1848 revolution and published his book Der animalische Magnetismus als Heilkraft (Animal Magnetism as a Healing Power) in 1852. He had to face serious financial difficulties at the end of his life and committed suicide together with his daughter in 1855 (Szentgyörgyvölgyi 2011). Mailáth’s book became a substantial work regarding the practices of animal magnetism in Hungary, although it was written in German and published in Regensburg. In the introductory part of the book he differentiates between an “old” and a “new” school of magnetism (cf. Kluge 1811). Mailáth enumerated many distinctive features of the two schools, including the magnetiser’s desirable inner characteristics and methods. According to the representatives of the new school, everybody was able to magnetise in his opinion under the following circumstances: one had the will to do so, know the method, and had to be healthier than the magnetised person. Notably, he declared himself to be the first representative of the new school of magnetism, although Szapáry’s work on the subject was published earlier (Szapáry 1845a). Providing primarily a practical guide, Mailáth gave relatively detailed accounts of the different passes, spasms, and neurological problems. While discussing the characteristics of somnambulism, he also warned the reader to the dangers of overemphasising the extraordinary capacities of somnambulistic patients: “The task of magnetism is not to develop fortune tellers, but to heal” (Mailáth 1852: 29). Mailáth’s book was based on his nine years of healing experience in the field of animal magnetism and mainly contained reports of successful treatments. More than thirty passes were described by the author which he used if the symptoms derived from psychological dysfunctions. In his view, the technique of animal magnetism did not work in the case of organic diseases. Another, and probably the most influential disciple of Szapáry, was the physician János Gárdos (1813–1893), who was one of Szapáry’s assistants in his private clinic in Budapest. Gárdos, originally an obstetrician, wrote his dissertation on cataract operations in 1840 (Gárdos 1840). Later he turned to animal magnetism and became an extremely popular magnetiser in Hungary. It was him that introduced Baroness Adelma Vay (1840–1925), the later co-founder of Hungarian institutionalised spiritism, to spiritualistic practices. Adelma was suffering from severe migraines in the 1860s and Gárdos suggested her to develop her mediumistic, somnambulistic capacities in order to improve. As a result, Adelma’s symptoms vanished

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and she developed an extraordinary talent in automatic writing (Grünhut 1932; Gyimesi 2016b; Vay 1923). The treatment that was applied by Gárdos in the case of Adelma was not unique; a famous Hungarian spiritualist medium of the early twentieth century, Mrs. Jelenek, also gained her mediumistic capacities due to Gárdos’ therapeutic suggestions. It was the well-known psychoanalyst Sándor Ferenczi (1873–1933), the founding father of the Budapest school of psychoanalysis, who recorded Gárdos’ profound influence in the life of Mrs. Jelenek: In the first years of her marriage she was ill for months at a time, had talked crazy; doctors thought it was typhus; ‘but was only somnambulism.’ During a relapse of her illness they took her to a Dr. Gárdas, the oldest magnetist in the city.10 He magnetized her. After she awoke from the magnetized sleep, the doctor told her she was a somnambulist (she didn’t know the word before; she was a child of poor parents and didn’t learn anything). The doctor said further, “If you want to stay healthy, you have to tell the fortunes of people who come to you and let yourself be put to sleep by your husband for this purpose. If you don’t do this, you will die.”—At first she had been very fearful when people came to her, but she gradually got used to it (Letter from Sándor Ferenczi to Sigmund Freud, 20 November 1909; quoted in Brabant et al. 1993: 100).

Due to Gárdos’ special treatment, Mrs. Jelenek became a well-known spiritualist medium in Budapest whose telepathic capacities were investigated even by Ferenczi himself (Fényes 1912; Gyimesi 2016a). Although Gárdos was the most popular magnetiser of his time, he did not write any comprehensive work on his magnetic practice. Only two papers were published in Hungarian. In 1847, he gave a relatively complicated quasi-neurological interpretation of magnetism, wherewith he attempted to convince his colleagues on the valid biological basis of magnetic forces (Gárdos 1863). Later, in 1854, Gárdos illuminated some less-known aspects of his method, such as his “pointing” technique. According to that, it was possible to cure many different diseases, such as cholera, by exerting pressure on certain points of the body. In this article, Gárdos identified magnetic phenomena not as miraculous but, rather, as yet unknown capacities of the human psyche. The seemingly supernormal capacities of several magnetised patients would be “nothing else, but symptoms, signs, that help us to  The errata are in the original text and kept in the translation (my note).

10

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understand the perfectness and imperfectness of the relationship between the soul and the matter in humans. A scientific era must observe and use these for the sake of improving ourselves, just as it took out electricity from the hand of old Jupiter” (Gárdos 1854: 167). His extraordinary fame was recorded by many of his contemporaries; rumours circulated that he gained his great wealth thanks to his somnambulists who told him the winning numbers of the lottery. Béla Tóth, who knew Gárdos personally, described him with the following words: What Doctor Gárdos did (I knew him) is in fact not a miracle anymore: he hypnotised. Of course not so simply and without any hocus-pocus as it is done today, but in the way of Mesmer: with mysterious touches, even referring to supernatural forces. It is indisputable that his method had positive effects on some nervous problems, however, sometimes he had a rather destructive influence on the nerves of weak women in particular. I know about a case in which after inducing catalepsy at a young girl he was unable to wake her up and even he himself was scared when he saw the augmentation of the spasms. The patient was awakened by other, ordinary doctors with great difficulties. However, such things did not reduce the fame of Gárdos; miraculous stories were circulating about him in Pest; for instance, it was taken for sure that his patients could feel his approaching even from a long distance (Tóth 1899: 216–217).

In 1852, Endre Bajkay, a Protestant diocesan clerk, gave a detailed account of Gárdos’ magnetic method. His son was suffering from a serious illness and there was apparently no hope for recovery. In this desperate situation, Bajkay turned to Gárdos as a last chance, who—according to his account— was not only a magnetiser at that time, but also a homeopath.11 Taking into account the critical condition of Bajkay’s son, Gárdos used a less intrusive method: magnetic passes and drinking magnetised water as a treatment. Building a positive rapport was also a fundamental aspect of the healing process. According to Bajkay’s account, Gárdos had nearly miraculous influence on his dying son, who completely recovered following the treatment (Bajkay 1852).

 Homeopathy was a popular healing practice in Hungary already from the 1820s.

11

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The Legacy of Gárdos In 1894, a year after Gárdos’ death his widow, Júlia Andrássy also died and bequeathed a large amount of money to the Medical Professorial Syndicate of the Royal Scientific University of Budapest (Budapesti Királyi Tudományegyetem Orvoskari Tanártestülete) for the establishment of a scholarship scheme entitled “Mrs. János Gárdos Foundation for Medical Research” (Özv. Gárdos Jánosné–féle orvostudományi vizsgálódásra ösztönzo ̋ alapítvány). According to the widow’s will, the aim of the award was to support the elaboration and publication of works on magnetism, its influence on the human organism, and its possible inner and outer therapeutic effects. Authors would need to take into account the notes and books of her deceased husband, which were also donated to the Syndicate’s library. However, the will of the widow was not entirely respected by the early theoreticians of hypnosis at the Royal Scientific University of Budapest. In 1900, the physicians Pál Ranschburg (1870–1945) and Károly Décsi published Lelki gyógymódok (Psychoterapia): A magnetizmusról, annak az emberi szervezetre való hatásáról és lehető külső és belső gyógyalkalmazásáról (Psychotherapies: On Magnetism, Its Influence on the Human Organism, and Its Possible Inner and Outer Therapeutic Effects). Their book was the first one that received a Gárdos Award; accordingly, one thousand copies were printed. At an early stage of Ranschburg’s scientific career, the award could have had great significance, but Ranschburg was an acknowledged scholar already at this time. Later, he became an internationally recognised neurologist, as well as the founder of experimental psychology and special educational psychology in Hungary. In spite of the work’s promising title, Ranschburg and Décsi’s book did not in fact focus on magnetism—especially not the type of magnetism described by Gárdos. Instead, Ranschburg wrote a comprehensive work enumerating the scientific evidence of the influence of suggestion, which Décsi complemented with a relatively short and rather unelaborated chapter on the history of psychotherapy. In this section, only a few pages were devoted to the topic of mesmerism and less than one page to the oeuvre of Gárdos. In the third and last chapter, which was jointly written, Ranschburg and Décsi gave an account of their own experiments in which the magnets’ medical influences were investigated. According to their conclusion, “the physiological effects of magnetism are nothing else than the influences of psychical reflexes of emotions that were reproduced by imagination, that is to say: magnetism has no specific effect on the

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functioning of human organism; its influence is the result of imagination” (Décsi and Ranschburg 1900: 267). It is obvious that Ranschburg and Décsi’s aim was to entirely differentiate animal magnetism from hypnosis research. In fact, Ranschburg gave a comprehensive and detailed account on the latest discoveries on hypnosis, which were enthusiastically supported by his contemporaries, such as the outstanding physicians Ender Hőgyes (1847–1906) and Ernő Jendrassik (1858–1921). It is also clear that Gárdos and the representatives of animal magnetism were not considered to be forerunners of hypnosis by the authors. Rather, they were referred to as the representatives of a magical-­ mystical, superstitious worldview that dominated for too long and set back the development of “true science.” The obvious misuse of Gárdos’ heritage was left without further reflection.

Spiritualistic Magnetisers Apart from Szapáry, it was the physician Adolf Grünhut’s (1826–1906) theories on the spiritualistic interpretations of animal magnetism that were to be decisive in regard to the evolution of magnetic practices in Hungary. Along with Baroness Adelma Vay, Grünhut was the cofounder of institutionalised spiritualism in Hungary. Actually, it was precisely animal magnetism that led him to the realm of spiritualism. Grünhut gained extensive experience in the field of magnetism already from the late 1840s. He first encountered animal magnetism as an assistant physician in the army during the War of Independence (1848–1849). According to his own account, it was the chief physician of the regiment who introduced him into the healing technique of magnetism. Later, from the 1860s onwards, he regularly applied magnetism in his medical practice, even for non-neurological conditions such as typhus and respiratory problems. In this period, he met a young somnambulistic woman in the town of Abaújszántó in northern Hungary; this proved to be a turning point in his life and led him to the systematic examination of the phenomena of animal magnetism. In 1866, he met Adelma who was already a successful somnambulist at that time due to the magnetic treatment of Gárdos; she was able to describe the exact nature of a patient’s illness as well as its cure through automatic writing. As Grünhut emphasised in his two-volume book, spiritualism, magnetism, and somnambulism were strongly and uniquely interconnected in his practice (Grünhut 1932). He identified magnetic power as “a soft power

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pervading the whole universe of the Creator, similar to electricity that is normally invisible for the human eye, but not immaterial” (ibid.: 29). He considered electricity to be equally fundamental as magnetism in connection to the spirit world; both of them would influence the contact with the spirits, and both of them were supposed to be physical materials according to Grünhut. It must be added that the spiritualism represented by Grünhut had very strong Christian features. Several of the mediums of the most important forum of spiritualism in Hungary, the Budapest Association of Spiritual Investigators (Szellemi Búvárok Pesti Egylete), were trance mediums who transmitted the messages of biblical figures. The members of the Association used the term “evangelistic spiritism” (evangéliumi spiritizmus) for the purpose of defining their framework, and their primary aim was self-development in a unified and re-evaluated Christian faith following the teachings of Christ. Since magnetism was interconnected with spiritualism in Grünhut’s theories, his magnetic practice also had strong religious features. According to him, only those who had strong faith in God could gain insight into the magnetic world: “The deep faith of the magnetiser in God is definitely desirable in order to avoid considering himself as the origin of these powers, and proudly believing himself to be capable of all these things” (Grünhut 1932: 47). It is remarkable that, while specifying several forms of magnetism, Grünhut also differentiated his magnetism from Mesmer’s method. According to him, magnetism had nothing to do with suggestion, which was applied by Mesmer in Grünhut’s interpretation, neither with hypnotism. In his view, magnetism was a divine force that was accessible only on the basis of good will, deep faith in God, and holiness. In this sense, positive magnetic rapport was the privilege of those who accepted the divine nature of magnetism. The influence of Grünhut and the Budapest Association of Spiritual Investigators became far-reaching in Hungary in the fields of both spiritualism and animal magnetism. Égi Világosság (Heavenly Light), the popular journal of the Budapest Association of Spiritual Investigators, published dozens of articles on magnetism and its relation to the spirit world between 1898 and 1944, including the series of Grünhut entitled “Small Talk Next to the Fireplace. On Magnetism, Somnambulism and Mediumism,” translations of Reichenbach’s works on od, and countless further reports on magnetism and its therapeutic influence.

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Being unsatisfied with the strong Christian contents of evangelistic spiritism, further spiritualistic societies were established seeking a more objective investigation of spiritualistic occurrences. The Hungarian Metapsychical Scientific Society (Magyar Metapszichikai Tudományos Társaság)12 was the most important forum among them. Animal magnetism was also an important field of research within the Society. For example, Vilmos Tordai (1880–?), one of the main representatives of metapsychical research, published a book on it (1914), and other metapsychical researchers devoted further comprehensive research to the subject. Even a journal—Magnetism (Magnetizmus)—dedicated to the research of magnetic phenomena was launched in 1904, edited by Alajos Wajditsch (1887–?).13 The great popularity of magnetism did not decrease in spiritualist and metapsychical circles—not even in the twentieth century. In 1943, Árpád Biacsi, a member of the Hungarian Metapsychical Scientific Society, published the book A hit és a lélek ereje a delej és általában az életműködéseket befolyásoló inmateriális tényezők lényege a természettudomány tükrében (The Power of Faith and the Soul and the Essence of Immaterial Powers Influencing Organism in Light of Natural Sciences; 1943), in which he expressed his strong conviction regarding the physical nature of magnetic force. This so-called “psycho-energy” (pszicho-energia) or “psychodyn” (pszichodin) was at the heart of several of the experiments on magnetism conducted in the Society, which he declared to be absolutely convincing. According to Biacsi, it was possible to influence or transfer thoughts on the basis of these magnetic psychological forces. In addition, he fervently supported a rather speculative biological interpretation of magnetism— even in 1943, when the physical-biological origins of magnetism were long refuted and discredited. It is obvious that spiritualist magnetism was an extremely rich field in the twentieth-century history of Hungarian animal magnetism. New interpretations emerged in connection to the religious contents of evangelistic spiritism, and superseded theories were rediscovered. This flourishing period ceased with the dissolution of the Budapest Association of Spiritual Investigators in 1949. During the communist regime all

12  The term “metapsychical” refers to the French physiologist and Nobel Laureate Charles Richet’s (1850–1935) works on metapsychical (early parapsychological) research. 13  The journal was published only in 1904.

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spiritualist—or any esoteric, religious, ideologically (or politically) “deviant”—activities were banned.

Popular Magnetisers: The Example of Mrs. Wunderlich Apart from the aforementioned representatives of animal magnetism, there were many other individuals whose public magnetic practice received great acclaim and were declared to be extraordinarily effective in the twentieth century. One of them was Mrs. Wunderlich, a magnetiser from Sashalom, located in Budapest’s sixteenth district, who was extremely popular in the 1920s. According to contemporary reports, crowds of people were waiting for her magnetic treatment, even during the period of her trial in which she was charged with quackery. Due to the support of her former patients, she was released in 1926 (Széman 2015). Prior to the verdict, she summarised the nature of her talent as follows: I am very sorry for what happened, but it is not my fault. It is a divine designation for me to heal, and I cannot refuse to practice my gift, otherwise God will take my power back. I helped everybody who came to me. They woke me up at night many times, and it happened quite often that I collapsed several times a day because of the exhaustion. I read in the newspaper that I “failed”. I do not want to argue with the doctors, but what they are saying does not correspond to the facts. I did not do anything else during the observation of the doctors, that I do at home, I caressed the patient. I do not say that I cure everybody, only those who believe in me.14

The international success of Mrs. Wunderlich was also mentioned in a local newspaper. According to the article, a parapsychological society in Vienna granted her an honorary award for her great achievements in the field of magnetic healing. Researchers were interested in her activity; she was even invited to a medical congress in The Hague. Furthermore, Mrs. Wunderlich was an elected honorary member of the spiritualistic Christophorus Federation in Vienna.15 She allegedly cured three hundred people there and even helped a deaf person speak.16  Huszadik Század, March 1926.  The Christophorus Federation (Christophorus Bund) was founded in 1923 by Hans Malik (1887–1964). 16  Rákos Vidéke 1930. 14 15

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László Lachwicska, a former police officer, was similarly successful in the practice of animal magnetism. Although he was accused of quackery three times until 1926, he was each time exonerated.17 In these days, the animal magnetiser Alfréd Pethes also gained great fame; he committed suicide in 1935.18 János Dömösy was another well-known animal magnetiser in this period; however, his prominence was due to the tragic death of one his patients. As it was revealed, Dömösy belonged to the group of spiritualist magnetisers, and the deceased was the spiritualist medium herself who has suffered from a serious illness.19 Vilmos Klein, another reputed magnetiser, became so popular that he reportedly had to flee from the crowd of “fanatic patients” on the streets.20 The great popularity of Mrs. Wunderlich and others show that, although animal magnetism was discredited within academe, it survived for a while as a mixture of spiritualist, religious, and folk healing method.

Concluding Remarks Notably, psychotherapeutic aspects of the tradition of animal magnetism were never really analysed in Hungary. It seems, that the demarcation of animal magnetism from hypnosis research by the forerunners of hypnosis, such as Ranschburg, was fully successful. Later on, twentieth-century scholars of hypnosis left the historical significance of animal magnetism in Hungary nearly untouched (Ádám 2012; Mészáros 1978; Völgyesi 1933). Not even psychoanalysts found the practice worth examining. Although spiritualists and metapsychical researchers preserved the tradition of animal magnetism, they were never able to transmit its message to a broader audience. It seems that the legacy of Szapáry and others was left in the hands of popular magnetisers, whose ambiguous fame determined the credit of their technique. Nevertheless, the influence of animal magnetism was manifold and sometimes not easily detectable (e.g., Baier 2019; Crabtree 1993; Ellenberger 1970; Gauld 1992). It certainly affected the ideas on healing in general and healing relationships in particular in and beyond psychology. It illuminated the nature of some psychological disturbances, the  Pesti Napló, March 20, 1926, 58 (11).  Friss Újság, April 26, 1935, 94 (3). 19  Új Barázda, June 3, 1927, 125 (3). 20  Esti Kurír, March 13, 1926, 59 (11). 17 18

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power of suggestion, and thus paved the way for the theory and practice of hypnosis (e.g., Ellenberger 1965; de Saussure 1943). It is evident that it was also characterised by the aforementioned effects in Hungary. Furthermore, as an implicit theory (Polányi 1958) that was present for so long even if it was denied by so many, it affected in many respects the modern worldview, ideas concerning the so-called reality, and questions regarding the nature of this reality. Hence, one may assume that Hungarian animal magnetism did not leave the development of psychology untouched. While investigating the Hungarian history, the same questions emerge as in the international history of animal magnetism: is this power biological by nature? Whose power is the healing one in the relationship? Is this power owned by the healer as an individual talent, or is it a divine power? Can anyone acquire this healing method? Or is a specific personal sensitivity needed for the proper application of healing? These questions are relevant in psychology, too. Taking into account the contemporary research results on the theory and practice of psychotherapies, can we assert that we have already answered all these questions?

References Primary Sources Ágai, Adolf. 1906. Új hantok [New Clods]. Budapest: Athenaeum. Bajkay, Endre. 1852. Az állati- vagy életmagnetismus delejesség tudománya, mint bizonyos gyógymód [The Science of Animal Magnetism as a Cure]. Pest: Landerer—Heckenast. Biacsi, Árpád. 1943. A hit és a lélek ereje a delej és általában az életműködéseket befolyásoló inmateriális tényezo ̋k lényege a természettudomány tükrében [The Power of Faith and the Soul and the Essence of Immaterial Powers Influencing Organism in Light of Natural Sciences]. Budapest: Self-Published. Brabant, Eva, Ernst Falzeder, and Patrizia Giampieri-Deutsch, eds. 1993. The Correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Sándor Ferenczi. Vol. 1, 1908–1914. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Csanády, István. 1860. Medicinische Philosophie und Mesmerismus. Leipzig: Franz Wagner. Décsi, Károly and Pál Ranschburg. 1900. Lelki gyógymódok (Psychoterapia). A magnetizmusról, annak az emberi szervezetre való hatásáról és leheto ̋ külso ̋ és belso ̋ gyógyalkalmazásáról [Psychotherapies: On Magnetism, Its Influence on the Human Organism, and Its Possible Inner and Outer Therapeutic Effects]. Budapest: Franklin.

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Eschenmayer, Karl August. 1816. Versuch die scheinbare Magie des thierischen Magnetismus aus physiologischen und psychischen Gesezen zu erklären. Stuttgart and Tübingen: Cotta’sche Buchhandlung. Fényes, László. 1912. Egy somnambul halálára [On the Occasion of the Death of a Somnambulist]. Égi Világosság 9 (September): 484–489. Gárdos, János. 1840. Dissertatio inauguralis medica de operationibus cataractae. Buda: Typis Joannis Gyurián et Martini Bagó. ———. 1854. A magnetizmus [Magnetism]. Müller Gyula Nagy Naptára 3: 161–167. ———. 1863. A szellemtanról vagyis az állati magnetizmusról [On the Doctrine of Spirit that is to Say Animal Magnetism]. In Magyar orvosok és természetvizsgálók munkálatai [The Works of Hungarian Doctors and Scientists], ed. Pál Bugát and Ferencz Flór, 120–123. Pest: self-published. Grünhut, Adolf. 1932. Tanulmányok a spiritizmus körébo ̋l.magnetizmus, szomnambulizmus, mediumizmus [Essays in the Field of Spiritualism: Magnetism, Somnambulism, Mediumism]. Budapest: Szellemi Búvárok Pesti Egylete and Uránia Ny. Hufeland, Christoph Wilhelm. 1799. Az ember élete’ meg-hosszabításának mestersége [The Art of Lengthening Human Life]. Pest: Patzko Ny. Kluge, Carl Alexander Ferdinand. 1811. Versuch einer Darstellung des animalischen Magnetismus als Heilmittel. Wien: Haas. Kölcsey, Ferenc. 1960 [1828]. Az állati magnetismus nyomairól a régiségben [Animal Magnetism in Ancient Times]. In Kölcsey Ferenc Összes Mu ̋vei [The Collected Works of Ferenc Kölcsey], ed. Józsefné Szauder and József Szauder, vol. 1, 1082–1096. Budapest: Szépirodalmi. Kováts, Mihály. 1818. Az állati mágnesesség méro ̋serpenyüje [The Measeure of Animal Magnetism]. Pest: Patzkó Ny. Lenhossék, Mihály. 1817. Az állati magnetizmus rövid rajzolatja [A Short Summary of Animal Magnetism]. Tudományos Gyu ̋jtemény [Scientific Miscellany] 1: 3–41. Mailáth, János. 1852. Der animalische Magnetismus als Heilkraft. Regensburg: Verlag von G. Joseph Manz. Oroszhegyi, Jósa. 1858. Az ód és életdelejség közéleti értéke: fölvilágosítás és utasítás minden értelmes embernek: mit kelljen e természethatányról hinni; miképen közéleti kényletekre és egészségi célokra fölhasználni [The Public Value of Od and Life-­Magnetism: Information and Manual to Every Intelligent Person: Facts and Medical Usage]. Pest: Müller. Puységur, Armand Marie Jacques. 1807. Du magnétisme animal.considéré dans ses rapports avec diverses branches de la physique générale. Paris: Chez Desenne. Reichenbach, Karl. 1922. Az od. Levelek az od-mágnességro ̋l [The Od: Letters on Od and Magnetism]. Budapest: Kultúra.

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Reiner, Bertalan. 1891. Magyar kultur-képek [Hungarian Cultural Scenes]. Budapest: Szépirodalmi Könyvtár. Schoepf, Auguszt. 1835. Orvosi rendszerek—gyógymódok—és némelly rokon tárgyakról [Medical Systems—Therapies—and on Some Related Subjects]. Pest: Eggenberger. Simonyi, Imre. 1846. A rokon és az ellenszenvro ̋l s ezeknek a betegségekre s orvoslásra leheto ̋ befolyásukról [On Sympathy and Antipathy and their Influence on Diseases and Medicine]. Pest: Beimel. Szapáry, Ferenc. 1840. Ein Wort über animalischen Magnetismus, Seelenkörper und Lebensessenz; nebst Beschreibung des ideo-somnambulen Zustandes des Fräulein Therese von B—y zu Vasarhely im Jahre 1838, und einem Anhang. Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus. ———. 1845a. Katechismus des Vital-Magnetismus zur leichteren Direction der Laien-Magnetiseurs.Zusammengetragen während seiner zehnjährigen magnetischen Laufbahn nach Aussagen von Somnambulen und vieler Autoren. Leipzig: Otto Wigand. ———. 1845b. Die magnetische Lehre der neuen Schule in Fragen und Antworten nach den Vorlesungen de Grafen F.  Szapáry von einem seiner Hörer. Regensburg: Manz. ———. 1850. Szapáry’s Magnetismus von anno 1850: I. Grundton. II. Aries. Graz: Jos. Kienreich. ———. 1854a. Magnétisme et magnétothérapie. Paris: Dentu. ———. 1854b. Das Tischrücken. Fortsetzung: Geistige Agapen. Psychographische Mitteilungen der Pariser Deutsch-Magnetischen Schule. Paris: Szapáry. ———. 1854c. Table-Moving: Somnabulisch-Magnetische Traumdeutung. Paris: Bonaventure and Ducessois. Tordai, Vilmos. 1914. Gyógyítás életdelejességgel [Healing with Animal Magnetism]. Budapest: Rényi K. Bizománya. Tóth, Béla. 1899. Magyar ritkaságok [Hungarian Curiosities]. Budapest: Athenaeum. Vay, Adelma. 1923 [1869]. Szellem, ero ̋, anyag [Spirit, Power, Matter]. Budapest: Szellemi Búvárok Pesti Egylete.

Secondary Sources Ádám, György. 2012. Az első lépések a hipnóziskutatás felé [First Steps Towards the Research of Hypnosis]. In Tudatállapotok, hipnózis, egymásra hangolódás, [States of Consciousness, Hypnosis, Mutuality] ed. Katalin Varga and Greguss Anna Gősiné, 277–280. Budapest: L’Harmattan. Baier, Karl. 2015. Mesmer versus Gaßner. Eine Kontroverse der 1770er Jahre und ihre Interpretationen. In Von der Dämonologie zum Unbewussten. Die

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Transformation der Anthropologie um 1800, ed. Maren Sziede and Helmut Zander, 47–83. Berlin: De Gruyter. ———. 2019. Von der Iatrophysik zur romantischen Psychologie des Unbewussten. Eine Einführung in den Mesmerismus. Entspannungsverfahren. Zeitschrift der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Entspannungsverfahren 36: 101–132. Brottman, Mikita. 2011. Phantoms of the Clinic: From Thought-transference to Projective Identification. London: Karnac Books. Crabtree, Adam. 1988. Animal Magnetism, Early Hypnosis and Psychical Research 1766–1925: An Annotated Bibliography. Millwood: Kraus International Publications. ———. 1993. From Mesmer to Freud: Magnetic Sleep and the Roots of Psychological Healing. New Haven: Yale University Press. ———. 2003. Automatism and the Emergence of Dynamic Psychiatry. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 39: 51–70. ———. 2012. Hypnosis Reconsidered, Resituated, and Redefined. Journal of Scientific Exploration 26 (2): 297–327. Ellenberger, Henri Frédéric. 1965. Mesmer and Puységur: From Magnetism to Hypnotism. Psychoanalytic Review 52B: 137–153. ———. 1970. The Discovery of the Unconscious: The History and the Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry. London: Penguin. Gauld, Alan. 1992. A History of Hypnotism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gyimesi, Júlia. 2016a. Why “Spiritism”? The International Journal of Psychoanalysis 97 (2): 357–383. ———. 2016b. The Institutionalization of Psychical Research and Parapsychology in Hungary in the 20th Century. In Okkultismus im Gehäuse. Institutionalisierungen der Parapsychologie im 20. Jahrhundert im internationalen Vergleich, ed. Anna Lux and Sylvia Paletschek, 201–224. Berlin: De Gruyter. Kolos, István. 1938. Gróf Mailáth János [Count János Mailáth]. Budapest: Dunántúl. Mészáros, István. 1978. Hipnózis [Hypnosis]. In Budapest: Medicina. Budapest: Franklin. Polányi, Michael. 1958. Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy. London: Routledge. Saussure, Raymond de. 1943. Transference and Animal Magnetism. Psychoanalytic Quarterly 12 (2): 194–201. Sulloway, Frank J. 1979. Freud, Biologist of the Mind: Beyond the Psychoanalytic Legend. London: Burnett Books. Széman, Richárd. 2015. Wunderlich Péterné [Mrs. Péter Wunderlich]. In Kisasszonyok, nagyasszonyok [Young Ladies, Great Ladies], ed. Lantos Antal and Richárd Széman, 202–214. Budapest: Corvin Műv. Ház.

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Szentgyörgyvölgyi, Gábor. 2011. “Delejezők” a l9. század második felében Magyarországon [“Magnetiseurs” in Hungary in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century]. Orvostörténeti Közlemények. Communicationes de historia artis medicinae 1–4: 185–190. Tarjányi, Eszter. 2002. A szellem örvényében [In the Wheel of the Spirit]. Budapest: Universitas. Völgyesi, Ferenc. 1933. Mesmer és a “gyógydelejezés” [Mesmer and Animal Magnetism]. Budapest: Novák. Wolffram, Heather. 2009. The Stepchildren of Science: Parapsychology and Psychical Research in Germany, c. 1870–1939. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi.

CHAPTER 5

From Fluidum to Prāṇa: Reading Mesmerism Through Orientalist Lenses Dominic S. Zoehrer

There in the Orient, where the light and the sun appear, we find in the promised lands the first humans in sacred harmony with nature, filled with the divine light of prophecy and poetry. In their early period of bloom, the Indians, Persians, Chinese, Egyptians, Israelites, and all the adjacent peoples indeed lived a magnetic life […] Ennemoser 1819a: 185; my translation They are using prana ignorantly and calling it “magnetism.” If they would combine rhythmic breathing with their “magnetic” treatment they would double their efficiency. Ramacharaka 1905a: 59

D. S. Zoehrer (*) University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 L. Pokorny, F. Winter (eds.), The Occult Nineteenth Century, Palgrave Studies in New Religions and Alternative Spiritualities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55318-0_5

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Introduction: The “Pranic” Branch in the Reception History of Mesmerism The deep influences of the Austrian physician Franz Anton Mesmer (1734–1815) on the modern history of religion, psychology, and alternative forms of healing can hardly be overstated.1 Animal magnetism, Mesmer’s theory and practice of healing introduced in the 1770s, asserted the existence of an invisible, etheric matter, or magnetic fluidum, perfusing the cosmos and all living beings. Illnesses, according to Mesmer’s model, were the result of disturbances or obstructions of this universal life force. Asserting that this fluid could be sensed and directed by a skilled “magnetiser” for healing purposes, he claimed to be endowed with a surplus thereof. Mesmer was convinced that transferring it to a patient would hasten the necessary crisis that leads to the cure and the re-establishment of the fluid’s harmonious flow through the body. With the eventual repudiation of Mesmer’s theory through the French Royal Commission of 1784, the mesmerists and their extravagant healing séances soon became the epitome of “otherness” in the view of established physicians (Lanska and Lanska 2007: 308).2 While his explanation of animal magnetism was dismissed by means of a strict reductionist methodology, the remarkable effects his treatments produced in “magnetised” subjects provided grounds for continued speculation. Although Mesmer’s own organisation was short-lived, his theories were rejected, and his practices were substantially modified by his students, his legacy would inspire several new branches and develop a rich reception history. A variation of the mesmeric treatment devised by the Marquis de Puységur (1751–1825) experienced a particularly illustrious career. Bypassing the cathartic but often violent healing crisis advocated by Mesmer, Puységur found that he could induce in his patients a condition of sleep-like trance: a somnambulisme provoqué (artificial somnambulism) (Puységur 1811). This phenomenon, which seemed to allow access to the unconscious and its hidden “paranormal” powers, decisively impacted the rise of several 1  Alternative healing practices here refer to methods whose underlying anthropology and explanatory models lie outside the conventional biomedical framework. 2  King Louis XVI (1754–1793) had charged the Académie des Sciences and the Faculté de Médecine with the establishment of a scientific commission to investigate Mesmer’s claims. The Commissioners demonstrated that the force of suggestion itself was sufficient to generate the effects and thus concluded that the mesmeric states were caused by the patient’s imagination and collective expectation (Lanska and Lanska 2007: 308).

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nineteenth-century esoteric movements including spiritualism and psychical research, early psychology and psychiatry, as well as the New Thought movement (Hanegraaff 2013: 37–39).3 Furthermore, as Karl Baier has shown through two acclaimed comprehensive historical studies, even the early modern yoga and meditation movements were intertwined closely with mesmeric ideas (Baier 1998, 2009). A likely reason for such an embrace of mesmerism by a wide range of individuals and movements was the simplicity of the idea of a universal fluid that was open to various purposes and implications. It provided a rationale for the inherent connection between the micro- and the macrocosm, promising the ultimate key to health and harmony. Notwithstanding the scepticism of the medical and scientific establishment, the polyvalent character of the fluidum allowed it to function as a grand unifier of opposites and mediator between the material and spiritual levels of reality, science and religion, the cosmos and the divine (Hanegraaff 1998: 434–435). The field of energy healing is another current of practices (though widely overlooked) that received crucial input from the discourses surrounding mesmerism (Baier 2013: 439). Energy healing has evolved to become a key protagonist among the various popular trends in today’s holistic milieu, the now matured “New Age religion.” Forms of energy healing encompass a highly heterogeneous array of approaches that claim to alter and reinvigorate disturbed states of a subtle, vital agency postulated to surround and penetrate biological organisms (cf. Albanese 1999: 314). The objective of restoring the balance of mind, soul, and body—in short, “well-being”—is attained through applying techniques that enable the undisrupted “flow” of the energy that mediates between the layers constituting the whole person. Ritual elements of classical mesmerism have survived in several energetic practices, such as the characteristic “passes” over the patient’s body or certain measures of energetic hygiene. Most contemporary practitioners do not aim to effect a mesmeric crisis or to induce altered states of consciousness. However, an essential aspect of Mesmer’s healing conception, namely the notion of a vital force with its ambivalent function as both a subtle substance and a mental or spiritual 3  The New Thought movement, also known as Mind Cure, refers to a form of self-help psychology that became popular during the 1870s and formed a significant segment of the American cultic milieu by the end of the century. Following a novel interpretation of mesmerism put forward by Phineas Parkhurst Quimby (1802–1866), the adherents of New Thought upheld the idea that external reality, including illness and health, is primarily determined by one’s inner beliefs and expectations (Hanegraaff 1998: 484–487).

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agent sensitive to intention, has been retained in the majority of approaches that claim to heal through energy. Ever since the parting of natural science from Naturphilosophie in the course of the Enlightenment, complementary and alternative healing approaches with their allusions to unknown powers became disassociated from allopathic, evidence-based medicine. In defence of their legitimacy, these practices had to adjust their explanatory frameworks repeatedly. References to functional equivalents of a universal agent imparting health and harmony that substituted the magnetic fluidum became a hallmark of energy healing, while Asian traditional philosophies increasingly replaced the European pre-Enlightenment and Romantic science as a useful source of authority. However, as the “distorted cultural echoes” of Mesmer’s healing practice (Lanska and Lanska 2007: 317) are still perceptible in the field of contemporary therapies, they merit a deeper understanding by examining the nexus of intercultural transfer dynamics. Among the muttering noise caused by the profuse spectrum of energy healing approaches today, one concrete tune is composed by practices that explicitly refer to the Sanskrit term prāṇa. These practices are rooted in a process of combining mesmeric elements with notions of the Indian traditions, a process that chiefly occurred within both the Western and Eastern cultic milieus of the nineteenth century. The objective of this chapter is to highlight some of the key figures that were involved in generating this particular branch of the reception history of mesmerism.

Anquetil-Duperron’s Mesmeric View of Prāṇa and Its Ensuing Reception Among German Mesmerists The flow of ideas and practices between cultures do not progress in simple one-way translations or in a linear fashion. Instead, they occur through reinterpretations and transformations by means of selective readings, adaptations, and innovative additions in new social contexts. Transcultural exegeses may be marked by pre-existing welcome structures, although the concrete needs of the receiving culture will differ. This has also been the case with European readings of prāṇa, which has been associated with prevalent vitalistic ideas including Mesmer’s animal magnetism and similar concepts. In its original Sanskrit context, prāṇa denotes “breath” sensu stricto, and “life principle” or “vital force” sensu lato. The notion of prāṇa first entered the Hindu textual corpus through the Chāndogya

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Upaniṣad (eighth to sixth century BCE) and the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad (c. 700  BCE) (Leland 2016: 25),4 and it was not until the nineteenth century that prāṇa entered the European mindscape. As Franz Winter has shown, the earliest association of Mesmer’s fluidum with prāṇa was most likely put forth by the French orientalist Abraham Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron (1731–1805) in his best-known work, the Oupnek’hat (1801/1802). The book consists of a rather liberal Latin translation of 50 Upanishads gathered from Persian manuscripts as well as the translator’s extensive introductory remarks (Winter 2005: 90–91). Anquetil-Duperron’s introduction embedded the Upanishads within a form of philosophia perennis—the traditional conception of the existence of a universal wisdom that could be distilled from all major religious and philosophical teachings (Winter 2005: 100). He referred to his reconstruction of an Indian ur-philosophy as the summa orientalis systematis, which supposedly contained the foundation for all other “oriental” religious doctrines. However, what the French orientalist claimed to have uncovered as the quintessence of Indian philosophy and religion actually reflected more recent developments in the modern European history of ideas. In his attempt to develop a systematic summary of the Upanishads, Anquetil-Duperron considered the various influences (influxus) of the celestial bodies on the earthly bodies—living beings and inanimate objects—to be one of the fundamental principles of the perennial wisdom on which Indian theology was supposedly based (ibid.: 79–89). The reference points in his argument for a cosmic mediating force were the works of the German physician and physicist Rudolph Goclenius (the Younger; 1572–1621) as well as Mesmer, who in fact drew from earlier notions of magnetism in relation to healing practices including those espoused by Goclenius (Hanegraaff 1998: 433). Anquetil-Duperron claimed that the carrier substance of this spiritual or subtle force-principle was identical with the Upanishads’ concept of Pran—rendered in the Oupnek’hat as respiratio (breathing), halitus (breath), and anima (air, breeze, breath, soul, or vital force). Divided manifoldly into Pranha, the Pran is the operative agency that animates the living beings of any kind (Winter 2005: 92). A noticeable feature in Anquetil-Duperron’s discussion of Pran 4  In a later scripture, the Praśna Upaniṣad (c. fourth century BCE), prāṇa and rayi (matter) represent the two fundamental principles of creation, while prāṇa is ascribed a superior position among the elements and praised as the supreme agency that maintains the life of all creatures (cf. verses 1.4 and 2.1–6 in Müller 1884: 272).

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concerns the ambiguous and arcane nature he ascribed to it. Because Pran functions as the bond between the essentially differing soul and the body it can neither be purely material nor spiritual (ibid.). Therefore, its “cause and mode of action remains shrouded in darkness” (Anquetil-­Duperron 1801/1802, vol. 1: XCVIII).5 The attractiveness of the notion of prāṇa among the mesmerists and within the emerging occultist movement was not least due to this intermediating function as a tertium datur between the immaterial and material realms. Karl Joseph Hieronymus Windischmann (1775–1839), a German professor of philosophy and medicine at the University of Bonn, continued the identification of prāṇa with the mesmeric fluidum introduced by Anquetil-Duperron without referring to him as the originator of the idea. He further expanded the incorporation of Indian concepts into a mesmeric framework by building on the reception of India that had gained currency among German mesmerists who interpreted Indian forms of meditation as a “magnetic” phenomenon, including Joseph Ennemoser (1787–1854), Johann Karl Passavant (1790–1857), and Dietrich Georg von Kieser (1779–1862) (Baier 2009: 209–224). In his uncompleted oeuvre Die Philosophie im Fortgang der Weltgeschichte (Philosophy in the Course of World History; 1827–1834), which represents a first comprehensive exposition of East and South Asian thought in the German language, Windischmann elaborated on “the magnetic life of the soul” as the characteristic feature of the Indian mindset (ibid.: 222). Although his work has faded into obscurity today, it had considerable impact on other mesmerists through whom it influenced the reception of Indian spiritual practices by modern occultists (ibid.: 222–224). Windischmann recognised the “magical state of the soul” achieved through Upanishadic meditation practices, that is, yoga, as a self-induced somnambulistic condition (Windischmann 1832: 1315). In his reading, a fundamental element of these practices is the concentration and introversion of “Prana” the “animating breath of Brahma,” which he identified with the traditional European medical idea of the spiritus vitae operating in living beings (ibid.: 1331). This Prana qua vital spirit does not only signify a subtle element but involves a dynamic, physiological aspect as

5

 Cited in Winter 2013: 271.

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well, namely the “pulsating and propulsive” artery movements representing the principle of life itself (ibid.).6 Based on the Chāndogya Upaniṣad and later Upanishads, Windischmann reconstructed yogic meditation forms that involve the ascent of Prana as the carrier of the soul—or “Dschivas” (jıv̄a)—in the context of a subtle physiology. He suggested that Prana ought to be inhaled and exhaled for the purpose of its centring and unification (“Joga”) in the heart, thus preparing the adept for the knowledge of one’s essential self (Windischmann 1832: 1346–1348). However, apart from this basic affirmation of conscious breathing, he apparently showed no further interest in concrete exercises that focused on the control of Prana, and neither did the mesmerists of his time (Baier 2009: 242). Focusing the vital force in the heart leads to the withdrawal of the senses, which corresponds to the first stage of the Upanishadic meditation comparable to a “magnetic sleep” (Windischmann 1832: 1347–1349). The next stage is described by Windischmann as the ascent of the soul that is carried by “Udana”—the upwards moving manifestation of Prana—from the heart to the forehead, to the crown, and ultimately to its highest destination: perfect liberation by means of the ecstatic union with “Brahma”, the ultimate reality and absolute, all-inclusive ground of the universe (brahman) (ibid.: 1351, 1359, 1363).7 While the main focus of his interpretation of the Upanishads was the adept’s progressive journey to salvation, the narrower context of healing and the role of Prana therein was of secondary importance. However, in the course of describing the phases that precede the ascent of the soul, he mentioned that a healing process may occur through somnambulic experiences—implying the concentration of Prana in the heart, accompanied by the shutting down of senses—when a suffering person immerses in the 6  Windischmann lists several other synonyms for the vital spirit that were in vogue at his time and reflect the term’s broad semantic range that encapsulates matter, force, life, and spirit; for example, pneuma, “life force,” “life spirit,” “life ether,” “nerve spirit,” as well as animal or magnetic fluidum (Windischmann 1832: 1347–1348, note *). 7  On its path towards the brain, the “etheric current” of Udana moves with the soul through the “Suschumua” [sic], the “vein of sweet sleep” (Windischmann 1832: 1351; see also n. 20 in this chapter). In the light of mesmerism, Windischmann described the soul’s substrate in the form of a subtle fluid that moves along bodily centres corresponding to stages of spiritual progress. His interpretation and his focus on the bodily and therapeutic aspect of meditation would prefigure the reception of kuṇḍalinı̄-yoga and the cakras by the late nineteenth-century occultists and second-generation theosophists.

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“inner source of life” and returns invigorated to the presence of daylight. Then, “his body is refreshed, his soul calmed and more capable for the practical life” (Windischmann 1832: 1052). According to Windischmann’s healing concept, recovery does not necessarily depend on the treatment of a magnetiser; it occurs in the individual himself if he is able to attain a deep restorative, somnambulist sleep (Baier 2009: 224–228). The mesmeric interpretation of Indian philosophy developed by Windischmann was popularised through more simplified and readable presentations by other German mesmerists, in particular Ennemoser. His Geschichte der Magie (1819b; second edition 1844), a history of magic, contains a summary of the reception of Indian thought in German mesmerism. Its English translation by Mary Howitt (1799–1888) was published in 1854 and constituted a significant source for the Theosophical musings on magic, animal magnetism, and Indian thought that would unfold two decades later (Baier 2009: 243–244).

Blavatsky’s Orientalism and “The Power to Heal” The Russian author Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831–1891), the co-­ founder of the Theosophical Society, is credited with weaving together several doctrinal elements into an occultist synthesis which formed the roots of modern Theosophy. These included teachings from spiritualism, traditional esotericism, magic and the occult sciences, mesmerism, Romantic Naturphilosophie, as well as the emerging knowledge about Indian religions (Hanegraaff 1998: 448). Blavatsky’s outspoken rejection of the “dogmatism” and “exclusivism” of traditional Christianity—articulated trenchantly in Isis Unveiled (1877)—was a significant driving force behind the vision of Indian superiority and the assimilation of oriental religious elements in the Western occultist framework. While ancient Egypt served as the ultimate source of Blavatsky’s original version of a “primordial wisdom” during her early Hermeticist period, the projected root of that perennial philosophy moved increasingly eastward in the late 1870s, namely to India. However, the oriental turn of the Theosophical Society was only fully realised when Blavatsky and her fellow-Theosophist Henry Steel Olcott (1832–1907) moved to South Asia in 1879 to get involved with Ceylonese Buddhism and subsequently neo-Hindu movements (Hanegraaff 1998: 449–453). For many Westerners, Theosophical literature opened the gate to Eastern religious thought, although Blavatsky’s teachings of this period remained “to a large extent a Western [occultist] interpretation of Hinduism and

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Buddhism” and were “heavily coloured by the prevailing Orientalist discourse at the time” (Bogdan 2006: 237). Blavatsky’s views of India were deeply intertwined with her quest for the occulta philosophia, that is, the Hermeticists’ synthesis of religion and magic, as well as her scientistic legitimisation of occult practice as a form of magia naturalis (Hanegraaff 1998: 449–450). The latter aim is reflected in Blavatsky’s attempt to reinterpret spiritualism within an occultist context, in which magic functions as a form of natural science despite the repudiation of the existence of hidden forces in nature by established science. Oscillating between the literal and the metaphorical, Blavatsky borrowed terminology from classical physics to make a case for the mesmeric fluid as the key to the study of natural magic: being filled by the “the radiant light of the universal magnetic ocean,” equivalent to “the divine breath,” the cosmos allows for the possibility of magic (Blavatsky 1877: 282). The exploration of this cosmic agent would “unlock the secrets of psychology and physiology” and ultimately explain all physical and spiritual phenomena (ibid.). Blavatsky thus directly drew on the physicalist claims of the early mesmerists, and suggested that there ought to be sound scientific evidence for the workings of magic. At the same time, the religiously connoted reference to the “divine breath” in this context already foreshadowed her explicit identification of the luminous magnetic fluid with prāṇa six years later. In contrast to the New Thought movement, a major branch in the reception history of mesmerism, healing practice never played a central role in the early phase of the Theosophical Society (Baier 2009: 434). The only exception was the temporary but spectacular engagement of Olcott as a mesmerist healer in Ceylon in 1882. An article authored by Blavatsky and published in the April 1883 issue of The Theosophist entitled “The Power to Heal” contains a passionate testimony of “mesmeric methods,” including the account of more than 50 (!) paralytics supposedly healed by Olcott. After reproducing several anecdotes of miracle healings and exorcisms, Blavatsky suggested that there existed “unanswerable proof that the mesmeric fluid has manifested itself similarly in all ages,” referring to its alternative names such as “pran [sic], od, aura, electro-magnetism, or whatever else you prefer to call it” (Blavatsky 1991 [1883]: 382–383). She explained that the power to heal essentially depended on the healer’s power of will, self-confidence, knowledge, and compassion to project the vital agent into the patient’s nervous system and thus restore health, that is, fluidal equilibrium. Correspondingly, faith and “polaric receptivity” are

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required on the side of the patient for recovery to occur. Optimistic trust is indeed so crucial that supreme and unshakable faith alone could bring about the healing process (ibid.: 383–385). Blavatsky thus temporarily transcends the pure physicalism of animal magnetism by implicitly building a bridge to the idealistic “mind cure” approach of the New Thought authors. In The Secret Doctrine (1888), her notion of prāṇa would reenter a scientistic discourse. In passing, she interpreted “prana” as the “fiery lives” that provide microbes with “vital constructive energy” and thereby support the process of building up the human body (Blavatsky 2011 [1888]: 263). Blavatsky never pursued the matter of healing much further than she did in her account of Olcott’s grand mesmeric experiment. However, her eclectic and imaginative style generated a broad reservoir of ideas that became a departure point for more comprehensive interpretations of mesmerist practices through orientalist lenses. At least two elements of her teachings had a lasting impact on twentieth-century concepts of the subtle body and related healing techniques. First, her discussion of the human aura entrenched the idea of subtle sheaths surrounding the body and perceptible to clairvoyants and adepts in occultic movements as well as the wider cultic milieu (Leland 2016: 114–115). In her Esoteric Instruction No. 3 (1897), she drew a correlation between the colour shades of an individual’s aura and his or her mental state: corresponding to the various emotions, the “circulating vitality of Prâna” produces vibrations throughout the nervous system. This process again causes “undulations in the psychic Aura of the person which results in chromatic effects” (Blavatsky 1980 [1897]: 621). In several forms of the energetic healing practice, the shape, colour, and intensity of the human aura will serve as an indicator for a client’s corresponding health condition. Second, her tantra-inspired claims regarding the existence of seven “centres of force” directly influenced the cakra systems devised by second-generation Theosophists including Annie Besant (1847–1933), Charles Webster Leadbeater (1854–1934), and Alice Ann Bailey (1880–1949) (Leland 2016: 98–99). Moreover, as will be elucidated below, Blavatsky spurred a discourse on subtle anatomy that was further popularised by leading representatives of occultism, neo-­Hinduism, and New Thought.

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Reuß’s First Announcement of Pranatherapie As the end of the nineteenth century was approaching, the “pranaisation” of mesmerist techniques was “in the air.” Stimulated by Theosophical musings, the creation of great syntheses of Eastern and Western wisdom traditions was gaining momentum in the alternative religious milieu. In the German-speaking world, Theodor Reuß (1855–1923) was probably the first author to claim a mesmerism-based healing technique constructed around the notion of prāṇa. The journalist, Theosophist, Freemason, and neo-gnostic Reuß was an active, albeit not uncontroversial figure in European occult and fringe-Masonic circles. In July 1894 he contributed an article entitled “Pranatherapie” to the journal Sphinx (1886–1896).8 Under the pseudonym Theodor Regens, Reuß embedded his essay on prāṇa-based therapies in the context of mesmeric treatments and their offshoots. Prompted by a public discussion of “white magic” by the German philosopher and occult author Carl du Prel (1839–1899),9 Reuß presented a systematic overview of particular healing arts including du Prel’s “sympathetic cure”: The treatment of illnesses of the human body by means of the exteriorised Od10 is a subcategory of the generic prana therapy. Prana therapy is the teaching of the healing art of the vital spirit, prāna, Od, life force, astral fluidum, also known as organic magnetism or nerve electricity. (Regens 1894: 14–15; my translation; emphasis in the original)

In the syncretistic style characteristic of nineteenth-century occultists, which would be adopted by twentieth-century New Age authors, Reuß presented a list of supposedly identical notions that indicated the presumed existence of a universal, invisible force or energy unknown to conventional science or orthodox theology. Thus, he adopted the earlier mesmerist and Theosophical interpretations of prāṇa and claimed it to be 8  The Sphinx, launched and edited by the German Theosophist Wilhelm Hübbe-Schleiden (1846–1916), initially promoted monism and experiment-based occultism but eventually served as a Theosophical publication organ from the early 1890s onwards (Frick 1978: 296). 9  Du Prel’s article “Die sympathetische Kurmethode” (1894) appeared in Die Zukunft (The Future), a Vienna-based weekly magazine that was published with interruptions from 1879 to 1896 and promoted revolutionary social-democratic and anarchistic ideas. 10  Derived from the Norse god Odin, the term “Od” was coined by the German chemist Karl von Reichenbach (1788–1869) and describes a vitalist force that was believed to permeate and animate all biological organisms.

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a synonym for the magnetic fluid or the ancient notion of the spiritus vitae, while raising its status as an overarching category. He described “prana” as a healing agent that underlies four particular methods of treatment: First, the remedy of prana is mediated through a physical ointment in the case of the somewhat obscure “mummial” or “balsamic” treatment. Second, the transfer of salutary prana may occur by means of a “spiritual mummy” in the case of a “sympathetic cure” as applied by du Prel. Third, the direct transmission of prana from the healer to the patient is classified as mesmerism or “magnetic cure.” Lastly, healing may be imparted through the so-called “magnetic sleep” in the process of a hypnotic cure. The essential difference between these healing techniques, Reuß explained, only lie in the modality of how the body of the ill person is supplied with replenishing prana (Regens 1894: 15). As Henrik Bogdan observed, Reuß’s positive orientalism can easily be explained by his earlier involvement with Theosophy (Bogdan 2006: 237). Whether prana ultimately refers to a spiritual agency, a quasi-physical but subtle substance, an elusive energetic potential, or the psychological use of the force of suggestion remains ambiguous.11 Furthermore, the development of a complete healing system was not Reuß’s concern, and it was only two decades later that he would mention Pranatherapie again, albeit at the backdrop of a somewhat shifted context as will be further discussed below.

Vivekananda’s Prāṇa-Based Model of Alternative Healing Methods Vivekananda (1863–1902), born as Narendranath Datta, is known today as “the pioneer of the neo-Hindu mission in the West” (Baier 2009: 467). Having formed a synthesis of elements from his native Neo-Vedāntic esotericism on the one hand, and concepts of Western occultism, mesmerism, and New Thought on the other, his teachings were tailored to the interests and ideological horizon of the American cultic milieu of the late nineteenth century (ibid.: 468–472). Vivekananda’s achievements in popularising early modern yoga typically take precedence in historical accounts. However, he also played a crucial role in reinforcing the orientalisation of mesmerism by introducing a semi-scientistic, semi-­traditionalist 11  Reuß concluded his article with an admonition that any abusive application of prana would amount to “black magic.” Only theurgists who recognise that the source of all vital force is divine may use it for the benefit of their fellow men (Regens 1894: 16).

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interpretation of prāṇa from the position of an “esotericised” Hindu spiritual authority. During Vivekananda’s first voyage to America and Europe between 1893 and 1897, the voluble and charismatic teacher from the East attracted an audience that moved within the orbit of the bustling cultic milieu in fin de siècle America. This diverse field stretched from liberal Christians, members of the New Thought movement, and Theosophists to spiritists, astrologists, and palmists. Due to his acquaintance with the milieu’s central themes and endowed with the aura of a swami from the land considered to be the oldest and purest cradle of mysticism and occult knowledge, Vivekananda’s message easily found resonance. While he had the chance to enjoy English-style schooling as an offspring of the Western-oriented middle-class of Calcutta, Vivekananda also became familiar with the urban alternative religious milieu of the city, which had avidly absorbed Western influences through the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772), mesmerism, and American transcendentalism (Baier 2009: 468).12 However, secular philosophical ideas would continue to influence his later thought and writings, thus facilitating his reinvention of yoga in a fashion that would appeal to a broader Western audience (de Michelis 2004: 93–96). Despite the apparent common ground between Vivekananda and the American scene, he made no pretence in his personal correspondences regarding the superiority of his neo-Hindu spirituality vis-à-vis Western esoteric groups. In particular, he scorned the crude orientalism of the Theosophical Society, which he considered simply an “Indian grafting of American Spiritualism—with only a few Sanskrit words taking the place of spiritualistic jargon” (Vivekananda 1958: 318). Outdoing what he 12  Emic literature produced after the swami’s death tended to exaggerate the influence of the Bengali mystic Ramakrishna (1836–1886) whom Vivekananda adopted as his guru during a brief period between 1884 and 1886. For example, while the Bengali text Sri Sri Rāmakṛsn ̣ ̣a Kathāmrta (1907; The Nectar of Sri Ramakrishna’s Words) written by Mahendranath Gupta (1854–1932) contains no account of an explicit spiritual transmission to Vivekananda, the liberal English translation thereof penned by Swami Nikhilananda (1895–1973)—The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (1984 [1942])—provides a polished narrative of Ramakrishna appointing Vivekananda as his spiritual heir. However, a more careful historical analysis of the available evidence underlines the more significant role of his former master Keshab Chandra Sen (1838–1884) in the moulding of Vivekananda’s neo-Vedāntic outlook, and in introducing him to Western esoteric and occult culture. Whereas Ramakrishna’s Hinduism was relatively free of Western influences, Sen’s teachings had adopted Christian, Enlightenment, Romantic, and spiritualist elements (de Michelis 2004: 49–50, 70, 100–108).

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considered to be amateurish Theosophical attempts, Vivekananda presented the West with another version of ancient Indian knowledge through the lenses of secularised neo-Hindu thought. As will be demonstrated his prāṇa model13 was greatly influenced by mesmeric concepts that were readily available in America’s vibrant cultic milieu. In his approach towards the West he assimilated the already anonymised mesmeric fluid, at that time more commonly known as “life force,” by defining and popularising a Sanskrit equivalent of it. The notion of prāṇa formed the central nexus of his cosmology and anthropology, and represented the extrapolation of the vital function of breath to the level of an omnipresent, universal energy. Although conjectures that drew parallels between prāṇa and the mesmeric fluidum had already been circulating as shown above, Vivekananda is counted among the first to explicitly assimilate prāṇa as a central category into a cosmology entrenched in mesmeric ideas (cf. de Michelis 2004: 162; Baier 2009: 479). His explorations of prāṇa added potent conceptual and practical elements to the reservoir of the cultic milieu, from alternative healing techniques to modern yoga. In his seminal text Râja Yoga (1896),14 Vivekananda presented his own interpretation of yoga together with a rather liberal, annotated translation of Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtras. His reading of Patañjali singled out the practice-­ oriented parts of the Yoga Sūtras, that is, aṣt ̣āṅga yoga (the “yoga of the eight limbs”),15 and selected the fourth limb of yoga—prāṇāyāma, the conscious inhibition or control of prāṇa—as the foundational theme of his yoga conception. The discursive strategy employed in Râja Yoga was to start from largely “disenchanted” premises, that is, by casting a rationalised yogic cosmology that contains ample scientistic elements. On the basis of a quasi-materialistic Naturphilosophie, Vivekananda designed a 13  As Elizabeth de Michelis (2004: 151–153) has observed, Vivekananda’s synthesis does not result in a rigorous, coherent worldview, but instead strings together three distinguishable approaches, namely the Prāṇa Model, the Samādhi Model, and the neo-Advaitic “mode of thought.” 14  De Michelis (2004: 3) appraises the book as “seminal” since not only does it translate classical Hindu approaches to yoga history, concepts, and practices for Western audiences but actively reshapes them on secular terms. Drawing from earlier classifications, Vivekananda discerned between the four traditional yogas of karma (deeds), bhakti (loving devotion), rāja (king, i.e., royal), and jñāna (knowledge), and defined rājayoga as the superior path to realise divine truth (Baier 2009: 471–472). 15  The eight limbs encompass yama (restraints); niyama (observances); āsana (postures); prāṇāyāma (regulation of breath); pratyāhāra (withdrawal of the senses); dhāraṇa (concentration); dhyāna (meditation); and samādhi (immersion) (de Michelis 2004: 15 note 3).

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theory and practice of yoga that was highly congenial to mesmeric, Harmonial, and psychological ideas prevalent in the Western cultic milieu. An analysis of Vivekananda’s Prana theory outlined in Râja Yoga demonstrates how he assimilated three defining principles of classical mesmerism within his own hermeneutic framework: first, Prana functions as a subtle, vitalistic element that fills and permeates the cosmos; second, the unequal distribution of Prana in the human body accounts for illness; third, the application of certain techniques, referred to as Pranayama, enables the storing and transmission of Prana for healing purposes (de Michelis 2004: 159–168). The initial appeal of mesmeric notions consisted in their claims to offer a comprehensive explanation for alternative healing practices. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the idea of an energetic agent had expanded to involve not only explanations for spontaneous healing experiences, but also paranormal abilities and meditation practice. The notion of a cosmic energy underlying these phenomena was “common property” in the Western cultic milieu (Baier 2009: 480). Therefore, Vivekananda could easily penetrate the mindscape of the American alternative religious scene and propose “Prana” as the shared root principle and universal force at the base of its various practices: We see sects in every country who have attempted this control of Prana. In this country [USA] there are Mind-healers, Faith-healers, Spiritualists, Christian Scientists, Hypnotists, etc., and if we examine these different bodies, we shall find at the back of each this control of the Prana, whether they know it or not. If you boil all their theories down, the residuum will be that. It is the one and the same force they are manipulating, only unknowingly. They have stumbled on the discovery of a force and are using it unconsciously without knowing its nature, but it is the same as the Yogi uses, and which comes from Prana. (Vivekananda 1907 [1896]: 149–150)

Obviously, Vivekananda recognised a partial truth in the practices of the cultic milieu of his time while arguing for a grand “unified theory of alternative healing”16 based on his concept of Prana as a functional equivalent to the omnipresent “vital force” that had superseded Mesmer’s fluidum. Unintentionally, this passage reveals more about our author’s own affinity with esoteric healing concepts and his attempt to recast them in an  This wording was suggested by Karl Baier (personal exchange).

16

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orientalist light than it offers a sound theoretical model encompassing these practices. As Karl Baier (2009: 480) observed, Vivekananda de facto ­introduced a Sanskrit term to simply replace an already well-established Western notion, thus repeating exactly the kind of orientalism that he accused the Western Theosophists of. Vivekananda loosely followed the traditional cosmology of Sāṃkhya-­ Yoga while mainly constructing his own mesmeric/occultist adoption of prāṇa that is cast within the terms of modern physical sciences. He thus introduced the dyadic couple of Prana and Akasha as the fundamental principles of an active, omnipresent “energy”17 and a passive, primordial “matter” that give structure to the universe (de Michelis 2004: 154–156). The semantic fuzziness attached to these two notions allows for the interpretational flexibility typical for occultist ether theories. On the one hand, Vivekananda described the functional pair of Prana-Akasha as a subtle but quasi-physical substance that fills the universe like an “infinite ocean” (Vivekananda 1907: 149), which is highly reminiscent of Mesmer’s cosmic fluid. He suggested that this cosmic substratum offered the explanatory framework for spiritist perceptions, occult clairvoyance, and healing at distance (ibid.: 154). The apparent motive for choosing Sanskrit terminology to denote his naturphilosophical key concept was to match ancient Indian knowledge, that is, Sāṃkhya thought, with the worldview of contemporary physics and its associated notions of mechanistic instrumental causality and primal matter (de Michelis 2004: 125, 157). On the other hand, the terminological fluidity of both notions becomes apparent when Vivekananda outlines the implications of his cosmology for spiritual practice. He ascribed far greater importance to Prana than Akasha, and moved on to expand his (only superficially) materialistic concept to include decidedly vitalistic and occult nuances (Vivekananda 1907: 147–150). To fulfil its role as a universal mediating agent, Prana is characterised by an inner polarity that encompasses both material (“gross”) and mental (“subtle”) energies, thus blending the cosmological into the anthropological levels. Having this two-fold psycho-physical property allows Prana to essentially perform the same function as the mesmeric fluidum, while implicitly suspending the role of Akasha. Understanding 17  By the end of the nineteenth century, physicists had developed a notion of energy that served as a unifying concept for several theories including Newtonian mechanics and gravitation, thermodynamics, and electromagnetism. Thus, identifying prāṇa with physical energy would bestow the Sanskrit term with the quality of a unifying idea based on sound science.

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the workings of Prana is the key to the hidden powers. In this vein, Vivekananda offered his readers the prospect that whoever “has discovered and learnt how to manipulate the internal forces [i.e., via Raja Yoga] will get the whole of nature under his control” (ibid.: 132). By asserting the conscious transmission of a vital force, several passages in Râja Yoga seamlessly tie into mesmeric interpretations of exerting influence over others, that is, for the purpose of healing or charismatic persuasion (cf. ibid.: 154–155; 172–173). It becomes clear that, some dispersed scientistic and causal-mechanistic allusions notwithstanding, the swami ultimately endorsed his own occultist Naturphilosophie that is not rooted in the principle of causality but in correspondence between microcosm and macrocosm. Corresponding to his identification of the fluidic healing agent with Prana, he defined disease as a disturbance in the “balance of Prana” (Vivekananda 1907: 155). He stressed that it is not faith that leads to healing, but the transmission of Prana by a “pure man, who has controlled the Prana” and is able to convey his own increased pranic vibration to the patient (ibid.). The material feature of the mesmeric fluid, and the necessity of its equal distribution to overcome illness, are still recognisable in Vivekananda’s description of the act of healing, which aims to “take away the superfluous Prana, or to supply the Prana that is wanting” (ibid.: 156). Vivekananda’s suggested technique for acquiring and cultivating the healing agent clearly diverges from mesmeric healing practices. Pranayama, which is the core objective of Raja Yoga, involves the command over one’s own Prana and subsequently the ability to influence others by means of magical correspondence between the life energies that pervade the individual and the universe at large. Vivekananda imagined Prana as an essentially magic substratum that is mastered by the advanced yogi through Pranayama. Akin to a form of magia naturalis, he postulated that control of one’s own bodily Prana would enable control over all other bodies composed of Prana, thus enacting the exchange between microcosm and macrocosm (Vivekananda 1907: 146–149). Rhythmic breathing and the practice of meditation will intensify the process of accumulating and concentrating Prana, which in turn leads to the ability to heal others (ibid.: 153–155), accelerates the spiritual evolution of the yogi (ibid.: 156), and allows the practitioner to control successively subtler levels of Prana. Despite the occult abilities that may be acquired through Pranayama, the final aim of the practice is neither healing nor magic; it is “Samadhi,” the immersion into the highest state of pranic vibration and the ultimate

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knowledge of reality (Vivekananda 1907: 159). This is the point where the more mundane, secular motives merge with the soteriological, spiritual objectives in Vivekananda’s teachings. He makes the psychic, viz. occult and mystical, orientation the hallmark of his approach while contrasting it with Delsartism, a method of breathing and bodily expression introduced by François Delsarte (1811–1871),18 which Vivekananda negligently regarded as a purely physical practice (ibid.: 138). However, by the time Vivekananda entered the stage, American Delsartism, popularised by Genevieve Stebbins (1857–1934),19 had already decisively influenced the emerging body culture in both the New Thought movement and occultist groups, prefiguring modern yoga (Baier 2009: 454–467, 458). In Dynamic Breathing and Harmonic Gymnastics (1892), Stebbins had connected breathing exercises with the idea of a universal life force and the control thereof in a grand holistic vision with deep religious implications. She thus co-shaped the “welcome structures” of America’s end-­ of-­ the-century New Thought circles and aspiring body cultures that already involved breathing techniques, body postures, and elaborate methods of meditation, enabling Vivekananda’s interpretation of yoga to fall on fertile ground. As far as the swami’s concept of healing is concerned, it remains eclectic and sketchy without resulting in a coherent system. However, his recombination of several elements from both the Western cultic milieu and his 18  Delsarte was a French teacher of acting and singing. He earned fame throughout Europe for developing a theory of aesthetic principles in the context of the pedagogy of dramatic expression. His spirito-physical exercises for the coordination of voice and breath with physical postures were popular beyond the professional circles of theatre and opera (Singleton 2010: 144). 19  Stebbins became known as arguably the foremost representative of Delsartism in America and a pioneer of modern dance. Her theories drew on the ideas of the Delsarte-student Steele Mackaye (1842–1894), the system of gymnastic exercises developed by Pehr Henrik Ling (1776–1839), as well as yoga. Furthermore, she was a member of the Church of Light, which entertained close connections with a short-lived but influential occult and neo-Rosicrucian group of the mid-1880s, the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor (Deveney 2006: 486–487). Accordingly, Stebbins focused on practice-oriented occultism and interpreted Delsarte’s ideas in esoteric terms (Singleton 2010: 144). Rejecting the notion that science opposes religion, she suggested that her breathing exercises not only had a positive medical effect but that they also enabled the practitioner to influence his or her mental state to the point of mystical ecstasy. Through breathing, not only air but also ether is being absorbed, which she identified as the divine life force (Baier 2009: 458–461). The vital energy accumulated in this manner possesses “both mental and magnetic powers” that become freely available to the practitioner (Stebbins 1892: 53).

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native Indian esoteric traditions would prove to be of crucial relevance for later developments of Pranic Healing. In the chapters of Râja Yoga entitled “The Psychic Prāna” and “The Control of Psychic Prāna,” Vivekananda introduced a subtle physiology that adopts elements from the traditions of haṭha yoga and tantrism, for example, subtle nerve channels called “Nadis,” and a form of spiritual energy situated at the base of the spine known as “Kundalini” (coiled one) (Vivekananda 1907: 160, 169). The central aim of the yogi is to open up the “Sushumna”.20 Connected with the Sushumna, which interpenetrates the cerebrospinal axis, are the seven “centres” or “lotuses” through which the human energies are drawn, transferred, and transformed in the process of spiritual practice (ibid.).21 Diverging from classical symbolic readings, he interpreted all these subtle body elements literally, endowing them with an ontological status in accordance with his materialistic-monistic Naturphilosophie (de Michelis 2004: 167). Whereas Vivekananda did not directly graft them into his discussion of healing, these components would be integrated onto twentieth-­century energy healing systems. Sounding both familiar and exotic at the same time, the message of Râja Yoga exerted a notable attractivity on Western audiences for two reasons. On the one hand, Vivekananda offered a spiritual teaching that was remodelled to suit rationalistic and scientific modes of thinking without forsaking an essentially esoteric horizon of meaning. Arguing for the fundamental role of Prana as the universal life energy and psychic force, he assimilated the function of Mesmer’s fluidum as a scientistic category to legitimise alternative healing practices, occult phenomena, and ultimately his own version of yoga. On the other hand, by incorporating elements from traditional Indian teachings, he capitalised on his public image as a Hindu authority and clearly outshone any previous attempts by Western Theosophists to promote oriental wisdom. Whereas Blavatsky had sought 20  Vivekananda refers to the three major Nadis (tube, pipe), which are “Ida” (comfort) and “Pingala” (tawny, golden), each respectively running to the left and the right of the Sushumna (gracious, kind), the central Nadi stretching along the spine. First mentioned in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad and Chāndogya Upaniṣad (c. 500 BCE), the nāḍıs̄ were thought of in later Yogic and Tantric texts as subtle nerve- or arteries-like channels that conduct prāṇa, the vital energy, between the cakras (Leland 2016: 25, 33). 21  Vivekananda did not yet refer to these lotuses explicitly as cakras, but in passing mentioned their traditional tantric names. According to Kurt Leland (2016: 154), this passage in Râja Yoga is possibly the first instance that the Sanskrit names of the seven cakras appear on American soil.

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to incorporate elements from Indian traditions into an inherently Western esoteric programme, the swami “was the first Indian to succeed in acting as an effectual bridge-builder between Eastern and Western esoteric milieus” (de Michelis 2004: 92). In short, Vivekananda provided a worldview that had a secularist, scientific taste at first but was ultimately appealing to romantic dreams of a transfigured India.

Reuß Continued: From Pranatherapie to Prana Healing When Reuß took up again the issue of Pranatherapie in an article published in his own journal, the Oriflamme (1902–1915), he did so at a backdrop different from the early 1890s. This time, he embedded the therapeutic application of prāṇa within the context of arcane “Hermetic” teachings surrounding a “mystic anatomy” of human beings. The Oriflamme22 was established as the official organ for the Ordo Templi Orientis (henceforth: O.T.O.), a consolidation of Reuß’s widespread fringe-Masonic network.23 Sexual magic was a core element of the O.T.O.’s teachings, which had its roots in the writings of the occultist author Paschal Beverly Randolph (1825–1875). Reuß linked the sexual magic of Randolph—transmitted via the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor and the Hermetic Brotherhood of Light—with yogic practices that had been introduced to him by the “first Viennese yogi,” occultist, Freemason, and Rosicrucian Karl Kellner (1851–1905) (Bogdan 2006: 222).24 22  The name Oriflamme (from Lat. aureaflamma, golden flame) was derived from the battle standard of the Kings of France used by the French crusaders. High-grade Masonic rites in France have used the symbol as well, which, according to legend, had been depicted on the heraldic banner of Charlemagne (742–814) (Frick 1978: 469). 23  Reuß first revealed the O.T.O.’s existence in the “jubilee edition” of the Oriflamme in 1912. The British occultist Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) had become involved with Reuß’s project only shortly before (Pasi 2006: 901). Through Crowley, the O.T.O. attained dubious international fame, while contributing significantly to the promotion and dissemination of tantric teachings in the West. 24   Apparently, both Kellner and the leading German Theosophist Franz Hartmann (1838–1912) were involved in Reuß’s Masonic undertakings at least in the early days of the Oriflamme and contributed occasionally to his publication. Together with Reuß they seemed to have formed the arcane triumvirate referred to as the “Inner Triangle” (Pasi 2006: 899). There are no indications of rituals involving sexual elements in Kellner’s extant papers, and the notion of “sexual magic” does not appear in Reuß’s publications until Kellner’s death in 1906 (ibid.).

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In the July 1913 edition of the Oriflamme, Reuß published a short but densely written essay, entitled “Mystic Anatomy,” on his subtle body conception under the pseudonym “Merlin.” Therein he portrayed an esoteric transmission line of a Hermetic medical art. Having its foundation in “the finer forces of nature” this healing technique would surpass “ordinary medical science” (Merlin 1913: 4).25 Turning from the medical to the magical and mystical, Reuß (qua Merlin) introduced the notion of “the great act of transmutation of the reproductive energy,” which he claimed to be a means for attaining knowledge of, and even union with, the godhead. What follows is a cryptic hint to this “Hermetic Mystery” in the form of a condensed account of tantric anatomy, subtle channels, body centres, and lists of correspondences that conspicuously resemble Blavatsky’s Esoteric Instruction (1897).26 Reuß presented 3 main and 11 minor “Nadis” (or ‘nerve fibres’), 42 lotuses (or “nerve plexuses”) of which 7 are listed by name,27 7 “Tattvas” encompassing 3 transcendent principles and 4 physical elements, as well as the Tattvas’ correspondence to bodily organs and glands (ibid.: 5).28 Following this opaque introduction to mystic anatomy, Reuß dedicated the last paragraphs of his article to a brief note on the role of “Prana” in restoring health. Accordingly, Prana is contained in the air, transcending however the mere material form as an all-penetrating vital agent (Merlin 1913: 7). He then presented a concise description of a healing method that has much stronger parallels to classical mesmerism than those practices he had earlier subsumed under Pranatherapie:

25  Reuß claims that Paracelsus (1493–1541), Heinreich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim (1486–1535), and Mesmer among other physicians of renown were acquainted with this mystical art. 26  For an overview of Blavatsky’s interpretation of subtle anatomy, see Leland 2016: 102–116. 27  These lotuses are defined as “the Psychic Centres of the Body, within which force and life-energy are stored up” (Merlin 1913: 5–6). He adopts Blavatsky’s number of seven main lotuses or “cakras” that are of special importance and are listed by name (roughly resembling their original Sanskrit terms), location (although incompletely), and their corresponding number of petals: (1) Mudladhar Lotus at the base of the spine (4 petals); (2) Swadkisthan Lotus (6); (3) Manipur Lotus under the navel (10); (4) Anahat Lotus in the heart (12); (5) Vishudda Lotus (16); (6) Ajna Lotus between the eyes (2); (7) Sakasrar Lotus (1000). 28  Without referring to Blavatsky, the passage on the Tattvas and the pituitary gland closely follows her Esoteric Instruction No. 3 (see Blavatsky 1980 [1897]: 611–618).

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We absorb the Prana of the air in every breath we take. But we can train our breathing to absorb, inhale, a greater quantity of Prana than is ordinarily required for our daily life. And this Surplus-Prana we are able to store in our Nerve-Centres, Lotuses or Plexus, until such time as we may require it again for special use. This function can be compared to the storing of materialistic electricity in a Leyden Jar. Through this self-willed, conscious accumulation of surplus Prana in our body, the physical body developes [sic] forces which previously lay dormant in him. Persons who have by accumulation of Surplus Prana developed such special Forces by special intellectual training may become able to transfer, exhale, disseminate, pass on (part) of their own stored up Prana to Others! This is called then, and is used for Prana Healing […]. (ibid.: 7; emphasis in the original.)

There is a striking similarity between this summarised account of Prana Healing and a passage in a chapter of William Walker Atkinson’s (Ramacharaka; 1862–1932) Hindu Yogi Science of Breath entitled “The Esoteric Theory of Breath” (see Ramacharaka 1905: 17–19). Atkinson was a lawyer, businessman, and prolific writer, and one of the most influential key figures of the New Thought movement in the beginning of the twentieth century. From 1903 onward he had produced several books on yoga practice, health, and occult abilities under the pseudonym Ramacharaka (Baier 2009: 486–487). While he had neither theoretically expanded his first idea of prāṇa-based therapeutic practices nor promoted it any further, Reuß (qua Merlin) had simply paraphrased another author’s text without revealing his sources. Reuß’s summary reflects three basic elements of Atkinson’s conception of Pranic Healing29 contained in Hindu Yogi Science of Breath: (1) the absorption of Prana through inhalation and the increase of Prana through controlled breathing—an idea that had already been common property in the American cultic milieu of the 1890s due to the writings of Stebbins and Vivekananda (Ramacharaka 1905: 18); (2) recharging the healer’s seven “vital centres” or “nerve centres”30 through controlled breathing (ibid.: 56, 58); (3) the alleged ability to awaken occult forces through will-­ power in connection with breathing (ibid.: 69), including the imparting of one’s supply of Prana qua vitality to another person (ibid.: 18, 52, 58–59; 29  The term “Pranic Healing” itself probably appears for the first time in a later book called The Science of Psychic Healing (1906), in which Atkinson presented it as a subcategory of a more elaborate healing concept rooted in mesmerist and New Thought ideas. 30  Leadbeater (1922 [1911]: 287–297) instead refers to “force-centres,” thus following Blavatsky’s nomenclature. Apart from breathing control, several aspects of Pranic Healing were later popularised through Leadbeater’s books in the 1910s and 1920s.

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cf. Leadbeater 1922 [1911]: 122). The principles constituting Reuß’s revised definition of Pranatherapie were not so mystical after all as they had already been disseminated at least among Anglophone circles of the cultic milieu. Therefore, Reuß can hardly be considered an innovator regarding a healing technique. Although his articles from 1894 and 1913 were too sketchy and shrouded in arcane language to leave behind an applicable practice, they did foreshadow a more in-depth inclusion of yogic and tantric anatomy into a mesmeric framework that would become a hallmark of prāṇa-based and similar forms of energy healing conceived by subsequent twentieth-century authors. Notwithstanding his esoteric allusions, Atkinson insisted that “all persons are potential healers,” and that the ability to increase one’s own store of vital force and transmit it to others for curing diseases is only a matter of confidence and practice (Ramacharaka 1906: 13–14, 21). This motive of democratising the power to heal would be echoed through the many offshoots of his blueprint of Pranic Healing. One of them was a homonymous—but trademarked—healing practice that was established by the Chinese-Filipino author and entrepreneur Choa Kok Sui (1952–2007), whose first book, Pranic Healing (1987), implicitly built on Atkinson’s approach in combination with the ‘Western Chakra System’ (Leland 2016). Choa Kok Sui thus established the conceptual framework for a global enterprise of practitioners that would compete with other prevalent forms of energy healing, such as Reiki or Therapeutic Touch.

Conclusion A gradual replacement of fluidum with prāṇa occurred through the Romantic reception of the Upanishads, occultist and fringe-Masonic teachings, and early modern yoga as these currents were influenced by the orientalism fashionable across the nineteenth-century cultic milieus. The above discussion roughly drafted a historical outline of some outstanding authors involved in the project of synthesising mesmeric elements with the notion of prāṇa and adjacent Sanskrit terms. This process began with the speculations of Anquetil-Duperron and German mesmerists in the early 1800s, was intensified by Blavatsky, Reuß, and Vivekananda, and prepared the matrix for the architecture of Pranic Healing, a method that was first conceived by Atkinson in the early 1900s. During the course of this development, not only was prāṇa and the mastering thereof through breathing techniques adopted as the lynchpin between the micro- and macrocosms, as well as the nexus between the bodily and mental dimensions. The

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attempt to reframe mesmerism in an orientalist context also triggered the transfer of several features of subtle physiology from yogic and tantric traditions, and their transformation in terms of rather this-worldly pursuits, namely health and healing. Mesmeric principles and techniques thus persist in transmuted shapes, that is, as transcultural products that were forged by Western and Indian authors alike. In view of Albert Einstein’s (1879–1955) special theory of relativity (1905), the scientific community that had rejected Mesmer’s fluidum on empirical grounds, dismissed the naturphilosophical idea of a cosmic ether once and for all. Meanwhile, the vitalistic and occult connotations inherent in the physicalist notion of a universal force-substrate were enshrined in esoteric texts and healing practices by adopting a Sanskrit notion that endowed the idea with an aura of ancient wisdom. Taking this path, Mesmer’s theory spanned a bridge linking the medical anthropologies of the Renaissance to those of the late nineteenth century cultic milieus, which still linger on—albeit in orientalised forms. Acknowledgments  I would like to thank Karl Baier for his substantial and steady advice, as well as the many helpful exchanges on the historical roots of energy healing practices.

References Primary Sources Anquetil-Duperron, Abraham H. 1801/1802. Oupnek’hat (id est, secretum tegendum). Vol. 1–2. Argentorati (Strasbourg): Levrault. Blavatsky, Helena P. 1877. Isis Unveiled: A Master-Key to the Mysteries of Ancient and Modern Science and Theology. Vol. 1: Science. New York: J. W. Bouton. Blavatsky, Helena P. 1980 [1897]. Instruction No. III. In Collected Writings, ed. Boris De Zirkoff, vol. 12, 581–652. Wheaton: Theosophical Publishing House. ———. 1991 [1883]. The Power to Heal. In Collected Writings, ed. Boris de Zirkoff, vol. 4, 380–386. Madras and London: The Theosophical Publishing House. ———. 2011 [1888]. The Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy. New York: Cambridge University Press. Choa Kok Sui. 1989 [1987]. The Ancient Science & Art of Pranic Healing. Second edition. Manila: The Institute for Inner Studies, Inc. Ennemoser, Joseph. 1819a. Der Magnetismus nach der allseitigen Beziehung seines Wesens, seiner Erscheinungen, Anwendung und Enträthselung in einer geschich-

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tlichen Entwicklung von allen Zeiten und bei allen Völkern wissenschaftlich dargestellt. Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus. ———. 1844 [1819b]. Geschichte des thierischen Magnetismus. Band 1: Geschichte der Magie. Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus. Gupta, Mahendranath. 1983 [1907]. Sri Sri Rāmakṛsn ̣ ̣a Kathāmrta. Calcutta: D. K. Basu. ———. 1984 [1942]. The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. Trans. Swami Nikhilananda. New York: Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center. Leadbeater, Charles W. 1922 [1911]. The Inner Life. Chicago: Theosophical Press. Merlin [= Theodor Reuß]. 1913. Mystic Anatomy. Oriflamme. Amtliches Organ des Ordens der Orientalischen Templer 11: 4–7. Müller, F. Max. 1884. The Upanishads. Part II. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Puységur, Armand Marie Jacques de Chastenet. 1811. Recherches, expériences et observations physiologiques: sur l’homme dans l’état de somnambulisme naturel, et dans le somnambulisme provoqué par l’acte magnétique. Paris: J.  Dentu and The Author. Ramacharaka, Yogi [= William Walker Atkinson]. 1905 [1903]. The Hindu-Yogi Science of Breath: A Complete Manual of the Oriental Breathing Philosophy of Physical, Mental, Psychic and Spiritual Development. Chicago: Yogi Publication Society. ———. 1906. The Science of Psychic Healing. Chicago: Yogi Publication Society. Regens, Theodor [= Theodor Reuß]. 1894. Pranatherapie. Sphinx. Monatsschrift für Seelen- und Geistesleben 19 (1): 14–16. Stebbins, Genevieve. 1892. Dynamic Breathing and Harmonic Gymnastics: A Complete System of Psychical, Aesthetic and Physical Culture. New York: Edgar S. Werner & Company. Vivekananda, Swami. 1907 [1896]. Râja Yoga: Conquering the Internal Nature. In The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, ed. Advaita Ashrama, vol. 1, 119–314. Almora and Calcutta: Sri Gouranga Press. ———. 1958. Stray Remarks on Theosophy. In The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda. Mayavati Memorial Edition, ed. Advaita Ashrama, vol. 4, 516–519. Calcutta: Sri Gouranga Press. Windischmann, Karl Joseph Hieronymus. 1832. Die Philosophie im Fortgang der Weltgeschichte. Erster Theil. Die Grundlagen der Philosophie im Morgenland, Dritte Abteilung: Indien II. Bonn: Adolph Marcus.

Secondary Sources Albanese, Catherine L. 1999. The Subtle Energies of Spirit: Explorations in Metaphysical and New Age Spirituality. Journal of the American Academy of Religion 67 (2): 305–325. Baier, Karl. 1998. Yoga auf dem Weg nach Westen. Beiträge zur Rezeptionsgeschichte. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann.

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———. 2009. Meditation und Moderne. Zur Genese eines Kernbereichs moderner Spiritualität in der Wechselwirkung zwischen Westeuropa, Nordamerika und Asien. Vol. 2. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann. ———. 2013. Der Magnetismus der Versenkung. Mesmeristisches Denken in Meditationsbewegungen des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts. In Aufklärung und Esoterik. Wege in die Moderne, ed. Monika Neugebauer-Wölk, Renko Geffarth, and Markus Meumann, 407–439. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter. Bogdan, Henrik. 2006. Challenging the Morals of Western Society: The Use of Ritualized Sex in Contemporary Occultism. The Pomegranate 8 (2): 211–246. Deveney, John Patrick. 2006. Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor. In Dictionary of Gnosis & Western Esotericism, ed. Wouter J. Hanegraaff, 486–487. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Frick, Karl R.H. 1978. Licht und Finsternis. Gnostisch-theosophische und freimaurerisch-­ okkulte Geheimgesellschaften bis an die Wende zum 20. Jahrhundert. Teil 2: Geschichte ihrer Lehren, Rituale und Organisationen. Graz: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt. Hanegraaff, Wouter J. 1998. New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought. Albany: State University of New York Press. ———. 2013. Western Esotericism: A Guide for the Perplexed. London and New York: Bloomsbury. Lanska, Douglas J., and Joseph T. Lanska. 2007. Franz Anton Mesmer and the Rise and Fall of Animal Magnetism: Dramatic Cures, Controversy, and Ultimately a Triumph for the Scientific Method. In Brain, Mind and Medicine— Neuroscience in the 18th Century, ed. Whitaker Harry, C.U.M.  Smith, and Stanley Finger, 301–320. New York: Springer. Leland, Kurt. 2016. Rainbow Body: A History of the Western Chakra System from Blavatsky to Brennan. Lake Worth: Ibis Press. Michelis, Elizabeth de. 2004. A History of Modern Yoga: Patañjali and Western Esotericism. London and New York: Continuum. Pasi, Marco. 2006. Ordo Templis Orientis. In Dictionary of Gnosis & Western Esotericism, ed. Wouter J. Hanegraaff, 898–906. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Singleton, Mark. 2010. Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice. New York: Oxford University Press. Winter, Franz. 2005. Eine summa orientalis systematis. A.H. Anquetil-Duperron und der Entwurf einer Urphilosphie im Vorwort seiner Upaniṣaden-­ Übersetzung. Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde Südasiens/Vienna Journal of South Asian Studies 49: 71–105. ———. 2013. Indische Philosophie und Religion als Vollendung der abendländischen Weisheit im Oupnek’hat des Abraham H.  Anquetil-Duperron. In Aufklärung und Esoterik. Wege in die Moderne, ed. Monika Neugebauer-Wölk, Renko Geffarth, and Markus Meumann, 259–277. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter.

PART II

Occultism in America and Europe

CHAPTER 6

Total Recall: The “Panoramic Life Review” Near Death as Proof of the Soul’s Timeless Self-Presence in Western Esotericism of the Nineteenth Century Jens Schlieter

It will be during life that we drink the bitter cup of Lethe, it will be with our brain that we are enabled to forget […;] nothing is ever forgotten wholly and beyond recall Schiller 1891: 296.

Introduction Near-death experiences that included a “panoramic life review” were reported in the nineteenth century. In these, the subjects recalled or re-­ experienced the scenes, acts, and thoughts of their lives in a highly condensed and accelerated form. For spiritualists, occultists, mesmerists, and transcendentalists, these narratives gained currency as key evidence for the soul’s ability to enter into a state of “total recall” after its separation from J. Schlieter (*) University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 L. Pokorny, F. Winter (eds.), The Occult Nineteenth Century, Palgrave Studies in New Religions and Alternative Spiritualities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55318-0_6

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the body. This was perceived as a timeless self-presence that included full awareness of everything that had been experienced in the current (and sometimes also former) lives. From this perspective, death was a form of spiritual “awakening.” In some narratives, Judaeo-Christian-Islamic imagery alluding to the Book of Deeds that was to be opened (again) at the final judgment was present. Other reports described the life review in more religiously neutral terms. The phenomenon also increasingly attracted the attention of naturalistically minded anatomists that advanced theories attempting to explain the phenomenon as hypermnesia (the exaltation of memory) on a psycho-pathological basis. Nineteenth-century esotericists, of course, took exception to this interpretation; for them, countering such interpretations was of crucial importance because they wished to substantiate the claim that the immortal soul had cognitive capacities. In their perspective, memories did not emerge from the brain but from an external, trans-individual consciousness that unravelled or revealed itself, precisely at such moments as near-death experiences. In the nineteenth century, these ideas often developed as a result of drug experiences (especially opium), in the context of mesmerist somnambulism, and finally, in Theosophy. In this chapter, I will argue that the idea of a total recall at the point of death is prefigured by the notions of “anamnesis” or “hypermnesia.” It also combines the notion of a perfect lucidity experienced at death with that of a moral life review (or judgment). Taken by the spiritualists of the nineteenth century as evidence for total recall at death, the life review seems to rest on practices of autobiographical writings developed by the modern, autonomous self in the eighteenth century. Accordingly, the absence of such narratives in antique, late antique, or medieval writings is not surprising. In the following, I will show how various key protagonists of esotericism read the reports of life reviews. The conclusion will discuss the significance of the life review discourse per se.

Platonic Prelude: Anamnesis as a Recall of the Soul’s Former Thoughts and Perceptions Plato advanced a theory that prepared the ground for the belief that the soul may in the moment of death—or, to be more precise, when it separates from the body—be able to experience a full recollection of all the knowledge achieved during former lives. As part of his objective to explain

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that the embodied soul had innate, yet latent knowledge (of the Forms, that is, the non-physical “Ideas” as abstract entities behind all appearances), Plato portrayed Socrates as arguing that it was only through an entry into a new body that the soul could forget what it knew. Nonetheless, this latent knowledge could be recovered—for example, through the help of a skilful teacher (such as Socrates) asking “maieutic” questions. The soul, however, did not only possess knowledge of former existences, but also an almost limitless knowledge that was acquired in the nether realms.1 In essence invisible, godly, and infinite, the soul suffered from being embodied (cf. Phaedo 79b–80a, 82d–83a; Jowett 1892, vol. 2: 226). In Plato’s sense, anamnesis as “recollection” presupposed metempsychosis, or the transmigration of the soul—that is, to be more precise, the soul’s regained knowledge of former existences. In Neoplatonic versions of the theory, in experiencing anamnesis, the human mind came as close as possible to the soul per se, in full freedom and awareness of its divine nature prior to being reincarnated. These theories deserve some elaboration, as nineteenth-century spiritualists built on them. Plato’s discussions of anamnesis served two major functions. The first was to show that the acquisition of knowledge was a process of rediscovery or recollection of that which had already been known from past incarnations. Second, it provided evidence for the immortality of the soul. These ideas were preserved and transmitted into Neoplatonism and Christian philosophy (cf. Gertz 2011: 109–122). However, the relevant passages on what the soul experienced when freed from the body—for example, the “after-death” experience of the soldier Er who returned to life, narrated in Plato’s Politeia (613e–621d)—did not include any explicit description of anamnesis nor of any experience of an extraordinary re-­ emergence of memories, a life review, or any peculiar capacity of recollection at the moment of death.2 Such a perspective epistemically presupposes a return from death. 1  In Meno, Socrates explains that the soul is immortal and “has been born many times, and has beheld all things both in this world and in the nether realms, she has acquired knowledge of all and everything; so that it is no wonder that she should be able to recollect all that she knew before about virtue and other things” (81c–d; Lamb 1962: 303). 2  However, it is narrated that the souls, after they have chosen their new lives, are requested to drink (and, according to their moral worth, different portions) of water from the river of lēthē, the “River of Forgetfulness,” and “every man,” Plato recounts, “as he drinks forgets everything” (Politeia, 620); the soldier Er, destined to return to life, was not allowed to drink from the water, which enabled him to remember what had happened to him. In con-

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The central aim of Plato’s narrative was outlining the ethical significance of a postmortem judgment, as has been acknowledged by Carol Zaleski and others.3 In this context, a prominent detail in the narrative is that the soul’s afterlife body carries attached “signs” of its deeds in its previous existence.4 Plato did not discuss the emergence of “memories,” or the higher cognitive capacities of the after-death soul, seemingly because the central intention of the narrative was to portray afterlife judgment.

Swedenborg on the Memories of the Dying Soul The work of Emmanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772) shall serve here as a second important example of how the soul’s powers of recollection at death were articulated in esoteric traditions. Like Plato’s anamnesis theory, it was also quoted by nineteenth-century spiritualists. The cursory reading offered here points to conceptual boundaries that still prevent one from assuming a total recall of the soul at bodily death. In De Cœlo et inferno (Of Heaven and Hell; 1758), Swedenborg presented his views on spiritual resuscitation and the experience of the afterlife (Swedenborg 1758: 187–190, n. 445–452). For his views on the thinking and willing soul, Swedenborg sought “confirmations from experience” rather than “deductions from reason.” For Swedenborg, experiences included encounters with spirits while he himself was occasionally “withdrawn from the body” as a disembodied spirit. During these states, Swedenborg considered himself to be awake to the fullest extent, with all his senses intact; indeed, in comparison to ordinary waking states, they were even more refined and capable. In this state, Swedenborg said, one could know oneself as “altogether awake.” All the trast, in the so-called “Orphic Gold Tablets” (Orphicae lamellae) there is mention of the “aters of Memory” (mnemosyne). The dying soul, drinking from “the Lake of Memory,” “should remember everything about their former lives” (Graf and Johnson 2007: 117). Having drunk, they will travel “the sacred road” of the “glorious initiates” (tablet 1; ibid.: 5). 3  According to Zaleski (1987: 19), the moral of the story is that “only an ardent dedication to the pursuit of wisdom can combat the stupefaction (symbolized by the effects of drinking from Lethe) to which all flesh is subject.” 4  They differ in its “moral” positions: whereas the moral soul, destined for a positive appraisal, carries a sign fixed by the “judges” in front, unjust souls carry these “signs” or “tokens,” which “bore evidence of all their deeds” (Macdonald Cornford 1976: 351) on their back. For our purpose, these signs of all deeds may allude to an idea of a co-presence of all deeds done, as it is in an analogous way encapsulated in Judaeo-Christian narratives of the “Book of Deeds.”

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senses were “as wakeful as in the highest wakefulness of the body” (Swedenborg 1758: 288–289, n. 439–440). This extraordinary refinement of the senses was enabled by the new afterlife environment, the “light of heaven.” In contrast to “external” natural memory, the all-­ encompassing “internal memory” was never erased.5 Still from within the confines of the Christian tradition, Swedenborg argued that angels would take care of the last thought of the dying who focused on eternity. The spirit would then pass with all its qualities and memories into the afterlife.6 These would be kept after death, but memory would remain static; it could no longer change or grow. The retrieval of memory was combined with an ethical stance: memories could be revived, and this would happen in the afterlife realm after the souls would confess their sins, but would not be able any longer to recall the situation in which the sins or evil-doings had been committed (Swedenborg 1758: n. 464). It seems that Swedenborg conceptualized a non-individual basis for the memories to be read by angels, spirits, or God, preserved in the “society of spirits” that could be collectively revived (with the help of supernatural agents). For Swedenborg, God granted all these experiences. After the “total cessation of the heart’s action,” he held, the individual was “resuscitated; but that this was done by the Lord alone” (Swedenborg 1758: 160; cf. 188, n. 447). The “states of good and truth” were “impressed on the memory,” “preserved in man by the Lord,” and “stored up, entirely without his knowledge, in his internal man” (Swedenborg 1934: 338, n. 561). The Lord ensured that “not the least of them is lost, as I have been granted to know from the fact that every state of a man, from his infancy to extreme old age, not only remains in the other life, but also returns, in fact his states return exactly as they were while he lived in this world” (ibid.). But did Swedenborg think of a total recall, or full life review, at the moment of death? In the Arcana cœlestia we are informed that memories 5  The internal memory is not only “inscribed” in the brain and body, but also in the spirit. Moreover, there seems to be a successive order in which the forms of memory evolve, culminating in a third form, the “angelic memory” of moral relevance (Swedenborg 1778: 312, n. 467). 6  Man “takes with him his natural memory, retaining all that he ever heard, saw, read, learned, or thought in the world, from his infancy to his leaving it; but as to the memory of such natural objects, which there is nothing in the spiritual world to revive the ideas of, that is quiescent, like as in a man when he thinks not of them; however, these also are again excited in the mind occasionally, by the divine permission” (Swedenborg 1778: 304, n. 461).

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come forth only “when the external man, as it were, dies, as is usually the case during temptations, misfortunes, sicknesses, and at the hour of death” (Swedenborg 1934: 268, on Genesis 17). There is, however, no full evidence of this as a total recall. Remaining within Christian conceptions of afterlife judgments, Swedenborg predominantly discusses memories of the sins of the departed. All capital sins such as “adultery and fornication,” he says, are “set before them in order, as they were recorded in their own memory” (Swedenborg 1778: 305, n. 462). The memories are uncovered by being explored by an external observer, the Lord, or angels who read the memories inscribed in the body and the brain (cf. ibid.: n. 463–471). In this context, Swedenborg advances traditional thoughts on Judgment and the Book of Deeds,7 as being individual accounts of all the deeds that were done during a lifetime, including all the circumstances, all “set in clear light.” Their “memorandum-books,” so he learned in his visionary excursions, were opened and “read to them page by page” (ibid.: 306, n. 462).8 Every detail of their crimes was “recorded in their memory,” including detailed knowledge of places and purposes, and even “the very faces of the virgins and women they had seduced, were all at once fully represented” (ibid.). Swedenborg assured his readers that not even the slightest chance of denial existed. Literally everything that had been acted or thought was inscribed in the “book of man’s life,” which was spoken of in the Bible. The total and complete “recollection” was a complex process of morally relevant memories being “read” and “revived” in the final afterlife judgment. In accordance with Christian preconceptions, Swedenborg did not mention any mystical lucid state of a total recall in which the dying individual arrived at a luminous self-presence. If my assumption is correct, the subject, as conceptualised during Swedenborg’s time, was not yet the author of its own life story, which was (at least partly) positive. Rather, it was subjected to others, who revealed predominantly hidden memories of sinful deeds.

 On the metaphor, cf. Blumenberg 1981: 22–85; Schlieter 2013.  Sometimes, the act of deciphering resembles the “reading” of inscriptions, whereas in other occasions it seems more to be a process of “becoming manifest.” 7 8

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Jan Baptist van Helmont on Drug-Induced Mental Lucidity (1648) A third influence, although of minor influence, on the development of the idea of past-life recall was the report of the Flemish Paracelsian chemist, physician, alchemist, and mystic visionary Jan Baptist van Helmont (1579–1644; cf. Hedesan 2016). Van Helmont published a description of his experiments with the poisonous plant napellus (i.e., monkshood, or wolf’s bane), and his report can be regarded as a very early example of intentional experimentation with psychoactive substances with the intention of achieving mystical-occult experiences and performing scientific self-observations. In the present context, van Helmont (whose son, Francis Mercury [1614–1698], would later become a famous student of Jewish Kabbalah) adhered to a Neoplatonic Christian mysticism (cf. Giesecke 1908: 59–63), with a strong emphasis on the personal experience of the “light of God,” as well as visionary dreams (ibid.: 68–76). In his short treatise Demens idea (On Mental Insanity, in Ortus medicinae; cf. van Helmont 1648: 277–288; ch. 38), he discussed the effect of a very small dose of monkshood that he ingested. There, he reported a “certain clarity and joyful illumination of my mind” (quaedam claritas, sive illuminatio gaudiosa mei intellectus; ibid.: 279 [12]) that did not, however, recur upon repeated ingestions of napellus. Most interestingly, van Helmont reports that after his drug experiments, he had more “meaningful dreams with a more formal discourse, and a clearer than before” (as the early English translation by M. H. Oxon has it; see van Helmont 1662: 276). Instead of attributing these effects to the power of “poison,” van Helmont argued: “For the minde once as it were retaking the offices of its own Body, doth afterwards better understand” (ibid.: 276; mens, velut munia sui corporis reassumens, deinceps melius intelligit [van Helmont 1648: 280]). In other words, the psychoactive substance was seen as a catalyst (cf. Pagel 2002: 104, 198), or “door-opener,” by which the mind reassumed the regiment in the body. The different locations of the mental faculties allowed him to observe what was happening with clarity while being in that “other state” (alium statum; van Helmont 1648: 280). Being without fear (in contrast to sheer madness), he informs us “[I could] contemplate of my own matters not as mine” (res meas, non ut meas contemplarer; ibid.: 281 [17]). He could look at them from all sides as if they were coming into his head from another world. Obviously, the experience of this drug-induced ecstasy made a strong impression on van Helmont.

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Lastly, he argued, “I have understood, that the immortal and untirable Soul, while it did of due right govern its own Body before sin, it understood all things intimately, optically or clearly, and that without labour” (van Helmont 1662: 276, ibid. 1648: 281 [22]). In other words, the drugged soul may intermittently exist as if in the state before sin—in paradise. The impact of van Helmont’s description will become obvious further below.

Total Recall and the Life Review Near Death: A Discursive Formation of the Nineteenth Century The idea of total recall of all experiences and thoughts of one’s own life at death emerged in the late eighteenth century. The search for a new synthesis of the natural and the supernatural, of mysticism and science (as embodied in Romanticism, mesmerism, and occultism) played an essential role. Additionally, an upsurge in the idea of human life, unfolding in individual biographies, certainly had an impact (cf. Mascuch 1997: 71–96). New metaphors of external media of memory (diaries, notes) no longer implied a transcendent Book of Deeds, imprinted in the soul and read by angels or God in post mortem judgment. Instead, memories preserved on the “pages” of the soul now became the basis for biographical self-­ knowledge, the collected wisdom of the individual, while external moral evaluation became less relevant. The Greek idea of metempsychosis9 resurfaced in the nineteenth century, now also thought of as an “Indian doctrine.” The notion of an “immortal memory” that could be revived at a certain point during the soul’s journey of metempsychosis, to the effect that “all resorts and containers of collected world-experiences will suddenly spring forth and present itself to the thinking Ego” was, for example, propagated by Adam Weishaupt (1748–1830),10 philosopher and founder of the Order of the Illuminati. In the same vein, the theologian Carl Friedrich Bahrdt (1740–1792) expressed ideas on different layers of consciousness, the final of which 9  Although some of the protagonists discussed here distinguished between reincarnation and metempsychosis (e.g., Blavatsky; see Chajes 2012), I adhere to a simplified discussion of the doctrines. 10  In German: “[dass] alle Ressorts und Behältnisse der gesammelten Welterfahrungen auf einmal losspringen, und sich vor unsern denkenden Ich darstellen” (Weishaupt 1994: 405; see Hense 2012: 163).

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includes all others in the form of a recall (Rükerinnerung; see Hense 2012: 254). Significantly, in these contexts, we find the imagery of “noting down memories” that may be “read” and thereby recalled (as, e.g., the “diary,” or “slip of paper”—Zettel—that will be found in totality at the end of the “global journey” as Johann Georg Schlosser [1739–1799] speculated in his treatise on transmigration in 1783). Commenting on these authors, Martin Hense argues convincingly that these “collected notes on paper” serve an important function. The Platonic and Christian paradigm of a transcendent, supra-empirical store of memory (existing in the realm of ideas, or in God) can now be enriched by individual experiences and subjective memories that now only in sum become almost complete (Hense 2012: 164–165). In this context, in the wake of German Romanticism, genealogical ideas surface that later allowed the mention of a “total recall” as a more positive act of “awakening.” Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829), for example, wrote in 1804  in a notebook: [There is the] likelihood of a great revolution in consciousness at the moment of death; perhaps the memory of early childhood awakens again, perhaps a view into the correlation of our soul […], a view in the secret workshop of transmigration […]. Dying is not a fading away but an awakening of the spirit. Bright consciousness of some of the dying, awkward visions [my trl.].11

11  “Wahrscheinlichkeit einer großen Revolution im Bewußtsein im Augenblick des Todes; vielleicht erwacht die Erinnerung der ersten Kindheit wieder, vielleicht geschieht ein Blick in d[en] Zusammenhang unsrer Seele, mit d[er] d.[er] Eltern der Geliebten, ein Blick in die geheime Werkstätte der Seelenwanderung in das Bewußtsein der Erde (d.[es] Erdgeistes sowohl als der Erdseele; das erste ein vorzüglich edler und schöner Tod.) Vorbereitung zum Tode ist daher für uns selbst das höchste Ziel der Religion […]. ” (Schlegel 1971: 100–101; 17 [176]); cf. Zander 1999: 389). Schlegel speculates that the same may be true for humankind in total – an awakening of the beginning may come at the end (Schlegel 1971, 101; 17 [177]). Cognate ideas were articulated by Friedrich W. J. Schelling in 1816/1817. Dying should be seen as an “awakening,” and in approaching death there is a moment of “highest inner clarity,” a state of “non-interrupted clairvoyance.” In death, finally, there is a “most intimate consciousness,” and “their whole being will be condensed in a focal point, that unites past, present, and future. Far less than losing memory,” the dying and dead will be able to view their distant past, and will even be able to see into future (cf. Schelling 1972 [IX 65]: 164–168).

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Unfortunately, this note is somewhat isolated and allows only a few conclusions with respect to context and meaning. It seems clear that Schlegel ponders the possibility of transmigration—as said, a popular topic at the time. Against this backdrop, he theorises about dying as a kind of awakening of the spirit, in which the memories of childhood may be revived. In addition, an awareness can be gained that allows insights into the interconnectedness of individual lives in transmigration. Therefore, the possibility of a total recall emerges—but it is still a speculation that the author does not support with narratives of experiential evidence. Turning to the discourses on animal magnetism (mesmerism) in the early nineteenth century, the idea of the soul’s capacity for a total recall near death increasingly gained traction. In his work Theorie der Geisterkunde (1808), translated into English in 1834, Johann Heinrich Jung-Stilling (1740–1817), a German ophthalmologist interested in the emerging field of magnetism and somnambulism, reflects on the possibility of the soul’s capacity to gain a complete recollection of its own life in the world. From the magnetic experiments that offered proof of clairvoyance and discourse with disembodied spirits and so on, Jung-Stilling concludes that it follows “logically and justly” (Jung-Stilling 1834: 62) that if “the human soul during its existence in its material body, from which it is not entirely detached, be capable of such wonderful things; what will its capability be when totally separated from it by death!” He further reflects: In dying, the person loses his consciousness [Selbstbewußtseyn], he falls into a perfect trance or profound sleep. As long as the mass of blood is still warm and not congealed […], the soul remains in it; but as soon as the brain and the nerves lose their warmth and become frigid, they can no longer attract the ethereal part of the soul, nor retain it any longer; it therefore disengages itself, divests itself of its earthly bonds, and awakes [erwacht]. It is now in the state of a clear-seeing magnetic sleeper, but being entirely separated from the body, its state is much more perfect: it has a complete recollection of its earthly existence from beginning to end [er erinnert sich seines Erdenlebens von Anfang bis zum Ende vollkommen]; it remembers those it has left behind, and can form a very clear idea of the visible world, to which it is now no longer susceptible.12

Jung-Stilling holds that clairvoyance is only the visible part of a larger capacity of the soul. This capacity, usually dormant, awakens in magnetic  Jung-Stilling 1834: 62; German added in brackets: Jung-Stilling 1832: 49.

12

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states or at death. It does not rely on the functioning of the brain and nerves, since the somnambulist’s soul is equally able to exert its astonishing capabilities without relying on bodily, outward senses. In fact, he argues (as did Swedenborg) using the metaphor of “reading” the soul; however, it is the somnambulist who does the reading on this occasion.13 Although Jung-Stilling adduces evidence for the soul’s capacity for a total recall at death, he does not substantiate his findings by quoting the first-person reports of individuals who had experienced such recollections near death. Such substantiation appears only in the following decades. In his work Untersuchungen über den Lebensmagnetismus und das Hellsehen (Examinations of Life-Magnetism and Clairvoyance), Johann Karl Passavant (1790–1857)14 includes a full chapter on “Clairvoyance Near Death” (Hellsehen in der Nähe des Todes; Passavant 1837: 163–170). He argues that, being near death, “half-liberated souls” are aware of both their past and future and are freed from the bondage of time. As evidence, he refers to several first-person accounts. The soul’s partial detachment from the body is a “partial death,” a “stripping of the earthly egg-­ membrane,” which will affect a “full concentration of the inner man” (ibid. 1837: 58). Passavant relates a case of a somnambule who, in a certain situation, is able to review her whole life. It is not an instance of ordinary memory but a clear-sighted state in which defunct and hidden memories are revived. He opines that these clairvoyant states are even stronger in cases of illness and injury that resemble states of death. Therefore, it is only in death that “memory must be much more complete,” and all deeds, conceived as constituting moments within a continuous development, must be present to the experiencer’s “expanded consciousness” [erweitertem Bewußtsein] (cf. ibid.: 99, 102–103). This follows from the fact that a person who comes to know themselves completely must become aware of the “essential development, free from all contingencies,” which attests that the living human is but the “embryo of eternal man” (ibid.: 103). In somewhat Hegelian terms, Passavant continues by stating that eternity is only insufficiently understood if held to be a negation of time. In reality, it is the “totality of being” (Totalität des Seyns) in which all moments 13  Jung-Stilling 1834: 64: “The somnambulist reads in the soul of him with whom he is placed in rapport; there is no need of language for the purpose, and such also is the case after death, the one reads in the soul of the other.” 14  On Passavant, see Baier 2009: 210–218.

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of time are present and realised. This must equally be the case in God’s consciousness, which cannot allow for any succession but consists of a totality, a “being simultaneous” [Zugleichseyn] (Passavant 1837: 109). Significantly, Passavant provides a first-person account, namely the near-­ death experience (in 1734) of Johann Schwerdtfeger (ibid.: 166),15 who, emerging from a serious illness and an almost comatose state, had reported that he had been able to remember his whole life and recall all of his faulty actions. As with eighteenth-century narratives, this formed part of an after-death vision of God’s judgement. I should briefly mention that in the first half of the nineteenth century, the phenomenon of an unusual ability of recall is treated in a more systematic way by medical psychologists—for example, Ernst von Feuchtersleben (1806–1849) and Thomas Laycock (1812–1876). They define a recall of previously unrecallable, hidden items as “reminiscence,” while the term “hypermnesia”16 is used for cases where there is an unusual increase of the capacity to recall the past. Elaborating on an idea that would become characteristic of nineteenth-century Spiritualism, in a chapter entitled “Clairvoyance in Illness” Passavant asserts that certain drugs may also induce this state, reviving vivid memories long lost. This is an effect, he argues, of “narcotic poisons” (Passavant 1837: 155–160). In his interpretation, he uses van Helmont’s report (discussed above) for his own purposes, namely to provide evidence that this represents “clairvoyance” (Hellsehen), or the soul’s unmediated gaze (the lost state due to the Original Sin [ibid.: 160]). In its uncorrupted state, the soul can reign over the body and all organs, including the sentient soul-organ, and thus be able to perceive and remember everything. In this state, which is regained after death, the soul is no longer dependent on memory—or “induction from reminiscence, in relationship to space and time.” It experiences “a single ‘here and now’ that encompasses all things. Because of that, if, in that state, memory were to remain, it would be an eternal useless burden. The same is true of reminiscence, which can only function by mediation of reflection,” but “at that time, the latter is dead” (ibid.: 161, quoting van Helmont’s Imago mentis, § 24).17  On the case of Schwerdtfeger, see Schlieter 2018b: 59–64.  Von Feuchtersleben (1845: 255–256) defines hypermnesia as “unusually heightened memory”; cf. Laycock (1875: 4, cf. 14), quoting Feuchtersleben, as “abnormally vigorous reminiscence.” 17  See van Helmont 1648: 272; van Helmont 1662: 267. 15 16

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As is well known, in the early nineteenth century, intellectual circles (especially in France) were enthusiastic about experiences with opium (usually in the form of laudanum). Within the context of such experiences, a growing audience reported the sudden revival of memories. In 1817, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834), who had personal experiences with opium, argued in his Biographical Sketches that blocked memories could return in extraordinary states of consciousness. Coleridge held that “the intelligent faculty,” now bound to the “terrestrial body,” would become “more comprehensive,” as “the body celestial,” and could, in that form, “bring before every human soul the collective experience of its whole past existence” (Coleridge 1817, vol. 2: 115). Still, the “body celestial,” as Coleridge reasoned from a Christian standpoint, was embedded in visions of a “Dread book of judgment” (see Revelations 20: 12–15). The total experience of the past might be included in such a book, in whose mysterious hieroglyphics every idle word is recorded! Yea, in the very nature of a living spirit, it may be more possible that heaven and earth should pass away, than that a single act, a single thought, should be loosened or lost from that living chain of causes, to all whose links, conscious or unconscious, the free-will, our only absolute self, is co-extensive and co-­ present. (Coleridge 1817, vol. 1: 115–116)

It is worth noting the new conceptual framework of an “absolute self,” the fundamental intuition of an “I am” (ibid.: 302) that was now the focal point of the description. This was inspired by German idealist philosophy, especially Schelling (see Roy 2007: 294, 298). In the same vein, the contemporaneous English essayist Thomas de Quincey (1785–1859) describes such memory revivals in his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821). It is here, and probably for the first time, that we find an explicit reference to the famous life review phenomenon. We read in de Quincey: “I was once told by a near relative of mine, that having in her childhood fallen into a river, and being on the very verge of death […], she saw in a moment her whole life, in its minutest incidents, arrayed before her simultaneously as in a mirror; and she had a faculty developed as suddenly for comprehending the whole and every part. This, from some opium experiences of mine, I can believe.” He continues with a Biblical reference, “that the

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dread book of account which the Scriptures speak of is in fact the mind itself of each individual” (de Quincey 2013: 38).18 In sum, the imagery of the Book of Account suggests that there is no active forgetting but only an absence of recollection as present in some opium or (non-intentional) near-death experiences.19 Opium experiences, however, were not restricted to literary salon culture. They quickly found their way into esoteric and occult circles, where they were combined with narratives of clairvoyance, “somnambulist” states, and “near death” states, all of which pointed to the same incredible capability of a total recall.20 A crucial point in the intellectual history of the total recall was the introduction of the term “panoramic life review.” This occurred in a letter written by the British admiral Francis Beaufort (1774–1857), published in 1847. It described an accident around 1795, in which the young Beaufort nearly drowned. In his personal report he says that, close to death, [e]very past incident of my life seemed to glance across my recollection in retrograde succession; not, however, in mere outline, as here stated, but the picture filled up with every minute and collateral feature; in short, the whole period of my existence seemed to be placed before me in a kind of panoramic review, and each act of it seemed to be accompanied by a consciousness of right or wrong […]; indeed, many trifling events which had been long forgotten then crowded into my imagination, and with the character of recent familiarity. May not all this be some indication of the almost infinite power of memory with which we may awaken in another world, and thus be compelled to contemplate our past lives?21 18  Interestingly, in his sequel Suspiria de Profundis, de Quincey returned to the topic, reassuring his readers of the veracity of the report, portraying it in ever more fantastic words, and, furthermore, alluding to the “Damascene conversion” of Paul: “Such a light fell upon the whole path of her life backwards into the shades of infancy, as the light, perhaps; which wrapt the destined Apostle on his road to Damascus. Yet that light blinded for a season; but hers poured celestial vision upon the brain, so that her consciousness became omnipresent at one moment to every feature in the infinite review” (de Quincey 1851: 234). These “immortal impresses” can even be experienced “experimentally,” as de Quincey argues, by “every man” who passes through similar states, for example, by opium ingestion (ibid.: 236). 19  Strictly speaking, the generic term “near-death experience,” notorious for its unclear boundaries (e.g., so-called “fear of death”-experiences that are structurally similar but not emerging in any sort of life-threatening situation), is very much connected to the usage of Raymond Moody and the post-1975 discourse (see Schlieter 2018b). 20   For example, cf. French spiritualist Jean Dupotet de Sennevoy’s (1796–1881) Introduction to the Study of Animal Magnetism (1838: 131–136). 21  Letter, quoted in Barrow 1847: 400–401; cf. 398–402.

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Beaufort’s extensive description is actually the first of its kind. In particular, his metaphor of a “panorama” was so convenient and enlightening that it is still in use as a generic term: namely “panoramic [life] review.”22 Significantly, Beaufort mentions the moral quality of the events recalled. The Christian interpretation, however, is no longer the prime point of reference. The dominant feature is a more neutral observation of the “infinite power of memory.” He was, as he says, entirely “wrapped in the past” (Barrow 1847: 400) and had no thoughts of the future. This was the case although he had been “religiously brought up,” as he felt necessary to mention (ibid.: 401). The new position of the modern individual becomes obvious when we perceive certain qualities of this review, especially the fact that those recalled events were experienced in retrograde succession. This departs from Judaeo-Christian Book-of-Judgment accounts and their inherent logic of a final settlement of accounts after-death. Beaufort’s report was well received in the emerging science of pathological states of consciousness as well as in Christian circles. However, the most enthusiastic reception occurred in esoteric, occultist, and Spiritualist circles. The British mesmerist Joseph W. Haddock (1800–1861) quoted the report in full in his Somnolism and Psycheism (1851), arguing that it offered evidence for a “higher mesmeric state, being analogous to partial death” (Haddock 1851: 215). Christian writers, such as Davis Wasgatt Clark (1812–1871), Bishop of the American Methodist Episcopal Church, quoted and discussed the report from a Christian perspective. According to Clark, it was “in that future world” that memory “shall run back over the history of our past probationary being and call up all its events, however much we may desire to bury the past in utter oblivion.” This was because it was, he assumed, a quality of the soul proper “clothed upon with its celestial body” (Clark 1864: 395; cf. 391–393). Similarly, the American Spiritualist Andrew Jackson Davis (1826–1910), although not quoting Beaufort, spoke of a panoramic existence in which the external memories were assembled; the “internal” memory, “the soul’s sanctum sanctorum,” however, comprises the spirit of things, the spirit of “all useful experiences.”23 In these decades, authors reported drug experiences which  For a philosophical discussion of the “life review,” see Schlieter 2018a.  The external memory is “a tablet whereon the world of matter and sensuous objects write the evanescent impressions of their panoramic existence.” The internal memory, in contrast, contains “as imperishable jewels in a casket which none but the possessor can open, the spirit of things, of all impressions, of all useful experiences!” And he continues: “on the internal memory, the faintest lines of a spiritual reality produce the most permanent impres22 23

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detailed Jewish-Christian “book of life”—visions as part of drug experiences, such as the American writer Fitz Hugh Ludlow (1836–1870), son of a Presbyterian minister, in his autobiographical work The Hasheesh Eater (1857).24 More explicitly, the German philosopher Carl du Prel (1839–1899) turns in Die Philosophie der Mystik (1885, English translation: The Philosophy of Mysticism; 1889) to the subject of the life review that can occur when drowning and during drug use. Moving towards the concept of the “subconscious,” and influenced by German Transcendental Idealism, he reformulates the distinction between a terrestrial and a celestial body and their respective memories. The empirical, now termed “normal self-consciousness with its physiological measure of time,” is juxtaposed with transcendental consciousness. The latter emerges “as soon as the empirical is set to rest,” and consciousness indulges in dreams, of which “the transcendental measure of time” is a “characteristic incident” (cf. du Prel 1885: 77–79, 1889, vol. 1: 92–94). In other words, the “extraordinary exaltation of memory” highlights nothing less than the transcendental quality of time itself, a co-presence beyond all measures of succession that reign waking life. Quoting van Helmont, du Prel holds that the liberated soul is no longer dependent on memory (that is, something present in “sensual consciousness”) and will experience “everything in a single sions,” but are, as “the mind’s most interior experiences” (Davis 1853: 162; cf. 260), seldom remembered. 24  Ludlow is one of the first to describe an autoscopic interest of the disembodied observer (cf. Schlieter 2018b: 75–6); but mentions the “panoramic display of internal images” only in passing (cf. Ludlow 1857: 227). However, one visionary experience is highly relevant. Ludlow reports that he was immersed in an internal dialogue on the dreadful question of damnation, musing “Oh thou Angel of Destiny, in whose book all the names of the saved are written, I call on thee to open unto me the leaves!” Suddenly, a “dread registrar” appears, and shows to him “the great volume of record,” and Ludlow, with “devouring eyes,” scans the pages, “turning them over in wild haste that did not preclude the most rigid scrutiny. Leaf after leaf flew back […]. Here and there I recognized a familiar name, but even my joy at such revelations took nothing from the cruelty of the suspense in which I looked to find my own. With a face cold as marble I came to the last page, and had not found it yet. Drops of torture beaded my brow as […] I ran down the final column. One, two, three— I came to the bottom— the last. I was not there!” (Ludlow 1857: 144–145). This, he felt, is evidence of his annihilation, and he “saw Eternity, like a chariot out of which I had fallen, roll out of sight.” However, shortly afterwards, he receives comfort in a vision of the merciful Christ (cf. ibid.: 145–146 cf. Partridge 2018: 115–117). In sum, Ludlow’s experience shows the interdependency of the moral vision of the book of life (here, with the entries of the saved), hallucinatory drug experiences, and the emergent panoramic life review.

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now” (in transcendental consciousness). The “simultaneity” of both the empirical and transcendental consciousness, du Prel maintains, was actually first “suggested in Indian philosophy,” and only later “recovered” by Plotinus and Kant (ibid. 1889, vol. 1: xxiv). The panorama imagery is also used by Emma Hardinge Britten (1823–1899), who argued that the perfect “liberation of the soul,” with memory being unbound, would be reached at death.25 Referencing Indian ideas such as “atma” (meaning the soul) searching for “liberation,” or spiritualist interpretations of akasa (Skt. ākāśa, meaning “ether” or “space”), Hardinge Britten paved the way for Theosophical views on the quality of such phenomena as transcending cultures (Hanegraaff 2017: 30–31). This idea influenced the growing conviction among spiritualists, occultists, and Theosophists in the late nineteenth century that the extraordinary states of the dying, as well as preparatory states experienced through drugs and mesmerism, were universal in nature and had already been depicted in the classical texts of yoga and Buddhism written in early India.26 I will now finally turn to Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831–1891), arguably the most famous protagonist of modern Theosophy. In Isis Unveiled (1877: 178), Blavatsky writes: That flash of memory which is traditionally supposed to show a drowning man every long-forgotten scene of his mortal life—as the landscape is revealed to the traveler by intermittent flashes of lightning—is simply the sudden glimpse which the struggling soul gets into the silent galleries where his history is depicted in imperishable colors. The well-known fact […] that we often recognize as familiar to us, scenes, and landscapes, and c­ onversations, which we see or hear for the first time, and sometimes in countries never visited before, is a result of the same causes. 25  In states of “trance,” the soul, or “Atma,” as she says with reference to Hindu thought, “can go forth, and wander abroad in space,” can ascend heavens etc., and can, finally, “behold the past, present and future outstretched as in a vast panorama […]. The full perfection of the trance state is very seldom reached until Death sets the soul at liberty, but even an approximation to this Divine condition is eagerly coveted by illuminated minds” (Hardinge Britten and Britten 1876: 185). Interestingly, she refers in this context to a “Hindoo” idea of an “all-pervading fluid,” or “Astral fluid,” “AKASA” (ibid.: 187). If accumulated by capable Indian ascetics, she holds, this “Astral fluid” can be “projected,” which means that the practitioners can, for instance, travel through the air, or become invisible (ibid.: 189). 26  For example, American spiritualist Hudson Tuttle (1836–1910) points to “total recall”experiences, naming in one breath hashish “which the Hindoos used,” magnetising, and cases of drowning (cf. Tuttle 1864, vol. 2: 141, cf. 63).

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Several aspects here are noteworthy. While panorama-imagery is still used, the phenomenon is now believed to be an outcome of the same causes that allow experiences of déjà-vu, clairvoyance, and, most importantly, mental travel (“astral projection”). It seems that Blavatsky conceptualised the life review in spatial terms. Her interpretation made use of the idea of “psychometry,” that is, the ability of persons to receive visions while exposed to a certain object.27 Accordingly, the whole world is duplicated in the form of “photographic” galleries. She points to “mental travel,” or mental visits of distant countries, that may lead to different “galleries.” In this trajectory, Blavatsky says that one may be “awakened at any moment,” and then, “during such flashes of man’s inner memory, there is an instantaneous interchange of energies between the visible and the invisible universes. Between the ‘micrographs’ of the cerebral ganglia and the photo-scenographic galleries of the astral light, a current is established” (Blavatsky 1877: 180). Adapting freely the deliberations of John William Draper (1811–1882),28 a chemist and philosopher, but also a pioneer of early photography, she concludes that “believers in reincarnation” will “adduce this as an additional proof of our antecedent existence in other bodies” (Blavatsky 1877: 179). Ancient wisdom and modern science agree, she states, that it “is on the indestructible tablets of the astral light that is stamped the impression of every thought we think, and every act we perform; and that future 27  Joseph Rodes Buchanan (1814–1899), William Denton (1823–1883), and others had argued with “psychometry” that the human mind has the hidden power to make infinite use of mental “daguerreotypes” (Hanegraaff 2017: 20–22). Edward Hitchcock (1793–1864), whom Blavatsky quotes as well, had outlined in his The Religion of Geology (1852) that rays of light, captured by chemical processes of photography, will expand into the universe and, therefore, carry with them photographic portrait of every detail of the world. It is “nature” that, “more skilfully than any human photographist, can bring out and fix those portraits, so that acuter senses than ours shall see them, as on a great canvas, spread over the material universe. Perhaps, too, they may never fade from that canvas, but become specimens in the great picture gallery of eternity” (Hitchcock 1852: 426). So, our minutest actions, and perhaps our thoughts, from day to day, are known throughout the universe (ibid.: 439, emphasis in the original); in a future state, Hitchcock holds, attaining higher sensitiveness, man may be able to read the past history of the world and of individuals (Hitchcock 1852: 440, emphasis in the original; see Hanegraaff 2017: 24). The relationship of these ideas to Theosophy’s all-encompassing “Akashic records” is obvious. 28  Draper expands that in the “silent galleries” of memory “hung micrographs of the living and the dead, of scenes that we have visited,” and these “latent apparitions,” or “phantom images,” may spring forth “in the solemn moments of death” (Draper 1875: 134; quoted in part in Blavatsky 1877: 179).

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events—effects of long-forgotten causes—are already delineated as a vivid picture for the eye of the seer and prophet to follow” (ibid.: 178). Whereas in Swedenborg the capability to read the “tablets” inscribed in other souls was attributed to God and the angels alone, it now rests on the human domain, open to the eye of seers and prophets. For Blavatsky, the phenomenon of life review proves that even a magnetised trainee shall be able, in regard to him/herself, “to look with inner sight into the astral light, and there behold the images of past sensations and incidents” (ibid.). However, Blavatsky still occasionally clads the life review in the biblical imagery of eternal repositories: “The minutest acts of our lives are imprinted on it, and even our thoughts rest photographed on its eternal tablets. It is the book which we see opened by the angel in the Revelation, ‘which is the Book of life, and out of which the dead are judged according to their works.’ It is, in short, the MEMORY of GOD!” (ibid.). In this vein, Blavatsky discusses two different religious responses to the phenomenon. Believers in reincarnation, she says, will see these flashes of memory as corroborating proof of earlier existences, while Christian philosophers hold that it points to the soul’s pre-existence and immortality—the total recall, as we term it, merely indicating evidence that there is a memory that will not function on the physical basis of the mortal brain (cf. ibid.: 179). In the following years, Blavatsky continued to pay close attention to the emergent psychology discussing the phenomenon. In her article “Memory in the Dying” (1889), Blavatsky refers to Charles Samson Féré (1852–1907), a French physician who had published a series of contributions about the mental states of the dying.29 Discussing these cases, Blavatsky refutes naturalist explanations and argues that it is impossible for all these infinite memories to be “within our brain capacities”—they must have their roots in a more general “Spiritual consciousness.” Applying cases from the scientific report provided by Féré—for example, someone who regained the ability to speak a long-lost childhood language, or a woman disclosing information apprehended in somnambulist states but hidden for years—she argues that they point to a state of perfect lucidity at death. Even persons with physical brain damage will reach this state. In short, the latest cases provided by naturalist psychologists corroborate 29  Féré (1889: 109) displays a more naturalist attitude towards the “panoramic life review,” arguing that quite often the visionary content is meaningless, while in some other instances it might—historically speaking—have contributed to the belief in final judgment.

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what Theosophy not only already knows (the contribution begins with a letter from a Theosophical master on the life review), but what it can also explain. For this purpose, Blavatsky adduces a new terminology, arguing that there is a “spiritual memory, that of the Higher Ego (Manas or the re-incarnating individuality)”—an Ego that is almost omniscient in its immortal nature (Blavatsky 1889: 126). In short, panoramic memory shows how this “divine insight” will awake on the death-bed, an eternal co-presence of past, present, and future. Absolute consciousness, she holds, cannot emerge from the brain alone. In a highly interesting way, Blavatsky argues that “the human brain is simply the canal between two planes—the psycho-spiritual and the material—through which every abstract and metaphysical idea filters from the Manasic down to the lower human consciousness” (ibid.: 128, see Chajes 2019: 79–81). Obviously, this idea of the brain as a restrictive “canal” through which ideas “filter” into human consciousness strongly corresponds to the filter-­ theory of Ferdinand Canning Scott Schiller (1864–1937) and William James (1842–1910), an idea that gained traction at exactly the same time—in the late 1880s. In this general model of a “higher ego,” it will come as no surprise that Blavatsky and Henry Steel Olcott (1832–1907), editors of the periodical The Theosophist in the 1880s, published an answer to a reader’s inquiry on the life review, in which they said that the “‘Ego’ cannot review all his past experiences before it obtains the state of a Buddha. At the point of death, however, a man may see all of his past life as in a panoramic view” (Blavatsky 1991 [1882]: 301).30 In this context, the reference to the Buddha’s awakening is highly significant. As it is well known, the standard account in which the Buddha describes his way to awakening (Skt. bodhi) encompasses his recollection of past lives (Skt. pūr va-nivāsānusmṛti) as a crucial element.31 Of course, in the case of the Buddha, “awakening” did not occur near-death but in the subsequent deep absorptive mediation under

30  Elsewhere, Blavatsky explains that hashish experiences may uncover “a recollection of my former existences, my previous incarnations,” yet only “one series” at a “given time,” to prevent “crowded memory,” as her interlocutor suggests (quoted in Hanegraaff 2017: 14). 31  He remembered his manifold past lives with all details: “There I was so named, of such a clan, with such an appearance, such was my nutriment, such my experience of pleasure and pain, such my life-term [that is, his end of life]; and passing away from there, I reappeared elsewhere; and there too I was so named, of such a clan,” etc. (Nyanamoli and Bodhi 1995: 106 [Bhayabheravasutta, Majjhimanikāya I.22; see Majjhimanikāya I. 247–248]).

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the Bodhi tree.32 Nevertheless, Indian descriptions of what it means to be a buddha, a “fully awakened one,” capable to perceive former lives, provided additional evidence for Theosophy to substantiate their own beliefs on the total recall of the (reincarnating) soul. Moreover, it was used to substantiate the existence of a universal memory, the “akashic records,” that Alfred P. Sinnett (1840–1921) described in his Esoteric Buddhism (1883), departing—as Hardinge Britten had done (cf. above)—from the Buddha’s awakening, including, among other elements, a “total memory” of his numerous former lives.33 I will leave the unfolding story of the total recall here, although a final conceptualization that emerged in the late nineteenth century should at least be mentioned, namely, the “filter-” or “transmissison-theory” by Schiller, James, Frederic W. H. Myers (1843–1901), and Henri Bergson (1859–1941). Referring, once again, to the panoramic life review, these scholars argued that the brain is not the basis of knowing and memorising, but merely a filter for higher consciousness, destined to forget. In near-­ death situations, among others, it will be a receiver of unhindered transmission of a transpersonal “consciousness at large,” as it will be called by Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) and others in the twentieth century (see Baier, forthcoming).

Conclusion Summarising the discursive history of the idea of a total recall at death, we can see significant changes with regard to where total memory, evidenced by the life review, is located, and how it was held to demonstrate a perfect lucidity at death—if not eventually the achievement of a higher self, Ego, or consciousness at death. As we have seen, the narrative (and, most probably, the experience) of the panoramic life review emerged in the 32  Nevertheless, it is worth bearing in mind that the standard hagiography holds that the Buddha almost died as a result of radically reducing his food intake due to aesthetic motives. 33  “And in the consciousness of that person who at the end of a given chain of beings attains Buddhahood, or who succeeds in attaining the fourth stage of Dhyana […], the scenes of all these serial births are perceptible. […] Early Buddhism then, clearly held to a permanency of records in the Akasa [sic], and the potential capacity of man to read the same when he has evoluted to the stage of true individual enlightenment” (Sinnett 1885: 80–81). It must be admitted, however, that instead of adapting Indian and Buddhist thought and practices, early Theosophy was more inclined to merely illustrate western spiritualist beliefs with these ideas (cf. Baier 2009, vol. 1: 334–358).

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nineteenth century. Yet, even then, it was often still framed by biblical judgment scenes. What do we gain from this observation? Does it confirm that life review experiences were actually developed by Christians (although often with Spiritualist or occult inclinations), and were therefore almost invariably expressed in moral imagery? Or were these narratives developed irrespective of religious backgrounds, and merely communicated in a Christian context? Interestingly, there is no clear evidence of life reviewreports in earlier centuries, nor in pre-modern, non-Western cultures. Therefore, I am inclined to argue that the life review could only emerge in a culture that: (a) had developed practices of autobiographical life-­ writing; (b) emphasised the necessity of moral self-evaluation (mirrored, for example, in death-bed confessions, etc.); (c) had experimental experience of drug- and somnambulist states; and (d) had a preconception of seeing the world as a succession of single projected images that may add up to a whole panorama. Surely, the latter went hand in hand with developing technologies such as photography, panoramic image projections, and so on. The reports of respective experiences did not exhaust themselves in piling up innumerable cases that were witnessed but mentioned certain circumstances in childhood, youth, and so on. As it seems, these remembered situations (and re-remembered after the experience!) seem to suffice—for at least some protagonists—in order to argue that the whole life had been remembered. The latter interpretation, however, is based upon another important idea, namely, that the mass of the life review has either been forgotten after the experience, or it has been part of the “unconscious” segment of the soul from its onset—an idea already implicit in Plato and Swedenborg. Hence, the interpretation of the life review as total recall may finally refer to a new concept of unconscious images (impressions, emotions, thoughts, etc.) that may only occasionally (and only partly) become conscious. In addition, the phenomenon was increasingly referenced as evidence for the existence of an internal form of memory that surpasses the external, physical one. In earlier centuries, after-death memory was conceptualised in the imagery of signs written on the soul and included in the Book of Life, and so on—pointing to a kind of knowledge that is primarily supraempirical, deciphered by angels and God. In contrast to these classical depictions, expressed with variations in Plato, van Helmont, and Swedenborg, a new and innovative approach was adopted in the late eighteenth century. The panoramic life review, as both a description and a new generic term, discloses an important epistemic and moral shift: while the recalled moral

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evaluations display the “timeless” quality of truth, it is the biographical, subjective experience that leads to all the trifling and incidental events that were so vividly revived. The decreasing association of morality with the phenomenon, as hypothesised above, may have co-evolved with practices of autobiographical writing (the term “autobiography” itself evolved in Western languages in the late eighteenth century; see Davis 2006: 19), but also with intentional practices of drug experiences and mesmerist states (see, e.g., Jung-Stilling). In sum, the cursory reading of spiritualists and occultists reveals how a total recall was taken as proof of the soul’s potential for total “self-­ luminosity,” in which no act or experience is ever forgotten. However, as the protagonists speculate, this state is usually present only as a potential restrained by the limitations of the body and everyday worldly routines. These prevent the soul from becoming fully self-transparent. Occultists and spiritualists adduced Indian traditions—for example, the term ātman, or the stories of the Buddha’s awakening—to show that the usually hidden capacities of the soul can be made accessible to the individual through specific practices. They may also be read by other spiritually advanced parties (cf. Blavatsky above). In a final move towards an increasing scientification (its combination with psychometry, or, later, with the filter-theory of consciousness), and historisation (e.g., with transpersonal akashic records to be read by advanced spirits), the total memory was increasingly ontologised, being now one of several phenomena that reveal the existence of “consciousness at large.”

References Primary Sources Barrow, Sir John. 1847. To Dr. W. Hyde Wollaston. [Letter by Francis Beaufort]. In An Autobiographical Memoir of Sir John Barrow, ed. John Murray, 398–403. London: John Murray. Blavatsky, Helena P. 1877. Isis Unveiled: A Master-Key to the Mysteries of Ancient and Modern Science and Theology. Vol. 1. Science./Vol. 2. Theology. New York: J. W. Bouton. ———. 1889. Memory in the Dying. Lucifer 5 (26): 125–129. ———. 1991 [1882]. Death and Immortality. In Collected Writings, ed. Boris de Zirkoff, vol. 4, 250–256. Wheaton: Theosophical Publishing House. (Originally published in The Theosophist 4 [2], [1882]: 28–40).

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Clark, Davis W. 1864. Man All Immortal: or, the Nature and Destination of Man as Taught by Reason and Revelation. Cincinnati: Poe & Hitchcock. Coleridge, Samuel T. 1817. Biographie Literaria; or Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions. 2 vols. London & Camberwell: S. Curtis. Davis, Andrew Jackson. 1853. The Present Age and Inner Life: A Sequel to Spiritual Intercourse […]. New York: Partridge and Brittan. Draper, John William. 1875. The Conflict Between History and Science. New York: Appleton and Company. Dupotet de Sennevoy, Baron. 1838. An Introduction to the Study of Animal Magnetism: With an Appendix […]. London: Saunders & Otley. Féré, Charles. 1889. Note pour servir à l’histoire de l’état mental des mourants. Compte Rendu des Séances de la Société de Biologie 9: 108–110. Feuchtersleben, Ernst von. 1845. Lehrbuch der ärztlichen Seelenkunde. Als Skizze zu Vorträgen. Carl Gerold: Wien. Haddock, Joseph W. 1851. Somnolism & Psycheism; or, The science of the Soul and the Phenomena of Nervation, as Revealed by Vital Magnetism or Mesmerism […]. 2nd ed. London: J. S. Hodson. Hardinge Britten, Emma, and William Britten. 1876. Art Magic, or, Mundane, Sub-mundane and Super-mundane Spiritism. A Treatise in Three Parts and Twenty-three Sections: Descriptive of Art Magic, Spiritism, the Different Orders of Spirits in the Universe Known to be Related to, or in Communication with Man; Together with Directions for Invoking, Controlling, and Discharging Spirits, and the Uses and Abuses, Dangers and Possibilities of Magical Art. New  York: self-published. Helmont, Jan Baptist van. 1648. Ortus Medicinae. Id est, Initia Physicae Inaudita Progressus medicinae novus […]. Amsterdam: Apud Ludovicum Elzeverium. ———. 1662. Oriatrike Or, Physick Refined. The Common Errors Therein Refuted […]. Trans. M.H. Oxon. [= John Chandler]. London: Lodowick Loyd. Hitchcock, Edward. 1852. The Religion of Geology and Its Connected Sciences. Boston: Phillips, Sampson, & Co. Jowett, B. 1892. The Dialogues of Plato. Translated into English. Vol. 2. 3rd ed. London: Oxford University Press. Jung-Stilling, Johann H. 1832 [1808]. Theorie der Geisterkunde […]. Stuttgart: Wolters. ———. 1834. Theory of Pneumatology. London: Longman, Rees, Orme et al. Lamb, Walter R.M. 1962. Plato with an English Translation: Laches, Protagoras, Meno, Euthydemus. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Laylock, Thomas. 1875. A Chapter on some Organic Laws of Personal and Ancestral Memory. Lewes: Geo. P. Bacon. Ludlow, Fitz H. 1857. The Hasheesh Eater: Being Passages from the Life of a Pythagorean. New York: Harper & Bros.

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Nyanamoli, Bhikkhu, and Bhikkhu Bodhi. 1995. The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Majjhima Nikāya. Somerville: Wisdom. Passavant, Johann Carl. 1837. Untersuchungen über den Lebensmagnetismus und das Hellsehen. Revised ed. Frankfurt am Main: H.  L. Brönner (first edition 1821). Prel, Carl du. 1885. Die Philosophie der Mystik. Leipzig: Ernst Günthers Verlag. ———. 1889. The Philosophy of Mysticism. Vol. 2. London: Keagan Paul. Quincey, Thomas de, ed. 1851. Confessions of an English Opium Eater, and Suspiria de Profundis. Boston: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields. ———, ed. 2013 [1821]. Confessions of an English Opium-Eater and Other Writings. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schelling, Friedrich W.J. 1972. Clara oder über den Zusammenhang der Natur mit der Geisterwelt. In Werke. 4. Ergänzungsband. Persönliches, Nachlass 1810–1850, ed. Manfred Schröter. Munich: C. H. Beck. Schiller, Ferdinand C.S. 1891. Riddles of the Sphinx: A Study in the Philosophy of Evolution. London: Swan Sonnenschein. Schlegel, Friedrich. 1971. Philosophische Lehrjahre 1796–1806 nebst philosophischen Manuskripten […]. In Kritische Friedrich-Schlegel-Ausgabe, ed. Ernst Behler, vol. 19. Paderborn: Schönigh. Sinnett, Alfred Percy. 1885. Esoteric Buddhism. Fifth enlarged ed. London: Chapman and Hall. Swedenborg, Emanuel. 1758. De coelo et ejus mirabilibus, et de inferno: ex auditis & visis. London: John Lewis. ———. 1778. A Treatise Concerning Heaven and Hell, and of the Wonderful Things Therein [...]. Now First Translated from the Original Latin. London: James Phillips. ———. 1934. Arcana cœlestia [The Heavenly Arcana] […]. Genesis, Chapter I– VII. Nos. 1–823. London: Swedenborg Society. Tuttle, Hudson. 1864. Arcana of Nature [...]. Vol. 2. Boston: William White. Weishaupt, Adam [c. 1783] 1994. Höhere Mysterien. 2te Klasse. Doceten. In Johann Joachim Christoph Bode, Journal von einer Reise von Weimar nach Frankreich im Jahr 1787, ed. Hermann Schüttler, 395–414. München: ars una.

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Chajes, Julie. 2012. Metempsychosis and Reincarnation in Isis Unveiled. Theosophical History 16 (3–4): 128–150. ———. 2019. Recycled Lives: A History of Reincarnation in Blavatsky’s Theosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Davis, Lloyd. 2006. Critical Debates and Early Modern Autobiography. In Early Modern Autobiography: Theories, Genres, Practices, ed. Ronald Bedford and Philippa Kelly, 19–34. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Gertz, Sebastian R.P. 2011. Death and Immortality in Late Neoplatonism: Studies on the Ancient Commentaries on Plato’s Phaedo. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Giesecke, Friedrich. 1908. Die Mystik Joh. Baptist van Helmonts (1577–1644). Erlangen: Dr. Karl Pickert. Graf, Fritz, and Sarah Iles Johnston. 2007. Ritual Texts for the Afterlife: Orpheus and the Bacchic Gold Tablets. London and New York: Routledge. Hanegraaff, Wouter J. 2017. The Theosophical Imagination. Correspondences 5: 3–39. Hedesan, Georgiana D. 2016. An Alchemical Quest for Universal Knowledge: The ‘Christian Philosophy’ of Jan Baptist Van Helmont (1579–1644). London and New York: Routledge. Hense, Martin. 2012. “eine Palingenesie und Metempsychose […] ehemals fremder, jetzt eigner Gedanken”. Seelenwanderungsbegriffe in Philosophie und Literatur des 18. Jahrhunderts. Ph.D. thesis, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany. Macdonald Cornford, Francis. 1976. The Republic of Plato. London and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mascuch, Michael. 1997. Origins of the Individualist Self: Autobiography and Self-­ Identity in England, 1591–1791. Cambridge: Polity Press. Pagel, Walter. 2002. Joan Baptista Van Helmont: Reformer of Science and Medicine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Partridge, Christopher. 2018. High Culture: Drugs, Mysticism, and the Pursuit of Transcendence in the Modern World. New York: Oxford University Press. Roy, Ayon. 2007. The Specter of Hegel in Coleridge’s “Biographia Literaria”. Journal of the History of Ideas 68 (2): 279–304. Schlieter, Jens. 2013. Checking the Heavenly “Bank Account of Karma”: Cognitive Metaphors for Karma in Western Scholarship and Early Theravāda Buddhism. Religion 13 (4): 463–486. ———. 2018a. “Death-x-Pulse”: A Hermeneutics for the “Panoramic Life Review” in Near-Death Experiences. In Imaginations of Death and the Beyond in India and Europe, ed. Günter Blamberger and Sudhir Kakar, 145–169. Singapore: Springer Nature. ———. 2018b. What Is It Like To Be Dead? Near-death Experiences, Christianity, and the Occult. New York: Oxford University Press. Zaleski, Carol. 1987. Otherworld Journeys: Accounts of Near-Death Experiences in Medieval and Modern Times. New York: Oxford University Press. Zander, Helmut. 1999. Geschichte der Seelenwanderung in Europa. Alternative religiöse Traditionen von der Antike bis heute. Darmstadt: Primus.

CHAPTER 7

Stages in the Development of an Occult Linguistics Olav Hammer

An Emerging Science of Language Some ideas are long in the making, but may, in hindsight, seem perfectly obvious.1 The methodological basis of the academic discipline of comparative linguistics that emerged in the late nineteenth century can certainly give this impression. Similarities and differences between languages are evident even to a novice in the field. Yet, it took more than two millennia, from the first speculative ideas on the emergence and nature of language in Biblical texts and in Greek philosophy, to establish a near-consensus on the reasons for such similarities, and how they should be studied.

1  I wish to thank Karen Swartz for valuable comments on the topic of this chapter and for improving the style and readability of the text.

O. Hammer (*) University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 L. Pokorny, F. Winter (eds.), The Occult Nineteenth Century, Palgrave Studies in New Religions and Alternative Spiritualities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55318-0_7

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Two premodern sets of theories needed to be cleared out of the way for a scholarly approach to develop.2 The first posited the monogenesis of all language in a primordial divine act. The myths of the Abrahamic religions had given speech a creative role. In Genesis, the deity was said to create through speech (“Let there be light”; and there was light; Genesis 1:3) and impose order on creation by naming (“God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night”; Genesis 1:5) or by delegating the task to the first human being, Adam, who named all living creatures (in Genesis 2:20). Adam and Eve were thus created as beings endowed with speech, and although the details are not spelt out, the first humans and the deity seem to have spoken the same language: immediately after creating them “in His image” in Genesis 1:27, he spoke to them. The origin of human linguistic plurality is dealt with in greater detail in the well-known myth of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11). Here, direct divine intervention is said to have given rise to the current plethora of languages. Over the centuries, a vast literature developed that discussed whether the language of Adam was Hebrew (the preferred theory) or another of the known languages and attempted to relate other languages to this presumed mother tongue of all humanity. Minority views, prompted by the ethnic pride of their creators, saw some Germanic tongue, a Celtic idiom, or various other languages as more likely candidates (Olender 1989). The second set of premodern theories deals with the question of whether language is mimetic of reality. How do words, whether in the primordial human tongue or in the post-Babel situation, relate to the realities that they designate? Are words connected by mere convention to reality, or is there a correlation between the sounds and letters of a language and the world that surrounds us? This question was inspired by Plato’s dialogue Cratylus, in which the eponymous interlocutor suggests 2  A sizeable literature surveys prescientific speculation on the origins of human speech and on the identity of the first human language, and the reader is referred to relevant works. The article “Language” in the Encyclopedia of Religion (Wheelock 2005 [1987]) presents basic, albeit somewhat outdated information on religious views of language and provides references to the scholarly literature. The substantial literature on Western premodern conceptions of language origins includes the six-volume survey of ancient, medieval, and early modern theories by Arno Borst (1957–1963); theories on the language of Paradise surveyed by Maurice Olender (1989); the quest for the perfect language studied by Umberto Eco (1995); the theory that language reflects reality, as investigated by Gérard Genette (1995) and summarised under the label ‘mimology’; and the many samples of these and other premodern approaches to language found in the contributions in Gessinger and von Rahden (1989).

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that since language was created by the deities, its sounds must reflect the reality it designates. From the Renaissance to the present day, this suggestion led to numerous attempts to demonstrate that there was a natural connection between words (especially nouns) and objects (Genette 1995). Both sets of theories are speculative and a priori, and occupied intellectuals throughout the centuries. By contrast, fundamental empirical investigation into historical linguistics was almost unknown. For instance, until the dawn of the early modern period, the evident similarities between Latin and Greek, or between the Romance and the Germanic tongues, did not trigger any recognition that these languages might be related (Ruhlen 1987: 30). Hypotheses regarding the relations between the various languages of Europe and elsewhere were formulated in the seventeenth century. Joseph Justus Scaliger’s (1540–1609) attempts, published in 1610 as Diatriba de Europaeorum linguae, are the best-known.3 Scaliger recognised that the Germanic languages formed a group and that the Romance and Slavic languages constituted two others. Greek was placed in a category of its own. Pioneers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries recognised that Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin must be related, and very gradually, the theory was formed that a larger family incorporated them all. Only in the late eighteenth century, with the work of William Jones (1746–1794), did this idea become widespread in learned circles. Jones delivered a paper in 1786 to the Royal Asiatic Society in Calcutta, where he showed that all three languages had a common root and suggested that they were also related to Gothic and Celtic. As the nineteenth century progressed, various other languages and groups were included in the same family, and the details of their interrelations were worked out. In numerous works published in the first decades of that century, the Danish scholar Rasmus Rask (1787–1832) demonstrated how the various Germanic, Baltic, and Slavic languages fit into that family. Later efforts recognised that languages with less obvious surface similarities, Albanian and Armenian in particular, also belonged to the same group. Other language families were established in a roughly similar manner. Two insights followed from this gradual emergence of a genealogy of languages. First, there seemed to exist irreducible differences between the various families. By no stretch of the imagination would it seem possible to link the words for, say, ‘four’ in various language families: Latin 3   My thumbnail sketch of the early history of comparative linguistics is based on Metcalf 1974.

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quattuor, Arabic arba‘a, Finnish neljä, and Turkish dört just seemed to be irreducibly different. Therefore, there was (presumably) no word for ‘four’ in a postulated Ur-language of all humanity, one which would have given rise to the words in various historically attested languages. From this, the second insight followed: the actual form of the word in any language would appear to be historically contingent. There was nothing ‘four-like’ about the words listed above that made any of them a more natural or appropriate candidate for signifying the numeral “4.” The Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913) suggested that the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign was a fundamental fact of human language.4 Nineteenth-century academic research into language was thus founded on the premise that it was futile to attempt to recreate a primeval human language or speculate on how language mimicked reality. Instead, it was believed that a careful sifting of empirical linguistic data could separate evidence of relationships between languages and of the specific historical changes that had occurred in a language from various sources of “noise,” such as the borrowing of linguistic forms and chance resemblances. In particular, a group of German Indo-Europeanists working at the end of the nineteenth century, the Neogrammarians (Junggrammatiker), offered a solution to the problem of separating genuine historical links from noise. They were inspired by the success of the natural sciences in identifying regularities and laws and suggested that genetic relationships between languages would also result in completely regular sound changes.5 For instance: numerous words that begin with a ‘p’ sound in Latin, do so with an ‘f’ sound in the Germanic languages. For example, the Latin pater, piscis, and pes correspond to the English father, fish, and foot and are part of a wider set of sound shifts that is known as Grimm’s law. Such underlying regularities, rather than surface similarities, became the backbone of historical and comparative linguistics. As Matisoff (1990: 111) remarks, looking at suggestive resemblances, and disregarding the results of otherwise well-established sound laws, would lead to patently absurd conclusions such as positing the existence of a relationship between Mandarin Chinese (where ‘2’ is èr) and Armenian (erku), but not between Armenian and Latin (duo). 4  Saussure 1995 [1916], an influential compilation of lecture notes published posthumously. 5  For the history of modern comparative linguistics and the role of the neogrammarians, see Allan 2007: 210–215.

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Rejecting the Mainstream In a number of fields, the establishment of an academic mainstream has gone hand in hand with the rejection of the methods and theories of that mainstream by outsiders. Parallel to an institutionalised archaeology, there exist alternative accounts of the distant past crafted by writers such as Erich von Däniken (b. 1935); biomedicine competes with numerous complementary and alternative modes of healing; academic psychology coexists with popular psychologies; and so forth. The world of historical linguistic scholarship may seem small and rarefied, but alternatives have been formulated there as well. Various proponents of such alternatives have in particular been inspired by precisely the two theses rejected by academia: the monogenesis of language and its mimetic nature. One group of alternative linguistic theories was driven by ethnic or nationalist motives. In characteristically monogenetic fashion, it was suggested that Turkish, Hungarian, or various African languages were direct reflexes of the most ancient language of humankind.6 Another group of theories seemed to be the idiosyncratic inventions of individual amateur linguists. The most notorious were the theories of the Soviet linguist and Marxist scholar, Nikolai Yakovlevich Marr (1865–1934), who for a number of years was supported by Joseph Stalin (1878–1953). Marr’s (quite eccentric) ideas were elevated to the status of semi-official dogma.7 His theory was both monogenetic and mimetic in that it saw the languages of the Caucasus as the privileged point of access to a proto-language of our species built up of only four syllables, that is, sal, ber, yon, and rosh, which corresponded naturally to the socio-economic reality that the first humans experienced. The alternative linguistic accounts that will be the focus of the remainder of this chapter constitute a third group, namely occultist theories. These combine monogenesis, mimeticism, and, in some of their many 6   For the Turkish nationalist linguistics promoted under Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881–1938) and perhaps by him personally, see Laut 2000. Its Hungarian counterpart links Hungarian with Sumerian, the earliest attested written language; see Weaver 2003/2004. Afrocentric linguistics is in particular associated with the Senegalese scholar and politician Cheikh Anta Diop (1923–1986), who wrote a number of books linking West African and Egyptian culture. An important part of his argument was the claim that his native Wolof language was related to ancient Egyptian. 7  There is substantial literature on Marr and his theories, which includes Thomas 1957 and L’Hermitte 1987.

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versions, a third topos, namely the belief that clairvoyant investigation can uncover the truth about primeval speech. Early Occultist Theories A widely shared postulate in occultist linguistics placed the origin of human language in Atlantis. The many ramifications of the Atlantis myth are magisterially surveyed by L.  Sprague de Camp (1954) and Joscelyn Godwin (2011) and need not be summarised here. Few authors on Atlantis seem to have dedicated much thought to what language or languages the denizens of that continent may have spoken; we will return to some authors who did reflect at length on this issue later. More commonly, when language was discussed, this was done in order to provide evidence for the very existence and geographical placement of Atlantis. Those writers on Atlantis, whom Godwin calls rationalists, looked for empirical evidence for the reality and location of the mythic continent, and titbits of information on language and writing were assembled and put together with purported evidence from the flora, fauna, geology, material culture, and religions of the various peoples deemed to be the successors of the Atlanteans. Often, single suggestive etymologies constituted the main linguistic evidence; a staple of the literature was the striking similarity between the words for “god” in Greek (theos) and Aztec (teo). Speculation focusing specifically on the Mayans has been a fundamental component of occult Atlantis literature since the early nineteenth century (Godwin 2011: 206–212). Ignatius Donnelly (1831–1901), a source of much nineteenth-century speculation on the fabled continent, amassed an astounding range of evidence for his theory on the Atlantis story and devoted a chapter of his magnum opus to the writing system of the Mayans. Donnelly attempted to show that the Mayan glyphs were related to the alphabets of the ancient Near East. Mayan characters were understood to be part of a “phonetic alphabet,” reproduced in full as an illustration in Atlantis (Donnelly 1882: 217, 219). The “letters” were compared with Semitic characters, and Donnelly also explained how the busy Atlanteans had simplified the initially much more ornate characters in diverse ways, resulting in forms that still bore some resemblance to the originals. Donnelly explained how some detail of the Mayan “letter” had been stylised, rotated, or modified in other ways in order to produce a Phoenician, Hebrew, or Greek letter. Writing in the nineteenth century, and thus antedating modern attempts at deciphering the script by many decades,

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Donnelly had to rely upon the then most readily available source on Mayan writing, a description by the sixteenth-century Franciscan and bishop Diego de Landa (1524–1579). Donnelly, like his contemporaries, radically misconstrued the nature of Mayan characters. Only in the middle of the twentieth century did scholars of Mayan realise that Landa had actually recorded syllables (ah, be, and so forth), and serious progress with the script could then begin.8 Another writer in the same genre was the explorer and antiquarian Augustus Le Plongeon (1826–1908), who suggested that the Mayan and Hebrew languages resembled each other. Although this was, prima facie, a rather odd claim (given that the two languages are utterly unlike each other in sound and structure), Le Plongeon saw Mayan origins and Mayan etymologies everywhere. His Queen Moo and the Egyptian Sphinx (1900) provided abundant examples, but a few illustrations of his approach will suffice. The Akkadians of Mesopotamia were, according to Le Plongeon, descendants of the Mayans, as could be seen from the fact that their ethnonym resembled the Mayan words akal “pond; marshy ground” and akil “ground full of reeds or rushes” (Le Plongeon 1900: 29). The name of the homeland of the Sumerians, Sumer, was related to a Mayan word for valley. Indeed, Le Plongeon insisted that scores of Akkadian and Maya words were related, and he provided a lengthy word list to prove his point (ibid.: 30–32). Even Jesus spoke Mayan (ibid.: 38): the words he uttered on the cross “Eli Eli lema sabachthani,” usually rendered as “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me,” were, in reality, the Mayan phrase “Hele, Hele, lamahzabac ta ni,” translated by him as “Now, now. I am fainting; darkness covers my face.” Of the various occult currents prevalent around the turn of the twentieth century, the family of Theosophical movements is no doubt the most influential. With Theosophy (and its offshoots), we take yet another major step away from the linguistic mainstream and towards an alternative vision of the linguistic past. Theosophical texts present a detailed theory of language origin and language development based upon purported ancient documents or upon clairvoyant insight. These theories are embedded in more general theories of human prehistory that need to be presented briefly. 8  On the nature of the Mayan script and its decipherment, see Bricker 2004 (a brief scholarly summary) and Coe 2012 (a popularising, detailed narrative by one of the key figures involved in this task).

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Helena Blavatsky on Language The main creator of Theosophical doctrines, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831–1891), formulated a cosmology in which evolution was the key concept. Her magnum opus The Secret Doctrine (1888) described this evolutionary process in the racial terms typical of the nineteenth century. Over vast spans of time, sentient entities or “monads” emerged from the Absolute, gradually incarnated in successively more material forms, passed through various fixed evolutionary stages, and were now poised to return again to a more spiritual state. Life on Earth was divided into seven “root-­ races” or epochs; in Blavatsky’s Theosophical terminology they were identified as the Polar, Hyperborean, Lemurian, Atlantean, and Aryan races, to be followed by two future races about whom little was known. As one root-race took over from its predecessor, the older race would not necessarily die out but lingered on as putatively inferior ethnic groups inhabiting the various cultural peripheries of the world. The development of language was part of this cosmic saga and was described in the second volume of The Secret Doctrine (Blavatsky 1999, vol. 2: 198–201). Here Blavatsky presented the details of how speech arose and gradually developed more distinct and advanced characteristics as humanity passed from one race to the next. This evolutionary pattern was used to comment upon two basic insights of nineteenth-century linguistics. The first was the family tree model of linguistic relationships, mentioned only briefly in The Secret Doctrine. The second was a typological division of the world’s languages into three categories, based not upon their origins but upon one single, readily observable parameter. This typology, stemming from an impressionistic assessment of morphological complexity, was connected to the work of writers active in the early nineteenth century—in particular, to August Wilhelm Schlegel (1767–1845) and Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835).9 In agglutinating languages, each morpheme has a readily identifiable meaning, and words are typically composed of a chain of several morphemes. An example is Turkish, where ev- “house,” -ler- “plural,” -iniz- “your (plural),” and -den “from” combine into evlerinizden: “from your houses.” Inflecting languages also form words consisting of several morphemes, i.e. a stem plus prefixes and suffixes. However, each prefix or suffix typically combines several grammatical functions. In Latin, the suffix—ibus can designate (among other things) 9

 See Shibatani and Bynon 1995 for a brief history of typological approaches to language.

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the masculine plural ablative of the third declension, but it is impossible to take apart the suffix and find a particular segment of it that specifically designates the ablative case, the masculine gender, the plural number, or the third declension. Isolating languages do not combine morphemes; each meaning-carrying element is a word of its own. Classical Chinese is often quoted as an example of such a language: there are separate words to denote such grammatical features as tense and aspect. The three typological labels are one-dimensional, rough, and impressionistic, but they began to be widely used in linguistics after the late 1920s. What these linguists did not inherit from their nineteenth-century predecessors was the normative evaluation that these earlier authors could connect to each of the language types and the evolutionary schema that linked them together. Humboldt’s writings on the topic, for example, were characterised by an “obscurity of expression” (Allan 2007: 207), with the result that although some passages suggested that all language structures were products of human creativity other quotes strongly implied that there was a hierarchy among them. Inflection was a “principle of genius, born of a true intuition of language” (Humboldt 1999: 145), whereas agglutination was apparently the result of a “weakness of the inwardly organizing sense of language” (ibid.: 107). Somewhat later, August Schleicher (1821–1868) suggested that the typological differences were linked to a chronological development. Isolating languages came first, agglutinating languages being a later development, and inflecting languages arriving last on the historical scene (Allan 2007: 209). Blavatsky’s historiography borrowed these tenets of nineteenth-century scholarship but placed them into the occult, racialised historiography described above.10 The first race had no speech at all, and communication had to be handled telepathically. The second race developed a language consisting of only vowels. The third or Lemurian race initially had a kind of proto-language that merely emulated the sounds of nature. As they continued to evolve, “creative gods” incarnated in the bodies of the Lemurians, and language as we know it developed. At this point in occult history, everybody still spoke the same language. This product of divinely-­ impelled Lemurian linguistic evolution consisted solely of monosyllabic words. Blavatsky assured her readers that the largely monosyllabic, isolating languages of East Asia were the direct descendants of this early form of language.  For the details on what is summarised here, see Blavatsky 1999, vol. 2: 198–201.

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Only on Atlantis did more morphologically complex languages evolve. Atlanteans spoke a variety of languages, some agglutinating and some inflecting. From Blavatsky’s perspective, the agglutinating languages were an inferior form of language, and only “decayed” remnants of the agglutinating languages remained in existence when the Atlantean stage was succeeded by the Aryan. The native languages of North America belonged to this stratum. The most perfected of the highest, inflected, Atlantean form of language was the ancestor of the classical languages and especially Sanskrit, which was considered a kind of sacred Theosophical language: the mystery tongue of the initiates of the fifth, Aryan race. Contrary to the view that was commonly held at the time, the other Indo-European languages (a term Blavatsky did not accept) were not branches on the same tree as Sanskrit but the descendants of the latter. The Semitic languages were inflecting as well, and some place was needed for them in this scheme. Since Blavatsky rejected the family tree model, the Hebrew and Arabic languages turned out to also be descendants of the inflecting form of Atlantean, but whereas Sanskrit was its loftiest form, “the ‘Semitic’ languages are the bastard descendants of the first phonetic corruptions of the eldest children of the early Sanskrit” (Blavatsky 1999, vol. 2: 200).

Ariosophy and the Ario-Germanic Ursprache The racist and anti-Semitic potential of passages such as the final quote of the preceding section was in the early decades of the twentieth century fully exploited by writers within the Ariosophic current.11 As we have seen, Blavatsky considered the “Aryans” to be the race that had perfected the primeval language. Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels (1874–1954) explained that only his own heroic blonde race was capable of creating language (Lanz von Liebenfels 1911: 3–4). Only they had the skull structure, and therefore the brain physiology, necessary for the emergence of language in the full sense of the word. Just as Blavatsky had previously done, Lanz von Liebenfels ranked inflecting languages as higher developmental stages than agglutinative and isolating languages. For him, the difference was explicable in terms of the higher racial soul of the Ario-Germans. What did this primal Ario-German language look like? Lanz von Liebenfels provided some hints (1911: 8–17), but for a detailed answer we must turn to a massive 650-page monograph on this topic, written by  The standard reference on this current is Goodrick-Clarke 1985.

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Guido von List (1848–1919). List was passionately interested in Germanic history and was a well-known figure in the turn-of-the-century völkisch milieu. In 1902, he contracted a serious eye disease, became effectively blind for 11 months, and withdrew into an inner world. He felt that, while in a visionary state, he had come in contact with an ancient form of runic magic and with the secrets of the Germanic language. After regaining his sight, List began to compose a prolific corpus of writings expounding the insights he had gained, texts that, upon closer scrutiny, were heavily reliant on Theosophical concepts. One of these volumes, Die Ursprache der Ario-­ Germanen und ihre Mysteriensprache (The Primal Language of the Ario-­ Germanic People and Their Mystery Language, 1915), was devoted, as the title indicated, to the putative proto-language of his Germanic ancestors. The very name Ario-Germans was rooted in List’s version of Theosophy. Human prehistory was (as argued in Blavatsky’s work as well) understood in terms of the successive dominance of various root-races and their subraces. The fifth, Aryan root-race began its existence a million years ago, but the origin of the fourth sub-race of this root-race, the Ario-­German, could only be traced back 15,000 years to a time when it inhabited the circumpolar continent of Arktogäa (von List 1915: 20–30). Climate change ushered in the Ice Age and forced this sub-race to migrate towards the south. Squeezed in between the ice and the sea, the Ario-­Germans became an isolated people that developed a distinct civilisation (ibid.: 32). Other, older branches of the Aryan root-race had already spread over most of the Old World, imparting its lofty culture to the benighted local peoples. In particular, the luminaries of religion, from Osiris to Buddha, were all Aryans (von List 1915: 33). Unfortunately, their encounter with the local inhabitants weakened their racial unity. Once the Ice Age was over, the Ario-German sub-race could expand over most of Europe. They mixed with and invigorated the remnants of older Aryan peoples, which led to the ethnographic map of present-day Europe (ibid.: 34–37). In List’s view, this racial history also explained the linguistic past. Racial purity had preserved traces of the Aryan proto-language, despite the vast periods of time involved. Aryans, from List’s perspective, had emerged as a distinct race one million years ago. Some facts about their ancient proto-­ language could only be ascertained by consulting the arische Geheimüberlieferung, that is, the Aryan secret records (von List 1915: 37). From there, one learned that each root-race had spoken a language that had the number of vowels that corresponded to its chronological order in

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the list of root-races. The language of the first root-race had only one vowel, the next had two, the next again had three, the Atlanteans that succeeded them had four, and the Aryans, finally, spoke a language that possessed the five vowels a, e, i, o, and u (ibid.: 37–38). Other aspects of the Aryan tongue could be reconstructed by investigating present-day languages and by peeling away layers of later accretions in order to arrive first at monosyllabic root words (Wurzelwörter), then at the even more original proto-­words (Urwörter), and finally at the seed words (Keimwörter) that lay at the very origins of modern vocabularies. The fact that there were three strata was due to a tripartite law of Aryan linguistics, namely: words emerged, existed for some time, and then faded away again in order to prepare the way for a new emergence. List’s latitude in reconstructing these older layers was apparent from his methodological announcement (ibid.: 40) that one had to look beyond such apparently ephemeral details as prefixes and suffixes, short and long vowels, stressed and unstressed syllables, and his conclusion that the seed words thus ascertained could have a multitude of different meanings (ibid.: 41). He then linked individual sounds via elaborate correspondences to the occult symbolism of numbers as well as runes, planets, and much else besides. From List’s point of view, every consonant and every vowel had an inherent meaning in the primeval Ario-Germanic language, one that could manifest itself in an emergent, existing, or fading form. By combining each consonant with each vowel, the significance of every single Ario-Germanic syllable could be listed. List spent the next nearly 300 pages of his book accomplishing precisely that gargantuan task, adding numerous examples of words containing these syllables. As in so many other books in the alternative linguistic genre, the entire web of meanings appears to be built upon spurious etymologies.

Rudolf Steiner’s Theory of Language Origins In this brief overview of occultist attempts to trace the origins and diffusion of language, Anthroposophy probably represents the most thorough effort to transcend the epistemic barriers that mainstream linguistics had imposed upon itself. To recall the remarks made about the linguistic paradigm presented at the beginning of this chapter, mainstream linguistics generally proceeded by tracing regular changes, stopping at a (perhaps not clearly definable) time in the past where such changes were no longer traceable by empirical means, and offering few if any suggestions as to how language as such arose. Anthroposophy’s founder, Rudolf Steiner

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(1861–1925), claimed that he possessed an alternative epistemological path, an almost infallible first-hand insight into facts inaccessible to “materialistic” mainstream researchers, including realities that lurked behind these barriers of academic historical linguistics. Many of Steiner’s pronouncements on language consisted of reflections upon the nature of language as such. Statements about language origins and linguistic development could also be found in these writings.12 A speech held in Copenhagen in 1911 and later published as the second chapter of his Die geistige Führung des Menschen und der Menschheit (Spiritual Guidance of the Human and Humanity)13 presented the basic events of linguistic prehistory as revealed by Steiner’s clairvoyant perception—an Anthroposophical counterpart, so to speak, of the Biblical myth of the divine creation of Adam as a being endowed with a primordial language, and of the Tower of Babel incident as the origin of linguistic plurality. Like his Theosophical counterparts, Steiner suggested that humans had passed through several distinct cultural stages, including a stage on the continent of Atlantis. Both the origin and the diversity of language were traced back to this primordial life-form. Proto-humans on Atlantis had spoken a single language, a primeval tongue inspired by beings from the Moon who had completed their evolutionary cycle there. These first Atlanteans expressed their impressions of the external world by means of consonants and their own feelings associated with these impressions by means of vowels. These consonants and vowels were the immediate reflexes of primeval impressions-with-feelings: contrary to the nearly universal agreement in mainstream linguistics that linguistic signs were arbitrary, human speech, and Atlantean speech in particular, thus arose as a natural counterpart of the things and emotions it represented.14 The original Ur-language split up because of yet further impulses from other spiritual beings: entities that were understood (or misunderstood) in various mythologies as angels or heroes, in Steiner’s clairvoyant elucidation were identified as those who had not completed their lunar developmental cycles and who were destined to be bearers of

 A collection of Steiner’s statements on language can be found in Steiner 1980.  Printed as Vol. 15 of the Gesamtausgabe and available online at multiple sites, e.g.: http://anthroposophie.byu.edu/schriften/015.pdf. Accessed 18 July 2018. 14  The same mimological hypothesis is a repeatedly affirmed constituent of Steiner’s language theory; see, e.g., Steiner 1980: 22–27. 12 13

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an impulse towards differentiation and individuality. In Steiner’s cosmology, this is known as the Luciferian impulse. The mechanisms that provided a natural match between sound and meaning, imprinting feelings by means of vowels and impressions through consonants, were literally cosmic. Steiner described human life as a series of incarnations, in which the disembodied individual in the period between death and rebirth went through a process with distinct Platonic echoes. The entity first ascended through the planetary spheres up to the sphere of the fixed stars, and then returned for another incarnation. On its way, the etheric body of the individual was affected consonantally by the zodiac and vocalically by the movements of the planets. After being reborn, the child who learned their mother tongue, in a sense, merely reactivated these cosmic consonants and vowels (Steiner 1980: 58–59). Unfortunately, most historically documented languages were too far removed from the Atlantean proto-language to retain more than mere traces of this original match between sound and sense. In particular, the transition within the current fifth post-Atlantean period from the Greek to the Roman cultures implied a reduction of language from something living and concrete to an abstraction (Steiner 1980: 52–53). The reason for this loss of immediacy was that the more abstract languages were affected by the occult constitution of the human being. Semitic languages such as Hebrew provided closer representatives of the way things originally impinged on the human being, while Indo-European languages had been modified by processes connected with the astral body (ibid.: 29). All of us, regardless the linguistic family our native tongue happened to belong to, were born into cultures speaking such reduced languages. Only one person in the post-Atlantean period still spoke the original language of the legendary continent: one of two children born at roughly the same time, both of whom were named Jesus. This particular Jesus was already at birth able to converse in Atlantean, an idiom spoken by nobody else at the time. Miraculously, his mother understood him.15 Language change could also be clairvoyantly traced, and would, in the light of such higher knowledge, be seen to follow very precise pathways. Individual speech sounds provided one illustration of the developmental steps involved. The regular historical sound shifts detected by nineteenth-­ century Indo-Europeanist linguists had a deeper explanation (Steiner 15  Steiner 1911, available at: http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/FromJ2C1973/ 19111012p01.html. Accessed 18 July 2018.

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1980: 114–119). The sounds of a language were rooted in either the astral, etheric, or physical body. A universal law successively transformed astral sounds into etheric and then physical ones, and then again into astral sounds. Voiced stops, for instance, were astral; voiceless stops belonged to the etheric stage; and fricatives were physical. Correspondences between these three series of consonants (as in German drei, Greek treis, and Gothic threis for “three”) reflected the way in which some languages remained in a particular phase of this transformative cycle, while others continued to progress through the three stages (ibid.: 115–124).

Speech Eurythmy Steiner’s most distinctive contribution to contemporary esotericism was his ability to formulate practical consequences of his doctrines. Few people may know much about Steiner’s extravagantly alternative ideas about seven-year cycles in the development of the etheric and astral bodies of children, but very many will have heard of the Waldorf schools where these theories are transmuted into a didactic programme. I will conclude this chapter by seeing how Steiner was able to transform arcane suggestions about the proto-language spoken on Atlantis into a performing art: eurythmy. Eurythmy began as a kind of Theosophical dance that Steiner conceptualised in 1911.16 It evolved into a way of depicting sounds and words in the form of bodily movement. Steiner continued to work on the basics of eurythmy in the post-war years, and his major theoretical pronouncements on the new art form belonged to the last years of his life. A series of lectures held in 1924 and published as Eurythmie als sichtbare Sprache (Eurythmy as Visible Speech)17 explained the rationale for transforming speech sounds into movement. The actual presentation of these movements by groups of performers and the many details involved in staging the new art were to a considerable extent developed by his wife Marie Steiner (1867–1948) and gradually evolved over many sessions of teaching eurythmy to members of the Anthroposophical Society. These details are most easily garnered from literature developed by those of Steiner’s followers who specialised in this branch of Anthroposophy.  For a brief history of eurythmy, see Zander 2011: 301–307.  Printed as Vol. 279 of the Gesamtausgabe and available online at: http://anthroposophie.byu.edu/vortraege/279c.pdf. Accessed 18 July 2018. 16 17

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The Cratylean approach to language that we have seen elsewhere in the Anthroposophical understanding is also at play here. Whereas language in the modern world according to Steiner has become abstract and conventional, it originally expressed feelings and external objects in an authentic way. Suprasensible investigation could reveal the link between speech, sound, and reality because, even when the physical body is rigid during speech, the normally invisible etheric body moves in ways that correspond precisely to the sounds that are uttered. Since it is the movement of the etheric body that in eurythmy is transferred into physical gestures, the result is not an art form expressing the subjectivity of the performer, but ideally an expression of the inner nature of sound and speech itself. Vowels did not only represent emotions in the Ur-language of Atlantis— in present-day languages, each vowel is naturally connected to a specific feeling as well. The task of the eurythmy practitioner is to express the emotion involved in the vowel sound through movement or posture.18 The a sound (of course, as pronounced in Steiner’s own native German) represents wonder or amazement but also defence against an excessively strong feeling. The appropriate motion is angular: holding the arms at an angle to the body, spreading the fingers to form angles. The e sound represents fear and awe, but also, more negatively, disgust, and is naturally represented by crossed arms, legs, or feet, or by crossing an arm across the torso. The sound i is the perhaps more abstract emotion associated with asserting one’s self, as in the very word for the first-person pronoun in German, ich. The associated posture is to form a diagonal shape with one arm pointing up at an angle and the other placed at a downward angle towards the ground. The vowel o is the loving or admiring embracing of somebody or something and is—like the shape of the letter—associated with rounded motions and postures. The u vowel is fearful and reserved, and is expressed with tight postures, arms pressed close to the body or to each other. The specific German umlauted vowels and diphthongs also have their associated qualities: ü with joyful wonder, ö with dissonance, and so forth. Consonants, in Steiner’s perspective, represent the external world. By representing them in movement, one is connected to earlier times when consonants depicted the world around us in an even more direct sense. The very small movements made by the etheric body underlying the larynx and adjacent organs were in those distant times expressed by the entire human being. By moving eurythmically, the performer, so to speak,  For the details, see Dubach-Donath 1974: 17–27 (vowels), 81–101 (consonants).

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expresses natural connections between consonant sounds and body movements that had been nearly suppressed in the passage from the Atlantean stage to the present. The associations are detailed and very specific, and a few examples will suffice to illustrate what is involved. The consonant d denotes the first contact of the human being with impressions from the external world. The motion associated with it is one of pointing or indicating with arms slowly descending. The sound f is a much more insistent impingement of the world on one’s senses—for example, a shout, a shock or blow, or a flash of lightning. The movement of the limbs is more forceful, directed either downwards or in a springy, elastic motion away from the body. The consonant g wards off something in the external world that appears slightly threatening or unpleasant; a more distinctly threatening situation corresponds to k. Both movements are averting but with different degrees of intensity. The list goes on, through the entire alphabet. The vowel associations, at least to a non-Anthroposophist, often seem based upon the meaning that interjections or other words have in German. The consonants are explicitly illustrated by means of German locutions. How is it possible, for instance, for those of us who lack Steiner’s clairvoyant faculties to see that d is associated with a first reaction of the human being to the external word? The answer is that key expressions and words in German with a d-like quality denote this kind of experience: dies durch dich (this [impression is perceived] through you), deuten (interpret). The connection between these quite language-specific associations and the contention that the emotional tenor of vowels and the ultimate meaning of consonants goes back to the proto-language of Atlantis is based upon Steiner’s monogenetic and degenerative understanding of language. The language of Atlantis was a perfect medium for expressing truths about inner and outer realities. The classical languages of the major religious traditions retain a fair amount of this one-to-one correspondence with reality. Modern languages are much more distant from primordial mimesis, but traces remain for the spiritual scientist to discern. Eurythmy goes beyond merely asserting the mimetic nature of language and ultimately presents itself as an esoteric web of correspondences. Not only are speech sounds in Steiner’s writings on the topic linked “naturally” to feelings and events, they are also described as microcosmic manifestations of the macrocosm. As we saw above, Steiner associated the vowels with the astrological planets and some of the consonants with the signs of the zodiac. With regard to the sounds reviewed above, a corresponds to Mercury, e to Venus, i to Mars, o to Jupiter, and u to Saturn. D

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and perhaps k19 seem to lack astrological counterparts, while g is a Sagittarian kind of sound (Dubach-Donath 1974: 250–259). Ultimately, the basic building blocks of language for Steiner not only point back to occult linguistic origins but are also rooted in the spiritual secrets of the cosmos itself.

References Primary Sources Blavatsky, Helena Petrovna. 1999 [1888]. The Secret Doctrine. Facsimile edtion. Pasadena: Theosophical University Press. Donnelly, Ignatius. 1882. Atlantis: The Antediluvian World. New York: Harper. Dubach-Donath, Annemarie. 1974. Die Grundelemente der Eurythmie. 4th ed. Dornach: Philosophisch-Anthroposophischer Verlag. Lanz von Liebenfels, Jörg. 1911. Die Blonden als Schöpfer der Sprache, ein Abriss der Ursprachenforschung (Protolinguistik). Ostara 52. Le Plongeon, Augustus. 1900. Queen Moo and the Egyptian Sphinx. New York: n/a. List, Guido von. 1915. Die Ursprache der Ario-Germanen und ihre Mysteriensprache. Wien: Rudolf Lechner & Sohn. Steiner, Rudolf. 1911. From Jesus to Christ: Lecture VIII: The Two Jesus Children, Zoroaster and Buddha. http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/FromJ2C1973/ 19111012p01.html. Accessed 13 May 2019. ———. 1980. Sprechen und Sprache. Vorträge, ausgewählt und herausgegeben von Christoph Lindenberg. Stuttgart: Verlag freies Geistesleben.

Secondary Sources Allan, Keith. 2007. The Western Classical Tradition in Linguistics. London and Oakville: Equinox. Borst, Arno. 1957–1963. Der Turmbau von Babel. Geschichte der Meinungen über Ursprung und Vielfalt der Sprachen und Völker. 6 vols. Stuttgart: A. Hiersemann. Bricker, Victoria R. 2004. Mayan. In The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World’s Ancient Languages, ed. Roger D.  Woodard, 1041–1070. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Coe, Michael. 2012. Breaking the Maya Code. 3rd ed. London: Thames & Hudson.

19  Perhaps, because Dubach-Donath (1974: 256) somewhat oddly adds that c corresponds to Libra; like several other writers in the mimological tradition, she does not clearly distinguish the sounds of language from the letters that rather imperfectly represent sounds in written form.

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Eco, Umberto. 1995. The Search for the Perfect Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Genette, Gérard. 1995. Mimologics. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press. Gessinger, Joachim, and Wolfert von Rahden. 1989. Theorien vom Ursprung der Sprache. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter. Godwin, Joscelyn. 2011. Atlantis and the Cycles of Time: Prophecies, Traditions, and Occult Revelations. Rochester: Inner Traditions. Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas. 1985. The Occult Roots of Nazism: Secret Aryan Cults and their Influence on Nazi Ideology. New York: New York University Press. Humboldt, Wilhelm von. 1999 [1836]. On Language: On the Diversity of Human Language Construction and Its Influence on the Mental Development of the Human Species. Trans. Peter Heath. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. L’Hermitte, René. 1987. Marr, marrisme, marristes: Science et perversion idéologique; une page de l’histoire de la linguistique soviétique. Paris: Institut d’Etudes Slaves. Laut, Jens-Peter. 2000. Das Türkische als Ursprache? Sprachwissenschaftliche Theorien in der Zeit des erwachenden türkischen Nationalismus. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Matisoff, James A. 1990. On Megalocomparison. Language 66: 106–120. Metcalf, George J. 1974. The Indo-European Hypothesis in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. In Studies in the History of Linguistics: Traditions and Paradigms, ed. Dell Hymes, 233–257. Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press. Olender, Maurice. 1989. Les langues du paradis: aryens et sémites, un couple providentiel. Paris: Gallimard. Ruhlen, Merritt. 1987. A Guide to the World’s Languages. Vol. 1: Classification. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Saussure, Ferdinand de. 1995 [1916]. Cours de linguistique générale. Paris: Payot. Shibatani, Masayoshi, and Theodora Bynon, eds. 1995. Approaches to Language Typology. Oxford: Clarendon. Sprague de Camp, L. 1954. Lost Continents: The Atlantis Theme in History, Science, and Literature. New York: Gnome Press. Thomas, Lawrence L. 1957. The Linguistic Theories of N. Ja. Marr. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Weaver, Eric Beckett. 2003/2004. Madness in the Media: An Anthropological Discussion of the Significance of Theories of Cultural and Historical Primacy Illustrated with Examples from Hungary and Serbia. Compass Directions. http://users.ox.ac.uk/~oaces/weaver.html. Accessed 13 May 2019. Wheelock, Wade T. 2005 [1987]. Language: Sacred Language. In Encyclopedia of Religion, ed. Lindsay Jones, 5301–5308. Detroit: Macmillan Reference. Zander, Helmut. 2011. Rudolf Steiner. Die Biografie. München: Piper.

CHAPTER 8

The Art of Esoteric Posthumousness Marco Pasi

Men have always been expected to cut their coat according to their cloth, they learnt to do so, but their wishes and dreams did not comply. Here almost all men are future, rise above the life that has been granted them. —Bloch (1986: 1365).

In 1970 the Finnish scholar Sixten Ringbom (1935–1992) published a book titled The Sounding Cosmos (Ringbom 1970), which was the first scholarly book to seriously examine the esoteric interests of a protagonist of the artistic avant-gardes of the early twentieth century, namely Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944).1 This book showed to what extent the invention of abstraction as a new form of art was related to the influence of esoteric ideas. It generated a broad discussion and opened the way to further

1

 The book was preceded by an important article: Ringbom (1966).

M. Pasi (*) University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 L. Pokorny, F. Winter (eds.), The Occult Nineteenth Century, Palgrave Studies in New Religions and Alternative Spiritualities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55318-0_8

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researches in the same direction.2 Those researches were the basis for the ground-breaking exhibition The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 1890–1985, curated by Maurice Tuchman (b. 1936) at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1986.3 Since Ringbom’s book and Tuchman’s exhibition, a lot has happened concerning the relationship between alternative spirituality and modern art. Important books and essays have been published, major retrospective exhibitions have been held, and large research projects—such as “Enchanted Modernities”—have been supported by institutional funding agencies. Although there may still be differences of opinion as to the extent of the influence of esoteric movements—such as Theosophy and Anthroposophy—on the origins of abstract art or on the early twentieth-­ century avant-gardes, it would be difficult for an art historian today to deny that such an influence existed at all.

Esoteric Posthumousness An important exhibition held between 2018 and 2019 at the Lenbachhaus art gallery in Munich, entitled World Receivers, has shown once again how the development of modern art cannot be properly understood without considering its esoteric dimension.4 The exhibition focused mainly on three women artists who were deeply influenced by esoteric ideas: Georgiana Houghton (1814–1884), Hilma af Klint (1862–1944), and Emma Kunz (1892–1963). These three artists developed, each in her own time, an abstract, non-figurative, a-mimetic style independently from the male-dominated world of artistic modernism.5 The title of the exhibition, World Receivers (Weltempfänger), refers to their particular sensitivity, their ability to pick up the signals from another world and translate them into an extraordinarily innovative and original pictorial language. One of the qualities that I find most intriguing in the art of these three artists is what I call “posthumousness,” which I define as “the inability or unwillingness to have one’s [artistic] work promoted and recognised  On the history of the book and its influence, see Introvigne (2018).  See the catalogue: Tuchman (1986). 4  The exhibition “World Receivers—Weltempfänger” was held between 6 November 2018 and 10 March 2019 in the Kunstbau space of the Lenbachhaus gallery. For the catalogue, see Althaus et al. (2018). 5  On the pre-history of abstraction, also with an attention to possible connections to esoteric ideas, see the catalogue of an important exhibition: Rosenberg and Hollein (2007). 2 3

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during one’s life, which projects the work into a temporal limbo [of obscurity] that may last decades or even forever” (Pasi 2015: 113). However, posthumousness is meaningful for us only when such work possesses an aesthetic quality or energy that is able to challenge neglect and oblivion— sometimes subtly and gradually, sometimes suddenly and dramatically. This eventually leads to recognition and canonisation. Then, there is usually a sense of wonder: How were we able to ignore this work until now? How could it remain into obscurity for so long? The paradigmatic case for posthumousness in modern art is Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890). But, important as he is in the canon of modern art, van Gogh’s example is less relevant here, because I would rather like to focus on cases where posthumousness gets mixed with a deep interest in alternative spirituality, mysticism, and esoteric doctrines or practices. This is not so much the case with van Gogh, but it is indeed so with the artists included in the World Receivers exhibition. The relationship between posthumousness and alternative spirituality is probably not purely accidental, but points to some interesting patterns. There is a long list of artists influenced by esotericism to whom the concept of posthumousness can be clearly applied. For some, recognition is already a matter of fact—in some cases even spectacularly so, as is obviously the case with Houghton, af Klint, and Kunz. For others, it is likely to be coming soon enough, or may have to wait some more time. I could mention a few examples: Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn (1881–1962);6 Aleister

6  The daughter of an upper-class Dutch family established in London, Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn moved to Monte Verità, near Ascona, Switzerland, in the 1920s and became a leading personality in the community of spiritually-oriented persons living there at the time. Along with Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961), she was instrumental in the creation of the famous series of interdisciplinary conferences, the Eranos Tagungen, that were so important for defining a certain approach to the study of religion and spirituality. Over the years, she created an extremely interesting oeuvre of graphical, abstract works based on esoteric symbolism, which have rarely received the attention they deserve from art critics. These works can now be seen in the Casa Anatta Museum on Monte Verità. I am not aware of a monograph or major exhibition devoted to her artistic work. A recent rise of interest has been generated by the collective exhibition curated in 2016 by Massimiliano Gioni at the New Museum in New York, entitled ‘The Keeper’, which included some of her drawings. For the catalogue, see Gioni and Bell (2016), especially pp.  142–149. On the history of Eranos, with frequent references to Fröbe-Kapteyn and her crucial role therein, see Hakl (2013) and Bernardini (2011).

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Crowley (1875–1947);7 Ithell Colquhoun (1906–1988);8 and Luigi Pericle (1916–2001).9 Pericle, an artist deeply influenced by alternative spirituality, has been rediscovered only recently and his posthumous recognition is now growing fast. A large retrospective exhibition, the first since his death, was held in 2019 at the Querini Stampalia Foundation in Venice and received quite some attention from the press.10 Pericle’s case is particularly interesting. After making a fortune in the 1950s as the creator of the cartoon character “Max the Hamster,” he decided to devote himself entirely to painting. In the early 1960s, his new career as an artist took off quite rapidly with a number of important exhibitions, thanks particularly to the support of influential critics, gallerists, and collectors. His work was deeply influenced by his interest in alternative spirituality and Asian religious traditions. But, at the end of the 1960s, he went through a personal crisis and decided to disappear completely from the world of art. He lived the rest of his life in relative isolation in his house on Monte Verità, in the Swiss canton of Ticino. Nonetheless, he silently continued to create his art. When he died in 2001 he was practically forgotten, and it is only a few years ago that the immense body of work that he left behind in his house was rediscovered.

7  I co-curated, together with Giuseppe Di Liberti and Alessandra Sandrolini, an exhibition of Aleister Crowley’s newly found paintings in 2008 at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, which was connected to the broader exhibition ‘Traces du sacré’, curated by Jean de Loisy and Angela Lampe at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, in the same year. For the catalogue, see Pasi (2008). See also the English version of my essay from the catalogue: Pasi (2013). 8  Ithell Colquhoun was a practicing occultist, author of several books and essays, and painter. She had a brief but intense connection to the surrealist movement in Great Britain in the late 1930s but was unable or unwilling to secure long-lasting recognition for herself as an artist. Her work is still waiting to be appreciated outside of a small (but ever-growing) circle of connoisseurs. This will happen at some point, considering also that the major collection of her artistic works has been transferred by the National Trust, which previously owned it, to the Tate Gallery. For an introduction to her life and work, see Ferentinou (2017), Ratcliffe (2007), and Hale (2020). 9  For an introduction to Luigi Pericle, see Biasca-Caroni and Biasca-Caroni (2018). 10  The exhibition was curated by Chiara Gatti. For the catalogue, see Gatti et al. (2019).

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The Cultural and Political Value of Posthumousness It is evident that, depending on particular biographical and psychological circumstances, posthumousness can find itself closely associated with the world of creativity. And yet it has not been really explored as a phenomenon in its own right. It is obviously not one that we can observe only in the visual arts, although this is my main focus in this chapter. In fact, posthumousness—and more particularly esoteric posthumousness—can easily be found in other fields of creativity, such as literature (e.g., the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa [1888–1935] with his famous trunk of posthumous papers) or music (the Italian composer Giacinto Scelsi [1905–1988]).11 And, in some of these cases, posthumousness itself becomes an object of critical reflection for the artist, as is the case with Pessoa, who devotes many (posthumous) pages to the problem of celebrity and artistic recognition (Pessoa 2000). An aspect that I find particularly interesting about posthumousness is the way in which it irritates and is antithetical to some basic ideological presuppositions of liberal capitalist societies, such as the affirmation of individuality and personal success. Insofar as these ideologies influence the system of contemporary art, posthumousness appears to be at odds with the latter as well.12 Clearly, posthumousness is the opposite of what the system of art wants from artists today. An artist is expected to be not just a creator but also a manager, an entrepreneur, if not even an impresario of him- or herself.13 In other words, to strive for living success, not for posthumous recognition. Whereas this kind of pressure is undeniably an aspect of the art establishment, it is interesting to see how artists may react against it. An interesting case here is the contemporary American artist Cady Noland (b. 1956), who had considerable success in the 1980s and the early 1990s, even setting a record for the highest price paid for an artwork by a living

11  I had already made a comparison between Hilma af Klint, Georgiana Houghton, Fernando Pessoa and Giacinto Scelsi—also briefly touching on their shared quality of posthumousness—in Pasi (2015). 12  For my understanding of the system of contemporary art, see Pasi (2019). 13  For an interesting reflection on how contemporary artists are increasingly perceived as and expected to be ‘creative entrepreneurs’, see Deresiewicz (2015).

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female artist.14 Interestingly enough, the role of celebrity in contemporary American society was one of the major themes of her work. After 1995 she decided to stop having personal exhibitions of her works and practically disappeared from the art scene, even committing the ultimate sin of disavowing some of her earlier works, which made some of the collectors who paid millions for those works react angrily to the point of bringing her to court (Gilbert 2015). So here, similarly to the case of Pericle, we have a successful artist who at some point tries his or her best to reject recognition and intentionally construct his or her own posthumousness. Esoteric Posthumousness: Types and Motivations If we reflect on the artists I have mentioned, and more particularly on the three women artists featured in the Lenbachhaus exhibition, I think we can see some patterns emerge. First of all, there seem to be two main types of posthumousness: (1) an inability to function within the art system; and (2) a lack of interest in, or a rejection of, the art system. In both cases the result is the same: an artist who has enough talent and originality to be recognised by the art establishment, and who can have personal success, finds him- or herself in a situation of relative obscurity, which lasts until the moment of his or her death and can continue indefinitely afterwards. However, the two cases are also different. In the first one there may be a desire to enjoy artistic fame, but this desire, for whatever reason, is frustrated and cannot be fulfilled. In the second one, there is apparently no desire to be part of the artistic establishment and achieve personal success. If we look closer at the latter instance (posthumousness as an apparent choice of the artist), and we place it within the context of esotericism, we realise that there may be at least three different motivations for esoteric posthumousness. First, this choice is perceived by the artist as dictated, or even imposed, by some spiritual authority. This could be a preter-human entity from another level of existence, but it could also be a spiritual master living in this world. This is for instance, as we will see, the role Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925) seems to play with Hilma af Klint at a certain point 14  The work of Cady Noland has been shown between October 2018 and May 2019 in a large retrospective exhibition at the Museum für Moderne Kunst (MMK) in Frankfurt. This was her first solo exhibition in many years. On the exhibition and more generally on the artist and her work, see the booklet published for the occasion (Pfeffer 2018). See also the important essay by her friend and fellow artist Steven Parrino (2005).

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in her life. Second, the fruition of the artist’s work seems to be projected into the future. The artist believes that the world is not presently ready or mature enough for the spiritual message conveyed through this artistic work. Subjectively, this could explain why attempts to exhibit the work would not be successful, even if the artist wanted to make attempts in that direction. Third, there might be a lack of interest from the part of the artist for any material or mundane gain that might be achieved through an art considered to be inherently spiritual. In this case any compromise between the spiritual and the commercial value of an artwork would be implicitly or explicitly rejected. A Comparative Analysis of Posthumous Esoteric Artists Let us see now how we can relate some of these types and motivations to the concrete cases of artists inspired by esoteric ideas. In order to do so, I will focus on the examples of the three “posthumous” artists included in the aforementioned Lenbachhaus exhibition: Georgiana Houghton, Hilma af Klint, and Emma Kunz. How do they fit into this rather abstract scheme of types and motivations? A comparison between them will offer, I believe, some interesting answers to this question. All three artists have much in common.15 First of all, they claimed to be receiving their art from spiritual sources that go beyond their limited selves and their personal creativity. Second, they perceived the value of their work as being not primarily aesthetic or artistic, but spiritual. Third, the fact of being women put them, in the context in which they lived, in a disadvantaged position with respect to the public recognition of the artistic quality of their work. These are the most significant similarities between the three. But there are also important differences. Let us begin with Georgiana Houghton.16 Like the other two, Houghton claims to receive her works from spiritual sources. These are identified as the spirits of deceased persons, who in some cases have achieved a high spiritual status and have become angels. We are here in the specific context of mid-nineteenth century spiritualism, before the foundation of the Theosophical Society and the development of other forms of 15  These commonalities are of course highlighted in the catalogue of the Lenbachhaus exhibition. See in particular the essay by one of the curators (Althaus 2018). 16  On Houghton, see Grant et al. (2016), Oberter (2006 and 2007), Atkinson (2005), and Gibbons (1988).

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occultism.17 Starting especially from the 1880s, these new forms would visibly influence the cultural landscape of Europe and be significant not only for Hilma af Klint, but also for many other modern artists at the turn and in the early decades of the twentieth century. What makes Houghton different from af Klint and Kunz is the fact that, although she attributed a deep spiritual meaning to her drawings, she also tried to make her work visible in a more conventional artistic context by organising a personal exhibition in a commercial gallery in London in 1871. She paid the costs of the exhibition herself, which she hoped to partly cover by selling the exhibited works, but in the end the plan turned out to be a failure, at least from a financial point of view (Grant and Pasi 2016: 18–20). Here we see some interesting differences, because the very attempt by Houghton to showcase her spiritual work in a secular art context brings her closer to the first type of posthumousness (i.e., posthumousness as an inability rather than as a choice). Af Klint and Kunz never seem to have made a similar attempt, and would therefore be closer to the second type. Whereas the spiritual quality of af Klint’s and Kunz’s works seems to have prevented a desire to have it acknowledged and appreciated in a nonspiritual artistic context, this was not the case with Houghton, even if her attempt was eventually unsuccessful. Let us turn now to af Klint.18 Even more clearly than Houghton, she received a formal training as an artist.19 With her, we find ourselves in a context where Theosophy, and later Anthroposophy, offered additional sources of inspiration apart from spiritualism. In fact, af Klint, initially as a member of a group of spiritualist women (“The Five”), received spiritual 17  For a conceptualisation of nineteenth century occultism, including its distinction from spiritualism, see Pasi (2005). 18  On af Klint, see now the important book-length biography that has been recently published: Voss (2020). For the rest, there is a growing literature on af Klint, which is based primarily (but not exclusively) on the catalogues of the important exhibitions of her works held in recent years: Bashkoff (2018), Birnbaum et  al. (2016), Müller-Westermann and Widoff (2013), Hilma af Klint (2008), Hutchinson (2005). Also important are the following collections of essays, published in connection to some of these exhibitions: Almqvist and Belfrage (2015, 2017, and 2019). Finally, it is important to mention the reproduction and English translation of a selection of af Klint’s notebooks in Burgin (2018). 19  Af Klint was admitted as a student to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm in 1882 and completed her studies in 1887 (see Müller-Westermann 2013: 37; Hilma af Klint 2008: 37). Women were accepted as students at the Academy only since 1864 (see Svensson 2005: 14).

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and artistic guidance from higher beings who resemble more the Theosophical Masters or Mahatmas than the simple spirits of deceased persons.20 She was “commissioned” by them to produce a large number of paintings that would then be displayed in a “Temple.” This is why the paintings belonging to this vast cycle, subdivided into several “series,” are usually referred to as the “Paintings for the Temple.” This was part of a grand cosmic plan, because the paintings would be a crucial instrument for the imminent revelation of spiritual truths to humanity. There was also a sense of urgency in their communications to af Klint: the task had to be accomplished before a certain time.21 The idea that these paintings would be shown to the public seemed therefore to be part of the plan from the beginning. This, however, should not happen in a secular context, but rather in a religious one, because this would be the only appropriate one to their primary—or perhaps even only—purpose. It is important to consider that the High Masters forbade af Klint to show the paintings before the whole work was completed. Showing the paintings at the end of the process was part of the plan, because this was the manner they could fulfil their role in the Masters’ grand spiritual scheme. But the moment when this would actually happen was projected into the future. Yet, even when af Klint had the feeling that the whole cycle of spiritual paintings had been completed, in December 1915, she still did not try to show them, at least for quite some time. Why? Her meeting with another esoteric master—this time an incarnate one—has been deemed crucial by most critics. In 1908 Rudolf Steiner, then lecturing in Stockholm, was invited by af Klint to visit her studio and see some of her paintings. It appears that he was not particularly impressed by them and was particularly critical about the mediumistic methods af Klint had used in order to produce them (Svensson 2005: 28–29; Voss 2019: 24). Af Klint, who hoped to receive encouragement and appreciation from one of the most charismatic and influential figures of the European esoteric scene at the time, was most probably disheartened by this and in fact even stopped painting for a number of years. 20  In a passage in one of her notebooks, af Klint calls them “High Lords of the Mysteries” (quoted in Svensson 2005: 19). On “The Five” group and af Klint’s involvement in it, see Müller-Westermann (2013: 41). 21  See for instance the communication from the Masters dated 11 January 1907 and reported by af Klint in her note book: “There is little time and much work that lies before you. The High Masters intend to build a temple in the world. You have been given the task of producing drawings for the space of three years” (af Klint 2005: 64).

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Although her interest in Steiner, and later Anthroposophy, remained high for the rest of her life, we have to assume that Steiner’s lack of enthusiasm made her somewhat insecure about her whole project and therefore also about the necessity of showing her spiritual works to a large public. Furthermore, it is well known that when af Klint died, in 1944, she left a testament in which she instructed her heirs not to show her paintings publicly for 20 years after her death (Svensson 2005: 29). This can be easily understood as being related to the second motivation for esoteric posthumousness: namely the idea that the world is not yet ready for the spiritual message conveyed through the artworks. However, this would be only a partial image of the story. There is some clear evidence that, more than ten years after the completion of the large cycle of her spiritual paintings, af Klint made attempts at exhibiting them, always in an Anthroposophical context. One was made in Amsterdam in 1927, where an international conference of Anthroposophists was scheduled to take place, but it led to nothing. A second attempt, recently discovered by art historian and af Klint biographer Julia Voss (b. 1974), was more successful. On that occasion, af Klint was able to show a small selection of her spiritual paintings at an Anthroposophical convention that took place in London in 1928 (Voss 2019: 24–28). These attempts, and their result, are no doubt significant. They relativise a certain image of af Klint as an artist who led a secluded life and was uncompromisingly secretive about her spiritual works. But if we compare these attempts with Houghton’s 1871 exhibition, we notice at least one important difference. Af Klint was certainly well connected to the art establishment through her period spent at the Academy of Fine Arts as a student and her continuous work as a conventional figurative artist, both before and after her graduation. However, we do not know of any attempt made by her to exhibit her spiritual paintings in a context other than the Anthroposophical one. One could say that the venues of Anthroposophical conventions would offer the most appropriate environment for the appreciation of their spiritual message—short of a “Temple” where she could show the paintings, as had been promised by the High Masters. Much more visibly than in Houghton’s case, the spiritual quality of af Klint’s works seems therefore to predetermine the context for their fruition. We could reverse the argument with respect to Houghton. She was clearly well connected to London’s spiritualist milieus, and it would have

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been easy for her to exhibit her drawings in a spiritualist context.22 Instead, she chose to rent a commercial gallery and show them there. The implication seems to be that she was also more confident in the artistic value of the works, apart from their spiritual quality. This does not necessarily mean that she disassociated the two. There are good reasons to believe that the spiritual message of the works was as important to Houghton as it was to af Klint. We may perhaps suppose that Houghton’s greater openness towards a secular, non-esoteric exhibition space was based on the idea that this kind of space would allow her to reach out to a broader audience, therefore, increasing the chances for the works to convey their spiritual message. This point would still be relevant today, precisely as the spiritual works of these artists are exhibited in the predominantly secular context of art museums and galleries. It might feel reassuring for a contemporary art curator to know that exhibiting artworks created with a spiritual purpose in a wholly secular context would not necessarily betray the original intention of the artist.23 Let us now turn to Emma Kunz.24 As for Houghton and af Klint, also for Kunz there is the idea that the meaning of her art could not really be understood by her contemporaries. In fact, she has been reported as saying: “A time will come when my pictures will be understood”; and: “My pictures are for the twenty-first century” (quoted in Meier 1998b: 28; see also p. 19 for another similar statement). At the same time, of the three artists examined here, Kunz was the least connected to the secular art establishment of her time, although she lived for a long time as a housekeeper with the family of the Swiss artist and art critic Jacob Friedrich Welti (1871–1952). Not only she never had a formal artistic training (unlike Houghton and af Klint), but she also did not seem to be interested in the very idea of exhibiting her works, either in a spiritual or in any other context. 22  About Houghton’s prominent position in the British spiritualist movement of her time, see Grant and Pasi (2016: 11). 23  Not every art curator would necessarily agree that the original intentions of the artist should determine the way in which an artwork is displayed or presented today, but my personal experience of the contemporary art world leads me to believe that most curators would consider it at least an ethical question with which to grapple at some point in the preparation of an exhibition project. 24  The main source of information on Kunz’s life and work is Meier (1998a). See also the catalogue of the important 2019 exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery in London: Blanchflower and Grabowska (2019).

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Another important difference is that, unlike Houghton and af Klint, Kunz does not seem to have been in contact with or directly guided by spirits. She was rather using a pendulum in the creation of her works, and the whole process presents some similarities to the one commonly used with the Chinese divination system of the Yìjı̄ng. At the beginning there would be the formulation of a particular question from a person who would consult Kunz as a healer and seer. This would usually be related to health or other personal issues. The pendulum would then indicate particular points on a surface. When connected, these points would construct a visual diagram that would offer, through correct interpretation, the answer to the original question (Meier 1998b: 28). Kunz’s works are therefore mostly diagrams that were constructed for this particular purpose, although they were given by their author a broader spiritual significance that exceeded the original circumstances of their creation. Interestingly, this brings Kunz closer to another posthumous esoteric artist who was close enough both temporally and geographically to her, and whom I have already mentioned: Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn.25 And, together with Fröbe-Kapteyn, it is easy to think also of Carl Gustav Jung, with whom she was associated for the organisation of the famous Eranos conferences.26 Jung is another extraordinary example of artistic esoteric posthumousness. Whereas his major role in the history of modern psychology is far from being posthumous and was already widely acknowledged while he was still alive, a few years ago another aspect of his personality was revealed that had been virtually unknown until then. This was his artistic side, which became visible through the discovery and publication of his Red Book (Jung 2009) leading to new interpretations of his work as a whole.27 This side of Jung’s personality appears to be close to that of artists such as Houghton, af Klint, and Kunz. The fact that both Jung’s Red Book and af Klint’s paintings were included in the main exhibition of the Venice Biennale curated by Massimiliano Gioni (b. 1973) in 2013 is a clear

25  It is not surprising to see that the famous art critic and curator Harald Szeemann (1933–2005), who was deeply interested in the spiritual and cultural underground of the twentieth century and devoted a ground-breaking exhibition to Monte Verità, was well aware of both Fröbe-Kapteyn’s and Kunz’s artistic works. He included a biographical profile of Fröbe-Kapteyn in the catalogue of his famous exhibition devoted to Monte Verità (see Rosenbaum-Kroeber 1978) and wrote a long essay on Kunz (see Szeemann 1998). 26  See above, n. 7. 27  On the artistic side of Jung’s work, see The Foundation of the Works of C.G. Jung (2018).

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i­ndication of this newly discovered affinity and of the inclusion of their approach in a new canon of modern artistic creativity. Returning to the three artists I have been discussing, there are some other interesting differences between Houghton and af Klint on the one hand, and Kunz on the other. With Houghton and af Klint we have a grand spiritual vision that justifies the production of the artworks but goes at the same time well beyond them. Both Houghton and af Klint had the idea that their artistic work was the carrier of a new religious revelation. It can be understood to possess, in this sense, messianic or millennialist qualities. Houghton, from a Christian spiritualist perspective, referred to a “Third Dispensation,” which can be understood as the new revelation of spiritualist movement as a whole, in which her drawings were supposed to play a prominent role (Houghton 1881: v–vi). This would usher a new spiritual age of harmony and peace, clearly inspired by the millenarian model of Joachim of Fiore (c. 1135–1202), the medieval Italian monk whose work was an important undercurrent in the religious history of Europe, and received new enthusiastic attention in alternative spiritual milieus in the nineteenth century.28 Similarly, af Klint mentioned in her notebooks her intention to write a “fifth gospel” (Svensson 2005: 23). The messianic aspect of Houghton’s and af Klint’s work is made even more evident by the fact that it is perceived by them to be a message sent by invisible personal agencies—spiritual “guides” or “masters”—who play a crucial role in a scheme of cosmic evolution. This aspect, which features so prominently in Houghton and af Klint, seems to be much less visible in Kunz. As I have already pointed out, the starting point for Kunz’s visual work usually seems to be merely contingent, in relation to a particular situation or problem. Her visual work can later be used again in another context, where it acquires a new, broader meaning, but Kunz did not claim to receive it from higher beings as a message of universal value. Another significant difference is that both Houghton and af Klint, unlike Kunz, left a considerable amount of textual, interpretive material about their own visual works. This material is different in the cases of Houghton and af Klint, at least in the form in which it reached us. In fact, Houghton published much of this material in her books, whereas af Klint

28   On the influence of Joachimism in nineteenth-century Britain, see Gould and Reeves (2002).

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left it unpublished.29 But it does offer an interesting view of how Houghton and af Klint looked at their respective works from their subjective perspectives. Kunz’s voice, on the other hand, reaches us only indirectly, initially through the visual work itself, but then also through the persons who knew her personally and reported what her opinions and interpretations were.30 Apart from that, she left no extensive written interpretation of her work.

Concluding Remarks As we have been able to see with the examination of these three women artists, there is a fascinating diversity in the types and motivations of esoteric posthumousness. Whereas for Houghton the situation of posthumousness seems to be verging more on the first type (inability), for af Klint and Kunz it seems to go towards the second (choice). As to motivations, whereas we find all three of them in af Klint (command by entities, projection into the future, and lack of interest in material gain), we find only the second and the third in Kunz. Houghton, after the disappointment of her 1871 exhibition, also came to the conclusion that the world was not ready yet for her message, which brought her close to the second motivation. This shows how complex the dynamics of esoteric posthumousness can be. For us, living not only in a post-post-modern world, but also in a post-­ Marxian, post-Freudian, and post-Nietzschean one, there seems to be something “inauthentic” in the esoteric posthumousness of these artists, who were ready to accept relative obscurity and lack of recognition in spite of an immense talent that appears so evident to us today. But the point is that the projection of their work into the future of posthumousness is very probably not a contingent aspect, but one of the factors that allowed them to give full expression to their creativity. Precisely because they had a feeling that their art belonged to the future, and not to their own times, they could feel free to experiment and challenge the norms of the present. 29  Houghton tells us a good deal about the way in which she produced her drawings, and her own understanding of them, in the catalogue of her 1871 exhibition and in her major autobiographical work, Evenings at Home in Spiritual Séance. See Houghton (1871, 1881, and 1882). As to af Klint, she left 124 unpublished notebooks comprising more than 20,000 pages of handwritten notes and sketches, which are essential for any interpretation of her artistic work. As indicated above, some of this material has begun to be published, also in English translation. 30  See above, n. 25.

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We are here very close to what the Marxian philosopher Ernst Bloch (1885–1977) defined as the “principle of hope” in his classic work on the subject: a principle allowing people to make revolutions that have very concrete social effects and political consequences in this material world, even when they make them for the sake of a spiritual or religious vision (Bloch 1986).

References Primary Sources af Klint, Hilma. 2005. Excerpts from Notes by Hilma af Klint. Edited by Gurli Lindén. In Hilma af Klint, ed. John Hutchinson, 46–47; 64–65. Dublin: The Douglas Hyde Gallery. Houghton, Georgiana. 1871. Catalogue of the Spirit Drawings in Water Colours, Exhibited at the New British Gallery, Old Bond Street. By Miss Houghton, through Whose Mediumship They Have Been Executed. London: W. Corby. ———. 1881. Evenings at Home in Spiritual Séance, Prefaced and Welded Together by a Species of Autobiography. First series. London: Trübner & Co. ———. 1882. Evenings at Home in Spiritual Séance, Welded Together by a Species of Autobiography. Second series. London: E. W. Allen. Jung, Carl Gustav. 2009. The Red Book. Liber Novus. Edited by Sonu Shamdasani. London and New York: Philemon Foundation/W. W. Norton & Co. Pessoa, Fernando. 2000. Heróstrato e a busca da imortalidade. Libon: Assírio & Alvim.

Secondary Sources Almqvist, Kurt, and Louise Belfrage, eds. 2015. Hilma af Klint: The Art of Seeing the Invisible. Stockholm: Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation. ———, eds. 2017. Hilma af Klint: Seeing is Believing. London and Stockholm: Koenig Books/Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation. ———, eds. 2019. Hilma af Klint Visionary. Stockholm: Bokförlaget Stolpe. Althaus, Karin. 2018. World Receivers. Georgiana Houghton—Hilma af Klint— Emma Kunz. In World Receivers: Georgiana Houghton—Hilma af Klint— Emma Kunz, ed. Karin Althaus, Matthias Mühling, and Sebastian Schneider, 15–27. Munich: Lenbachhaus/Hirmer Verlag. Althaus, Karin, Matthias Mühling, and Sebastian Schneider, eds. 2018. Georgiana Houghton—Hilma af Klint—Emma Kunz. Munich: Lenbachhaus/ Hirmer Verlag. Atkinson, Maggie. 2005. Healing Vibrations through Visionary Art. Religion and the Arts 19: 339–388.

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Bashkoff, Tracey, ed. 2018. Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future. New York: Guggenheim Museum Publications. Bernardini, Riccardo. 2011. Jung a Eranos. Il progetto della psicologia complessa. Milan: FrancoAngeli. Biasca-Caroni, Andrea, and Greta Biasca-Caroni, ed. 2018. Luigi Pericle. n/a: Li.Ze.A. Birnbaum, Daniel, Jennifer Higgie, and Julia Voss. 2016. Hilma af Klint: Painting the Unseen. London: Koenig Books. Blanchflower, Melissa, and Natalia Grabowska, eds. 2019. Emma Kunz: Visionary Drawings. London: Serpentine Galleries/Koenig Books. Bloch, Ernst. 1986. The Principle of Hope. Vol. 3. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Burgin, Christine, ed. 2018. Hilma af Klint: Notes and Methods. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Deresiewicz, William. 2015. The Death of the Artist—and the Birth of the Creative Entrepreneur. The Atlantic (January/February). https://www.theatlantic. com/magazine/archive/2015/01/the-death-of-the-artist-and-the-birth-ofthe-creative-entrepreneur/383497. Accessed 27 October 2019. Ferentinou, Victoria. 2017. Margaret Ithell Colquhoun. World Religions and Spirituality Project. https://wrldrels.org/2017/08/11/margaret-ithellcolquhoun. Accessed 11 November 2019. Gatti, Chiara, Luca Bochicchio, Marco Pasi, and Michele Tavola. 2019. Luigi Pericle: Beyond the Visible. Cinisello Balsamo: Silvana Editoriale. Gibbons, Tom. 1988. British Abstract Painting of the 1860s: The Spirit Drawings of Georgiana Houghton. Modern Painters 1 (Summer): 33–37. Gilbert, Laura. 2015. Did Cady Noland Disavow Another Work? The Art Newspaper (June). https://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/did-cady-noland-disavowanother-work. Accessed 27 October 2019. Gioni, Massimiliano, and Natalie Bell, eds. 2016. The Keeper. New  York: New Museum. Gould, Warwick, and Marjorie Reeves. 2002. Joachim of Fiore and the Myth of the Eternal Evangel in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Grant, Simon, and Marco Pasi. 2016. “Works of art without parallel in the world”: Georgiana Houghton’s Spirit Drawings. In Georgiana Houghton: Spirit Drawings, ed. Simon Grant, Lars Bang Larsen, and Marco Pasi, 9–23. London: The Courtauld Gallery. Grant, Simon, Lars Bang Larsen, and Marco Pasi, eds. 2016. Georgiana Houghton: Spirit Drawings. London: The Courtauld Gallery. Hakl, Hans Thomas. 2013. Eranos: An Alternative Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century. Sheffield: Equinox. Hale, Amy. 2020. Ithell Colquhoun: Genius of The Fern Loved Gully. London: Strange Attractor Press.

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Hilma af Klint. 2008. Une Modernité Révélée. Paris: Centre Culturel Suédois. Hutchinson, John, ed. 2005. Hilma af Klint. Dublin: The Douglas Hyde Gallery. Introvigne, Massimo. 2018. The Sounding Cosmos Revisited: Sixten Ringbom and the “Discovery” of Theosophical Influences on Modern Art. Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions 21 (3): 29–46. Meier, Anton C., ed. 1998a. Emma Kunz: Artist, Researcher, Natural Healer. Würenlos: Emma Kunz Zentrum. ———. 1998b. Emma Kunz: Life and Work. In Emma Kunz: Artist, Researcher, Natural Healer, ed. Anton C. Meier, 19–37. Würenlos: Emma Kunz Zentrum. Müller-Westermann, Iris. 2013. Hilma af Klint: A Pioneer of Abstraction in Seclusion. In Hilma af Klint: A Pioneer of Abstraction, ed. Iris MüllerWestermann and Jo Widoff, 33–51. Stockholm and Ostfildern: Moderna Museet/Hatje Cantz. Müller-Westermann, Iris, and Jo Widoff, eds. 2013. Hilma af Klint: A Pioneer of Abstraction. Stockholm and Ostfildern: Moderna Museet/Hatje Cantz. Oberter, Rachel. 2006. Esoteric Art Confronting the Public Eye: The Abstract Spirit Drawings of Georgiana Houghton. Victorian Studies 48 (2): 221–232. ———. 2007. Spiritualism and the Visual Imagination in Victorian Britain. Ph.D. thesis, Yale University, United States of America. Parrino, Steven. 2005. Paranoia Americana: The New Work of Cady Noland. After all: A Journal of Art, Context and Enquiry 11: 3–8. Pasi, Marco. 2005. Occultism. In The Brill Dictionary of Religion, ed. Kocku von Stuckrad, 1364–1368. Leiden and Boston: Brill. ———, ed. 2008. Peintures inconnues d’Aleister Crowley. La collection de Palerme. Milan: Archè. ———. 2013. Aleister Crowley, Painting, and the Works from the Palermo Collection. Abraxas: International Journal of Esoteric Studies 3: 65–77. ———. 2015. Hilma af Klint, Western Esotericism and the Problem of Modern Artistic Creativity. In Hilma af Klint: The Art of Seeing the Invisible, ed. Kurt Almqvist and Louise Belfrage, 101–116. Stockholm: Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation. ———. 2019. Afterthought Forms: Theosophy in Modern and Contemporary Art. In Hilma af Klint Visionary, ed. Kurt Almqvist and Louise Belfrage, 93–109. Stockholm: Bokförlaget Stolpe. Pfeffer, Susanne, ed. 2018. Cady Noland. Frankfurt am Main: Museum für Moderne Kunst. Ratcliffe, Eric. 2007. Ithell Colquhoun. Pioneer Surrealist Artist, Occultist, Writer, and Poet, Oxford: Mandrake. Ringbom, Sixten. 1966. Art in “the Epoch of the Great Spiritual”: Occult Elements in the Early Theory of Abstract Painting. The Journal of Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 29: 386–418.

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———. 1970. The Sounding Cosmos: A Study in the Spiritualism of Kandinsky and Abstract Painting. Turku: Åbo Akademi. Rosenbaum-Kroeber, Sybille. 1978. Eranos e Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn. In Monte Verità. Antropologia locale come contributo alla riscoperta di una topografia sacrale moderna, ed. Gabriella Borsano, 119–121. Milano and Locarno: Electa Editrice/Armando Dadò Editore. Rosenberg, Raphael, and Max Hollein, eds. 2007. Turner Hugo Moreau. Entdeckung der Abstraktion. Frankfurt am Main and München: Schirn Kunsthalle/Hirmer Verlag. Svensson, Anna Maria. 2005. The Greatness of Things: The Art of Hilma af Klint. In Hilma af Klint, ed. John Hutchinson, 13–30. Dublin: The Douglas Hyde Gallery. Szeemann, Harald. 1998. More than Art—Tied into Primal Mud and Mystic Light. In Emma Kunz: Artist, Researcher, Natural Healer, ed. Anton C. Meier, 55–84. Würenlos: Emma Kunz Zentrum. The Foundation of the Works of C.G.  Jung, ed. 2018. The Art of C.  G. Jung. New York: W. W. Norton & Co. Tuchman, Maurice, ed. 1986. The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 1890–1985. Los Angeles and New  York: Los Angeles County Museum of Art/Abbeville Press Publishers. Voss, Julia. 2019. Five Things to Know About Hilma af Klint. In Hilma af Klint Visionary, ed. Kurt Almqvist and Louise Belfrage, 21–39. Stockholm: Bokförlaget Stolpe. Voss, Julia. 2020. Hilma af Klint. Die Menschheit in Erstaunen versetzen. Biographie. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer Verlag.

CHAPTER 9

Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie and Sexual Regeneration John Patrick Deveney

Now, it is the concentration of this Spiro [“vital force”] in the air we breathe that, in its union with the MAGNETIC CURRENT that FLOWS THROUGH ALL, becomes the SPIREMA in the Greek Bible. In plain English, the concentrated life force, the FIRE OF LIFE IN SEX, the FRUIT OF THE TREE OF LIFE. And as true as its use in generation procreates and brings to earth human beings in new human bodies, just so true is it that when men and WOMEN learn to USE the SAME FIRE and fruit of life in regeneration that they now use in GENERATION and PLEASURE, they will have found the SECRET OF LIFE and WILL SURELY cease to die —Levi Dowling, c.1909, quoted in Buescher (2007: 37–38)

Although the fact would soon be forgotten or obscured by historians, by the 1890s it was the unspoken “open secret”—known to all but only rarely publicly acknowledged or discussed—in the amalgam of New Thought, occultism, Theosophy, and spiritualism that came to prevail in the quarter century before World War I (Deveney 2015) that sexual energy J. P. Deveney (*) Independent Scholar, Memphis, Tennessee, USA © The Author(s) 2021 L. Pokorny, F. Winter (eds.), The Occult Nineteenth Century, Palgrave Studies in New Religions and Alternative Spiritualities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55318-0_9

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was the vital force that made possible psychic “unfoldment,” spiritual progress, and the creation of a conscious individuality capable of surviving death. This sexual process was “regeneration,” a universal technical term at the time, which was the reverse of “generation,” the sexual act that gives birth to man. To quote but one of the contemporary proponents of this open secret at the time, William Walker Atkinson (1862–1932): In both Generation and Regeneration […] the same potent forces of Nature are involved and set into activity, i.e., the forces concerned with the sexual or reproductive organism. The “secret doctrine,” “inner teaching,” “arcane wisdom,” etc., of the ancient philosophies and religions, and of the more modern secret societies and schools, concerning the secret of Regeneration is this: “Nature’s Generative Power may be employed as Regenerative Power; the same forces which bring man into life, strength, and vigor, will renew and reproduce his life, strength, and vigor, if rightly applied and directed.” (Atkinson and Beals 1922: 11–12).

As generation led to the Fall, expulsion from Eden, and death, regeneration led to the restoration of the Edenic state before the Fall and to physical immortality and direct communion with God. This fundamental process of the use (or abstinence from the use) of sexual energy in regeneration was variously envisioned at the time and covered a wide range of possibilities: • Complete continence and abstinence from all sexual activity in order to preserve the vital energy, “Alphaism,” exemplified by The Alpha, a journal published from 1875–1888 by Caroline B. Winslow (1822–1896) on behalf of the Moral Education Society of Washington, D.C. • Prolonged sexual intercourse without ejaculation, for example, “Karezza” (Stockham 1896). • Directed, intentional completion of the sexual act accompanied by internalised absorption and sublimation of the magnetised sexual energy before ejaculation (Woodhull 1873; Waisbrooker 1890; Dowd 1900).1 1  Almost all of the books and journals referred to here can be found in the collections of The International Association for the Preservation of Spiritualist and Occult Periodicals and the Standard Spiritualist and Occult Corpus, at www.iapsop.com. Accessed 23 March 2019.

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Simple abstinence from sexual activity was almost never envisioned as sufficient in itself, and the most common form of regenerative practice among the innumerable sexual mages of the time was retention of the sexual energy combined with some method or practice to draw up, store, and transmute what was retained. Here, for example, is the “white sexual magic” of the Ordo Templi Orientis of Theodor Reuß (1855–1923) in 1912, closely paraphrasing its source in the American New Thought author William Walker Atkinson (Ramacharaka 1904: 66–67): This exercise of the transmutation of the reproductive energy is not done for sexual excess but rather for the strengthening of the eternal divine power on the earthly plane […]. The reproductive energy is the creative process, the divine act! […] In the course of the quite complicated exercise the student concentrates his thoughts so that the reproductive energy is drawn from that organ to the Solar Plexus [in English the original, followed by Sonnengeflecht], where he “wills” it to be stored up for transmutation purposes. A certain regulated breathing exercise accompanies this process and there follows the act of the transmutation of the energy. Finally the great unification occurs, in which the student becomes a seer while fully conscious and experiences what is seen. This is white sexual magic (Koenig 1993: 11).

One of the most detailed expositors of this regenerative sexual practice was Kenneth Sylvan Launfal Guthrie (1871–1940), although this aspect of his work has been completely ignored and he is remembered today, if at all, as a classicist and the translator of Plotinus and the Neoplatonists and others. Guthrie saw himself as the restorer of the original Christian tradition of sex as “the narrow gate” to the “Inner Temple” and ultimately to “Consecration to God.” The breathing and meditation exercises taught in his Brotherhood of the Eternal Life guided the student in becoming aware of the monthly “Vitality Germ” (zoé)—the Elixir of Life—generated by the body, and taught how to effect its “resorption” in order to restore the practitioner to the primordial state of Adam before the Fall, and ultimately to union with God. Guthrie was born in Dundee, Scotland, on July 22, 1871. His maternal grandmother was the famous Frances (“Fanny”) Wright (1795–1852), one of the Universal Reformers and “strong-minded women” tossed up by the wave of nineteenth-century reform. She wrote her Views of Society and Manners in America in 1821 after her first trip to the United States, returned again in the company of the Marquis de Lafayette (1757–1834),

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became enthralled with Robert Owen’s (1801–1877) community in New Harmony, Indiana, and then started her own Nashoba Commune in Tennessee to educate slaves she bought and freed—taking them to freedom in Haiti when the colony foundered. She easily moved into advocacy of abolition, women’s rights and universal suffrage, free love, spiritualism, and socialism (Anonymous 1866: 8), and found time to publish A Few Days in Athens (1822) which had a profound influence on Walt Whitman (1819–1892). The most lasting effect of the days in New Harmony was a child, Frances Sylva (1832–1903), the product of Wright’s marriage to Guillaume Sylvan Casimir Phiquepal d’Arusmont (1779–1855), an expatriate Frenchman she had met in the colony. Frances Sylva was Guthrie’s mother (Guthrie 1929a). Guthrie was educated in Britain, France, and Germany and received a medical degree and two doctorates in the United States (Guthrie 1929a). He was something of a classicist, though perhaps not of the first water. New editions of his studies on Pythagoras, Numenius, Porphyry and Plotinus, and the mysteries of Mithra continue to appear and have provided an introduction to Neoplatonism and related movements in Late Antiquity for English-speaking students, despite a violent attack by the academic classicist George Boas (1891–1980) on Guthrie’s scholarship and honesty (Boas 1920). Similarly, The Long-Lost Second Book of Acts Setting Forth the Blessed Mary’s Teachings about Reincarnation (Guthrie 1904), which Guthrie claimed to have discovered and translated and which contains extended discussions by Mary of her and Jesus’ past lives, has universally been dismissed as a hoax. Some of Guthrie’s eccentricities are understandable given his background and the peculiarities of his family—his brother, the Rev. William Norman Guthrie (1868–1944), was the rector of St. Mark’s Church in the Bouwerie in New York, famous for combining Episcopal ritual with the dances of Isadora Duncan (1877–1927) (accompanied by scantily clad nymphs), and the appearances of Khalil Gibran (1883–1931), Swami Paramananda (1884–1940), and other avant-garde figures. Despite Guthrie’s education and perhaps because of the intensity of his interests, he was never successful, as he continually bemoaned in his writings. [T]he very unusual breadth of his conflicting interests checkmated his career, so far as worldly advancement. Little understood or recognized he had to find consolation in earning his living honestly by teaching a language to children, by pouring out his religious experiences to the few who visited

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his semi-deserted East Side church, and in putting the accumulated results of his studies in such shape that, “to the greater glory of God,” they may be of service to humanity […] (Guthrie 1929a).

At one point he advertised in his periodical, The Prophet, for a benefactor who would offer a “small colony site” for use during Guthrie’s lifetime where he could pursue his studies un-plagued by money worries (Guthrie 1901b). Many of his books and pamphlets were printed by hand by Guthrie himself and are crammed to the margins, presumably to save money on paper. His whole life was a hand-to-mouth existence, a struggle to support himself and his family while he continued his mission of announcing the reality of the experiential, verifiable psychic and religious experience that pervaded the world literature of mysticism and religion. The most significant event in Guthrie’s life was his ordination to the priesthood in the Protestant Episcopal Church, in Pennsylvania in 1897. It is in this light, as a minister, or pastor, or, as he termed himself, a “prophet”—a man called to bring the word of true religion to his flock— that Guthrie is best viewed. He had been raised a Catholic but was directed into the Episcopal priesthood by his mother because it combined both the ritualism and the liberalism she valued. In January 1899, he was deposed from the priesthood (Anonymous 1899a, b)—for no reason that reflected ill on his “moral character,” as the official decree noted. The real reason seems to have been that he had become more religious than his church— an ever-present temptation of Episcopal clergy—and, as we shall see, had come to an understanding of Christianity that ill-comported with the orthodox version. For the next 15 years he was in and out of recognition by his Church. Guthrie repeatedly attempted to explain why he had “left” the priesthood and the main reason cited was that his own personal experience and his reading of the early Greek and Latin Fathers of the Church had convinced him that Christianity had an esoteric and experiential side behind the rigid facade of its ecclesiastical structure, and that the Church as then constituted “was not interested in becoming perfect” as required by the New Testament (Guthrie 1899a, b). Guthrie had come to see Christianity as an “Experimental Religion” (Guthrie 1929b, advertisement) rather than mere words and exhortations—a carefully described process in which strict adherence to the New Testament’s command of virginity (or at least chastity and abstention from all sexual activity) led to the experiential realisation of immortality and divinisation (Guthrie 1905: 105–106, 133).

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Unmentioned by Guthrie in his defence of his decision to leave the Church were his peculiar (from an orthodox Episcopal point of view) notions on achieving perfection and his becoming a disciple of Hiram Erastus Butler (1841–1916). In July 1892, at the age of 21 and already a deacon in the Episcopal Church, Guthrie wrote to Butler asking a series of questions which showed he had already been trying to follow what he could learn of Butler’s methods of leading the “regenerate life”: 1st. Does an Esoteric College exist? 2nd. Are there correspondence classes? 3rd. Should by chance an accident [i.e., a nocturnal emission] happen at night interrupting the “regenerate” life, is it unwise to continue the “sitting” for understanding and light? […] 4th Should the “Elixir of Life” be taken regularly? 5th. Will one hours’ [sic] “Elixir” and one hours’ “Sitting” each morning—4 am. to 6 am.,—suffice for practical advance? (Guthrie 1892: 85).

Note the phrase “‘regenerate’ life,” which was the hallmark of the work of Butler, Guthrie, and many other sexual mages of the time; a term always denoting preservation and transmutation of the sexual energy. Butler responded to Guthrie with assurances, but stressed that if the young man really wanted to learn he had to “pass through the preliminary school of the Esoteric Colony and College” in Applegate, California, where Butler was then living (Butler 1892: 86). It is unlikely that Guthrie ever took up Butler’s invitation to visit or even ever met him, but he certainly adopted the teachings and practice learnt from Butler’s magazine The Esoteric and was lavish in acknowledging the role of Butler’s teachings in practical spiritual development: Practical Methods.—In one way or another almost all the practical methods are owed, under God, to Mr. Hiram Erastus Butler, although those who followed his instructions have been taught by the Spirit directly in the matter. Thus the good work begun by Mr. Butler will never cease, independently of him (Guthrie 1900b: 187).

Butler is usually thought of (e.g., Vallee 1980: 139–146) as the eccentric founder of a colony in California that practiced a rigid form of celibacy and, as happens in many such cases, died out for want of disciples in the 1960s. However, he was considerably more than that, and was one of the principal pivots around whom the open secret of sexual regeneration was organised—although his name seldom appeared because of the obloquy

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that became attached to it because of his controversies with Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831–1891) and the Theosophical Society. He had begun as a Theosophist and was almost certainly a member of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor, and first came to public notice in Boston in the late 1880s when he proposed to found an Esoteric College to be called G.N.K.R.—The Genii of Nations, Knowledges, and Religions (which Blavatsky unkindly described as “Gulls Nabbed by Knaves and Rascals”) (Gomes 1985). This was launched, “under the direction of higher intelligences,” as an organisation for the teaching of the secrets of all ages and was first revealed to the world in one of the most bizarre occult books ever produced, the unintelligible G.N.K.R. No. 502. A Call to the “Awakened” from “The Unseen and Unknown” for an Esoteric College, and for G…R Dept. No. 1, which appeared in December 1888 (Anonymous 1888). Butler combined this with lectures and articles in his magazine The Esoteric, promising to teach the practical occult methods that Theosophy failed to deliver, arousing in the process the enmity of the Theosophical Society and the Boston police, who began investigating Butler for “gross immoralities” in importuning and debauching young women in connection with his teachings (Anonymous 1889). In the midst of these troubles, Butler decamped to California with the group’s funds and began his “celibate” colony in Applegate, where Guthrie wrote to him in 1892.2 It was this connection with Butler and the practices it entailed that periodically rendered Guthrie persona non grata in his church. After being deposed from the priesthood in 1899, Guthrie took up his position in the Episcopal Church again, in New Jersey, and was again deposed in 1908 (Anonymous 1909: 85), and then finally settled down in New York as a priest again around the year 1913 (Anonymous 1913a: 21, 1913b: 2)—driven probably by poverty and the experience of teaching European and classical languages and literature to New York high school students. He continued as a pastor in churches around New York until his death in 2  There was another side of Butler’s practice, totally unknown outside a small circle within his group, that consisted in members running the “quicksilver mill”—manually assisting the sexual partner by “resort to caresses [sic] and light manipulations” until “she will feel as if she were seated on a stick of dynamite, and he will feel as if he had got hold of something that would require help to let go of” (McDonald 1888: 75–79). Guthrie displayed no sign of being aware of this. McDonald (“Styx,” 1829–1917) was a disciple of Butler’s, a member of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor, and was, along with Sylvester Clark Gould (1840–1909), one of the founders of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Light, the claimed progenitor of Theodor Reuß’ Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.) in Germany.

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1940, seeking to broaden his appeal by asserting that Christian Scientists, Theosophists, occultists, socialists, and so on could all find their natural home in the Episcopal Church (Guthrie 1914). In 1897, the year in which he was ordained a priest, Guthrie had anonymously published the first version of his principal book Regeneration: The Gate of Heaven (Anonymous 1897) in which he laid out the physiological, Biblical, patristic, and poetic reasons why the true secret of early Christianity lay in radical virginity and consecration to God. The next year he published under his own name the now-lost Six Plain Instructions How to Become Divine Before Physical Death (1898), whose title is self-­explanatory, and the month after he was deposed as a priest in 1899, he started a journal, The Prophet, in Medford, Massachusetts, as the organ of his new Brotherhood of the Eternal Covenant. The purpose of the Brotherhood, as he set out in the first issue, was decidedly practical: “To present in a comprehensive, reasonable, unmistakable, specific way the only method to reach spiritual attainment” (Guthrie 1899c: 2). The journal regularly set out in its pages Guthrie’s understanding of the elements and purposes of his efforts: To show that the universally recognized laws of Biology point inexorably to a life of Continence as the basis of health. To show that entire Continence is possible and beneficial, and what the methods to attain it, where by any means its natural course has been wholly or partially disturbed, are. To show that the New Testament enforces it so clearly that language could not be more emphatic. To show that the Fathers of the Christian Church distinctly taught Regeneration as the secret how to attain Immortality, and as the central content of Religion. To show that the practical pursuit of Immortality alone supplies an universally possible aim of Life, which makes it worth living, yielding conscious present Immortality, or for those who dare not proceed so far, perfect bodily health and vitality (Guthrie 1899d).

The Brotherhood was a loosely structured group that seems to have met monthly and sometimes weekly wherever Guthrie was living at the time (Medford, Massachusetts; Oaklyn, New Jersey; and Lamott and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) to pray and discuss their experiences, problems, and progress with Guthrie’s techniques. The meetings seem to have been limited to meditation, prayers and hymns (with words and music by

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the polymath Guthrie himself), and a sermon or speech on his techniques. There was no membership fee or charge for joining the Brotherhood but Guthrie offered for a fee a variety of lessons, astrological charts, and the like, and published at least 21 volumes of the now lost The Prophet Library, whose contents tracked and explained the degrees and the experiences with the techniques. Under the auspices of the Brotherhood was the “Church of Silent Ministry,” with inner, outer, and “emergency” circles (Guthrie 1900a). The Brotherhood had degrees (a First Degree Manual and a Second Degree Experience Book are mentioned), but these were a simple recognition of individual progress in the inner work rather than ritual steps designed to advance the students. A notice of the Brotherhood in Sylvester Clark Gould’s Rosicrucian Brotherhood (1908) recites: “And now abideth health, science, and holiness, these three; but the greatest of these is holiness”—a distinction of goals that reflects the degrees of the Brotherhood since they closely parallel the possibilities opened to practitioners of Guthrie’s techniques (Gould 1908: 164).

The Techniques Guthrie gave his students explicit, detailed descriptions of what to do to preserve and transmute the “life energy.” Unlike the coy, prudish, or wary mages of a few years before, he actually discussed semen and ejaculation, although he preferred to give the terms in Greek, that is, goné and ekbolé. As might be expected from a physician, he described the process in purely physiological terms. While other sexual mages attributed magical or mystical virtues to the semen and its retention, Guthrie taught that semen was merely a naturally occurring physical secretion that bore the periodically produced “zoé,” the “Vitality Germ”—an entity unknown to science but, as Guthrie claimed, demonstrable by direct experience. If the germ was retained rather than wasted by voluntary or involuntary ejaculation, it circulated in the blood to feed the body’s functions and invigorate the higher processes of the brain (Anonymous 1897). As Guthrie emphasised (1900b: 317), regeneration was not magic but simple physiology. The mere conservation of the semen and the germ produced vigour and health—an opinion shared by many quack physiologists and proponents of New Thought of the time. If the student, however, coupled conservation with a regime of vigilant, wakeful concentration on the actual process by which the body on a regular daily and monthly

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cycle produced the Vitality Germ, and at the same time consciously willed the drawing up and “resorption” of the germ, he could achieve spiritual results and would be restored to the state man had enjoyed in Eden before the Fall (Anonymous 1897: 6, 93, 113, 121). According to Guthrie (and to Butler before him), every day and again monthly the body produced the Vitality Germ, always at some varying time between 1:30 a.m. and noon (determined by astrological and astronomical cycles of amazing complexity). The path to spiritual development lay in being aware of the creation of the germ, and the great danger lay in sleep: if the germ is created while man is drowsy or asleep, as happens in most people, it does not mature and is wasted; but if the conservator is vigilant and awake when the germ matures, it provides the energy for spiritual development. Guthrie advocated standing all night long to banish sleepiness—a technique he says he practiced for ten years (Guthrie 1905: 3)—but he allowed that some might be adept enough to leap out of bed at the first sign of the germ. He also believed, but did not himself claim the ability to do so, that some in the advanced stages of development would so have united their everyday mind with their divine inner self that they would be conscious and alert for the goné even during sleep (Guthrie 1900b: 188–190, 317). If the conservator wakefully observed the creation and maturing of the germ, he experienced “Fragrant Happiness”—a delightful term—and “a feeling of the rivers of life straining upwards, a power, a reserve force, an inspiration like which there is no other feeling in the category […]. A person who once has tasted it, will neither ever forget it, nor will ever be willing to do without it,—it is the fabled spring of which, if a man once drank, he would never thirst again, nor ever be satisfied until he drank it again” (Guthrie 1905: 3). A fairly clear description of what the process of watching for and drawing up the maturing germ can be found in the account of a “Woman Conservator” published by Guthrie in his final edition of his principal book: Regeneration: Special Methods for Men and Women with Specific Directions How to Calculate the Time Dangerous to Conservators (Guthrie 1905). Following in the footsteps of Hiram Erastus Butler (Butler 1908), Guthrie was practically unique among the mages in trying to extend his ideas beyond men, semen, and ejaculation and include women as something more than mere adjuncts to the man’s arousal. Both men and women could achieve regeneration by conservation, but separately and in different ways. Virginity was preferable, but celibate marriage was acceptable if the student had already married, and even a child was permissible if

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necessary or unavoidable—Guthrie himself had a daughter, Sylvan, and a son, Kenneth—but these were accommodations and not the ideal. In the original edition of Regeneration: The Gate of Heaven (1897), Guthrie had dedicated a scant paragraph to women, inventing (from Butler’s writing) what he called the leucorrhoea, the carrier of the germ: “The Regeneration with Women.—The goné in man corresponds in the woman to the leucorrhoea, not to the flow of blood and effete matter. The stopping of the latter would involve serious inflammations. It is, however, only the concomitant effect of the leucorrhoea which, if stopped gradually, will cause the other to diminish constantly” (Anonymous 1897: 55). The Woman Conservator quoted by Guthrie (1905: 17–23) went far beyond this and rather frankly describes the details of the process of drawing up the sexual energy—a process that, mutatis mutandis, must have been similar to that experienced by men. In the daily cycle of the maturing goné the conservator felt the “fullness of the womb and the vagina” as well as the “life forces trickling down the walls of the vagina and reaching its orifice.” At “the first intimation of any trickling,” the drill was to lie flat, dismiss the emotions, centre the mind on the sphincters of the vagina, breathe deeply while trying to be aware of any helpers “in the astral,” and then try by will to raise the “pelvic contents” from the sex organs into the chest (ibid.: 23). This was to be accompanied by various “memory drills” and “astral consciousness drills.” For Guthrie, one consequence of the practice in women, as it was also for his teacher Hiram Erastus Butler and for many other sexual mages, was the cessation of menstruation. Menstruation was deemed a consequence and symbol of the Fall and ceased with the female conservator’s re-attainment of the Edenic state woman enjoyed before the cursing of Eve (Guthrie 1901a: 88–89). So confident was Guthrie of the effectiveness of his technique that he offered a “warranty”: “Nobody can, after making a fair start, follow the Regenerate Life for three months without receiving from within himself, unmistakable signs of divine approval, such as shall place the matter beyond question” (Guthrie 1900b: 317).

Levels of the Practice Guthrie carefully distinguished the levels of achievement (which seem to have paralleled the degrees of the Brotherhood of the Eternal Covenant) that were possible to those leading the regenerate life. The first level was attainable by mere conservation of the germ and wakeful vigilance of its

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periodic creation. If this was done “for selfish purposes” rather than spiritual ones, it produced “physical health, personal magnetism, mental and magical powers, ‘self-development’, or the like” (Guthrie 1900b: 318)— in short, all of the goals usually promoted by the New Thought mage. These, in turn, and their adjuncts “astral-body athletics,” “aura-seeing,” and “soul-travel,” were the possibilities of the natural man before the Fall: It will be the glory of the twentieth century that men will learn to direct their vitality as intelligently as they feed and train their muscles and their digestive and secretive function. Then will it be possible for men to economize their vitality, and by control of their lower selves by the higher self, to use what formerly ministered to their self-gratification for the higher purposes of attaining the highest possible state of psychical and psychical health, that they may live wholly in accord with all natural law, which is but the revealed portion of the blessed Will of the Father in Heaven (Guthrie 1901a: 95).

The second level of attainment was possible by the same techniques but now done for spiritual reasons. It led to initiation and intercourse on the astral plane with what Guthrie calls “the Holy Ones”: elevated souls, both of the dead and apparently of never-born elevated beings, who seek to guide and assist the student to higher spiritual realisation. Guthrie described his own introduction to these Holy Ones in Baroque terms. After long practice of the technique and days of prayer and vigil he was led in a “dream” by a Guide into the “Judgment Hall,” where he was found worthy. Then he was taken to the “Hall of Learning” where he learned “the laws of Wisdom, and I learned to speak without a word, and how to leave my body, and how souls may find by instinct which direction it is where the Temple lies, and how to call to It for help in time of need, and when to go there when I would, and the Laws of Purity, and conscious sleep, and mysteries too deep to utter forth.” He was then escorted by a “White-robed one” into the Temple, where he knelt at the “Altar of Initiated Souls” in the “Inmost Shrine” and stood revealed to himself as the “Bride betrothed unto the Heavenly Bridegroom” (Guthrie 1905: 97–105). The final stage of development was “Consecration to God.” It was religious and beyond regeneration proper—which was restricted to mental control and restoration of the natural creative powers of man before the Fall (Guthrie 1899b)—and led to conscious immortality and divinisation.

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Consecration to God was the Narrow Way, the promise of the Eternal Covenant, and its accomplishment was the Pearl of Great Price. Guthrie’s description of the process places us once more entirely in the familiar territory of the New Thought consensus: consecration involved the overcoming of the “two minds” in man and the unification of the conservator’s everyday, individualised mind with his divine inner “selfhood or spirit” (Guthrie 1900b: 190): This is the secret of life. The inner mind is an unindividualized emanation of God. It takes a body, and forms it, ruling it through the solar plexus as also with animals. In the human the bloom of the body is the self-conscious individualized external mind which though yet so wavering is destined to achieve divinity in its own right. To achieve this self-determination it must through responsibility conquer its inner mind, and through it the body. Not that it itself while in the body attains continuous consciousness wholly, but that it subdues and assimilates the inner mind so thoroughly that the latter watches for it, wakes it, reports to it its own experiences, and protects it, being thus individualized. The external mind does not become independent of the brain tissues until it can at any time while conscious of the body at will be conscious of events in the spiritual world. Then the dropping of the body will not touch external memory (Guthrie 1900b: 189).

The process of uniting the two minds and realising one’s divine nature, in turn, consisted of special breathing exercises (thinking “will” when inhaling, and “still” when exhaling) and concentration on the “white light” at the centre of consciousness, drawing a “ray of it from the central sphere of it by your breath, through the nostrils, into the lungs” (Guthrie 1899e: 27, 31, cf. 1900b: 212–213). With this came consciousness of immortality, and divinisation: the goal was “to become God” (Guthrie 1900b: 145; Anonymous 1897: 151).

Later Years and Influence The Prophet ceased publishing in 1907, and the Brotherhood of the Eternal Covenant seems to have petered out around the same time, as did Guthrie’s public advocacy of his conservation techniques. Thereafter, he taught school, tried to sell his translations, and functioned as pastor of various small parishes around New York City. As a mage he was singularly unsuccessful financially both because of his eccentricities and due to his focus on union with God rather than on the contemporary mages’ customary

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emphasis on the development of man’s innate psychic powers. His endeavours could never have paid the expenses of his efforts: he charged only a small sum for his published lessons and books, subscription to The Prophet was only 75 cents a year, and membership in the Brotherhood of the Eternal Covenant was free, as was the advancement in the degrees. It is impossible to name a single prominent disciple or follower of Guthrie’s or to trace any offshoots of his Brotherhood of the Eternal Covenant. His teachings were too academic and his practices too difficult and elaborate for the casual seeker, and never spread widely beyond his immediate circle. In Germany, his sexual regeneration was considered too dangerous a topic to be advocated publicly. Neue Metaphysische Rundschau, edited by Guthrie’s friend Paul Zillman (1872–1940), gave a notice to Six Plain Instructions How to Become Divine Before Physical Death and Regeneration, but cautioned: We won’t publish a critical review of this book from the occult point of view because we would have to touch upon too much that would be unknown to most and would be misleading to many. The sexual relationships of people touch the greatest secrets of the universe and their misuse leads to annihilation. Misunderstanding is practically the same as abuse (Anonymous 1901).

The one possible exception to Guthrie’s lack of influence is Ernst Christian Heinrich Peithmann (1868–1943), the founder of the Gnostische Geheimschule in Westphalia in the 1920s, who was a man with his own role in the history of sex and occultism (Koenig 1995: 111–112). The connection rests on a single mention by the German occultist Henri Birven in a letter to Aleister Crowley’s disciple Gerald Yorke (1901–1983) in March 1950: “Peithmann had lived for 25 years in California. He knew Guthrie— author of: [Regeneration:] The Gate of Heaven—, a doctor and philosopher of great renown. He was probably the one who initiated Peithmann” (Möller and Howe 1986: 180). The two men may have known each other but there is no trace of the connection in their writings and Birven’s chronology of Peithmann’s life is fiction. The attempt to connect the two men rests simply on a supposed similarity of ideas, but even that does not survive scrutiny. Peithmann was above all a “Gnostic,” and Guthrie was far too orthodox an Episcopalian and too careful a patristic scholar and disciple of Plotinus to single out the Gnostics of the first Christian centuries as reservoirs of truth. Moreover, occult sexual practice for Peithmann was

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to be undertaken with a partner,3 while the practice for Guthrie was a solitary one. Guthrie deliberately positioned his occult work within the wave of occultism and New Thought around the turn of the twentieth century. He became and remained a Theosophist, though always an unorthodox one (Anonymous 1944: 144–146). He published several of his books through Harold Waldwin Percival’s (1868–1953) Theosophical Publishing Company in New York, contributed to Percival’s The Word, and also wrote for and advertised in a variety of New Thought occult journals. Other than Butler, the authorities referenced by Guthrie are, with minor exceptions, either the quack physiologists or anti-masturbationists of the time or the Church Fathers. He was not unaware of his contemporaries, however, and in a flyer called “Western Thought for Western People” (Guthrie 1929c), he gave a list of notable western thinkers that showed his eclectic reach: Mabel Collins (1851–1927); Anna Bonus Kingsford (1846–1888); Phineas Parkhurst Quimby (1802–1866); John Hamlin Dewey (1828–c. 1908); William Juvenal Colville (1862–1917) (for his novels on secret brotherhoods on both sides of the grave); Franz Hartmann (1838–1912) (on the “Secret Fire” of the Rosicrucians); and Thomas Lake Harris (1823–1906)—another mage, of an earlier generation, who combined celibacy on the physical plane with marriage (and children) on higher planes. Despite this, Guthrie and his work to a large extent stood apart and aloof from the occult and New Thought movements of the time, separated by his religious sincerity and learning, as well as by his conviction that the usual goals of New Thought, like overcoming poverty, were illusions (Guthrie 1900a: 286) and the real goal of life was to become God (Anonymous 1897: 151). In the 1930s, Guthrie tried to promote something called the “Brotherhood of Mutual Prayer,” but what the group taught or what its success might have been is unknown. He died in 1940, struck by a car while walking along a highway in New Jersey, impoverished and forgotten by all but Theosophists, who remembered only his contributions to the revival of interest in the Neoplatonists (Anonymous 1941, 1944).

3  Gnosticos 1932: 565–567: “One cannot do without the help of the other partner if he wants to be free from the ‘wheel of rebirths’.”

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References Primary Sources Anonymous. 1866. The Grave of Frances Wright in Spring Grove. Banner of Light 19 (20): 8. ———. 1888. G.N.K.R. No. 502. A Call to the “Awakened” from “The Unseen and Unknown” for an Esoteric College, and for G…R Dept. No. 1. ———. 1889. G.N.K.R. Vidya-Nyaika’s Call to the Awakened. Credulous Cranks Accept the Bait. Utopia to Spring from Shawmut Avenue. Scandal Among Esoteric Theosophs. Weird Tale Which May Have a Sequel in Court. The Boston Daily Globe, February 2: 2. ———. 1897. Regeneration: The Gate of Heaven. Boston: Barta Press. ———. 1899a. Notices of Clergymen Deposed. In Journal of the Proceedings of the Twenty-Ninth Annual Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Albany. Albany, NY: Weed-Parsons Printing Co.: 64. ———. 1899b. Notice. In Journal of the Twenty-Fifth Annual Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Southern Ohio. Cincinnati: W.B. Carpenter Co.: 45. ———. 1901. Review: “Guthrie, K.L., Six Plain Instructions How to Become Divine Before Physical Death.”. Neue Metaphysische Rundschau 4 (6): 239. ———. 1909. Notices of Discipline—Clergymen Deposed. In Journal of the Proceedings of the 137th Convention, Being the One Hundred and Twenty-Fourth Year of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of New Jersey. Trenton: Macrellish & Quigley. ———. 1913a. Service of Prayer and Medication. New York Times, May 8. ———. 1913b. All Saints Church. New York Times, May 28. ———. 1941. Office Notes. Canadian Theosophist 20 (8): 240–242. ———. 1944. Office Notes. Canadian Theosophist 25 (5): 144–146. Atkinson, W.  W., and Edward E.  Beals. 1922. Regenerative Power, or, Vital Rejuvenation. London: L. N. Fowler & Co. and Detroit: Personal Power Co. Boas, George. 1920. Review: “Plotinus’s Complete Works, translated by Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie.”. Journal of Philosophy 17 (13): 349–362. Butler, Hiram Erastus. 1892. Contributions and Answers to Questions. Esoteric 6 (1): 86. ———. 1908. Special Instructions for Women. 4th ed. Applegate: Esoteric Publishing Co. Dowd, Freeman Benjamin. 1900. Regeneration: Being Part II. Of the Temple of the Rosy Cross. Salem, MA: Eulian Publishing Co. Gnosticos (= E.  C. H.  Peithmann). 1932. Tibetanische und gnostische Magie. Zentralblatt für Okkultismus 25 (12): 565–566. Gomes, Michael. 1985. Crows in Peacock Feathers. Canadian Theosophist 66 (5): 114–117.

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Gould, Sylvester Clark. 1908. Arcane Societies in the United States. Rosicrucian Brotherhood 2 (5): 149–204. Guthrie, Kenneth Sylvan. 1892. Contributions and Answers to Questions. Esoteric 6 (1): 85. ———. 1899a. My Way Out to Freedom: or, Reasons Why I Left the Protestant Episcopal Church. Prophet 1 (4). ———. 1899b. Why I Must Leave the Protestant Episcopal Organization. In My Message and How I Got to It. ———. 1899c. The Purpose of the Brotherhood. Prophet 1 (1): 2–3. ———. 1899d. Three Important Books. Prophet 1 (3). ———. 1899e. Devotional Medications. In My Message and How I Got to It. ———. 1900a. Church of Silent Unity. Prophet 2 (1). ———. 1900b. Regeneration Applied: Being the Sequel and Practical Application of Regeneration, the Gate of Heaven. Medford: Prophet Publishing House. ———. 1901a. Regeneration. London: Nichols & Co. and Luzac & Co. ———. 1901b. Wanted: A Small Colony Site. The Prophet 4 (3). ———. 1904. The Long-Lost Second Book of Acts Setting Forth the Blessed Mary’s Teachings about Reincarnation. Medford: Prophet Publishing House and New York: Theosophical Publishing Co. ———. 1905. Regeneration: Special Methods for Men and for Women, with Specific Directions How to Calculate the Times Dangerous to Conservation. New York: Theosophical Publishing Co. and London: Luzac. ———. 1914. Why You Really Want to Become a Churchman of the American Church of the Future: The Protestant Episcopal, or, Protestant Catholic Church. Brooklyn: Comparative Literature Press. ———. 1929a. Career of Dr. Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie. In Temple Gates Ajar. North Yonkers: Platonist Press. ———. 1929b. Temple Gates Ajar: An Anthology of Experiential Religion. North Yonkers: Platonist Press. ———. 1929c. Western Thought for Western People. In Temple Gates Ajar. North Yonkers: Platonist Press. McDonald, Jonathan Stickney. 1888. Excerpt From a Letter to a Lady—December 27, 1888. In Notebooks. Jonathan Stickney McDonald Papers, 75–79. Smithsonian Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Ramacharaka, Yogi (= William Walker Atkinson). 1904. The Hindu-Yogi Science of Breath. Chicago: Yogi Publication Society and London: L.N. Fowler & Co. Stockham, Alice Bunker. 1896. Karezza: Ethics of Marriage. Chicago: self-published. Waisbrooker, Lois. 1890. From Generation to Regeneration. New  York: Murray Hill Publishing Company. Woodhull, Victoria C. 1873. The Elixir of Life: or, Why Do We Die? New  York: Woodhull & Claflin.

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Secondary Sources Buescher, John Benedict. 2007. Aquarian Evangelist: The Age of Aquarius As It Dawned in the Mind of Levi Dowling, Theosophical History Occasional Papers. Vol. 11. Fullerton, CA: Theosophical History. Deveney, John Patrick. 2015. Man is a Spirit Here and Now: The Two Faces of Nineteenth-Century Spiritualism and the Creation of the Magical Occult Theosophical Spiritualist New Thought Amalgam. In Handbook of Spiritualism and Channeling, ed. Cathy Gutierrez, 119–151. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Koenig, Peter-Robert. 1993. Der kleine Theodor Reuss-Reader. München: A.R.W. ———. 1995. Ein Leben für die Rose (Arnoldo Krumm-Heller). München: A.R.W. Möller, Helmut, and Ellic Howe. 1986. Merlin Peregrinus. Vom Untergrund des Abendlandes. Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann. Vallee, Jacques. 1980. Messengers of Deception. New York: Bantam.

CHAPTER 10

The Theosophical Maitreya: On Benjamin Creme’s Millenarianism Lukas Pokorny

Introduction No other proponent of the New Age current (cf. Hanegraaff 2007) has been more indefatigably advocating the imminence of a messianic World Teacher than Benjamin Creme (1922–2016). Undeterred by the apparent perenniality of his millenarian expectation, that is, the decade-long persistence of the World Teacher’s (public) absence, Creme until his passing persevered in his claim of the very soon-to-unfold Age of the Group, the “Share International millennium.” Etically, one may argue that “prophecy,” in his case, evidently “failed,” for Creme time and again indicated that he himself would indeed experience the Day of Declaration, or the World Teacher’s salvific coming out, while still alive. However, emically, importance is assigned not to dates but solely to the apodictic certainty of a millenarian materialisation that draws to a close, for temporality is relative and so are time designations. Accordingly, the Share International movement unswervingly keeps cherishing Creme’s millenarian vision and

L. Pokorny (*) Department of Religious Studies, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 L. Pokorny, F. Winter (eds.), The Occult Nineteenth Century, Palgrave Studies in New Religions and Alternative Spiritualities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55318-0_10

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its chief protagonist, the World Teacher or the Christ of the Aquarian Age. It is he—whose true name Creme confirmed to be Maitreya—who is the omphalos in Creme’s millenarian programme. Despite the notoriety of Creme’s millenarianism, surprisingly little research has been hitherto conducted on his teachings. The present chapter aside, only very recently scholars go beyond the usual en passant mentions. One is Jake Poller (2019), who explores the nature of Creme’s knowledge received telepathically and through “overshadowing”; the other one is myself in Pokorny 2021, where I delineate key aspects of Creme’s UFO religiosity. What both papers necessarily address, albeit merely in a nutshell, is the all-pervading millenarian mechanics of his thought. This chapter now seeks to give the fullest attention to Creme’s millenarianism and, specifically, the role of Maitreya therein. Following an overview of Creme’s hagiography and a brief archaeology of the Maitreya narrative in Buddhism and modern Theosophy, Creme’s appropriation thereof within his wider millenarian mindscape is examined. Before, however, two key terms need to be determined, namely “millenarianism” and “millennium.” Drawing on my definitions (see Pokorny 2020), I take the former as the belief in a salvational transformation of the current world order, through which at least (some of) the faithful will experience wellbeing. This transformation is held to (substantially) solidify imminently, patterned by a transcendent blueprint that is either devised by a superhuman agent or naturally impregnated into the fabrics of time and space through an impersonal absolute. Moreover, change may be facilitated or even enforced through the action pursued by human beings, rendering them into “vehicles of change.” “Millennium” is understood as the complete or crucially progressed state of millenarian perfection. In its consummated mode the millennium may exist indefinitely or until the dawn of a new cosmic era—for example, as spelled out in cyclical worldviews. Millennium-building can follow (possibly in subsequent terms or even “oscillatorily”) two chief trajectories—the “catastrophic” or the “progressive.” In the concluding remarks, Creme’s millenarianism is placed within this theoretical framework.

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Benjamin Creme and Share International The Painter Key portions of Benjamin Creme’s standard autohagiographical account of 1979 (cf. Creme 2007a: ix–xxii; for his official obituary, see SI 35.10 [2016 December]: 3–4) are variously repeated partially or in full across the Share International oeuvre. In scattered talks, he later added bits and pieces but the information we have regarding his life is overall sparse. Creme was born on December 5, 1922, as the second of three and only boy into a Jewish-­Catholic family in Glasgow. In his teens, he decided that he would become a painter and, eventually, left home at 16 to pursue his early commitment. The following year, he organised a small exhibition alongside his friend, the later actor Douglas Campbell (1922–2009), and apparently piqued the interest of famed local artists Jankel Adler (1895–1949), John Duncan Fergusson (1874–1961), and Josef Herman (1911–2000). Adler, who had been working with Paul Klee (1879–1940) in Düsseldorf during the 1920s and was particularly influenced by Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) and Fernand Léger (1881–1955), was, allegedly, especially intrigued and became Creme’s mentor over the next few years. Creme married his first wife (Peggy; d. 1965) and, in 1946, the couple moved to London, where—through Adler—he enjoyed vibrant contact with reputed contemporary painters such as Keith Vaughan (1912–1977), Robert MacBryde (1913–1966), Robert Colquhoun (1914–1962), John Minton (1917–1957), and Prunella Clough (1919–1999). Creme continued painting—and occasionally exhibiting—until his eyesight faded in the 2000s. The Benjamin Creme Museum in Los Angeles is dedicated to his (esoteric) art. Maitreya’s Voice Running parallel to and becoming increasingly entangled with his mundane career as a largely self-taught painter (see Creme 2017), Creme pursued another inner calling—the study of Ageless Wisdom Teaching or Esotericism (Creme 2006: 7). Early formative readings mentioned by Creme include Alexandra David-Néel’s (1868–1969) With Mystics and Magicians in Tibet (1931; translation of the 1929 Parmi les mystiques et les magiciens du Thibet), the writings of Wilhelm Reich (1897–1957), as well as Rolf Alexander’s (1891–?) The Power of the Mind (1956). Ultimately, it

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has been figures belonging to three partly overlapping and mutually influencing spiritual milieus that were shaping Creme’s own religious identity. Exerting the most striking impact were various giants of Theosophical thinking, above all his “predecessor triad”: Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831–1891); Helena Ivanovna Roerich (1879–1955); and, especially, Alice Ann Bailey (1880–1949); but also Annie Besant (1847–1933) and Charles Webster Leadbeater (1847–1934). Additionally, he immersed himself in the writings of different neo-Hindu thinkers—Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902); Paramahansa Yogananda (1893–1952); Sivananda Saraswati (1887–1963); and later, but most significantly, Sathya Sai Baba (1926–2011). Finally, he was greatly susceptible to the nascent UFO religious current, specifically as articulated by the likes of George Adamski (1891–1965) and George King (1919–1997). Reading the former’s Flying Saucers Have Landed (1953), co-authored with Desmond Leslie (1921–2001), as well as its sequel, Inside the Space Ships (1955), awakened in Creme such a glowing enthusiasm that he became an active member of King’s Aetherius Society from 1957 to 1958. His engagement with King purportedly had two lasting effects. Firstly, as Creme recalls, he was capacitated “to transmit the cosmic spiritual energies from the Space People” (2007a: xii), harnessing these energies for healing purposes. Secondly, he could now telepathically establish contact with the Space Brothers, that is, spiritually highly evolved extraterrestrials from within our solar system who man the numerous unidentified flying objects (UFOs) and unidentified submerged objects (USOs) protecting the earth. Subsequent to his association with the Aetherius Society, he took service with the Space Brothers, regularly liaising in out-of-the-body gatherings with other contactees such as Adamski himself (Creme 2010: 63–64), who, as Creme disclosed, had indeed been an incarnated Venusian. This seemingly prepared the stage for a watershed episode in Creme’s life occurring in early 1959. Having always been under its watch, as Creme insinuated, now for the first time a high-ranked member of Earth’s Spiritual Hierarchy of Masters (cf. Goodrick-Clarke 2010) established direct telepathic contact with him. This Master residing in the Himalayas was later to become Creme’s own Master, whose name, while supposedly being well-known to the initiated all over the world, he would never disclose. In a series of messages, Creme was familiarised with the Plan of humankind’s evolution, culminating in a momentous discourse by the Master on the imminent bodily emergence of his leader, the Head of our Planetary Hierarchy. It was further revealed to Creme that he was indeed

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assigned a special role in all this and, specifically, that he would become the proclaimer of the World Teacher’s Descent. Communication seemed to have subsequently substantially ceased until late 1972 when Creme was taken under the Master’s wing engaging in most intense and profound spiritual training. His discipleship enabled the Master to imprint his consciousness upon Creme. In a next step, Creme embarked on community-­ building. That is to say, in March 1974, his Master advised him to contact 14 selected individuals and relate to them in a lecture an outline of the Plan. Twelve were to join the cause, forming the first Transmission Meditation group.1 Shortly thereafter, the World Teacher himself commenced to occasionally engraft his consciousness upon Creme, a process called “overshadowing” in the Theosophical jargon. Creme thereby turned into the World Teacher’s veritable mouthpiece. Starting in May 1975, Creme carried his message centring on the Reappearance of the Christ and the Externalisation of the Hierarchy in general (i.e., the Masters’ public appearance) to other groups. Later, Creme confided that he was in fact one of five “disciples” originally tasked to do so; each one was then living in a spiritually charged city—Darjeeling, Geneva, New York, Tō kyō , and London (Creme). Only he was to accept (SI 20:8 [2001 October]: 30). While Creme kept spreading the word qua Christ’s herald indirectly for the most part of his “service,” from September 1977, the World Teacher every now and then engaged in publicly overshadowing him, therefore opening up a direct channel of communication. Two years later, Creme published his first book encapsulating his millenarian programme in order to elevate his message to new heights. Already the title of his opus magnum—The Reappearance of the Christ and the Masters of Wisdom—deliberately evinces his indebtedness to Bailey’s (messianic) thought (cf. Bailey 1978 [1948]). Sixteen books were to follow alongside numerous texts (ranging from brief responses in Q&A sections to substantial speeches) chiefly published in the movement’s central organ, Share International. Starting as a monthly in 1982, the magazine is presently released in ten issues per year. Most of his books are comprised of a thematically arranged 1   Borrowing notably from Bailey and her Triangles (Meditation) started in 1937, Transmission Meditation is a practice introduced by Creme with the aim to downscale cosmic energies given by the Space Brothers and released to Earth by the Hierarchy in order to facilitate humankind’s spiritual evolution. Transmission Meditation groups represent the only platform for real-life member interaction.

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and selected collection of (his) Share International texts. At the time, Creme also founded the Share International Foundation based in Amsterdam, which keeps serving as the nucleus of a larger network of like-­ minded organisations worldwide. Today, Transmission Meditation groups are active around the globe in more than 40 countries. Whereas the number of committed longer-term Transmission Meditation practitioners is likely merely in the hundreds, the overall impact of Creme’s teachings—in particular his millenarian and ufological thought—on the wider esoteric milieu is considerable. Although Creme largely presented himself as merely the Hierarchy’s spokesperson, a humble intermediary of the Plan of Evolution, and a disciple of much higher spiritual powers he could not yet fathom, he also, albeit unostentatiously, promoted the self-image of a spiritually well-advanced being in his own right. This was eventually made most explicit in his obituary where his spiritual evolution was given as that of a 3.46-degrees initiate (as of December 2014), which would place Creme among Earth’s spiritual elite,2 putting him in the company of figures such as Muhammad (3.4), the Apostle Peter (3.5), Milarepa (3.5), Francis of Assisi (3.5), and William Shakespeare (3.5). Such spiritual score shall also corroborate his claim to have carried forward at the vanguard the Theosophical lineage of great Ageless Wisdom Teaching mediators. Indeed, he deems himself to rank only behind Blavatsky (4.0) and Roerich (4.0), but well in front of other big names of Theosophy, including Bailey (3.2), Leadbeater (2.4), Henry Steel Olcott (1832–1907; 2.2), Alfred Percy Sinnett (1840–1921; 2.2), Besant (2.15), Nicholas Roerich (1874–1947; 2.1), and William Quan Judge (1851–1896; 2.0).3 Benjamin 2  Assigning initiatory levels and—drawing on Bailey’s A Treatise on the Seven Rays (1936)— “ray structure” (i.e., energetic) compositions to historical (and mythical) personalities, has been a trademark of Creme. In Theosophical soteriology, initiation refers to “the process of undergoing an expansion of consciousness” (Bailey 1977 [1922]: 12) in a multi-stage scheme. The higher one’s spiritual progress (or level of self-realisation of one’s own divinity) geared towards reaching oneness with the Supreme Logos of the Cosmos, the higher one’s initiatory score. According to Creme, the average level of present-day humankind is 0.3-degrees of initiation, allowing ordinary people to employ some twelve per cent of his/ her brain capacity. In contrast, a third-degree initiate could already utilise some sixty to seventy per cent (Creme 2010: 134). Mastership is attained with the fifth initiation. Accomplishing the first initiation may take several hundreds of thousands of reincarnations. It speeds up thereafter. Currently, around 2300–2400 people in incarnation are supposed to have taken the third initiation, and circa 450 the fourth one (Creme 2006: 32–33). 3  Among the Theosopically minded figures other than Blavatsky and Roerich, Creme only considers Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986; 4.0) to be ahead in spiritual terms. Yet, he rather

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Creme died in London on October 24, 2016, at the age of 93. He is survived by his second wife, Phyllis (b. 1942), their children Tara (b. 1973) and Lucis, as well as a son from his first marriage, Julian. The latter in tandem with his wife, Share International’s chief editor, Felicity Eliot, have become the public voices of the movement. Notably, they advocate the view that Creme’s passing has not ended his association with Share International qua “Aquarian type of group” (cf. Bailey 2017 [1951]: 297) but by dint of his spiritual identity (qua “Aquarian type of founder”) he would actually continue to nourish and sustain it. Moreover, in a number of recent interviews they re-emphasised millenarian contiguity—Maitreya’s Day of Declaration keeps being nigh.

Maitreya Buddhist Origins Maitreya’s (Sanskrit; “Metteyya” in Pāli; “The Benevolent One”) origins are obscure. Zoroastrian or Mithraic influences might have been at play (Appleton 2010: 90). Jaini (1988: 77–78) suggests that Maitreya was first introduced by the Mahāsāṃ ghikas and subsequently adopted by other mainstream schools. The earliest extant textual appearance—partly dating back to the second century BCE—is found in the Buddha’s biography of the Lokottaravāda-Mahāsāṃ ghikas, the Mahāvastu (Great Story). There the historical Buddha relates of a contemporary bodhisattva by the name of Ajita who “will become a Buddha in the world immediately after me” (tr. in Jones 1949: 9), that is, at some indeterminate point in the future of the current aeon (kalpa) (Jones 1956: 233).4 The Mahāvastu Maitreya myth rather prosaically displays dharma continuity than a messianic outlook. In the popular Cakkavattisı̄hanādasutta (Discourse on the Lion’s Roar of the Wheel-Turning Monarch) of the Theravādins, the only (brief) reference to Maitreya in the entire Pāli Canon (Walshe 1995 [1987]: 395–405), the topos of plain dharma continuity unfolds against an embryonic progressive millenarian background. Maitreya is held to attain views Krishnamurti as a “spiritual teacher” entrenched in the (neo-)Hindu context, which Creme took as a hotbed for spiritual grandeur as expressed through the extraordinary spiritual stats given to various of its exponents. The list of spiritually exceptional Hindu masters peaks in the person of Sathya Sai Baba, Earth’s Spiritual Regent deputising for Sanat Kumara, the reflection of the Planetary Logos. 4  In the later tradition, “Ajita” became an epithet of Maitreya.

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enlightenment at the height of a new cycle during the reign of an ideal monarch (cakravartin) when morality has returned to its utmost. Yet, neither does Maitreya messianically usher in change nor is the coming golden age (which is deemed far superior to the times of the historical Buddha) even faintly envisaged to materialise soon but rather in up to 5.67 billion years according to a common traditional reckoning. Whereas the classical Maitreya myth is relatively unembellished and the Cakkavattisῑhanādasutta Maitreya, specifically, remains lacklustre being solely a future copy of the historical Buddha, this was to change dramatically later, especially in the Chinese Mahāyāna discourse; a development notably advanced by amplified eschatological thinking (cf. Nattier 1991) thriving in the Buddho-Daoist conceptual crucible. The silent guarantor of dharma resurgence in a nebulous distant future metamorphosed into a tangible (at times messianic) agent becoming salvifically responsive to devotion. The ensuing Maitreya belief came to play out in a continuum, ranging over four salvational modes as expounded by Nattier (1988): imminently and earthly; earthly but in one’s next life (an option, which could well accommodate Maitreya’s descent in whatever far-off future); imminently occurring in Maitreya’s heavenly realm Tuṣita5; and in Tuṣita after one’s rebirth. In particular, the earthly-imminent version of the myth, already from the fifth century (Zürcher 1982: 13–14), gave way to a millenarian dynamism fleshing out all across East Asia in a variety of movements until today. Since the nineteenth century, expectationalism accelerated. Undoubtedly, new Maitreyas either in statu adventum or fully descended will keep coming. The Theosophical Appropriation Buddhism served as a major resource for devising Theosophical thought. So conspicuous were the borrowings that Sinnett could unhesitantly title his seminal Theosophical primer Esoteric Buddhism (1883), an early byword of Theosophy, as lamented echoingly by Blavatsky (1888: xvii). However, Blavatsky’s complaint was merely directed at the misleading implication of such title, which would invite to erroneously equate Theosophy with contemporaneous Buddhism. In fact, she initially used the designation herself in the sense of the “doctrine of wisdom,” which esoterically crystallised in the “wisdom-religion” of Gautama’s Buddhism 5

 Traditionally, the place where the designated next Buddha awaits his last transmigration.

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and pre-Vedic Brahmanism (Blavatsky 1877: 142–143); a secret doctrine, she and the wider Theosophical movement sought to divulge. For the sake of clarification, Blavatsky later contrasted “Buddhism” with “Budhism,” the latter being synonymous with Theosophy or “Wisdomism” (Blavatsky 1889: 12–13). In his Esoteric Buddhism, Sinnett mentions Maitreya only once. He would be the fifth Buddha (of a total of seven) in the present Great Planetary Circle, emerging when the subsequent sixth “root race” will already be around for several hundreds of thousands of years (1883: 144–145).6 In her The Secret Doctrine (1888) Blavatsky corrects, as on many other occasions, Sinnett, having Maitreya instead conclude a list of five Buddhas, being “the last MESSIAH [sic] who will come at the culmination of the Great Cycle” (1888: 384).7 Accordingly, he is not supposed to descend during the heydays of the sixth root race, but only when the highly spiritualised seventh and last root race is around (ibid.: 470). In her posthumous The Theosophical Glossary (1892), however, Blavatsky notes that Maitreya would instead be slated to “appear during the seventh (sub) race of this Round” (1892: 202). Although much sooner, it would still take at least tens of thousands of years before he arrives—if “he” would arrive in the flesh after all, given Blavatsky’s earlier hint that “Maïtree” will effectively incarnate “into the whole humanity collectively, not in a single individual” (Blavatsky 1881: 195). Early Theosophists, if they referred to him at all, placed Maitreya’s emergence in a distant future. This salvational remoteness evidently dimmed his popularity, for once his imminence(-cum-messianism) was highlighted, Maitreya came to occupy centre stage. Rumours within the Theosophical community that Maitreya’s messianic second advent following his “incarnation” as Jesus was at hand already spread, albeit 6  Blavatsky divided human evolution alongside seven “root races,” each of which consists of seven “sub-races.” Humankind has arrived at the fifth sub-race (the “European”) of the fifth root race (the “Aryan”), which has been around for one million years. The sixth subrace will come forth in a few hundred years, branching from the Americans. The seventh sub-race will slowly start to develop in some 25,000  years from now (cf. Santucci 2008; Lubelsky 2013). 7  In Isis Unveiled (1877), the Maitree’s [sic] emergence qua saviour (Blavatsky 1877: 286) involves a catastrophic millenarian scenario: “When Maitree-Buddha comes, then our present world will be destroyed; and a new and better one will replace it” (ibid.: 275). This original apocalyptic-messianic vision was upheld for several years among some Theosophists. For example, in 1885, Navroji Dorabji Khandalavala still stated that “the fifth Buddha (Maitree) will appear at his last advent to save mankind before the final destruction of the world” (Khandalavala 1885: 91).

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reluctantly, at the turn of the century (see, e.g., Besant 1900: 389). Towards the end of the 1900s, Besant alongside Leadbeater was then to turn these rumours into the lynchpin of Theosophy: Maitreya qua World Teacher was about to come forth. Besant believed that the sixth sub-race, the “American” with its centre in Southern California, already started to appear, now that the fifth one, which she called the “Teutonic,” was at its zenith. Every new sub-race brings about a World Teacher; this time it would be Maitreya, who assumed the role of Bodhisattva when his predecessor, Gautama, incarnated as the historical Buddha. During his tenure, Maitreya already twice was to implement lasting change—first being incarnated as Kṛsn ̣ ̣a reshaping Hindusim; next by overshadowing Jesus in order to give to the Teutonic sub-race an adequate doctrine, that is, Christianity (cf. Wessinger 1988: 264–268). To Besant, Maitreya is one of the chief dramatis personae of the mighty Occult Hierarchy of spiritual masters responsible for Earth, for he presides over its Department of Teaching8: “[A]t the head of that department, two grades above the grade of a Master, stands the Supreme Teacher, the Teacher of angels and of men. […] His the duty of watching over the spiritual destinies of mankind” (Besant 1912: 95). That is to say, “the World-Teacher […] comes out to sub-race after sub-race, and gives each religion appropriate to its needs, carefully designed for its own special and peculiar devotion” (Besant 1914: 269).9 A most significant task in Besant’s Theosophical-millenarian project, which she partly pursued allegedly under the direct order of the Manu of the sixth sub-race, was to prepare a bodily vessel for Maitreya to descend into, for his own physical body needed to be kept at his residence in the Himalayas. This shell was discovered in April 1909 by Besant’s right-hand 8  Its sister department is that of Ruling, overseen by another greatly evolved being (hailing from Blavatskian teachings), the Manu. As Besant has it: “[T]he Ruling Department, which guides all natural evolution, changes the face of the surface of our globe, builds and destroys continents, raises fresh races which grow mightier and pass away, controls the destinies of nations, shapes the fate of civilisations, balances up from time to time the great accounts between the races and the nations, and rules the outer destinies of men” (Besant 1912: 94–95). 9  Apart from his direct innovative interventions, a World Teacher would also commission his disciples to spread new contextualised articulations of the same one truth—chief examples being Confucius, “Lao-tse,” Plato, and Pythagoras. The latter is considered to be no one else than Master K.  H. (Koot Hoomi; Kuthumi), deemed the real co-founder, alongside Master M. (Morya), of the Theosophical Society, whose creation is meant to pioneer the new great religion of future humanity. Besant claimed that M. (the designated Manu of the sixth root race) was also her Master (likewise, Blavatsky and Olcott were his disciples), whereas Leadbeater was the disciple of K. H., Maitreya’s deputy and successor-in-waiting.

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man, Leadbeater (whom she had known since 1890 via Sinnett), in the person of the then 13-year-old Krishnamurti. Consequently, he was groomed by the Theosophical Society leadership with a view to eventually become the overshadowed vessel for the World-Teacher—a vision that was ultimately not carried into effect. Rather, Krishnamurti increasingly alienated from the messianism devised by Besant and Leadbeater, resigning from the Theosophical Society in 1930. Still, Besant kept on favourable terms with Krishnamurti until her passing, claiming that in lieu of the anticipated overshadowing, Maitreya implanted a fraction of his consciousness into him. In contrast, Leadbeater was dismissive and reportedly discerned in 1927 that due to Krishnamurti’s denial to let Maitreya use his body, “The Coming has gone wrong” (Tillett 1986: 762, 796). Overall, Leadbeater, a former Anglican clergyman, was the mind most systematically informing the World Teacher narrative (French 2000). He might have done so at least from 1901 (Jinarâjadâsa 1940: 11–12). Maitreya or the Bodhisattva serves the Hierarchy or the Great White Brotherhood as its Minister of Education and Religion (or, alternatively, that of Religious Instruction, or just Religion), the high office entrusted by the Buddha to his then assistant. Maitreya will apparently become the sixth of the total seven Buddhas of our “world-period” (Leadbeater 1925: 313). However, for the time being, he remains a bodhisattva, dwelling in his house in the Himalayas before he dons the body of a prepared disciple and consummates the Christian Second Advent joined by the range of other Masters. At present, he would be wearing a body of the Keltic race […]. His is a face of wondrous beauty, strong and yet most tender, with rich hair flowing like red gold about His shoulders. His beard is pointed, as in some of the old pictures, and His eyes, of a wonderful violet, are like twin flowers, like stars, like deep and holy pools filled with the waters of everlasting peace. His smile is dazzling beyond words, and a blinding glory of Light surrounds Him, intermingled with that marvellous rose-­coloured glow which ever shines from the Lord of Love. […] His is the voice that speaks, as never man spake, the words of teaching that bring peace to angels and to men. Within a very few years that voice will be heard and that Love be felt by those who dwell in the dark ways of earth; may we prepare ourselves to receive Him when He comes and give Him fitting welcome and faithful service! (ibid.: 42–43).

With the Krishnamurti prophecy having failed, Leadbeater (and fellow Liberal Catholic Church bishops) turned from outward to inward messianism: The Christ would not manifest individually but gradually descend

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into the human hearts (cf. Tillett 1986: 785)—a shift to the Blavatskian side note of 1881 in her Lamas and Druses. From its strident beginning to its sore end, the whole World Teacher episode sent seismic shocks through the Theosophical movement, leading to schisms, a surging drop-­out rate, and, eventually, self-imposed messianic silence among the remaining Adyar community. Yet, Theosophical messianism was kept very much alive in various dissenting groups, notably those led by the Roerichs and the Baileys. The Roerichian Maitreya (like his peers, Buddha and Christ) hails from Venus and is expected to live (perhaps only by way of his spiritual presence) amid the coming sixth and seventh root races. The Epoch of Fire, originally anticipated by the Roerichs to commence by 1931 and to fully erupt in the 1940s, would cataclysmically pave the way for Maitreya’s emergence. Disaster as a result of the worldwide purification, however, may be averted on an individual basis, provided one holds fast to the teachings of the Mother of Agni Yoga (i.e., Helena Roerich) (Agni Yoga Society 1954: 226–227), who is accordingly assigned a key soteriological function in her own right. Out of Armageddon, which also involves the apocalyptic battle between the Forces of Darkness and the Forces of Light (i.e., the Hierarchy), the Epoch of Maitreya will ultimately arise. The concomitant spiritual revolution centres on the growing recognition of the panentheistic feminine divine; the power source sustaining all that is good and beautiful, giving purpose and meaning to creation, and ensouling humankind. Maitreya’s role is to “transform life on Earth in the radiance of the Mother of the World” (Agni Yoga Society 1977 [1931]: 6), that is, to spiritually beacon humankind to the Feminine Origin, the Highest Reality, having everyone increasingly rejoice in the beautiful truth of cosmic existence. The Epoch of Maitreya shall thus be the Epoch of Woman. The Baileyian Maitreya myth forgoes the catastrophic millenarian concern of the Roerichs. Although the Real Armageddon would indeed occur, it is but a side note in Bailey’s oeuvre, placed at the closure of the sixth root race. Well before this distant event, Maitreya would already have descended in a progressive millenarian fashion. In fact, the World Teacher is only rarely addressed as “Maitreya” by Bailey (eleven times altogether across her copious writings). Rather, “Maitreya” is merely used as a sobriquet, deemed the Eastern synonym for the (Leadbeaterian) “Christ” known in the West. Although Bailey steadily evokes messianic imminence in order to alert to the need for Reconstruction Work, that is, properly setting the stage individually and communally to usher in the New Age

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and receive the Christ through the establishment of a “world at peace” (Bailey 1978 [1948]: 58–59), this notion of imminence is effectively stretched significantly. More precisely, in an oft-cited passage, Bailey (1981 [1957]: 530) claims that the Hierarchy’s coming out, and accordingly the Christ’s gradual materialisation, would not occur before 2025. Prior to that, however, he would incrementally descend ethereally in response to the Reconstruction Work conducted by this New Group of World Servers. At any rate, in 1945, the Christ allegedly resolved to soon emerge physically due to humankind having then witnessed an apogee of distress in the form of World War II (Bailey 1978 [1948]: 30). In the New Age, the Christ, who is the Master of all the Masters and the actual Head of the Hierarchy, would help elevate humankind’s consciousness to new evolutionary heights. The spiritual transformation (or collectivisation) fostered by the Christ in line with the Divine Plan would exhale a New World Religion, whose foundations Bailey considered to be already visible in her Arcane School (cf. Rudbøg 2019). Bailey’s ample Christology proved enormously influential for the later New Age current with Creme becoming one of its figureheads.

Creme’s Maitreya and the Millennium Maitreya A self-declared Ageless Wisdom Teaching intermediary, Creme takes the Theosophical-cum-ufological systems of his ideological precursors, starting with Blavatsky qua the first source in modern times, as granted. His role is twofold, namely to smooth seeming inconsistencies between these authorities through elucidation and to provide updated further insights (Creme 2007b: 3). Creme’s immediate chief reference is Bailey. Her Christ lends the functional outlines to Creme’s Maitreya, whose story and context is given below. Maitreya is no epithet to the World Teacher but his actual name, which means “The Happy One” in the sense of “the one who brings happiness to the world” (Creme 2001a: 39)—a name he was given by his Master at his second initiation. His own evolution commenced some eight million years ago in the age of Atlantis where he soon became the first initiate ever. In mid-Atlantean times, he took the third initiation and soon found himself at the evolutionary vanguard. The Hierarchy of that period consisted entirely of Hierarchical members coming to Earth from other planets.

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This relocation of early Space Brothers began in middle Lemurian times some 18.5 million years ago when humans, who originally stem from the Moon (SI 29:8 [2010 October]: 23) as well as partly from a precursor solar system (SI 25:9 [2006 November]: 31), had properly developed. The first to arrive was a Venusian named Sanat Kumara, a ninth-degree initiate and the reflection of the Planetary Logos. When descending to Earth this Leadbeaterian Lord of the World created Shamballa, his ruling abode and the planet’s energy centre located in the Gobi desert spanning the two highest etheric planes. It was Sanat Kumara, the Abrahamic God, who formed the Hierarchy qua Humanity’s Elder Brothers 1.5  million years later. Earth’s Hierarchy is a lodge of the Great White Brotherhood on Sirius (Creme 1993: 67), their members acting as agents of the Divine Plan Sanat Kumara desires to impart to humankind. The Atlantean civilisation largely collapsed after around twelve million years, that is, circa 98,000 years ago, caused through self-destruction owing to the misuse of electromagnetic weaponry—a part of the incredibly advanced science the Atlanteans received as a gift from the Hierarchy (Creme: 2007a: 234). The last portion of Atlantean territory in the present-day area of the Azores sunk 15,000 years ago. With Atlantis submerged the Masters who had been living amid the people retired from the public and moved to remote mountainous or desert regions across the globe.10 Maitreya, presently on the seventh stage of initiation, took up residence in the Himalayas 2000  years ago. His Master was Tara, the Mother of the World, or Creation’s Shakti, the Female Principle, another extraterrestrial being travelling to earth in ancient times. Moreover, if advice is needed these days he commonly resorts to her male counterpart, Sanat Kumara. Because of that the pace of Maitreya’s spiritual progress being a seventh-degree initiate is unprecedented among fellow humans. Only his brother and previous World Teacher, the Buddha, ranks above him as an eighth-degree initiate since recently when he assumed the office of intermediary between Shamballa and the Hierarchy. The latter is headed by Maitreya in tandem with his (hierarchically inferior) fellow Great Lords or Lords of Compassion, the Manu and the Mahachohan. Sanat Kumara, who himself embraces and accommodates the Plan given to the Planetary Logos from the Solar Logos (who in turn receives it from his spiritual superior and so forth), passes it on to the Buddha who carries the information forth to the 10  Atlantis is thought to resurface in 800–900 years, at a time when large parts of America and Europe will sink beneath the oceans.

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Hierarchical Leadership. They themselves seek to “approximate it to what is possible in a given cycle, 1000 or 2000 year cycle, which is then broken down into shorter cycles of perhaps 100 years, sometimes 75 or 25 years” (Creme 1993: 615), and spread it among the 60 other members of the Hierarchy, all Masters of the fifth and sixth initiation.11 Maitreya holds the World Teacher office since the dawn of the Age of Pisces 2150 years ago and will continue to do so for another 2350–2500 years until the end of the Age of Aquarius when he will be succeeded by Master Koot Hoomi, the World Teacher of the Capricornian Cycle. Meanwhile, Maitreya will leave Earth to hasten his own spiritual evolution pursuing the so-called Path of Absolute Sonship, only to return as the Cosmic Christ or Cosmic Maitreya at the end of the seventh root race “to take humanity on a journey of perfectionment” (Creme 2001a: 146)—a position which has been claimed by Sathya Sai Baba. Both are embodying the Christ Principle or Christ Consciousness—Maitreya doing so at the planetary level. It is the energy of love and spiritual evolution bound to lead the soul to unity with the absolute godhead, the Universal Logos.12 Maitreya is the Fifth Buddha. His three predecessors in this role— Gautama, Mithra, and Memnon—were all overshadowed by the Buddha.13 Maitreya, too, has been overshadowing as well as inspiring individuals throughout the ages. Most prominently, Kṛsn ̣ ̣a some 5000 years ago and Jesus or Jushu/Jeshu Ben Pandira/Panthera (SI 11:9 [1992b November]: 23), who was born in 24 BCE.14 Others include, inter alia, King Gesar of Ling, Caitanya (1486–1534), Krishnamurti, and, most recently, Creme himself. Maitreya was known to history by many names such as Metatron and Melchizedek. Where he lives in London today, he carries a “Muslim name.” Maitreya not only overshadows individuals but he is being persistently overshadowed, namely by the Spirit of Peace/Equilibrium (i.e., a great cosmic being emitting balance and so antagonising the chaos of the present-day world) and the Avatar of Synthesis (i.e., the embodiment of 11  Hierarchical meetings normally take place every century. Adjustments, however, may also be made by Maitreya singlehandedly at any given time. Such occurred, for example, with respect to the Krishnamurti episode, who was indeed (alongside a few others) prepared as a vessel for Maitreya. Yet, ultimately, Maitreya decided to create his own body. 12  Its complementary principle is the Energy of Wisdom, personified in its exclusivity through the Buddha. 13  Creme does not mention who the first was. 14  Since 1989, the Master Jesus resides in Rome influencing the Vatican. Notably, he also had a formative influence on Islam by overshadowing Muhammad over four years.

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Will, Love, and Intelligence). Both are responsible to constantly mitigate the increasing magnitude of natural disasters, which are a sign of progressing moral decay. Moreover, they are joined in their overshadowing by the Buddha to form an energetic triangle focusing on Maitreya who transmits their fused energies to the world, thereby facilitating humankind’s spiritual development. Maitreya is omniscient, is aware of everyone’s thoughts, may be omnipresent by sending out reflections of himself; his body being impeccable and inviolable. He has overcome the need for food and water. Neither does he need to sleep. Like every Master, he has attained immortality. His “native language” is telepathy (SI 6:4 [1987b May]: 18) but he is basically omniglot. Maitreya and the other Masters began preparing for their physical descent or externalisation as early as 1425, that is, already two centuries before the Pisces energy affecting Earth dropped in the year 1625, that is, 250 years before the Aquarian energy started its upswell. The next crucial stage in their externalisation scheme was the direct instruction of individuals—with Blavatsky, Roerich, and Bailey leading the way—who established a discursive platform to receive the World Teacher. Upon these re-­ articulations of the Ageless Wisdom Teaching, Maitreya assembled the New Group of World Servers in 1922, tasked to spearhead its dissemination. Following the two devastating World Wars, in 1945, Maitreya announced to appear in 1950; however, the incipient Cold War prevented him from doing so, for humankind thereby signalled that it was not yet ready for his coming. In fact, this was the time when the Forces of Evil (alternatively, Forces of Darkness, Forces of Materiality, or Market Forces) were close to their zenith of power striving to thwart the externalisation scheme and, accordingly, the “inauguration of the spiritual age of Aquarius” (Creme 2007a: 224). Their machinations eventually climaxed in the years between 1956 and 1959 but the Hierarchy with their Space Brother allies remained victorious. Since 1966 this alliance, or the Forces of Light, gained the upper hand.15 The lasting weakening of the Hierarchy’s enemies notwithstanding, the threat of global extinction was still acute. Indeed, the growing atomic arsenal of the—by Creme’s count—altogether 28 nuclear powers was the very reason Maitreya resolved to leave his Himalayan retreat (located at a height of approximately 17,500 feet) at

15  It is projected that the Forces of Evil will be completely obliterated in the Age of Capricorn (SI 6:3 [1987a April]: 19).

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this exact point in time, that is, in July 1977.16 Although he left his home “like a thief in the night,” as Creme kept pointing out, he did so with years of preparation during which he crafted a unique “body of manifestation” (or “mayavirupa”) that uniquely balances vibrational resilience to withstand the dense-physical yoke and energetic sensitiveness to the great cosmic powers he perpetually channels for the sake of humankind’s evolution (Creme 2007a: 46). While he still sends out reflections in a wide variety of appearances, his created core body is 6 feet 3 inches tall (i.e., 190.5 cm), lacks a navel, and overall resembles a middle-aged man of Indian-Pakistani descent with brown eyes.17 He commonly wears “local Moslem costume” (Creme 1996: 33). Two years prior, five Masters built Maitreya’s vanguard descending to Earth’s spiritual nodes (Shamballa aside), that is, Darjeeling, Geneva, London, New York, and Tō kyō . Nine more would enter the world in later years up to the present. In the future, a total of 40 Masters would be present. On July 7, 1977, Maitreya finished crafting his mayavirupa, donning it the same day, while leaving to rest his original Body of Light in his Himalayan abode. The next day he went down to the plains of Pakistan where he stayed for several days to adapt to the harshness of the dense-physical realm. He then boarded a plane and arrived in London, his “point of focus,” on July 19, acclimatising for another three days until the official inception of his mission on July 22. His coming set in motion the (final preparations for the) New Age (Creme 1992: 4). For the next years and until January 1986, following recurrent intrusions by the BBC, Maitreya lived in the Brick Lane area. After a number of relocations, he now dwells in a temple within the Pakistani community located in the northeast of London. After ten years of residence, he successfully applied for the British citizenship. Mentioned under “occupation” in his passport stands “Teacher.” Throughout the ages, Maitreya has been involved manifoldly in human affairs, both directly and indirectly. Most wars, revolutions, and key societal developments of the past centuries were either inspired (like the French Revolution or the Women’s Movement) or extenuated in their cruelty (like the American Civil War or the Russian Revolution) by the 16  Surprisingly, upon Maitreya’s request to end World War II, Sanat Kumara approved to give the Allied scientists access to the nuclear bomb technology. 17  For the next few hundred years, all members of the Hierarchy deliberately take male form due to “energetic reasons.” That is to say, up until this time they need to entrench themselves within the positive aspect of the energy that makes up the Earth. Reflections, however, may be female.

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Hierarchy under his direction. With his emergence, Maitreya multiplied his interventions significantly changing the course of events. He so turned directly to numerous “people in all walks of life, royalty, people of power and prestige, heads of government, the diplomatic corps all over the world, […] religious leaders, household names in industry and heads of corporations” (Creme 2007b: 20–21). Notably, he inspired Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) and Mikhail Gorbachev (b. 1931), which led to the end of apartheid and the Cold War, respectively. Likewise, he incited just protests such as the 1989 Tiānmén Square Protests in the People’s Republic of China, while also moderating conflicts such as the 2011 Egyptian Revolution, where he spent weeks at Tahrir Square in Cairo. He personally went on various disaster relief missions, prominently during Japan’s 2011 Triple Disaster where he saved the lives of many. In addition to his social and individual life-saving activities, Maitreya may even engage in actions of cosmic proportions. For example, he moved the Earth closer to the Sun in order for frozen land to become fertile again. The downside being that Earth’s repositioning entailed an increase in global warming, which amounts to 20 per cent of the overall warming. However, such would not offset its benefits for food production (Creme 2008: 57). At any rate, Maitreya’s every action is in line with the Law of Karma, which he would—hypothetically— only infringe in order to avoid World War III from happening. Generally, many Earth-protective measures are supported or even taken over entirely by the Space Brothers, who utilising their UFOs are the reason why humankind has not become extinct many times in recent decades in the first place (Pokorny 2021). By virtue of their brotherly compassion vis-à-vis humankind, the Space Brothers, among other things, decontaminate large portions of nuclear pollution, continually stabilise Earth’s axis through a “ring of light” to avert a destructive pole shift, deflect meteors, soften the effects of earthquakes, and channel powerful cosmic energies rendering them useable for the Hierarchy. Their action shall substantially contribute to the erecting of a spiritual platform for Maitreya’s open ministry. Their visible presence documented by a rising number of UFO sightings and crop circles—both like any other signs of these special times being prominently featured in Share International—is understood to symbolise a beacon for Maitreya’s coming and the New Age. To further raise awareness of this approaching watershed event, since 1997/1998, the Space Brothers alongside Maitreya created curative light signs all over the world. More recently, since late 2008, the so-called Maitreya Star, which is indeed

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four gigantic shape-shifting spacecraft positioned in the four cardinal directions,18 serves the symbolic purpose to re-enact the Star of Bethlehem heralding the advent of the Christ. Many more wondrous phenomena occur at this juncture, such as springs of healing water (eventually totalling 777 sources) charged with cosmic energy and created by Maitreya himself. Furthermore, Maitreya equipped humankind not only with theoretical knowledge and practical guidelines helping in one’s pursuit of self-­ awareness, but, in 1988, with a simple tool, that is, A Prayer for the New Age, which when uttered unleashes salvific powers.19 Additionally, Maitreya appeared publicly before larger crowds as well as on TV, albeit incognito, many hundreds of times all across the world. His salvific mission has, as of 2006, spiritually recruited 1.8 billion people, who are ready to receive his call. Many more will follow prompted by the miraculous events happening on the Day of Declaration. Originally set for late spring/May 1982, a date publicly announced by Share International through advertisements, publications, and a big press conference in Los Angeles by Creme, Maitreya had eventually to postpone it owing to the scheming of the Forces of Evil. In June 1988, Maitreya determined a crucial criterion for his open emergence (the recognition by the media aside), namely a global stock market crash, which may happen any day. The collapse of those “gambling casinos of the world” (Creme 2001a: 24), the very manifestation of greed and inhumanity, will commence in Japan and subsequently spread worldwide. The Age of the Group Triggered by the global meltdown of the stock exchange, Maitreya will finally turn to the public undisguisedly. This Day of Declaration or D-Day, 18  Whereas the fourfold Maitreya Star is truly spacecraft from Mars, Venus, and Jupiter, Creme disclosed that Maitreya also operates his own UFO, the “Light-Ship.” Occasionally, Maitreya takes people in there to show them a temporal panorama where past and future coalesce. This would be how Masters experience reality detached from a linear flow of time. Creme, too, was taken on board when he was requested to work on behalf of the Hierarchy (Creme 2010: 102–103). 19  Similarly, regularly reciting The Great Invocation, a mantra given by Maitreya to Bailey in 1945 and uttered by practitioners at the beginning of Transmission Meditation gatherings, would speed up the materialisation of the Day of Declaration. Its other key function is to set up a telepathic link to the Hierarchy, notifying the Masters about the start of the meditation (Creme 2001b).

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whose exact date will be made public to everyone beforehand by the news agencies of the world, will be the most pivotal and incisive event in humankind’s spiritual evolution so far. Being simultaneously broadcast worldwide, Maitreya will mentally overshadow at once all of humanity above the age of 14. What follows is a telepathic rapport, in which Maitreya introduces himself, the Hierarchical system, the Plan, and the future effects of its pursuit. Spontaneous mass healings will ensue; and the Christ Principle will be awakened in everyone in response to an explosive outflow from its very embodiment, that is, Maitreya. Many will be so deeply touched by his embrace and his words that they “will enter churches, temples and mosques, and church bells will ring. It will be a day of rejoicing” (Creme 2005: 243). The practical message delivered by Maitreya will be verbalised in simple words, a repetition of what Creme and Share International emphatically circulated over the years. It will focus on the need to share, for “Sharing is divine. When you share, you recognize God in your brother” (Creme 1997: 9); “[…] sharing creates trust. When there is trust among the nations there will be peace among the nations” (Creme 2001a: 27). Many will immediately feel relieved of fear and guilt, the two emotions instilled by existing religions and ideologies that most decisively impact our thought-formation. In the time following the Day of Declaration, Maitreya will cleanse away their remaining traces. He will rapidly embark on a world tour, visiting all the countries of the world, making himself available to everyone’s question. In the same vein, he will regularly appear on TV and radio to clarify the Plan while dispelling any misunderstandings. After a while his disciples, especially Morya, Koot Hoomi, and Jesus, will largely take over Maitreya’s public outreach agenda. Prior to his public teaching, upon the first and second initiations,20 every aspirant is inwardly summoned in front of Maitreya who qua Hierophant solemnises the ritual. With the Day of Declaration having passed, these rituals will ultimately be conducted outwardly in temples across the world. These temple initiations will become the core ritual of the new world religion. While Japan qua epicentre of change will generally take the spiritual lead (SI 8:9 [1989 November]: 22) and Great Britain the societal (Creme 2012: 87), 20  Creme adds an ontological dimension to the initiation process, which he deems a “gradual spiritualization of matter by the soul. Each initiation records and stabilizes a higher vibration and confers a growing proportion of light to the vehicles” (Creme 1996: 187). In fact, humans would consist of light only (Creme 2010: 44), so initiation may rather be seen as an uncloaking of one’s real ontic and epistemic nature.

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this new world religion based on the realisation of the Plan (or the Art of Self-realisation) will spread from Russia. Personalised ashrams of the Masters will start to materialise over time serving as additional spiritual rallying points. Plain English will become the new lingua franca in a world without borders. The United Nations, more profoundly than before D-Day, will grow in importance energised by the Avatar of Synthesis; political extremes will die out and centrism based on more active involvement of the people will become the standard. The world’s nations will move close together. Manual labour will be completely delegated to machines, freeing up the time to advance the exploration into one’s divine nature. Mystery Schools will be established everywhere with the aim to spiritually elevate everyone at least to the first level of initiation (SI 7:1 [1988 January/February]: 38). Besides Maitreya and the Masters, also the Space Brothers will start to openly collaborate with humankind. They will give full access to “their divine science” (Creme 2007a: 219) in two stages. At first, humans will learn how to operate cold fusion, which will grant unlimited energy. Next, in up to 20 years following the Day of Declaration, the Technology of Light giving us direct access to the full potential of the Sun’s energy will be mastered. This technology is virtually limitless in its applicability— interstellar travel; the complete detoxication of the Earth; the healing of all kinds of disease and the reproduction of organs. Sharing will become the centrepiece of human interaction laying the foundations for world peace. It is the natural expression of the sense of unity that will form the consciousness that true experience is lived by the group, not the individual. Because “Unity is strength, the essential nature of our Being, the purpose to which all men strive and to which all activities of men seek to give expression.”21 This “new age of Aquarius […] is the age of the group” (Creme 2002: 182, 200), or the Age of Light. It provides the spiritual-cum-technological environment for humans to evolve; indeed, humankind’s spiritual progress will greatly accelerate. Soon anything can be created solely through the power of the mind (SI 15:2 [1996 March]: 22). Notwithstanding, the final soteriological goal of spiritually unifying humankind with the Hierarchy and Shamballa (Creme 2001a: 173) still lies millions of years ahead (SI 11:2 [1992a March]: 23); yet, this will be a time of ever-growing bliss. 21  The trajectory set towards unity will likewise bring together humankind and the Mineral and Animal Kingdoms, which, too, greatly progress. Ubiquitous vegetarianism will be one implication.

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Concluding Remarks Creme’s millenarian set-up functionally resembles the progressivism of Bailey with very scarce sprinkles of avertive millenarianism (e.g., Creme 2001a: 10–11).22 Creme generally believes in a veritable salvational automatism bound to a progressive millenarian narrative, which he underscores through espousing ultra-imminency. Save for the time between October 1979 and May 1982 when a rough dating came into play (at first 1981–1982, later being concretised as late Spring/May 1982), “very soon indeed” is the standard formula to uphold this vibrant climate of expectancy—which to Creme has an explicit systemic significance for it leaves his notion of uninhibited salvational automatism intact (SI 8:9 [1989 November]: 22). That is to say, if the Day of Declaration, which is also a crucial topos of his progressive millenarian narrative, always keeps being close at hand, the risk of a catastrophic millenarian U-turn violently ingraining this salvationism would be nil. The role of humans in the millennium-building process à la Creme is rather limited. Humans may individually well control the pace of their evolution on an otherwise predetermined trajectory towards Unity. However, concerning the current state of affairs, humankind is very well cared for spiritually by the various agents of the absolute godhead, especially, Maitreya, further prominent members of the Planetary Hierarchy, the Space Brothers, and lower-rank Adepts of the Ageless Wisdom Teaching such as Creme himself. This means that even if there are possibly some further delays ahead, due to the fine nurturing of collective free will and its corresponding self-realising execution, the millennium will always arrive “very soon indeed.” Hence, the assigned effective scope of millenarian action of practitioners merely includes fending off or reducing potential short-term delays of the a priori inevitable, that is, the materialisation of the Age of the Group. 22  More often than not, avertive millenarianism (i.e., preventing the catastrophic scenario by adhering to the rule of sharing and the wider Share International doctrine for the sake of a progressive transformation) is an explicitly negated possibility. The argument is commonly as follows: Humankind stands at a millenarian crossroad facing a choice, which will indubitably be made it in the right way, that is, by “accepting” Maitreya and adopting his proposed course of action. Free will and Karmic Law might of course relativise this certainty but only to some extent because Sanat Kumara, the Hierarchy, and the Space Brothers would not tolerate humankind’s nuclear self-extinction (being the greatest threat in Creme’s view) or otherwise cosmically caused annihilation. Some sort of self-inflicted larger-scale decimation other than due to another World War, however, remains if only a vastly implicit possibility.

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In line with modern Theosophical millenarianism, Creme’s millennium is not fashioned as being “soteriologically unsurpassable, providing ab ovo the peak level of spiritual cultivation” but as “a continuum geared toward soteriological insuperability, deterministically leading the faithful to further and expedited salvational augmentation and, eventually, consummation” (Pokorny 2020: 314). Its soteriological constellation thus falls into the category of post hoc salvational perfection (or salvational gradualism). The Day of Declaration functions as a millenarian threshold from which humankind enters the Age of the Group, the springboard for quickened spiritual transformation into an unwritten future of incremental unification with the Supreme Logos. The Age of the Group liberates humankind from ill thinking (i.e., all that goes against the Art of Self-realisation), and launches it into gradual perfection within the evermore spiritualising continuum. On this path towards final Unity, Maitreya (qua Planetary Christ and, following an evolutionary leap, qua Cosmic Christ) perseveres as humankind’s compass directing to new spiritual horizons.

References Primary Sources Agni Yoga Society. 1954. The Letters of Helena Roerich 1929–1938. Vol. 1. New York: Agni Yoga Society. ———. 1977 [1931]. Hierarchy. New York: Agni Yoga Society. Bailey, Alice Ann. 1977 [1922]. Initiation, Human and Solar. New York: Lucis Publishing Company. ———. 1978 [1948]. The Reappearance of the Christ. New York: Lucis Publishing Company. ———. 1981 [1957]. The Externalisation of the Hierarchy. New  York: Lucis Publishing Company. ———. 2017 [1951]. The Unfinished Autobiography. New York: Lucis Publishing Company. Besant, Annie. 1900. (January). On the Watch-tower. The Theosophical Review 25 (149): 385–392. ———. 1912. Initiation: The Perfecting of Man. London: The Theosophical Publishing Society. ———. 1914. (January). World-Teachers of the Aryan Race. The American Theosophist: A Journal of Occultism 15 (4): 267–271.

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Blavatsky, Helena Petrovna. 1877. Isis Unveiled: A Master-key to the Mysteries of Ancient and Modern Science and Theology. Vol. 2—Theology. New  York: J. W. Bouton. ———. 1881. (June). Lamas and Druses. The Theosophist 2 (9): 193–196. ———. 1888. The Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy. Vol. 1—Cosmogenesis. London: The Theosophical Publishing Company. ———. 1889. The Key to Theosophy: A Clear Exposition, in the Form of Question and Answer, of the Ethics, Science, and Philosophy for the Study of which the Theosophical Society has been Founded. London: The Theosophical Publishing Company. ———. 1892. The Theosophical Glossary. London: The Theosophical Publishing Company. Creme, Benjamin. 1992. Messages from Maitreya the Christ: One Hundred Forty Messages. 2nd ed. London: Tara Press. (First edition, Vol. 1: 1981; Vol. 2: 1986). ———. 1993. Maitreya’s Mission, Volume Two. London: Share International Foundation. ———. 1996 [1993]. Maitreya’s Mission, Volume One. 3 ed. Amsterdam and London: Share International Foundation. (First edition: 1986). ———. 1997. Maitreya’s Mission, Volume Three. Amsterdam and London: Share International Foundation. ———. 2001a. The Great Approach: New Light and Life for Humanity. Amsterdam and London: Share International Foundation. ———. 2001b [1998]. Transmission: A Meditation for the New Age. 4th ed. Amsterdam and London: Share International Foundation. (First edition: 1983). ———. 2002. The Art of Co-Operation. London: Share International Foundation. ———. 2005. Maitreya’s Teachings: The Laws of Life. London: Share International Foundation. ———. 2006 [1996]. The Ageless Wisdom Teaching: An Introduction to Humanity’s Spiritual Legacy. London: Share International Foundation. ———. 2007a. The Reappearance of the Christ and the Masters of Wisdom. 2nd ed. Amsterdam and London: Share International Foundation. (First edition: 1979/1980). ———. 2007b. The World Teacher for All Humanity. Amsterdam and London: Share International Foundation. ———. 2008. The Awakening of Humanity. Amsterdam and London: Share International Foundation. ———. 2010. The Gathering of the Forces of Light: UFOs and Their Spiritual Mission. Amsterdam and London: Share International Foundation. ———. 2012. Unity in Diversity: The Way Ahead for Humanity. Amsterdam and London: Share International Foundation.

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Jaini, Padmanabh S. 1988. Stages in the Bodhisattva Career of the Tathāgata Maitreya. In Maitreya, the Future Buddha, ed. Alan Sponberg and Helen Hardacre, 55–90. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lubelsky, Isaac. 2013. Mythological and Real Racial Issues in Theosophy. In Handbook of the Theosophical Current, ed. Olav Hammer and Mikael Rothstein, 335–355. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Nattier, Jan. 1988. The Meaning of the Maitreya Myth: A Typological Analysis. In Maitreya, the Future Buddha, ed. Alan Sponberg and Helen Hardacre, 23–47. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1991. Once Upon a Future Time: Studies in a Buddhist Prophecy of Decline. Berkeley: Asian Humanities Press. Pokorny, Lukas. 2020. The Millenarian Myth Ethnocentrized: The Case of East Asian New Religious Movements. In Explaining, Interpreting, and Theorizing Religion and Myth: Contributions in Honor of Robert A.  Segal, ed. Nickolas P. Roubekas and Thomas Ryba, 299–316. Leiden and Boston: Brill. ———. 2021. Maitreya, Crop Circles, and the Age of Light: Benjamin Creme’s UFO Thought. In Handbook of UFO Religions, ed. Benjamin E.  Zeller, 295–311. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Poller, Jake. 2019. The Herald of the Christ: Benjamin Creme and the Theosophical Imagination. In Altered Consciousness in the Twentieth Century, ed. Jake Poller, 149–166. New York and London: Routledge. Rudbøg, Tim. 2019. Alice A. Bailey and the Consciousness of the New Age. In Altered Consciousness in the Twentieth Century, ed. Jake Poller, 133–148. New York and London: Routledge. Santucci, James A. 2008. The Notion of Race in Theosophy. Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions 11 (3): 37–63. Tillett, Gregory John. 1986. Charles Webster Leadbeater 1854–1934: A Biographical Study. Ph.D. thesis, University of Sydney, Australia. Wessinger, Catherine Lowman. 1988. Annie Besant and Progressive Messianism (1847–1933). Lewiston and Queenston: The Edwin Mellen Press. Zürcher, Erik. 1982. “Prince Moonlight”: Messianism and Eschatology in Early Medieval Chinese Buddhism. T’oung Pao 68 (1–3): 1–75.

CHAPTER 11

Martial Arts Spirituality in Sweden: The Occult Connection Per Faxneld

Introduction Physical training as a “religion” is a theme that has recently been the subject of considerable public debate in Sweden,1 and it can be tied to academic discussions of a “religion of health” (Hornborg 2012). A growing body of scholarship is also being produced on how Westerners in general are increasingly beginning to perceive or seek “spiritual” values in physical exercise. In particular, this pertains to practices derived from South and East Asia (like yoga), which overlap with broader forms of “New Age” spirituality.2 This development can be considered to be part of the complex processes of secularisation, where notions of “spirituality” 1  For example, Sweden’s biggest newspaper, Dagens Nyheter, published an article with the heading “Träning och hälsa ny religion” (“Exercise and Health New Religion”) on February 22, 2017 (https://www.dn.se/insidan/den-som-inte-tranar-kan-behandlas-samre-i-varden/. Accessed 9 September 2020). 2  It is notable here that various constructions of “Yoga” have been intertwined with Western esotericism for a long period (see Baier 1998).

P. Faxneld (*) Södertörn University, Huddinge, Sweden © The Author(s) 2021 L. Pokorny, F. Winter (eds.), The Occult Nineteenth Century, Palgrave Studies in New Religions and Alternative Spiritualities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55318-0_11

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become embedded in new and amorphous discursive complexes instead of the institutionalised religions of old (Huss 2014; Heelas and Woodhead 2005; Campbell 2007). A major field where this can be observed is that of Eastern martial arts. The existence of a persistent notion of such martial arts as “religious” in some sense is borne out by discussions that have taken place in the International Olympic Committee. When Japan applied to have Jūdō included in the programme for the 1964 Tō kyō Olympics, concerns were raised that Jūdō was insufficiently “secular” (the application was, nonetheless, successful). Similar protests were voiced again in 2008, when China, unsuccessfully, attempted to incorporate Wǔshù for the Beijing Olympics (Ryan 2008: 540). Nonetheless, this field has hardly received any scholarly attention by the specialists most fit to fully comprehend the ramifications of its “spiritual”/“non-secular” dimensions—that is, scholars of religion. Drawing on sociologist Colin Campbell’s (1972) concept of the “cultic milieu,” the field of study will be denominated “martial arts milieu” (henceforth: MAM). Rather than approaching the wide range of martial arts as individual phenomena, I will show how several “spiritual” key concepts appear to be recurrent throughout the milieu and how they are often rooted in interplay with Western occult ideas. In the period following the broad popularisation in the West of Karate, Aikidō , and other martial arts during the 1960s, the MAM has grown to be a socially consequential phenomenon in numerical terms, as well as regarding cultural influence. A significant portion of the population in many Western countries has some involvement with Eastern martial arts. An American survey (2012) showed that more than 21 per cent of US citizens (i.e., around 20 million people) had participated in martial arts training, while a Swedish census (1991) indicated that 5 per cent of all boys aged 13–15 were active practitioners.3 It is surprising that such a populous milieu, wherein spirituality is (as we will see) a main theme, remains neglected—especially in the academic study of religion. In The Easternization of the West (2007), Colin Campbell mentions the importance and cultural impact of martial arts but does not delve further into the topic (Campbell 2007: 19). The introduction to the recent book Eastspirit: Transnational Spirituality and Religious Circulation in East 3  http://www.fightingarts.com/reading/article.php?id=36. Accessed 25 June 2019. The American survey has some problems regarding the sample size (1000 individuals) and the unclear way in which the selection was done. For the Swedish figures, see Stenudd 1992: 157.

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and West suggests that an important research question would be to determine “[h]ow, why and by whom has meditation been psychologized and secularized, […] martial arts spiritualized” (Borup and Fibiger 2017: 6). But again, no closer engagement with the latter topic is offered. Spiritual dimensions of contemporary martial arts practice have thus repeatedly been suggested as a desired venue of research. I will here present some preliminary findings in order to start rectifying this lacuna. The focus in the present small study will be on examples from Sweden, as well as the role nineteenth-century occultist discourses have played in the Western reception of Eastern martial arts as “spiritual.”

Situating Martial Arts Spirituality in Swedish Secularity Western discourse on the “spiritual” aspects of Eastern martial arts displays a number of abiding notions concerning “superhuman” or “supranormal” feats and powers, mystical energies (Chinese: qì; Japanese/ Korean: ki),4 martial practice as a form of Zen meditation, the superiority of “traditional” East Asian (martial-spiritual) knowledge to Western science, and more. Many arts (e.g., Karate, several forms of Chinese Wǔshù) trace their lineage back to religious figures such as the legendary monk Bodhidharma, and institutions such as the Shàolín monastery or the Wǔdāng temples. Shàolín monks have also recently opened schools in Stockholm and Gothenburg, where they teach both Chán Buddhism and the “way of the fist.” Martial arts magazines (especially those published in the United States, e.g., Black Belt and Inside Kung Fu, which are also easily available in Sweden) are replete with adverts for New Age paraphernalia 4  There are important differences between the Chinese concept qì and the Japanese/ Korean ki (in themselves quite fuzzy and subject to change over time), which are often obfuscated by Western martial arts practitioners and in New Age contexts. Qì forms the basis for, among other things, Chinese medical systems like acupuncture, and Japanese shiatsu massage. The basic idea, if we simplify strongly, is that qì/ki is a life force, a sort of subtle energy flow moving along channels in our bodies, which is of decisive importance for our health (Holt 2001: 335–336; Hammer 1997: 173–174). It is commonly claimed that qì/ki can also be used to make kicking and punching techniques in martial arts more powerful— one of the most widespread ideas related to “spiritual” dimensions that can be found among Western martial arts practitioners, even those who might otherwise claim to be rationalist, materialist atheists. This is one indication of the overlaps with a broader New Age field, where qì and ki are also popular concepts (Hammer 1997: 189–190).

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and contain articles about people claiming to have achieved supernatural longevity, mysterious “magnetic powers,” unity with the cosmos, and so on.5 Rhetoric about “cultivating the self” and “developing spiritual strength” permeates the discourse. Hence, a significant portion of the practitioners considers their training to be both physical and spiritual. This is especially prominent in some arts. For example, in a 1983 survey among West German Kyūdō (Japanese archery) practitioners, 84 per cent claimed they were drawn to it as a spiritual training (Yamada 2001: 2). The main teacher of Bujinkan Budō Taijutsu (popularly known as “Ninjutsu”) Hatsumi Masaaki (b. 1931) states that the goal of his martial art “is to attain the enlightenment described by the first words of the Buddha” (Hatsumi 2004: 18) and his Western disciples tend to think along similar lines. Leading Swedish Aikidō instructor Stefan Stenudd (b. 1954) explains that martial arts are “paths to a higher spirituality and purity” (Stenudd 1992: 44). A Karate club in Stockholm describes its training premises as “a very special place where we train ‘mindfulness’ with our spiritual and physical traits as the starting point.”6 A central trait of martial arts discourse is a sacralisation of what would earlier have been taken to be a secular, mundane activity: physical training. Such tendencies are typical of the late-modern period, where perceptions of the “sacred” are transposed from institutionalised religion to new domains (Partridge 2004/2005). Yet, actors within the MAM generally (with, e.g., Shàolín monks as an obvious exception) keep a clear distance to the category of “religion,” and operate within an implicitly “secular” context. This entails a distinct tension within the milieu between its nominal secularity and the emphasis on spirituality and self-­development, which needs to be situated in specific historical circumstances. The classic secularisation hypothesis—strongly associated with the 1960s sociology of religions—arguing that Western modernisation coincides with (or results in) the gradual disappearance of religion has been heavily criticised. Today, the religious development in the modern West is generally characterised less in terms of the disappearance of religion, and more with regard to its transformation from church-based to privatised and individualised forms (Heelas and Woodhead 2005; Giordan and Pace 5  I have made an inventory of the issues between 2005–2008 of Black Belt (published since 1961) and 2004–2005 of Inside Kung Fu (published from 1973 to 2011). For a more detailed discussion of the “spiritual” content in these magazines, see Faxneld 2016: 58–59. 6  See http://iogkf.se. Accessed 25 June 2019.

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2012; Mercadante 2014). If we consider the case of Sweden, the country has clearly undergone a gradual process of secularisation over the last approximately 150  years, at least in certain respects. Surveys show that Swedes strongly favour “secular” values and individual self-expression over tradition (at least indigenous, institutional tradition), while Swedish participation in formalised church rituals and other gatherings is low. Secularist ideals are largely hegemonic in the public sphere, with religious identities often construed as problematic (e.g., see Willander 2015; Thurfjell 2015). The religious landscape of late-modern Sweden is thus characterised by a high degree of commitment to so-called self-expression values, a low degree of involvement in church activities, and a public discourse permeated by a secular norm. However, the full picture is slightly more complicated. Swedes rate highly on belief in a more fuzzily defined higher power or life force, frequently seen as connected to the self. Notions such as karma, ghosts, and reincarnation are widely accepted (Norris and Inglehart 2004; Frisk and Åkerbäck 2015; Willander 2015). The omnipresent secular rhetoric calls for continuous ontological negotiations in relation to this, often resulting in an attitude that has been described as a form of “simultaneity” (af Burén 2015).7 The MAM exists very much as part of this continuum and serves as an interesting example of how identities are negotiated in the field of tension between secularity and spirituality. In many respects, this is the same field of tension that turn-of-the-century occultism was caught in. I am using “occultism” here in the sense proposed by Wouter J. Hanegraaff, that is, as an etic term for “attempts by esotericists to come to terms with a disenchanted world or, alternatively, by people in general to make sense of esotericism from the perspective of a secular disenchanted world” (Hanegraaff 1996: 422). A typical example of an occultist group would be the Theosophical Society, which claimed to use “scientific” methods in its esoteric endeavours and viewed itself as a “scientific religion” (Hammer 2004: 222).

7  Parts of this paragraph are based on a grant application co-written with Manon Hedenborg-White and Henrik Bogdan.

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The MAM, Glocalisation and Intercultural Mimesis It is important to keep in mind that martial arts spirituality is an expression of the long-lasting entanglement of “East” and “West.”8 Writing of Tantra, Hugh B.  Urban (2003: xiii) describes a “tangled web of intersecting threads, both Eastern and Western, ancient and modern, woven through the intricate cross-cultural interplay of scholarly and popular imagination.” The same could be said of Eastern martial arts. Religious symbols, myths, and practices—when transferred to new cultural contexts—undergo processes of adaptation, which have variously been described in terms of “indigenisation,” “hybridisation,” and “religious relocation” (Prebish and Baumann 2002; Urban 2003; Tøllefsen 2015; Moberg et  al. 2015). Another approach to the same issue is the concept of “glocalisation,” deriving from the Japanese term dochakuka and denoting the modification of international products to suit local market conditions. Using the glocalisation perspective, sociologist Roland Robertson highlights how globalisation does not simply result in the adaption of local cultures to a homogenous, global culture. Instead, through the reshaping of cultural elements in new local contexts, globalisation is intimately connected to the production of local (or national) difference. Indeed, national or local searches for the authentic and indigenous can be viewed as a desire structured by the processes of globalisation (Robertson 1995).9 An example is how Suzuki Daisetsu (1870–1966) combined Western Theosophical ideas with his own nationalist goals, constructing a “spiritual” East contrasted with a “materialist” (and thus inferior) West, while foregrounding a Japanese spiritual warrior identity (Tweed 2005). 8  The terms East and West have rightly been criticised and deconstructed in a number of studies. Yet, as Borup (2017: 15) points out, until very recently (arguably still, in many quarters) “such a dichotomy did make sense to a lot of people (both in the ‘East’ and in the ‘West’), and outside the academia, they still have utility value and effect. As such, they were and are real as discourses and narratives. Accepting the fact that there is no one-to-one relationship between concept and content, and that neither cultures nor religions are static essences, as ideal types ‘East’ and ‘West’ can be applied as concepts in overall discursive narratives with some geographical resonance.” It is in this pragmatic sense the terms are used here. 9  Parts of this paragraph are based on a grant application co-written with Manon Hedenborg-White and Henrik Bogdan. It should be noted that the interpretation of the Japanese term is mainly Robertson’s idea; an alternative approach is translating it simply as “indigenisation.”

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Subsequently, this struck a chord with Westerners critical of their own culture’s perceived lack of (true) spiritual values. In this sense, globalisation and glocalisation are connected, producing both homogenisation and heterogenisation (while having local as well as transnational effects). Religion and spirituality can thus be conceptualised as a site for cultural interconnection, as well as for the construction of local uniqueness. The particular landscape of Swedish secularity in turn is arguably a key factor in the production of a glocalised, Swedish (spiritual) martial arts milieu. As hinted at in the example of Suzuki above, many of the martial arts (and the global/glocal discourse on them) are not as “Eastern” as they appear to be. Rather, they are an instance of what the buddhologist Charles Hallisey (1995) calls “intercultural mimesis.” On the one hand, this pertains to a process where Westerners adapt concepts and motifs from Eastern contexts. On the other hand, this has always been a bidirectional phenomenon, in which the East equally borrowed much from the West, resulting in deep-going entanglement that emic discourses are often keen to downplay. Three concrete examples of such entanglement in the MAM context are the following: 1. Aikidō , created by Morihei Ueshiba (1883–1969), is heavily influenced by its founder’s involvement with a Japanese new religious movement (Ō moto), partly inspired by Swedish esotericist and mystic Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772) (Raposa 1999: 110–113; Yoshinaga 2014: 61; Stenudd 1992: 13–133, 136). The reception of Aikidō as a spiritual teaching in a Swedish and international context (see, e.g., Stenudd 1992: 41–44, 50–64, 102–103) is therefore a case of cultural entanglement. The indirect role played by Sweden’s most famous esotericist and mystic is likely to be unknown to many Western Aikidō kas enamoured by “ancient Japanese mysticism.” 2. The widespread notions of Kyūdō (Japanese archery) as a Zen-­ oriented form of training are derived from a misunderstanding: a German academic, Eugen Herrigel (1884–1955), who lived in Japan in the 1920s, mistook an embryonic Japanese new religion— whose founder used archery as a cosmic metaphor—for Zen (Yamada 2001; cf., however, Stevens 2007: 90–93). He familiarised this connection in a best-selling book entitled Zen in der Kunst des Bogenschießens (Zen in the Art of Archery; 1948), subsequently also popular in Japan—again an example of circularity and entanglement.

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3. Understandings of “warrior Zen” among Western martial arts practitioners are mostly (directly or indirectly) based on the writings of the aforementioned Suzuki Daisetsu on the topic. As mentioned, Suzuki was heavily influenced by his interest in Western esotericism and wrote with a Western audience in mind.10 Examples like these conform to the findings regarding the partial origins of modern postural yoga in Swedish Ling Gymnastics (Singleton 2010). Such cultural hybridity is frequently neglected (or actively denied) in the emic discourse of yoga and martial arts practitioners alike, but it is exactly the type of historical origins a scholar of religion should bring to light in order to understand the underlying power dynamics (see Lincoln 2005).

Martial Modernity and the Mystic East As a case study of such origins we will presently look closer at how Eastern martial arts arrived in Sweden—specifically Japanese martial arts, as, for example, Chinese and Korean varieties only arrived much later—and how they were framed in a discourse marked by spiritual ideas and influences from (Western) occult currents. First, however, a brief outline of Japanese martial arts in their original context is needed. Japan has a long tradition of different types of martial techniques, frequently tied to distinct geographical regions. During the lasting peace (and isolation from the rest of the world) of the Tokugawa period (1603–1868), these were organised into formalised schools. Towards the end of this period, hundreds of such schools—usually focusing on archery or swordsmanship—had been established. They were more or less only open to the warrior (samurai) class. The seventeenth century also saw the codification of Confucianism-based warrior ideals and, with actual armed conflicts being quite rare, the teaching of said ideals came to the fore in the schools which were nominally places for instruction in swordsmanship, archery, and so on. (Ron 2001: 190–192, 195). In particular, 10  Tweed 2005. McMahan (2008: 125) states that Suzuki “reframes [Zen] in terms of a language of metaphysics derived from German Romantic idealism, English Romanticism, and American Transcendentalism” (see also Sharf 1995: 141–143), while Tweed (2005) stresses the importance of Theosophy in Suzuki’s thinking. In fact, Suzuki and his American wife were both highly active members of the Theosophical Society and ran a Theosophical lodge in Kyō to. Such influences, then, coloured the image of bushidō ’s relation to Zen spread in Suzuki’s writings.

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swordsmanship came to be trained less as a pure combat technique and more as “a means to physical and spiritual cultivation of the self” (Friday 1997: 15). The Meiji period (1868–1912) saw Japan opening up to the West after its long isolation, and the encounter with Western modernity was an ambivalent affair. At this time, the concept of bushido ̄ (usually translated as “the way of the warrior”) became prominent and was propagated as part of a national mentality. Historically, bushidō was a philosophy meant only for the samurai elite, and never a single, coherent teaching. There were, simply put, numerous views on what constituted the correct bushidō —a fact now swept under the rug of a monolithic nationalist construct. In the age of nationalist martial modernity, bushidō also came to be connected to Zen Buddhism in a manner that had been far from axiomatic in the past. In this process, Suzuki was a key figure, as his book Zen Buddhism and Its Influence on Japanese Culture (1938) presented a romantic image of Zen samurai sword masters. The “Zen warrior” came to be a prominent figure in the construction also of the newer systematisations of martial arts, like Jūdō (1880s), Aikidō (1920s), and Karate (established in mainland Japan in the 1910s, after its place of origin, the Ryūkyū Islands, had been annexed in 1879).11 Bushidō was introduced to the West at length already through Inazō Nitobe’s (1862–1933) book Bushido: The Soul of Japan (1900). Written in English for an Anglophone audience by a Japanese author who spent long periods of his life in the West, was married to an American woman, and had become a Christian (Quaker), the book was not well-received in Japan. This westernised interpretation of the warrior code was not at all what was sought after in his homeland, but it became a worldwide bestseller (Benesch 2014: 90–97). Japanese martial arts did not start spreading to the West on a large scale until after World War II, with the American occupation of Japan being an important factor. In 1946, the first Karate club in the United States opened (Krug 2001: 401). However, certain arts had a longer history in the West, in particular Jiu-Jitsu (Jūjutsu). Interestingly, American occult journals and magazines of the early twentieth century often contained adverts for Jiu-Jitsu courses (and articles in its praise), indicating that their readership was considered to be a target audience and an important market for such 11  Krug 2001: 396–397. All these arts have their origin in older varieties, but the presentday systems arose approximately in the periods stated. For a history of bushidō , see Benesch 2014.

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things (Path-Finder 1904: 11–12; The Segnogram 1905: 26. 271). JiuJitsu was introduced in Sweden already in 1908 by the well-travelled boxer Viking Cronholm (1874–1961), while a Jūdō club opened in Gothenburg in 1956 (preceded by a smaller group in Stockholm in the 1940s). Karate arrived in the early 1960s, and Aikidō training began in earnest in the mid1960s (Stenudd 1992: 144–146; Greger and Hansson 2005: 17–19).12 In 1959, Suzuki’s influential book, mentioned above, was published in a revised edition (under the title Zen and Japanese Culture), now with even more space devoted to the connection between the martial and the mystical.13 This publication, and its great success, was a sign of the times, as the 1960s came to be coloured by the “mystic East” in many ways. This was the era when yoga and the Dàodéjın̄ g was all the rage in the West, and Eastern new religious movements like ISKCON arrived—and of course, Japanese martial arts came into demand (Partridge 2004: 97).14 As Christopher Partridge puts it, “although the 1960s was a maelstrom of conflicting political, psychedelic, cultural and spiritual influences, the East scented it all” (ibid.: 103).

Bushidō as Occult Self-Help If we return to the very first period of the Swedish reception of Japanese martial arts, it can be related to the fascination occasioned by the Japanese victory in the Russo-Japanese war (1904–1905). How could a small East Asian island nation defeat a major European military power like Russia? Clearly, the Japanese must possess some mysterious powers beyond merely having a well-trained and well-equipped (but small, in comparison to Russia) army.15 For many, the answer was found in bushidō , and

 See also http://www.wadoryu.se/karate. Accessed 25 June 2019.  Suzuki 1959: 61–214. Suzuki notes in the preface that the long chapters on swordsmanship (“Zen and Swordsmanship I,” “Zen and Swordsmanship II”) are additions to the new version of the book, belonging to “such subjects as have happened to arouse my new concern” (Suzuki 1959: v). The first version of the book only contained the chapter “Zen and the Samurai” related to this theme. 14  In the 1970s, due primarily to Bruce Lee (1940–1973), Chinese martial arts also became popular. For reasons of space, I will here focus on Japanese styles. 15  Japanese military victories as a result of bushidō was also suggested by the international press (e.g., The London Times), a view subsequently summarised by the Swedish press (e.g., Dagens Nyheter, June 6, 1905). 12 13

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fascination with this alleged warrior code became connected to a general valorisation of the “spiritual” Japanese. A review of the Swedish translation (1906) of Inazō Nitobe’s Bushido (1900) in Dagens Nyheter (November 15), Sweden’s biggest newspaper, provides a good example. It waxes lyrical about “the rich scent of practical holiness, that rests over the mysterious people on the other side of our Earth.” The reviewer states that the book deals with “chivalry’s ancient, still perceptible, powerful enchantment of the soul of Japan,” which has grown from the “Buddha’s sense of calm faith in destiny.” The reviewer also highlights the training the samurai underwent in “the beautiful wrestling art that does not rest on muscle power or use of weapons, Jiu-Jitsu.” The review concludes with an exhortation to Swedes to learn from the Japanese: “May a glimpse of the beauty of the white flower, that is the image of Bushido, reach many here in our country through this little book! The light from the invisible mountains on the other side shall teach us true courage, which consists in seeing what is right and doing it” (Gerne 1906: 2).16 The use of words like “holiness,” “enchantment,” “soul,” “faith,” and “destiny,” along with images like “invisible mountains,” places this squarely into the discourse of spiritually inclined “positive orientalism” (Clarke 2000: 37), in which currents like Theosophy were prominent proponents—here combined with praise of “beautiful wrestling art” and martial culture. Japanese military triumphs constitute again the starting point of the argument in the Swedish book Bushido: Japanernas system: Behärska dina medmänniskor med tankens makt! (Bushido: The System of the Japanese: Control Your Fellow Man by the Power of Thought!) published in 1910 by one V. Gurre.17 Given bushidō ’s close ties to warrior training and attendant ideals, it somewhat surprisingly does not contain any discussion of combat exercises or anything of the sort. Nevertheless, the title and (as we will see) its reception gives it a place in the history of the MAM. The book

16  Original: “den rika doft af praktisk helighet, som hvilar öfver de gåtfulla människorna hinsidan vår jord”; ridderlighetens urgamla, ännu förnimbara, mäktiga förtrollning af Japans själ”; “Buddhas känsla af lugn förtröstan på ödet”; “den vackra brottningskonst som hvarken hvilar på muskelstyrka eller bruk af vapen, jiujitsu”; “Måtte en skymt af den hvita blommas skönhet, som är Bushidos sinnebild, nå många här i vårt land genom denna lilla bok! Ljuset från de osynliga bergen hinsidan skall lära oss det sanna modet, som består i att se hvad som är rätt och göra det.” 17  I have been unable to find any further details regarding the author.

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went through six editions, the last one printed in 1957, and can therefore be presumed to have enjoyed a fairly considerable level of popularity. Gurre’s bushidō manual focuses on how to develop willpower and charisma, not combat skills, and explicitly situates bushidō in Western occult currents fashionable at the time. The lasting popularity of the book likely helped establish the connection between Japanese martial culture and an inner, spiritual dimension viewed through a Western occultist lens. Critical reception of the book framed it in connection to martial matters, as can be seen in the review in Dagens Nyheter, where even the heading indicates this: “Bushido or the art of becoming a better man: A Japanese Jiu-Jitsu for the soul.” The reviewer describes how the cover depicts “a man who looks like a professional boxer ready to enter the arena,” but explains that this is somewhat misleading as “[t]he Japanese system is this time not the art of striking your competitor to the ground with some Jiu-Jitsu tricks, but rather to submit him through a sort of spiritual Jiu-Jitsu” (Floridor 1910: 5).18 What is this “spiritual Jiu-Jitsu”? Gurre himself suggests that “the reader craving sensationalism” might have hoped for “something different—the revelation of mysteries or a description of spells to conjure elemental spirits.” Gurre believes many readers might wonder why he calls bushidō “a secret doctrine.”19 He explains that this has no connection to an actual need for secrecy, and states that there are here “no lodge secrets or order teachings, and ‘occult’ knowledge that shall remain the carefully guarded private property of single ‘adepts’ are fables.”20 This is an attitude quite close to that found in, for example, the Theosophical Society, which made esoteric teachings easily available in a manner unheard of in earlier times (famously publishing, e.g., Blavatsky’s bestselling book called—significantly, considering Gurre’s choice of words quoted above—The Secret Doctrine in 1888). Such availability—the ideal of an open esotericism, if you will—can be considered a prominent feature of nineteenth-century occultism. 18  Original: “Bushido eller konsten att bli en bättre människa: Ett japanskt jiu-jitsu för själen”; “en man som liknar en yrkesboxare färdig att gå in på arenan”; “Japanernas system är denna gång inte konsten att slå sin konkurrent till marken med några jiu-jitsu-tricks, utan snarare att kufva honom de [sic] ett slags andlig jiu-jitsu.” 19  Gurre 1910: 35 (“[d]en sensationslystne läsaren”; “något annat—mysteriers afslöjande eller beskrifning på elementarandars besvärjelseformler.”; “en hemlig lära”). 20  Gurre 1910: 36 (“inga logehemligheter eller ordenslärdomar, och ‘ockulta’ kunskaper som skola förbli enstaka ‘adepters’ omsorgsfullt bevarade privategendom äro fabler”).

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Like Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831–1891), and despite his rejection of secrecy, Gurre naturally has a previously confidential insight to divulge to his readers. The “secret,” as it were, lies in bushidō ’s understanding of our “astral organism”21 and where our thoughts actually come from: “[T]houghts are generated not by the will individualised in us, they exist independently in the above-mentioned, endless astral realm of thoughts.”22 He moreover assures us that [a] true master of the occult sciences or Freemasonry does not need to reach out his hands to get money. It comes to him of itself. The related powers of thought, that he has consciously referred to their field of work, arrange without his further participation that what he wished for or craved falls abundantly into his lap.23

As part of the book’s regimen for attaining superior willpower, a long affirmation to control the astral thoughts and direct them to do one’s bidding is given. It includes an invocation of “säkerheten” (assuredness), which appears symbolically incarnate and promises the bushidō practitioner that “[n]o-one can harm you, prince, for your astral arm is irresistible.”24 This seems to be partly an invocation of a type of astral entity (a personified “thought”), and partly a psychological affirmation. Gurre emphasises the need to practice bushidō , not just read about it, since otherwise “[t]he occult teachings are too subtle. They slip like small fish through the mesh of the human brain, and all that is left is a mere vague memory of once having heard something of great importance.”25 Properly and regularly practised, he claims, the occult system he offers has enormous power and he adds: “How you should set one plan or another into motion using thought power you can learn in the books written by the representatives of esoteric philosophy, New Thought, the science of  Gurre 1910: 37 (“astralorganism”).  Gurre 1910: 39 (“tankarna alstras icke af den i oss individualiserade viljan, de existera själfständigt i den ofvan omnämnda, oändliga astrala tankevärlden”). 23  Gurre 1910: 77 (“En verklig mästare i de ockulta vetenskaperna eller frimureriet behöfver inte sträcka ut sina händer efter pengar. De tillfalla honom af sig själfva. De dithörande tankekrafter, han medvetet hänvisat till deras arbetsfält, sörja utan hans vidare medverkan för, att det han önskade eller åstundade faller rikligt i hans sköte”). 24  Gurre 1910: 82 (“Ingen kan skada dig, furste, ty din astrala arm är oemotståndlig”). 25  Gurre 1910: 88 (“De ockulta lärdomarna äro alltför subtila. De gilda som småfisk ut genom de stora maskorna i människohjärnans nät, och allt, hvad man har kvar, är blott ett svagt minne af att man en gång hört något mycket viktigt”). 21 22

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thoughts, the spiritual sciences. Such a book is Bushido: The System of the Japanese.”26 As Gurre here explicitly states, then, his book belongs to the occult publishing sector, a fact made clear from his many references to such currents and his recurring use of terms like “astral,” “ether,” “fluidum,” and, indeed, “occult.”

Moving Meditation, Self-Control, and Other Secrets Some Swedes apparently went so far as to take up some variety of bushidō as their religion. In an interview, the Swedish actress Märta Hedman (1883–1974), who had become a star in the United States, explained: “Every American artist has a religion. Mine is called Bushido. The Japanese have it. It is about self-control and other secrets. If you believe in Bushido, you will always do well” (Pius 1913: 5).27 Hedman’s notion of bushidō as a “religion” focusing on “self-control and other secrets” that bring the individual success seems exceedingly similar to Gurre’s book, and perhaps this was the source of her exotic religious persuasion. Most of the early (pre-1960s) Swedish publications related to Japanese martial arts were, however, exclusively focused on Jiu-Jitsu and its practical combat application—most famously Viking Cronholm’s pioneering Jiu-Jitsu tricks: Japanskt system för själfförsvar (Jiu-Jitsu Tricks: Japanese System of Self-Defence; 1908) and its later epigones. Yet, even a small manual like Arthur Weimark’s Jiu-Jitsu: Japansk försvarsmetod (Jiu-Jitsu: Japanese Defence Method; 1922), which (like Cronholm’s book) mostly contains photographic instructions regarding how to perform various self-­ defence manoeuvres, has a passage in the introduction where the dimensions of spirituality and willpower are emphasised: “To keep your body strong and lithe and to preserve health is not only physical enjoyment. It

26  Gurre 1910: 91 (“Huru du skall sätta i verket en eller annan plan med hjälp af tankekraften, får du veta genom de böcker, som skrifvits af representanterna för den esoteriska filosofin, de nya tankarna, vetenskapen om tankarna, de andliga vetenskaperna. En sådan bok är också Bushido, japanernas system”). 27  Original: “Varje amerikansk artist har en religion. Min heter Bushido. Japanerna ha den. Den handlar om självbehärskning och andra hemligheter. Tror man på Bushido, så går det alltid bra för en”.

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is to expand one’s spiritual life. Train and cultivate body and soul to a supple and obedient tool for you will” (Weimark 1922: 11).28 However, these publications primarily shared Cronholm’s focus on practical matters (Gyllerström 1960). This clearly irritated Robert von Sandor (1929–1997), an optometrist and devoted Japanophile, who was one of the major names in the early Swedish MAM.  In his 1970 book Budo: Den japanske krigarens väg till zen (Budo: The Japanese Warrior’s Path to Zen) he remarked that “the Westerner seldom has any idea that his training in these so-called budo techniques is actually exercises in Zen Buddhism, and that his individual development in these sports is completely dependent on a deeper understanding of the background of the exercises, i.e. Zen Buddhism” (von Sandor 1970: 7).29 He retained this critical tone throughout, further stating that “budo has been adopted by the West as purely sports, without the West knowing anything about the ideological background or the ultimate purpose of the exercises” (ibid.: 31).30 What is this purpose, then? “Budo is nothing else than moving meditation,” (ibid.: 32) he proclaimed.31 Von Sandor’s book illustrates a conflict present within the MAM between those who view their practice as merely physical exercise and combat techniques versus those who emphasise its spiritual dimensions (see Kohn 2003: 403). Presumably, many practitioners take a less one-­ sided position, incorporating both to a varying extent or drifting between the two positions. Although von Sandor’s interest seems to lie quite exclusively in Zen Buddhism (albeit probably coloured by Suzuki’s Theosophically informed take on it—one of the 13 books in von Sandor’s brief reference list is, unsurprisingly, Suzuki’s Zen and Japanese Culture), other later key figures in the MAM also take an explicit interest in Western esotericism—much like V. Gurre did in 1910.

28  Original: “Att hålla sin kropp stark och spänstig och bevara hälsan är ej blott att njuta fysiskt. Det är att vidga gränsen för sitt andliga liv. Träna och odla kropp och själ till ett smidigt och lydigt verktyg för din vilja”. 29  Original: “västerlänningen har sällan någon aning om att hans träning i dessa s.k. budotekniker egentligen är zen-buddhistiska övningar och att hans individuella utveckling inom dessa sporter är helt beroende av en djupare förståelse av övningarnas bakgrund, dvs. Zen-buddhismen”. 30  Original: “budo har adopterats av västerlandet som rena idrotter utan att västerlandet vet någonting om den ideologiska bakgrunden eller det yttersta syftet med övningarna”. 31  Original: “Budo är ingenting annat än rörelsemeditation”.

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By the 1960s, Japanese martial arts had started to become properly established in Sweden, and newspaper reports often highlighted their spiritual dimensions. In a 1965 article about Muhammad Ali’s (1942–2016) possible Karate skills (that would presumably explain his “mysterious” knockouts) that was published in Sweden’s biggest tabloid, the writer explains: “The Japanese sports have always had a religious connection. One strives for perfect interplay between body and soul” (Markos 1965: 18).32 Robert von Sandor (at the time secretary of Judoförbundet, i.e., the Judo Association) is then asked to comment, and he stresses: “In Karate, the idea is to foster the individuals to such self-control that they will not use Karate. You have to reach a certain spiritual level” (ibid.).33 The choice of words here is significant: it is not a mere question of personal maturity, but of “spiritual level” (andlig nivå). Such ideas are recurrent in the 1960s public discourse on martial arts in Sweden, and can be also found in a 1968 newspaper article about a group of Karate masters visiting Stockholm: “The person practicing Karate for self-defence must have the correct insight. Mr. Suzuki [one of the masters] himself has studied Zen Buddhism for 15 years to empty his mind and become free of fear” (s.n. 1968: 7).34

Contemporary Intersections Between the Occult Milieu and the MAM Zen, and a more vaguely defined “spirituality,” have remained dominant themes in the MAM since the 1960s. Clear connections to Western occultism are also as present today as they were in Gurre’s bushidō book. Let us look at two initial examples pertaining to specific persons. Firstly, Stefan Stenudd, who was President of the Svenska budo- och kampsportsförbundet (The Swedish Budo and Martial Arts Association, the umbrella organisation for most Eastern martial arts in Sweden) from 2009 until 2016, and is a leading name in Swedish Aikidō (being a seventh Dan shihan in the international Aikikai organisation). He has authored books on astrology 32  Original: “De japanska idrottsgrenarna har alltid haft en religiös anknytning. Man eftersträvar perfekt samspel mellan kropp och själ.” 33  Original: “Med karate vill man fostra individerna till sådan självbehärskning att de inte använder sig av karate. Man måste nå en viss andlig nivå”). 34  Original: ‘Den som utövar karate i självförsvar måste ha den rätta insikten. Hr Suzuki har själv studerat zenbuddism i 15 år för att tömma sitt medvetande och bli fri från rädsla’

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and owns the publishing house Arriba. The latter has issued several titles on New Age and occult topics—such as a book by the founder of the “dark magic” order Dragon Rouge, Thomas Karlsson (b. 1972).35 Secondly, Ingo de Jong (b. 1943), the highest graded Swede (eighth Dan hanshi and a leading instructor) in one of the main Karate organisations (Goju-Kai), who is an active member of the Theosophical Society (Adyar) and gives Theosophical lectures.36 Both Stenudd and de Jong occupy central positions in the MAM, and their involvement with occult currents is therefore indicative of something broader in a sense. The aforementioned order Dragon Rouge has been organising martial arts seminars and training sessions, and former and present leading members are, or have been, practitioners of Japanese arts like Bujinkan Budō Taijutsu, Shō rinji Kempō , and Naginata (something that has been mentioned in numerous fieldwork conversations I have had with such individuals, c. 2007–2017).37 Let us finally look more closely at a widely read contemporary Swedish Aikidō manual by Stefan Stenudd. It contains both a consistent accentuation of the spiritual dimensions of martial practice and an interesting blurring of Eastern traditions and Western occult concepts. In a long discussion of ki, Stenudd starts by emphasising dimensions of it with little relation to martial techniques: Every human’s personal Ki flow must strive towards a union with the universal flow. […] When Ki truly flows without limits this gives a spiritual experience that renders the individual completely without significance. One starts to breathe the very cosmic ether and the I am that forms the core of Ki unites with the being of the whole universe. One ceases to be separate from existence, instead becoming one with the totality. (Stenudd 1992: 57)38  http://www.arriba.se. Accessed 25 June 2019.  http://teosofiskasamfundet.se/verksamheter/denhemligalaran.html. Accessed 25 June 2019. 37  An interest in Eastern martial arts is also recurrent in other occult groups in Sweden, like the Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.), where I have not, however, conducted proper fieldwork (this observation thus being based on a much smaller sample of non-systematic conversations with adherents). 38  Original: “Varje människas personliga kiflöde måste sträva mot en förening med det universella flödet. […] När ki verkligen flödar gränslöst ger detta en andlig upplevelse som gör det individuella alldeles betydelselöst. Man börjar andas själva den kosmiska etern och det jag är som bildar kärna i ki går upp i hela universums varande. Man upphör att vara skild från existensen, utan blir som ett med världsalltet”. 35

36

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This is one of many examples in the book of how a religio-spiritual side of Aikidō is stressed by Stenudd. The fact that a key figure in the MAM like Stenudd propagates this understanding is undoubtedly of some significance, and, as seen in examples given earlier, the theme of spirituality is indeed a prominent feature in the MAM at large. Interestingly, further on in the same section, Stenudd warns of the potential destructive use of ki by framing it in Western occult and parapsychological notions, thus attesting to the continued vigour of this type of cultural hybridity: There are similar warnings in the Western occult tradition. There, one talks of white and black magic, where the former is benevolent and soft in its expression, but the latter hard and destructive. […] With Ki as well as magic it is not impossible to be captivated by the potential power, but that becomes darkening. […] Western parapsychological research today often speaks of psi, as an umbrella term for the powers that are impossible to explain— telepathy, psychokinesis, and so on. If these phenomena are real some sort of power or ability must underlie them, it is claimed, and it is reasonable that one then increasingly approaches the Eastern term Ki. (ibid.: 58)39

Concluding Remarks The Swedish MAM contains key figures that are also active occultists, and Swedish occultists are (seemingly disproportionately, in comparison to the general population) often martial arts practitioners. According to my preliminary observations, the overlap—and apparent affinity—between the two is so significant that something more than mere chance is clearly at play. I would suggest that this compatibility does not only stem from the fact that an interest in spiritual matters is of key importance both in the MAM and the occult milieu. Rather, it is a product of the way martial arts have been framed in Sweden (and the West more broadly, although that is a question for a different study) from the very start using a language derived from (Western) occult discourses. This tendency has waxed and 39  Original: “I västerländsk ockult tradition finns liknande varningar. Man talar där om vit och svart magi, där den förra är välvillig och mjuk i sitt uttryck, men den senare hård och destruktiv. […] Med ki såväl som magi är det inte omöjligt att tjusas av möjligheten till makt, men det blir förmörkande. […] Västerländsk parapsykologisk forskning talar idag ofta om psi, som ett samlande namn för de krafter som inte går att förklara—telepati, psykokinesi och så vidare. Om dessa fenomen är riktiga måste något slags kraft eller förmåga ligga bakom, menar man, och det är rimligt att man då alltmer närmar sig det österländska begreppet ki”.

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waned (and is more prominent in some martial arts, e.g., Aikidō , than others), but through its presence in popular books (that have remained in circulation) never fully disappeared. There are also further similarities between typical occult groups and martial arts organisations, which may partially account for why individuals with certain preferences seek out both the occult milieu and the MAM. These include the exploration and attainment of (in some sense) extraordinary abilities as a goal, advancement through a degree system, reverence for a master (and/or a chain of previous masters), exotic uniforms and ceremonies, formalised/ritual behaviour in a particular locale distinct from the mundane world, and so on. Somewhat distinct phases seem to exist in the Swedish reception of Japanese martial culture. Initially, one in conjunction with the Russo-­ Japanese war (which coincides with Theosophical enthusiasm for Buddhism and other Eastern teachings) that emphasises bushidō as a spiritual system. Then, a few decades during which physical Jiu-Jitsu “tricks” are in focus. Next, as the 1960s interest in “Eastern mysticism” was booming, comes a phase when Zen Buddhism is stressed. This is followed, from the 1980s onward, by new hybridisations and overlaps of Western occultism and martial arts mystique (for example an occult order organising martial arts seminars). This periodisation, it should be said, is preliminary, and more work needs to be done on a larger material to verify it. It is my hope that the present small study has at least made clear the tremendous potential in employing the MAM as a case study to highlight long-term processes of interculturality as well as tensions between secularity and (occult) spirituality.

References Primary Sources Black Belt. 2005–2008. Active Interest Media, Vol. 43–46. Cronholm, Viking. 1908. Jiu-Jitsu tricks. Japanskt system för själfförsvar. Fröléen & Comp: Stockholm. Floridor. 1910. Bushido eller konsten att bli en bättre människa. Ett japanskt jiu-­ jitsu för själen. Dagens Nyheter (September 7): 5. Gerne, D:r. 1906. Japans själ. Dagens nyheter (November 15): 2. Gurre, V. 1910. Bushido: Japanernas system: Behärska dina medmänniskor med tankens makt! Stockholm: Fröléen & Comp. Inside Kung Fu. 2004–2005. Active Interest Media, Vol. 31–32.

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Markos, Imi. 1965. Mystiken kring VM-knocken skingrad? Clay utbildad i karate! Aftonbladet (May 30): 18. Path-Finder. 1904. A Monthly Magazine Devoted to Literature, Science, Philosophy, and the Higher Development of the Human Race – Physical and Metaphysical. (May). 3 (5). Pius. 1913. Fröken Märta Hedman på besök i Stockholm. Dagens Nyheter (July 19): 5. s.n. 1968. Snabbhet och teknik avgör i karate. Dagens Nyheter (August 12): 7. Sandor, Robert von. 1970. Budo: Den japanske krigarens väg till zen. Stockholm: Forum. Suzuki, Daisetsu Teitaro. 1959. Zen and Japanese Culture. New  York: Pantheon Books. The Segnogram. 1905 (October). 5 (1). Weimark, Arthur. 1922. Jiu-Jitsu: Japansk försvarsmetod. Stockholm: Bonnier.

Secondary Sources af Burén, Ann. 2015. Living Simultaneity: On Religion Among Semi-Secular Swedes. Huddinge: Södertörns högskola. Baier, Karl. 1998. Yoga auf dem Weg nach Westen: Beiträge zur Rezeptionsgeschichte. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann. Benesch, Oleg. 2014. Inventing the Way of the Samurai: Nationalism, Internationalism, and Bushido in Modern Japan. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Borup, Jørn. 2017. Pizza, Curry, Skyr and Whirpool Effects: Religious Circulations Between East and West. In Eastspirit: Transnational Spirituality and Religious Circulation in East and West, ed. Jørn Borup and Marianne Fibiger, 13–35. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Borup, Jørn, and Marianne Fibiger. 2017. Introduction. In Eastspirit: Transnational Spirituality and Religious Circulation in East and West, ed. Jørn Borup and Marianne Fibiger, 1–10. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Campbell, Colin. 1972. The Cult, the Cultic Milieu and Secularization. In Sociological Year-book of Religion in Britain, ed. Michael Hill, vol. 5, 119–136. London: SCM Press. ———. 2007. The Easternization of the West: A Thematic Account of Cultural Change in the Modern Era. Boulder: Paradigm Publishers. Clarke, J.J. 2000. The Tao of the West: Western Transformations of Taoist Thought. London: Routledge.

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Faxneld, Per. 2016. Förnuftet är en dålig guide: Sekularitet och andlighetsdiskurs inom östasiatiska kampkonster i Väst. Aura. Tidskrift för akademiska studier av nyreligiositet 8 (1): 57–89. Friday, Karl F. 1997. Legacies of the Sword: The Kashima-Shinryu and Samurai Martial Culture. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Frisk, Lotte, and Peter Åkerbäck. 2015. New Religiosity in Contemporary Sweden: The Dalarna Study in National and International Context. Sheffield: Equinox. Giordan, Giuseppe, and Enzo Pace, eds. 2012. Mapping Religion and Spirituality in a Postsecular World. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Greger, Hans, and Tony Hansson. 2005. Ju-jutsu: Självförsvar med tradition och kvalitet. Stockholm: Svenska ju-jutsförbundet. Gyllerström, Kenneth. 1960. Jiu-Jitsu och Judoboken. Stockholm: Walhström & Widstrand. Hallisey, C. 1995. Roads Taken and Not Taken in the Study of Theravada Buddhism. In Curators of the Buddha: The Study of Buddhism Under Colonialism, ed. Donald S. Lopez, 31–61. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Hammer, Olav. 1997. På spaning efter helheten: New Age, en ny folktro? Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand. ———. 2004. Claiming Knowledge: Strategies of Epistemology from Theosophy to the New Age. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Hanegraaff, Wouter. 1996. New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Hatsumi, M. 2004. The Way of the Ninja: Secret Techniques. Tokyo: Kodansha. Heelas, Paul, and Linda Woodhead. 2005. The Spiritual Revolution: Why Religion is Giving Way to Spirituality. Malden: Blackwell. Holt, Ronald L. 2001. Meditation. In Martial Arts of the World, ed. Thomas A. Green, 335–338. Santa Barbara: ABC Clio. Hornborg, A.-C. 2012. Coaching och lekmannaterapi: En modern väckelse? Stockholm: Dialogos. Huss, Boaz. 2014. Spirituality: The Emergence of a New Cultural Category and its Challenge to the Religious and the Secular. Journal of Contemporary Religion 29 (1): 47–60. Kohn, Tamara. 2003. The Aikido Body: Expressions of Group Identities and Self-­ Discovery in Martial Arts Training. In Sport, Dance and Embodied Identities, ed. Noel Dyck and Eduardo P. Archetti, 139–155. Oxford: Berg. Krug, Gary J. 2001. At the Feet of the Master: Three Stages in the Appropriation of Okinawan Karate into Anglo-American Culture. Cultural Studies, Critical Methodologies 1 (4): 395–410. Lincoln, Bruce. 2005. Theses on Method. Method & Theory in the Study of Religion 17 (1): 8–10.

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McMahan, David L. 2008. The Making of Buddhist Modernism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mercadante, Linda A. 2014. Belief without Borders: Inside the Minds of the Spiritual But Not Religious. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Moberg, Marcus, et al. 2015. Diversification, Mainstreaming, Commercialization and Domestication: Trends within New Religious Movements in Finland. In Handbook of Nordic New Religions, ed. Inga B. Tøllefsen and James R. Lewis, 141–157. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Norris, Pippa, and Ronald Inglehart. 2004. Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Partridge, Christopher. 2004/2005. The Re-Enchantment of the West: Alternative Spiritualities, Sacralization, Popular Culture, and Occulture. Vol. 2. London: T&T Clark. Prebish, Charles, and Martin Baumann, eds. 2002. Westward Dharma: Buddhism Beyond Asia. Berkeley: University of California Press. Raposa, Michael L. 1999. Pragmatism, Budo, and the Spiritual Exercises. American Journal of Theology & Philosophy 20 (2): 105–121. Robertson, Roland. 1995. Glocalization: Time–Space and Homogeneity– Heterogeneity. In Global Modernities, ed. Mike Featherstone, Scott Lash, and Roland Robertson, 25–44. London: Sage. Ron, Roy. 2001. Japan. In Martial Arts of the World, ed. Thomas A.  Green, 79–199. Santa Barbara: ABC Clio. Ryan, Alexandra. 2008. Globalisation and the “Internal Alchemy” in Chinese Martial Arts. East Asian Science, Technology and Society 2 (4): 525–543. Sharf, Robert H. 1995. The Zen of Japanese Nationalism. In Curators of the Buddha: The Study of Buddhism Under Colonialism, ed. Donald S.  Lopez, 107–160. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Singleton, Mark. 2010. Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stenudd, Stefan. 1992. Aikido. Den fredliga kampkonsten. Malmö: Arriba. Stevens, John. 2007. Zen Bow, Zen Arrow: The Life and Teachings of Awa Kenzo, the Archery Master from Zen in the Art of Archery. Boston: Shambhala. Thurfjell, David. 2015. Det gudlösa folket. De postkristna svenskarna och religionen. Stockholm: Molin & Sorgenfrei. Tøllefsen, Inga B. 2015. The Art of Living Foundation in Norway: Indigenization and Continuity. In Handbook of Nordic New Religions, ed. Inga B. Tøllefsen and James R. Lewis, 239–253. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Tweed, Thomas. 2005. American Occultism and Japanese Buddhism. Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 32 (2): 249–281. Urban, Hughes. 2003. Tantra: Sex, Secrecy, Politics and Power in the Study of Religion. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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Willander, Erika. 2015. Religiositet och sekularisering. In Sociologiska perspektiv på religion i Sverige, ed. Mia Lövheim and Magdalena Nordin, 53–68. Malmö: Gleerups. Yamada, Shoji. 2001. The Myth of Zen in the Art of Archery. Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 28 (1–2): 1–30. Yoshinaga, Shinichi. 2014. Three Boys on a Great Vehicle: “Mahayana Buddhism” and a Trans-National Network. In A Buddhist Crossroads: Pioneer Western Buddhists and Asian Networks 1860–1960, ed. Brian Bocking, Phibul Choompolpaisal, Laurence Cox, and Alicia M.  Turner, 52–65. London: Routledge.

PART III

Occultism in Global Perspective

CHAPTER 12

A Study into a Transreligious Quest for the Ultimate Truth: Indian, Muslim, and European Interpretations of the Upanishads Franz Winter

Introduction This chapter is a kind of an experiment, which attempts to follow a specific religious quest throughout different cultures that are connected by a fascinating story of interpretation and translation of a particular corpus of “sacred texts” commonly referred to as the Upanishads. Particularly in the Western perception and interpretation this valuable collection is referred to as the fulcrum of Indian religious and philosophical history by ascertaining a specific worldview and “theology,” which includes important aspects such as: the search for an inner core in the human soul (commonly referred to as ātman) and its identification with the all-encompassing principle of the universe (brahman); or the various techniques to reach this particular highest goal that leads to “liberation” (mokṣa), which are taught

F. Winter (*) Department of Religious Studies, University of Graz, Graz, Austria e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 L. Pokorny, F. Winter (eds.), The Occult Nineteenth Century, Palgrave Studies in New Religions and Alternative Spiritualities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55318-0_12

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by a competent and authoritarian teacher (guru) to his disciple (śiṣya) forming a lineage of succession (paramparā) to pass on the proper interpretation through the generations. As will be shown, this current look on the Upanishads is the result of a rather long history of interpretation and reconceptualisation of specific traits of this corpus throughout various cultural and religious contexts. This journey began already within India and found a new moulding in a specific Muslim reception, which formed the basis for the early European interpretation of these texts that are clearly framed within certain aspects of the Western esoteric tradition. The main contexts that will be examined are the interpretative frames set by the tradition of the so-­called Advaita Vedānta initiated by the Indian philosopher Śaṅkara (traditionally, eighth century), the seventeenth century Mughal prince Dārā Shukūh (1615–1659) with his translation of a sample of Upanishads entitled Sirr-i akbar (literally, “the great secret”), and the French philologist and orientalist Abraham H. Anquetil-Duperron (1731–1805) and his Oupnek’hat (1801–1802). Both Dārā Shukūh and Anquetil-Duperron provided the first translations and interpretations of the Indian corpus outside the Indian linguistic space and paved the way for the specific understanding of the Upanishads as described above. With this approach this contribution draws on a transcultural and transreligious perspective. However, this is not based on a concept of “perennialism”, that is, the search of a kind of religious truth permeating various cultures and eras. Although this is a fundamental concept within the Western esoteric tradition, its academic study tries to avoid this trap by placing its research on a sound philological and discursive basis. Yet, this highly important conceptual attitude may lead to a constant avoidance of the question of transreligious connections and comparisons regarding patterns of thought and ideas. In this chapter a lineage of transmission is examined on the basis of textual traditions and with a strict philological and historical focus, but the question will at least be posed whether the term “esoteric” might be useful as a transreligiously applicable category. In addition, it is also a close study of the reception of a specific non-­ European corpus within Europe which is closely connected to the history of Western esotericism. It is beyond doubt that, particularly in the nineteenth century, the history of this religious current is closely related to the discovery of “the East” as a source for inspiration and religious longing, wherein India played a major role (see Zander 1999: 440–449). The study of one specific text and its earliest European reception will show that it was perceived within a particular frame that was clearly shaped by aspects of

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the Western esoteric tradition.1 In accordance with the general scope of this volume a focus will be laid on the last section, namely its interpretation in the work of Anquetil-Duperron who deeply influenced the way India and its religious and philosophical lore was perceived (for the broader history of interpretation, see Renard 1995). In this perspective, the contribution is dealing with one of the roots of an important aspect of nineteenth-­century Western esotericism.2

India Needless to say that the Upanishads are an essential part of the voluminous textual corpus referred to as the Veda that forms the core of Indian religious tradition. The Upanishads are said to be the vedānta, that is, “the end of the Veda,” which points to their actual place in the four collections or subdivisions of the Veda; however, this was later also interpreted as referring to the idea that they constitute the final goal of the other scriptures (Sharma 2007: 119; Slaje 2009: 383; Olivelle 1992: 3–4). Thereby the Upanishads surpassed the portions of the Veda called Brāhmaṇa and Āraṇyaka which both contained already long passages beyond the mere hymnical, mythological, and technical material of the older parts (the Saṃ hitā), with a tendency to reflect intensively on the rituals and to pave the way for individual approaches towards questions regarding the self and the universe (Slaje 2009: 399–403; Crangle 1994: 9–12; Mylius 1988: 63–73). But it was mainly in the Upanishads that a new era of thinking emerged which fundamentally replaced the focus on ritualistic attitudes with an emphasis on the individual’s attempts for salvation (Slaje 2009: 403). Consequently, in the following interpretation of the Vedic material a distinction was introduced between the “epistemological part” (jnāna-kāṇḍa) and the “ritual part” (karma-kāṇḍa) (Slaje 1  In addition to this topic there is another area which is at stake in this contribution, namely the reference to orientalism. The lines of transmission as presented in this chapter are a clear sign that a closer look into the historical contexts shakes the often too simply conceptualised approach towards the alleged distorted Western look on “the Orient,” as Islamic authors play a major role as intermediaries. I do not expand on this specific aspect in the present chapter, but refer to my remarks in Winter 2018: 30, 53–55. 2  Through its approach, this chapter is closely connected to concepts and ideas that were developed in the publications of Karl Baier who devoted a lot of his work on the interrelation between India and Europe and the various ways these cultural areas are connected and became more closely conjoined through various developments. See in particular Baier 1998.

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2009: 383; Bartley 2011: 134; Olivelle 1992: 3), the latter being to some degree substituted by the other. However, any closer reading of the various Upanishadic texts makes it difficult to realise a kind of common thread or “doctrine” within them. They offer a variety of different approaches and attitudes that sometimes reflect different traditions and lines of teachings in various religious contexts (della Casa 1983: 14–15). It was only in the course of the further reception and interpretation where one encounters a specific tendency to ascribe them a common idea and doctrine. Thereby it is important to keep in mind that these attempts were mainly based on already developed philosophical concepts and not on a particular reading of the Upanishads; that is, the Upanishads served as a mere reference point and a kind of proof of the system (della Casa 1983: 15), which is self-evident in the work of its later principal interpreter, Śaṅkara (see Slaje 2009: 389). The first example of this approach reaches back to the first centuries CE with the so-called Brahma or Vedānta Sūtra that attempted to establish a coherent view and outline of an Upanishadic “theology.” It summarised teachings on the ultimate reality (brahman) and became the starting point for the development of one of the six classical philosophical systems of India (Knott 1998: 29–30), the so-called Vedānta which was developed into a major tradition in the following centuries. Therein it was particularly the Upanishads that became extremely important, as they constitute—together with the aforementioned Brahma Sūtra and the Bhagavadgı ̄tā—the so-called prasthāna-traya, viz. the triple canon of the Vedānta, with the Upanishads being the śruti-prasthāna, that is, the “revealed” portion (Ghambirananda 1983: v–vi; Sharma 2007: 120). Hence, the main reference figure of the Vedantic tradition, the important philosopher Śaṅkara, wrote commentaries on a sample of so-called early, viz. older, or “principal” (mukhya) Upanishads that later became more or less canonised. The Vedantins were interpreting the Upanishads in accordance with the principle that the sample of texts are basically a single body of literature with a unified overall purport (tātparya), and their exegetical norms and techniques were applied in order to single out specific coherent contexts of meaning (eka-vākyatā) and then demonstrate that these contexts themselves fit together (Bartley 2011: 135). Accordingly, the Upanishads are put into a Procrustean bed and their content is narrowed down to one single mode of interpretation. The core idea is that of the “unity” of the

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first principle, which is defined as advaita (the “non-duality”), that is, the inner “true self” (ātman) is identical with the highest reality (brahman). However, it is important to state that the Vedānta philosophy, and with them the Upanishads as the core, had a rather late start. Although Śaṅkāra laid the foundation, this approach was not regarded as important until the eleventh century. A highly probable reason for the growing importance particularly of the Upanishads was the tendency to search for a kind of “sacred book”-tradition within the Indian context due to the emergent importance of Islam in that period. Important kings of the Vijayanagara reign (1336–1646) promoted the development of an “Indian” Brahmanical ideology and the importance of the Vedic material within that frame, resulting in a common identity with a significant and increasing influence in the following centuries (Slaje 2009: 388–389; Bronkhorst 2007: 279–280). This was focused on the Śankarian mode of interpretation and consequently brought his commentarial work to the fore, particularly through the influence of important philosophers such as Vidyāraṇya (fourteenth century) whose Sarvadars á nasaṃ graha contains a thorough description and apologetical confrontation with the major philosophical systems of India, culminating in the Advaita Vedānta, the “crest-­gem of all systems” (sakala-dars á na-s í rolaṃ kāra-ratnam; English translation after Cowell and Gough 1976 [1882]: 273). The focus on the “original” Śaṅkara was also a reaction to the newer developments within the Vedānta tradition which often contradicted Śaṅkara’s material. Particularly the concepts of Rāmānuja (1050–1137) and Madhva (1238–1317), who became eminent interpreters of the Vedānta, show major differences in regard to fundamental concepts and approaches (Isayeva 1993: 240–255; della Casa 1983: 17–18). These dogmatic quarrels and varying approaches to the Upanishads were essential for the further reception as portrayed below, namely the writings of a Mughal prince whose approach was primarily shaped by his Sufi education but with an obvious tendency to integrate Indian religions as well. As will be shown, his approach was shaped by contacts with pandits who were clearly within the aforementioned Śankarian tradition, which obviously dominated the official philosophical discourse at the time of the conception of the work (Gandhi 2014; Minkowski 2014; for detailed presentation of selected passages of the Upanishads and their Persian translations in the Śankarian tradition, see d’Onofrio 2006: 315–351). It is worth adding here that it seems to be the oft-referred

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irony of history that the discovery of the Upanishads by a Muslim was the result of the growing importance of a “sacred book”-tradition that became central because of the increasing threat from Islam in Northern India after the eleventh century.

Mughal India The time of the Mughals (1526–1857) is referred to as one of the most important eras in the history of India, which becomes evident to anyone travelling throughout the peninsula and particularly its northern part. Although there had been first contacts with Islamic merchants already in the seventh century, it was especially since the eleventh century that the Islamic influence grew with the establishment of the Delhi Sultanate from 1206 to 1526 with various dynasties (Jackson 1999: 3–22; Malik 2008: 92–110). The Empire of the Mughals, however, which began with the reign of the Central Asian invader Bābur (1483–1530) after the conquest of Delhi in 1526 developed into a long-lasting regime. Particularly the times of Akbar “the Great” (1542–1605) and his son Jahāngı̄r (1569–1627) made nearly all of Northern India part of the Mughal Empire, which was consolidated by their successor Shāh Jahān (1592–1666) and reached the maximum expansion under the following ruler Aurangzeb (1618–1707). In the seventeenth century, the Mughal Empire was the most important economic power in the world corresponding to nearly a quarter of the world’s economic activity (Maddison 2003: 26). It continued until the final defeat by the British colonial forces in 1857, although with gradually diminishing power and constantly under threat from nearby Hindu kingdoms. What makes the Mughals special was, inter alia, their approach to Indian culture and religion that was open-minded and integrative, not least because of issues of state control. This attitude was initiated in the aforementioned reign of Akbar, who in line with his principle of ṣulḥ-i kull (“peace for all”; see Kinra 2013: 261–288) abolished the obligatory tax for non-Muslims (jizya) in 1564 and supervised a couple of additional reforms (Wink 2009: 95–104). Additionally, there was particular interest in the translation of fundamental Indian texts into Persian, a process which can be traced back to the eleventh century (Ernst 2003: 178), but peaked in the two first centuries of the Mughal Empire. In this regard, the work of the ill-fated Persian Prince Dārā Shukūh constitutes part of a longer tradition (Truschke 2016: 223–225). He was

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the oldest son of the Mughal emperor Shāh Jahān, but was unable to prevail against his younger brother, the later emperor Aurangzeb (see Faruqui 2012: 38–45, for the historical context). In the struggle for power he eventually lost his life at the age of 44 through execution (Schimmel 1994: 2–5). The prince’s literary work offers insights into a very specific religious development that at first was confined within the Islamic religious context, but later broadened the scope with a particular focus on the Indian religious heritage. After a rather elitist education as a Mughal Prince, he became interested in the Sufi traditions of India and deeply immersed into its peculiarities. His first publication, Saf ı̄nat al-awliyāʾ (literally, “ship of saints”; 1639/1640), is a summary of important Sufi biographies; the second work, Sakı¯nat al-awliyāʾ (literally, “the peace of the saints”; 1642), is entirely devoted to the Qādiri-Sufi tradition and its alleged superiority. Already in 1646, in a short epistle entitled Risāla-i ḥaqqnūmā, the prince claimed to have received a kind of authoritarian revelation that connected him via the Qādiri lineage directly to Muḥammad. This is a clear sign that he perceived himself as holding a specific role beyond that of a mere recipient. After his important first phase, the prince began to be interested in other religious contexts as well. He had, inter alia, contacts with the Indian ascetic (Bābā) Laʿl Dās, who also got included in the prince’s collection of ecstatic utterances of various saints (published in 1654 with the title Ḥ asanat al-ʿārif ı̄n; literally, “good words of those who know”). The best-­ known fruit of his interest in Indian religions is the famous treatise entitled Majma῾ al-baḥrain (The Meeting-place of the Two Oceans), which was composed around the middle of the seventeenth century and is regarded as an important Mughal Persian text on Hindu traditions and Islam from a comparative perspective to date (d’Onofrio and Speziale 2011: 11). What becomes evident with this work, however, is the prince’s “focus on esoteric truth” (Ernst 2003: 186), which can be traced back to a distinction contained in the book on India by the important Muslim historiographer and polymath al-Bı̄rūnı̄ (973–1048). The great scholar differentiated between the (polytheistic) religion of the masses and an intellectual elite that was perceived as “monotheists” (muwaḥḥidūn), a concept that became important for other writers on India as well, such as the Persian geographer and historian al-Gardı̄zi (eleventh century), the Andalusian philosopher Ibn Ḥ azm (994–1064), or, more extensively, the Persian historiographer al-Shahrastānı̄ (1086–1153) (Faruqui 2014: 35; Friedmann 1975; Minorsky 1948).

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In the case of Dārā Shukūh the very title of the treatise, i.e. “the meeting-­place of the two oceans,” refers to an enigmatic passage in the Quran (Sura 18:60) wherein Moses found the water of eternal life and encountered a mysterious servant of God, who is usually identified as al-Khiḍr who later played a major role in Sufi discourse as the esoteric companion, contrasting the legalistic prophet Moses (Renard 2003: 81–83). In his approach to the Indian tradition, Dārā Shukūh’s main concern is a small elite which possesses the ultimate truth and to which he refers as the “monotheists of India” (muwaḥḥidān-i hind; see Gandhi 2014: 70–72). This rather excluding and elitist approach is also the basis for his interpretation of the Upanishads. The fruit of this endeavour is the famous book Sirr-i akbar (literally, “the great secret”), which is actually the first translation of these texts outside the Indian linguistic area (Ernst 2003: 185–186; d’Onofrio 2006: 3, n. 2). The prince’s own attitude towards the Upanishads is best described in an interesting preamble (dibāchā) to the actual translation wherein he delineates a kind of spiritual autobiography.3 He describes his own intellectual journey from the study of the Quran in order to find its profound meaning in the crucial Islamic concept of “unity” (tauḥı¯d). The Quran, though, did not satisfy the prince’s spiritual longing because it contained too many enigmas and was too cryptic.4 Consequently he began to search for the proper expression of the tauḥı¯d in other religious contexts as well, foremost in the scriptures of the “people of the book” (ahl-i kitāb), that is, the Tora (taurı¯t), the Gospels (anjı¯l), and the Psalms (zabūr). Once again, the same dissatisfaction ensued, whereby the prince clearly “echoes the quiet grouses of generations of Muslim scholars before him” (Faruqui 2014: 51). In the case of Dārā Shukūh, however, the dissatisfaction does not lead to a more intense reading of the text (which would be the typical rationale), but to the idea

3  I am following the text of Dārā Shukūh 1961, an edition by Tārā Chand and Muḥammad Riḍā Jalālı̄-Nāʾı̄nı̄; the preamble can be found on three unpaginated pages after p. 345 and before the edition of the actual translation of the Upanishads, together with a critical apparatus. Translations of phrases and expressions are mine; translations of the entire preamble are provided in d’Onofrio 2006: 296–299 (into Italian) and Göbel-Gross 1962: 13–18 (into German). 4  The term to describe the “enigmatic” nature of the Quran used by the prince is marmuz, “cryptic,” (only) expressed by signs, viz. filled with subtleties and enigmas (see Faruqui 2014: 50–51).

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to search for further inspiration outside the religious context he grew up with. It was particularly the Indian religious tradition that offerednew material, since Dārā Shukūh asserts that the “debate on the unity” (guftugū-yi tauḥı¯d) is “frequent” (bisyār) and many of its “old theologians and mystics” (‘ulamā-yi ẓāhirı¯ u bāt ̣inı¯-i qadı¯m-i)5 did not “deny the unity” (bar waḥdat inkārı̄) or object to the “monotheists” (muwaḥḥidān). It was “among that old people” (dar miyān-i ı n̄ qaum-i qadı ̄m), that is, the Indians, that he found another sample of “heavenly books” (kutub-i samāwı )̄ , which are identified with the four parts of the Veda by name. Dārā Shukūh consequently integrates this context into the classical Muslim scheme of revelations by ascribing them to the “prophets of that time” (anbiyā-yi ān waqt) among whom he identifies the Indian god Brahmā with no other than the first human, Adam. This explicit identification of Brahmā with an important figure of the Islamic religious tradition is probably one of the most significant approaches to Indian religious lore by a Muslim thinker. With this new approach he intensified his focus on India and claimed parity in the monotheistic status of the Upanishads and the Quran. Thereby he clearly transgressed commonly accepted boundaries and it is beyond doubt that his approach placed him outside the common religious framework. He was a “heterodox” in the classical sense of the word and his status as “heretic” (mulḥid) was one of the accusations in a trial that eventually led to his execution (Geoffroy and Gaetani 2010: 191). The evaluation of the Upanishads reaches its peak by identifying the Indian corpus with the enigmatic “hidden book” (kitāb maknūn) and even the (hidden) “mother of the book” (umm al-kitāb) mentioned in the Quran (regarding this concept, see Wisnowsky 2002: 412). In the Upanishads, that “old book of God” (kitāb-allāh-i qadı¯m),6 Dārā Shukūh thought to have found the definite origin of the revelation, a “divine word” (kalām-i ilāhı ̄ ) with a status that is even higher than that of the Quran. The Upanishads are treated as a unity forming the “essence of the Veda” (khulāsạ -yi bı ̄d) which is also the “essence of the tauḥı ̄d” (khulāsạ -yi tauḥı¯d) and the “sea of the tauḥı¯d” (baḥr-i tauḥı¯d). 5  Literally, “the old scholars of the inside and the outside.” The terms ẓāhir and bāt ̣in, respectively, refer to different levels of interpretation of the text of the Quran, denoting the “legalistic” and the “interior” (which means: the Sufi) mode. 6  Quoted from the epilogue to the Sirr-i akbar; see d’Onofrio 2006: 125.

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What becomes clear with this presentation is the focus of Dārā Shukūh’s endeavours: it is about a hidden, esoteric search for the “one” as a kind of theistic principle which culminated with the discovery of the Upanishads as the ultimate expression of the truth in the form of a “book.”7 As will be shown, this provides the frame for the following reception of this particular interpretation in the early modern European context.

France The Mughal prince’s exertion became important in the further reception in Europe, where a like-minded seeker of the truth discovered the “great secret” at the end of his adventurous life. Abraham H. Anquetil-Duperron was already famous due to his translation of the Zoroastrian Avesta into French and a couple of important studies on the history of intercultural relations between Asia and the West (Stausberg 1998: 790–809). The two hefty volumes with the rather awkward title Oupnek’hat, id est secretum tegendum (literally, “Oupnek’hat, which means: secret that must be kept”) were published in the years 1801–1802  in Strasbourg, and they are a summa of his life, denoting a kind of final goal of his life-long ventures. Obviously, he also draws on a rather elitist approach to the history of religions that promotes the notion of a (hidden) stream of knowledge now discovered within and through the Upanishads. This attitude is summarised in the concept of a doctrina orientalis (“oriental doctrine”), viz. a systema orientale (“oriental system”), a kind of Pan-Asian religious and philosophical tradition, whose origin and content were of major concern for Anquetil-Duperron. The alleged doctrina orientalis is described thoroughly in a lengthy introductory essay to the Oupnek’hat, entitled Dissertatio, in qua e Judaeorum, Ecclesiae Doctorum, et tam Catholicorum, quam Acatholicorum Theologorum scriptis, summa Orientalis Systematis inquiritur (A Treatise Wherein the Sum of the Oriental Religious System is Sought for with Reference to the Scriptures of Different Traditions, Namely the Jews, the Church Fathers, and Theologians of Catholic and non-Catholic Schools”).8 Therein Anquetil-Duperron provides the 7  See also Faruqui 2014: 56–59, with an attempt to interpret the prince’s approach to India within a certain political agenda, i.e. to prove and legitimise his own status as the successor of his father on the Mughal throne. 8  Anquetil-Duperron 1801: XXIII–CXI. The English translations of the Latin texts presented here are mine. The Oupnek’hat was only partly translated into German (Mischel 1882) and major translated excerpts can be found in an early book on Indian philosophy,

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t­heological outline of this “doctrine,” according to his approach constituting a summary of the content of the Upanishads, and which is presented on the background of and by referring to different commonly known “European” traditions. The dissertatio itself is divided into four chapters, the four articuli, which delineate important features of this summa orientalis systematis that Anquetil-Duperron thought to find in the Upanishads, and which cover all the aspects of the presupposed “oriental system.” These four articuli refer to diverse strands such as: the existence of the “highest being, its nature, and its properties (ens supremum, ejus natura et proprietates, the first articulus); the question whether emanation or creation is the cause of the universe (rerum productio, per emanationem aut creationem, the second articulus); the existence of a “supernatural world” (mundus supernaturalis, the third articulus); and the various interconnections between heaven and earth through presupposed intermediary forces (the fourth articulus). As will be shown, major traits of this framing might be connected with patterns of thought belonging to the vast arena of Western esotericism. In general, his approach is mainly based on the idea of a prisca theologia, meaning that India formed part of a stream of ancient wisdom which constituted the hidden truth now discovered. The prisca theologia is one of the most eminent reference points in the history of Western esotericism,9 of which there are different types mainly in connection to the question which or who is the source of the great wisdom, or whether there are different approaches in a hidden history (von Stuckrad 2004: 92–99). The idea of a primordial but hidden wisdom was initially coined by Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499) in the Renaissance, and it became central to the later Theosophical movement, as exposed specifically in the popular book Les Grands Initiés by Philippe Frédéric “Édouard” Schuré (1841–1929). The prominence of India therein, which was part of the list of possible reference cultures, makes it an important factor within all the attempts to ­formulate the prisca theologia (Walker 1954: 212–213, 254). In this whose author, the theologian and philosopher Anselm Rixner (1766–1838), heavily relies on the Oupnek’hat (Rixner 1808). Both books do not contain a translation of the introductory dissertatio. 9  See Hanegraaff 1996: 390–391, on the differences to the parallel expression philosophia perennis, which became prominent in the sixteenth century through the book with the same title by the librarian Agostino Steucho (1497–1548) published 1540, and which is to be interpreted as a reconceptualisation of the prisca theologia. See Schmidt-Biggemann 1998; Walker 1972.

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respect, Anquetil-Duperron is able to follow a specific discussion and presents his philosophia et theologia indica as contained in the Oupnek’hat as the final answer to a question long sought after: we are now able to encounter the dawn of this prisca theologia—or, in other words, the Indian philosophy contained in the Upanishads is the ultimate expression of this concept. This is discussed in detail in his treatment of the four articuli, where he makes references to important instances of various religious, philosophical, and even scientific discussions as proof for his theory. With regard to the first point, on the ens supremum, that is, the highest being, Anquetil-Duperron is mainly concerned with its “uniqueness” and “unity.” This concept, which is clearly inspired by the focus on the tauḥıd̄ in the Sirr-i akbar (Winter 2018: 48, 53–54), is encountered according to his theory in the Upanishads, which should be interpreted on the basis of the writings of the Late Antique Neoplatonic philosopher and later Christian theologian Synesios of Cyrene (fourth century). The references to Synesios and his work are something like a programmatic statement at the beginning of his presentation as the texts of Synesios propose a synthesis, a reconciliation of Christianity and Neoplatonic thought (Halbfass 1988: 21). It is worth noting that Synesios’ work became very important in its modern reception due to a translation by Marsilio Ficino in 1489,10 who himself is one of the most important figures in the formulation of the prisca theologia concept. In his interpretation, Anquetil-Duperron refers to certain aspects of the theology provided in the hymns of Synesios, which he comments on by quoting parallel concepts from the Upanishads. The idea of the unity of the God, which is described in Synesios’ first hymn,11 the “Indian” concept of reincarnation,12 or the importance of “silence” in religious contexts (Anquetil-Duperron 1801: XXVII) are examples of instances that Anquetil-Duperron quotes as parallel concepts. He even demonstrates that specific religious texts are interchangeable among the different ­traditions. In his opinion, the third hymn of Synesios, where the ascent to the father-god and the fountain of all light is 10  See Schmitt 2001: 41. There was much interest in Synesios in the Renaissance: his Peri enypniōn (On Dreams) was printed in 1516 and 1518 in Venice, in 1549 in Lyon, and in 1568 in Paris. On the importance of Synesius for Ficino see Walker 2000: 39, note 1. 11  In Anquetil-Duperron 1801: XXVI–XXVII, Anquetil-Duperron quotes longer passages of the first hymn, where God is characterised as “holy unity of the unities” (henote ̄to ̄n henas hagne ̄); see also ibid.: XXVII, XXXV, and XXXIX–XXXX (with quotes from the fourth hymn). 12  Anquetil-Duperron 1801: XXIX, with a definition of the Indian reincarnation as “return of the same ātman to its highest originator” (eijusdem ātma ad summum parentem reversio).

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delineated, could also be used by an Indian ascetic in his invocation of “the one” (ibid.: XXXIX). With this approach Anquetil-Duperron is able to find the same theological ideas in both, the use of the same metaphorical language,13 and even the Christian trinity, which is presented in the writings of Synesios on the background of Neoplatonic theories of emanation. A very explicit approach is given in Anquetil-Duperron’s presentation of the second articulus, which is on the question of how things come into being (rerum productio). Therein he is principally concerned with the concepts of creation and emanation as two opposing answers to the fundamental question of where the world originates from. Anquetil-Duperron favours the emanation theory which he presents as the genuine Indian idea (as provided in his Upanishads; Anquetil-Duperron 1801: XLVIIIf) by referring extensively to the tradition of the Kabbalah in its specific interpretation of the early modern period, which is commonly called “Christian” Kabbalah (Dan 2007: 83–93). The main work of reference is the book Introductio ad Historiam Philosophiae Ebraeorum by Johann Franz Budde (1667–1729), where the emanatio-creatio-topic is treated extensively and interpreted as a key point of the discussion between Christians and Jews.14 Another source of Anquetil-Duperron’s interpretation of the Kabbalistic emanatio are important collections of translated texts highly popular in early modern Europe, like the Cabbala Denudata seu Doctrina Hebraeorum Transcendentalis (The Kabbalah Exposed, or the Transcendental Doctrine of the Hebrews) by Christian Knorr von Rosenroth (1636–1689), which is one of the most important publications regarding the reception and interpretation of the Kabbalah within a specific, mainly esoteric frame (Coudert 1994). With these instances, Anquetil-Duperron refers in his second articulus to a specific discussion which was heavily debated in the intellectual world in the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century. The emanation theory was opposed to the idea of the creatio ex nihilo, which was seen as the main message of the biblical text, but it had more in common with the theories on the origin of the earth as proposed by the natural 13  Anquetil-Duperron 1801: XXXVIII, where Synesios’ picture of a heavenly “drop” (libas ourania) which comes down to earth is labelled as typically Indian. 14  Together with Christoph Matthäus Pfaff (1686–1760) and Siegmund Jakob Baumgarten (1706–1757), the theologian Johann Franz Budde was an important figure in the Protestant Enlightenment and proposed something like a reconciliation between Christian theology and the Jewish Kabbalah (Fritsch 2004: 213–215).

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sciences at the time (Schmidt-Biggemann 1998: 432–438). Kabbalistic theories supported the latter approach but had to be reconciled with Christian theology. Anquetil-Duperron actively takes part in this debate and votes for the “modern” version, that is, the emanation theory (Anquetil-Duperron 1801: LII). For Anquetil-Duperron there is no doubt that Indian philosophy as explicated in the Upanishads is totally compatible with the Kabbalistic theory of emanation of the En Soph. As he puts it: “This [i.e., the Kabbalistic emanation theory] is the genuine doctrine of the Indians, almost handed down by the same words in their books” (Haec est genuina Indorum doctrina, ipsis eorum librorum ferme verbis tradita; ibid.: LIII). Another example of his approach can be provided through the fourth articulus, which is on the question of “influences of heaven or the stars on earth and the bodies” (coeli seu astrorum in terram et corpora influxus). In this context Anquetil-Duperron is once again referring to current discussions of his time. He posits that one of the most important ideas presented by the Upanishads is the assumption that there is a strong connection between heaven and earth which are influencing each other. This influence is exerted through a certain intermediary power, a force working inbetween, which is something like the main source of power in the whole universe: “The things are supposed to be disposed by God this way, that the celestial bodies are exerting influence on the terrestrial bodies according to a fixed order, which, however, is less perceived by the senses, through a mediating spiritual principle or a fluidum” (Res supponuntur a Deo ista dispositae, ut ordine fixo, licet minus sensibili, corpora coelestia, mediante aliquo spiritu vel fluido, in terrestria agant; Anquetil-Duperron 1801: LXXIII). To prove this assumption Anquetil-Duperron is extensively referring to the tradition of animal magnetism, which became prominent in his time. His main source of information, however, is not the work of Franz Anton Mesmer (1734–1815), to whom he refers only briefly (ibid.: C), but earlier authors who paved the way for the theories exposed by Mesmer. An important work of reference is the Tractatus de magnetica curatione vulneris citra ullam et superstitionem et dolorem et remedii applicationem (Treaty on the Cure of Wounds with the Help of Magnetic Forces Without Any Superstitious Belief, Pain, and Use of Medication) published in 1609 by Rudolph Goclenius, the younger (1572–1621). The German physician and physicist can be perceived— together with Pietro Pomponazzi (1462–1525), Athanasius Kircher (1602–1680), and Johan Baptista van Helmont (1580–1644)—as an

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important predecessor of animal magnetism (Benz 1977: 13–14). One of the pillars of this system is the assumption of a “sympathetic” connection between terrestrial bodies (i.e., human beings, animals, plants, even inanimate things) and celestial objects. The interaction is realised by a specific power, which was the focus of many scientific endeavours in this period. Goclenius himself speaks in his Tractatus of the medians Spiritus intercedens, that is, the “intermediary, interfering spirit” (Goclenius 1609: 156–157), which is the main principle of the interaction of all the powers in the universe, identified with the magnetic force in the seventeenth and eighteenth century. The idea of a universal connection between all the bodies of the world and the cosmos was incorporated by AnquetilDuperron and ascribed to the will of a God who uses these powers to guide the machinery of the universe (Anquetil-Duperron 1801: XCIII). He highlights the influence of these divine powers on the world and on all the human beings, which he finds in his Upanishadic texts (ibid.: XCII). The specific powers connecting the various bodies (of heaven and earth) are at the centre of Anquetil-Duperron’s attention, whereby he speaks— following Goclenius—of a lucidus intercedens vector spiritus, that is, “a clearly distinguishable interceding carrier of the spirit.” This specific principle is identified with the Indian prāṇa,15 which denoted the main energy in the universe, connecting matter and spirit, although a clear definition of it regarding its nature does not seem to be possible (ibid.: XCIV, XCVIII). This assumption is further expanded by referring to a rather forgotten work of the sixteenth century, the Harmonia coelestium corporum et humanorum astronomice et medice (The Harmony of the Heavenly and the Human Bodies, Both from an Astronomical and a Medical Perspective) by the French philosopher Antoine Mizauld (1510–1578), who was proposing a kind of synthesis of astrological topics, Hermetic philosophy, and natural science, propagating the interconnection of macro- and microcosmos (universe and the human body) through certain intermediary powers (Das 2006: 436–440; Thorndike 1951: 299–301; Mottelay 1922: 125–126). This is combined by Anquetil-Duperron with important references to the theory of mesmerism and its foundation, viz. the theory of animal magnetism. By referring to these instances, Anquetil-Duperron gives a very interesting explanation of the process of meditation and meditation techniques as described in the Indian Upanishads. According to this 15  Anquetil-Duperron 1801: XCIV. In ibid.: 9 prāṇa is defined as “respiratio” (halitus, anima, to phren).

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approach, the different states a yogi is able to attain may be interpreted according to his ability to gather the innercosmic, intermediary powers as described in the aforementioned writings (see Baier 2009: 203–205, with important remarks on the further reception of this interpretation in Joseph Görres’ influential Mythengeschichte der asiatischen Welt). With these four topics Anquetil-Duperron seeks to cover all the important questions of the proposed theological system, which can be found— according to his assumption—in the Upanishads. He proves them by quoting the Upanishads and referring to various Western European traditions, thereby citing most fascinating examples as parallels to the supposed “Indian” concept. The proposed outline of Anquetil-Duperron’s doctrina orientalis is unique. The sample of sources is very specific and can be traced back to several concepts closely connected to the tradition of Western esotericism. Its basis, however, is clearly the work of the Mughal prince, whose enthusiastic veneration for the Indian corpus he shares.16

Concluding Remarks: A Transreligious Quest for the Truth It is indubitable that the Upanishads are an important landmark in the history of religions. This chapter followed the Upanishads’ interpretation throughout various centuries and highly differing cultural contexts, beginning the journey in India itself with a rather far-ranging and diversified history of interpretation that culminated in the work of Śaṅkara, who became the most influential philosopher of India to date (see Dubois 2013). One of the important aspects of his renaissance was the idea to focus on a corpus of written texts (“sacred books”) as the core of religious identity. Śaṅkara and his Vedantist approach was mostly exposed in a vast commentarial literature which included, inter alia, a selection of the Upanishads. This selection, essentially going back to Śaṅkara’s concept of the mukhya (“principal”) Upanishads, forms the core of the further reception. This development was clearly triggered by the alarming encounter 16  Another important aspect of Anquetil-Duperrons’ interpretation of the Upanishads as the major source of inspiration is the idea of a “book” containing the ultimate truth. In Winter 2018: 46–50, I tried to show that this idea has an interesting history of its own that is closely connected to the earliest discovery of Asian religions and their textual traditions through Christian missionaries.

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with Islam and the latter’s focus on one single book as the major source of religious longing. Already in the eleventh century and due to important developments in the Vijayanagara Empire, a kind of Brahmanical or “Indian” national identity developed that focused on its written sources, thereby bringing the Upanishads to the fore. Ironically, it was exactly within the Muslim environment of the Mughal Empire that a further step of the reception of the Upanishads was initiated by a prince of the royal Mughal family, whose intellectual endeavours were clearly shaped by a rather elitist approach to religious traditions—both of his own upbringing and his later interest in Indian religious lore. In this context the term “esoteric” might be used as a marker for his general attitude towards religious truth that was limited to a few chosen ones, the muwaḥḥidūn (“monotheists”), whom he thought could be found both in Islam and in India. Such a view is deeply connected to the idea of a hidden stream of wisdom that permeates various cultures through divine revelations contained in a “hidden book” that the prince thought to have found in the form of the Upanishads. The Indian texts became a kind of final goal of his life-long search that he combined with various Islamic discourses on the “hidden book,” that is, a summary of all heavenly revelations, now available in the form of his translation of a selection of Upanishads, the Sirr-i akbar. Thereby his hand was guided by Vedantist scholars in the tradition of Śaṅkara whose mode of interpretation is clearly visible. The Mughal prince found a thankful recipient in eighteenth-century France. The famous philologist and orientalist Abraham H. Anquetil-­ Duperron was searching for a revelation such as the Upanishads (in the interpretation of Dārā Shukūh) all his life. His own approach towards the texts, that is delineated in the introductory dissertatio, is clearly shaped by patterns of thought that can be connected to important layers within the Western esoteric tradition. The Oupnek’hat ideally fit into the way he interpreted the religious lore of India as part of a hidden greater wisdom that might be found in various cultures within selected communities of truth-seekers who form a kind of human elite. With his approach, the French philologist clearly shaped the way “the West” began to perceive India, that includes the esoteric reception which grew exponentially in the following decades. India as the homeland of both wisdom and the “better” religion was one of the major aspects of a revolution that has led to totally new paradigms of thought.

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References Primary Sources Anquetil-Duperron, Abraham H. 1801. Oupnek’hat (id est, Secretum tegendum). Opus ipsa in India rarissimum, continens antiquam et arcanam, seu Theologicam et Philosophicam, doctrinam, è quattuor sacris Indorum Libris, Rak Beid, Djedjr Beid, Sam Beid, Athrban Beid, excerptam; Ad verbum, è Persico idiomate, Samskreticis Vocabulis intermixto, in Latinum conversum; Dissertationibus et Annotationibus, difficiliora explanantibus, illustratum: studio et opere Anquetil Duperron, Indicopleustae. Vol. 1. Strassbourg: Levrault. Dārā Shukūh. 1961 [1381 A.H.]. Upānishād. Tarjuma-yi Muḥammad Dārā Shukūh farzand-i Shāh Jahān az matn-i Sānskrı̄t. Bā muqaddama wa ḥawāshı̄ wa taʿlı̄qāt wa lughatnāma wa iʿlām. Bi saʿı̄ wa ihtimām-i Tārā Chand, Muḥammad Riḍā Jalālı̄-Nāʾı̄nı̄. Vol. 1. Tihrān: Tābān. Goclenius, Rodolphus. 1609. Tractatus de magnetica curatione vulneris citra ullam et superstitionem et dolorem et remedii applicationem. Marburg: Rudolph Hutwelcker. Mischel, Franz. 1882. Das Oupnek’hat. Die aus den Veden zusammengefaßte Lehre von dem Brahm. Aus der sanskrit-persischen Übersetzung des Fürsten Mohammed Daraschekoh ins Deutsche übertragen. Dresden: Heinrich. Rixner, Thaddae Anselm. 1808. Versuch einer neuen Darstellung der uralten indischen All-Eins-Lehre. Nürnberg: In der Steinischen Buchhandlung.

Secondary Sources Baier, Karl. 1998. Yoga auf dem Weg nach Westen. Beiträge zur Rezeptionsgeschichte. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann. ———. 2009. Meditation und Moderne. Zur Genese eines Kernbereichs moderner Spiritualität in der Wechselwirkung zwischen Westeuropa, Nordamerika und Asien. Vol. 1. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann. Bartley, Christopher. 2011. An Introduction to Indian Philosophy. London: Continuum. Benz, Ernst. 1977. Franz Anton Mesmer und die philosophischen Grundlagen des animalischen Magnetismus. Mainz: Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur. Bronkhorst, Johannes. 2007. Greater Magadha: Studies in the Culture of Early India. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Casa, Carlo della. 1983. Upaniṣad. Torino: UTET. Coudert, Allison. 1994. The Kabbala Denudata: Converting Jews or Seducing Christians. In Jewish Christians and Christian Jews, ed. Richard H. Popkin and Gordon M. Weiner, 73–96. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

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Cowell, Edward B., and Archibald E. Gough. 1976 [1882]. The Sarva-dars á na-­ saṃ graha Or, Review of the Different Systems of Hindu Philosophy by Madhava Acharya. New Delhi: Cosmo Publications (Indian reprint of the original edition, London: Trübner & Co). Crangle, Edward Fitzpatrick. 1994. The Origin and Development of Early Indian Contemplative Practices. Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz. d’Onofrio, Svevo. 2006. Un commento persiano alle Upaniṣad: Il Serr-e akbar di Dārā Šikōh. Dottorato di Ricerca in Studi Indologici e Tibetologici (Ciclo XIX). Torino: Università degli Studi di Torino. Dipartimento di Orientalistica. d’Onofrio, Svevo, and Fabrizio Speziale. 2011. Muḥammad Dārā Šı̄koh. La congiunzione dei due oceani (Majma῾ al-baḥrayn), a cura di Svevo d’Onofrio e Fabrizio Speziale. Milano: Adelphi Edizioni. Dan, Joseph. 2007. Die Kabbala. Eine kleine Einführung. Stuttgart: Reclam. Das, Nandini. 2006. A New Source for Robert Greene’s Planetomachia. Notes and Queries 53: 436–440. ́ kara’s Dubois, Joël André-Michel. 2013. The Hidden Lives of Brahman: Saṅ Vedānta through His Upāniṣad Commentaries, in Light of Contemporary Practice. Albany: State University of New York Press. Ernst, Carl W. 2003. Muslim Studies of Hinduism? A Reconsideration of Arabic and Persian Translations from Indian Languages. Iranian Studies 36 (2): 173–195. Faruqui, Munis D. 2012. Princes of the Mughal Empire, 1504–1719. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2014. Dara Shukoh, Vedanta, and Imperial Succession in Mughal India. In Religious Interactions in Mughal India, ed. Vasudha Dalmia and Munis D. Faruqui, 30–64. New Delhi and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Friedmann, Yohanan. 1975. Medieval Muslim Views of Indian Religions. Journal of the American Oriental Society 95: 214–222. Fritsch, Matthias J. 2004. Religiöse Toleranz im Zeitalter der Aufklärung. Naturrechtliche Begründung—konfessionelle Differenzen. Hamburg: Meiner. Gandhi, Supriya. 2014. The Prince and the Muvaḥḥid: Dārā Shikoh and Mughal Engagements with Vedānta. In Religious Interactions in Mughal India, ed. Vasudha Dalmia and Munis D.  Faruqui, 65–101. New Delhi and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Geoffroy, Eric, and Roger Gaetani. 2010. Introduction to Sufism: The Inner Path of Islam. Bloomington: World Wisdom. ́ Śaṅkarācār ya. Ghambirananda, Swami. 1983. Brahma-Sūtra-Bhāsỵ a of Srı̄ Translated by Swami Gambhirananda. Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama. Göbel-Groß, Erhard. 1962. Sirr-i akbar. Die persische Upaniṣadenübersetzung des Moġul-prinzen Dārā Šukoh. Eine Untersuchung der Übersetzungsmethode und Textauswahl nebst der Praśna-Upaniṣad Sanskrit-Persisch-Deutsch. Marburg: Philipps-Universitätzu Marburg.

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Halbfass, Wilhelm. 1988. India and Europe: An Essay in Philosophical Understanding. Albany: State University of New York Press (English t­ ranslation of Indien und Europa. Perspektiven ihrer geistigen Begegnung. Basel und Stuttgart: Schwabe, 1981). Hanegraaff, Wouter J. 1996. New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Isayeva, Natalia. 1993. Shankara and Indian Philosophy. Albany: State University of New York Press. Jackson, Peter. 1999. The Delhi Sultanate: A Political and Military History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kinra, Rajeev. 2013. Handling Diversity with Absolute Civility: The Global Historical Legacy of Mughal Sulh-i Kull. The Medieval History Journal 16 (2): 251–295. Knott, Kim. 1998. Hinduism: A Very Short Introduction. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Maddison, Angus. 2003. The World Economy: Historical Statistics. Paris: Development Centre of the OECD. Malik, Jamal. 2008. Islam in South Asia: A Short History. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Minkowski, Christopher. 2014. Learned Brahmins and the Mughal Court. In Religious Interactions in Mughal India, ed. Vasudha Dalmia and Munis D. Faruqui, 102–113. New Delhi and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Minorsky, V. 1948. Gardı̄zı̄ on India. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 12 (3/4): 625–640. Mottelay, Paul F. 1922. Bibliographical History of Electricity and Magnetism, Chronologically Arranged. London: C. Griffith & Co. Mylius, Klaus. 1988. Geschichte der altindischen Literatur. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Olivelle, Patrick. 1992. Saṃ nyāsa Upaniṣads: Hindu Scriptures on Asceticism and Renunciation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Renard, John. 2003. Khaḍir/Khiḍr. In Encyclopaedia of the Qurʼān, ed. Jane D. McAuliffe, vol. 3, 81–83. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Renard, Philipp. 1995. Historical Bibliography of Upanisads in Translation. Journal of Indian Philosophy 23: 223–246. Schimmel, Annemarie. 1994. Dārā Šokō h. Encyclopaedia Iranica 7 (1): 2–5. Schmitt, Tassilo. 2001. Die Bekehrung des Synesios von Kyrene. München and Leipzig: Saur. Schmidt-Biggemann, Wilhelm. 1998. Philosophia perennis. Historische Umrisse abendländischer Spiritualität in Antike, Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Sharma, Chandradhar. 2007. Advaita Tradition in Indian Philosophy: A Study of Advaita in Buddhism, Vedanta & Kashmiri Shaivism. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.

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Slaje, Walter. 2009. Upanischaden: Arkanum des Veda. Frankfurt am Main: Verlag der Weltreligionen. Stausberg, Michael. 1998. Faszination Zarathushtra. Zoroaster und die Europäische Religionsgeschichte der Frühen Neuzeit. Vol. 2. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Stuckrad, Kocku von. 2004. Was ist Esoterik? Kleine Geschichte des geheimen Wissens. München: C. H. Beck. Thorndike, Lynn. 1951. A History of Magic and Experimental Science. Vol. 5. 2nd ed. New York: Macmillan. Truschke, Audrey. 2016. Culture of Encounters: Sanskrit at the Mughal Court. New York: Columbia University Press. Walker, Daniel P. 1954. The prisca theologia in France. Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 17: 204–259. ———. 1972. The Ancient Theology. London: G. Duckworth. ———. 2000. Spiritual and Demonic Magic: From Ficino to Campanella. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press (Reprint of the original edition London: Warburg Institute, 1958). Wink, André. 2009. Akbar. Oxford: Oneworld. Winter, Franz. 2018. Searching for the Hidden ‘One’: Muslim and Early European Interpretations of the Upanishads. Numen 65: 28–61. Wisnowsky, Robert. 2002. Heavenly Book. In Encyclopaedia of the Qur’ān, ed. Jane D. McAuliffe, vol. 2, 412–413. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Zander, Helmut. 1999. Geschichte der Seelenwanderung in Europa. Alternative religiöse Traditionen von der Antike bis heute. Darmstadt: Primus.

CHAPTER 13

Occult’s First Foot Soldier in Bengal: Peary Chand Mittra and the Early Theosophical Movement Mriganka Mukhopadhyay

Your name, respected Sir, is well known among all intelligent Spiritualists in America. Personally I have heard much of you and your studies from Mrs. Emma H. Britten (a member of the Council of our Society) and Mr. J.M. Peebles. I have also read what has been contributed by your pen to the London Spiritualist. Your views upon the Spiritual States […] so coincide with those of our revered colleague and teacher Mme. H.P. Blavatsky, that the Council have instructed me to respectfully request the privilege of enrolling your name among our Corresponding Fellows […]. You live so far away from here, and it requires so much time to exchange letters, that I will venture to transmit your Diploma without waiting to hear from you; at the same time expressing the hope that it may please you to retain it —H.S. Olcott’s letter to Peary Chand Mittra, dated June 5, 1877 (TS Adyar Archives, Adyar, India. Accessed 3 January 2019)

M. Mukhopadhyay (*) University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 L. Pokorny, F. Winter (eds.), The Occult Nineteenth Century, Palgrave Studies in New Religions and Alternative Spiritualities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55318-0_13

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On November 9, 1877, Peary Chand Mittra1 (1814–1883) was listed in a letter as the 135th member of the Theosophical Society,2 which made him one of the earliest Indians—and the first Bengali—to join the incipient occult organisation. Mittra’s admission to the Theosophical Society is a landmark event in the entangled history of occultism. It marked the beginning of Bengal’s involvement with the Western world in the context of the modern history of esotericism. The letter written by Henry Steel Olcott (1832–1907) gives the impression that the American Theosophists were more interested in involving Mittra in the Theosophical Society than he was himself. The reason for this eagerness on the part of the Western Theosophists is not difficult to speculate. Mittra was quite well-known among the Bengali intelligentsia or the Bhadralok3 community for his social activism and literary works. Moreover, the Theosophical Society was keen on entering into the Indian socio-cultural and spiritual space for which they required a local support base. In this chapter, I will introduce the life and career of the first Bengali Theosophist Peary Chand Mittra. In doing so, I will also shed light on the early Theosophical movement’s connections to the Bengali social world. The purpose of this chapter is to make a case study of the circumstances under which the Theosophical Society entered into native Indian societies: a phenomenon which turned a Western occult movement into a global player.

1  Available sources give two different spellings of Peary Chand’s surname: “Mitra” and “Mittra.” However, since the latter is more common in spiritualist and Theosophical literature and also in the biographical essay written by his grandson (Mittra 1905), I will be using it in this chapter. 2  This information is available from the Theosophical Society’s Membership Register at https://tsmembers.org. Accessed 18 September 2019. 3  Bhadralok refers to the socio-intellectual elite community of Bengal which rose with the spread of Western education in the nineteenth century. Their influence in the culture and society of colonial Bengal inspired social change and progress.

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Early Life Peary Chand Mittra’s career manifests the social changes that nineteenth-­ century Bengal was witnessing.4 Mittra was a child of the Bengal Renaissance.5 Born in an affluent Hindu upper-caste family,6 he received education at the Hindu College of Calcutta. His teacher was Henry Louis Vivian Derozio (1809–1831)—the ideologue of the radical movement which went on to be known as the “Young Bengal Movement.” The Young Bengals refer to an Anglicised group of educated Bengali young men notoriously known for their radical social views, who were dreaded by the Hindu conservatives. Mittra was a prominent member of this group from the very beginning and started writing on the social issues and dogmas of Hindu society from his early youth. When the journals Jnannweshan and Bengal Spectator (1842–1843) began being published, he was at the forefront along with his friends Dakshinaranjan Mukherjee (1814–1878), Ram Gopal Ghose (1815–1868), and Rasik Krishna Mallick (1810–1858). Accordingly, he gained the reputation of a notable writer at a very young age. Much later, his writings would earn him recognition in the spiritualist and occult circles of the Western world and make him an early mediator for the Theosophists in Bengal. Mittra’s writing skills likewise earned him a reputation among the Englishmen of Calcutta. As a result, the connections he developed with the English-speaking population of the city helped him find a job as a deputy librarian when the Calcutta Public Library was established in 1836 (Kesavan 1961: 4).7 In fact, most of Mittra’s celebrated achievements took 4  In general, Mittra’s career has been well-discussed in several accounts published in Bengali and English. One of the detailed biographical accounts came from Mittra’s grandson which was published posthumously in 1905  in the journal Calcutta Review. I will briefly mention some major aspects of Mittra’s life in this section but would not go into details. The purpose of this chapter is not to repeat his life accounts but, rather, to focus on Mittra’s activities in spiritualist and Theosophical circles—something which paved the way for a significant occult movement in colonial Bengal. 5  Bengal Renaissance refers to a period in the history of modern Bengal during which a set of social reforms and intellectual developments took place which marked the cultural progress of Bengali society. It can be seen as the movement that modernised and rationalised indigenous Bengali society and ushered in Enlightenment values. 6  The Mittra family of North Calcutta had connections to the elites of Bengali society. Peary Chand’s father was a friend of Ram Mohan Roy (1772–1833). 7  The Calcutta Public Library was converted into the Imperial Library in 1903, later (1953) to be renamed the National Library (Kesavan 1961).

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place during his tenure at the Public Library, an institution which he nurtured well for years before finally leaving8 as its secretary and honorary curator in 1867. Mittra was an active participant of Bengal’s socio-cultural life. During his association with the Public Library, and even after his retirement, he became member of more than 40 groups and organisations. Additionally, his eloquent prose pieces in Bengali and English made him quite famous. However, his greatest contribution to Bengali literature was Alaler Gharer Dulal (The Spoilt Child) which was first published in 1857. This novel, written under the nom de plume Tek Chand Thakur, gave a new dimension to Bengali prose literature. The text reflected how the “Victorian-­ Brahmo reformist-nationalist serious self-righteousness in the latter half of the nineteenth century was to put this world into crisis” (Banerjee 2009: 78). He continued to publish novels and essays which had significant social implications with themes such as female education, family life in Bengal, agrarian and economic issues, and oppression of peasantry by the indigo planters, among others. He often used a satirical tone in his novels. I will return to some of his writings and his style when discussing his spiritualist and occult ideas.

Mittra’s Spiritualist Turn A major turn in Mittra’s life came after the death of his wife in 1860. This is the decisive moment our actual story begins. Following his wife’s passing, Mittra started studying about psychology, spiritualism, and animal magnetism. Although he had been studying spiritualism previously, he did so with just a passing interest (Mittra 1905: 253; Ghosh 1934: 115). However, from the 1860s, Mittra was more seriously reading the works of the Anglo-American spiritualists and mesmerists. As he was employed at one of the biggest libraries of the country, getting access to the books and the journals from the English-speaking world was not difficult for him. The Public Library of Calcutta was a major repository of Western intellectual works in the city. Simple love and the desire to communicate with his deceased wife made him curious about mediumistic practices. In spiritualism, he found a means 8  There is a confusion regarding leaving the Public Library. Although most of the sources suggest that he retired, Mittra’s grandson wrote that he actually resigned (Mittra 1905: 239–240).

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through which he could achieve his end. Mittra was a regular attendee of the séances held in the elite circles of the city and was considered as one of the notable figures among them. Therefore, Mittra had a group of companions who were interested in spiritualism. He was connected to three different spiritualist organisations in London and Calcutta, namely, the British National Association of Spiritualists and the Central Association of Spiritualists of London and the United Association of Spiritualists in Calcutta. I will give a detailed account of this while discussing the spiritualist subculture of Calcutta. Before, it is necessary to examine the social climate of esotericism in which spiritualism thrived in the city.

The Esoteric Subculture Just like in the general history of esotericism, as in every historical movement, the rise of spiritualism in Bengal can also be linked to the longer trajectory of an alternative spiritual subculture of colonial Calcutta. This subculture was a product of a transcultural intellectual network, which not only connected the Westerners and the Indians but also resulted in an entwinement of Eastern and Western ideas. Western esotericism’s first footprint in Calcutta is traced in the last quarter of the eighteenth century with the emergence of Freemasonry. The first Masonic lodge of India was established in the city in 1728—only eleven years after the origin of the British Masonic movement in London. Yet, the Masonic movement in India was exclusively restricted to the British civil and military officials for several decades and hardly allowed the entry of Indian members. The first Bengali Mason was Prosonno Coomar Dutt who gained admission to the movement in 1872 after nine years of petitioning. Although there was overlapping membership of the Theosophical Society and the Indian Freemasonry since the last quarter of the nineteenth century,9 it might be too far-fetched to connect the pre-Theosophical trajectory of the mid-nineteenth century with the late-eighteenth century Masonic movement. Instead, I would trace the origin of the Bengal Theosophical movement in those countercultural movements whose connection to occultism was more direct pertaining to ideas and practices.

9  For example, the famous Bengali Theosophist Mohini Mohun Chatterji (1858–1936) was also a Freemason.

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In this regard, the most prominent tradition is mesmerism. In mid-­ nineteenth-­ century Bengal, mesmerism found prominence due to the British medical doctor James Esdaile (1808–1859). Esdaile deserves to be mentioned here as he can be considered a precursor of the early Theosophical movement in Bengal. In 1883, on the occasion of the first anniversary of the Bengal Theosophical Society, Olcott read out a report on Esdaile’s mesmeric practices expressing his personal sympathy to mesmerism (Olcott 1883: 7). In fact, Olcott himself was a mesmerist and he applied mesmeric techniques among the local population while touring across Bengal. Olcott’s healing practices apparently became very popular and convinced several Bengalis to join the Theosophical Society (Olcott 1900: 406–425). However, Olcott’s healing tours were preceded by James Esdaile’s more serious application of animal magnetism in medical treatment during the 1840s. Esdaile was a government doctor and considered one of the leading surgeons in the medical colleges and hospitals in Bengal. He deemed Franz Anton Mesmer’s (1734–1815) healing techniques to be scientific. On April 4, 1845, he successfully applied mesmerism on one of his patients for the first time. Following this, in 1846, he managed to acquire permission from the Governor-General of India to set up a mesmeric hospital in Calcutta, on an experimental basis, which became popular as the “jadoo hospital” (i.e., hospital of magic) among the lower class population (Prakash 1999: 31–32). Next year, Esdaile also published his treatise Mesmerism in India and its Practical Application in Surgery and Medicine (1847) followed by Introduction to Mesmerism into the Public Hospitals of India (1856). Esdaile made much effort to establish mesmerism as a medical science in colonial India. His efforts found acceptance among the Bengali elites who were looking for alternative scientific currents from the West that could justify their spiritual ideals. Several Bengali intellectuals actively supported and provided funding for his mesmeric hospital (Ernst 2004: 64). Esdaile was quite connected to the Bengali gentry through organisations such as the Agricultural and Horticultural Society of India of which he was the secretary of the Hooghly district’s branch. It is important to note that Mittra was one of the leading figures of this organisation and elected as its vice-president several times. Although I have not been able to trace any correspondences between Esdaile and Mittra, it might not be unthinkable to speculate that they could have perhaps met in this context. Connections such as these give us an indication of how the networks of alternative

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science and spirituality were developing in mid-nineteenth century Bengal. The Theosophical Society would later tap into such networks and involve both the European and Indian members of these interesting groups.

Transnational Spiritualist Network If mesmerism’s popularity is evidence for a growing curiosity towards alternative sciences and medicine, spiritualism reflects the Bhadralok’s curiosity vis-à-vis alternative spirituality which they considered scientific and rational. Spiritualism arrived in Bengal a few years after mesmerism. The interest in spiritualism, as noted earlier, began in the 1860s. Two other contemporaries of Mittra among the Bengali intellectuals, Digambar Mitra (1817–1879) and Keshab Chandra Sen (1838–1884), also had much interest in spiritualism (Ghosh 1934: 114–115). An article published in the July 1935 issue of the spiritualist journal Light, written by the wife of British parapsychologist James Hewat McKenzie (1869–1929), informs us that in 1861 Mittra was in contact with some spiritualists from England and the United States who sent him the then available literature on spiritualism. Mittra’s Western contacts, as McKenzie mentions, included American spiritualist lawyer John Worth Edmonds (1799–1874), British spiritualists James Burns (1835–1894) and J.  J. Morse (1848–1919) and, most significantly, Emma Hardinge Britten (1823–1899) (McKenzie 1935: 465). Mittra and Sen were also in touch with a certain Mr. Nelson who was keen on promoting spiritualism in Calcutta (Barrett 1878: 271–275). However, it was the Ghosh family of the Amrita Bazar village in Jessore district who left an early mark in the history of spiritualism in India.10 It might not be too far-fetched to compare the Ghosh family with the Fox household of Rochester, New York, where spiritualism’s history started. Sisir Kumar Ghosh (1840–1911), then a young member of the Ghosh family and the later editor of the periodical Amrita Bazar Patrika, was a pioneer in introducing spiritualist ideas in the family. Sisir Kumar himself was introduced to spiritualism by Mittra who lent him books on the subject from the Public Library (Ghosh 1934: 4). In the cultural history of Bengal, Ghosh is well-known for his interest in Bengal Vaishnavism. He was quite famous as a healing medium and would later join the Theosophical 10  This family’s members founded the famous Amrita Bazar Patrika, naming it after their ancestral village.

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Society. It comes as no surprise that Sisir Kumar and his brother Moti Lal Ghosh (1847–1922) would later publish the Hindu Spiritual Magazine— which was one of the most significant and popular occult and spiritualist periodicals ever published on the Indian subcontinent. Three women of the Ghosh family had clairvoyant power. Among them, the eldest one, known as Sthira Soudaminee (1842–1925) was a prominent medium and clairvoyant in the family (Ghosh 1934: 44–50). The detailed account of the Ghosh family and the spiritualist culture of the late nineteenth and the early twentieth-century Bengal was published in 1934  in a work entitled Life Beyond Death. This book is a valuable resource for studying spiritualism’s history in Bengal. It not only mentions several cases of séances from the Ghosh family but also narrates anecdotes on spirit practices both in India and Europe, theories and philosophical perspectives on rebirth, and attempts to connect Hinduism’s relation to spiritualism thus coining the term “Hindu Spiritualism” (Ghosh 1934: vii). It is not possible to discuss this more than 400-pages book in detail here, but I will highlight the section where it discusses Mittra and the psychic and spiritualist scenario in Calcutta. Mittra’s practical involvement in spiritualism began in 1863 when the French homoeopath Thiennette de Bérigny (1823–1868) came to Calcutta and organised séances at his house. Not much is known about de Bérigny except that he studied homoeopathy in the United States and lived in Victoria, Australia, from 1852 to 1863 where he was involved in mediumistic practices. He went to India and settled in Calcutta around 1863 or 1864 and became popular as a homoeopath practitioner and spiritualist among the Bengali middle class. He was known to the pioneering Bengali homoeopath Mahendralal Sircar (1833–1904) and established the now oldest homoeopathic pharmacy in Calcutta known as Berigny & Co. In early 1868, de Bérigny left Calcutta for Bordeaux, France. He died during the sea voyage on June 21, 1868 (Armstrong 2009). We get to know that in these early séance circles, held in de Bérigny’s house, Mittra manifested his mediumistic powers for the first time (Ghosh 1934: 117). However, these circles were later transferred to J. G. Meugens’ office at north Calcutta11 after de Bérigny left the city in 1868. It was in Meugens’ office where the United Association of Spiritualists—the first spiritualist group of India—was established on May 30, 1880. J. G. Meugens, the manager at a firm called Moran and Company, was among the leading Europeans of Calcutta who had a deep interest in  J. G. Meugens’ office address was 3 Church Lane, Calcutta.

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spiritualism. Details about Meugens—including his life dates, nationality, and early life—are not known. However, we know that he was a merchant by profession and his office became a nucleus of the Calcutta-based Bengali spiritualists. He subsequently became the President of the United Association of Spiritualists, with Narendra Nath Sen (1843–1911) as the secretary of the organisation. Sen, it should be noted, was also the founding secretary and later—after Mittra’s death—the president of the Bengal Theosophical Society. We find names of several other individuals who were members of the United Association of Spiritualists. Among them, the noteworthy figures were Purna Chandra Mukherjee, a Freemason who came from a wealthy family of Hooghly (Mitra 1968: 67–73) and Raj Krishna Mitra, a homoeopath whose Bengali book Shoka Bejoy (Overpowering Grief) gives some insight into the history of spiritualism in Bengal (Ghosh 1934: 117). Rabindranath Tagore’s (1861–1941) eldest brother Dwijendranath Tagore (1840–1926) was also a member of the Association, who, in April 1882, was also to join the Bengal Theosophical Society along with several important Bengali spiritualists, including Narendra Nath Sen. The spiritualists of Calcutta held continuous and successful meetings for around two decades, from the 1860s to the 1880s, until the Theosophical movement arrived in Bengal. We are informed about some Bengali mediums who were regularly attending these sessions—among them, Nitto Niranjan Ghose and Satya Charan Chatterjee (ibid.: 119–131). As Calcutta was becoming a buzzing centre of spiritualism, the city began attracting the attention of Western spiritualists as well. For example, at the height of the Spiritualist activities in the city, American spiritualist J.  M. Peebles (1822–1922) paid a visit. Although Peebles travelled to India for the first time in the 1860s, his first visit to Calcutta took place in 1873 when he participated in séances with Mittra. Peebles appreciated Mittra’s work in his writings and speeches (Ghosh 1934: 146–147). He was also in contact with Keshab Chandra Sen (1838–1884) with whom he met in London and Calcutta in 1870 and 1873, respectively. As mentioned earlier, Sen had an interest in spiritualism and Peebles’s biographer writes that the London spiritualists persuaded him that spiritualism and Brahmo Samaj share a similar form of monotheism and, hence, they should be allies (Barrett 1878: 271–275). Peebles’s second and final visit to Calcutta took place in 1907 when he met Sisir Kumar Ghosh and presided over the foundation meeting of the Calcutta Psychical Society. This meeting was held at the Tagore castle which was the house of eminent philanthropist and public figure Maharaja Sir Jotindra Mohun Tagore

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(1831–1908)—the same building where the Bengal Theosophical Society was founded. The meeting was also attended by the then president of the Bengal Theosophical Society, Narendra Nath Sen (Ghosh 1934: 151–154). However, although Mittra had already passed away, Peebles’s and the spiritualists’ connection to the local Theosophists cannot be overlooked. This gives an indication about how the two movements still remained connected to one another even in the early twentieth-century Bengal. Peebles’s first visit to the city was followed by the arrival of the president of the British National Association of Spiritualists Alexander Calder, who came to Calcutta in June 1881 (ibid.: 122). However, a significant development occurred when the prominent British medium William Eglinton (1857–1933) was invited to the city. Eglinton came to Calcutta in November 1881 and stayed in the city until the end of April 1882. He was hosted by Colonel William Gordon (1831–1909) and his wife in Howrah—a neighbouring town to the north of Calcutta. It was the same Gordon couple who hosted Olcott during his first visit to Calcutta and also set up a Theosophical lodge in their house in Howrah in 1882 (Mukhopadhyay 2016: 109). Eglinton’s visit was the immediate precursor to the arrival of the Theosophical movement in Bengal. This was the time when spiritualism was at the height of its popularity in Calcutta and this certainly created an ambience for the Theosophical Society’s launch. Eglinton’s visit and most of his séance sessions are well-documented in the periodical Psychic Notes, which was published in Calcutta for a very short period of time and was mainly dedicated to the activities of Eglinton. Mittra was a regular participant in the séances which has been recorded in the Psychic Notes. He even wrote about his experiences in the columns of the journal. A total of ten issues were published between November 1881 and March 1882. The journal had a pan-Indian subscription with readers from both Indian and European communities and was subtitled A Record of Spiritual and Occult Research, while also acting as a defender of the Theosophical Society. For example, in one of the issues, the journal republished a letter written to the editor of The Spiritualist in which the correspondent—an English woman based in Bengal—defended Theosophical concepts and argued for co-operation between the Theosophists and the spiritualists (Gordon 1882: 15–16). Hence, in India, the relationship between spiritualists and Theosophists was cordial and this inspired the Indian Theosophists to continue the mediumistic practices. However, the network among the spiritualists and the

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Theosophists was already yielding a positive outcome for the founders of the Theosophical Society. It was from spiritualists such as E. H. Britten and others that Blavatsky and Olcott came to know about Mittra’s works and got in touch with him.

Correspondences with the Founders of the Theosophical Society Mittra’s association with Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831–1891) and Colonel Olcott began through exchange of letters. In the opening of this chapter, I have mentioned excerpts from the first letter which Olcott sent to Mittra on June 5, 1877. However, this was only the first among a series of letters that would follow. Most of these letters are now preserved in the Theosophical Society’s archives in Adyar and are crucial to understanding the development of the Theosophical movement not only in Bengal but also in India. According to these records, at least eleven letters were exchanged between Mittra and Blavatsky and Olcott between 1877 and 1881. Out of these, nine came from Blavatsky and Olcott thus reflecting their eagerness to collaborate with Mittra. However, the twelfth and final letter was written by Mittra on May 21, 1883, on his death bed. These letters give us an insight into how the founders of the Theosophical movement were gathering supporters in non-Western societies. This was important for them in order to spread the movement beyond Europe and America and to reach out to the Asian territories which they considered the lands of ancient wisdom. Blavatsky’s eagerness is justified by her comment on Mittra when a Calcutta-based correspondent sought her opinion about his spiritualist activities and questioned the reason behind electing a spiritualist as the president of the Bengal branch. Blavatsky’s response to that is worth noting: “He is certainly the most spiritual Theosophist and most theosophic [sic] Spiritualist we have ever met” (Blavatsky 1882: 272). This comment shows that she was sincerely inclined to entrust the leadership of the movement in Bengal to Mittra. Olcott, with whom Mittra exchanged most of the letters, was also full of praise of the latter and never fell short of appreciating his works—both spiritualist and otherwise. Blavatsky and Olcott were well aware of the literary works of Mittra. The file on Mittra in the Adyar archives lists six writings by him,12 some of which were sent to the two founders of the  “Peary Chand Mittra” file, TS Adyar Archives, Adyar, India. Accessed 3 January 2019.

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Theosophical Society by Mittra himself. Indeed, Olcott was already keen on setting up a branch of the Theosophical Society in Calcutta as early as 1877—around the same time when Mittra was given the membership to the Society. Hence, in his letter, dated September 14, 1877, Olcott inquired about the possibilities. He wrote to Mittra: “[g]ive me the names of men whom you can enlist with you in organizing a branch of our Society, and I will send them diplomas.”13 In the same letter, Olcott informed that Charles Carleton Massey (1838–1905) and William Stainton Moses (1839–1892)—both of whom were prominent among the British spiritualists and psychic researchers—were preparing to set up the Theosophical Society’s branch in London. Olcott also mentioned the cremation ceremony of Joseph Henry Louis Charles de Palm—better known as Baron de Palm (1809–1876).14 What is more significant, Olcott informed Mittra that he was planning to invite a “truly pious” Hindu scholar to America who could deliver lectures every Sunday. The required Hindu scholar should be “one whose life would bear the closest scrutiny, and who should be competent to debate theological questions with our best divines.”15 Olcott’s idea was to generate publicity for both Hinduism and Theosophy in the West. Therefore, this letter shows us that the purpose behind enlisting Mittra as a member of the Society had deeper intentions, that is, to spread the movement in India and, more particularly, in the capital of British India, namely Calcutta. The letter also reflects that Blavatsky and Olcott were planning to groom up an Indian preacher who could make an iconic appearance in the Western world. We can assume that this would later result in Mohini Mohun Chatterji’s (1858–1936)16 arrival in Europe as an Indian chela17 in the mid-1880s. 13  H. S. Olcott’s letter to P. C. Mittra, 14 September 1877, TS Adyar Archives. Accessed 3 January 2019. 14  This incident was the first cremation ceremony organised in the United States. Baron de Palm requested Olcott to perform his last rites in accordance with Eastern rituals. After much resistance from the mainstream American society, Olcott arranged for the cremation and officiated it. 15  H. S. Olcott’s letter to P. C. Mittra, 14 September 1877, TS Adyar Archives. Accessed 3 January 2019. 16  Mohini Mohun Chatterji was a prominent Theosophist from Bengal during the mid1880s. He made strong impact in Europe and America in regard to Indian spirituality and Advaita Vedānta philosophy. He was also the first Theosophist to translate the Bhagavadgītā into English. 17  Chela is a Sanskrit word meaning “disciple” which was adapted into the Theosophical Society’s discourse. Blavatsky used this term to refer to the chosen ones and considered them as spiritually and mystically superior.

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Mittra responded to the above letter on November 9, 1877. This was his first letter to Blavatsky and Olcott and, therefore, this date is listed as his date of admittance to the Theosophical Society on its membership register. Here Mittra informed Olcott about his publications on spiritualism, some of which he urged Olcott to read. However, at this stage, Mittra was not very optimistic regarding Olcott’s proposal of establishing a Theosophical branch in Calcutta: “I think there is not much hope of our being able to organize a Branch here—most of the educated natives are absorbed in mundane subjects.”18 Mittra also refrained from recommending the name of any Hindu scholar for preaching in the United States. However, he mentioned that he would see if this could be further explored and kept the issue open. This exchange of letters shows that an effort had started to develop the Theosophical movement in India within two years of the establishment of the organisation. Mittra was an important conduit for Olcott through whom occultism could reach India. Mittra was clearly the best choice for the founders of the Theosophical Society as he was well-acquainted with the spiritualist circles of both the Western world and India. In this way, Mittra became a pioneer in Bengal for the cause of the nascent occult organisation. Finally, the efforts of establishing a branch in Calcutta, which started in 1877, came to a climax on April 6, 1882, when the Bengal Theosophical Society was founded. Needless to say, Mittra was unanimously elected as the first president of the newly formed branch.

Mittra’s Contribution to Spiritualist and Occult Literature As noted earlier, Mittra was a remarkable writer. His popularity among the spiritualists of the English-speaking world started to grow with the publication of his essays in two of the spiritualist periodicals, namely, Banner of Light19 and The Spiritualist.20 These essays appeared mostly in the late 1870s when he also became a corresponding member of the British National Association of Spiritualists. His works on spiritualism had a wide  ‘Peary Chand Mittra’ file, TS Adyar Archives, Adyar, India. Accessed 3 January 2019.  A weekly journal on spiritualism published in Boston between 1857 and 1907. 20  The oldest journal on spiritualism published in the United Kingdom. It was based in London. The first issue appeared in 1869 and continued until 1882. 18 19

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readership not only in the West but also in India. As Mittra himself wrote, “[t]he rapid sale of my ‘Spiritual Stray Leaves’ is a convincing proof of the growing appreciation of spiritualism in India” (Mittra 1880a: 14). Mittra’s ideas about spiritualism were somewhat different from his Western colleagues. He found an affinity between yoga and spiritualism and considered the latter as a yogic method of connecting with the afterlife. He even mentioned that it was easier for him to connect with the afterlife through spiritualist methods as he practised yoga (Mittra 1879a: 22). He explained that yoga helps to attain samādhi—a term which he translates as “soul state.” As he maintained, one can develop psychic powers reaching the soul state (Mittra 1880a: 3–4). He further wrote that the spirit’s attempt of assuming a subtle body is a form of yogic technique (ibid.: 5–6). He saw yoga everywhere in spiritualism. As a result, in several of his writings on spiritualism, he highlighted the importance of yoga. This is true for works such as his English publications Yoga and Spiritualism and Stray Thoughts on Spiritualism (1880a), or his Bengali text Adhyatmika (1880b; The Spiritual Woman). Besides, he also made a comparative study on occultism and spiritualism in an article with the same title (Mittra 1879a: 49–54). According to him, “Occultism and Spiritualism are both evolved by the will-force. These two sciences engaged the attention of my countrymen, of which there are proofs in the Darsanas. Occultism is partial Spiritualism. The will-force is in the subtle body, or lingasarira or sucshmasarira, which lives after the natural body dies” (ibid.: 50). He then goes on to discuss the Sāṃ khya and Vedānta concepts of the soul’s development. He concluded that true Theosophy means to be in the soul state (ibid.: 53). In this article, Mittra’s great focus on the soul and the development of spiritual power indicates that his understanding of occultism and Theosophy was mainly based on his practice of spiritualism and yoga. In general, Mittra saw a logical continuation of yoga and spiritualism in Theosophy: “Theosophy is [sic] […] the end [sic]—yoga and spiritualism are the means” (Mittra 1880a: 22). Most remarkably, one of Mittra’s essays was published in the very first issue of The Theosophist in October 1879, which proves his importance in the early Theosophical circles. Entitled “The Inner God,” the essay firmly established his name in the corpus of the Theosophical literature. He wrote that the development of the soul brings people closer to God and thus, “[i]f we realize what soul is, we realize what Theosophy is” (Mittra 1879a: 18). He also stated that the culmination end of spiritualism would be Theosophy and, hence, Theosophists and spiritualists must unite and

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think together. This would help in the development and progression of the soul and bring one closer to God (ibid.: 18). Mittra’s interest in spiritualism and occultism can be demonstrated by the works he produced throughout his career. I have been able to locate around twenty of his articles published in spiritualist and Theosophical periodicals of England and America. Out of these, thirteen were compiled in a volume entitled The Spiritual Stray Leaves (1879b). Additionally, he wrote four books in English and Bengali on this topic. Mittra’s writings certainly enriched the discourse on transcultural history of spiritualism and occultism during the nineteenth century.

Conclusion Several inferences can be derived out of the above discussion. Firstly, Mittra’s involvement with the Theosophical Society initiated the process of the organisation’s entry into the cultural and intellectual space of Bengal. In the broader trajectory of global occultism’s history, this was part of the early stage of De-spatialisation of the Theosophical Society.21 At this stage, the young movement was venturing in Bengal at the organisational level. This gradually helped them create an impact on the cultural and intellectual space of the region. Secondly, and in connection to the above point, one can see how the social history of the Theosophical Society started to develop in the context of Bengal Renaissance. The Theosophical Society’s founders were eager to enlist Indian recruits who were prominent members of the local societies. The social connections that Blavatsky and Olcott were willing to develop help us understand their intention to diversify the movement geographically. In a way, this was a social as well as a cultural expansion of the incipient movement. Mittra’s nomination as the founder-president of the 21  I understand De-spatialisation as a process where an idea or a cultural movement is taken out of its original geographical and social space and planted into another one thus resulting to a cross-cultural exchange. It is one of the theoretical frameworks which connect South Asian and the Western cultural and intellectual worlds of alternative spirituality and esotericism. De-spatialisation can occur on various levels, both physical and intellectual. In this context, the Theosophical Society—whose roots were in the United States—was trying to set up its base in India thus uprooting itself from its original base. This can be seen as a physical form of De-spatialisation. For more on this see my paper “Grammars of Occultism: Understanding Modern South Asia in the Light of Esotericism” (Mukhopadhyay forthcoming).

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Calcutta branch of the Theosophical Society gave good publicity to the movement in Bengal and he was celebrated by the later generations of Bengali Theosophists. In fact, for several years after Mittra’s death, his memorial meetings were held at the Bengal Theosophical Society’s premises in presence of significant members of the Bengali intelligentsia. The speakers and the attendees of these meetings included many reputed intellectuals who were not members of the Theosophical Society (Anon 1915: 6, 1916: 7). Needless to say, the invitation of the non-Theosophists and arrangement of the ceremony at the Bengal Theosophical Society’s building gave much publicity to the organisation. Thirdly, this chapter also shows that English-educated Bengali elites were keen on joining a movement which had a Western origin. This was an era when it was fashionable for the Bengali intelligentsia to attain membership in several organisations. Developing connections with white Westerners was a marker of social prestige: an issue which reflects the racial and cultural aspirations of the colonised Bengali Bhadralok. Mittra was a representative of that same mould of the colonial elite, and his affiliations to several organisations—which included both Indian and European members—gives evidence to this fact, which further indicates how the urban middle-class Bengalis were aspiring to Westernise themselves. Colonial Bengal adopted this Westernisation as a model for modernisation of the indigenous society. As a result, various processes of transcultural encounters took off in the nineteenth century. Hence, the Theosophical movement in Bengal needs to be investigated within this broader cultural context of nineteenth-century Bengal. Fourthly, Mittra’s case also indicates another trend in the history of global occultism: how spiritualism formed the immediate precursor to Theosophy. This was also the case in Britain and the United States where several members of the early Theosophical Society had a background in spiritualism. But what remains special in the case of Bengal is that spiritualist practices continued several years after the establishment of the Theosophical movement in the region. Most of the leading figures from the first generation of Bengali Theosophists had an active involvement with spiritualism. As mentioned above, both Mittra and Narendra Nath Sen—the first president and the first secretary of the Calcutta branch, respectively—were members of the Calcutta-based group United Association of Spiritualists. But it was not only just the two of them; even some early members such as Mohini Mohun Chatterji and Swarnakumari Devi (1855–1932)—the first Indian female Theosophist—took part in

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mediumistic practices. There are several anecdotes and unconfirmed reports which suggest that séances were held at the Bengal Theosophical Society.22 Even several decades later, the popular notion in Calcutta was that the Bengal Theosophical Society was a centre of séances and mediumistic practices. This proves that the Theosophical movement preserved a spiritualist subculture in urban Bengal, and this certainly started with Mittra. In this respect, Bengal illustrates a pattern which was the opposite to that of the Western world. Whereas in the Western world spiritualism’s popularity declined after the rise of Theosophy, in Bengal the former was encouraged to grow by the latter movement. To the best of my knowledge, the development of spiritualism in colonial cities such as Bombay or Madras is not sufficiently researched, but one can speculate that the situation could have been quite similar to that of Bengal. Bengalis’ curiosity for the spirit world also found expression in modern Bengali fiction and prose literature in general. There is a substantial number of Bengali language writings which can add evidence to this, a theme which is broad enough to be discussed in a separate paper. However, if we look closely, the practice of associating Bengali prose literature with spiritualism was started by Mittra in the 1870s. His works such as Abhedi (1878) and Adhyatmika (1880b) are some of the examples of Bengali prose literature where spiritualism is a dominant subject. He can thus be considered a pioneer in this field as well. Therefore, Mittra’s involvement in spiritualism and Theosophy can be seen as the first attempt towards transcultural encounters in the entangled history of occultism. This case kick-starts the process of the development of occult South Asian movements which gradually were to become more popular over the next few decades.

References Primary Sources Anon. 1915. Late Peary Chand Mittra. 32nd Anniversary Meeting. The Amrita Bazar Patrika, November 29. ———. 1916. Peary Chand Mittra Anniversary. The Amrita Bazar Patrika, November 27.

22  Interview with Mr. Ratan Chandra Das, secretary of the Bengal Theosophical Society, conducted by the author on January 5, 2019.

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Barrett, J.O. 1878. Spiritual Pilgrim: A Biography of James A.  Peebles. 4th ed. Boston: Colby & Rich Publishers. Blavatsky, Helena Petrovna. 1882. Theosophy and Spiritualism. The Theosophist III (11): 272. Esdaile, James. 1847. Mesmerism in India and Its Practical Application in Surgery and Medicine. Hartford: Silas Andrus and Son. ———. 1856. Introduction to Mesmerism into the Public Hospitals of India. London: W. Kent and Co. Ghosh, Mrinal Kanti. 1934. Life Beyond Death. 3rd ed. New Delhi: Cosmo Publication. Gordon, Alice. 1882. The Himalayan Brothers. Psychic Notes 1 (2): 15–16. Mckenzie, Hewat. 1935. Early Days of Spiritualism in India. Light 55 (2846): 465–466. Mittra, Peary Chand. 1879a. The Inner God. The Theosophist I (1): 18. ———. 1879b. The Spiritual Stray Leaves. Calcutta: I. C. Bose & Co. ———. 1880a. Stray Thoughts on Spiritualism. Calcutta: I. C. Bose & Co. ———. 1880b. Adhyatmika [The Spiritual Woman]. Calcutta: I. C. Bose & Co. Mittra, Sukhendra Lal. 1905. Peary Chand Mittra. Calcutta Review 120 (240): 237–260. Olcott, Henry Steel. 1883. Dr. Esdaile and Mesmerism in Calcutta Thirty Six Years ago. The Theosophist IV (46): 7. ———. 1900. Old Diary Leaves. Second series. London: The Theosophical Publishing Society.

Secondary Sources Armstrong, Barbara. 2009. Bérigny. https://historyofhomeopathy.com.au/people/item/41-berigny.html. Accessed 12 June, 2019. Banerjee, Milinda. 2009. The Trial of Derozio, or the Scandal of Reason. Social Scientist 37 (7/8): 60–88. Ernst, Waltraud. 2004. Colonial Psychiatry, Magic and Religion: The Case of Mesmerism in British India. History of Psychiatry 15 (1): 57–71. Kesavan, B.S. 1961. India’s National Library. Kolkata: National Library. Mitra, S.K.1968. Hoogly Jelar Itihash O Bangasamaj [The History of Hooghly District and the Bengali Society]. Calcutta: Mitrani Prakashan. Mukhopadhyay, Mriganka. 2016. A Short History of the Theosophical Movement in Bengal. In Paralok Tattwa, ed. Makhanlal Roychowdhury, 103–132. Kolkata: Bengal Theosophical Society. ———. Forthcoming. Grammars of Occultism: Understanding Modern South Asia in the Light of Esotericism. In Occult South Asia: From the 19th to the 21st Century, ed. Karl Baier and Mriganka Mukhopadhyay. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Prakash, Gyan. 1999. Another Reason: Science and Imagination in Modern India. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

CHAPTER 14

Re-Imagining an Ancient Greek Philosopher: The Pythagorean Musings of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (Osho) Almut-Barbara Renger

Introduction This chapter presents an excerpt of my work on the reception history of Graeco-Roman antiquity in the context of its dynamic intertwining with the recent history of religion. In particular, I will highlight references to Pythagoras made by Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (1931–1990), the self-­ proclaimed guru and subject of controversial debates, eventually named Osho.1 Claiming that he had attained “enlightenment” at the age of

Translated from the German by Dominic S. Zoehrer. 1  It was only from the beginning of 1989 until his death that ‘Rajneesh’ Chandra Mohan Jain called himself “Osho.” Between the mid-1960s and the early 1970s, he went by the name Acharya Rajneesh, and thereafter Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh until the end of 1988.

A.-B. Renger (*) Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 L. Pokorny, F. Winter (eds.), The Occult Nineteenth Century, Palgrave Studies in New Religions and Alternative Spiritualities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55318-0_14

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twenty-one, Osho garnered a large following against the backdrop of modern and late-modern interactions between Asia, Europe, and North America. After having founded the psycho-religious movement Neo-­ Sannyas International in 1970, he enjoyed such an increase in popularity that in 1974 he relocated his activities to the Shree Rajneesh Ashram (today called Osho International Meditation Resort) in Poona (known today as Pune) and temporarily resettled in Oregon, where he established the “Bhagwan-city” Rajneeshpuram on a former ranch in 1981.2 In the course of these activities, he postulated the necessity of a “new”— “Pythagorean”—man, and began to present himself as a new Pythagoras. The background of this claim will be the focus of this chapter, which aims to demonstrate how Pythagoras, stylised in the modern era as a representative of the philosophia perennis, constituted a suitable reference figure for Osho. His appropriation of the famous Greek philosopher, which may initially come as a surprise, can be explained in terms of how his career as a guru came about from a university career in the field of philosophy. After completing his studies in philosophy in 1957, he initially held a position as a lecturer at the Raipur Sanskrit College and then as a professor at the University of Jabalpur until—after years of travels throughout India to teach and guide meditation camps—he left academia in 1966 in order to become a speaker and spiritual teacher. Having taught mostly in Hindi, Osho started to deliver his lectures more and more in English after he settled in Bombay (today’s Mumbai) in 1970. He then began to present an interpretation of philosophical and religious texts—from Heraclitus and Plato to Laozi and from the Upanishads and the Bhagavadgı̄tā to the Christian Bible—considerably shaped by his own goals and assumptions. At first, his teaching activities took place within a small circle, but found a growing audience from 1974 onwards. In this process, Pythagoras of Samos, who has been repeatedly invoked since antiquity as the epitome of a wisdom that arose from the exchanges

2  In the wake of conflicts within as well as with the surrounding society, the new commune in Oregon broke up in 1985. After having experienced detention, expulsion from the USA, and a lengthy odyssey with stays inter alia in Nepal, Crete, and Uruguay, Osho finally returned to Poona in 1987, where he died in 1990, and was posthumously stylised as an icon of global spirituality. There are plenty of studies on Osho’s life and activities. Unless indicated otherwise, the exposition in this chapter draws on the following selection: Riedel and Mildenberger 1980, Tanner 1986, Thoden and Schmidt 1987, Carter 1990, Palmer and Sharma 1993, Süss 1994, 1996, Fox 2002, Goldman 2004, Urban 2005, 2015.

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between Asia and Europe, became a special prototype for Osho.3 He saw in the Samian an exceptional personality of the Graeco-Roman antiquity who embodied a particular form of “West-Eastern encounter and wisdom”—a “synthesis” he considered fundamental for the renewal of humankind which he sought. Osho painted a picture of being human in a future world where all ethnic and religious barriers as well as identitarian distinctions in terms of nation, gender, class, and culture have been transcended, all polarities have dissipated, all opposites turned into complements.4 In this vision, Pythagoras served as the paragon of the “new,” “Pythagorean” person: “We need a new man on the earth, a Pythagorean man: the man who walks in the middle. We need a man who is neither Eastern nor Western” (Rajneesh 1981, vol. 1: 208). The following reflections on Osho’s reception of Pythagoras will take place against the background of a postcolonial perspective which recognises the complex web of “shared histories” in the modern world (Randeria 1999: 87–96), thereby taking into account the entanglement of societies and cultures.5 Just as the alternative religious and ideological currents, scenes, and communities in the USA and in Europe proclaimed in the second half of the twentieth century that “[w]e turn East for completion” (Ferguson 1987: 368), Osho’s self-conception and action cannot be thought of without the “entangled histories” (Randeria 2002) of the modern era, without exchanges and interactions, interferences, and dependencies on inter- and transcultural levels. Just as his vision of the new man who has transcended identitarian distinctions, Osho himself—in his view, the pioneer of this renewal process—is both product and producer of Indian interweavings with Europe and North America. These occurred in a variety of ways, first in the colonial period and later on in processes of the postcolonial search for identity. Within this framework, I will begin with outlining the historical developments of Pythagoras’ reception which led him to being stylised as the  On details of this reception history, see, for example, Renger 2015.  The notion of “synthesis” in connection with “the renewal of mankind” can be found throughout Osho’s work. As one of several common themes, it also pervades his lecture series on Pythagoras—the subject of this chapter. Passages herein that explicitly address the theme of “the new man” are, for example, Rajneesh 1981, vol. 1: 12–13 (chapter one, pp. 1–33: “The Greatest Luxury,” lecture held on December 21, 1978), 208 (chapter six, pp. 180–217: “Logos: Power: Necessity,” December 26, 1978), 262 and 270 (chapter eight, pp. 254–284: “You Are Without Stain,” December 28, 1978). 5  See Conrad and Randeria 2013. 3 4

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educational provider between the “Orient” and the “Occident,” as well as the personification of philosophia perennis, thereby becoming a suitable reference figure for Osho (Section “‘Pythagoras represents the eternal pilgrim for the philosophia perennis’: On the Reception History of Pythagoras”). This is followed by two examples of Osho’s reception of Pythagoras from the 1970s. The first one is taken from a lecture published in The Book of Secrets on a meditation exercise originating in the Vijñāna Bhairava Tantra (Section “‘Pythagoras had to pass through this training.’ First Example: The Vigyan Bhairav Tantra (1972/73)”). The second example is Osho’s commentary of the Golden Verses entitled Philosophia Perennis (Section “‘This is all that is left of that great man’s effort.’ Second Example: The Golden Verses of Pythagoras (1978/79)”); the concluding remarks will round off my deliberations (Section “Concluding Remarks”). By illustrating how the founder of the Neo-Sannyas movement made use of Pythagoras and the alleged “Pythagorean” way of life for his own purposes, it becomes apparent how he tried to underpin his self-presentation as an “enlightened master” and to legitimise his vision of salvation.

“Pythagoras represents the eternal pilgrim for the philosophia perennis”: On the Reception History of Pythagoras Pythagoras of Samos founded a commune in Kroton (today’s Crotone in Southern Italy) in the sixth century BCE and resettled to Metapontion, presumably due to tensions within the commune. The Greek thinker, whom Osho invoked through his lectures, was a character that offered him and his audience several aspects to draw upon. Osho, who asserted that he and Pythagoras were of a kindred spirit, established an ashram in India and later resettled to the USA in order to establish a commune and a “city of the new man.” Moreover, he portrayed the Greek as a bordercrosser “between East and West” who offered his Western listeners the potential for identification. By using modern narratives that stylise India as the cradle of spirituality and refuge of truly wise men, Osho praised Pythagoras as the epitome of the unchanging, universally valid wisdom due to his unwavering quest in various countries and cultures, not least in India: “Pythagoras came to India, met great wise men; he met great seers, great brahmins. Saw for the first time what a wise man is! Meditated for years … became a wise man in his own right, became enlightened”

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(Rajneesh 1981, vol. 1: 191). At the same time, he re-imagined the ancient figure as a unique precursor; a pioneer who worked for the liberation of human consciousness by uniting numerous polarities, including “East and West.” “I feel a very deep spiritual affinity with Pythagoras,” he declared; “I am also bringing you a synthesis of East and West, of science and religion, of intellect and intuition, of the male mind and the female mind, of the head and the heart, of the right and the left.” Osho claimed that he tried in every possible way to create “a great harmony” just as Pythagoras did, “because only that harmony can save. Only that harmony can give you a new birth” (Rajneesh 1981, vol. 1: 13). By referencing Pythagoras, Osho has inscribed himself into a long and multi-layered tradition of myths and legends surrounding the Samian. Pythagoras and Pythagoreanism—with its doctrine of the soul and rules for life, cosmology, music, and numerology—have been handled in a variety of genres and media throughout centuries: literature, culture, and music; philosophy and the sciences; and, not least of all, in the modern context of occultism and Western esotericism.6 This process regularly involved inventions about Pythagoras and the attribution of teachings which served the purpose of constructing traditions or legitimising certain assertions and claims by appealing to the antiquity or divinity of his person and wisdom. This tendency to reimagine the Greek philosopher was substantially abetted by the fact that he himself presumably did not leave behind any writings, and neither his immediate students nor disciples seem to have written anything about his teachings. Since the Classical period (fifth and fourth centuries BCE), diverse religious, philosophical, and scientific strands have utilised Pythagoras’ teaching for their own needs as a figure of authoritative venerability; the impact of Plato and the markedly Platonising interpretation of Pythagoras by Plato’s immediate successors (the “Old Academy”) was especially influential (Kahn 2001: 63–71; Riedweg 2007: 152–157; Thiel 2006: 31–136; Huffman 2013: 237–270). A rich pseudepigraphic corpus was added in Greek antiquity that could purportedly be traced back to Pythagoras or his circle of students. This complicated the distinction between the original teachings of Pythagoras, the views of Pythagoreans, and the ascriptions by outsiders (see, e.g., Burkert 1961: 16–43, 226–246; Thesleff 1961, 1965; Burkert 1972: 23–55; Centrone 1996: 148–163; Kahn 2001: 74–79). Finally, in the 6  An overview can be found in Renger and Ißler 2016. For further details on the reception history until the early modern era, see Renger and Stavru 2016.

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Roman Imperial Period (first century BCE to third century CE) and following the renewal of Pythagoreanism by the Romans,7 a systematic embellishment of Pythagoras’ life and works took place by means of glorifying and idealising anecdotes. In these texts, the motif of the Grand Tour or Bildungsreise (educationally motivated travel) underwent an efficacious development. Whereas details regarding the travels of the Samian were given only sporadically in the pre-Hellenistic age, their number increased in later centuries and— under considerable ornamentation and expansion of the travel routes— became an integral part of Pythagoras biographies (Zhmud 1997: 60–61). Not only were wanderings within Magna Graecia reported, but also travels to ancient advanced civilisations, such as Egypt, where Pythagoras would have learnt Egyptian, as well as Phoenicia, Babylonia, Persia, and India, among others.8 From those expeditions, Pythagoras would have brought along the most ancient knowledge imparted to him by adepts, and, after several sojourns, passed it on in southern Italy. The sources name Egyptian priests, Persian magicians (including Zoroaster himself), Phoenicians well-­ versed in arithmetic, Chaldean astronomers, Jewish oneiromancers, and even Celts and Iberians as specialists who recorded and passed on the knowledge acquired by Pythagoras. References to this expert knowledge usually came as a combination of rational-scientific and religious aspects, which Aristotle already attested about the Samian.9 In the Imperial Period, the special features of the Pythagorean way of life (pythagoreios tropos tou biou)—already noted by Plato—were likewise portrayed in increasing detail.10 For example, Diogenes Laërtius (third century CE) lists a broad range of obligations and prohibitions and reports on the admission to an inner circle of Pythagoreans that required a long probation phase, including a five-year period of silence.11 Similarly, 7  Cicero asserts in Timaeus 1 that Publius Nigidius Figulus had “renewed” (renovaret) the “extinct doctrinal tradition” (disciplina extincta) of the ancient Pythagoreans in the first century BCE, which had “flourished for centuries in Italy and Sicily” (aliquot saecla in Italia Siciliaque viguisset). Quoted from Ax and Plasberg’s (1965: 154–155) edition of the works of Cicero. 8  Source references to the travels are to be found, among others, in Zeller 1856: 218–225, Delatte 1922: 150–154 (by reference to pp. 104–106); Hopfner 1925: 3–6, 11–13, Lévy 1927: 20–26, Gorman 1979: 43–68, Riedweg 2007: 20–21, Zhmud 2012: 83–91. 9  Aristoteles, Fragment 191, in Rose 1968: 153. 10  Plato, Res publica 600b, in Hermann 1926: 293. 11  Diogenes Laertius, Vitae et sententiae philosophorum 8.10, in Marcovich 1999: 578.

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Porphyry and Iamblichus depict the “Pythagorean way of life” in the most dazzling colours (Staab 2002: 109–143). Their texts convey the image of an extraordinary man who distinguished himself through his mathematical findings and medical-dietary as well as magico-ritualistic knowledge for self-purification and enhanced cognitive capacity. All these features make up an integral part of Pythagoras’ unreserved love for wisdom that he communicated to his students in the form of a philosophy embodied by himself, and which—particularly in Iamblichus’ depiction—had the revelatory character of a soteriological doctrine.12 It was Pythagoras’ passion for knowledge and his extensive travels, so vividly portrayed in the Imperial Period, that prompted Osho to garnish the image created in the past and to project his own ideas onto Pythagoras: “His whole life he was a seeker, a pilgrim, in search of a philosophy—philosophy in the true sense of the word: love for wisdom” (Rajneesh 1981, vol. 1: 5). Osho saw in Pythagoras a “seeker” who first stayed for years in Egypt before continuing his journey in order to discover as many facets and manifestations of the truth as possible: “He wanted to know truth in all its aspects, in all its dimensions […], always ready to bow down to a Master” (ibid.: 6). With this humble attitude he allegedly travelled to almost all countries of the then known world (“For years he was in India, then he travelled to Tibet and then to China” [ibid.: 5]), where, according to Osho, he adopted worldviews and ways of life, such as reincarnation and vegetarianism, which he introduced to the Western world after returning to his homeland (Rajneesh 1981, vol. 2: 191).13 However, above all else—and here Osho claims to have detected Pythagoras’ greatest achievement—he sought to merge within himself the cultural particularities and exemplify the integration of all opposites and discrepancies—which was as necessary a desideratum then as it is today—in order to save the world from its disorientation: “Pythagoras is the first experiment in creating a synthesis. Twenty-five centuries have passed since then and nobody else has tried it again. Nobody else before had done it, and nobody else has done it afterwards either. It needs a mind which is both—scientific and mystic. It is a rare phenomenon. It happens once in a while” (Rajneesh 1981, vol. 1: 10). 12  This is already apparent from the proem: Jamblich, De vita Pythagorica 1–2, in von Albrecht et al. 2002: 32f. 13  Chapter six, pp. 184–217: “Enlightenment is Your Birthright,” lecture held on January 5, 1979.

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Osho understood the knowledge Pythagoras acquired in his journeys to be that of eternal wisdom encompassing all knowledge. This form of interpretation was shaped, among others, by Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499). In search of the “ancient wisdom”—the “primal knowledge”—and pursuing the unity of theological and philosophical worldviews, Ficino became known as a translator and commentator of Plato and Platonism, Neoplatonism, and Pythagoreanism (including Pythagorean pseudepigraphs), thus making Greek texts available to the Latin-speaking public of his time. Among the works he translated was De mysteriis (On the Mysteries) as well as the treatises forming the Corpus Hermeticum, considered by Renaissance thinkers to be a revelation that parallels the biblical creation narrative. A brief prologue (Ficino 1959a [1576]: 1836) is prepended to his translation of the first fourteen treatises of the Corpus Hermeticum, the Mercurii Trismegisti Liber (Ficino 1959b [1576]: 1837–1857), where Ficino presents his idea of an ancient transmission of extra-biblical truth by constructing a six-membered chain of prisci theologi. Hermes Trismegistos comes first as the founder of the prisca theologia, the ancient, pre-Christian theology, followed by Orpheus and Aglaophemus, then Pythagoras, Philolaos, and Plato. However, in his central work, the Platonica Theologia (first published in 1482), as well as other texts, Ficino places Zoroaster at the beginning of this tradition (Celenza 1999: esp. 675; Moreschini 2006: 94–97). Hence, a tradition of original, undivided wisdom is construed, which once also included essential elements of Christianity and was split into the various disciplines. With equally lasting impact, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–1494)—who in a letter to Ficino referred to himself explicitly as a Pythagorean (“Pithagoricus [sic] sum”, Pico della Mirandola 1971 [1972] 368)—advocated the unification of philosophical and religious teachings from various eras and cultural spheres. In his famed speech De hominis dignitate (On the Dignity of Man; written in 1486 and first published in 1496), he integrated several fields of philosophy known to him, as well as theology, magic, and Kabbalah, in an effort to reconcile knowledge and faith, philosophy and theology, for the purpose of a pax philosophica inspired by the unity of truth (Pico della Mirandola 1988). His thoughts refer to the traditions of large parts of the regions surrounding the Mediterranean as well as territories east thereof. Not only does he take into account Graeco-Roman antiquity, but also the intellectual heritage of the Chaldeans, Arabs, and Hebrews. In order to support his position that philosophy would lead to the blissful contemplation of God, he refers to

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Moses, Zoroaster, Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle, the Delphian and Chaldean Oracles, as well as the Kabbalah. He identifies Orpheus as the first source of the philosophical-theological wisdom from which Pythagoras’ philosophy arose. With their approaches, Ficino and Pico paved the way for a modern esoteric reception of Pythagoras that invokes him as the representative of a “secret,” “higher,” “primordial” knowledge—the bearer of an ancient wisdom, which is manifested in the existence of hidden or occult knowledge accessible only to a circle of adepts.14 Osho’s reference to this ancient figure is part of this strand of reception history, as the first sentence in the lecture series Philosophia Perennis clearly signals: “Pythagoras represents the eternal pilgrim for philosophia perennis—the perennial philosophy of life” (Rajneesh 1981, vol. 1: 4).

“Pythagoras had to pass through this training.” First Example: The Vigyan Bhairav Tantra (1972/73) That Pythagoras came to possess outlasting wisdom through his travels is a view that Osho did not hold until the late 1970s. References to the Greek can, however, already be found in earlier instances, and, as in the case of Philosophia Perennis, some were embedded in his interpretations of prominent texts. Osho subjects these ancient texts to a specific relecture and re-­evaluation in order to advance their prestige within the scope of his salvific vision of synthesising “Eastern wisdom” with “Western knowledge.” The example that I will discuss below is from the lecture series Vigyan Bhairav Tantra that Osho held in his apartment in Bombay (Woodlands) from October 1, 1972, until November 8, 1973. It comprises a section of the chapter “Five Techniques of Attentiveness”15 in The Book of Secrets (Rajneesh 1977: 103–131), which contains the recorded original text of the lecture series. In his lecture on the five attentiveness exercises, Osho equates the pineal gland with the so-called brow-cakra and builds on occult speculations deriving from Helena P. Blavatsky’s (1831–1891) Theosophy, which, in its pursuit of common structures underlying all religions, also touched upon the cakra doctrine in the Hindu and Buddhist traditions and connected it with notions of Western anatomy (cf. Baier 14  There is a wealth of recent examples in alternative religion that reimagine Pythagoras in an esotericising manner. Two may suffice here: Lehner 2010 and Kardaras 2011. 15  This lecture was held on October 5, 1972.

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2009: 391–395). The lecture is introduced with the assertion that Pythagoras had learnt the age-old Indian exercise of focusing on the point between the eyebrows while attending an Egyptian mystery school and, by transferring it to Greece, he became the originator “of all mysticism in the West” (Rajneesh 1977: 105–114). The exercise itself traces back to the Vijñāna Bhairava Tantra, for which Osho used Paul Reps’ English edition (see below). Structured as a dialogue between the Kashmiri Śiva (Bhaivara) and his feminine component Śakti, the Sanskrit text teaches 112 exercises—concentration methods referred to as yukti (“connection,” “unification [with the supreme being],” “meditation”). Osho formally designed his lecture series on the Tantric scripture as a commentary on the 112 exercises, which he arranged thematically—thus deviating from the sequence of the template—and annotated them by inserting question-­ and-­answer sections within those theme clusters. Considering Osho’s textual choice for the lecture series makes his involvement with the complex exchange and transfer relations between Asia, Europe, and America particularly apparent. The Vijñāna Bhairava is a typical example of a religious text whose disclosure and popularisation are as much a result of the interweaving of the modern world as it is a contribution thereto. The text belongs to the oldest tantras of the so-­ called Kashmiri Śivaism (Trika), which experienced its heyday with Abhinavagupta (like Śaṅkara in the seventh and eighth centuries, one of the most important representatives of Hindu philosophy in the tenth and eleventh centuries).16 Its assumed prominence beyond the Indian subcontinent throughout the twentieth century was due to an internationally growing interest in Tantric texts that capture spiritual practices (Skt. sādhana) for realising a deity or the pure consciousness. The notion of the middle (Skt. madhya) recurs throughout as a leitmotif of the text. It must be found, opened, and unfolded by means of concentrating on the middle between two things or states in order to establish the preconditions for becoming aware of the “emptiness” (Skt. s ́ūnyatā) of the in-betweenness of reality and for realising the divine state (Skt. bhairava bhāva). In 1918, this tantra was published in the Kashmir Series of Sanskrit Studies and Texts (Rāma Shāstrı̄ 1918a, b),17 after the Indologist Georg  For an introduction to this tradition, see Bäumer 1992.  In 1911, the research department of Jammu and Kashmir established a research team that launched the book series in the same year. The edition of 1918 mentioned above was published in two volumes: The Vijñāna-Bhairava with Commentary Partly by Kṣhemarāja 16 17

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Bühler (1837–1898)—professor of oriental languages in Bombay since 1863, and professor of Old-Indian philology and antiquity studies in Vienna since 1880—began searching for Sanskrit manuscripts in Kashmir in 1875, a project with wide-reaching influence on the work and interests of his contemporaries. As a consequence of Bühler’s activities as a collector, various actors developed a fascination for the texts of Kashmiri Śivaism—scholars and intellectuals as well as religious protagonists and “spiritual seekers.” Many of them would be spellbound in particular by the Kashmiri Swami Lakshman Joo (1907–1991) from Srinagar. Just as Bühler was a key figure in regard to the exploration and distribution of Kashmir Sanskrit texts beyond regional borders and the Indian subcontinent during the nineteenth century, so was Lakshman Joo during the twentieth century. A native of Kashmir—who since the 1930s translated and annotated important scriptures of Kashmiri Śivaism by, among others, Utpaladeva and Abinavagupta—he became popular both as an erudite pundit and a practicing yogi. Moreover, he had the reputation of being the last living master of the tradition he orally passed on (see Nelson 1994). Among the visitors of his ashram, where he taught regularly on Sundays, were scholars, authors, artists, and other spiritual teachers from the region as well as from various states of India and other countries. One of the most famous visitors was the founder of Transcendental Meditation, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (1918–2008), for whom he supposedly interpreted the Vijñāna Bhairava during a visit in the late 1960s.18 It was chiefly due to his European and American adherents who were fascinated by the Tantric forms of Śivaism that the contents of Lakshman Joo’s teachings were disseminated far beyond Jammu and Kashmir. One of them was Lilian Silburn (1908–1993), who had been his student since 1948 and published several studies on Kashmiri Śivaism. For students such as Silburn, and in addition to the meetings on Sundays, Lakshman Joo set up sessions during the week where he translated and interpreted Sanskrit texts. Subsequently, after his death in 1991, several of his listeners became

and Partly by Shivopādhyāya (No. 8) and The Vijñāna-Bhairava with Commentary Called Kaumadi by Ā nanda Bhat ̣ṭa (No. 9). The commentary of the Kṣemarāja, which is preserved only until the twenty-third Śloka, was complemented and continued by Śivopādhyāya (mideighteenth century). 18  For example, see Kachroo 2004, as well as the “life sketch” of the Ishwar Ashram Trust: http://www.ishwarashramtrust.com/li.php. Accessed 15 July 2018.

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known through publications on Kashmiri Śivaism (especially on the Vijñāna Bhairava) in their native languages.19 The first of them was Paul Reps (1895–1990). The English translation Centering was published in the spring edition of the Magazine Gentry in 1955.20 Two years later, Reps republished it in the anthology Zen Flesh, Zen Bones (1957) as an amendment to three texts, which he and his friend, Zen master Nyogen Senzaki (1876–1958), regarded as central for Zen practice, and which had been already published in the 1930s: The Gateless Gate (1934); Ten Bulls (1935); and 101 Zen Stories (1939). Reps explains that the reason for binding them together with Centering is that its contents would be more than four thousand years old and could indeed constitute “the roots of Zen” (Reps 1957a: 12). The very liberal English translation of the Sanskrit text promptly aroused interest of various kinds. Aldous Huxley (1894–1963), who published The Perennial Philosophy in 1946 and served as a source of inspiration for all those who maintained the existence of a culturally invariant essence of all religions, already praised the Tantra made known by Reps in his 1959 lecture Latent Human Potentialities as “the most comprehensive series of exercises in consciousness.” He lamented that the exercises had remained undiscovered for so long as “some sort of vague Oriental superstition,” and predicted that they would prove to be of supreme value (Huxley 1977: 247). Osho founded his statements on these English translations.21 The reason for choosing this text as the subject for a lecture series in English might be that Reps’ collection—his “classic of Zen” still enjoys worldwide popularity today—was already well-known at the time in the field of Zen and alternative religiosity in the USA.  Furthermore, when Osho 19  Apart from Silburn 1961, among the first publications on the Vijñāna Bhairava was Singh 1979. A notable publication from the German-speaking world is Bäumer 2003. 20  Reps emphasised on two occasions that the translation was based on Lakshman Joo. Cf. his foreword to Zen Flesh, Zen Bones in Reps 1957a: 12, as well as the preface to his transcription of Centering in Reps 1957b: 191–192. 21  This can be gathered—except for a reference in chapter 14, “Changing the Direction of Energy”—from the imprint pages of most English editions, including the version of Harper Colophon Books used in this chapter, where it states: “The sutras quoted in this book are taken from ‘Centering’ in Zen Flesh, Zen Bones (Anchor Books edition, 1972 reprint), transcribed and compiled by Paul Reps, and are printed with the kind permission of the author.” In the most recent edition of The Book of Secrets: 112 Meditations to Discover the Mystery Within, published by Osho Media International in 2012, the impression page reads: “Osho comments on a series of small excerpts from Zen Flesh, Zen Bones by Paul Reps. Reprinted with permission of Charles E. Tuttle Co. Inc.”

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developed his neo-Tantric idea of “transforming sex into love through consciousness,” tantra might have appeared particularly suitable to him. The view of tantra as a long-held traditional testimony of a world- and life-­affirming attitude seemed capable of endowing his approach with an aura of legitimacy and authority on matters of divinity and antiquity. After all, the Vijñāna Bhairava was written with the claim of being a divine revelation from Śiva, and Reps described it as a potential root of Zen. The annotation of the Tantric text harboured a great opportunity to Osho, as Senzaki and other Zen masters had already become world-known through their elaborations on Zen texts. In a similar fashion, Osho was to gain international attention through his explanations of a traditional testimony of “Indian spirituality”—namely, as an expert on those meditation techniques from which the exercise of Zen had allegedly emerged in the first place. What made the text particularly interesting to Osho was that the 112 exercises, which integrated techniques such as the concentration on breath, mantra recitations, and visualisation, offered a broad range of human sensations, feelings, and bodily phenomena. The practice-oriented nature of the text associated therewith gave him space for his idea of wisdom that anyone could attain in a body-friendly fashion. Osho assumed that the wisdom-to-be-actualised is inherent in every person—a wisdom that accepts everything, including human sexuality and the need to express it. He thus recommended to use the body as a transformative vehicle. Similarly to the choice of holding his presentation in English, the section on Pythagoras indicates that Osho’s commentary on the exercises was targeting an international audience. The passage constitutes one of many surveys on famous protagonists of the presupposed Eurasian history of religion and philosophy contained in his lecture series, which were supposed to offer to Osho’s listeners from all over the world the opportunity to make a connection between their own cultural imprint and his words. Construed around the theory that the Greek had received ancient practical knowledge from India and brought it to Greece, the passage says that contents of the old Tantric scripture constitute the root not only of Zen but of all “Western mysticism.” As a result of their successful acquisition and transference, Pythagoras purportedly became “the fountainhead, the source, of all mysticism in the West”—even the “father” of all “mysticism in the West” (Rajneesh 1977: 106). In the story that Osho presents in order to consolidate this claim, and thus the idea that Indian knowledge was transferred to Greece via Egypt, Pythagoras travels to Egypt with the aim to join a “secret esoteric school of mysticism” (ibid.: 105); he is,

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however, rejected. Without being discouraged, he applied repeatedly, eventually receiving the notice that the prerequisite for admission would be the completion of a training course on fasting and breathing exercises. In the brief dialogue following the pronouncement of this prerequisite, Osho injects the view that one needs to experience what words cannot express. When Pythagoras responds that he came “for knowledge, not for any sort of discipline” (Rajneesh 1977: 105), the school authorities state that they cannot give him knowledge before he has changed himself. As a matter of fact, they are not interested in knowledge, but in “actual experience”—no knowledge could be knowledge before being experienced. The ending that follows ties the teaching Pythagoras receives—which at the same time instructs the audience and the readership—back to the whole lecture series’ claim to convey secret knowledge on highly transformative meditation techniques. The story culminates as follows: “There was no other way, so Pythagoras had to pass through this training” (ibid.). Finally, after a highly efficient period of forty days of fasting and breathing while focusing on certain points, he was accepted into the secret esoteric school in which he had hoped to be admitted. Osho lets the protagonist himself emphatically express the efficiency of the training: “I am a different man. I am reborn” (ibid.). Pythagoras, as imagined by Osho, then goes on to describe the transformative impact of this exercise by stressing that his centre of existence had shifted and moved from the intellect down to the heart. Now he could sense things; now truth would no longer be a concept nor a philosophy, but an experience—an existential truth. In other words, he was no longer a mere collector of knowledge. He was capable of wisdom. This kind of depiction of Pythagoras can be explained by referring to the context of the lecture series. After Osho had resigned from his position as a professor of philosophy due to conflicts with the university, he established an independent livelihood as a guru whose followers also included artists and intellectuals. In their presence, he railed against “philosophy” whenever he could and, more emphatically than ever before, espoused the “wisdom” unfolding from experience rather than “knowledge.” The lectures on Vijñāna Bhairava fall within this time period. These are the early years of the developing Neo-Sannyas movement in Bombay, when Osho had already started to enjoy popularity among Europeans and North Americans, and had a much closer relationship with his students than he would have later. At that time, part of his strategy in building community around him as the leading figure was the intense interaction and

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establishment of profound closeness, while he personally instructed his adherents via letters as well as through face-to-face contact. Already in those days, he sought to open their brow cakra or Third Eye—according to his understanding, an invisible eye in-between the two visible eyes—the perceptivity of which transcends normal seeing, enabling access into inner worlds and spaces of higher consciousness.22 Whoever chose him as “master” would receive not only a “Sannyas name” (beginning with “Ma” for women, “Swami” for men) upon their initiation, but also have his thumb pressed on their Third Eye. Moreover, initiates would commit themselves to wear orange-coloured or reddish clothes as well as a wooden bead necklace (mālā) with Osho’s image. The aim of bestowing the “Sannyas” way of life—both clothes in orange shades and mālā are attributes of traditional Sannyasins—was to commit his students under personal supervision to a clear and determined spiritual alignment. Osho’s “reformed” Sannyas concept of “abstinence” did not focus on strict asceticism, but on a form of body-affirming self-abandonment, which he described as the separation from all comforts in favour of the devotion to his spiritual leadership: through trust in him and the new community, his followers were supposed to dare a leap into the unknown and, thus, into a space of opportunities for transformation provided by the community. In this context, the commentary on the Vijñāna Bhairava served as a key, which Osho gave into the hands of those who were ready to receive his training. Being well-aware of the Indian tradition that a guru leads his students onto the path of sādhana, he presents the audience of his lecture series with traditional methods of a religious practice designed to transform. In his introductory remarks, he challenges his students to playfully put these to test: whoever senses a feeling of resonance during the course of a certain exercise, should experiment with it for three days and, if convenient, practice it for three months (cf. Rajneesh 1977: 24).23 The promise Osho gave implied nothing less than the claim that all hearers could find and master at least one exercise because “[t]hese 112 methods are for the whole humanity—for all the ages that have passed, and for all the ages that have yet to come” (ibid.). At the same time, he declared that the exercise to focus on the middle between the eyebrows—which, he claimed, 22  For example, see Rajneesh 1977: 103–131, and his 1972 lecture on the “Five Techniques of Attentiveness.” 23  The first lecture of his series, entitled “The World of Tantra,” was held on October 1, 1972.

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Pythagoras would have mastered—was particularly easy to practice: “This is one of the simplest methods of being attentive” (ibid.). He highlighted this exercise because it aimed at what he sought to produce in his students: an experience of “enlightenment” by means of the deliberate opening of the Third Eye. There are some indications that Osho also introduced the Pythagoras-­ example (as well as other references to Greek figures) because of a certain Catherine Venizelos (1927–2016), one of his adherents. For the purpose of international dissemination in English, Osho imparted his ideas and objectives to Venizelos, who went by the spiritual name Ma Yoga Mukta. She was the heir to a Greek millionaire shipowner and would later provide the bulk sum of the money necessary for establishing the ashram in Poona in 1974. The Greek patroness, who belonged to the “Inner Circle” of twenty-one members (Gyan Bhed 2006: 580) and to whom Osho transferred the leadership shortly before his death, was among the first Sannyasins and remained close to him throughout his life, even in Oregon and during his odyssey via Crete back to Poona. Her name and the names of her daughters Seema and Neeta (Maria and Elena Venizelos) appear repeatedly in his lectures. For example, he starts off his lecture series on Heraclitus, in which he soon gets to talk about Pythagoras as well (Rajneesh 1978: 131–132),24 in the Buddha Hall of Poona on December 21, 1974, as follows (ibid.: 3): “I have been in love with Heraclitus for many lives. In fact, Heraclitus is the only Greek I have ever been in love with—except, of course, Mukta, Seema and Neeta!”25 The conclusion from this explicit mention, that is, that the Pythagoras-theory in October 1972 was already intended to be an implicit tribute to the Greek lady, is supported by the intensity with which Osho maintained this relationship since the early 1970s. She ranked among those with whom Osho built an especially close bond and, already in 1971, she was appointed the president of Neo-­ Sannyas International for North America (cf. Rajneesh 1971). The message Osho aimed to convey through his teaching is most evident: whoever decided to “take Sannyas” and receive training from the 24  The reference to Pythagoras appears in his lecture “Such is the Depth of its Meaning” (Rajneesh 1978: 129–156), held on December 25, 1974. 25  To give another example, in a lecture from the series Glimpses of a Golden Childhood, held in 1984 in the Lao Tzu House in Rajneeshpuram, he emphasised the physical resemblance of Mukta and Seema with his maternal grandmother, who had supposedly looked more Greek than Indian. Cf. Rajneesh 1985a: 21 (“Session 2,” pp. 14–21), 49 (“Session 4,” pp. 42–57).

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“master,” they were promised a transformative experience, similar to the one Pythagoras allegedly had by concentrating on the Third Eye—an exercise the Greek mastered, thus laying the foundation of Western mysticism. Hence, the teaching served a double purpose: firstly, to corroborate Oshos’s promise of transformation by invoking India as the provenance of effective meditation techniques worthy of application; and secondly, to illustrate that simple “initiation into Sannyas” would not suffice, but that (persistent, albeit playful) exercise and dedication to the training were necessary to enable a profound transformation process that could lead to “enlightenment” and wisdom. With an allegorical narrative, Osho presented a prominent figure as a role model to his listeners: a collector of knowledge of “Western” origin who, versed in wisdom following a successful training by means of an Indian exercise, became a new man.

“This is all that is left of that great man’s effort.” Second Example: The Golden Verses of Pythagoras (1978/79) As in the commentary on the Vijñāna Bhairava, Osho gave free rein to his imagination when portraying Pythagoras in his lecture series Philosophia Perennis: Speaking on The Golden Verses of Pythagoras. In this lecture series, held in Osho’s ashram in Poona between December 21, 1978, and January 10, 1979, the ancient reference figure primarily reflects the context and demands of the lectures and their setting. While Pythagoras in the Book of Secrets primarily appears as an aspirant and a practitioner of a certain meditation training, which he needed in order to realise that the accumulation of knowledge without experience was in vain, in the Philosophia Perennis he is presented as the master of that great synthesis that Osho postulated throughout the 1970s with increasing persistence. The background of this change in reimagining Pythagoras is related to an altered framework: while Osho was about to achieve a breakthrough with his meditation movement and become an internationally known guru in 1972/1973, he had gained broad popularity by the end of the 1970s. His meditation techniques and hypotheses on Tantra, spirituality, and sex attracted worldwide attention, his name circulated in various media, and the ashram’s visitor numbers were so high that the movement considered another expansion. In short, Osho’s plan proved to be a success. Just as the figure of Pythagoras visualised by Osho once returned “to the West”

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from his journey eastward and exerted his influence, several Sannyasins founded groups or centres in their homelands during the 1970s after residing in India.26 This international strengthening of the Neo-Sannyas movement was significant, not least of all because conflicts arose with the state and local authorities in India, and the idea of relocating a large part of the activities to the West began to mature. Its realisation started in 1981 with the attempt to build a large commune. This development is mirrored in the guru’s lectures through the changing strategies of legitimising the teacher’s authority. Pythagoras appeared in a brief discussion in 1972 where Osho’s biography and teachings were reconnected to the Vijñāna Bhairava—a strategy intended, firstly, to endow his views with the impression of continuity and historical authority through a testimony of “Indian spirituality,” and, secondly, to disclose how “Western mysticism” depended on “Eastern mysticism.” However, at the end of 1978, a phase in which the movement increasingly turned toward Europe and the USA, Pythagoras became the subject of a whole lecture series. By now, Osho refers to the ancient figure as a spiritual progenitor who was in possession of the “eternal wisdom” 2500 years before him, and who masterfully undertook a universal synthesis of cultural and religious traditions as the first living bridge between “East and West.” Because this “synthesis […] was needed, particularly in his days, as it is needed today” (Rajneesh 1981, vol. 1: 10–11), the Greek accomplished a fundamental task for the salvation of humankind: “He was the first bridge. He had come to know the Eastern mind as deeply as the Western mind” (ibid.: 7). The reason Pythagoras’ oeuvre has not survived is traced back by Osho to human ignorance and wilful destructiveness. Only a few lines that could fit on a postcard have remained, the Golden Verses of Pythagoras: “This is all that is left of that great man’s effort, endeavor. And this too is not written by his own hand; it seems all that he had written was destroyed” (Rajneesh 1981, vol. 1: 9). Osho reads these verses as an instruction on how man could live in a radically different way than before: in a paradisiac state of love, peace, and great kindness, without divisions and without separations—that is, whole, complete. He orbits around this message in twenty-one lectures structured in four groups of five and concluding with 26  In Germany, for instance, there were “disciple groups, centres, as well as individual Bhagwan-students in all regions, who spread his ideas and methods” already around the year 1980. Quoted from Riedel and Mildenberger 1980: 3.

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the final lecture. The first of each group of five is introduced with remarks on Pythagoras and laid out as a commentary on the verses. This is followed by four chapters featuring Osho’s answers to questions asked by his listeners. In this compositionally well-balanced structure, the seventy-two verses on five double pages are spread over all twenty-one chapters of the two-volume lecture series. They are located in both volumes before the first and the sixth chapter, respectively, as well as before the eleventh chapter in volume two, whereby the left book-page renders the Greek wording and the opposite side the English version translated by Nayán Louise Redfield. The introductory (I.1) and the final chapters (II.11) thus constitute the framework enclosing the lectures together with the first and final verses of the ancient text. Osho’s decision to dedicate a whole lecture series to Pythagoras and his “Golden Verses” in front of the audience of his Shree Rajneesh Ashram comes as no surprise considering the cross-cultural interest the text has sparked since antiquity. The Golden Verses, known by the Greek title chrusā epē and in Latin as carmen aureum or aurea carmina, contain a multitude of “golden rules” for a philosophical way of living and, at the same time, promise beneficial results if rigorously implemented. To portray the content of the verses in a nutshell: it is imperative to honour the gods and heroes as well as one’s parents and relatives; deal with friendship carefully; speak and act virtuously; be composed and moderate; keep in mind the transience of life; and take stock of the day by visualising one’s own accomplishments and wrongdoings. Whoever pays heed to these rules and puts them into practice will understand the omnipresent laws of nature, attain liberation from suffering through insight into its causes, and after death will reach the free ether as an immortal soul, thus living the life of an immortal deity. The carmen aureum ends with this promise, which has provoked various interpretations far beyond the philosophical context. Its dating is controversial, and so is the question of its temporal existence in the traditional length of seventy-one hexameters, or whether it originates from one or several authors. There is, however, clear evidence that it stirred great interest already in the pre-modern era and was the subject of cultural interactions.27 The verses did not receive an enthusiastic reception in the early modern era alone; it had already begun in the Middle Ages when they 27  A critical edition of the Greek text including an English translation, research history, and annotation can be found in Thom 1995.

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were repeatedly translated within the Arabic linguistic and cultural milieu (Thom 1995: 28–29) following several commentaries in late antiquity, for example, by Hierocles of Alexandria (cf. Hierokles 1983). Moreover, these dynamics and transfers of knowledge beyond cultural and linguistic barriers led to the special attention the text has received in the field of modern occultism—most of all in Theosophical circles, where it was understood as an instruction of how to live wisely according to humankind’s wisdom tradition (Thom 1995: 3, note 2). One example is a master’s thesis entitled The Pythagorean Way of Life, with a Discussion of the Golden Verses (Watters 1926), that was submitted to Stanford University in 1923 and published in 1926 by the Theosophical Publishing House in Chennai, where Blavatsky and her friend Henry Steel Olcott had established the International Headquarters of the Theosophical Society in Madras (Chennai), after relocating from Bombay. Hence, as was the case with the Vijñāna Bhairava, Osho was not alone in his interest in the Golden Verses. Again, he based his lectures on an English version of the text that had already received attention in America’s dynamic milieu of alternative religiosity. It was an edition of Redfield’s liberal English translation from 1917 of Antoine Fabre d’Olivet’s (1767–1825) Les Vers dorés de Pythagore (1813)—namely the reprint that was published in 1975 as The Golden Verses of Pythagoras by Samuel Weiser Books.28 In this edition, the transmitted ancient text and both modern translations are published: one page reproduces the Greek text, the opposite page renders the French version, while the English version appears at the foot of both pages (Redfield 1975: 2–9). This is followed by verse-by-­ verse comments in the next part of the book, the “examinations” of the 1813 edition, which were also translated by Redfield into English (ibid.: 11–164). The preface was written by Ehud C. Sperling (b. 1949), the founder of “Inner Traditions,” who worked in Weiser’s Book Shop, the well-known bookstore in New  York City specialised in esotericism and occultism, from 1970 onwards. Thus, he had the chance to pursue the interest that Weiser himself already cultivated, namely—as the website of

28  This new edition, to be quoted hereinafter, did not include d’Olivet’s Discours sur l’essence et la forme de la poésie (Discourse on the Essence and Form of Poetry), a discussion that preceded his translation and that was still included in the edition of the English translation of 1917 (pp. 5–112).

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his publishing house states—on “the occult, hermeticism, ancient Egypt, the mysteries of consciousness, and the spiritual traditions of the world.”29 The text in the edition published by Weiser is noticeably characterised by the house’s declared interest. Citing Redfield, Fabre d’Olivet is praised as “the great metaphysician of Esotericism of the nineteenth century, who penetrated far into the crypt of fallen sanctuaries to the tabernacle of the most mysterious arcanas” (Sperling 1975: iii), and the ancient text as a “rich Fruit of Wisdom” that d’Olivet successfully set out to illuminate (Redfield 1975: 1). By claiming that the insight was crucial since what “the modern academician” overlooked was in reality the “instruction on the preparation, purification, and perfection of the adept” (Sperling 1975: i), Sperling directly builds on Fabre d’Olivet. He, too, beheld in the verses an arcane knowledge—a kind of knowledge that previous publications had not helped to make accessible, least of all the philological ones. Fabre d’Olivet did not consider it a desideratum to produce just another critical philological commentary on the text but saw his task as an attempt to unfold the “inner meaning” of the verses (Redfield 1975: 13). According to his understanding, the text does not merely issue ethical instructions for leading a righteous life but manifests a deeper level of meaning, which refers to the wisdom that comprises the largest part of the tripartite path of the Pythagorean adept. By employing the Greek terms paraskeuē (preparation), katharsis (purification), and teleiotēs (perfection), Fabre d’Olivet presented the ancient verses and their translation through a tripartite subdivision following the pattern “préparation,” “purification,” “perfection.”30 Thus, he drew on the idea of a path of initiation and knowledge in three parts or steps, which can be found—since antiquity, via the Neoplatonism of Late Antiquity and the mysticism of the Christian Middle Ages—in manifold variations in the European history of religions. To underpin his account on the quest for perfection and salvation, Fabre d’Olivet draws on hundreds of sources and references to ideas of eminent scholars of European and Asian (including Chinese) origin in his explanatory notes. Those renowned scholars from various places and ages would thus testify that this quest is manifested cross-culturally. This orientation of the “examinations” clearly reveals that 29   Inner Traditions. Online: http://www.innertraditions.com/about-us. Accessed 15 July 2018. 30  Cf. Redfield 1975: 14–24 (“Preparation,” Verses 1–3), 24–83 (“Purification,” Verses 4–65), 84–164 “Perfection,” (Verses 66–72).

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they are influenced by the expansion of the European scope of knowledge to incorporate Asian religious texts, the paradigm of “Indo-Aryan” ancient cultures, as well as the historico-philosophical speculations on the philosophia perennis. Under their impact, Fabre d’Olivet sought to prove the universality of a “tradition théosophique” that would represent the common root of Pythagoreanism, Hermeticism, and Asian religious thought in primeval times (Law 2013). In doing so, he assumed that the Greek mysteries were an emulation of the Egyptian ones, ascribed them to priests from India—the “cradle of all religions”—and asserted that their underlying ancient wisdom teaching, documented in the Corpus Hermeticum, had been passed on by adepts such as Moses, Pythagoras, and Orpheus (ibid.: 244–256). Fabre d’Olivet’s esoteric views, attributable to theosophy—in the sense used by Jakob Böhme (1575–1624)—as well as illuminism, have received wide attention, especially among authors who dealt with Egyptian and Graeco-Roman mythology, Hermeticism and alchemy, Kabbalah and Christian theosophy, and sought to reconcile these with modern explanatory models of the emergence and evolution of the world. His influence stretched from Romanticism and symbolism all the way to the popularised forms and contents of Theosophy in the New Age movement. In particular, his Histoire philosophique du genre humain (A Philosophical History of the Human Type; 1824) published in Paris in two volumes was met with great enthusiasm (Cellier 1998; Kremnitz 1985; McCalla 2006). One of Fabre d’Olivet’s most prominent recipients was the French writer and Theosophist Édouard Schuré (1841–1929). Through his magnum opus Les Grands Initiés (The Great Initiates 1889)—the depiction of an esoteric doctrine that allegedly underlies various philosophies and religions of human history, having been transmitted by Rama, Krishna, Hermes, Moses, Orpheus, Pythagoras, Plato, and finally Jesus—Fabre d’Olivet came to be known beyond the French borders. However, Fabre d’Olivet is not mentioned at all in Osho’s lecture series, neither was Lakshman Joo in the Book of Secrets, whom Osho possibly regarded to be a competitor.31 Only the imprint of some issues of 31  It is not likely that Osho, who held numerous meditation camps in Kashmir and demonstrably met with other spiritual teachers, such as Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, was not aware of the recognition Lakshman Joo enjoyed, even more so as Reps highlights the special appearance of this “prescient man of Kashmir” (Reps 1957a: 12), “tall, full bodied, shining” (Reps 1957b: 191), and indicates that his English version is based on a collaboration with Lakshman Joo in Kashmir. Cf. Reps 1957a: 12, 1957b: 191.

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Philosophia perennis refers to the edition published by Samuel Weiser Books in 1975.32 The references are apparent, even if not expressly indicated in the text, on the basis of at least three facts. First, the Greek verses and their English translation originate from the Weiser edition. Second, their annotation is made by referring to “the three famous P’s [sic] of Pythagoras: preparation, purification, perfection” (Rajneesh 1981, vol. 1: 14), viz. the categorising headings that Fabre d’Olivet used for publishing the verses as well as the subsequent annotation (“explanations”) in three clearly distinct sections. And third, Osho repeatedly elaborates on the “three famous Ps”: in the first instance as an introductory concept by reference to the first eight verses in his first lecture, and thereafter with references to other verse groups of the ancient poem in his subsequent lectures. Furthermore, Fabre d’Olivet’s influence is also revealed in the interpretation of the verses in the sense of a deeper semantic level that draws on the timelessly efficacious wisdom of Pythagoras. In the same fashion, Osho regards the educational objective of Pythagoras to be the “enlightenment” of man. Just as Fabre d’Olivet, he understands the Golden Verses as a poetic outpouring of the wisdom of illumination in the form of concrete instructions on how to practice towards the great goal. And just as the Frenchman, he conceives the final stage of the prescribed path as “unitive” (Rajneesh 1981, vol. 1: 16). He diverges from Fabre d’Olivet in his view of man and the proper path to salvation. According to Osho, the path can only be pursued under the guidance of a “master”—just as Pythagoras had been one.33 This master was to ensure that his student is made accessible during the preparatory phase: “Preparation means getting ready, into a receptive mood, becoming available, opening up” (ibid.: 14). This includes, on the one hand, the student’s ignition for his pursuit of truth, God, and nirvana (“just names for the same phenomenon,” according to Osho), and, on the other hand, shaking him up so that he awakes from the mental derangement and the dreams dominated by greed for money, power, and prestige: “Preparation means the disciple is being awakened […] to the truth that we are existing in darkness and light has to be searched for and sought, awakened to the fact that we have been wasting our lives, that this is not 32  For example, the first edition of the Rajneesh Foundation published in 1981, to which this chapter refers. Both the imprints of volumes one and two state: “For the sayings of Pythagoras quoted in this book grateful acknowledgement is given to The Golden Verses of Pythagoras by Fabre d’Olivet, published by Samuel Weiser, New York, 1975.” 33  For a metalinguistic discussion of the object-language use of the notion “master,” see Renger 2013.

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the right way to live” (ibid.: 15). Next, purification ought to take place. The point here is to cast off unnecessary ballast and liberate oneself from all social conditioning. The aim of the purification phase is to achieve liberation of external influences, become “absolutely empty,” virtually wipe the slate clean, so that all the words imprinted by society are erased. Only then could the process of “perfection” begin and the truth reveal its mysteries. In the usual manner of his lecture series on prominent traditional scriptures, Osho subjects his textual template to an interpretative reading. In doing so, he modifies the Golden Verses to suit his own ideas and goals by construing them at the backdrop of his own religious understanding and the cultural values of his environment. Thus, for example, he turns the rule at the beginning of the poem, that the gods are to be honoured, into an obligation to trust in God (Rajneesh 1981, vol. 1: 19–22), or the duty to pay homage to the heroes into remembrance of illustrious “masters” such as the Buddha, Laozi, Krishna, Christ, Moses, Muhammad, and Mahavira (ibid.: 23–26). Through elaborating on these figures, he offers an interreligiously designed synthesis, wherein his listeners of whatever cultural and religious background ought to feel accepted regardless of their imprint—provided that they engage with Osho’s interpretations and reinterpretations of the “masters,” including the traditions tied to them, in favour of his view. Pythagoras himself appears in the lectures as the originator of the rules and thus as the archegete of exercise, and, moreover, as the paragon of the eternal pilgrim towards the philosophia perennis and truth seeker par excellence. This ascription is justified by his unceasing quest to have the eternal wisdom revealed to him repeatedly—from various aspects and within various cultures. In Osho’s view, this quality of tirelessly deepening one’s knowledge made the Greek an especially outstanding teacher in the form of a living synthesis: “In him, East and West became one. In him, yin and yang became one. In him, male and female became one. He was […] a total unity of the polar opposites. Shiva and Shakti together” (Rajneesh 1981, vol. 1: 8). Thus, Osho concludes that Pythagoras became what generated a feeling of deep spiritual affinity: a sage who provided rules for the transformation into the new man, who was neither one nor the other. “The sage is neither this nor that […]—he has not chosen. He has accepted his wholeness; he is total, as much day, as much night. He has dropped the constantly choosing ego. He has simply accepted whatsoever is the case.

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He lives the truth in its utter nakedness, whatsoever it is—he has no business to interfere in the stream of life” (ibid.: 185).

Concluding Remarks In one sentence one could say that, in Osho’s perception, Pythagoras was another Osho, just as Osho was another Pythagoras, namely a “homo novus”—“unsplit, integrated, whole” (Rajneesh 1981, vol. 2: 48). Osho considered his Sannyasins to be “the first rays” of that new human being (ibid.).34 At the same time, the way the ancient figure was outlined throughout the various phases in Osho’s work was somewhat altered each time. This was because he fitted each depiction of his reference figures in pronouncedly new interpretations of traditional texts, thereby reacting to incidents occurring in his surroundings that affected him as a leader. When, for example, he referred to Pythagoras while commenting on his favourite books in 1984, the emphasis of the reference had shifted as a result of the events of the day. The relocation to Oregon in 1981 had provoked conflicts, including acts of violence, both within the local commune and the surrounding society, and tarnished Osho’s reputation, who was increasingly questioned even by his students. Thus, among the many perspectives on Pythagoras that distinguish the depiction from 1978/79, only one now stands at the fore: Pythagoras was “one of the most misunderstood men” (Rajneesh 1985b: 38).35 The ancient progenitor is displayed as an isolated master whose destiny was to be misunderstood by his own students and be completely disregarded in his homeland: “[N]ot a single disciple of Pythagoras rose to his heights, not a single one became enlightened” (ibid.: 39). Just as other great figures of ancient philosophy, such as Heraclitus, Socrates, and Plotinus, he did not remotely receive the recognition he deserved in Greece—although he presumably made more efforts than anyone else to find the key to wisdom: “Pythagoras was the most authentic seeker. He risked all and everything. He travelled all around the world that was known in those days; studied under all kinds of 34  Osho elaborates on this, inter alia, in his lecture “Zorba the Buddha,” delivered on January 1, 1979 (Rajneesh 1981, vol. II: 36–73, here in particular pp. 46–51). 35  The lecture that this passage refers to—chapter four (called “Series 3 Session 1”) in Osho’s Books I Have Loved (Rajneesh 1985b)—is said to have been recorded at the end of 1981 in Rajneeshpuram, Oregon, USA (cf. http://www.sannyas.wiki/index.php?title=Books_I_ Have_Loved#Books_I_Have_Loved. Accessed 10 September 2020).

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Masters; entered into all kinds of mystery schools and fulfilled their conditions. He is a category in himself” (ibid.). This portrayal of Pythagoras and the declaration of the “new” person as the “Pythagorean” one deliberately reinforces the mythical glory in which reception history has shrouded the ancient figure. To illustrate his vision, for which he coined the concept of “Zorba the Buddha,”36 Osho did not invoke just any prominent figure of ancient Greece. His choice fell on a man of exalted mythical quality who points back behind the classical period and who—throughout his reception history—has been repeatedly endowed with features that transcend the human realm, including his share in the philosophia perennis. Osho depicted Pythagoras as the embodiment of the new man and ascribed to him the possession of a salvific truth that has survived the ages and cultures. Thus, in Osho’s reading of Pythagoras, the Greek had referred to the future already during his lifetime—a reference that would manifest in Osho himself. Against this backdrop, Osho’s explications appear as the long overdue disclosure of Pythagoras’ wisdom, 2500 years after his endeavours, because only now is the world potentially ready. It is likely that the absence of any mention of Fabre d’Olivet is due to this claim. In any case, the omission indicates a certain “anxiety of influence” as Harold Bloom described it (Bloom 1973). While Osho did not fear the ancient Greek since none of his writings were left, and Pythagoras’ stylisation as the spiritual forebear endowed him with legitimacy, the Frenchman represents a recent precursor and authority in Osho’s own field of interest, against whom the Indian guru sought to preserve his originality. Accordingly, his philosophia perennis breathes a new, and very different, spirit. Fabre d’Olivet’s language, which revolves around notions such as “vices,” “errors,” and “virtue,” is transposed into a parlance that 36  Osho’s pun “Zorba the Buddha,” used for proclaiming his ideal of the perfectly integrated person, is a reference to Nikos Kazantzakis’ Greek novel Zorba the Greek (1946; first English translation in 1952), a book Osho included as a “masterpiece” in his list of favourite books (Rajneesh 1985b: 71). In anthroponymic, abstract form it encapsulates a self-description of Osho and simultaneously a recommendation to live like the Greek protagonist and the historical Buddha Siddhartha Gautama—inclined to singing and dancing while “remaining completely still within”: “A great meeting I teach: the meeting of Zorba and Buddha. I teach Zorba the Buddha—a new synthesis. The meeting of the earth and the sky, the meeting of the visible and the invisible, the meeting of all the polarities—of man and woman, of day and night, of summer and winter, of sex and samadhi. Only in that meeting will a new man arrive on the earth” (Rajneesh 1981, vol. 2: 48).

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is characterised by the socio-critical approaches of the 1968 upheavals and the concepts of humanistic psychology—substantially conveying Osho’s vision of a salvation that is open to everyone who is ready to unite sensual worldly enjoyment with otherworldly transcendence.37 The enormous appeal this vision has had in various countries and cultures worldwide demonstrates once again that the modern era is also, and not least, a history of inner-worldly promises of salvation. It is, moreover, a history whose signature is decisively marked by the multi-layered interactions and entanglements between Asia, Europe, and America.

References Primary Sources Albrecht, Michael von, John Dillon, Martin George, Michael Luije, and David S. duToit. 2002. Jamblich, Περὶ τοῦ Πυθαγορείου βίου. Pythagoras: Legende, Lehre, Lebensgestaltung. Eingeleitet und mit interpretierenden Essays versehen. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Ax, Wilhelm, and Otto Plasberg, eds. 1965. M. Tulli Ciceronis scripta quae manserunt omnia. Fasc. 46: De divinatione, De fato, Timaeus. Stuttgart: Teubner. Bäumer, Bettina. 1992. Abhinavagupta: Wege ins Licht. Texte des tantrischen Śivaismus aus Kaschmir. Zurich: Benziger. ———, ed. 2003. Vijñāna Bhairava. Das göttliche Bewußtsein. 112 Weisen der mystischen Erfahrung im Śivaismus von Kashmir. Sanskrit-Text, Übersetzung, Kommentar. Grafing: Edition Adyar. Delatte, Armand, ed. 1922. La Vie de Pythagore de Diogène Laërce. Édition critique avec introduction et commentaire. Brussels: Lamertin. Édouard, Schuré. 1889. Les grands initiés: esquisse de l’histoire secrète des religions: Rama—Krishna—Hermès—Moise—Orphée—Pythagore—Platon—Jésus. Paris: Perrin. Fabre d’Olivet, Antoine, ed. 1813. Les Vers Dorés de Pythagore expliqués et traduits pour la première fois en vers eumolpiques français, précédés d’un discours sur l’essence et la forme de la poésie. Paris: Treuttel et Würtz. Ferguson, Marilyn. 1987. The Aquarian Conspiracy: Personal and Social Transformation in the 1980s. 2nd ed. Los Angeles: Tarcher. Ficino, Marsilio. 1959a [1576]. Argumentum Marsilii Ficini Florentini in librum Mercurii Trismegisti, ad Cosmum Medicem, patriae patrem. In Marsilio Ficino. 37  For fuller details on this, see the chapter on “Zorba the Buddha: The Whole Human Being” in Rajneesh 2001: 207–219.

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Opera omnia. Vol. 2.2. Facsimile Reprint of the Basel Edition of 1576, ed. Mario Sancipriano, 1836. Turin: Bottega d’Erasmo. ———. 1959b [1576]. Mercurii Trismegisti Liber de Potestate et Sapientia Dei, cui titulus Pimander. In Marsilio Ficino. Opera omnia. Vol. 2.2. Facsimile Reprint of the Basel Edition of 1576, ed. Heinrich Petri, 1837–1857. Turin: Bottega d’Erasmo. Gyan Bhed [Jñānabheda], Swami. 2006. The Rebellious Enlightened Master Osho. New Delhi: Fusion Books. Hermann, Karl Friedrich, ed. 1926. Plato, Rei Publicae Libri Decem. Leipzig: Teubner. Hierokles. 1983. Kommentar zum pythagoreischen Goldenen Gedicht. Translated by Friedrich Wilhelm Köhler. Stuttgart: Teubner. Inner Traditions. Accessed 15 July 2018. http://www.innertraditions.com/ about-us. Ishwar Ashram Trust. Accessed 15 July 2018. http://www.ishwarashramtrust. com/li.php. Kazantzakis, Nikos. 1952 [1946]. Zorba the Greek. Translated by Carl Wildman. London: Lehmann. Lehner, Alfried. 2010. Die Esoterik der Pythagoreer. Der pythagoreische Orden der Antike. Tattva Viveka. Zeitschrift für Wissenschaft, Philosophie und Spirituelle Kultur 44: 17–23. Excerpt, Accessed 15 July 2018. http://www.tattva.de/ die-esoterik-der-pythagoreer-3. Marcovich, Miroslav, ed. 1999. Diogenes Laertius. Vitae Philosophorum. Vol. 1. Stuttgart and Leipzig: Teubner. Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni. 1971 [1572]. Ioannes Picus Mirandula Marsilio Ficino. In Joannes Picus Mirandulanus. Opera Omnia. Vol. 1. Facsimile reprint of the Basel edition of 1572, ed. Heinrich Petri, 367–368. Turin: Bottega d’Erasmo. ———. 1988. Über die Würde des Menschen. Aus dem Neulateinischen übertragen von Herbert Werner Rüssel. Mit der Lebensbeschreibung Picos von Thomas Morus (1510). Zürich: Manesse. Rajneesh, Bhagwan Shree [Osho]. 1971. Turning In [A Collection of Thirty Immortal Letters Written to H. H. Ma Yoga Mukta (Mrs. Catherine Venizelos), President, Neo-Sannyas International for North America]. Bombay: Jeevan Jagriti Kendra. ——— [Osho]. 1977. The Book of the Secrets I. Discourses on “Vigyana Bhairava Tantra”. New York and London: Harper & Row. ——— [Osho]. 1978. The Hidden Harmony: Discourses on the Fragments of Heraclitus. London: Sheldon Press. ——— [Osho]. 1981. Philosophia Perennis. Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh speaking on The Golden Verses of Pythagoras. Vol. 2. Poona: Rajneesh Foundation.

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——— [Osho]. 1985a. Glimpses of a Golden Childhood. Rajneeshpuram, OR: Rajneesh Foundation International. ——— [Osho]. 1985b. Books I Have Loved. Rajneeshpuram, OR: Rajneesh Foundation International. ——— [Osho]. 2001. Autobiography of a Spiritually Incorrect Mystic. New York: St. Martin’s Press. ——— [Osho]. 2012. The Book of Secrets: 112 Meditations to Discover the Mystery Within. New York: Osho Media International. Rāma Shāstrı̄, Mukunda, ed. 1918a. Vijñāna-Bhairava with Commentary Partly by Kṣhemarāja and Partly by Shivopādhyāya. In Kas m ́ ı̄ra saṃ skṛta granthāvali [Kashmir Series of Texts and Studies]. Vol. 8. Bombay: Tatva-Vivechaka Press. ———, ed. 1918b. The Vijñāna-Bhairava with Commentary Called Kaumadi by Ā nanda Bhat ̣ṭa. In Kaśmı̄ra saṃ skṛta granthāvali [Kashmir Series of Texts and Studies]. Vol. 9. Bombay: Tatva-Vivechaka Press. Redfield, Nayán Louise, ed. 1975. The Golden Verses of Pythagoras. Explained and Translated into French by Fabre d’Olivet. Done into English by Nayán Louise Redfield. New York: Samuel Weiser. Reps, Paul. 1957a. Foreword. In Zen Flesh, Zen Bones: A Collection of Zen and Pre-­ Zen Writings, ed. Paul Reps, 11–13. Tokyo and Rutland: Tuttle. ———. 1957b. Centering. Transcribed by Paul Reps. In Zen Flesh, Zen Bones: A Collection of Zen and Pre-Zen Writings, ed. Paul Reps, 189–209. Tokyo and Rutland: Tuttle. Rose, Valentinus, ed. 1968. Aristotelis qui ferebantur librorum fragmenta. Stuttgart: Teubner. Silburn, Lilian, ed. 1961. Le Vijñāna Bhairava. Texte traduit et commenté. Paris: E. de Boccard. Singh, Jaideva, ed. 1979. Vijñānabhairava or Divine Consciousness: A Treasury of 112 Types of Yoga. Sanskrit Text with English Translation, Expository Notes, Introduction and Glossary of Technical Terms. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. Thom, Johan C. 1995. The Pythagorean Golden Verses. With Introduction and Commentary. Leiden and Cologne: Brill. Watters, Hallie. 1926. The Pythagorean Way of Life, with a Discussion of the Golden Verses. Madras: Theosophical Publishing House.

Secondary Sources Baier, Karl. 2009. Meditation und Moderne. Zur Genese eines Kernbereichs moderner Spiritualität in der Wechselwirkung zwischen Westeuropa, Nordamerika und Asien. Vol. 1. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann. Bloom, Harold. 1973. The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry. New  York: Oxford University Press.

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Burkert, Walter. 1961. Hellenistische Pseudopythagorica. Philologus 105: 16–43, 226–246. ———. 1972. Zur geistesgeschichtlichen Einordnung einiger Pseudopythagorica. In Pseudepigrapha, ed. Kurt von Fritz, vol. 1, 23–55. Vandoeuvres and Geneva: Olivier Reverdin. Carter, Lewis F. 1990. Charisma and Control in Rajneeshpuram. New  York: Cambridge University Press. Celenza, Christopher. 1999. Pythagoras in the Renaissance: The Case of Marsilio Ficino. Renaissance Quarterly 52: 667–711. Cellier, Léon. 1998 [1953]. Fabre d’Olivet. Contribution à l’étude des aspects religieux du romantisme. Geneva: Slatkine Reprints. Centrone, Bruno. 1996. Introduzione a I Pitagorici. Rome: Laterza. Conrad, Sebastian, and Shalini Randeria. 2013. Einleitung. Geteilte Geschichten— Europa in einer postkolonialen Welt. In Jenseits des Eurozentrismus. Postkoloniale Perspektiven in den Geschichts- und Kulturwissenschaften, ed. Sebastian Conrad and Regina Römhild, 32–70. 2nd extended ed. Frankfurt am Main and New York: Campus. Fox, Judith M. 2002. Osho Rajneesh. Salt Lake City: Signature Books. Goldman, Marion S. 2004. When Leaders Dissolve: Considering Controversy and Stagnation in the Osho Rajneesh Movement. In Controversial New Religions, ed. James R.  Lewis and Jesper Aagaard Petersen, 119–137. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Gorman, Peter. 1979. Pythagoras: A Life. London: Henley. Hopfner, Theodor. 1925. Orient und griechische Philosophie. Leipzig: Hinrichs. Huffman, Carl. 2013. Plato and the Pythagoreans. In On Pythagoreanism, ed. Gabriele Cornelli, Richard McKirahan, and Constantinos Macris, 237–270. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Huxley, Aldous. 1977. Latent Human Potentialities. In The Human Situation. Lectures at Santa Barbara, 1959, ed. Piero Ferrucci, 236–253. New  York: Harper & Row. Kachroo, P.N. 2004. Ishwar Swaroop Swami Lakshman Joo. In Saints and Sages of Kashmir, ed. Triloki Nath Dhar, 295–304. New Delhi: APH Publishing Corporation. Kahn, Charles H. 2001. Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans: A Brief History. Indianapolis: Hackett. Kardaras, Nicholas. 2011. How Plato and Pythagoras Can Save Your Life: The Ancient Greek Prescription for Health and Happiness. San Francisco: Red Wheel, Weiser. Kremnitz, Georg. 1985. Fabre d’Olivet reconsidéré. Revue Lengas 18: 408–421. Law, Esteban. 2013. Die alten Theologen und das neue Licht von Osten. Zum Traditionsbegriff bei Antoine Fabre d’Olivet. In Aufklärung und Esoterik. Wege

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in die Moderne, ed. Monika Neugebauer-Wölk, Renko Geffarth, and Markus Meumann, 237–258. Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter. Lévy, Isidore. 1927. Recherches sur les sources de la légende de Pythagore. Paris: Ernest Leroux. McCalla, Arthur. 2006. Fabre d’Olivet, Antoine. In Dictionary of Gnosis & Western Esotericism, ed. Wouter J. Hanegraaff, 350–354. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Moreschini, Claudio. 2006. Ancora alcune considerazioni su Marsilio Ficino e l’ermetismo. In Marsilio Ficino. Fonti, testi, fortuna, ed. Sebastiano Gentile and Stéphane Toussaint, 89–120. Rome: Edizioni di stroia e letteratura. Nelson, Lance E. 1994. Foreword. In Self Realization in Kashmir Shaivism: The Oral Teachings of Swami Lakshmanjoo, ed. John Hughes, xi–xxxii. Albany: State University of New York Press. Palmer, Susan J., and Arvind Sharma. 1993. The Rajneesh Papers: Studies in a New Religious Movement. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. Randeria, Shalini. 1999. Geteilte Geschichte und verwobene Moderne. In Zukunftsentwürfe. Ideen für eine Kultur der Veränderung, ed. Jörn Rüsen, Hanna Leitgeb, and Norbert Jegelka, 87–96. Frankfurt am Main and New York: Campus. ———. 2002. Entangled Histories of Uneven Modernities: Civil Society, Caste Solidarities and Legal Pluralism in Post-Colonial India. In Unraveling Ties: From Social Cohesion to New Practices of Connectedness, ed. Yehuda Elkana, Ivan Krastev, Elisio S. Macamo, and Shalini Randeria, 284–311. Frankfurt am Main and New York: Campus. Renger, Almut-Barbara. 2013. The Allure of the ‘Master’: Critical Assessments of a Term and Narrative. Diskus. The Journal of the British Association for the Study of Religions 14: 95–125. ———. 2015. Von Pythagoras zur arabischen Alchemie? Über Longue-Durée-­ Konstruktionen und Wissensbewegungen im Mittelmeerraum. In Magia daemoniaca, magia naturalis, zouber. Schreibweisen von Magie und Alchemie in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit, ed. Peter André Alt, Jutta Eming, Tilo Renz, and Volkhard Wels, 19–56. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Renger, Almut-Barbara, and Roland Alexander Ißler. 2016. Pythagoras. In Figures of Antiquity and their Reception in Art, Literature and Music. New Pauly-­ Supplements. Translated by Duncan Smart and Chad M. Schroeder, ed. Peter von Möllendorff, Annette Simonis, and Linda Simonis, Vol. 7, 341–351. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Renger, Almut-Barbara, and Alessandro Stavru, eds. 2016. Pythagorean Knowledge from the Ancient to the Modern World: Askesis, Religion, Science. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Riedel, Ingrid, and Michael Mildenberger. 1980. Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. Modell einer psycho-religiösen Bewegung. Information Nr. 78 III/80, Evangelische Zentralstelle für Weltanschauungsfragen. Stuttgart: EZW.

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Riedweg, Christoph. 2007. Pythagoras. Leben, Lehre, Nachwirkung. 2nd ed. Munich: C. H. Beck. Sperling, Ehud C. 1975. Introduction. In The Golden Verses of Pythagoras. Explained and Translated into French by Fabre d’Olivet. Done into English by Nayán Louise Redfield, ed. Nayán Louise Redfield, i–viii. New  York: Samuel Weiser. Staab, Gregor. 2002. Pythagoras in der Spätantike: Studien zu De Vita Pythagorica des Iamblichos von Chalkis. Leipzig: Teubner. Süss, Joachim. 1994. Zur Erleuchtung unterwegs: Neo-Sannyasin in Deutschland und ihre Religion. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer. ———. 1996. Bhagwans Erbe. München: Claudius. Tanner, Fritz. 1986. Bhagwan. Gauner—Gaukler—Gott? Altstätten: Panorama. Thesleff, Holger. 1961. An Introduction to the Pythagorean Writings of the Hellenistic Period. Turku: Åbo Akademi. ———. 1965. The Pythagorean Texts of the Hellenistic Period. Turku: Åbo Akademi. Thiel, Detlef. 2006. Die Philosophie des Xenokrates im Kontext der Alten Akademie. Leipzig: Teubner. Thoden, Anna, and Ingemarie Schmidt. 1987. Der Mythos um Bhagwan. Die Geschichte einer Bewegung. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt. Urban, Hugh B. 2005. Osho, From Sex Guru to Guru of the Rich: The Spiritual Logic of Late Capitalism. In Gurus in America, ed. Thomas A.  Forsthoeffel and Cynthia Ann Humes, 169–192. Albany: State University of New York Press. ———. 2015. Zorba the Buddha: Sex, Spirituality, and Capitalism in the Global Osho Movement. Oakland: University of California Press. Zeller, Eduard. 1856. Die Philosophie der Griechen in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung. I, 1. Allgemeine Einleitung. Vorsokratische Philosophie. 2nd revised ed. Tübingen: Fues. Zhmud, Leonid. 1997. Wissenschaft, Philosophie und Religion im frühen Pythagoreismus. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag. ———. 2012. Pythagoras and the Early Pythagoreans. Translated by Kevin Windle and Rosh Ireland. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

CHAPTER 15

African and Amerindian Spirits: A Note on the Influence of Nineteenth-Century Spiritism and Spiritualism on Afroand African-American Religions Hans Gerald Hödl

Le spiritisme est la seule des doctrines spiritualistes du XIXe siècle qui ait réussi à survivre à la mort de son fondateur et à se transformer en “religion” au sens sociologique du terme —Cuchet (2007: 74)

Nineteenth-century Occultism has many sources (Baier 2009: 277–290), among them mesmerism—which has had a strong impact on Kardecian spiritism—and American spiritualism.1 Both of these currents have their 1  I use “spiritualism” for the US-American form of mediumism, centred on the “believe in the ability of the living to communicate with the dead,” including practices like “table-rappings, levitation and trances” (Fernández Olmos and Paravisini-Gebert 2011: 203–204) that

H. G. Hödl (*) University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 L. Pokorny, F. Winter (eds.), The Occult Nineteenth Century, Palgrave Studies in New Religions and Alternative Spiritualities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55318-0_15

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own history in the Americas, be it as religious traditions on their own or as influences on Afro- and African-American religions.2 This chapter compares the impact of Kardecian spiritism on the religious landscape of Brazil, Cuba, and Puerto Rico, and of spiritualism on New Orleans-based spiritual churches with a focus on the relationship of Afro- or African-American religions to spiritism and spiritualism. Whereas all of these topics have been described and discussed separately for each of the countries or locations mentioned, hitherto there has been no attempt in scholarly literature to bring Brazilian, Caribbean, and Americana (Louisiana) Studies together regarding this topic. Cathy Gutierrez (2015) provides a chapter on spiritism in Brazil, with some allusions made to Puerto Rico (which is also mentioned in the chapter on reincarnation), but omits spiritism in Cuba and spiritualism in New Orleans, whereas Fernández Olmos and Paravisini-­ Gebert (2011)—due to the focus of their book—give an overview of the Caribbean (Cuba/Puerto Rico). There are in-depth studies on spiritism in the aforementioned Latin American countries and the influence of spirit(ual)ism on Afro-American and African-American religions has been addressed in many works dedicated to one of them, but an overall comparison is still a desideratum. In this chapter, a first step is taken to fill this lacuna.3

can be traced back to the Fox Sisters in Hydeville 1848 and Andrew Jackson Davis’ (1826–1910) The Principles of Nature (see Ahlstrom 2004: 488–490; Jacobs and Kaslow 2001: 73–74; Baier 2009: 244). “Spiritism,” on the other hand, refers to the Kardecian system and its offshoots in the Americas (see also Schmidt 1995: 164). According to Cuchet (2007: 76), the translation of “spiritualism” as “spiritisme” might have been introduced by Kardec to avoid a lexical ambiguity, as “spiritualisme” in French denoted those who, in opposition to materialist philosophy, stuck to the notion of an “immortal soul”: “On a pris l’habitude en France de désigner par ‘spiritisme’ l’ensemble des pratiques nées aux ÉtatsUnis en 1848 et importées en Europe autour de 1852 […]. Le mot n’a été inventé par Allan Kardec qu’en 1857. Jusque-là, on parlait de ‘spiritualisme américain’, de ‘spiritualisme moderne’, de ‘phénomènes magnétiques’ ou de ‘phénomènes des tables’” (Cuchet 2007: 75; see also Aureliano and Zikán Cardoso 2015: 275). Kardec (1860: 1) explains that “[l]es mots spirituel, spiritualiste, spiritualisme” already have a defined meaning, so that adding one more meaning would mean “multiplier les causes déjà si nombreuses d’amphibologie,” and therefore “nous employons pour désigner” the belief in spirits and their communication with the visible world “ceux [mots] de spirite et de spiritisme.” 2  I use “African-American” for US citizens of African descent and “Afro-American” for inhabitants of South America and the Caribbean stemming from sub-Saharan Africa. 3  For example, occult traditions in Trinidad or the cult of Maria Lionza in Venezuela have not been taken into account in my overview.

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Allen Kardec Hyppolite Rivail (1804–1869), a French academic,4 founded spiritism in the 1850s and 1860s, after having come into contact with spiritualistic circles and practices. Strongly influenced by the theory of animal magnetism as promoted by Franz Anton Mesmer (1734–1815),5 he adopted the name “Allen Kardec,” which was the name of a Gaelic druid, as he believed to be an incarnation of the same spirit as this druid had been (Sharp 2015: 232). In many books, he gave a systematic outline of a spiritist worldview. His foundational work, entitled Le livre des esprits (1857), is written in a dialogical style: in numbered paragraphs spirits give the answers to basic questions concerning worldview. Kardec’s theology is clearly monotheistic;6 he refutes both Pantheism and the idea that man can become (part of the) deity.7 The Godhead, an absolute power, creator of the universe, is on top of the hierarchy of spiritual beings: eternal, unchangeable, omnipotent, just, and good.8 The cosmos consists of the material plane and spirits, who primarily inhabit an invisible natural world.9 Capable of communicating with humankind by the means of mediumistic phenomena (e.g., Kardec 1860: 11–12; 17–18; 23; 25), spirits incarnate as human beings,10 but on

4  On Kardec and a sketch of his system, see Schmidt 1995: 158–167, Hödl 2003: 497–498, Noguera Negrão 2005, Cuchet 2007: 79–83, Fernández Olmos and Paravisini-Gebert 2011: 204–209. 5  Especially his notion of the “périsprit” is influenced by Mesmer’s concept of the “fluid.” See below on Kardec’s theory of reincarnation. On Kardec and Mesmer, see Noguera Negrão 2005: 5089, Cuchet 2007: 81; on Mesmer, mesmerism, and its vast influence on alternative spirituality, esotericism, occultism, and the religious history of the USA, see Baier 2009: 179–290. 6  My sketch of the main outlines of Kardecism is drawn from Kardec 1860, his “fundamental work,” “usually called […] the bible of Spiritism” (Warren 1968: 395). Although most of my description is taken from the answers of spirits to specific questions, as a rule, I quote these citations as “Kardec.” I also refer to Kardec 1869. 7  Kardec 1860: 36–37. 8  “Dieu est éternel, immuable, immatériel, unique, tout-puissant, souverainement juste et bon” (Kardec 1860: 9; see also 34–35). Nevertheless, humans cannot know God’s inner attributes, as the spirit answers to Kardec’s question: “L’homme peut-il comprendre la nature intime de Dieu?”: “Non; c’est un sens qui lui manqué.” 9  “Les êtres matériels constituent le monde visible ou corporel, et les êtres immatériels le monde invisible ou spirite, c’est-à-dire des Esprits” (Kardec 1860: 9). 10  “L’incarnation des Esprits a toujours lieu dans l’espèce humaine; ce serait une erreur de croire que l’âme ou Esprit peut s’incarner dans le corps d’un animal” (Kardec 1860: 10).

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different levels of perfection—due to their “purification”11—not only on earth, but also on other planets.12 Brought forth initially by god, they are the main actors in this world, endowed with a free will despite being submitted to the law of universal progress. In the world of the spirits, progress means constant evolution towards a higher spiritual perfection. Kardec’s doctrine of spiritual progress rests upon the central idea of cause and effect. This bears a resemblance to the Indian concept of karma. But because of the central idea of universal progress—seemingly taken over from the philosophy of Enlightenment—the Kardecian concept of reincarnation differs significantly from the one held in Indian thought.13 In Kardecism, it deals with incarnations of basically spiritual entities, which— due to their moral decisions—are bound to different planes of existence, more or less mingling with the material plane. One important part of Kardec’s theory of reincarnation is the notion of a principe vitale, responsible for the existence of organic beings (life). This “principle of life” has its source in the fluide universel, a term obviously stemming from

11  “[…] l’âme serait ainsi d’une nature matérielle plus ou moins essentielle selon le degré de son épuration” (Kardec 1869: 48). 12  See the chapter “Incarnation dans les différents mondes” in Kardec 1860: 92–96. As Warren (1968: 396) notes: “More than anything else, the idea of multiple existence of the spirit sets Kardecism apart from Anglo-Saxon Spiritualism […] Spiritism may be called evolutionist, because it dwells on the immortality of the soul and […] Spiritualism static, because it emphasizes resurrection.” 13  In classic Hindu thought, an indestructible (in fact, essential) part of the being is transferred from one existence to another, a process called “metempsychosis” by Kardec (e.g., Kardec 1860: 108: “Pythagore, […] n’est pas l’auteur du système de la métempsycose; il l’a puisée chez les philosophes indiens et chez les Egyptiens, où elle existait de temps immemorial”). “Reincarnation” can also be thought of as a kind of impulse stemming from the former existence determining the latter, with no “essence” transferred, which is, roughly spoken, the Buddhist version. With respect to the relationship of Afro-American religions based on the Yorùbá worldview to Kardecism, it has to be stated that the idea of “reincarnation” in Yorùbá anthropology is neither the same as in Indian thought nor is it in line with Kardecism. A reincarnated spirit is principally a member of the family or a clan, in most cases the grandfather or grandmother, and reincarnation is desired both by the ancestor and the family (in case the ancestor was a good one), as life on earth among one’s family or clan is good per se (Bascom 1969: 71–76; Awolalu 1979: 59–60). The contribution to the shaping of an individual by an ancestor can be conceived as a stimulus rather than a transferring of its “essence,” because the ancestor is thought of as existing for himself in Orun (heaven); see Awolalu 1979: 60. Beier (1954: 329) reports the case of a grandfather reborn while he was still alive.

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mesmerism.14 The so-called périsprit that covers the soul (or the spirit) like the perisperm covers the seed of a plant15—the means by which disincarnated spirits retain their individuality16—also has its roots in the fluide universel that differs according to the atmosphere of the planet where the spirit is incarnated (Kardec 1860: 61). As Kardec holds that the supernatural or invisible world is subject to natural laws and therefore can be investigated with methods similar to those used in the natural sciences,17 Kardecian spiritism cannot only be looked at as a forerunner of Parapsychology; it also offers to its adherents a kind of scientific weltanschauung, as opposed to merely “superstitious” belief in spirits and the like.18 Furthermore, Christian charity is the highest value in Kardec’s system. As Christ is considered to have been the most elevated spirit that has ever been incarnated,19 Kardecism is catering to people with a background in Christianity who are critical about their church for some reason or another. The social world, where the morally free spirits are striving for development, is the product of their choices in former lives. Thus, it can be looked at as intrinsically just—despite its injustices and inequalities. 14  Kardec 1860: 53: “[…] c’est ce que vous appelez fluide magnétique ou fluide électrique animalisé. Il est l’intermédiaire, le lien entre l’esprit et la matière.” See also Kardec 1860: 45, with the answer to the question “Où étaient les éléments organiques avant la formation de la terre?” given by the spirit asked: “Ils se trouvaient, pour ainsi dire, à l’état de fluide dans l’espace, au milieu des Esprits, ou dans d’autres planètes, attendant la création de la terre pour commencer une nouvelle existence sur un globe nouveau.” 15  Kardec 1860: 61: “Comme le germe d’un fruit est entouré du périsperme, de même l’Esprit proprement dit est environné d’une enveloppe que, par comparaison, on peut appeler périsprit.” 16  See Kardec 1860: 83: the question “Comment l’âme constate-t-elle son individualité, puisqu’elle n’a plus son corps matériel?” is answered by the spirit: “Elle a encore un fluide qui lui est propre, qu’elle puise dans l’atmosphère de sa planète et qui représente l’apparence de sa dernière incarnation: son périsprit.” 17  He calls magnetism and spiritism two sciences, which are basically one and the same and are apt to prevent superstitious beliefs: “Le spiritisme et le magnétisme nous donnent la clef d’une foule de phénomènes sur lesquels l’ignorance a brodé une infinité de fables où les faits sont exagérés par l’imagination. La connaissance éclairée de ces deux sciences, qui n’en font qu’une pour ainsi dire […] est le meilleur préservatif contre les idées superstitieuses” (Kardec 1860: 219; see also ibid. 165, where the spirit asked calls magnetism “le pilote de cette science que vous comprendrez mieux plus tard”). 18  The scientific approach of Kardec has, for example, been noted by David Hess (1987: 16): “Kardec viewed his doctrine as a kind of empirical science of the spirit world […].” 19  See, for example, Kardec 1860: 373, where Christ is called “l’archétype humain” and “l’Homme-Dieu.” Very often the spirits quoted in this book (among them St. Paul and St. Augustine) refer to Christian charity; see, for instance, Kardec 1860: 322–324.

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This way Kardec’s theory of reincarnation also solves the problem of theodicy.20 The scientific worldview and a background in Christianity might have been among the reasons that Kardecism rapidly spread within Latin America and—in contrast to Europe—became very popular up to our days, namely in Brazil, Cuba, and Puerto Rico.

Kardecism in Brazil In Brazil, we find Kardecian spiritism as a religious tradition of its own and as a main influence on Umbanda, a religious current that is sometimes labelled Afro-American. According to Diana Brown (1994: 1–2), the term Umbanda refers to “an extremely varied […] range of beliefs and practices,” with groups strongly drawing on Kardecism on one extreme of the spectrum and those heavily influenced by African traditions on the other, blending with elements from Catholicism, South Asian religions,21 and esoteric practices to different degrees, looked at by some as the one and only Brazilian religion. This religion, with its background in spiritism, came about in the 1920s in Rio de Janeiro. According to Roger Bastide (1978: 314–316), spiritism was introduced in Brazil in 1863, and there are three different versions to be found: (1) a “scientific” one of the “intellectuals,” practiced mostly by academics; (2) one that has the “modernday Gospel of Allen Kardec” at its centre,22 mostly practiced by lower-class whites; and (3) “low Spiritism,”23 as practiced mostly by “blacks,” although it did not “remain confined to the coloured class.”24

20  Kardec 1860: 91: “La doctrine de la réincarnation, c’est-à-dire celle qui consiste à admettre pour l’homme plusieurs existences successives, est la seule qui réponde à l’idée que nous nous faisons de la justice de Dieu à l’égard des hommes placés dans une condition morale inférieure, la seule qui puisse nous expliquer l’avenir et asseoir nos espérances, puisqu’elle nous offre le moyen de racheter nos erreurs par de nouvelles épreuves.” 21  For example, some Umbandists trace the name of Umbanda to “Om-Bandha,” maintaining that this was a Sanskrit word (Bastide 1978: 321). 22  Kardec’s L’évangile selon le spirtisme, originally published in 1864, in Brazilian Portuguese. There are also many printings in Spanish that are central to some Caribbean versions of Kardecismo. 23  A pejorative term coined by whites (Bastide 1978: 315). 24  Giobellina Brumana and Gonzalez Martinez (1989: 32) only distinguish between “Kardecism” and “low Spiritism,” under which they subsume—in contradistinction to Bastide—Umbanda and (to a lesser extent) Candomblé.

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The formation of Umbanda25—with influences of Afro-American religions such as Candomblé26 and Macumba27—is, according to Bastide (1978: 319), a reaction of the “Negro” to the fact that spiritists would accept “blacks” only in subordinate roles in their societies. Hence, the coming into existence of Umbanda28 is a kind of “upgrading” of Macumba through spiritism by “the more highly developed black” who saw “that macumba lowered him in the eyes of the whites” but, at the same time, did not want “to abandon his African tradition altogether.” Brown (1994: 39) relates a story told to her by her informant Zélio de Moraes, according to which Umbanda came into existence when he was paralysed and treated by Kardecists. He was visited by the spirit of a Jesuit priest who told him that his illness was a spiritual one and that he was called to found a truly Brazilian religion, “dedicated to the worship and propitiation of Brazilian  Bastide (1978: 480) defines “Umbanda” as “African form of Spiritism.”  Candomblé is the name of an Afro-Brazilian religious tradition stemming from Salvador de Bahia. According to Graden (2006: 103), the word comes from a Bantu verbal form “kubonda or ku-lomba,” meaning “to praise, pray, worship and invoke.” Graden gives an overview of the history of the relationship of Brazilian state authorities and the Catholic Church to Candomblé (ibid.: 103–131). When he writes that Africans practiced Candomblé in West and South Central Africa, this is a historical mistake (ibid.: 103)—in fact they did not, but practiced religious cults that had an influence on shaping Brazilian Candomblé. On the different traditions that shaped Bahian Candomblé, see Harding 2003: 38–40. There are at least three different Yorùbá traditions, Bantu (Angola) traditions, and Aja-Fon (mostly from the historical kingdom of Dahomey) traditions that formed different “nations” of Candomblé practice. As Harding (2003: 40) aptly points out, in Brazil these are not to be understood as ethnic divisions; rather, they are to be looked at as differences in ritual practices and spirits worshipped. She also takes a stance against the—“racist”—idea that the predominance of Yorùbá traditions in shaping Candomblé was caused by a superiority of Yorùbá culture over other African traditions (rather than historical circumstances). 27  Bastide (1978: 476) defines “Macumba” as “African sect in Rio. By extension, Black Magic.” He treats Macumba, described by him (and others) as a forerunner of Umbanda, in chapter 13 as a kind of urban disintegration of Afro-Brazilians from their African heritage. Nevertheless it is not really clear whether the term is used here for early forms of Umbanda or for a religious movement of its own (Brown 1994: 26). “Macumba” also seems to be used (“by extension”) as an umbrella term for activities and rituals among Afro-Brazilians considered to represent “(black) magic.” Smith Omari-Tunkara (2005: 1) sees the difference between the two currents in the role of blood sacrifice in Macumba. Further discussion of the terminology and of Bastide’s definitions in his classic treatment of Afro-Brazilian religions are beyond the scope of this chapter. 28  On the impact of urbanisation on the emergence of that religion, which blends elements of Kardecism with those from traditions of the black slaves and the urban black poor, see Bastide 1978: 304–342. 25 26

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spirits: Caboclos […] and Prethos Velhos.” Such spirits—those of Indians and of enslaved Africans—were not welcome in Kardecism, which,29 despite its important activities in charity directed to the urban poor, does not overcome social boundaries between higher- and lower-class citizens. Given the very different clientele of different Umbanda groups—from “whitewashed” spiritist-oriented, middle to high class communities to those whose members are mostly Afro-Americans from the favelas—the spirits of old slaves (pretos velhos/pretas velhas) are interpreted in different ways: “not only a reflection of Brazil’s historical ambivalence about race […] but also a function of Umbanda’s diverse following” as Hale (1997: 395)—who interviewed some of them when they were incorporated by mediums—puts it, and who reads them as “sign-vehicles through which Umbandistas speak to and embody Brazilian dramas of race and power.”30 As she points out, in some interpretations the caboclos, that is, the spirits of the Indians, are looked at as superior to the pretos velhos, because they are not bearing the mark of submission associated with slavery: “[…] the Indian embodies physical courage, pride, and nobility.” Most of the spirits in Umbanda can also be found in Candomblé, but there is a different organisation of the spirit world in these two traditions. First, like in Umbanda, there is no single Candomblé with one stable hierarchy of spirits. Although in many descriptions only Yorùbá-influenced Nagô-­ Candomblés are taken into account,31 there are more types of Candomblés among them, “differentiated according to ritual conventions and organizational formations” (Smith Omari-Tunkara 2005: 14) and according to the “nations” (the ethnic origins of the slaves brought to Brazil): Gege (Ewe and Fon from West Africa), Angola and Congo (Bantu/Central African), and Caboclo Candomblés. Most of the spirits worshipped and received in possession trance are not exclusive to one of those Candomblés. For example, Yorùbá orixa (deities) are also honoured in Bantu Candomblés and rituals. Caboclos are “frequently mixed with Angola, Gege, or Yoruba cosmology” (ibid.: 15) in Caboclo Candomblés, whilst they can also play a subaltern role in the “African” Candomblés. Indian spirits are often 29  Brown (1994: 25) argues that “[…] less educated and cultured spirits who clearly symbolize the lower sectors of the population are rejected rather than incorporated into [Kardecist] rituals.” 30  Clearly, in the more “Africanised” versions of Umbanda, they play a more significant role. 31  See, for instance, Clarke 2001, Houk 2001, Berkenbrock 1995, de Hohenstein 1991, Smith Omari-Tunkara 2005—the latter gives a glossary of orixa in Yorùbá and Bantu Candomblés on pp. 145–149.

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espiritos desencarnados (ancestors), and there are two kinds, indios (wearing feathers) and boiadeiros (cattle herders) (ibid.). In the varying pantheons of Umbanda, there are relatively complex hierarchies of the spirit world, which principally have a godhead at the top and seven ranks of deities (Yorùbá orixa with their Catholic/Congo counterparts) that rule over further legions (subdivisions) each.32 Like the pretos velhos, there are other spirits in Umbanda that can be seen as a kind of extension to the traditional African spirits and the Caboclos at the centre of worship in Candomblé:33 oguns (soldiers, named after the Yorùbá God of iron casting); bahianos (inhabitants of the north-eastern part of Brazil); marinheiros (sailors); boiadeiros (cowboys); ciganos (gypsies); crianças (children); exus and pomba giras (crooks and prostitutes; exus are named after the Yorùbá trickster); eguns and sofredores (dead people without one of the characteristics of the above-mentioned groups; egun is the Yorùbá word for ancestor). Although the godhead is at the centre of the hierarchy and the orixa rule over the several lines, a multiplicity of spirits of the dead are in fact at the centre of Umbanda ritual practice—a trait Umbanda shares with other forms of spiritism. One of the main characteristics of all these movements is a focus on healing. In a way, we can distinguish a “religious” and a “therapeutic” dimension in these forms of spiritism, although they also have their “intellectual” and “political” ones.34 Clearly, the therapeutic aspect is not detached from “religion,” as in all the forms of healing we find in “spiritist” movements in Brazil, the therapeutic scheme involves super-human agents.35 These super-human agents are called “guides” in Kardecian spiritism, “orixa” in Candomblé, “guides and orixa” in Umbanda, whereas— for the sake of completeness—in Pentecostalism “Jesus” is the healing figure (Giobellina Brumana and Gonzalez Martinez 1989: 30–40).36 32  For Umbanda pantheons (or “lines of spirits”), see especially Giobellina Brumana and Gonzalez Martinez 1989: 155–165, see also Bastide 1978: 322–324, and the tables in Brown 1994: 56–58; 60–61. 33  This list follows Giobellina Brumana and Gonzalez Martinez 1989: 161–163. 34  Giobellina Brumana and Gonzalez Martinez 1989: 22, with respect to Umbanda. 35  My term, not taken from the sources discussed. 36  As Giobellina Brumana and Gonzalez-Martinez (1989: 29) point out, there is a “blind spot of Catholicism” with respect to religious healing as it is looked at as illegitimate—in contradistinction to official medical care. Whereas in rural areas there is no need to leave the field of Catholicism for alternative cures, in urban ones there exist the four aforementioned ways of getting “spiritual” cures for illnesses.

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The relationship of Brazilian spiritism to official medicine has been treated by David Hess (1987) who also shows how inner tensions between various groups of spiritists have been settled from time to time as a reaction to pressure by Church and state authorities, but rose again when pressure diminished. The main fracture in Brazilian spiritism lies between a “scientific” and a “religious” orientation, the latter strongly influenced by Roustaingism. Jean Baptiste Roustaing (1805–1879), a French spiritist who seems to be almost totally forgotten in Europe (Cuchet 2007: 79–80; Hess 1987: 16–17) but is still of importance in Brazilian spiritism, is the author of a “corrected” version of the gospels (Roustaing 1866),37 based on communications of the medium Madame Collignon with the evangelists (Monroe 2015: 266–268). In contrast to Kardec, he restated the divinity of Christ, whereas Kardec explicitly opposed Roustaing’s docetic Christology, according to which Christ was not incarnated as a human being but had a “fluidic” or “perispiritual” body from conception on (Hess 1987: 16; see also Warren 1968: 398).38 When Adolfo Bezerra de Menezes Cavalcanti (1831–1900), who as a devotee of Mother Mary had an inclination to Catholicism (Aureliano and Zikán Cardoso 2015: 278), became the president of the Federação Espírita Brasileira in 1895, he sought to reconcile the two fractions by fostering Roustaingism (Hess 1987: 18). As Hess (ibid.) points out, “by 1920 the leading organization of Brazilian Spiritism had refashioned Kardec’s spiritist doctrine in terms of Roustaingism.” The further history of spiritism in Brazil was characterised by ever new quarrels between Roustaingist and Kardecist parties or federations (ibid: 22; 24; 28). The strong orientation towards healing in Brazilian spiritism (as distinguished from the ethical and moral orientation of “orthodox” Kardecism) seems to have played a role in these fractions as well, since the médiuns receitistas (mediums who receive prescriptions by spirits)39 are named by Hess (ibid.: 18–19; 21; 31) in the context of the controversies within Brazilian spiritism as followers of Roustaingism. As 37  It is worth noting that the author claims that “[c]ette oeuvre n’émane point de moi” (Roustaing 1866: i), but is a revelation on the revelation of the evangelists, assisted by the apostles. The preface (Roustaing 1866: i–xxxiii) consists not only of remarks by Roustaing, but also of messages by the four evangelists and Moses. 38  On Roustaing and the relationship of Kardec and Roustaing see Monroe 2015: 265–270. 39  Kardec discerns between those and “healing mediums”: “Médiums médicaux; leur qualité est de servir plus facilement d’interprètes aux Esprits pour les prescriptions médicales. Il ne faut pas les confondre avec les médiums guérisseurs, car ils ne font absolument que transmettre la pensée de l’Esprit, et n’ont par eux-mêmes aucune influence” (Kardec 1869: 188).

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Hess (ibid.: 17) has also shown, one of the reasons that healing practice could become an important trait of spiritism in Brazil was that “the orthodox medical profession was much less firmly established than in Europe.” Nevertheless, spiritism was attacked by members of the medical profession several times (ibid.: 21–23). Yet, spiritists owned (psychiatric) hospitals in which “orthodox” doctors worked, “a situation that was not conducive to their labelling spirit mediumship a form of psychopathology” (ibid.: 23). To sum this up, spiritism as a whole flourished in Brazil mainly because of its religio-therapeutic dimension, although there were factions between more scientifically oriented and more religious versions of spiritism. Furthermore, we can distinguish various forms of spiritism, and an influence of Kardecism on Afro-Brazilian Umbanda, with a stronger emphasis on spirits of the dead than in earlier Afro-American religions like Candomblé.40 Umbanda served as a kind of white-washing of Africanderived religious traditions but was looked at as superstitious by the more scientific layout of Kardecism in urban areas. But in itself, it is divided into more Africanised and more “spiritist” centres, according to the place on the social ladder of its practitioners.41 As Aureliano and Zikán Cardoso (2015: 280) conclude, there is a continuum of spiritist religions in Brazil, with Kardecism on one end and Umbanda on the other, “and in between a series of combinations.” Apart from mediumship these religions also have in common a therapeutic aspect as well as being “a means for social adjustment in the context of rapid urbanisation.”

Kardecism in the Caribbean We find a similar situation of Kardecist spiritism in Cuba and Puerto Rico. I will shortly outline parallels and differences to the Brazilian religious field. In Cuba, Kardecismo has spread at about the same time as in Brazil,42 and there are three main forms of Kardecian spiritism: (1) espiritismo ­cientifico or de mesa (table spiritism), which is thought of by its 40  Another Brazilian religion with a ritual focus on spirit possession that appropriated “spirits […] from […] Kardecism and Umbanda” (Dawson 2010: 141), Santo Daime, can only be mentioned here (see Dawson 2010). 41  Whereas Umbandists show a certain respect to Kardecism (despite its perceived lacking of real rituals), the reverse is not the case. Umbanda is considered “low-brow” by Kardecists (Giobellina Brumana and Gonzalez Martinez 1989: 288–290). 42  “[…] around the same time (mid-19th century) that Yoruba traditions became dominant in Cuba” (Viarnés 2007: 140).

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practitioners to be a philosophy rather than a religion.43 The name stems from the practice that the members of a meeting are seated around a table, mostly covered by a white cloth, invoking the spirits. Hymns are sung, prayers (taken from the works of Kardec) are spoken, and spirits communicate through mediums in mild forms of trances in a language more or less elaborated due to their spiritual level;44 (2) espritismo de cordón (Fernández Olmos and Paravisini-Gebert 2011: 211–214), which is loosely organised and sets itself apart from both the “authoritarian” Catholicism of the “white man” and the “superstitions” of the blacks—in this respect similar to the less Africanised Umbanda centres. The name cordón stems from the form of its ritual, in which members basically stand in a circle, hand in hand. After ritual work has begun at the table, mediums form “the circular cord that passes a ‘mediumistic fluid’ through the human chain” (ibid.: 214), a practice that obviously sprung up from the mesmeric background of Kardecism. Although its rituals hint to a strong Kardecian bias of this form of espiritismo, scholars see an influence of Congo traditions45 in its ways of communicating with the dead; (3) espiritismo cruzado, widespread in Santiago de Cuba, the most “Africanised” form of Cuban spiritism (although pure examples of the typology presented in literature will rather be the exception than the rule in reality). The main difference to the other forms is an inclusion of elements from African traditions—apart from spirits and deities—such as animal sacrifice.46 Espiritismo cruzado features a special ritual for the dead, the cajon (para los muertos), named after the principal percussion instrument used (a box with snares attached). Spirits of Indians, Congos and Gypsies are

 See Fernández Olmos and Paravisini-Gebert 2011: 211.  Some authors also mention an espiritismo de caridad, which, according to Pescoso Molina (2008: 4), it is mainly focused on healing and closely resembles espiritismo de mesa: “Esta variante tiene características muy similares al espiritismo científico con respecto a las creencias que se adoptan como fundamento. La diferencia radica en el uso durante sus prácticas de un ritual llamado despojo o santiguación.” 45  As Viarnés (2007: 139) expounds, “Congo” is a fluid “ethnic” marker in the history of slavery in Cuba, having been used for groups with a variety of different African “homelands.” Nevertheless, “Africans from the Congo region and their descendants were quite possibly the dominant population of color in Cuba prior to the arrival of the Yoruba.” 46  José Millet, quoted by Viarnés (2007: 157), defines it as a “type of spiritism in which […] components of popular catholicism and […] of religious cults of African origin are mixed, with particular emphasis on […] cults of bantú origin. Also present are elements of santería, spiritism, and Espiritismo del cordón.” 43 44

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invoked (Viarnés 2007: 134)—a striking resemblance to some of the spirits central to Candomblé and Umbanda. These Cuban spiritist traditions share one common element, the “table.” A bóveda, a table covered with a white cloth on which glasses or goblets filled with water, candles, and pictures of the deceased are placed, forms the centre of the misa espiritual, a ritual for communicating with the recently deceased in order to establish a steady connection with them in espiritismo cruzado, where this is an essential practice—although the other Cuban versions of Espiritismo also include it, albeit with different accents (Castañeda Mache 1999: 3).47 The misa espiritual is also practiced by members of Afro-Cuban Santería, be it in the Congo-based Regla Mayombe (Palo Monte)48 or the Yorùbá-based Regla Ocha.49 Raul Cañizares (1993: 76–79) has suggested that the reason for the incorporation of Kardecist rituals for communication with the dead lay in the fact that African (in this case: Yorùbá) traditions of representing the death by especially trained mediums in secret societies (egungun) did not survive in Cuba; rather, during the formative years of Santería, slaves saw their masters communicating with the dead in Kardecian séances. Furthermore, George Brandon (1997: 175–177), following Cabrera, remarks that mediumship was not alien to Africans, although he also states that—in a racist society—the loftier forms of mediumship in European-derived spiritism could be looked at as more “white” or “civilised” than those in African derived possession cults. Compared to Brazil, we see a similar division between scientific Kardecism, folk Kardecism, and African-derived religions making use of elements from Kardecism within the cultural matrix they are built upon. It seems that the situation in Puerto Rico slightly differs from the one in Cuba, although some reasons for the success of spiritism on the island 47  “La misa espiritual de difuntos […] a realizar por la familia del fallecido es, generalmente, efectuada por espiritista [sic] cruzados, aunque los científicos y cordoneros, también la incorporan en su práctica, pero con un matiz diferente.” Castañeda Mache gives a detailed description of the ritual. 48  It has to be noted that “Congo” is a rather unspecific “ethnic” category, as “[d]uring the course of the slave trade, ‘Congo’ lost its specificity and was eventually used to describe people from a variety of ethnic groups residing in West-Central Africa” (Viarnés 2007: 139). 49  The latter has been more extensively studied and it has also been much more effectively exported to other countries. Most studies dealing with Santería restrain themselves more or less to Regla Ocha. On Reglas Palo see, for example, Cabrera 1986 as well as Fernández Olmos and Paravisini-Gebert 2011: 88–99.

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are similar to those found in Cuba. As Raquel Romberg (1998: 70) remarks, (1) spirit worship has been a part of anti-clerical folk Catholicism with some roots in Taino Indian religion, and (2) Kardecism (like Freemasonry) had an appeal to “liberal, progressive elites” who, opposed to “the conservative elites who fought continuation of Spanish Catholic rule,” opted for “abolition of slavery, independence, and freedom of religion.” The book that had sold even more than the Bible at the beginning of the twentieth century in Puerto Rico was Kardec’s The Gospel according to Spiritism (originally published as L’Évangile Selon le Spiritisme in 1864; Romberg 1998: 71). Similar to Brazil and Cuba, in Puerto Rico, there is a tradition of “orthodox” Kardecian spiritism (more or less the imported European tradition, generally understood as a philosophy rather than a religion; Schmidt 1995: 167–192) and one called espiritismo popular, with healing being more important than Kardecism’s traditional focus on the evolution of spirits (Schmidt 1995: 192; 194; 200, 2008: 182). Espiritismo popular mostly deals with psychological problems, so that it has been labelled “the psychiatry of the poor” by Eduardo Seda (Fernandéz Olmos and Paravisini-Gebert 2011: 220).50 With respect to healing ceremonies, spirits can be either protective or so-called causas (ibid.: 223–224), that is, offensive spirits causing sickness, trouble, and pain. In contradistinction to “orthodox” Kardecism, in espiritismo popular every person has a guia espiritual (a spiritual guide) that guides them from birth on and is also important in consultations with spiritist mediums, when they seek to find out the causa of a troublesome situation (Schmidt 1995: 199–200).51 Some authors mention a third form of Puerto Rican spiritism, called Santerismo—a word composed of Espiritismo and Santería (Brandon 1997: 108; Fernández Olmos and Paravisini-Gebert 2011: 225).52 This notion suggests that this religion was a mixture of two traditions not 50  On spiritism as psychotherapy/healing in the Puerto Rican context, see Schmidt 1995: 211–233, Schmidt 2008: 186–189. Having studied public spiritist healing rituals in Puerto Rico and among Puerto Rican migrants in the USA, Koss names three causes for illness (be it mental or physical) that Puerto Ricans acknowledge: “personal problems, physical states, and spirit influences”; as she writes, Puerto Ricans seek the help of a spiritist healer when firsthand remedies (as home remedies or medicine) do not cure the illness (Koss 1977: 458–459). 51  She compares the concept to the Catholic idea of a guardian angel and the protective spirits shamans acquire. The former seems much more plausible to me when it comes to possible historical influences. 52  Pérez y Mena (1998: 18) calls “Santerismo” forms of Cuban spiritualism that have “incorporated Yorubaland beliefs, and Catholicism, as well as French Kardecian Spiritism in Cuba” and are “similar to Puerto Rican Spiritualism.”

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indigenous to Puerto Rico, that is, Spiritism and Santería. When Kardecism was introduced to Brazil and Cuba, there existed already African-derived religions that later took over traits from Kardecian spiritism. This does not seem to have been the case in Puerto Rico. Santería came to Puerto Rico via migrants from Cuba not before the mid-twentieth century, and it also attracted Puerto Rican migrants in the USA.53 According to Brandon (1997: 108), it did not come into existence in Puerto Rico where there was no indigenous form of Santería to be found, but emerged through contact of Puerto Ricans with Santería in the USA only. As Moreno Vega (1999: 331) remarks, due to the significantly smaller numbers of Africans enslaved in Puerto Rico (in the range of 80,000), scholars have shown little interest in documenting the African belief systems that have been maintained by African descendants. As we have seen, Kardecist elements have been a part of Santería long before Puerto Ricans came into contact with it. Furthermore, Santería is a kind of an umbrella term for certain Cuban religious traditions and their offspring outside Cuba, mostly being a result of migration.54 Partly out of these reasons, Bettina Schmidt (1995: 306) has argued against labelling certain Puerto Rican versions of spiritism that incorporate elements of Santería as a new religious stratum called “Santerismo.”55 Her interviewees in the Puerto Rican context explicitly refused this label. Therefore she opts for staying with the notion of “spiritist centres” that have only come closer to Santería (and vice versa; ibid.: 305–308).56 Schmidt (ibid.: 305) also notes that “orthodox” Kardecists in Puerto Rico distance themselves from Africanised forms of spiritism, whereas Santero/as differentiate themselves from spiritism. Be that as it may, according to Vivian Garrison, among the spirits in Puerto Rican espiritismo (coined “santerismo” by Brandon 1997: 6; 107–114), before the introduction of Santería’s Oricha, 53  “After the late ‘50s (probably due to the input of Cuban immigrants after Castro’s revolution), Spiritism has also incorporated more visible ritual elements from related African spirit possession religions like Cuban Santería […], giving rise to what today is called Santerismo” (Romberg 1998: 80). 54  Brandon differentiates different “phases” of development of Santería, with “Santerismo” belonging to Phase IV (Brandon 1997: 107). 55  This is at least how Fernández Olmos and Paravisini-Gebert have it. In my reading, Brandon sees “Santerismo” more as a form of Santería than of spiritism, albeit one rather incorporating Santería traits into spiritism than the other way around. 56  Nevertheless, she marks the differences between these Santería-influenced forms of Espiritismo and more “traditional” spiritist centres on the one hand and Santería proper on the other.

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there were the Madama (a black motherly type […], the Congo (a strong African), the Indio (a virile independent type), the Hindu, and the Gypsy (Brandon 1997: 109). The Indian is featured again, as a kind of independent (as opposed to an enslaved) type. With special reference to the Madama, referring to the African regions from where slaves were brought to Puerto Rico and the symbol of the cross interpreted as Congo in origin, Marta Moreno Vega (1999: 347–349) has argued—following Robert Farris Thompson (1984: 108–115)—that there has been an African, Congo-based tradition of ancestor worship57 and spirit possession in Puerto Rico prior to spiritism. This would imply that Spiritism outside “scientific” Kardecism was first taken up by Congo-based folk religions in Puerto Rico and the Yorùbá deities had only been introduced later— which is not an argument against Brandon’s or Schmidt’s views, but adds an African background to the emergence of espiritismo popular. To sum up, both in Cuba and Puerto Rico different forms of spiritism exist, more or less mixed with folk traditions. Although there is consent that an Afro-American tradition was already established in Cuba which incorporated Kardecian elements into its ritual scheme as soon as the second half of the nineteenth century, most scholars hold that only with immigration of Cuban expatriates in Puerto Rico in the second half of the twentieth century did spiritist centres adopt some features of Santería,58 although Vega argues for a Congo background of espiritismo popular. As we have seen, the divisions within Kardecian-based Spiritism (“scientific” Kardecism versus “folk-healing” traditions rooted in Kardecism) are in a way similar in Brazil, Cuba, and Puerto Rico, whereas only in Cuba and Brazil there are clearly defined Afro-American religions that have existed prior to the influx of spiritism.59 This gave birth to Umbanda as a “white-­ washed” form of African-derived religion close to spiritism in Brazil,60 maybe similar to espiritismo cruzado, but different from Santería given that the latter, as a rule, incorporated Kardecist elements into an Afro-American religious matrix rather than putting African spirits into a Kardecian  The term she uses.  And it is possible that this only started among migrants in the USA. A closer consideration of the situation among Cuban and Puerto Rican migrants in the USA is beyond the scope of this chapter. 59  Moreno Vega’s argument being more a kind of a historical reconstruction than a description of clearly defined religions like Brazilian Candomblé and Cuban Santería. 60  Romberg (1998: 80) notes that “Candomblé had merged with Spiritism creating Umbanda, which holds many similarities with Puerto Rican Santerismo.” 57 58

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f­ramework. Apart from African (and other) spirits, Indian spirits are featured in Candomblé, Umbanda, Cuban espiritismo cruzado, and Puerto Rican espiritismo popular. The more Africanised the religion, the more types of spirits are included, among them spirits that are looked at in “orthodox” Kardecism as inferior, like those of Indians.

Spiritual Churches in New Orleans and the Legacy of Spiritualism In contradistinction to South America and the Caribbean, Kardecism does not seem to have had any lasting influence on North American spiritualism or African-American religions. Rather, by lacking a “universally accepted philosophical view of the nature of the spirits” (Deveney 1997: 14), spiritualism was but one of the main sources61 next to mesmerism (not mediated by Kardecism) of the “birth of Occultism” of Paschal Beverly Randolph (1825–1875),62 Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831–1891), Henry Steel Olcott (1832–1907), and Emma Hardinge Britten (1823–1899) (Baier 2009: 277–290). Nevertheless, there was a critical discussion about spiritualism among these more traditionally oriented (in the sense of a philosophia perennis and a historical foundation in western esotericism) occultists, interestingly also with respect to the nature of the spirits received in mediumistic trance (ibid.: 284–290)—which, as we have already seen, is also a critical argument brought forth by the “scientific” variant against the more popular forms of Kardecism. Furthermore, with the exception of Louisiana, no distinguishable African-American religions based on traditions from sub-Saharan Africa have come into existence in the colonies and in ante bellum USA like they have in Brazil and the Caribbean (Hödl 2016: 132–135). Nevertheless, there seems to be an influence of spiritualism on the so-called spiritual churches among the “Black Community” that have been interpreted as “a religious response to racism” (Baer 2001). Generally, spiritual churches are looked at as an amalgam of spiritualism, voodoo (or hoodoo), Catholicism, and certain forms of Protestantism63 61  At least Andrew Jackson Davis combined Swedenborgian ideas, mesmerism, and with respect to political philosophy, the socialism of Fourier to a spiritualist system (Bell 1997: 191–197). 62  On Randolph, an African American occultist, see Deveney 1997. 63  That is, baptism, methodism, pentecostalism, and holiness groups (Baer 2001: 112).

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(Baer 2001: 111–112; Jacobs and Kaslow 2001: 58–92; Daggett 2017: 153–154). Voodoo and to a lesser degree spiritualism tend to be negated as influences by members of the churches (Baer 2001: 127; Jacobs and Kaslow 2001: 16–17; 30–32). The term “voodoo” stems from the Fon word vodun, which designates: a) a religious stratum on West Africa’s Slave Coast; and b) the spirits with whom practitioners of the religion communicate. This mainly Dahomean tradition has had a substantial impact on Haitian “vaudou” or “vodou” (Desmangles 1977: 13–15). Voodoo is either a derogative term for the latter or a notion used by some scholars to distinguish a religious stratum (now extinct) in Southern USA from what is looked at as the practice of “magic,” “conjure” or “herbalism,” called “hoodoo” (Anderson 2009a: 197; 2009b: 427; Baer 2001: 130–132). The presence of voodoo in New Orleans can be traced back to 1716, when bringing in slaves from Martinique, Guadeloupe, and St. Domingue seems to have started. The greatest impact of Haitian vodou on the black population of Louisiana nevertheless is associated with the time around 1809, when French colonists fled the island after the revolution bringing with them their black slaves (Baer 2001: 128–129; Long 2007: 10–12). The high time of voodoo in New Orleans—still celebrated in tourism and popular culture—has been the second half of the nineteenth century, when Voudou Queen Marie Laveau (c. 1801–1881) was active.64 According to Zora Neale Hurston (1931: 318–320), there is an influence of spiritualism on hoodoo on the one hand and a certain influence of hoodoo on some of the spiritual churches on the other. Jacobs and Kaslow (2001: 30–32) name two theories of the origin of spiritual churches in the Crescent City brought forth by members: either out of voodoo (according to Robert Tallant Mother Tora Dyson was explicitly referring to “Mother Laveau”; see Jacobs and Kaslow 2001: 30) or spiritualism. Although there has been a tradition of creole spiritualism in nineteenth-­ century New Orleans—the detailed history of which is given by Melissa Daggett (2017; see also Bell 1997: 187–221) based on her study of the French séance protocols of Henry Louis Rey, a free man of colour65—it is 64  1801 being the birth date according to Ward 2004: 191; for as discussion of the date, see Long 2007: 230, note 33. In fact, there have almost certainly been two Marie Laveaus (according to Hurston 1931: 326, there were three), as the mother had been replaced by her daughter at some stage (Ward 2004: ix). On legends surrounding this replacement and historical facts, see Long 2005: 288–292, Long 2007: 190–205. 65  On Rey, see also Daggett 2014 and Bell 1997: 215–220. Spiritualism in New Orleans was strong in the elite of the Creole population (“free men of colour”), mostly migrants

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rather uncertain that there is a direct link between those traditions and the spiritual churches that arose in the Crescent City in the 1920s. Like Kardecism in Latin America, spiritualism in nineteenth-century New Orleans “offered an enlightened alternative to the […] Catholic Church” (Bell 1997: 187), for the creole population it provided “therapeutic treatment free of financial obligations” and access to a spirit realm without social boundaries marked by race, through automatic writing, mediumistic trances, and the like (Guillory 2009: 282). Although spiritualist activities were rather restricted to private circles (Bell 1997: 215), there were two, albeit short-lived, journals published by New Orleans spiritualists (ibid.: 208–215), with one of them, Le Spiritualiste de la Nouvelle-Orléans propagating spirit(ual)ist works—among them books by Alan Kardec. Spiritist circles in the Crescent City also reflected hopes for social and political change.66 Nationwide, black and creole spiritualists were members of the National Spiritualist Association until 1924, when the latter rejected members of colour. In 1925, the National Colored Spiritualist Association was founded, which still seems to be active today (Guillory 2009: 283). The spiritualist heritage of spiritual churches in New Orleans (see, e.g., Jacobs and Kaslow 2001: 80–82) seems to be rather rooted in a form of spiritualism brought to the city by Mother Leafy Anderson (1887–1927) from Chicago around 1920.67 Mother Anderson has formed the first spiritual(ist)68 church whose history is documented, The Eternal Life Spiritualist Christian Association. She is probably the person who opened spiritualism to non-creoles (ibid.: 31). Other prominent leaders of the early movement (and similar churches) have been Mother Catherine Seals (d. 1930), “the most charismatic and intriguing Spiritual leader of the 1930s” ([sic]: ibid.: 38), as well as other female leaders (ibid.: 38–43). As Daggett (2017: 154) remarks, spiritual churches were a matriarchal from the Caribbean, the second layer of the ante bellum three-tiered social system of the Crescent City. 66  “Most communications were of a personal nature […] but many were political commentaries about the social and political changes experienced during the 1860s and the 1870s” (Daggett 2014: 430). 67  Baer and Singer (2002: 186) have 1918–1921 as the date of her arrival in the Crescent City. Daggett (2017: 154) has 1921, whereas Jacobs and Kaslow (2001: 31) think that she arrived at New Orleans in 1920. At any rate, her church was founded in April 1921 (Daggett 2017: 154). 68  Later, “spiritual” has been used instead of “spiritualist,” maybe to set oneself apart from “spiritualism” in order to have a more Christian image of the church.

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r­ eligion offering “African-American women […] marginalized because of their gender, race, and class […] a golden opportunity for them to empower […] themselves […].” One feature of the spiritual churches that shows some similarity to Afro-American religions discussed above beyond the realm of “mainstream” Christian churches is the communication with spirits through mediumism or possession trance. Another special feature, although connected to the latter, is the presence of personal spirit guides “to guide you […] and protect you from these evil forces,” as a member has told Jacobs and Kaslow (2001: 127). These spirit guides can also be central in ritual activities and their pictures or statues can be found on altars in spiritual churches. Among them are Catholic saints, leaders from the history of the church, deceased relatives, or benevolent figures like “Aunt Peggy” or “Uncle George.” The most prominent ones are the saints—the special importance of St. Patrick could hint at a voodoo connection69—and spirits of Native Americans, with Black Hawk as the main spirit among them. As Jacobs and Kaslow (ibid.: 129) have shown, there are two possible sources for the institution of spirit guides; on the one hand, Louisiana voodoo (they refer to Danballah), and spiritualism on the other, “whose believers frequently contacted sprits of Indians.” There is also a scholarly discussion of the origin of the Black Hawk figure which takes into account the custom of “Indians”—African-Americans dressed up like Native Americans—in Mardi Gras festivities (Bettelheim 2005: 325–326, 2001: 90). While Wehmeyer (2000; see also 2007) traces these traditions back to a Congo origin relying on aesthetic parallels between Congo ritual artefacts like Minkisi70 and figures on altars in spiritual churches, Judith Bettelheim has argued that the figure of the Indian on altars of spiritual churches goes back to a cultural exchange between the Caribbean (Havana) and Louisiana, representing a “Pan-Caribbean style” to be found in Afro-American religions as well as in African-influenced forms of spiritism (Bettelheim 2005: 327). She explicitly names Kardecism as the origin not only of elements on altars of spiritual churches that “Wehmeyer reads as Congo,” but also of the “particular manner of 69  The Fon Sky-God Dan (the rainbow serpent) is associated with St. Patrick in Haitian Vodou (Danballah or Dambala or Danballa Ouedo) and has also been present in New Orleans Vodou (see, e.g., Long 2007: 115). The association is iconographic, since St. Patrick is usually portrayed with snakes (because legend has it that he drove out the snakes of Ireland). 70  On minkisi (pl.; sing. nkisi), that is, Congo charms that are also used in New World African derived religions, see Thompson 1984: 117–131.

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a­ rranging an altar with Indian statues and other paraphernalia” (Bettelheim 2001: 90). Without trying to answer the question whether Wehmeyer’s or Bettelheim’s historical reconstruction might be the better explanation for the presence of Indian spirits on altars in spiritual churches, we can clearly see a structural parallel of the interaction of spiritualism in New Orleans and spiritism in the places discussed above with African traditions.

Conclusion Apart from the spirit(ual)ist traditions as religious strata on their own, in all of the places treated in this chapter Afro-Americans have adopted traits from these religions (or philosophies) with a strong emphasis on healing and an expansion of the spirit world. With a stronger emphasis on spirit(ual)ism, African elements tend to be restricted and a kind of “white-­ washing” takes place.71 In Brazil, Cuba, and Puerto Rico there is a current of Kardecism that has attracted upper class (white) citizens with a background in Catholicism—who are, however, critical of the Catholic Church. Kardecism offered them a “scientific” worldview, detached from “superstitious” beliefs in a spirit world on the one hand and free from the rules and regulations of the Catholic Church on the other; a worldview to oppose colonial rule, but not one to lead to racial equality. Nevertheless, in Brazil and the Caribbean we find two kinds of adaption of Kardecism by Afro-­ Americans (or creoles): one that is deemed “low-brow” spiritism by the “pure” Kardecists, as it mingles more or less with African traditions; and another that puts elements from Kardecian spiritism into a (West-)African religious matrix (Umbanda, Santería). In those “low-brow” adaptations of Kardecism, healing and spirit possession72 (as different from communication with spirits) are more important than the classic Kardecian interest in spirit evolution. Also, “lesser spirits” (Amerindians, slaves, and the like) are incorporated, that are not really welcome in “Kardecism proper.” On the one hand, embodying spirits of Amerindians and African slaves is an incorporation of people being subjects to colonial asymmetrical power relationships; on the other hand, the spirits work as “guides,” protective ones and “role models” (with reference to their respective qualities). In the spiritual churches of New Orleans, we saw some parallels to the 71  It has to be noted that in some of the traditions discussed there is also a trend to “reafricanisation” in the last decades. However, this is beyond the scope of this chapter. 72  The more “Africanised” the religion is, the more intense spirit procession appears to be.

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Latin-­ American cases discussed: a heritage of spiritualism and Afro-­ American religions, a variety of spirits, protective spirit guides, and healing as a central religious trait. Without discussing possible historical relationships between all those religious currents featured, we can clearly identify a structural parallel: in all those cases, (descendants of) slaves taken from sub-Saharan Africa have adopted elements of a European-based tradition to (1) “upgrade” in the hierarchy established by colonial power and (2) adopt their cultural/religious matrix to a new situation. Clearly, this is just a rough comparison that demands further investigation.

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Daggett, Melissa. 2014. Spiritualism among Creoles of Color in Nineteenth-­ Century New Orleans: The Life and Times of Henry Louis Rey. Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association 55: 409–431. ———. 2017. Spiritualism in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans: The Life and Times of Henry Louis Rey. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Dawson, Andrew. 2010. Taking Possession of Santo Daime: The Growth of Umbanda within a Brazilian New Religion. In Spirit Possession and Trance: New Interdisciplinary Perspectives, ed. Bettina E.  Schmidt and Lucy Huskinson, 134–150. London and New York: Continuum. Desmangles, Leslie Gerald. 1977. African Interpretations of the Christian Cross in Vodun. Sociological Analysis 38: 13–24. Deveney, John Patrick. 1997. Paschal Beverly Randolph: A Nineteenth Century Black American Spiritualist, Rosicrucian, and Sex Magician. New York: State University of New York Press. Fernández Olmos, Margarite, and Elizabeth Paravisini-Gebert. 2011. Creole Religions in the Caribbean: An Introduction from Vodou and Santería to Obeah and Espiritismo. New York and London: New York University Press. Giobellina Brumana, Fernando, and Elda Gonzalez Martinez. 1989. Spirits from the Margin: Umbanda in São Paulo: A Study in Popular Religion and Social Experience. Uppsala: Almquist & Wiksell International. Graden, Dale Torsten. 2006. From Slavery to Freedom in Brazil. Bahia, 1835–1900. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Guillory, Margarita Simon. 2009. Spiritualism. In African-American Religious Cultures, ed. Anthony B.  Pinn, 380–385. Santa Barbara and Denver: ABC-CLIO. Gutierrez, Cathy, ed. 2015. Handbook of Spiritualism and Channeling. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Hale, Lindsay Lauren. 1997. Preto velho: Resistance, Redemption, and Engendered Representations of Slavery in a Brazilian Possession-Trance Religion. American Ethnologist 24: 392–414. Harding, Rachel E. 2003. A Refuge in Thunder: Candomblé and Alternative Spaces of Blackness. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Hess, David. 1987. The Many Rooms of Spiritism in Brazil. Luso-Brazilian Review 24 (2): 15–34. Hödl, Hans Gerald. 2003. Alternative Formen des Religiösen. In Handbuch Religionswissenschaft, ed. Johann Figl, 485–524. Innsbruck and Wien: Tyrolia. ———. 2016. Reversed Racism: Fundamentalist Genealogies in African-American Religions. Interdisciplinary Journal for Religion and Transformation in Contemporary Society 2: 131–153. Hohenstein, Erica Jane de. 1991. Das Reich der magischen Mütter. Eine Untersuchung über die Frauen in den afro-brasilianischen Kulten Candomblé. Frankfurt am Main: Verlag für interkulturelle Kommunikation.

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Houk, James. 2001. Brazil, Candomblé. In Encyclopedia of African and African-­ American Religions, ed. Stephen D. Glazier, 75–77. New York and London: Routledge. Hurston, Zora Neale. 1931. Hoodoo in America. The Journal of American Folklore 44: 317–417. Jacobs, Claude E., and Andrew J. Kaslow. 2001. The Spiritual Churches of New Orleans: Origins, Beliefs, and Rituals of an African-American Religion. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. Koss, Joan D. 1977. Social Process, Healing, and Self-Defeat among Puerto Rican Spiritists. American Ethnologist 4: 453–469. Long, Carolyn Morrow. 2005. Marie Laveau: A Nineteenth-century Voudou Priestess. Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association 46: 262–292. ———. 2007. A New Orleans Voodoo Priestess: The Legend and Reality of Marie Laveau. Gainsville: University Press of Florida. Monroe, John Warne. 2015. Crossing Over. Allan Kardec and the Transnationalisation of Modern Spiritualism. In Handbook of Spiritualism and Channeling, ed. Cathy Gutierrez, 248–274. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Moreno Vega, Marta. 1999. Espiritismo in the Puerto Rican Community: A New World Recreation with the Elements of Congo Ancestor Worship. Journal of Black Studies 29: 325–353. Noguera Negrão, Lisias. 2005. Kardecism. In The Encyclopedia of Religion, ed. Lindsay Jones, 5089–5091. New York and London: Palgrave Macmillan. Pérez y Mena, Andrés I. 1998. Cuban Santería, Haitian Vodun, Puerto Rican Spiritualism: A Multiculturalist Inquiry into Syncretism. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 37: 15–27. Pescoso Molina, Rachell. 2008. Aproximación al estudio de los Centros Espíritas en Ciudad de La Habana y La Habana: 1926–1966. Ponencia presentada en el I Coloquio Internacional sobre Investigaciones y Estudio de las Religiones Afroamericanas (25–27 de mayo de 2008), organizado por el Instituto Cubano de Antropología. http://www.lacult.unesco.org/redrel/publication_details. php?lg=esp&id=13. Accessed 13 December 2019. Romberg, Raquel. 1998. Whose Spirits Are They? The Political Economy of Syncretism and Authenticity. Journal of Folklore Research 35: 69–82. Schmidt, Bettina E. 1995. Von Geistern, Orichas und den Puertoricanern: Zur Verbindung von Religion und Ethnizität. Marburg: Förderverein Völkerkunde in Marburg e.V. ———. 2008. Meeting the Spirits: Puerto Rican Espiritismo as Source for Identity, Healing, and Creativity. Fieldwork in Religion 3: 178–194. Sharp, Lynn L. 2015. Reincarnation: The Path to Progress. In Handbook of Spiritualism and Channeling, ed. Cathy Gutierrez, 221–247. Leiden and Boston: Brill.

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Smith Omari-Tunkara, Mikelle. 2005. Manipulating the Sacred: Yorùbá Art, Ritual, and Resistance in Brazilian Candomblé. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Thompson, Robert Farris. 1984. Flash of the Spirit: African & Afro-American Art & Philosophy. New York: Vintage Books. Viarnés, Carrie. 2007. Cultural Memory in Afro-Cuban Possession: Problematizing Spiritual Categories, Resurfacing ‘Other’ Histories. Western Folklore 66: 127–159. Ward, Martha. 2004. Voodoo Queen: The Spirited Lives of Marie Laveau. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Warren, Donald Jr. 1968. Spiritism in Brazil. Journal of Inter-American Studies 10: 393–405. Wehmeyer, Stephen C. 2000. Indian Altars of the Spiritual Church: Congo Echoes in New Orleans. African Arts 33 (4): 62–69, 95–96. ———. 2007. ‘Indians at the Door’. Power and Placement on New Orleans Spiritual Church Altars. Western Folklore 66 (1/2): 15–44.

PART IV

Occultism and Modern Yoga

CHAPTER 16

Sri Sabhapati Swami: The Forgotten Yogi of Western Esotericism Keith Edward Cantú

́ Sabhāpati Svāmı̄, c. The Tamil yogin Sri Sabhapati Swami (Srı̄ 1828–1923/4),1 also variously transliterated, among others, as Sabhapathy Swamy—or Swāmı̄—and Capāpati Cuvāmikaḷ) has left significant imprints

A version of this chapter was first delivered at the American Academy of Religion annual meeting in San Antonio, Texas, in November 2016. I am grateful to David Gordon White, Karl Baier, Kurt Leland, Gordan Djurdjevic, Henrik Bogdan, Bill Breeze, Saymon Zakaria, Seth Powell, Philip Deslippe, Julian Strube, Mriganka Mukhopadhyay, Jason Birch, Mark Singleton, Srilata Raman, Eric Steinschneider, Suzanne Newcombe, Munish Kumar, Saravanan Sami, Sivasakthi, Hariharan Swamigal and his son Vinayagam, Uma Maheswari, Padmanaban, Jegan, Chiththaanai, Magdalena Kraler, Michael Kolson, Madeline Cantú, and many others unnamed who have since offered helpful feedback, logistical assistance, and/or sources on conceptual issues at play in this research. 1

 For issues surrounding these dates see the “Who was Sri Sabhapati Swami” section below.

K. E. Cantú (*) University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 L. Pokorny, F. Winter (eds.), The Occult Nineteenth Century, Palgrave Studies in New Religions and Alternative Spiritualities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55318-0_16

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on the development of early modern yoga2 as well as in South Asian, North American, and European esoteric and occult conceptions of the body. His works introduced elements of Tamil yogic practices to North India (especially British Punjab and Bengal), and he pioneered a yogic system that—on the surface—resembles one later popularised by Swami Vivekananda (Svāmı̄ Vivekānanda, 1863–1902). Sabhapati was also a major figure in a larger movement for the publication and dissemination of editions of yogic texts in Indic vernacular languages as well as in English in nineteenth-century India. In addition, he had close contacts with some of the founding members of the Theosophical Society who later, however, severed their ties with him, and his practices went on to find a home in the alternative religio-philosophical movement Thelema. This chapter aims to generate further interest in this remarkable author by presenting an overview of Sabhapati’s life and works with special reference to his relevance to the field of Western esotericism, especially given his discernible imprint on Theosophical and Thelemic literature. Given Sabhapati’s publications, his prominence, and later influence, it is remarkable that he is scarcely mentioned in modern western academic works on the historical development of modern yoga. De Michelis’s A History of Modern Yoga: Patañjali and Western Esotericism (2008) and Singleton’s Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice (2010)3 are two of the foremost examples. There are, however, a few academic and non-academic English-language scholars that treat Sabhapati, of which the most notable are Karl Baier (see Baier 2009, 2012, 2016) and Henrik Bogdan (see Bogdan 2014; Crowley and Curwen 2010), who have respectively dealt with Sabhapati’s work in relation to both Theosophy and Thelema. Other twentieth-century and contemporary authors who have mentioned him in their works or annotations include T.  K. Rajagopalan (c. 1880–1960) (Rajagopalan 2005 [1945]), Arjan Dass Malik (1938–2006) (Malik 2002), Bill Breeze (Crowley et al. 2004 [1997]), Kurt Leland (Leland 2016), Phil Hine (Hine 2016, 2018), and Tobias Churton (Churton 2019). 2  By “early modern yoga” I mean the period from the start of the British East India Company’s colonial expansion in the seventeenth century to Swami Vivekananda’s publication of Râja Yoga in 1896, which is an accepted date for the start of modern yoga according to Elizabeth de Michelis (2008; see below) and most scholars in the growing field of “Yoga Studies” today. 3  Singleton’s excellent book deals with Sabhapati’s editor Shrish Chandra Vasu/Basu (see below) but does not refer to Sabhapati, although he does provide a reference to Sabhapati’s work in his bibliography.

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There seem to be two overarching and overlapping reasons that most authors have either forgotten or neglected to engage Sabhapati’s works in their own research. One reason is that Sabhapati’s yogic techniques do not neatly fit into the trajectory of what de Michelis has termed modern postural yoga, a category that has recently been expanded to encompass other typologies of yoga, yet one that remains a dominant frame that drives scholarship. Put simply, the emphasis in Sabhapati’s Vedānta-­ inflected version of Rājayoga or “Yoga of Kings” (Birch 2013) is not on postural practice but on meditations and mental refutations of the cakras, although obtaining a steady posture (āsana) is considered a prerequisite for these techniques and there is a short portion of his work in which ten āsanas are outlined (Swamy 1884/1890: 104–105). In this respect, Sabhapati’s teachings resemble those of Swami Vivekananda; however, the two systems do not arise from the same context and thus both deserve examination on their own terms.4 The main distinction is that Sabhapati’s teachings on rājayoga predate Vivekananda’s repackaged form of Pātañjalayoga, the yoga of Patañjali known through the famous c. fourth-­ century CE Yoga Sūtras and their commentary by Vyāsa (i.e., the Pātañjalayogaśāstra; see Maas 2006; White 2014; Larson 2018), which may have been a pseudonym for Patañjali or Vindhyavāsin, depending on how one attributes authorship of the Yoga Sūtras. Although Sabhapati does include a small excerpt on Pātañjalayoga in the aforementioned portion on āsanas, Sabhapati’s embodied practices are framed in both his English and Indic vernacular works as a local Tamil genre of yoga known as “Śivarājayoga,”5 a fusion of yogic practices and techniques that resemble Tamil Siddhar literature, most notably the c. twelfth-century Tirumantiram, attributed to one Tirumūlar. Sabhapati also adds a blend of both Saiddhāntika and Vedāntic doctrines of Tamil Vı̄raśaiva origin that 4  The first Ramakrishna Mission in South India was founded in 1897 in Madras (modern Chennai) by Svāmı̄ Rāmakr̥sn ̣ ̣ānanda, seventeen years after the date of Sabhāpati’s first extant publication. 5  The emphasis on Śivarājayoga (Tamil civarājayōkam; possible translations: “the Yoga of King Śiva,” “Śiva’s Yoga of Kings,” “The Royal Yoga for Śiva”) as a distinct category is wellarticulated in the Indic vernacular literature on Sabhāpati that spans the linguistic worlds of Tamil (Yō kı̄svarar 1894; Cuvāmikaḷ 1913), Hindustani (Svāmı̄ 1892), Urdu (Svāmı̄ 1883), Bengali (Svāmı̄ 1885), and Marathi (Swamy 1884/1890: 427–434) in addition to Sanskrit and English as well as Telugu (as bibliographic records attest). Śivarājayoga lives on, independently of Sabhapati Swami, in contemporary Tamil literature on yoga (Ceṭtị yār 2016; Kailāsn ̣ āt 2012).

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appear related to an earlier genre of yoga called “Śivayoga” (Powell 2018),6 and which also incorporate Vaiṣṇava and Śākta themes, which was a feature of the Tirumantiram as well many centuries earlier (Sanderson 2009: 286–287, n. 686; Fisher 2013: 229–30). A second reason is that Sabhapati’s encounters with founding members of the Theosophical Society, and particularly the adoption of his techniques into Thelema by the British occultist and poet Aleister Crowley (1875–1947), call for a more nuanced examination of religious history during the colonial period. Some of the dynamics at play in these occult literatures reveal the limitations of most postcolonial or subaltern critiques or when attempting to adequately discern the motivations of these occultist mediators who brought aspects of Sabhapati’s teachings to Europe, North America, and elsewhere. Following Edward Said (1935–2003), prevailing theories of political “post-orientalism” are naturally predicated upon a perceived exoticisation or “othering” by colonial powers to facilitate greater political and economic hegemony (see Said 1979). While colonisers certainly committed numerous abuses during their rule, Saree Makdisi has astutely noted (Makdisi 2014) that there were many individual “exceptions” to the colonial project, such as William Blake. Like Blake, at least some occult authors often had strained or complex relations with the colonial project and its accompanying bourgeois mentality, even if some did at times hold nationalist views (for Crowley’s own complicated relationship to England, see Pasi 2014: 36–42). As a result, the views of such authors deserve to be described in more nuanced terms, just as scholars have pointed out the need to nuance popular and absolutist generalisations of colonial-era history (see, for example, White 2006). The situation becomes even more blurry when examining the Indian side of Sri Sabhapati Swami’s reception history, where we find a primarily pan-Indian network of “Admirers”. These Admirers appear most prominently in Sabhapati’s pan-Indian works written in English, where they explicitly represented themselves as Hindus seeking to openly 6  In one of his Tamil works Sabhapati aligns himself with the paramparā or “guru-lineage” of the c. seventeenth-century Vı̄raśaiva philosopher Kumāratēvar and his student Tiruppō rūr Citampara Cuvāmikaḷ. An analysis of the relationship of these figures to Sabhapati’s literature is forthcoming in the third chapter of the author’s dissertation (Cantú 2020). In the meantime see Steinschneider 2016 for an excellent description of Kumāratēvar, his teacher Cāntaliṅka Cuvāmikaḷ, and Tiruppō rūr Citampara Cuvāmikaḷ’s general philosophy and works in the context of the “warring sects” of Tamil Śaivism.

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convey the perceived truth of their teachings, not only within India but also to outside or “foreign” networks of interested readers, especially in order to prevent “the Atheism” from gaining a foothold in India under British rule (Swamy 1884/1890: 24). The complexity of the motivations behind these sorts of exchanges warrants a more rigorous historical examination, especially since the Admirers’ eagerness to disseminate knowledge to outsiders appears to complicate rigid views on “Western” yoga as a cultural appropriation of Hinduism (see Vitello 2010). At the same time, it cannot be denied that occult authors, Crowley included, openly sought to expand the limits of Sabhapati’s teachings beyond the confines of “Hindu Vedantism” proper, that is, outside the Hindu religious discourse of Sabhapati’s Admirers.

Who Was Sri Sabhapati Swami? Sri Sabhapati Swami was born around 1828 to a family of either Brahmin Deccani or Naidu of Telugu-speaking origin in Velachery, then a separate village that has since been incorporated as a suburb of Chennai, the capital of Tamil Nadu. His father was named Gurunatha Baktar (Gurunāta Paktar) and his mother was named Punyavathi (Puṇṇiyavati), and his father was in the service of one Vedashreni Chidambara Swamigal (Vētacirēṇi Citambara Cuvāmikaḷ), whose sacred tomb in Velachery still attracts both devotees and yogis today. Sabhapati’s hagiographical account in English (henceforth ur-account, likely written by Shrish Chandra Vasu and later translated into Hindustani and Bengali) gives the date of Sabhapati’s birth as 1840. This is also reflected in the first Tamil account of his life (T1, found in Cuvāmikaḷ 1889), which gives this date as 4941 of the Kali Yuga (Tam. kaliyukam). However, a second Tamil account (T2, found in at least two surviving copies of Cuvāmikaḷ 1913) gives the date 1828 along with more precise astrological details, and for various historical reasons, I consider it more likely that Sabhapati was born closer to this date if not in that exact year.7 7  I consider T2’s dating to be more accurate since it corroborates other known details of his life, particularly his relationship with his first guru Vedashreni Chidambara Swamigal, who died in 1858. If we take T2 at its word that Chidambara met with Sabhapati when he was as old as twenty-nine or thirty, then out of the two options Sabhapati must have been born in 1828 and not 1840 as that would place this meeting in 1869 or 1870, at least a decade after Chidambara’s death, widely confirmed in both textual and inscriptional evidence at his sacred tomb (jı̄va-samādhi) in Velachery. T2’s attention to minute astrological

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After being educated at Free Church Mission School,8 Sabhapati travelled to Burma (Myanmar) on a textile trade business trip with his father-­ in-­ law, where he interacted with Buddhist phongyis, that is, Burmese monks. Returning to Tamil Nadu, he soon departed for the predominantly Islamic maraikkāyar (lit. “kings of the boat”) port city of Nagore near Nagapattinam, where he interacted with fakirs at the sixteenth-­ century Dargah or “shrine” of the Sufi elder Shāh al-Ḥ amı̄d Nagurı̄ (1490–1579) (Bayly 1989: 91–92; Narayanan 2006).9 Following his travels to Burma and Nagapattinam (which apparently lasted around three years, although the accounts differ on the timing and order of events), one of Sabhapati’s “admirers” and the author of the ur-account mentions that, despite his exploits in comparative religion, his “mind was not at ease” and that he was still “far from obtaining the true Spirituality” (Swamy 1884/1890: 2).10 After seven years working as a civil servant, remaining with his wife and two sons, and studying various scriptures, anxiety gave way to a dream at the age of twenty-nine (ur-account) or thirty (T2). In the dream the “Infinite Spirit”—in Sabhapati’s English works always a translation of the Brahman or Śiva as Sarveśvara, “the Lord of All”—appeared and told him to go to the “Agastya Ā śrama.”11 Sabhapati instead went to Vedashreni (Vedaśreṇi, “the Refuge of the Vedas”), an alternate name for his place of birth and a once rural temple area that is now a rapidly developing information-­technology district in modern Chennai (Velachery, Tamil: details and the specifics of his parentage also implies that the author, Shivajnanaprakash Yogishwara, had probed Sabhapati more deeply about the circumstances of his birth and had paid much more attention in general to chronological details, at least as pertains his early life. Additionally, T1 does not provide a Gregorian equivalent to the Kali Yuga year, meaning that the calculation could possibly have reflected a different correlation closer to 1828. 8  This Scottish Protestant missionary school was founded by Rev. Robert Johnston and Rev. John Anderson (see Braidwood 1862), and today has been reconstituted as Madras Christian College. 9  While Shāh al-Ḥ amı̄d Nagurı̄ is sometimes linked to the Chishti t ̣arı̄qa, his hagiographical literature records that he became a close student of the Shat ̣t ̣ārı̄ adept Muḥammad Ghawth Gwāliyārı̄ (d. 1563). 10  “Spirituality” is Sabhāpati’s antiquated translation of Tamil pirummakiyāṉam (Skt. brahmajñāna), lit. “gnosis of the brahman.” The unique English translations in his works predate later standardization of translations for Sanskrit terms yet are nevertheless philologically interesting. A lexicon is being prepared that tracks the linguistic development of many such terms and compounds as they occur in translation (Cantú 2020). 11  For the broader significance of Agastya in South Indian political and medical discourse, see Weiss 2009.

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Vēḷaccēri).12 After three days and nights in continual meditation (dhyāna), the accounts agree he obtained a vision (“darshonum”; Tam. taricaṉam; Skt. darśana) of Mahādeva (“the Great God,” an epithet of Śiva), who expressed to him certain mysteries of his “phallic stone” (Tam. liṅkam; Skt. liṅga). It was there that the Infinite Spirit again communicated to Sabhapati his desire for him to travel to his hermitage, which was not in Vedashreni but deep in the densely-forested wilderness of the southern Nilgiri (Nı̄lgiri, “Blue Mountain”) region of South India—specifically, at the Pothigai Hills situated on the border of the modern Indian states of Tamil Nadu and Kerala. After a long journey through Suruli, Sathuragiri, Courtallam, and finally Papanasam, he encountered his guru Satgurunath Shivajnana Bodha Yogishwarar (Caṟkurunāta Civañānabō ta Yogı̄śvarar)13 near Agastyamalai (“Agastya’s Mountain”), and was welcomed as a student. After staying there for nine or twelve years, Sri Sabhapati Swami then embarked on a lecture expedition with a newly-found spiritual passion. The accounts agree that he published a scriptural text (śruti) in Tamil,14 and also went on pilgrimages to many of the major Hindu temple complexes in India and Nepal (including Kedarnāth, Muktināth, and Paśupatināth). Sabhapati next spent at least six months at Lahore, which was then the primary city of British Punjab (see Talbot and Kamran 2016; Glover 2008) and undoubtedly an important stop on his lecture expedition. There he

12  In several of his works Sabhapati notes that he had Citampara Cuvāmikaḷ (a.k.a. Citampara Periya Cuvāmikaḷ, (d. 1858) of Veḷacceri as his guru, most likely referring to a disciple of Kuḻantaivēl Cuvāmikaḷ in the paramparā of Kumāratēvar. It is possible that Citampara Periya Cuvāmikaḷ died before Sabhapati arrived or that he was accepted by one of his surviving disciples in the paramparā. 13  Basic details for Civañānabō ta are as of yet unknown, as he is not listed in any sources I have been able to consult. One possible candidate is Caṟkurunāta Svāmı̄kaḷ, considered the nineteenth avatar of Agastya (Kailāsn ̣ āt 2012:4–6), although this cannot yet be conclusively determined. A woodcut print depicting Civañānabō ta together with Agastya and Sabhapati (with his later name Gurupitā) is given in Cuvāmikaḷ 1913, in which their artistic depictions resemble those of the medieval Tamil Siddhars (Venkatraman 1990; White 1996). 14  This text, now lost if indeed composed, was apparently entitled Vētānta sittānta samarasa pirummakiyāṉa civarājayōka kaivalya aṉupūti. The title is remarkably similar to Swamy 1884/1890 and Svāmı̄ 1892, and to another work mentioned in a catalogue page of Yō kı̄svarar (1894). Given these similarities it may have formed the basis for some of Sabhapati’s vernacular instructions that still survive. For an analysis of the various streams of Sabhapati’s literature see the author’s dissertation (Cantú 2020).

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met, among others,15 his future editor Shrish Chandra Vasu (a.k.a. S.C. Vasu, Śrı̄ś Candra Basu, 1861–1918),16 a Bengali who was then a student at Government College Lahore, where his father Shyamacharan Basu (Syāmācaraṇ Basu) had migrated from Tengra Bhabanipur (Ṭ eṃ grā-­ Bhavānı̄pur), which prior to the Partition of Bengal in 1905 was in Khulna District and today is in Satkhira District, Bangladesh. Shrish Chandra’s collaboration with Sabhapati in 1880 to publish his lectures in an English pamphlet with transliterated Sanskrit terms marks an important point in what was to become his lifelong interest in yoga, an interest that had been previously sparked in childhood by a neighbouring “Kanphata yogi” named Shivanath (Śivanāth) who followed the teachings of the medieval Nāth Yogı̄ Gorākhnāth (Bose 1932: 70).17 Shrish Chandra’s edition of Sabhapati’s lectures were popular and reprinted in 1883, 1890, 1895, 1920, 1950, and even as late as 1977, including by R. C. (Ratan Chand) Bary & Sons, a publishing outfit that also worked with the Sanskrit pandit Rāma Prasād (c. 1860–1917), who was also Shrish Chandra’s contemporary and fellow student at Government College. It also attracted the attention of Max Müller, who cited it in the context of yogic “miracles” (Müller 1899: 462–464). Later this work was expanded into a work divided into two books that were sometimes bound in a single volume (Swamy 1884/1890), which included most of the technical yogic terms in Tamil, Devanāgarı̄, and Roman, and contained a wide array of visual diagrams. These two books subsequently made their way to the United States, where the early twentieth-century New Thought author William Estep published a stripped-down version of their contents after traveling to India to study with Sabhapati, according to his claim (Swami and Estep 1929).18 In addition, Shrish Chandra sponsored a Bengali translation of the 1880 ­pamphlet, translated with a new introduction by Ambikacharan Bandopadhyay 15   Apart from the Theosophists (see below), Sabhapati met John Campbell Oman (1841–1911), a lecturer at the Government College Lahore and academic mentor of Shrish Chandra Vasu. Oman mentioned meeting Sabhapati during the latter’s visit and published a brief account of his Rājayoga (Oman 1889: 30–33). 16  Vasu’s family name is transliterated Basu according to Bengali orthography. 17  For a useful article on the Nāth Sampradāya that contains a useful bibliography with many extant sources, see Mallinson 2011. For a comparative survey that examines the yoga of the Nāth Yogı̄s, see White 2009. For a recent translation of the “sayings” (bānı̄) of Gorākhnāth, see Djurdjevic and Singh 2019. 18  I am grateful to Philip Deslippe for bringing Estep’s journey to India to my attention. While there is no proof that Estep met and studied with Sabhapati, more research is necessary on this front to confirm or deny this claim.

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(Ambikācaraṇ Bandyopādhyāẏ),19 which can still be found in some libraries in Kolkata (Svāmı̄ 1885; see Cantú 2018). According to his biographer (Bose 1932: 87), Shrish Chandra also authored the poem entitled “The Yogi’s advice to his Country,” attributed to Sabhapati Swami in some of his works (Swamy 1884/1890: 27; Swami 1895), which employs the typical colonial-era trope of India’s decline yet promotes the Yogı̄s—not practitioners of modern postural yoga but rather the “Yogies” of the Agastya ashram in the Nilgiris of Tamil Nadu—as the inheritors of the glory of the past. Shrish Chandra’s interest in these political dimensions of yoga would only continue as he went on to enter the legal profession, to formally study Sanskrit and produce a celebrated edition of Pāṇini’s Aṣt ̣ādhyāyı̄, and to become a member of the Theosophical Society, Brahmo Samaj, and participate in but not join Arya Samaj (he refused to sign the Arya Samaj’s pledge-form attesting to the infallibility of the Vedas). Along the way, he published translations of quite a few texts on yoga, including early editions of the c. fifteenth-century Haṭhayogic text Śiva Saṃ hitā,20 the c. seventeenth-century Gheraṇḍa Saṃ hitā, and a translation of a Sufi yogic work by the seventeenth-century Mughal prince Dārā Shukūh (1615–1659). Shrish Chandra’s translations and writing on yoga went on to inspire occultist milieus in Vienna and London (Baier 2018; see also Cantú 2017) and, as Mark Singleton points out in his landmark study, he also later emerged as an important figure in early twentieth-century Hindu reformism prior to Indian independence with his Sacred Books of the Hindus series (Singleton 2010; see also Bose 1932). His younger brother Baman Das Basu (Bāman Dās Basu, 1867–1930) was also a prolific author on Ayurveda, politics, education, and yoga (Cat ̣ṭopādhyāy 1932; Chatterjee 1930) and undoubtedly would have been aware of his brother’s interest in Sabhapati. Whereas the ur-account ends with Sabhapati’s stay in Lahore and relationship with Shrish Chandra Vasu, a further section of Sabhapati’s trilingual work as well as his Tamil works record his return to the Pothigai Hills to experience a vision of Agastya, an event that was said to only happen  Basic details on the life of this translator are unfortunately still lacking.  Mallinson in the introduction to his critical translation of Śiva Saṃ hitā (2007: xi; see also Mallinson 2018: 184) criticises Vasu for “prudishly” omitting verses on the vajrolı̄mudrā in his translation. While Mallinson is correct in noting that Vasu did indeed omit these verses in the Sacred Books of the Hindus series (1914), Vasu nevertheless included them in his earlier translation for Dhole’s Vedanta Series (1893). 19 20

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once every fifty years (Swamy 1884/1890: 19; Cuvāmikaḷ 1913: 11). It was not long before he travelled north again, however, and a reference in The Theosophist XI reveals that he was in Bombay for two months in 1890 where he “delivered a series of six lectures in the Framjee Cowasjee Institute on Creation and Evolution and Purification of mind and soul,” accompanied by diagrams, and initiated “some hundreds of men into the practical system of Raj-Yoga, as he calls it” (Shroff 1890).21 It is likely that Sabhapati’s subsequent popularity in Bombay inspired a publication of his Hindustani work (Svāmı̄ 1892), which does not name an editor or translator but does provide a song praising Sabhapati by the pandit Jwalaprasad Mishra (Jvālaprasād Miśra, 1862–1916) of Moradabad, an important figure in the formation of Hindi literature (Sūda 1986: 78–84) who likely assisted with its publication in that language.22 Sabhapati’s subsequent works in Tamil indicate that he afterwards returned to Chennai and established what he called a “Meditation Hall” (Tam. maṭālayam; Skt. maṭha  +  ālaya) in Konnur, then a small village adjacent to Villivakkam on the outskirts of Madras (Yō kı̄svarar 1894; Svāmikaḷ 1898). Although he continued teaching yoga to students, his main Tamil works (Cuvāmikaḷ 1889; Yō kı̄svarar 1894; Cuvāmikaḷ 1913) notably do not seem to mention either Shrish Chandra Vasu’s name or editorial assistance at all.23 Instead, Sabhapati went on to attract many regional followers throughout Tamil Nadu until his death. These followers not only lived in Madras but were spread out around the Nı̄lgiri Hills in Udhagamandalam (Ooty, then a British hill station and summer capital, nicknamed “Snooty Ooty”), Coonoor, as well as elsewhere in Tamil Nadu, including Tiruchirappalli, as attested by a list of names given in one of his Tamil works (Cuvāmikaḷ 1913: 6). One of Sabhapati’s most important students by 1913 was Konnur Ramalinga Swamigal (Koṉṉūr Irāmaliṅka Cuvāmikaḷ, 1856–1936), who held the post of “chief of the meditation hall” (maṭātipati) after the previous chief’s departure or death (Capāpati Cuvāmikaḷ 1913: 3). Ramalinga’s student Anandananda Swamigal (Ananta Ā nantā Cuvāmikaḷ alias Raman Nair; d. 1983), a former military officer from Kerala, inherited the  I am grateful to Kurt Leland for bringing this reference to my attention.  I am grateful to Jason Schwartz for pointing out Jvālaprasād Miśra’s broader significance in the development of Hindi literature. 23  A detailed treatment of Sabhapati’s vernacular works are outside the scope of this chapter but have been engaged at length in the second chapter of the author’s dissertation (Cantú 2020). 21 22

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Meditation Hall upon Ramalinga’s death in 1936, a small area of which is still extant today (Muthalali 1936; Ceṭt ̣iyār 2019). Another equally important Tamil student was Om Prakash Swami (Om Prakāsa Cuvāmı̄kaḷ, 1872–1947), an engineering draftsman and member of the Indian occult society Latent Light Culture who worked at the Mysore Palace before deciding to pursue a career as a Hat ̣hayogin and the author of an eclectic Vedāntic work entitled Sri Sathsambhashini (Swami 1939 [1915]). According to his biographer, Om Prakash came across one of Sabhapati’s books while at the Mysore Palace, exchanged letters with him from Udhagamandalam, and was initiated by him in a dream on a full-moon night before meeting one of his students (Piḷḷai 1957: 13–20).24 Based on extant documentation we can infer that Sabhapati must have died between 1913 and 1936. Evidence gleaned from my interview with Anandananda Swamigal’s student Hariharan Swami (Pi. Pi. Ā r. Hariharaṉ Cuvāmikaḷ, c. 1935–2019) at a remaining site of Sabhapati’s Meditation Hall, which was once much larger in size, suggests that he died in either 1923 or 1924 (Swamigal 2018).25 Another interview I conducted with a man whose father knew Ramalinga Swamigal personally also provides evidence that Konnur in Villivakkam was Sabhapati’s place of death (Ceṭṭiyār 2019). While tradition holds that Sabhapati’s sacred tomb (Skt. jı̄va-­ samādhi) is in the extant site of his meditation hall or matha, the precise location has yet to be conclusively proven.

Camp Theosophy The Theosophical Society’s response to Sabhapati’s literature has been recently analysed by Karl Baier in a paper that examines the Theosophical Society’s broader engagement with South Asian systems of the cakras in 24  Om Prakash is today still celebrated at a hermitage bearing his name in Kandal, a town adjacent to Udhagamandalam. I visited this site in the summer of 2018 and am grateful to Sravanan Sami for sharing books about his life to me, both of which clarify Om Prakash’s relationship with Sabhapati, as well as a duplicate copy of one of Sabhapati Swami’s rare primary works. 25  Sabhapati is referred to as still being alive and accepting visitors in 1913, and by that time he would have already been around eighty-five years old. As we have already seen, T2 appears to give the most detailed data on his birth, placing it in Mazhkali (December/January) of 1828. Hariharan Swamigal recalled with relative certainty in an interview that Sabhapati lived to be ninety-five years old, which enables us to tentatively situate Sabhapati’s year of death as either 1923 or 1924 (Swamigal 2018).

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great detail (Baier 2016). Baier’s treatment of the late nineteenth- to early twentieth-century author Baradā Kānta Majumdār is compelling and insightful, especially the contrast he draws between his approach to tantric literature as opposed to that of Dayananda Saraswati (Dayānanda Sarasvatı̄ 1824–1883), an important Hindu reformist and early leader of the Arya Samaj (see also Scott 2016). Rather than attempting to repeat Baier’s analysis, I will here limit my remarks to a brief summary of the stated facts regarding the Society’s encounter with Sabhapati Swami. The Theosophical Society’s founding members are considered to be Helena P. Blavatsky (1831–1891) and Henry S.  Olcott (1832–1907) who, along with other prominent supporters such as William Quan Judge (1851–1896), held a public meeting to establish the Theosophical Society at Blavatsky’s New York apartment in 1875. As Joscelyn Godwin (1994: 307–331) mentions, both arrived in Bombay (today’s Mumbai) a few years later, on February 16, 1879. Olcott records (Olcott 1900: 258) that he and Blavatsky met Sri Sabhapati Swami on November 8, 1880, in Lahore after Olcott had delivered a lecture on the occasion of the third anniversary of the founding of the Lahore Arya Samaj the previous day, which at that time was led by Sain Dass (Lālā Sāin Dāss, d. 1890) and Ruttun Chund Bary (also transliterated Lala Rattan Chand Barry; Ratan Candra Bairı̄, c.1849–1890), a Punjabi clerk in the Lahore Accountant-­ General’s Office who would go on to join the Theosophical Society and also reprint Sabhapati’s books in English (see Cantú 2020; Jones 1976; Bowen 2020). Olcott’s lecture was followed by an impromptu address by Sabhapati Swami, which is also attested in Olcott’s handwritten personal diary for 1880, which I have personally consulted at the archives of the Theosophical Society in Adyar.26 However, soon after they met there appears to have been a falling out over his description of a religious experience at Manasarovara (Mānasarovara), a sacred lake today in modern Tibet, from where he flew to commune with Mahadeva on Mount Kailash (Swami 1880: iii–iv). Given Olcott’s later acceptance of a wide array of Theosophical phenomena, it is somewhat strange that he and Blavatsky were greatly disenchanted with Sabhapati after they met with him 26  The programme for this event was preserved in Blavatsky’s scrapbook that is also preserved at the archives of the Theosophical Society in Adyar. Sabhapati’s name is not listed on the programme but we know from corroborating accounts that he addressed the crowd. For more details on this address and on those who were in attendance see the first chapter of the author’s dissertation (Cantú 2020).

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personally and he recounted his vision in terms of a physical experience. Olcott (1900: 258–259) writes: Whatever good opinion we may have formed of him before was spoilt by a yarn he told us of his exploits as a Yog [sic]. He had, he said, been taken up at Lake Mânsarovara, Tibet, high into the air and been transported two hundred miles along the high level to Mount Kailâs, where he saw Mahadeva! Ingenuous foreigners as H.P.B. and I may have been, we could not digest such a ridiculous falsehood as that. I told him so very plainly. If, I said, he had told us that he had gone anywhere he liked in astral body or clairvoyant vision, we might have believed it possible, but in physical body, from Lake Mânsarovara, in company with two Rishis mentioned in the Mahabharata, and to the non-physical Mount Kailâs—thanks, no: he should tell it to somebody else.

Compare this with Olcott’s unpublished diary entry for November 8, which reads as follows: Sabhapaty Swami came [to] us with Birj Lal & another & stopped from 9 ½ am to 4 pm. His talks are right, but seems to me a possible humbug as his is not a spiritual face, and he tells a ridiculous story about being able to fly bodily 200 miles through the air.27

Whether it was Sabhapati’s flight, his perceived lack of a “spiritual face,” or Olcott’s intuition that he was a “humbug,” he and Blavatsky subsequently abandoned any support they may have previously had for his work. At the same time, a little over a week after their November 8 meeting, on November 16, 1880, Sabhapati had an open letter published in the English-language newspaper The Amrita Bazar Patrika. Sabhapati in the letter, composed in English with his own archaic transliterations from Sanskrit, recounts his own much more favourable impression of the meeting: I remained with them from 8 A.M. to 4 P.M. of the 8th November 1880. had a long conversation with them on the theory and practice of ancient occult science (Sarva Sidhoo Shastras) and on the Vedantic Giyana Yog Shastras i.e., the science and holding communion with one’s Self Impersonal God—The Infinite Spirit. Their explanations of these two branches of secret 27  Henry Olcott’s unpublished personal diary for 1880, entry “Monday, November 8, 1879,” held at the Theosophical Society Archives in Adyar, Chennai.

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knowledge of our ancestors were on the whole perfectly correct, and in harmony with my own practical knowledge of them. They agreed with all my main points, and I am fully convinced that they have gained some practical acquaintance of both these sciences.28

In the letter, he then went on to lavishly praise Blavatsky for her “considerable progress in yoge,” but is curiously silent about his impressions of Olcott. In any event, Sabhapati only later appeared as a significant figure in early Theosophy via a partial translation into German by the occult author Franz Hartmann (1838–1912) (see Svâmî 1908a, b; Hartmann 1909; Svami 1926), and to a much lesser extent via a translation of portions of his biographical account into French by the President of Le Disciple Branch of the Theosophical Society in Paris, Paul Gillard (d. 1901) (Gillard 1897).29 An intriguing response to Olcott’s rejection of Sabhapati can be traced in later editions of Sri Sabhapati Swami’s works and Theosophical literature. For example, later reprints of his 1880 work adds the following editorial footnote (Swami 1895, iv, 1950: 15), presumably written by Basu, in the part of Sabhapati’s account that mentions this vision: This need not have been in the physical body of the Rishis; they might have flown towards the holy mountain in their Mayavi Rupa Kama Rupa [sic] (astral body), which to our author (who certainly is not an Adept in the sense the Theosophists use the word) must have been as real as if he had travelled through air in his physical body.

A second note also adjusts the identities of the Rishies (Skt. ṛsị ), who are changed from sages of the Mahābhārata to “Brothers of the Theosophical Society” (ibid.).30 These footnotes were further commented upon by Damodar Mavalankar (Dāmodar Ke Māvalãkar, b. 1857) in The Theosophist, who noted that “the Editor has, to some extent, in a special footnote 28  The letter is entitled “The Madras Yogi Sabhapaty Swamy, Madame Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott at Lahore,” and was dated November 16, 1880. It was preserved in Blavatsky’s unpublished scrapbook held at the Theosophical Society Archives in Adyar, Chennai. 29  I am grateful to Julian Strube for sharing with me more sources on Paul Gillard and his connection to French fin de siècle esoteric milieus. 30  Damodar was an early Theosophist from Ahmedabad, Gujarat who had been accompanying Olcott during much of this early trip in India and who was also a friend of Shrish Chandra.

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­ astened to extricate his hero and himself out of a really perilous situah tion” (Mavalankar 1884; see also Bowen 2020). The Bengali translation of the account of Sabhapati’s flight for its part appears to emphasise that Sabhapati was describing a state of samādhi and not a physical flight. Despite these efforts, it seems that all this commotion over a “flight” did not daunt Sabhapati, who appeared content to continue his work with new networks of students (as stated above) outside the aegis of the Theosophical Society. At the same time, he also continued for at least a decade to “persuade all his disciples to join the Theosophical Society” (Shroff 1890: cxxiv), despite the fact that there is no record of Sabhapati ever joining the Theosophical Society himself. Henry Olcott for his part continued to maintain a sceptical distance from Sabhapati and discouraged people from “running after Yogis, Gurus, and Hermetic Brotherhoods of sorts,” also noting that “[…] while it is kind of [Sabhapati] to advise people to join the Theosophical Society, I should like to see his credentials before undertaking to believe that he ever went into or came out of Agasthya’s Ashrum” (ibid.). Sabhapati’s teachings on yoga did nevertheless continue to survive in certain circles of Theosophy, and to a limited extent were engaged by a separate occult order called Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor via Thomas M. Johnson (1851–1919), a Theosophist who tried to obtain one of Sabhapati’s books from Olcott, and via William Alexander Ayton (1816–1909), Johnson’s “guru” in that order (Bowen 2020: 148–149).

Camp Thelema The continuing practice of certain aspects of Sabhapati’s system has also survived in Thelema, a modern religio-philosophical tradition inseparable from Aleister Crowley, in which the major tenets are “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law” and “Love is the law, love under will.”31 Whereas feelings about Sabhapati were, at best, mixed among Theosophists, Crowley deeply appreciated his work. In his witty “Autohagiography” (Crowley 1970 [1929]) he wrote that he first became attracted to Sabhapati’s writings following his travels in 1901 to Ceylon (modern Sri Lanka), where he visited his friend Allan Bennett (1872–1923), a fellow 31  For examples of both etic scholarly and emic sources that record the historical continuity of Thelema and the Ordo Templi Orientis from Crowley’s death into the present day, see Kaczynski et al. 2015, Starr 2003, Beta 1986, and Melton 1983: 67–89.

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initiate in Crowley’s occultist order, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (Kaczynski 2010: 93–97; Pasi 2014: 12; Djurdjevic 2014: 37).32 An unpublished 1901 diary indicates that Bennett was competent in Sanskrit and interested in yogic meditation, and he later became the second European to receive a Theravāda Buddhist ordination, and the first in Burma (modern Myanmar) (Crow 2009). Before parting ways, Crowley and Bennett studied yoga with a Śaiva pandit named Ponnambalam Ramanathan (1851–1930), who at the time was the Solicitor-General of Ceylon (see Vythilingam 1971). The information given in Crowley’s Confessions and diary is corroborated by the writings of Gerald Yorke (1901–1983), who wrote in his marginal notes to his copy of Kenneth Grant’s Aleister Crowley and the Hidden God that Crowley told him he “did get Tantrik knowledge from Subhapati Swami [sic] in Madras.”33 While the reference to Sabhapati is important, there is no additional proof that Crowley himself ever considered Sabhapati’s knowledge as “tantric,” or that they physically met in Madras or elsewhere. Instead, Crowley elsewhere stated that he was exposed to the “writings” of Sabhapati Swami in Madurai through a man who “spoke English well and was himself a great authority on Yoga” (Crowley 1970: 255).34 This is verified in a letter from Crowley to David Curwen (dated September 11, 1945), in which he recounts that he “was only at Madura for three days and was nobody’s pupil” (Crowley and Curwen 2010: 49). Despite his letter to Curwen, Crowley elsewhere does seem to indicate that he received some sort of instruction in yogic meditation at Madurai, if only briefly. In his commentary to Helena P. Blavatsky’s The Voice in the Silence (1899)—an interesting example of Thelemic commentaries on Theosophical works—he writes that he got a “certain point 32  While an intriguing possibility, there is no evidence that Crowley obtained his teachings on Sabhapati from the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor, as Bowen understandably suggests as a possibility (Bowen 2020: 158) given the likely roots of some of Crowley’s other practices in that order as well as the Hermetic Brotherhood of Light. 33  Quoted in Crowley and Curwen 2010: xxxiv. For more on Yorke’s relationship to Crowley see Yorke et al. 2011. 34  The fact that Crowley in his writings never claimed to be a tantric initiate or even practitioner complicates Hugh Urban’s assertion (Urban 2003: 293) that Crowley has become “one of the most important figures in the transmission of Tantra to the West.” While this may be a popular sentiment, it is important to look at other mediating figures like Kenneth Grant (1924–2011) who helped transform Crowley’s image into a tāntrika, albeit one who in Grant’s view did not fully realise the importance of female sexual fluids (HedenborgWhite 2018).

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in the body suitable for meditation” from his “guru in Madura” (Crowley et al. 1996: 301). Without more data, however, the identity of this guru is unfortunately impossible to determine. Crowley cited Sabhapati favourably in numerous places, but perhaps the best indication of his methodical engagement with Sabhapati’s work is found in a typescript to Crowley’s March–April 1905 diary, which Bill Breeze published as a footnote in the second revised edition to Crowley’s Magick: Book Four (Crowley et al. 2004: 780). In the diary entry, Crowley summarises a passage from Sabhapati’s 1880 work that was reprinted in all subsequent English editions of Sabhapati’s text on Rājayoga. Given Crowley’s emphasis on method, it should not be surprising that the passage he condensed is one of Sabhapati’s most practical and explicit instructions on Śivarājayoga: Draw the light of your two eyes internally to kuṇḍali [i.e., a coil, for Sabhapati located at the base of the spine] by iḍa ̄ and piṅgalā respectively. Imagine the mind as a straight pole brahmarandhra-kuṇḍali and the consciousness at the bottom of this pole. Take hold of the consciousness by the two keennesses35 of your eyes and pull it slowly up […]. Keep consciousness in brahmarandhra for 20 min. more. Then drop and lift it through suṣumnā so fast that it takes less than 1 sec.36

These kinds of dynamics in yogic physiology greatly inspired Crowley, who incorporated them into an instruction entitled Liber HHH, S.S.S. (see Crowley 1911: 13–14; Djurdjevic 2014: 50). It is striking that the Tamil author and former Accountant-General of Madras, T. K. Rajagopalan (2005 [1945]: 76–80), also republished and commented upon this passage—apparently independently of Crowley. Rajagopalan linked the passage to “Tāraka Yoga,” or the “Yoga of the Pupil of the Eye” as a phase of “Amanaska Yoga,”37 citing a similar technique given in part of the first and second brāhmaṇams (1.2–2.4) of the Maṇḍalabrāhmaṇopaniṣad (Śāstri and Rangāchār ya 1899: 9–27), one of 35  The original Sanskrit provided by Sabhāpati is bhāvanā-jñāna, which could be more accurately rendered as “gnosis of (or by means of) cultivation,” or in this context “meditative cultivation.” 36  The original passage Crowley commented on is found in Swami 1880: 35–36; cf. also Swamy 1884/1890: 112–114. 37  For an analysis of the relationship of the term amanaska to rājayoga, see Birch 2013: 406–409.

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the Yoga Upaniṣhads, and its commentary attributed to the celebrated Advaita Vedāntic philosopher Śaṅkara (generally thought to have lived in the late eighth and early ninth century).38 Another author named Arjan Dass Malik (1938–2006), a former civil servant in the North Indian state of Haryana, was also enamoured of the technical dynamics at play in the above passage, noting that Sabhapati’s inclusion of both upwards and downwards flows of “consciousness” is significant. More specifically, Malik asserted that the swami “correctly mentions that the Kundalini having reached the top of the brain first descends to the Ajña [i.e., the ājñā cakra] and later on ascends from the Ajña to the top of the brain” (Malik 2002: 43).39

Concluding Thoughts It is hoped that these observations will help indicate a way in which Sri Sabhapati Swami can be better integrated into the discourses that surround the academic field of Western esotericism, and that they will also encourage more rigorous historical analyses of Theosophical and Thelemic engagement with South Asian yogic traditions. Additionally, the reception history of Sabhapati Swami’s literature demonstrates that a primary intent of some of these occult authors—at least as explicitly stated—was to learn and disseminate techniques that were deemed objectively efficacious, and not to intentionally exoticise or inscribe difference. This is perhaps most exemplified by the negative attitude towards “oriental” fascination with yoga in Crowley’s Eight Lectures on Yoga, where he humorously stated the following (1985 [1939]: 13): There is more nonsense talked and written about Yoga than about anything else in the world. Most of this nonsense, which is fostered by charlatans, is 38 ́ ́ kara is  Sāstri in his edition of this text notes that this traditional attribution to Saṅ unlikely, and that the attribution to an unnamed “disciple of Sadánandávadhùta” (śrı̄sadānandāvadhūtaśiṣya) given in the colophon of one of the manuscripts he consulted is more likely. For a useful analysis of what works are thought by contemporary scholars to actually be written by Śaṅkara, see Clark 2006: 104–114. I am grateful to Nils Seiler for bringing to my attention current debates over what constitutes the authentic corpus of Śaṅkara’s works. 39  It is interesting that Malik and Rajagopalan explicitly differentiate Sabhapati Swami’s yogic methods from those later published by John Woodroffe/Arthur Avalon (1865–1936), whose book and translation The Serpent Power later became one of the most common western source texts for teachings on kuṇḍalinı̄.

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based upon the idea that there is something mysterious and Oriental about it. There isn’t. Do not look to me for obelisks and odalisques, rahat loucoum, bul-buls, or any other tinsel imagery of the Yoga-mongers. I am neat but not gaudy. There is nothing mysterious or Oriental about anything, as everybody knows who has spent a little time intelligently in the continents of Asia and Africa. I propose to invoke the most remote and elusive of all Gods to throw clear light upon the subject—the light of common sense.

Statements like the above by Crowley demonstrate that not all authors on yoga partook in the same orientalist project—if they partook in orientalism at all. Perhaps it is therefore more useful to speak of several “orientalisms,” not all of which are necessarily negative, thus discursively distinguishing: the political “orientalism” of Edward Said (see Said 1979) from the mystical pole-star “orientalism” of Henry Corbin (see Corbin 1994); the “orientalism” of Indologists as examined by David Smith (see Smith 2003); “Theosophical orientalism” as analysed by Karl Baier (see Baier 2016) and harshly critiqued by Christopher Partridge (see Partridge 2013); and perhaps even a Thelemic “orientalism” that also partakes in a kind of period-specific “anti-orientalism” (as evident by Crowley’s quote above). On the other hand, perhaps such an exploration into this kind of complex exchange will serve as a helpful reminder that, at the end of the day, the “orient” on this wide earth can be simply wherever the sun rises and the “occident” wherever it sets.

References Primary Sources Beta, Hymenaeus, ed. 1986. The Equinox. The Review of Scientific Illuminism: The Official Organ of the O.T.O.  Volume III, Number 10. New  York: Thelema Publications. Braidwood, Rev. John. 1862. True Yoke-Fellows in the Mission Field: The Life and Labours of the Rev. John Anderson and the Rev. Robert Johnston, Traced in the Rise and Development of the Madras Free Church Mission. London: James Nisbet & Co. Ceṭṭiyār, Eṉ Taṃ ṃ aṇṇa. 2016. Vāciyo k̄ am eṉṉum civarāja yōkam [The Yoga for King Śiva that is called the Yoga of Channels]. Chennai: Śrı̄ Indu Papḷikēsạ ṉs. Cet ̣ṭiyār, V. Cuppiramaṉiya. 2019. Interview in Murugambakkam, Tamil Nadu, by Keith Cantú and Vinayagam. Audio recording in Tamil dated August 17.

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Crowley, Aleister. 1911. Liber HHH sub figvra CCCXLI continet capitula tres: MMM, AAA, et SSS.  In The Equinox: The Official Organ of the A: A: The Review of Scientific Illuminism I: no. 5. London: Printed for Aleister Crowley and Published by him at the Office of the Equinox. ———. 1970 [1929]. The Spirit of Solitude: An Autohagiography Subsequently re-­ Antichristened. The Confessions of Aleister Crowley. Edited and Abridged by John Symonds and Kenneth Grant. New York: Hill and Wang. ———. 1985 [1939]. Eight Lectures on Yoga. Scottsdale: O.T.O. in Association with New Falcon Publications. Crowley, Aleister, H.  P. Blavatsky, J.  F. C.  Fuller, and Charles Stansfeld Jones. 1996. Commentaries on the Holy Books and Other Papers: The Equinox, Volume Four, Number One. Edited by ‘The editors of The Equinox.’ York Beach: Samuel Weiser. Crowley, Aleister, Mary Desti, Leila Waddell, and Hymenaeus Beta. 2004 [1997]. Magick: Liber ABA, Book Four, Parts I-IV. 2nd revised ed. York Beach: S. Weiser. Crowley, Aleister, and David Curwen. 2010. Brother Curwen, Brother Crowley: A Correspondence. Edited and with an Introduction by Hendrik Bogdan. York Beach: Teitan Press. Cuvāmikaḷ, Capāpati. 1913. Carva karmma, kiriyā, yōka, kñāṉa, tiyāṉāppiyāca, cātanānupava, mantira caṅkiraha vēta tiyāṉōpatēca smı̄ruti [Inspired Treatise on the Instructions of Meditation and Mantras, as Compiled from the Scriptures, on Every Deed, Action, Yoga, Gnosis, Exercise of Meditation, and Experience of Ritual]. Puttūr, Tirucci [Tiruchirapalli]: Ṣaṇmukavilāsa Piras. Cuvāmikaḷ, Ñāṉakuruyō ki Capāpati. 1889. Carvōpatēsa tatvañāṉa civarājayōka svayap pirammañāṉāṉupūti vētapōtam. Madras: Empress of India Piras. Gillard, Paul. 1897. ‘Le Yogi Sabhapatty Swami, de Madras’ and ‘Le pas décisif’. Le Lotus Bleu 8 (1): 18–24. Kailāsn ̣ āt, Yō kı̄. 2012. Caṟkurunāta yōkam [The Yoga of Sargurunath]. Chennai: Kaṟpakam Puttakālayam. Maas, Philipp. 2006. Samādhipāda: Das erste Kapitel des Pātañjalayogaśāstra zum ersten Mal kritisch ediert. Aachen: Shaker. Mallinson, James, ed. 2007. The Shiva Samhita: A Critical Edition and an English Translation. Woodstock: YogaVidya.com. Mavalankar, Damodar. 1884. The Philosophy and Science of Vedantic Raja Yoga. The Theosophist: A Magazine of Oriental Philosophy, Art, Literature and Occultism 5 (6): 146. Muthalali, Koshi. 1936. Proceedings of the Tahsildar of Saidapet Taluk, Ref: Transfer of Registry-Saidapet Taluk 71, Konnur Village Patta Nos. 54 and 68. Unpublished legal document.

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Olcott, Henry S. 1900. Old Diary Leaves: The Only Authentic History of the Theosophical Society. Second Series 1878–83. London and Madras: The Theosophical Publishing Society and the Theosophist Office. Śāstri, A. Mahādeva, and Panditaratnam K. Rangāchār ya, eds. 1899. The Maṇḍala-­ Brāhmaṇopanishad with a Commentary. Mysore: Government Branch Press. Shroff, Muncherjee M. 1890. The Work in Bombay. In The Theosophist: A Magazine of Oriental Philosophy, Art, Literature and Occultism. Supplement to Volume XI, April 1890, ed. Henry S.  Olcott, cxxiii–cxxiv. Madras: The Proprietors, Adyar. Svâmî, Mahâtmâ Jñâna Guru Yogî Sabhapatti. 1908a. Aus dem Leben des indischen Mahâtmâ Jñâna Guru Yogî Sabhapatti. Trans. Franz Hartmann. Neue Lotusblüten 1 (7–8): 259–271. ———. 1908b. Aus der Philosophie und Wissenschaft des Vedânta und Râja-­ Yoga, von Mahâtmâ Jñâna Guru Yogî Sabhapatti Svâmî. Trans. Franz Hartmann. Neue Lotusblüten 1 (7–12): 282, 301, 319–353, 377–403. Svāmı̄, Mahātmā Jñānaguruyogı̄ Sabhāpati. 1892. Rājayoga brahmajñānānubhūti saṃ graha veda [Compiled Sacred Scripture on the Direct Apprehension of the Gnosis of the Brahman that is the Yoga of Kings]. Mumbaı̄ [Mumbai]: ‘Tattvavivecaka’ Chāpkhānā. Svāmı̄, Sabhāpati. 1883. Yogı̄ Sabhāpati Svāmı̄ ke hālāt [The Life of Sabhapati Swami]. Bareilly: The Rohilkhand Theosophical Society. Svāmikaḷ, Ñāṉakuru Yō kı̄svara Capāpati. 1898. Cātaṉāppiyāsāṉupava upatēcam [Instruction on the Exercises and Practices of the Rites]. Vellore: V.N. Press. Svami, Sabhapatti. 1926. Die Philosophie und Wissenschaft des Vedānta und Rāja-­ Yoga oder Das Eingehen in GOTT. Translated by Franz Hartmann. Leipzig: Theosophisches Verlagshaus. Svāmı̄, Śrı̄mat Sabhāpati. 1885. Bedāntadarśan o rājayoga [The Philosophy of Vedānta and the Yoga of Kings]. Translated by Ambikācaraṇ Bandyopādhyāy. Kolkata: Śrı̄ś Candra Basu. Swami, Sabhapati. 1880. Om. A Treatise on Vedantic Raj Yoga Philosophy. Edited by Siris Chandra Basu. Lahore: ‘Civil and Military Gazette’ Press. Swami, The Mahatma Jnana Guru Yogi Sabhapaty. 1895. Om: The Philosophy & Science of Vedanta and Raja Yoga. Edited by Srish Chandra Vasu. Third Edition. Lahore: R.C. Bary & Sons. Swami, Sabhapaty. 1950. The Philosophy and Science of Vedanta and Raja Yoga. Edited by Siris Chandra Vasu. Second Edition. Bombay: C.P. Mandali. First published 1883. Swami, Sabhapaty, and Wm Estep. 1929. Esoteric Cosmic Yogi Science, or, Works of the World Teacher. Excelsior Springs: Super Mind Science Publications. Swami, Sri Om Prakash. 1939 [1915]. Sri Sathsambhashini. Madras: Eveready Press.

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Swamigal, Hariharaṉ. 2018. Interview at Aruḷmiku Śrı̄ Capāpati Liṅkēsvar Jı̄vacamāti Ā layam, by Keith Cantú, Sivasakthi, Beulah, and Mathan Raj. Audio recording in Tamil dated August 12. Swamy, Sabhapathy. 1884/1890. Om. The Cosmic Psychological Spiritual Philosophy and Science of Communion with and Absorption in the Holy and Divine Infinite Spirit, or Vedhantha Siva Raja Yoga Samadhi Brumha Gnyana Anubuthi. Two books in one volume. Madras: The Hindu Press (Second book printed at Bombay: the ‘Karnatak Press’). Vythilingam, M. 1971. The Life of Sir Ponnambalam Ramanathan. Two Volumes. Colombo: Ramanathan Commemoration Society. Yō kı̄svarar, Ñāṉakuru Capāpati. 1894. Cakalākamattirtṭ ụ [A Compilation of All Agamas]. Madras: C. Murugesa Mudalyar at the Hindu Theological Press.

Secondary Sources Baier, Karl. 2009. Meditation Und Moderne: Zur Genese eines Kernbereichs moderner Spiritualität in der Wechselwirkung zwischen Westeuropa, Nordamerika und Asien. Vol. 2. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann. ———. 2012. Mesmeric Yoga and the Development of Meditation within the Theosophical Society. Theosophical History: A Quarterly Journal of Research XVI (3–4): 151–161. ———. 2016. Theosophical Orientalism and the Structures of Intercultural Transfer: Annotations on the Appropriations of the Cakras in Early Theosophy. In Theosophical Appropriations: Esotericism, Kabbalah, and the Transformation of Traditions, ed. Julie Chajes and Boaz Huss, 309–354. Be’er Sheva: Ben-­ Gurion University of the Negev Press. ———. 2018. Yoga within Viennese Occultism: Carl Kellner and Co. In Yoga in Transformation: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, ed. Karl Baier, Philipp A.  Maas, and Karin Preisendanz, 183–222. Vienna: Vienna University Press. Bayly, Susan. 1989. Saints, Goddesses and Kings: Muslims and Christians in South Indian Society 1700–1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Birch, Jason. 2013. Rājayoga: The Reincarnations of the King of All Yogas. International Journal of Hindu Studies 17 (3): 399–442. Bogdan, Henrik. 2014. Reception of Occultism in India: The Case of the Holy Order of Krishna. In Occultism in a Global Perspective, ed. Henrik Bogdan and Gordan Djurdjevic, 177–201. London and New York: Routledge. Bose, Phanindranath. 1932. Life of Sris Chandra Basu. Calcutta: R. Chatterjee. Bowen, Patrick D. 2020. ‘The Real Pure Yog’: Yoga in the Early Theosophical Society and the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor. In Imagining the East: The Early Theosophical Society, ed. Tim Rudbøg and Erik Reenberg Sand, 143–165. New York: Oxford University Press.

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Cantú, Keith Edward. 2017. ‘Śrı̄ścandra Basur Yauban-Kāl o Yog Sādhanār Racanā’ [‘The Youth of Śrı̄śacandra Basu (a.k.a. S.C.  Vasu) and Works on Yogic Sādhanā’]. Bhābanagara: International Journal of Bengal Studies 7 (8): 833–844. ———. 2018. Śrı̄ścandra Basu o Baṃ lār Anubāde Sabhāpati [Sris Candra Basu and Sabhapati’s Bengali Translation]. Bhābanagara: International Journal of Bengal Studies 9 (10): 1099–1107. ———. 2020. Sri Sabhapati Swami and the “Translocalization” of Śivarājayoga. PhD dissertation, University of California, Santa Barbara. Caṭṭopādhyāy, Śrı̄rāmānanda. 1932. Bāmandās Basu. Prabāsı̄ 30 (3): 400–408. Chatterjee, Ramananda. 1930. Baman Das Basu. The Modern Review 48 (6): 667–675. Churton, Tobias. 2019. Aleister Crowley in India: The Secret Influence of Eastern Mysticism on Magic and the Occult. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions. Clark, Matthew. 2006. The Daśanāmı̄-Saṃ nyās ı̄s: The Integration of Ascetic Lineages into an Order. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Corbin, Henry Eugène. 1994. The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism. Translated by Nancy Pearson. New Lebanon: Omega Publications. Crow, John L. 2009. The White Knight in the Yellow Robe: Allan Bennett’s Search for Truth. M.A. thesis, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Djurdjevic, Gordan. 2014. India and the Occult: The Influence of South Asian Spirituality on Modern Western Occultism. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Djurdjevic, Gordan, and Shukdev Singh. 2019. Sayings of Gorakhnāth: Annotated Translation of the Gorakh Bānı̄. New York: Oxford University Press. Fisher, Elaine. 2013. A New Public Theology: Sanskrit and Society in SeventeenthCentury South India. PhD Dissertation, Columbia University. Glover, William J. 2008. Making Lahore Modern: Constructing and Imagining a Colonial City. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Godwin, Joscelyn. 1994. The Theosophical Enlightenment. Albany: State University of New York Press. Hartmann, Franz. 1909. Die Philosophie und Wissenschaft des Vedānta und Rāja-­ Yoga oder Das Eingehen in die Gottheit von Mahātma Jñāna Guru Yogi Sabhapatti Svāmı̄. Leipzig: Jaeger’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung. Hedenborg-White, Manon. 2018. The Other Woman: Babalon and the Scarlet Woman in Kenneth Grant’s Typhonian Trilogies. In Servants of the Star & the Snake: Essays in Honour of Kenneth & Steffi Grant, ed. Henrik Bogdan. London: Starfire Publishing Ltd. Hine, Phil. 2016. Chakras Into the West—Early Theosophical Sources. Accessed 23 July 2018. http://enfolding.org/chakras-into-the-west-early-theosophicalsources-i. ———. 2018. Wheels Within Wheels: Chakras Come West. London: Twisted Trunk. Jones, Kenneth. 1976. Arya Dharm: Hindu Consciousness in 19th-century Punjab. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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Kaczynski, Richard. 2010. Perdurabo: The Life of Aleister Crowley. Revised and expanded ed. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books. Kaczynski, Richard, Frater Iskandar, and Frater Taos, eds. 2015. Success Is Your Proof: One Hundred Years of O.T.O. in North America, a Festschrift in Honor of Hymenaeus Beta, Celebrating Thirty Years of Leadership. New  York: Sekmet Books. Larson, Gerald. 2018. Classical Yoga Philosophy and the Legacy of Samkhya. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. Leland, Kurt. 2016. Rainbow Body: A History of the Western Chakra System from Blavatsky to Brennan. Lake Worth: Ibis Press. Makdisi, Saree. 2014. Making England Western: Occidentalism, Race, and Imperial Culture. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. Malik, Arjan Dass. 2002. Kundalini and Meditation. Delhi and Borehamwood: Motilal Banarsidass. Mallinson, James. 2011. The Nāth Saṃ pradāya. In Brill’s Encyclopedia of Hinduism, ed. Knut A. Jacobsen, vol. 3, 407–428. Leiden and Boston: Brill. ———. 2018. Yoga and Sex: What Is the Purpose of Vajrolı̄mudrā? In Yoga in Transformation: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, ed. Karl Baier, Philipp A.  Maas, and Karin Preisendanz, 183–222. Vienna: Vienna University Press. Melton, J.  Gordon. 1983. Thelemic Magick in America. In Alternatives to American Mainline Churches, ed. Joseph Henry Fichter and William Sims Bainbridge, 67–87. New York: Unification Theological Seminary. Michelis, Elizabeth de. 2008. A History of Modern Yoga: Patañjali and Western Esotericism. London and New York: Continuum. Müller, F. Max. 1899. The Six Systems of Indian Philosophy. London: Longmans, Green, and Co. Narayanan, Vasudha. 2006. Religious Vows at the Shrine of Shahul Hamid. In Dealing with Deities: The Ritual Vow in South Asia, ed. William Harman and Selva Raj, 65–85. Albany: State University of New York Press. Oman, John Campbell. 1889. Indian Life, Religious and Social. London: T Fisher Unwin. Partridge, Christopher. 2013. Lost Horizon: H.  P. Blavatsky and Theosophical Orientalism. In Handbook of the Theosophical Current, ed. Olav Hammer and Mikael Rothstein, 309–333. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Pasi, Marco. 2014. Aleister Crowley and the Temptation of Politics. Durham: Acumen. Piḷḷai, Śrı̄ Ti. Ku. Kō vintacāmi. 1957. Nı̄lakiri, utakamaṇtạ lam, tirukkāntal śrī takṣiṇāmūr tti mat ̣am lōkōpakāra vityātāṉa capai stāpakar acalapı̄tạ m śrīmat ompirakāsa cuvāmikaḷ carittirac curukkam [A Biographical Sketch of Shrimat Om Prakash Swamigal, Founder of the Assembly of Giving Knowledge for the Benefit of the People, (located at) Shri Kandal Dakshinamurthy Math in Udhagamandalam, Nilgiri]. Kō yamuttūr [Coimbatore]: Payaṉı̄r Piras.

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Powell, Seth. 2018. A Lamp on Śiva’s Yoga: The Unification of Yoga, Ritual, and Devotion in the Fifteenth-Century Śivayogapradīpikā. PhD prospectus, Harvard University. Rajagopalan, T.  K. 2005 [1945]. Hidden Treasures of Yoga: Revealing Certain Ancient and Secret Methods of Practical Mysticism. Delhi: Oriental Book Centre. Said, Edward W. 1979. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books. Sanderson, Alexis. 2009. The Śaiva Age—The Rise and Dominance of Śaivism during the Early Medieval Period. In Genesis and Development of Tantrism, ed. Shingo Einoo, 41–351. Tokyo: Institute of Oriental Culture, University of Tokyo. Scott, J. Barton. 2016. Spiritual Despots: Modern Hinduism and the Genealogies of Self-Rule. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. Singleton, Mark. 2010. Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Smith, David. 2003. Hinduism and Modernity. Malden: Blackwell Publishing. Starr, Martin P. 2003. The Unknown God: W.  T. Smith and the Thelemites. Bolingbrook: Teitan Press. Steinschneider, Eric. 2016. Beyond the Warring Sects: Universalism, Dissent, and Canon in Tamil Śaivism, ca. 1675–1994. Ph.D. thesis, University of Toronto, Canada. Sūda, Haramohana Lāla. 1986. Bhāratendu maṇḍal ke samānāntara aur āpūrak murādābād maṇḍal [The Parallel of the Bharatendu Milieu and the Apurak Milieu]. New Delhi: Vāṇı ̄ Prakāśan. Talbot, Ian, and Tahir Kamran. 2016. Lahore in the Time of the Raj. Haryana, India: Penguin Random House India. Urban, Hugh. 2003. The Power of the Impure: Transgression, Violence and Secrecy in Bengali Śākta Tantra and Modern Western Magic. Numen 50 (3): 269–308. Venkatraman, Ramaswamy. 1990. A History of the Tamil Siddha Cult. Madurai: Ennes Publications. Vitello, Paul. 2010. Hindu Group Stirs a Debate Over Yoga’s Soul. New York Times, November 27. Weiss, Richard S. 2009. Recipes for Immortality: Medicine, Religion, and Community in South India. New York: Oxford University Press. White, David Gordon. 1996. The Alchemical Body: Siddha Traditions in Medieval India. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. ———. 2006. Digging Wells While Houses Burn? Writing Histories of Hinduism in a Time of Identity Politics. History and Theory 45: 104–131. ———. 2009. Sinister Yogis. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. ———. 2014. The Yoga Sutra of Patanjali: A Biography. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Yorke, Gerald, Keith Richmond, Timothy D’Arch Smith, Clive Harper, David Tibet, and Aleister Crowley. 2011. Aleister Crowley, the Golden Dawn and Buddhism: Reminiscences and Writings of Gerald Yorke. York Beach: Teitan Press.

CHAPTER 17

Tracing Vivekananda’s Prāṇa and A ̄kās´a: The Yogavāsiṣṭha and Rama Prasad’s Occult Science of Breath Magdalena Kraler

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902), a Bengali swami who taught yoga and Vedānta in India and the West, contributed significantly to the emergence of modern yoga (e.g., de Michelis 2004; Pokazanyeva 2016).1 In his short life, his fame as a gifted spiritual teacher extended throughout India, the United States, and Europe, and his popular lectures were emblematic of a confident explication of Hinduism that often argued against the grain of colonialism. In his famous Râja Yoga (1896), a book that compiles a series of talks on the yoga of Patañjali held in winter 1895–1896 in the United States, Vivekananda outlines a cosmology that innovatively employs the concepts of prāṇa, which he commonly translates as “energy,” “force,” and “movement,” as well as ākās a, ́ which he usually translates as “matter”  While the errors and misunderstandings in this chapters are certainly my own, I am grateful to Keith Edward Cantú, Dominik Haas, and Dominic S. Zoehrer for their valuable comments on earlier versions. 1

M. Kraler (*) University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria © The Author(s) 2021 L. Pokorny, F. Winter (eds.), The Occult Nineteenth Century, Palgrave Studies in New Religions and Alternative Spiritualities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55318-0_17

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or “ether.” These principles are not only applied on a macrocosmic level but are also relevant for Vivekananda’s understanding of the individual’s constitution on a microcosmic level. For example, on the latter, prāṇa, pulsating in the individual, implies the movement of breath and thought; ākās a, ́ on the other hand, associated with certain functions of the (sense) organs, is equated with the mind. This very brief summary of Vivekananda’s cosmology and anthropology that claims to span science and religion—a typical occult motive—already reveals the complex stratification of his usage of these key terms. So far, they have been interpreted in the light of nineteenth-century occultism along two major lines: one mainly following the interpretation of prāṇa; the other that of ākās a. ́ One way Vivekananda’s theory of prāṇa has been understood is in its function as a “healing agent,” a notion that can be paralleled with the mesmeric fluidum. Elizabeth de Michelis (2004: 159–168), Karl Baier (2009: 479), and Dominic Zoehrer in this volume pursue such an argumentation.2 A second line of interpretation has traced the influence of nineteenth-century ether theories on Vivekananda’s notion of ākās a/ ́ ether.3 In proximity to discourses of science, Vivekananda at times translates prāṇa as “force” and ākās á as “matter,”4 which is reminiscent of Ludwig Büchner’s Kraft und Stoff: Empirisch-Naturphilosophische Studien (1855; Force and Matter: Empirical-philosophical Studies), and the vast net of materialist and anti-materialist discourses related to these notions in the nineteenth century.5 While the above approaches are revealing, I will elaborate in this chapter on some additional implications of Vivekananda’s notion of prāṇa and ākās á in relation to premodern Indian sources familiar to him. In doing so, I will limit this preliminary investigation to sources that employ both prāṇa and ākās a, ́ as is the case in Râja Yoga. My approach, then, is 2  Zoehrer also elaborates on the mesmeric fluidum and its correlation with prāṇa in the works of Helena P. Blavatsky (1831–1891), the co-founder of the Theosophical Society. All mentions of Theosophy in the present chapter are to the Theosophical Society established by Helena P. Blavatsky and Henry S. Olcott (1832–1907). 3  Asprem (2011) discusses the historisation of discourses on ether and matter in Victorian physics, and the involvement of the Theosophical Society in these discourses, while Pokazanyeva (2016) also directly refers to Vivekananda. 4  See, for example, CWV II: 436. 5  In Kraft und Stoff, a well-known book of popular science that was translated into fifteen languages, Büchner postulates the unity of force and matter and propagates, although not fully consistently, a material monism that reduces categories like mind, soul, and thought to a force-bearing imperishable substance (Bergunder 2016: 89–90).

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twofold: First, I engage with the Yogavāsiṣt ̣ha, a kind of esoteric Rāmāyaṇa that teaches a path to non-dual liberation, which evidences Upanishadic, tantric, and Hat ̣hayogic streams of influence. I also examine the influence that a Theosophically tinged English translation of the Yogavāsiṣt ̣ha by Vihari Lal Mitra may have had on Vivekananda. Second, I discuss a cluster of texts by the North Indian Sanskrit pandit and Theosophist Rama Prasad ́ Kasyapa (c. 1860–1914), which can be grouped around the Sivasvarodaya, a tantric text that gives instruction for divination through breath or svara. Under the heading of an “Occult Science” or a “Science of Breath,” Prasad produced three influential publications that were based on a trans6 ́ lation of the Sivasvarodaya. I also refer to the reception history of the Occult Science of Breath within German occultism and Theosophy predating Vivekananda’s Râja Yoga in so far as it relates to prāṇa and ākās a. ́ As will be shown, the Yogavāsiṣt ̣ha emphasises both prāṇa and ākās a, ́ but does not, as far as I can tell, link them as a functional pair. The cluster of texts by Rama Prasad occasionally mentions prāṇa and ākās á as a pair and also highlights each of these notions in a specific way. This chapter, then, sheds new contextual light on the use of Vivekananda’s term prāṇa and its close associate ākās a. ́ In doing so, my approach to Indian sources is inspired by the work of James Madaio (2017), who has persuasively argued against the selective historiography of Advaita Vedānta and the demarcation between so-called classical and neo-Vedāntic proponents. These categories appear more obfuscating when attention is paid to medieval and early modern Vedāntic, Advaitic, and yogic sources that demonstrate creative integrations that are not dissimilar to those ascribed to figures such as Vivekananda. This leads to a reconsideration of the Indian sources familiar to Vivekananda, whose oeuvre Madaio positions as a “vernacular advaita” (Madaio 2017: 7). In this chapter, I pursue one such source, the medieval Yogavāsiṣt ̣ha, which purports a form of Advaita that did not emerge within Vedāntic traditions and therefore does not entail the same epistemic constraints associated with Śaṅkarite Vedānta (ibid.: 7 n. 21). With that being said, I also consider the work of Karl Baier (2018), who rightly observes that traces of a cosmology based on prāṇa and ākās á appear in Theosophical discourse before Vivekananda. In doing so, I highlight Vivekananda’s likely but rather 6 ́  In this chapter, I refer to Prasad’s texts based on the Sivasvarodaya in a generic way as the “Occult Science of Breath,” implying the Occult Science (1892 [1884]), The Science of Breath and the Philosophy of the Tatwas (1890), and related articles in The Theosophist (1887–1889).

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elusive reception of Theosophical literature, the latter incorporating itself a vast body of (South) Indian medieval and early modern Sanskrit texts, such as the Yoga Upaniṣads. Indian Theosophists pioneered in translating Haṭhayogic and tantric literature from Sanskrit to English, thereby mediating an arcane body of literature to a broad public. One of these early ́ works is Rama Prasad’s translation of the Sivasvarodaya, a possible entry point for Vivekananda into nineteenth-century occultism.7

̄ s̄ á in Premodern Indian Thought Prāṇa and A ka

Mentioned in early Vedic texts, prāṇa and ākās á have deep roots in Indian religions and philosophies as independent notions. For centuries, each of them was relevant for cosmological and anthropological explications because both can be understood to span the macro- and microcosm. However, in premodern contexts, they were rarely, if at all, closely associated with each other, let alone positioned as a functional pair. Before pursuing Vivekananda’s engagement with these terms, I briefly discuss several premodern meanings of prāṇa and ākās a. ́ Prāṇa is generally translated as “breath,” “spirit,” “vitality,” or “vital principle” (Monier-Williams 1899: 705). This encompassing principle forms an intricate part of Indian thought, connected to such vast categories as individual life and life at large (as in the Upanishads), as well as prolongation of life and spiritual attainment through prāṇāyāma, which means “control of prāṇa” or “breath control.” Upanishadic thought, which developed out of earlier strata of the Vedas, extensively discusses prāṇa as a vital principle. The Chāndogya Upaniṣad even places it on the same ontological level as brahman, the highest principle in the cosmos, and ātman, the universal self which is—on some accounts—ultimately identical with brahman (Zysk 1993: 204). In “classical” Sāṃ khya,8 prāṇa

7  Regarding some of Vivekananda’s key terminology, which was partly mediated in the Indian context through Theosophists, I argue elsewhere that Vivekananda’s notion of “superconsciousness” can be related to Theosophical sources and their usage of this term. See Jacobs and Kraler (forthcoming). 8  What I refer to as the “classical Sāṃ khya” extends roughly from the first to the tenth century CE, epitomised in the Sāṃ khyakārikā by Iś̄ varakṛśṇa (c. 350–450 CE), a work that came to be viewed as foundational and was commented on numerously. Late medieval Sāṃ khya can be dated between 1500 and 1600 CE (Larson 1979: 134; 152).

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does not play an overtly important role.9 Also, in Pātañjalayoga, a tradition closely associated with the broadly diffused tradition of Sāṃ khya, prāṇa is not discussed metaphysically but only in reference to breath control. It is in medieval Haṭhayoga that the control of prāṇa through breath regulation or prāṇāyāma techniques (as well as mental practices) gains superior soteriological potential. For some medieval authors, the control of prāṇa is the defining category for Hat ̣hayoga (Mallinson and Singleton 2017: 32). Prāṇāyāma was also used as a therapeutic tool to cure imbalances of prāṇa or vāyu (“air,” “breath”) accumulated in the body, as explained in some editions of the Haṭhapradı ̄pikā (Birch 2018: 56–57).10 Space does not permit to unpack further details here; suffice it to say that premodern Indian contexts emphasise prāṇa as a vital principle and a therapeutic tool, both of which are relevant for understanding Vivekananda’s use of prāṇa and prāṇāyāma in healing contexts, which, until the present, have been largely interpreted in the light of mesmerism.11 ̄ s á is generally translated as “space,” “sky,” or “ether” (Monier-­ A kā Williams 1899: 127). In the earlier Upanishads, ākās a, ́ not unlike prāṇa, is occasionally identified with brahman, as is the sun (āditya) and the mind (manas) (Dasgupta 1932 [1922]: 43). In Sāṃ khya cosmology, ākās á is the first and the subtlest of the five elements (bhūtas), bearing the other four and thus entailing a creative component (Pokazanyeva 2016: 326). In the classical explications of the Sāṃ khyakārikā, ākās á is not “eternal” (nitya) and does not resemble either puruṣa or prakṛti in any way—despite

9  Rather, the role often ascribed to prāṇa seems to be partially supplanted by the principle of intellect (buddhi): “The buddhi is spread all over the body, as it were, for it is by its functions that the life of the body is kept up; for the Sāṃ khya does not admit any separate prāṇa vāyu (vital breath) to keep the body living” (Dasgupta 1932 [1922]: 262). 10  An addition of a chapter from the Dharmaputrikā to the Hat ̣hapradı̄pikā (Birch 2018: 56–57) states that the yogi, suffering from disease through an imbalance of vāyu, should “draw out the breath that has accumulated [there] as one [would draw out accumulated] fluid from the ear with water” (Hat ̣hapradı̄pikā 5.9–11, as quoted in Birch 2018: 57). This re-balancing of prāṇa/vāyu is induced through “many exhalations and inhalations” (ibid.). Vivekananda seems to apply a similar concept by explaining: “Sometimes in your own body the supply of Prâṇa gravitates more or less to one part; the balance is disturbed, and when the balance of Prâṇa is disturbed, what we call disease is produced. To take away the superfluous Prâṇa, or to supply the Prâṇa that is wanting, will be curing the disease” (Vivekananda 1896: 42). 11  The broader implications of Vivekananda’s theory and practice of prāṇāyāma, or yogic breath cultivation, will be addressed extensively in my Ph.D. thesis.

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its creative component (Duquette and Ramasubramaniam 2010: 520).12 However, the sixteenth-century Vijñānabhikṣu, who attempted to unify Vedānta, Sāṃ khya, and Pātañjalayoga, ascribed a causal quality to ākās á that approximates the function of prakṛti in the Sāṃ khyakārikā (ibid.). In the philosophical school of Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika, ākās á is equalled to ātman, and both are called “the supremely great or all-pervasive,” and are considered “eternal” (Dasgupta 1932 [1922]: 292).

Vivekananda’s Cosmology in Relation to Sam ̄ ̣ khyan Cosmology Vivekananda’s Râja Yoga: Conquering the Internal Nature (1896) is a collection of lectures on Pātañjalayoga, a tradition that assumes the metaphysics and cosmology of Sāṃ khya. Before engaging with the exegesis of Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtra, Vivekananda establishes a cosmological framework in which he sets forth the ideas of prāṇa and ākās á as a metaphysical background that is not specifically tied to the Yoga Sūtra itself, but, in his view, linked to the broader explications of the Yoga-Sāṃ khya tradition. In the introduction to Râja Yoga, Vivekananda states that all existence evolves out of ākās a, ́ a primordial matter, or the element ether (Vivekananda 1896: 30; 36). Prāṇa, a vibrating energy and the “sum total of all force,” activates this primordial matter, and together they form all existence on the macro- and microcosmic levels (ibid.: 31). In its lower vibrations, ākās á gives rise to all objects, from the stars to the human body, and in its “finer state of vibration [ākās a/ether] ́ will represent the mind” (ibid.: 36). The vibrations of prāṇa are manifested in physical forces on a macrocosmic plane within the universe, including motion, gravitation, and magnetism, and in (psycho-)physical forces on the microcosmic one within the individual, such as movement, nerve currents, and thought (ibid.: 31). The “subtle” action of prāṇa correlates with the “subtle” material quality of ākās á and the “gross” action leads to “gross” manifestations, thereby producing tangible objects (ibid.: 36; 14). Since tangible manifestations are caused by the subtle vibration of prāṇa and ākās a, ́ 13 the “whole universe is composed of these subtle vibrations” (ibid.). The universe is “an ocean of ether, consisting of layer after layer of varying degrees of vibration under the action of Prâṇa” (ibid.: 45). Although Vivekananda  On the Sāṃ khyan notions of puruṣa and prakṛti, see below.  “The finer is always the cause, and the grosser the effect” (Vivekananda 1896: 11).

12 13

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c­ omments on the Yoga Sūtra, linked to Sāṃ khyan metaphysics, many of these functions of prāṇa and ākās á (e.g., their vibrating quality) are not found in the classical doctrines of these traditions. The contexts that employ similar attributes to these terms will be further discussed below. In order to better comprehend Vivekananda’s understanding of prāṇa and ākās a, ́ I will address below another of Vivekananda’s lectures called “Cosmology,” also held in the winter of 1895 in New York, which was originally entitled “Sankhya Cosmology” (Burke 1985: 580). Before turning to this lecture, it is helpful to set this discussion in the context of the classical articulation of Sāṃ khya in the Sāṃ khyakārikā.14 Notably, Sāṃ khya “enumerates” a set of twenty-five principles or tattvas. The first two principles—“consciousness” (puruṣa) and “materiality” (prakṛti)—are eternal and form the basic Sāṃ khyan duality. They are ontologically distinct, and it is through their proximity or co-presence that twenty-three further aspects of reality emerge. Puruṣa is a “witnessing translucent presence” (Larson 2012: 76) and a unique principle distinct from prakṛti and the other principles derived from it (including the mind). Though manifold in its appearance, prakṛti can be reduced to an unmanifest singularity (mūlaprakṛti). The twenty-three tattvas emanate in the following order: intellect (buddhi); egoity (ahaṃ kāra); mind (manas); the five organs of perception (jñānendriyas); the five organs of action (karmendriyas); the five subtle elements (tanmātras); and the five gross elements (mahābhūtas), of which ākās á is the first. Returning to Vivekananda’s lecture on Sāṃ khya, the swami, echoing the classical material, explains key aspects of Sāṃ khyan thought, such as the ontological dualism of puruṣa and prakṛti. He expounds that all phenomenality emerges from prakṛti in its unmanifest or undifferentiated (avyakta) form (CWV II: 433). This creation from “nature” (Vivekananda’s translation of prakṛti) occurs in cyclical repetition. From there, prāṇa and ākās á emerge: There is one element which […] is eternal; every other element is produced out of this one. It is called Âkâsha. It is somewhat similar to the idea of ether of the moderns, though not exactly similar. Along with this element, there is the primal energy called Prâna. Prana and Akasha combine and recombine and form the elements out of them. […] Prana cannot work alone without the help of Akasha (ibid.: 435–436).  For an account of Sāṃ khya, see Larson 1979.

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Vivekananda goes on to explain the emergence of the other elements out of ākās á (i.e., air, fire, water, and earth), which, through the interaction of prāṇa and ākās a, ́ form the sense organs of the human body (ibid.: 436–438). Finally, Vivekananda mentions puruṣa, or “the pure, the perfect, […] the Self of man” (ibid.: 438), and he reveals the final purpose of the play of forces between nature (prakṛti), prāṇa, and ākās a: ́ “Nature is undergoing all these changes for the development of the soul; all this creation is for the benefit of the soul, so that it may be free” (ibid.: 439). This lecture lists most of the relevant aspects of Sāṃ khyan thought, recognises ākās á as the first of five elements, and most importantly, refers to puruṣa’s and prakṛti’s primary ontological status and the soteriological potential for liberation central to Sāṃ khya. Nevertheless, the understanding of ākās á and prāṇa differs significantly from the Sāṃ khyakārikā. Therein, the “gross” element ākās á does not directly emanate from prakṛti but is generated from the “subtle” elements (Larson 1987a: 51). Although Vivekananda acknowledges a generative relation between “subtle” and “gross” materiality, he does not subsume ākās á under that scheme but rather attributes these qualities to ākās á itself. Prāṇa is not, as Vivekananda holds, considered as a “primal energy” in Sāṃ khya; rather, it is limited to a vital function in the human organism (ibid.: 25). Consequently, in classical Sāṃ khya prāṇa is no cosmological agent that, together with ākās a, ́ would “form the elements out of them” (CWV II: 435), nor do they interact to create the human sense organs or the mind. It is important to note that the cosmology outlined in Sāṃ khya forms the basis for many cosmological renditions in Indian history, as will become evident when dealing with Rama Prasad. From the medieval period onward, Sāṃ khyan psycho-cosmology was absorbed into numerous traditions, including Vaiṣṇava, Śaiva, and Vedānta, and, then, the cosmological side of the Sāṃ khya doctrine was often emphasised (Larson 1979: 152). Indeed, by the fourteenth century, within Advaita Vedānta for example, the traditions of Sāṃ khya and Pātañjalayoga were no longer viewed as “rivals but rather as pan-brahmanical traditions/technologies” (Madaio 2018: 8 n. 47). Generally speaking, Vivekananda assumes this backdrop of inherited tradition but, in doing so, he also articulates his own rendition of Sāṃ khya cosmology, which privileges prāṇa and ākās a. ́ Thereby, he stretches the framework of classical Sāṃ khya and Pātañjalayoga. When Vivekananda speaks of varying degrees of prāṇic vibrations that produce different planes of reality in Râja Yoga, this is a position alien to these traditions in which prāṇa is only relevant to the human organism.

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Yet, the link between prāṇa and the mind, which Vivekananda employs, is already established in Pātañjalayoga (Zysk 1993: 208). Unlike Vivekananda, though, the classical Yoga-Sāṃ khya tradition does not recognise prāṇa and ākās á as a functional pair responsible for unfolding the cosmos. The confluence of ideas in medieval India, to which I now turn, partly explains why the usage of these notions diverts from the classical doctrines of the Yoga-Sāṃ khya tradition that was commented on by Vivekananda in the aforementioned lectures.

Pran ̄ ̣a and A ̄ka s̄ á in the Yogavas̄ isṭ ha ̣

In medieval India, there were no insular Haṭhayoga, Vedānta, Sāṃ khya, Pātañjalayoga, or Tantra “schools” that were unaltered by the practices and metaphysical speculations of other traditions. Interaction and adaption across sectarian boundaries on the issue of yoga, for example, is evidenced by several medieval texts that include subtle body schemes and techniques typical of Hat ̣hayoga, Pātañjalayoga, as well as Vedāntic metaphysics. Examples of various types of adaptations, often written in Brahmanical contexts, include medieval and early modern works, such as the Jı v̄ anmuktiviveka,15 Aparokṣānubhūti, Yogacintāmaṇi, as well as the Yoga Upaniṣads (Birch 2013, 2018; Bouy 1994). In the Aparokṣānubhūti, the notion of rājayoga (lit. “king-yoga”), which originally appeared in a Hat ̣hayogic context, is positioned atop a fifteen-fold system of Vedāntic yoga that subsumes Pātañjalayoga within Advaita Vedānta (Birch 2013: 406–407). This move, and the innovations of, say, the Yogacintāmaṇi, resemble Vivekananda’s attempt to integrate Pātañjalayoga within his explication of Advaita Vedānta, calling it Raja Yoga. In a similar vein as Birch (2013) and Madaio (2017), I argue that it is important to see Vivekananda’s approach to yoga as part of a long tradition of adaption and integration within Advaita-related movements. Another polyvalent Advaita tradition is evidenced in the Yogavāsiṣt ̣ha (c. tenth century CE),16 which is attributed to the mythical saint Vālmı̄ki. 15   Vivekananda praised the fourteenth century Vidyāraṇya who integrated the (Laghu-)Yogavāsiṣṭha into Advaita Vedānta and extensively appropriated Pātañjalayoga in his Jı̄vanmuktiviveka (Madaio 2018). 16  The Yogavāsiṣt ̣ha-Mahārāmāyaṇa, the work translated by Vihari Lal Mitra, consists of almost 30,000 verses and pre-supposes the tenth-century Mokṣopāya and the Laghuyogavāsiṣtḥ a, both of which have origins in Kashmir (see, e.g., Hanneder 2005).

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While purporting a radical form of non-dualism, the work demonstrates familiarity with various strands of Indian philosophical traditions, such as Upanishadic Advaita, Yogācāra Buddhism, non-dual Trika Śaivism, as well as Haṭhayogic and tantric elements (Timalsina 2012: 304).17 In an extensive “prologue” to the epic Rāmāyaṇa, the Yogavāsiṣt ̣ha presents the troubled prince Rāma, who is taught by the sage Vasiṣt ̣ha in the form of a dramatic dialogue.18 Purporting a non-dualistic philosophy, Vasiṣt ̣ha teaches a means to realising liberation while living (jı̄vanmukti). The text incorporates various streams of tradition and employs numerous narratives, including the apprenticeship of Vasiṣt ̣ha himself, who learned from the eternally living crow Bhuśuṇḍa. In this narrative that is found in the Nirvāṇa section of the text, the “yoga of prāṇa” (Timalsina 2012) is introduced by the yogi-crow Bhuśuṇḍa with the aim of liberation while in a body. Here, the yoga of breathing is ascribed the same soteriological status as contemplative techniques like jñānayoga (ibid.: 304; 308; 324). The Hat ̣hayogic practice of prāṇa engenders Bhuśuṇḍa’s corporeality, immortality, and liberated status, since it keeps his body alive as well as granting him liberation (ibid.: 304; 306; 310). It thereby varies from the overall tendency of the Yogavāsiṣt ̣ha to emphasise the world as an illusionary veil (ibid.: 324). The yoga of Bhuśuṇḍa enacts tantric and yogic subtle body schemes, such as the three main nāḍıs̄ and the cakras, while prāṇa is depicted as governing all bodily functions (ibid.: 311). Prāṇāyāma includes the regular prāṇaflow within the body and the intentional control of breath with the goal to merge the mind with the flow of breath (ibid.: 314; 316).19 Hence, the Yogavāsiṣt ̣ha highlights the “prāṇa-mind nexus” (Madaio 2017: 5), a theme central to many strands of Indian thought—and to Vivekananda’s cosmo-anthropology. In the Yogavāsiṣt ̣ha, this nexus is activated by the principle of vibration, or spanda, which is attributed to prāṇa (prāṇa-spanda). According to Mainkar, the doctrine of spanda shows Śaiva (i.e., tantric) influence on the Yogavāsiṣt ̣ha, and he sees in it Following Madaio (2019: 122 note 1), I use the title “Yogavāsiṣtḥ a” in a generic way, implying both the Laghuyogavāsiṣt ̣ha and the Yogavāsiṣt ̣ha-Mahārāmāyaṇa. 17  According to Timalsina 2012, most scholars have neglected yogic elements in the text because its Haṭhayogic and tantric aspects have been overshadowed by its poetic tropes and the work’s repeated emphasis on knowledge-based methods of awakening (jñāna). 18  On the transformative nature of dialogue in the Yogavāsiṣtḥ a and the work’s pedagogical approach, see Madaio (2019). 19  For other useful comments on yogic material in the Yogavāsiṣtḥ a, see Madaio 2019: 124, note 26.

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an important point of difference between the Vedānta of Śaṅkara and the Advaita of the Yogavāsiṣt ̣ha (Mainkar 1977 [1955]: 243). With regard to prāṇa, on the microcosmic level, this means “[w]hen the prāṇa vibrates and is on the point of passing through the nerves […], then there appears the mind full of its thought processes” (Dasgupta 1952 [1923]: 256). On the macrocosmic level, “[i]t is the vibration of the prāṇa (prāṇa-spanda) that manifests itself through the citta and causes the world-appearance out of nothing” (ibid.). The yogic practice that derives thereof (briefly described above), and the ontological relation between the principle of vibration (prāṇa) and the mind, is echoed in Vivekananda’s cosmological accounts, including the praxeological-microcosmic level and the metaphysical-­macrocosmic level. Dasgupta (1952 [1923]: 240–244) summarises the “world creation” in the Yogavāsiṣt ̣ha, and its appearance from the principle of thought, as follows: [T]he world has appeared from the mind (citta or manas). […] At the beginning of each so-called creation the creative movement of manas energy is roused. Thought-creation [… combines with…] each successive outflow from the supreme fund of potential energy. Thus it is said that the first creative movement of manas manifests itself as the ākās á creation (ibid.: 243–244).

Since “it [i.e., prāṇa] is identical with citta” (ibid.: 259), this cosmological outline could have been inspirational for Vivekananda’s cosmology: from “thought-creation,” which is connected to prāṇa, ākās á emerges. This is, however, speculative. In any event, it is clear that prāṇa and ākās á are highlighted in the Yogavāsiṣt ̣ha, as well as in Vivekananda’s innovative rendition of Sāṃ khyan cosmology. Similarly, the concept of a vibrating prāṇa is key to Vivekananda’s cosmo-anthropology. Another element of the Yogavāsiṣt ̣ha that appears to have influenced Vivekananda is the swami’s three-fold division of ākās a, ́ which permeates, again, the macro- and microcosmic levels. The Yogavāsiṣt ̣ha employs ākās a, ́ or space, in a three-fold manner: (bhūta-) ākās´a, or the elemental space; cittākās´a, or the mental space; and cidākās´a, or the space that is consciousness (Slaje 1994: 279).20 So does Vivekananda  In the final analysis, however, all of these demarcations of space are ultimately consciousness: “All of this is brahman, the space that is consciousness [sarvam eva cidākās´aṃ brahmeti]” (Laghuyogavāsiṣt ̣ha 6.9.224 cited in Madaio 2019: 115). Indeed, according to Madaio (2019: 125 note 33) there are numerous declarations of this sort in the Yogavāsiṣt ̣ha. 20

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when he speaks of “the ordinary space, called the Mahâkâsha, or great space […], the Cittâkâsha, the mental space, [… and] the Chidâkâsha, or knowledge space” (Vivekananda 1896: 51).21 In the threefold conception of ākās a, ́ Vivekananda is in many aspects clearly aligned with the Yogavāsiṣt ̣ha. He explains that in mahākās á perceptions, imaginations, and dreams arise (ibid.). This is also the primary association of the space-­ giving quality of (bhūta-)ākās á in the Yogavāsiṣt ̣ha, based on the concept that these impressions of individual consciousness, and space in general, are ultimately emptiness (śūnyatva) (Slaje 1994: 274–276). The individual’s attainment of cidākās á is both in the Yogavāsiṣt ̣ha and by Vivekananda characterised by objectless perception (ibid.: 280 n. 307; Vivekananda 1896: 51). Other than in the Yogavāsiṣt ̣ha, for Vivekananda cittākās á gives rise to the yogi’s ability of thought reading and “supersensous” perception (ibid.). Although the notion of siddhis (magical powers) in the Yogavāsiṣt ̣ha and in premodern yogic contexts could be relevant for a close analysis of this statement,22 here he most likely draws on similar accounts of clairvoyance that were prevalent in Theosophy at that time. Like other disciples of Ramakrishna, Vivekananda had read the Yogavāsiṣt ̣ha (in Bengali or Sanskrit) before he asked for an English translation in a letter from New York to Calcutta in 1895 (Gupta 1974: 987; cf. Madaio 2017: 7 n. 21). The fact that he explicitly ordered the “English translation [… published] in Calcutta” (CWV VI: 337) may be due to his needs teaching English-speaking disciples, or due to a specific interest in this translation. That he requested Mitra’s translation, however, certainly suggests he was already familiar with it. What makes the Yogavāsiṣt ̣ha translated by Mitra “special” (Indologists would say “highly inaccurate”) is his tendency to impose and weave in Theosophical terminology and concepts.23 21  Although Vivekananda substitutes (bhūta-)ākāśa by mahākās a, ́ the parallel here is obvious. According to Jürgen Hanneder (personal conversation, 29 November 2019), mahākās á is used as a synonym for (bhūta-)ākāśa at least once in the Yogavāsiṣt ̣ha. 22  Such an analysis is, however, beyond the scope of this chapter. 23  For example, Mitra appraises the efforts of Blavatsky and Olcott in propagating “the efficacy of Yoga meditation” among the Indian public (Mitra 1999 [1891]: 3). Vivekananda’s reference to Mitra’s translation is one of the most explicit evidences that he engaged with literature influenced by Theosophy. Another example is noted by Philip Deslippe (2018: 34), mentioning a letter sent by the swami from New York to the Theosophist Edward T. Sturdy (d. 1957) in which he requested, probably for the purpose of teaching yoga, two Haṭhayogic ́ texts, the Hat ̣hapradı̄pikā and the Sivasaṃ hitā. These texts were first translated by Sris Chandra Vasu (1861–1918), a Theosophist who Vivekananda personally knew (Bose 1932:

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The first two volumes of the English translation of the Yogavāsiṣt ̣ha published before 1896 (i.e., in 1891 and 1893) are, indeed, full of references to “vital air,” or prāṇa, and to the “vacuous space,” or ākās a. ́ Equally, it repeatedly refers to a “divine mind” as the ultimate source, and this “infinite sphere of the intellect is the seat of the Supreme” (Mitra 1999 [1891]: 429). The three forms of ākās á mentioned above “have all sprung and come to being from the essence of the Chit or Divine Intellect” (Mitra 1999 [1893]: 260). In an article entitled “The Ether,” first published anonymously in the New York Medical Times in February 1895— around the time when Vivekananda requested the English translation of the Yogavāsiṣt ̣ha—Vivekananda says that both Hindu and Greek philosophers were devoted to the “study of the mind” and the transcendence of “limited human consciousness”; their ambition was to “resolve all physical phenomena to unity” (Vivekananda 1985 [1895]: 56). The result, as he claims, was the Indian notion of ākās á and the Greek notion of ether.24 And he gives an important additional clue here: Ā kās´a is the first manifestation “after the mind” (ibid.). Vivekananda argues that although ākās a/ ́ ether explains the molecular structure of material existence, this principle does not explain the space between these molecules. For him, this space is filled with the “Infinite Mind,” a position that resembles the Yogavāsiṣt ̣ha: [I]f there is anything which will explain this space, it must be something that comprehends in its infinite being the infinite space itself. And what is there that can comprehend even the infinite space but the Infinite Mind? (ibid.: 59)

There is significant evidence that the Yogavāsiṣt ̣ha had direct bearing on Vivekananda’s articulation of prāṇa, ākās a, ́ and related concepts. In the following section, I shift my attention to Rama Prasad’s Occult Science of Breath, a Theosophically influenced cluster of texts revolving around the tantric source text S´ivasvarodaya, which, I argue, may have also influenced Vivekananda’s use of prāṇa and ākās a. ́ While there is explicit textual evidence that Vivekananda knew the Yogavāsiṣt ̣ha, the same cannot be said of ́ 184). Deslippe (2018: 34) also attests that Vasu’s translation of the Sivasaṃ hitā, “The Esoteric Science and Philosophy of the Tantras: Shiva Sanhita” (1887), was distributed among Vivekananda’s advanced disciples. 24  Mitra makes a very similar argument for the “Aryan” monist quest common to Greeks and Hindus. He concludes: “According to Vásishtha this single substance is the chit or divine intelligence, which produces the Mind, which is conversant with matter” (Mitra 1999 [1893]: 225 note *).

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́ the Sivasvarodaya—or of its translation by Rama Prasad. The argument in the following section is therefore based on terminological and semantic overlaps between Rama Prasad’s and Vivekananda’s interpretation of the pair prāṇa and ākās a. ́

Rama Prasad’s Occult Science of Breath ́ The Sivasvarodaya (The Arising of the Breath of Śiva) is a tantric text of which some portions may date back to the twelfth century (Cantú forthcoming). The central notion of the text is svara, which can be translated as “sound” or “breath” (Monier-Williams 1899: 1285).25 The ́ Sivasvarodaya deals with prāṇic rhythms and the flow of prāṇa, or svara, through the three main nāḍıs̄ , channels for subtle energy called iḍā, piṅgalā, and suṣumnā (Bühnemann 1991: 304 n. 59). The tantric practitioner employs the knowledge of svara-flows for purposes of divination. The right timings and appropriate actions for religious practice and healing—including the prediction of and warding off death—are determined by the rhythm of prāṇic flow (Mallinson and Singleton 2017: 485 n. 20). Rama Prasad, a North Indian Theosophical author and translator, had ́ first incorporated the Sivasvarodaya, although without revealing the name of the original Sanskrit work, into his Occult Science: The Science of Breath (c. 1884).26 Despite its subtitle (“Translated from the Original Sanskrit”), it is clearly an interpretation of the original text rather than a translation. A few years later, Prasad published a series of essays entitled “Nature’s Finer Forces: The Science of Breath” in The Theosophist (November 1887– March 1889). The Science of Breath and the Philosophy of the Tatwas: Nature’s Finer Forces (1890) was published based on these essays, to which ́ Prasad appended a partial translation from the Sivasvarodaya (Prasad 27 1890: 180–236). In his first publication, he introduces the regulation of 25  Regarding “breath,” it means more specifically “air breathed through the nostrils” (ibid.). 26  However, some comments on Prasad’s work in The Theosophist already mentioned the ́ original Sanskrit title Sivasvarodaya. For a discussion of Prasad’s cluster of texts and its reception within Theosophy, especially with regard to Blavatsky, see Baier 2009: 372; 390–391. 27 ́  Prasad referred to the appended translation not as the Sivasvarodaya, but as a portion of a Sanskrit work called the Shivágama, or the “Teachings of Shiva” (Prasad 1890: 181). According to Keith Cantú (personal communication), the appended translation follows the ́ Sivasvarodaya remarkably well despite certain omissions and eccentricities in the number of verses.

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svara as a yogic practice, being the main focus therein. In the later texts, ́ an overwhelming part is the interpretation of the Sivasvarodaya in relation to a cosmogonic rendition. Only the 1890 edition has appended a translá tion of portions of the Sivasvarodaya. In Prasad’s Occult Science of Breath, svara, also called the “Great Breath,” or the “Breath of Life” (Prasad 1890: 1; 137),28 is the central agent and cause of the universe: “It is the Swara—the Great Controller of All—that Creates, Preserves, and Destroys and Causes whatever is in this world” (Prasad 1892 [1884]: 6). Svara is also said to be an “abstract intelligence,” or “intelligent motion,” and the “current of the life wave” (Prasad 1890: 137; 11; original emphasis). Svara as a vitalistic principle—or “life-­ wave”—is connected to the breath of beings (ibid.: 12), and it has, again, the capacity to bridge macro- and microcosm: The primeval current of the life-wave is, then, the same which in man assumes the form of inspiratory and expiratory motion of the lungs, and this is the all-pervading source of the evolution and involution of the universe (ibid.: 12).

Having a Sāṃ khyan emanationist cosmology at its base, the first entities to emanate from svara in this cosmogony are the tattvas:29 “The tatwas are the five modifications of the Great Breath” (ibid.: 1). Of these, ākās á is the first: “When the process of evolution began, this Swara, this great power, threw itself into the form of Akàsa, and thence respectively […] into the forms of [the other elements, MK]” (Prasad 1888a: 276). According to Prasad, ether is five-fold and correlates with the respective qualities of the five elements. It would thus be wrong to translate ākās á simply as “ether.” Instead, since ākās á is attributed with the element of sound, he suggests translating it as “sonoriferous ether” (Prasad 1890: 1). The universe persists through a constant change of the tattvas, which is mirrored in the flow of breath. The science of breath tells the yogi, which tattva governs 28  The “Great Breath,” or the “Breath of Life,” is an important theme in Theosophy. Surprisingly, in Blavatsky’s work, these notions, especially in their application to higher cosmological realms, is mainly associated with ākās á rather than with prāṇa or svara. See, for example, Blavatsky 1877: 133; 140. However, Blavatsky refers to Prasad’s understanding of svara as the “Great Breath” in her “Psychic and Noetic Action,” published in Lucifer (1890). 29  Tattva (lit. “thatness”) is a “true or real state” or “principle” in Sāṃ khya (MonierWilliams 1899: 432). In Prasad’s outline the five “tatwas” coincide with the five elements (Prasad 1890: 1).

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the present moment and he thereby can cure diseases, conquer death, and make right prognoses for the future (Prasad 1892 [1884]: 1–6). Regarding the overlap and distinction between svara and prāṇa, there are a few crucial aspects in Prasad’s work that I will briefly address. Although for Prasad svara is the more encompassing term in the sense of the vital source of the universe, he also speaks about prāṇa in cosmological and yogic contexts.30 Generally, Prasad tends to distinguish between svara, the Great Breath, and prāṇa, “physiological life” (Prasad 1890: 90), the latter mainly being associated with the terrestrial sphere and this solar system (ibid.: 30; 80). This connotation of prāṇa with the terrestrial spheres including its association with the individual’s vital force is a common theme in Theosophy, and Theosophical doctrines normally do not associate prāṇa with life at large that permeates the cosmos.31 However, in Occult Science, Prasad also speaks of prāṇa as the “vital principle, which is indestructible” (Prasad 1892 [1884]: 7 n. *). For Prasad, yoga is the “discipline of prana” (Prasad 1888b: 550), and by “constant practice of the eight branches of Yoga, the prána is purified” (Prasad 1890: 77). Although there are certainly differences in the outlines of Vivekananda and Prasad,32 the obvious parallels are the constitution of the world’s existence on svara/prāṇa and ākās á as the first tattva/element, and the regulation of breath as a tool for health and healing. There is additional evidence that Vivekananda knew Prasad’s Occult Science of Breath. First, both Prasad and Vivekananda refer to the same passage in the Ṛgveda for explaining existence based on a principle that “breathed breathless in itself” (Prasad 1892 [1884]: i). Vivekananda avers that this was prāṇa that “existed without vibration” (CWV II: 435). For both of them, this principle was in a state that was ontologically distinct from its later cosmological function—breathless and non-vibrant.33 Second, Prasad states that the 30  Regarding its macrocosmic connotations, Prasad also mentions prāṇa in relation to rayi, which can be translated with “stuff, materials” (Monier-Williams 1899: 868). He attributes prāṇa with “solar, positive life-matter” and rayi with “negative, lunar life-matter” (Prasad 1890: 80). This echoes the Praśnopanishat I. 3–4, in which prāṇa and rayi are presented as a primordial pair from which all creatures are born (Gharote et al. 2017: 57–58). 31  See for example Blavatsky 1888, vol. 2: 593. 32  Of these, the most important ones are that Vivekananda does not apply the science of breath for divination, but instead mainly focuses on the yogic practice of prāṇāyāma; also, Vivekananda does not place strong emphasis on the tattvas and their constant modification in his cosmology. 33  Additionally, they both refer to the Sanskrit compound anidavatam (Prasad) and ânidavâtam (Vivekananda).

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science of breath is based on verifiable experiments and that through this practice the yogi controls the elements and nature: “All these facts are established by experiment, which may, at any time, be repeated by any body who cares for it. This is the course of nature. But a Yogi commands nature. He turns every thing his own way” (Prasad 1892 [1884]: 9). Both of these arguments—yoga as a verifiable science and the yogi that aims to control nature—are two of Vivekananda’s leitmotivs in Râja Yoga (Vivekananda 1896: 11; 6). Third, like Vivekananda, Prasad mentions a direct interdependence of the functional pair prāṇa and ākās a. ́ Explaining the functioning of the telephone, he states that its vibrations are those of the “sonoriferous ether, the constituent of the Indian prána, which is called âkâsa” (Prasad 1890: 3 n. *, original emphasis). Although Vivekananda was unaffectionate towards the Theosophical Society, especially after the events at the World Parliament of Religion (Pokazanyeva 2016: 335), it is likely, given these parallels, that Vivekananda indeed knew Prasad’s work, easily available in Calcutta at that time. The first and second editions of Occult Science (c. 1884 and 1892) were published by R.C. (Ratan Chand) Bary & Sons in Lahore, not necessarily revealing a Theosophical background at first sight. Additionally, Prasad’s school mate in the Government College Lahore, Sris Chandra Vasu (1861–1918), who was also an influential scholar-translator and Theosophist, hosted Vivekananda as his guest before his voyage to the United States (Bose 1932: 184). Vivekananda often stressed the reception of indigenous sources, which may have attracted him to Prasad’s works, perhaps mediated to him through Sris Chandra Vasu before his departure. In any case, the Occult Science of Breath gained international fame among nineteenth-century occultists. Some relevant points of its reception before Vivekananda’s formulation of Râja Yoga in 1896 that already implement—and possibly increase—the prāṇa-ākās á nexus are briefly outlined below.

The Occult Science of Breath within German Occultism and Theosophy Prasad’s Occult Science of Breath was influential in German occultism and the reception of yoga in German-speaking countries at the turn of the century (Wedemeyer-Kolwe 2004: 145–148). Famous proponents of German occultism like Carl Kellner (1851–1905), Theodor Reuß (1855–1923), Gustav Meyrink (1868–1932), and Franz Hartmann

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(1838–1912) drew from Prasad’s texts.34 His Occult Science (c. 1884) was translated into German in 1893 by “Kama,” a pseudonym for the poet-­ cum-­ occultist Gustav Meyrink, entitled Occulte Wissenschaft: Die Wissenschaft des Atems. This translation that operates closely to Prasad’s original was published in the same press in Leipzig, Germany, as the Theosophical monthly journal Lotusblüten (1893–1900), which was edited by Franz Hartmann—one of the most influential Theosophical writers of his time (Baier 2018: 395). Karl Baier has observed that Hartmann’s postulation of unity of prāṇa and ākās a, ́ ultimately forged by a divine will and consciousness, as well as the functional unity of their equivalents, force and matter, is a clear predecessor of Vivekananda’s cosmological outline (ibid.: 407). Also, Hartmann speaks of a vibrating existence of matter on different planes (ibid.: 406; Hartmann 1893a: 415; 437–438). Tying on to Baier’s research, I have investigated possible Theosophical sources for Hartmann’s metaphysical speculations, which are undoubtedly Rama Prasad’s works. Hartmann refers to Prasad in at least two essays (Hartmann 1893a, b).35 From these, “Das Wesen der Alchemie” (1893a), if inexplicitly, draws extensively from Prasad, but also from other established Theosophical metaphysics such as the sevenfold constitution of the cosmos (ibid.: 417). Besides obvious overlaps in content—with the most salient points being the repeated references to prāṇa, ākās a, ́ and the tattvas—Hartmann combines the symbols and colours of the five tattvas (ibid.: 422–425) as they are introduced by Prasad (1892 [1884]: 12–13; 1890: 7; 22–23). In a largely innovative move, Hartmann transposes the science of breath into a theory of alchemy, based on the knowledge of the tattvas, or the “modifications” of ākās a: ́ The key to the entering of chemistry into the field of alchemy lies in a correct understanding of the qualities of “ether,” or, to be more accurate, of the Akâsha and its modifications, and we have good reason to believe that in this respect we are on the eve of great discoveries (Hartmann 1893a: 438 as translated in Baier 2018: 407). 34  Kellner (1896: 9) mentioning “surya-swara” (lit. “sunbreath”), “Sonnenatem,” and “Mondatem” in his Skizze on Yoga indicates the reception of Prasad through Kama (1893: 18–19), because the latter applies exactly the same terminology in German. Reuß (Merlin 1913: 4–5) mentions the phrase “Finer Forces of Nature” twice in his “Mystic Anatomy.” 35  The two relevant passages in Hartmann (1893b: 27, 33) are “This principle of life, which the Indians called ‘prana,’ could also be called a function of the general primary matter or ‘ether.’ It constitutes the life force of each organism.” “Science [may] turn its attention to the ‘finer’ forces of nature, i.e. the various modifications of movement, which occur in the solar ether (which the Indians call Akâsha).”

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Already Prasad presents an idea akin to the alchemy of changing the quality of the “terrestrial element” by applying heat, so that the element “approach[es] its solar state,” whereby the “terrestrial coatings” of the same are destroyed (Prasad 1890: 22). Turning to the Theosophist Annie Besant, a lecture given in Adyar in late 1894 again references the interdependence of prāṇa and ākās a. ́ Clearly, Besant has read Prasad (1890: 78–79), as she quotes the same passage as Prasad from the Praśnopanishat by saying: “From Atma this prana is born” (Besant 1912 [1895]: 57). She goes on to explain that “wherever prana is there also is akasha, and without akasha prana cannot show itself” (ibid.: 58). In this lecture, she compares prāṇa and ākās á to electricity and ether, translations that would soon be used by Vivekananda, among others. Vivekananda also postulates a direct interdependence of prāṇa and ākās a, ́ and like Hartmann, he also correlates these terms with force and matter (CWV II: 436). Generally, however, Vivekananda tends to apply prāṇa and ākās á as a dual function and does not speak of their unity as Hartmann does (Baier 2018: 407). At the present state of research, it is difficult to determine the exact Theosophical sources from which Vivekananda drew, but in all likelihood, he had adopted a number of Theosophical ideas. This is not to say that Vivekananda necessarily read Hartmann or Besant (at least less likely than Prasad), but these texts exemplify the wide dissemination of a concept that had been formulated before Vivekananda.

Additional Arguments for A ̄ka s̄ á

Vivekananda’s cosmology based on the dual function of prāṇa and ākās á has precedents in the Yogavāsiṣt ̣ha, in Rama Prasad’s Occult Science of Breath, and in Hartmann’s and Besant’s explications derived thereof. Apart from the likely influence that these texts had on the swami, I argue that for Vivekananda there were certain rhetorical advantages in basing his cosmology on these principles. Regarding prāṇa, he could tie on to a highly relevant and polyvalent notion in Indian (premodern) contexts that allowed for a subsequent discussion of Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtra and implementation of prāṇāyāma practice within his Raja Yoga. By highlighting ākās a, ́ Vivekananda was able to participate in nineteenth-century discourses on ether theories, in which occultism had its part, and by referring to force and matter, he could present his cosmology in proximity to scientific discourses.

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I will briefly shed light on a final argument for Vivekananda’s stress on ākās a. ́ Various strands of Indian philosophy polemise against Cār vāka philosophy, a materialist doctrine that identifies the self and consciousness with the physical body. By denying the existence of ākās a, ́ it claims that the body consists of four elements only (Dhole 1899: 74 n. *). In contrast to that, the author of the Yogavāsiṣt ̣ha, the medieval Sāṃ khya-commentator Aniruddha, and a modern commentator on Advaita Vedānta highlight the doctrine of ākās a, ́ at times in relation to their argument against Cār vāka philosophy (Slaje 1994: 208 n. 33; Larson 1987b: 349–350; Dhole 1899: 74–77 n. *). Most likely, Vivekananda adopts the argumentative line of these traditions. The existence of prāṇa and ākās á that could ultimately be reduced to a universal mind is central to Vivekananda’s Advaita perspective with a strong idealist bend. This particularly “Hindu” perspective is, according to Vivekananda, diametral opposed to a materialist worldview, often associated with the West, as the following quote makes plain: The Hindu drank in with his mother’s milk that this life is as nothing—a dream! In this he is at one with the Westerners; but the Westerner sees no further and his conclusion is that of the Chârvâka—to “make hay while the sun shines.” “This world being a miserable hole, let us enjoy to the utmost what morsels of pleasure are left to us.” To the Hindu, on the other hand, God and soul are the only realities, infinitely more real than this world, and he is therefore ever ready to let this go for the other (CWV IV: 305).

Given the wider Indian philosophical contexts, Vivekananda’s highlighting of ākās á stressed his otherworldly religious orientation. This suggests that Vivekananda’s focus on force and matter, the “gross” and “subtle” energy and materiality of prāṇa and ākās a, ́ was not based on a “quasi-­ materialistic” (de Michelis 2004: 14) worldview but, rather, the spiritualised counterpart of such a “typically Western” position.

Concluding Remarks This chapter has investigated some parallels between Vivekananda’s account of ākās á and prāṇa and similar views posited in the Yogavāsiṣt ̣ha and Rama Prasad’s Occult Science of Breath. In doing so, Vivekananda’s cosmology is contextualised within a framework that underlines the swami’s ties to medieval and early modern Indian sources as well as contemporaneous Theosophical works. Revisiting the Yogavāsiṣt ̣ha calls attention

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to this work’s view of prāṇa as a vibrating cosmological and soteriological principle closely attuned to the functionality of the mind and ākās á in its creative quality and threefold spatial function. I have also noted here Vivekananda’s remarks regarding a universal mind as the ultimate source, which has certain resonances with the radical idealism of the Yogavāsiṣt ̣ha. Consulting Prasad’s Occult Science of Breath reveals a direct model for a prāṇa-ākās á interdependency and highlights the ‘discipline of prāṇa’ for healing purposes. Given that Vivekananda implemented all of these elements, I have argued that Vivekananda was likely inspired by both the Yogavāsiṣt ̣ha and Rama Prasad’s Occult Science of Breath. This chapter does not claim that the frameworks of mesmerism and ether theories, often mediated by the Theosophists, are not crucial for a synoptic perspective on Vivekananda. It does though hold that this view is incomplete—and, on that basis, distortive—if it is not coupled with an understanding of related ideas in Indian sources. Theosophy appropriated a considerable number of Indian materials, yet often interpreted these within a specific Theosophical and occult framework. Hence, Theosophical translators occupied an ambivalent position that both mediated and altered the contents of Indian philosophy. Thus, Rama Prasad’s notion of prāṇa is clearly aligned with Theosophical interpretations, and the fact that he ́ pairs prāṇa and ākās á in his interpretation of Sivasvarodaya is due to the conceptual prehistory of these terms within Theosophy. As such, this pair is—regarding both Vivekananda and Prasad—to be read through the lens of an occultism that is inextricably linked with Indian sources. The polyvalent notions of prāṇa and ākās á were indeed containers large enough to accommodate both occult and premodern Indian ideas. While there is much investigation yet to be done on these topics, this chapter supports the view of Vivekananda as an innovative compiler and systematiser. Indeed, as a “cosmopolitan theologian” (Madaio 2017: 9), Vivekananda was aware of several strands of Indian and Western philosophies and perspectives. His philosophical and religious explications, which are mostly in the form of lectures, addressed a great variety of audiences in India and the West. It is reasonable that this spiritual teacher developed innovative approaches that, in the light of colonialism, reflect both his specific “Indian” legacy and his expansion towards and demarcation from things “Western.”

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———. 1952 [1923]. A History of Indian Philosophy. Vol. 2. First reprint. London and New York: Cambridge University Press. Deslippe, Philip. 2018. The Swami Circuit: Mapping the Terrain of Early American Yoga. Journal of Yoga Studies 1: 5–44. Duquette, Jonathan, and K.  Ramasubramaniam. 2010. Is Space Created? Reflections on Śaṇkara’s Philosophy and Philosophy of Physics. Philosophy East & West 60 (4): 517–533. Gharote, Manmath M., Parimal Devnath, and Vijay Kant Jha. 2017. Traditional Theory of Evolution and its Application in Yoga. Lonavla: The Lonavla Yoga Institute. Hanneder, Jürgen, ed. 2005. The Mokṣopāya, Yogavāsiṣtḥ a, and Related Texts. Aachen: Shaker Verlag. Jacobs, Bas J. and Magdalena Kraler. Forthcoming. Yoga and Psychology: Vivekananda on Superconsciousness. In Occult South Asia: From the 19th to the 21st Century, ed. Karl Baier and Mriganka Mukhopadhyay. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Larson, Gerald J. 1979. Classical Sāṃ khya: An Interpretation of Its History and Meaning. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. ———. 1987a. Introduction to the Philosophy of Sāṃ khya. In Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies. Vol. 4. Sāṃ khya: A Dualist Tradition in Indian Philosophy, ed. Gerald J. Larson and Ram S. Bhattacharya, 3–83. Delhi, Varanasi, Patna, and Madras: Motilal Banarsidass. ———. 1987b. Aniruddha: Sāṃ khyasūtravṛttı̄. In Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies. Vol. 4. Sāṃ khya: A Dualist Tradition in Indian Philosophy, ed. Gerald J. Larson and Ram S. Bhattacharya, 333–375. Delhi, Varanasi, Patna, and Madras: Motilal Banarsidass. ———. 2012. Pātañjala Yoga in Practice. In Yoga in Practice, ed. David G. White, 73–96. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Madaio, James. 2017. Rethinking Neo-Vedānta: Swami Vivekananda and the Selective Historiography of Advaita Vedānta. Religions 8 (101): 1–12. ———. 2018. The Instability of Non-dual Knowing: Post-gnosis Sādhana in Vidyāraṇya’s Advaita Vedānta. Journal of Dharma Studies 1 (1): 11–30. ———. 2019. Transformative dialogue in the Yogavāsiṣtḥ a. In In Dialogue with Classical Indian Traditions: Encounter, Transformation and Interpretation, ed. Brian Black and Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad, 107–129. London and New York: Routledge. Mainkar, T.  G. 1977 [1955]. The Vāsiṣtḥ a Rāmāyaṇa: A Study. New Delhi: Meharchand Lachhmandas. Mallinson, James, and Mark Singleton. 2017. Roots of Yoga. London: Penguin Books. Michelis, Elizabeth de. 2004. A History of Modern Yoga: Patañjali and Western Esotericism. London and New York: Continuum.

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Monier-Williams, Monier. 1899. A Sanskrit-English Dictionary. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. Pokazanyeva, Anna. 2016. Mind within Matter: Science, the Occult, and the (Meta)physics of Ether and Akasha. Zygon 51 (2): 318–346. Slaje, Walter. 1994. Vom Mokṣopāya-Śāstra zum Yogavāsiṣtḥ a-Mahārāmāyaṇa. Philologische Untersuchungen zur Entwicklungs- und Überlieferungsgeschichte eines indischen Lehrwerks mit Anspruch auf Heilsrelevanz. Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Timalsina, Sthaneshwar. 2012. Liberation and Immortality: Bhuśuṇḍa’s Yoga of Prāṇa in the Yogavāsiṣt ̣ha. In Yoga Powers: Extraordinary Capacities Attained Through Meditation and Concentration, ed. Knuth A.  Jacobsen, 303–326. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Wedemeyer-Kolwe, Bernd. 2004. Der neue Mensch. Körperkultur im Kaiserreich und in der Weimarer Republik. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann. Zysk, Kenneth, G. 1993. The Science of Respiration and the Doctrine of the Bodily Winds in Ancient India. Journal of the American Oriental Society 113 (2): 198–213.

Abbreviations CWV: The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda. Calcutta: Sri Gouranga Press.

CHAPTER 18

Guru and Messiah: On the First Yoga Handbook in Polish Language: Wincenty Lutosławski’s The Development of the Power of Will by Means of Psychophysical Exercises (1909) Marlis Lami

Introduction At the age of thirty-four, Wincenty Lutosławski (1863–1954), who is simply referred to as a philosopher on his tombstone in the Salwator-graveyard of Kraków, attained international fame because of his ground-breaking publication on Plato (Lutosławski 1897).1 Using, among others, the Translated from the German by Dominic S. Zoehrer 1  Previously, Lutosławski published on Plato in Polish and German. The book Preservation and Decline of the State Constitutions according to Plato, Aristotle and Machiavelli (the origi-

M. Lami (*) Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 L. Pokorny, F. Winter (eds.), The Occult Nineteenth Century, Palgrave Studies in New Religions and Alternative Spiritualities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55318-0_18

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method of stylometry, he succeeded in identifying a chronological order in Plato’s dialogues that received widespread acceptance. The multilingual oeuvre of the Polish philosopher, who was in touch with the leading intellectuals of his time—including Henri Bergson (1859–1941), Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), William James (1842–1910), and Gandhi (1869–1948)—is partially better known in Western Europe and the USA than in Poland, where today he is considered the leading representative of neo-messianism. This ideology,2 labelled “a Polish worldview” by Lutosławski, has recently received an unexpectedly great deal of attention. Thus, a critical analysis seems all the more appropriate. Astonishing information offers one of Lutosławski’s lesser knows works, which is the first yoga handbook in Polish. This publication constitutes an original contribution to the history of the development of modern yoga, but also allows us to trace the emergence of neo-messianism in the context of esoteric sources as well as within the specific Polish tradition of Romantic poetry. The chapter focuses on analysing theses unique interdependencies.

Biographical Context The table of contents in the autobiography One Easy Life (Lutosławski 1933; latest edition 1994, with an epilogue by his daughter Janina Lutosławska), completed by Lutosławski on his seventieth birthday in 1933, reads by and large like a travel guide: Drozdowo—Riga Polytechnical Institute—University of Dorpat—year of travel—Dorpat—Paris—Madrid—Zakopane and Dorpat—London— Kazan—America—London and Drozdowo—Spain—Helsinki/Leipzig— Kraków—Lausanne and Geneva—Kraków and London—America— Warsaw—Searching for a Place of Residence—Vilnius—France.3 nal was published in 1888 in German: Erhaltung und Untergang der Staatsverfassungen nach Plato, Aristoteles und Machiavelli) discussed the laws according to which revolutions arise—a highly relevant topic in then partitioned Poland. 2  In the latest anthology of programmatic texts on messianism, which also presents excerpts from Lutosławski’s writings amongst others, the editors refer to messianism as an ideology (Wawrzynowicz 2015: 370–387). 3  Crucial information gets lost in the verbatim translation of the Polish title Jeden łatwy żywot (An Easy Life, or One Easy Life). The Polish numeral for one, as opposed to indefinite articles such as a or an, suggests that the life remembered in the autobiography is only a single one out of a whole series of lives, that is, one easy life among many. Thus, the author expresses the belief in reincarnation underlying his philosophy through the title of his auto-

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The son of a large landowner near Łomz˙a, a city in north-eastern Poland which was under Russian control since the Congress of Vienna (1814–1815), Lutosławski was taught by private teachers from French-­ speaking Switzerland and Germany, and attended a German-speaking classical grammar school in Mitau (today known as Jelgava, located in Latvia). At the age of nine, he spoke French (Lutosławski 1933: 121), whereas since he was ten years old German became his primary language (ibid.: 25); subsequently, he studied chemistry under German professors at the Riga Polytechnical Institute (in today’s Latvia) and at the University of Dorpat (today known as Tartu, Estonia) in order to inherit his father’s brewery. Thereupon, he took the exam for the study of philosophy in a fast-track procedure. At the age of nineteen, he began to learn English and Spanish by himself, just to discover in Milan during a one-year trip through Europe: “I do not recall when and how I learnt Italian. I only know that I was able to converse well” (ibid.: 79). He only started to use Russian—at that time, the language of instruction in public schools of the Russian partition of Poland, to which his patriotic father refused to send him— when he moved to Russia together with his Spanish wife at the age of twenty-four, where he would soon hold his first teaching position at the University of Kazan (ibid.: 160). While in his childhood and youth, he became familiar with “the German spirit at its best” (ibid.: 72) due to his German teachers and university professors, and he said to have recognised the superiority of the clear French style as a student of the École des Hautes Études at the Sorbonne (ibid.: 121–122). Apart from Latin and Greek, Lutosławski taught and published in seven modern languages mainly on philosophical subjects that garnered his interest and particularly in regard to their practical implementation.4 Not least because of his language skills, he was in the position biography. Since he neither had his library nor written records or documents at hand while drafting the text in Paris, his autobiography is largely based on memories. Important specifications, including dates and quotations from his own and other works, were not rendered precisely. Similarly to many of his publications, an obvious intention in writing the autobiography was to find a patron who would be willing to support the establishment of a factory for the education of the Polish youth. In the preface, Lutosławski not only declares his address but also his bank details (Lutosławski 1933: viii). His picture drawn by himself ought to be qualified, just like the other self-testimonies that will be discussed later. 4  The complete systematic exposition of his philosophy was published in Lutosławski 2004. To some extent it can already be identified in the yoga handbook. In this chapter, I will not go into detail about the chronological development of his thought.

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to obtain an overview of the contemporary state of research on Plato, while the various research traditions, as he remarked in the preface of his magnum opus, were hardly aware of each other (Lutosławski 1897: viii–ix). In Poland, Lutosławski has gained the reputation of an eccentric— when and if he is remembered at all. The reasons for this were his occasionally obsessive extramural, socio-political activities for the sake of public enlightenment, which were intensified at the turn of the century; conflicts surrounded by scandals with colleagues and governing bodies at universities; the incompatibility of his philosophy with the doctrine of the Catholic Church—reincarnation above all; his unconventional lifestyle, including the annulment of his first marriage, as well as his daily routine such as nude gymnastics and sunbaths; and not least, his reputation of being a difficult character. His inconceivably vast, interdisciplinary oeuvre5—including the correspondence with leading intellectuals of his time as mentioned above, his lecture series in Europe and the USA, as well as a flood of popular scientific brochures and the establishment of journals in several languages6—only gradually underwent a serious review in the last years after having fallen into complete oblivion during the Polish People’s Republic (1944–1989). Scant attention has been paid so far to the first yoga handbook in the Polish language (except for individual websites of Polish yoga studios), which was initially published in 1909, and followed by several reprints ever since. On the one hand, the adaptation of yoga presented therein constitutes an original contribution to the history of the development of modern yoga at the beginning of the twentieth century. On the other hand, it offers an insightful source for understanding Polish neo-messianism.

The Genesis of the Work The extraordinary development of the publication, called a handbook (podręcznik) by the author, already indicates an idiosyncratic synthesis of traditions that seem to be different at first glance. Lutosławski emphatically dedicated The Development of Will Power by means of Psychophysical Exercises—In Accordance with Aryan Traditions and Personal Experiences 5  It encompasses over 800 titles, including more than one hundred separate publications (Zaborowski 2000: 189; bibliography in pp. 239–275). 6  I regard Lutosławski 1925 to be an example of the genre of spiritual guidebooks.

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for Use by Fellow Compatriots (1909),7 to the physician Apolinary Tarnawski (1851–1943) who was leading a famous sanatorium near Kosów in the Eastern Carpathians (at that time Galicia and part of the Habsburg monarchy; today’s Kosiv in Ukraine), for he would heal “the body through the impact of the mind.”8 The book was supposed to serve as “a means to liberate our compatriots from the idleness of the mind,” which was “the main reason for our misfortune.” With this formulation, Lutosławski refers already in the preface to the political situation in Poland and explains that the country itself is responsible for it. In doing so, he takes up—apparent to his readership— the controversial statements of Andrzej Towiański (1799–1882), who is considered one of the leading founders of Polish messianism and who influenced great poets of Polish Romanticism, especially Adam Mickiewicz (1798–1855) as well as Juliusz Słowacki (1809–1849).9 Yoga is thus not only introduced as an “ancient” method to heal illnesses based on “personal experiences,” but also fulfils a national mission. The handbook was written in the summer of 1905 in Tarnawski’s sanatorium—which became a centre of the intellectual and artistic elite not least due to its promotion through Lutosławski—not only as the result of 7  I used the second, revised edition Rozwój potęgi woli przez psychofizyczne c´wiczenia w drugiem ulepszonym wydaniu, według dawnych aryjskich tradycji oraz własnych swoich doświadczeń podaje do uz.ytku rodaków Wincenty Lutosławski (Lutosławski 1910b). In 1923, the third edition was published in the (at that time) Polish city of Wilno (today’s Vilnius, Lithuania), where Lutosławski held the chair of philosophy at the Polish Stefan-BatoryUniversity between 1920 and 1931. He penned a new preface and amended three chapters that went by the titles “Fasting Cures,” “Prayer,” and “Service to God.” The last chapter was extended to include fundamental theses on national politics in various editions (1987, 1991, 1992, 1994). The changes made to the text reflect the development of Lutosławski’s philosophy compared to the first edition: Indian yoga is now referred to as a “foreign example” in the same breath as the fascism of the Italians, the Jewish socialism, the radicalism of the French, the liberalism of the English, and the democracy of the Swiss and the Americans, of which the author cautions in an “allegedly” free Poland. A considerably reduced third edition was published in 1992 and 1994. 8  Lutosławski speaks of body and soul elsewhere. Hereinafter, the terminology will be introduced. Tarnawski himself was reportedly healed in the sanatorium of Sebastian Kneipp (1821–1897) in Wörishofen. After he returned, his treatment of patients relied on a vegetarian diet and exercise apart from “water cures” and (proposed by Lutosławski) increasingly fasting cures. 9  Not least because of his criticism of his own compatriots, Towiański had a reputation of being a traitor and agent of the Russian Zar. Lutosławski considered himself as his follower and built on his teachings (Lutosławski 1933: 262).

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an illness as described by Lutosławski in the preface, but also during a period of a deep personal, professional, and spiritual crisis. In 1905, after ten years of intense scientific work that found its completion with his English magnum opus on Plato, Lutosławski suffered from periodically recurring symptoms that he referred to as “lethargy” (letarg) or “paralysis” (prostracja) and compared them to a succession of death and resurrection.10 During this period, he was subjected to extraordinary burdens that he described in his autobiography, as well as in an article originally written in German and published in the journal Hochland (Lutosławski 1923a). In 1900, a public scandal was caused by a decision of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków to withdraw Lutosławski’s authorisation to teach by referring to his “mental illness.”11 Shortly before, and to his own surprise, the philosopher returned to the Catholic Church following a general confession.12 A marriage crisis with the Spanish poetess Sofía Casanova Pérez Eguía de Lutosławski (1861–1958)—whom he married in Madrid, because of some “inner compulsion” and the wish to have a son, and with whom he had four daughters—was intensified at the same time.13 Two close friends died almost simultaneously.14 Neither cures nor massages, nor a hypnosis treatment by the Swiss physician August Forel (1848–1931), who—just as Otto Binswanger (1852–1929) in Jena—diagnosed a “periodic mild neurasthenia” or “weak nerves,” were able to help mitigate the “lethargy,” described in the handbook by Lutosławski as purely physical.15 In the conflict with the Jagiellonian 10  William James, the American psychologist and co-founder of philosophical pragmatism, presented Lutosławski’s case with a paper entitled “The Energies of Men” at the convention of the American Psychological Association on December 28, 1906, and in 1907 published his lecture in Science as well as in the Revue de Philosophie (Lutosławski 1933: XII). 11  The medical report and the correspondence concerning the matter have been preserved (Kuliniak 2017: 63). The decision of the university was not based on a medical diagnosis (Mróz 2008: 119). 12  Even this “deepest crisis of my life” was summarised in an article originally written in German (Lutosławski 1923b). 13  Lutosławski’s biographer marked the year 1903 as the last one of his marriage (Mróz 2008: 132). Having himself been addressed as “father” in the associations he founded, Lutosławski emphasised in the introduction of his autobiography that “fatherly love” and the “urge to look after others” would have been the “leading form of love” in his life, stronger even than the “brotherly love” towards friends or women. 14  Stanisław Szczepanowski (1846–1900) and Kazimierz Odrzywolski (1860–1900). 15   Forel dosed him with opium which “removed the blockades” only temporarily (Lutosławski 1923a: 8).

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University, which Lutosławski saw as politically motivated, he reacted with increased activity.16 Near the university, he founded the Seminar of National Philosophy,17 where lectures were held continuously. He taught at the Universities of Lausanne and Geneva, and at the University College in London between 1904 and 1906. In 1902, he founded the short-lived association Eleuteria for combatting alcohol addiction, as well as Eleusis along with a journal by the same name,18 which was active until World War I (1914–1918). According to the bylaws of Eleusis, its aim was the self-­ perfection of its members as well as the national education in the Catholic spirit particularly through the literature of Polish Romanticism. With varying degrees of success, additional associations were formed from 1907 onwards in England, France, the USA, Switzerland, and even—thanks to a patroness—in Algeria. Lutosławski decided to help himself. During the year of 1903—and with the same systematic thoroughness he had already applied when working in London’s British Library in the years 1889/1890 and 1893/189419— he studied “anything” that could be found “on health, the relationship between mind and body, and the various methods to treat chronic illnesses,” including occult and esoteric literature (which he rejected since he held that truth was available for everyone; Lutosławski 1910b: x). In 16  Lutosławski drew parallels with the most significant Romantic poet of Poland, Adam Mickiewicz, who lost his professorship at the Collège de France in Paris in 1844, because he propagated the teachings of his teacher Andrzej Towiański in his lectures. In his autobiography, Lutosławski reflected not only on his own behaviour in an exceptionally critical manner, but also on that of Mickiewicz: the professorial chair was not his “private property.” In the same way, he himself should have lectured “objectively” at the Austrian university in Kraków: “Whoever desires to change reality must first recognise it as it is” (Lutosławski 1933: 248). 17  Seminarium filozofii narodowej is translated by Lutosławski himself as “Seminar of National Education” (Seminar der Nationalerziehung; see Lutosławski 1923a: 13). 18  Lutosławski filled the first edition, comprised of 367 pages, with his own articles using several pseudonyms (Eleusis 1903). Eleusis was directed against, among others, the so-called Young Poland and Kraków’s Decadence. One of the most prominent representatives of the latter group was the famous author Stanisław Przybyszewski (1868–1927) whom Lutosławski tried to keep away from alcohol by using tricks during his visit of several months in Spain in 1898 (Lutosławski 1933: 225–226). Eleusis considered itself to be the continuation of the Circle of the Cause of God by Andrzej Towiański. 19  In his autobiography, Lutosławski devoted a separate section to the British Library and its comparison to the Parisian Bibliotèque Nationale. The former would allow a reader to obtain an overview of the current state of knowledge about any topic within a very short time. He summarised the “initiation into philosophical knowledge” in the year of 1889/1890 as “one of the happiest years of my life” (Lutosławski 1933: 173).

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this manner, he discovered the “eternal experiences that were brought by Ramakrishna’s disciples to the West and known as yoga.” After his first setbacks in the practice of breathing exercises, he sought a suitable, secluded place in Cornwall, Wales, and on the Isles of Scilly, the most southerly point of the British Isles, until he finally returned to Tarnawski in Kosów. In July 1905, he resumed the exercises “according to the present handbook, which I compiled there” (ibid.: xi). As he mentioned explicitly in the preface of the second edition, he wrote the handbook before the “beginning of the crucial experiences” (ibid.: xxxix). Accordingly, the first yoga handbook in Polish is to be considered a summary of the studies of an adept scientist in London’s British Library. Lutosławski exercised according to the instructions that he himself had drafted following his extensive reading, that is, without any kind of guidance by an experienced master—whereas he himself recommends the guidance of a master in the handbook through repeated warnings. In this respect, the first publication on yoga in the Polish language could also be read as a document of a successful self-therapy. What Lutosławski only indicated in the last lines of the handbook, he accentuated in his German Hochland-article: he had chosen as his leader “the Christ who is present in the Eucharist, in this case as well as in all other matters already since 1900,” in order to “determine the plans for the intended exercises in accordance with the inspirations coming from Christ during daily communion” (Lutosławski 1923b: 12). When autumn began in Kosów, he continued the exercises at the Dalmatian coast together with a young artist who joined him, and noted “that it is possible to lead others successfully, even on paths that one does not know yet oneself.” As in most publications, Lutosławski asked his readers for feedback and would offer practical guidance, provided they were ready to entrust themselves to him for at least half a year (Lutosławski 1910b: xxvii). Apart from the (idealised) history of Poland, successful self-­ recovery was the subject of countless lectures that Lutosławski held in the USA at the invitation of William James between 1907 and 1908.20 Already before the publication of the handbook, he methodically passed on the training system he developed to his students. It constituted an integral part of the programme that was propagated by the association Eleusis.21  Some were published; e.g., Lutosławski 1917.  Stanisław Pigoń (1885–1968), who was to become the most superb literary historian of Polish Romanticism, temporarily served as the chairman. In his Memories of Sachsenhausen he 20 21

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The Context of Modern Yoga Irrespective of the work’s genesis, the handbook is not a scientific publication; rather, it was primarily based on personal experiences and aimed at their practical conveyance. At the same time, the readership is repeatedly encouraged to modify the exercises and adjust them to their own conditions. Despite the above-cited reference to the allegedly long-standing tradition of yoga, the syntheses of various European and American trends with classical yoga—considered as constitutive for the invention of modern yoga—can be found in the handbook: Moreover, it is increasingly recognised today that modern yoga cannot be understood as the result of a unilateral Western reception of traditional Indian forms. It is a transnational cultural asset that emerged from an intercultural and interreligious encounter between the Euro-American modern era and India. Yoga had already been modernised in India itself before being exported worldwide, and precisely for this reason become so successful in foreign countries that were likewise influenced by Euro-American modernity (Baier 2011: 223).

Obviously, Lutosławski came across relevant publications during his research at the British Library and used sources that were essential to yoga still before its “way west” (Baier 1998). Since he was academically trained, he cited bibliographical information for the greatest part—mostly indicating the publisher’s address, as well as an entry on the current price of the respective publication. As already indicated by the reference to Christ as the teacher, the universalist conviction regarding the compatibility of yoga with Christianity as two different paths towards the same goal underlies the handbook. According to Lutosławski, there are merely different emphases to be perceived, for while the Indian tradition was based on meditation exercises by the individual secluded from the world—not unlike single contemplative Christian congregations—the Christians would rather focus on fellow men and community. Not through one’s own efforts alone but, above all, emphasised that the exercises had helped him to survive the concentration camp (Pigoń 1987: 38–41). On November 6, 1939, nearly 200 professors were arrested at the Jagiellonian University by the German security police and brought to the concentration camp in the course of the “Special Campaign Kraków” (Sonderaktion Krakau). Pigoń was released in 1940 and illegally continued his teaching activity. Lutosławski, emeritus at that time, had not followed the invitation to the university assembly.

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by undeserved grace would they be able to attain the state of highest concentration.22 For this purpose, psychophysical exercises could be additionally taken up, as they would be effective independent of one’s respective faith. The largest part of the handbook (chapters I‑VII) addresses preparatory exercises such as: ascetism; abstinence; the renouncement of alcohol, nicotine, and excessive eating; as well as ethical principles. They are described in detail as indispensable prerequisites for the more advanced, “special” exercises as they need to be practised over a longer period (at least half a year): breathing exercises are most central since they assist practicing the intended control over the body. The terminology used is less explained than visualised through descriptions of the exercises (without using illustrations) as well as examples and comparisons. However, the notion of psychophysical exercises mentioned in the title is not defined at any point, although contrasted with pure “muscle exercises.” Unlike physical exercises, psychophysical ones take effect through the power of imagination and the will of the practitioner. They help to strengthen and regulate the flows of prāṇa during the exercise. Although theoretical explanations are avoided in the handbook, a definition of prāṇa can be found denoting some kind of “diluted matter” (Lutosławski 1910b: xxv) of the “highest order” (ibid.: 9). The trained chemist associates it with those smallest, “radiating” elementary particles which in persistent and rhythmic movements induce light, electricity, or sound. Even if the invisible matter is not (yet) provable under the rules of Western science, there is no doubt about its efficacy. Just as in mesmerism, of which many formulations and concrete practices (for example the instruction to magnetise drinking water) are indeed evocative, it is generally assumed that the effect of prāṇa (similar to that of the fluidum) is compatible with the achievements of modern science. The described sequence of exercises in gradual phases mainly serves to collect the currents of prāṇa in order to induce its force to move up along the spine in the form of kuṇḍalinı̄. The highest aim of the preparatory exercises is to gain control over the body through the development of the power of imagination and will as the requirement for subsequent exercises. This clearly body-related focus can be explained through Lutosławski’s biography as well as the sources he used. Since the beginning of his illness

 This aspect is stressed more clearly in the third edition (Lutosławski 1923c).

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in his student days,23 he had worked out a strict daily routine with regular nude gymnastics, rubdowns with cold water, phases of silence, and later on sunbaths, which his half-brothers and fellow students had to follow.24 Presumably, these experiences and his interest in alternative healing methods found their way into the yoga handbook and influenced the selection of his sources.25 To be numbered among his own exercises are probably those breathing exercises that were connected with counting one’s steps while walking and are unknown in the yoga tradition. Moreover, references in the handbook are made to a whole range of European and American sources. Regarding diet rules, for example, the Polish translation of the publication of Maximilian Bircher-Benner (1867–1939) is cited. Regarding the technique of thoroughly chewing food, Lutosławski refers to the popular reformer Horace Fletcher (1849–1919), whom he had met in the USA.26 The recommended fasting cures were already mentioned above. In a special chapter on “aesthetic” exercises, which particularly help to practice the change of prāṇa streams (from and to the centre of the body), Lutosławski made use of the exercise system developed by the singing and acting instructor François Delsarte (1811–1871) for the sake of increasing natural expressiveness. With his combination of vocal training, relaxation, and breathing exercises, Delsarte inspired the avant-garde of modern dance and body culture. The r­ elaxation 23  During his travels through Europe, his father had him examined by Jean-Martin Charcot (1825–1893) in Paris, who supposedly advised him to give up his studies and devote himself to gardening (Lutosławski 1933: 82). 24  Lutosławski repeatedly stressed his role as an educator of his brother and four younger half-brothers (including the father of the composer Witold Lutosławski). For twelve years, he directed a form of underground school with foreign private teachers whose programme he personally planned and supervised. After returning from his European tour, he founded a student living community that he called “monastery” and managed it rigorously (Lutosławski 1933: 89). These examples of the “urge for fatherliness” reach back a long way and unequivocally played a decisive role when he founded the aforementioned institutions and associations. In the handbook, the notions “monastery” and “missionaries” also appear in the context of psychophysical exercises. 25  A dramatic event not mentioned in the autobiography, the death of his third daughter Jadwiga, only verifies how far back his occupation with alternative healing methods goes: the child died in 1895 at the age of five because her father refused medical treatment and instead tried to heal her himself through “energy” (Szostak 2012: 139). 26  On another occasion, Lutosławski noted, sarcastically as usual, that Fletcher by no means ate any slower than others (Lutosławski 1933: 283). Supposedly, the Fletcherism according to Lutosławski was a key element in the programme of the famous Krakówian literary cabaret Cellar under Aries (Mróz 2008: 142).

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exercises described by Lutosławski, based on letting or dropping down single body parts, are probably traced back to the school of Delsarte, which enjoyed great success in the USA (Baier 2016: 48). By his own account, Lutosławski quoted entire exercise sequences from the English publications of his student Geneviève Stebbins (1857–1934)27 because “the same theories and exercises are also found among the Indian sages ever since Patanjali” (Lutosławski 1910b: 4). In the meantime, the influence of this actress, dancer, and occultist on modern yoga has been widely recognised. Similar to Lutosławski, Stebbins assumed that, in particular through breathing, it was possible to connect with the divine life force that animates the cosmos. Her “dynamic breathing” (Baier 2016: 50–51) and the presumption of a correspondence between breath and spirit (unsteady, calm) can be found in several exercises of the handbook. Lutosławski concludes the chapter on the aesthetic exercises by referring to the choreo­ graphies of the dancer Isadora Duncan (1877/78–1927), who “emulated” ancient statues. Thus, the first yoga handbook in Polish, compiled in London’s British Library, presents a comparably syncretistic system of Euro-American and Indian traditions that nowadays has been broadly recognised to be characteristic of the development of modern yoga. However, it is remarkable that as early as 1903 Lutosławski came across the cited sources independently and autonomously. At the same time, he assumed a common core of religions, regarded yoga as basically compatible with Western science and the “latest research in Western physiology,” and integrated exercises from body culture, gymnastics, and the first forms of modern expressionist dance.28 The most telling indication can be found in the publication that he designates in his introductory remarks to be the best of all: originally, Lutosławski intended to translate a text by Yogi Ramacharaka from English 27  Often cited was Stebbins 1892. Moreover, Lutosławski cites without further bibliographical details the following: Delsarte System of Expression; System of Physical Training; and Society Gymnastics and Voice Culture. 28  Lutosławski referred his readers with command of English to a whole range of names that confirm the breadth of his studies. He did not, however, expand further on all the persons he mentions: Carrington, Fletcher, Butler, Broadbent, Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie, Thomas Lake Harris, Laurence Oliphant, I. H. Noyes, Edward Carpenter, Vivekananda, Abhedananda, Ramakrishna, G. Leland, I. C. Street, John Hamelin Dewey, John Kingsland, Mary E. Boole, Anna Kingsford, H. Dresser, Lilian Whiting, A. Jackson Davis, P. B. Randolph (Lutosławski 1910b: XXI). Lutosławski’s correspondence with Hiram Erastus Butler (1841–1916), whose Esoteric Society he visited in the USA, has been preserved.

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to Polish, but ultimately abandoned his idea because it would have only be intended for a small circle, and his tone might have led to prejudice among the readership.29 At the time he worked on the handbook it was apparently not (yet) known to him that the name was one of several pseudonyms under which the Chicagoan attorney William Walker Atkinson (1862–1932)—presumably because of marketing purposes—released a whole range of publications between 1903 and 1917. The leading representative of New Thought “yogised” (Baier 2009: 485–497) the modern Western body culture and is said to be a “merger of popular Western spirituality and yoga” (Diamon 2013: 97). In the handbook, he renders his interpretation of the Raja Yoga of Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902), which Lutosławski introduced in detail following the preparatory exercises as summarised above, despite the fact that he repeatedly warned about New Thought as a “trend (…) that now even spreads its products in Germany with tremendous advertising and too expensive prices.”30 Some of the exercises recommended in the handbook are reminiscent of the typical affirmation practices of this mass movement.31 The exercises referred to as “psychophysical” in Lutosławski’s titles could also be understood as a synthesis of Ramacharaka/Atkinson’s practices, which were divided into physical and psychological breathing exercises. Lutosławski warned against Theosophy, because it would induce people to be “against Christianity,” in the same emphatic way that he did against New Thought.32 29  He cited Yogi Ramacharaka’s The Hindu Yogi Science of Breath (1903). Another recommended text of the same author was Hatha Yoga or the Yogi Philosophy of Physical Well Being (1905) (Lutosławski 1910b: 5). Lutosławski seems to have studied these texts immediately after their publication. The significance of the solar plexus, as Ramacharaka describes it, was not adopted by Lutosławski. 30  In the cited passage, Lutosławski mentions Atkinson’s name in the context of his criticism of New Thought (Lutosławski 1923a: 6). 31  For the interpretation of the handbook in the particular context of New Thought, see Świerzowska 2015 (including quotations from the unpublished correspondence with William James and Hiram Erastus Butler). 32  The Theosophists would spread their nonsense “on both hemispheres of the globe” (Lutosławski 1933: 199–200). With Blavatsky, whom he allegedly met in London, Lutosławski conversed in Russian—in accordance with his method of adapting to his respective conversational partner. Thus, he would know her contempt for the “Americans who fell for her,” and that she would only be interested in making money. Even if he likely agreed with Blavatsky’s critical assessment of the Americans, Theosophy was at that time of no importance anymore to Lutosławski, regardless of the mediating role it played in the genesis of modern yoga. In a similar manner, he repeatedly made devastating remarks about Rudolf Steiner (1861–1965).

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Rājayoga and Messianism In the penultimate chapter VIII, following the main bulk of the handbook, Lutosławski introduces “special” exercises which, in the preface, he calls useful “only in exceptional cases” for “individual” Europeans, and of which the description serves as information “rather than an encouragement to practice.” After mastering the psychophysical exercises and attaining complete control over the body, one could venture—under the expert guidance of a teacher—on those exercises known as rājayoga. Lutosławski presents Swami Vivekananda at length as the most outstanding source and summarises his teachings on the basis of his English publications. On this occasion, just as in the introductory chapter, Lutosławski mentions the first Parliament of the World’s Religions which took place in Chicago in 1893 and made “the Hindoo monk of India” famous overnight. However, Lutosławski, who readily alluded to his international contacts and encounters with illustrious personalities, continues to conceal his own participation in this historic event. From his autobio­ graphy it can be concluded that after his father’s death, the scholar-to-be spent his portion of the inheritance—in defiance of his father’s last will— paying his trip to the USA. Lutosławski’s first public lecture in English (on the immortality of the soul) supposedly took place on the occasion of a meeting facilitated by the organiser of the World Parliament, a certain Dr. Foster, and was subsequently published (Lutosławski 1933: 186). It can also be gathered from the autobiography that Lutosławski had more interest in the modern aspects of the New World than the “tower of Babel” and the “naïvety” of its initiators. Due to the mediation by a renowned attorney, he was able to do several interviews with American millionaires in Philadelphia and gained unique insights into modern America through the method of mimesis, the complete adaptation to the respective conversational partner, already tested on countless trips: “Alone for this one day, the trip to America was worthwhile” (ibid.: 191). Vivekananda, however, remains unmentioned in the autobiography.33 It may thus be concluded that only in 1903 did Lutosławski indeed discover the book that in current research is unanimously considered the most significant publication for 33  Lutosławski reports elsewhere that he had met Vivekananda in Chicago without realising “that he could have gained such a great significance for me later on.” In London, he supposedly met a fervent devotee who drew his attention to Vivekananda’s works (Lutosławski 1923a: 10).

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the development of modern yoga.34 The starting point was not the personal encounter with the first Indian yoga teacher in the West; rather, it was his scholarly studies of predominantly American literature, including—in Lutosławski’s view—the outstanding interpretation of rājayoga by Vivekananda.35 At the same time, Lutosławski was apparently aware of Vivekananda’s Western education and praised the “Christian influences” that he would spread throughout India.36 In Vivekananda’s reinterpretation of rājayoga— unanimously regarded in today’s Modern Yoga Studies an “amalgam” of classical yoga, European philosophy, and esotericism (Diamon 2013: 266), that facilitated the adoption of yoga in the Western world which on her part had developed “welcome structures”37—Lutosławski did not merely see a source of allegedly ancient Indian wisdom alone but adopted it within the context of the aforementioned movements. In the introductory summary of the eighth chapter, he again outlined Vivekananda’s eightfold path of Raja Yoga as a methodologically consequent path to the gradual liberation from influences of the physical world with the aim of attaining the highest concentration. The exercises described in the first seven chapters—in broad accordance with Vivekananda’ classification—constitute the indispensable prerequisite for those exercises that lead to the direct experience of one’s own immortality and union with God. Lutosławski obviously made use of a number of quotations from Vivekananda’s Râja Yoga (1896) without marking them in each instance. Eventually, he further elaborated Vivekananda’s “psychic prana” by means of his “psychophysical” exercises, imparted by Ramacharaka/Atkinson. The central notion in Lutosławski’s philosophy, whereby its varying contextualisation may be interpreted, also finds an analogy in Vivekananda’s thought: in the handbook, the discovery of one’s own jaźń—which could be experienced as “pure,” “independent” from the external world, and 34  Diamon 2013: 266. Karl Baier (2011: 224) relativised the claim that de Michelis ascribed to Vivekananda’s publications in her foundational work (de Michelis 2005). 35  Vivekananda’s New York lectures on Raja Yoga were expressly applauded. I will discuss the quotations from Vivekananda’s lectures in Madras below. 36  At another point, Lutosławski criticised Vivekananda’s “double face:” in front of Westerners he would admire the Indian revelations, while recommending to his compatriots to learn “foot-ball” from the Englishmen (Lutosławski 1923a: 10). 37  “There rather exists a whole array of welcome structures [sic] in the shape of kindred practices, forms of exercise, and habitus forms, by means of which elements from other traditions can be welcomed” (Baier 2009: 485).

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“indestructible”—is named as the supreme goal of the delineated exercises. Subsequently, this experience would have to be practised regularly for longer periods (e.g., by uniting during exercise one’s own jaźń with individual body parts or organs, which themselves possess a jaźń). All force originates in her, and she alone enables control over the body, as well as having an effect on the outer world because, “When she liberates herself from the body, she instantly gains power over it” (Lutosławski 1923c: 140). The feminine term jaźń (pronounced “jashnee”) is usually translated as “soul,” “consciousness,” or “self.”38 This neologism (Robaczewski 2004: 291–293),39 introduced in the mid-nineteenth century by the philosopher Bronisław Trentowski (1808–1869) who initially published in German, links the Polish word for “I” (ja) with the suffix for abstract nouns (-źń), and thus could be rendered as “I-ness.” The described exercise system suggests that the term denotes what Vivekananda formulated earlier as the “experience of pure ‘isness.’” Further evidence can be found in Lutosławski’s (originally German) article for Outline of the History of Philosophy (Grundriß der Geschichte der Philosophie), the recognised foundational work of Friedrich Ueberweg (1826–1871), in which he mainly presents his own philosophy.40 In his German text, Lutosławski inserts the Polish original term for the greater part, yet he also uses the synonyms Einzelgeist, Seele, Geist, and in some instances Atman. Moreover, through the term jaźń, Lutosławski connects the teachings of rājayoga with the poetry of Polish Romanticism, which would have expressed this “state of consciousness” better than any other literature (Lutosławski 1923c: 149). In the volume of the aforementioned journal Eleusis, entirely dedicated to the Romantic poet Juliusz Słowacki, the Indian term samādhi also appears to denote the state of consciousness described by him (and other Polish Romanticists) (Eleusis 1909: 37). According to Lutosławski, Romantic poetry, “not less than the old Indian books,” would provide guidance on “liberating the mind” (Lutosławski 1910b: 169). For this reason, he includes lengthy quotations from Romantic poetry in his summary of rājayoga. In the instruction on the exercise of total relaxation, he  In the Polish translations of the works of C. G. Jung, self is rendered as jaźń.  Trentowski created this neologism referring to Ich, the German word for “I” (Boz˙yca 2017: 24), as well as to the German notion of Geist, “spirit” in the “Slavic sense of the word, rather than the German or French” (ibid.: 67–68). 40  Lutosławski 1928. In the foundational work of Ueberweg, Lutosławski’s contribution is disproportionally extensive. The anthology on Polish messianism mentioned above adopted this programmatic text in its Polish translation (Wawrzynowicz 2015: 381–388). 38 39

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cites in full the posthumously published poem Vision (widzenie) by Adam Mickiewicz as an example of the highest ecstasy and “in complete concordance with the Indian yogi.”41 Lutosławski thereby sets a specific Polish accent in his adaption of rājayoga in the typical synthesis of modern yoga summarised above. In accordance with Baier (2009; cf. n. 38 above), the poems of the Polish Romanticists could be called welcome structures for Vivekananda’s teachings in Poland. During the nineteenth century, when Poland was partitioned, Romantic poetry broadly assumed the function that in other European countries was assigned to philosophy. One of its constants was the development of a particular version of the idea of reincarnation, which was continued by Lutosławski. He regarded the actual spiritual life “in the hereafter, before birth, and after death […] as periodically interrupted by successive incarnations” (Lutosławski 1928: 308). He did not think of reincarnation as a “transmigration of souls through various bodies,” but as a “periodical renewal of the same bodily form that belongs to a soul.” In the unification of the individual with the jaźń of his fellow human beings lies the way to “overcome the opposition of this world and the hereafter […] whereas the bodies are supposed to attain the same immortality as the spirits.” The “personal discovery of the absolute imperishability and indestructability of the single spirit [jaźń],” considered in the handbook as the highest goal, would guide humankind to the “consciousness of belonging to a natural group of like-minded spirits who have a common mission and thus form a nation” (ibid.: 307). Hence, Lutosławski’s notion of the nation is justified metaphysically, similar to the idea of his role model, Towiański.42 In the handbook, the unification of the individual with God as the highest goal of yogic practice is regarded to serve the national collective with the purpose of realising the kingdom of God on Earth, including physical immortality. According to Lutosławski, the immortality of the body was already prophesied by the poets of Romanticism, especially by

41  Lutosławski 1910b:70–72. Elsewhere, Lutosławski used Vivekananda’s steps of meditation for the interpretation of the poem (Swami Vivekananda 1973: 93). He repeatedly designated the poem as a prayer that every child in Poland was supposed to know by heart (Lutosławski 1937). 42  Lutosławski uses the same categories “sort” (gatunek) and “germe” (zarodek) of jaźń that would have to merge in order to form nations in his works published in the following year (Lutosławski 1910a).

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Juliusz Słowacki.43 However, the absolute prerequisite for this is the discovery and experience of one’s own jaźń. In the same year the handbook was published, Lutosławski dedicated a detailed paper on the fate of jaźń in the writings of Słowacki, who did not know of this term (Lutosławski 1909b).44 Lutosławski apparently experienced the discovery of his own jaźń at the age of twenty-two while reading Plato’s Symposium.45 In his autobiography, he remembered it as a complete “internal transformation” and equated it with the experience described by Mickiewicz in the poem Vision mentioned above and cited by Lutosławski in his handbook: “I suddenly felt as imperishable, eternal spirit, fundamentally different from the body and thus immortal, indestructible, and as a result also immaterial.”46 This summary correlates with the criteria listed in the handbook to discover jaźń by means of psychophysical exercises. In his warning of esoteric knowledge mentioned above, Lutosławski emphasised that every “allegedly initiated” would ultimately refer to Plato, whom he knew as a “thorough thinker” (Lutosławski 1933: 199). The Greek philosopher, whose development “from idealism to spiritualism” Lutosławski outlined, 43  Meanwhile, Słowacki’s prophecy would be confirmed by A. Osborne Eaves, H. Gaze, and Helen Wilmans (Lutosławski 1910b:xi). 44  Lutosławski was an expert on this long-underestimated poet, whose hundredth birthday was celebrated in the same year the handbook was published. Already in 1897, he procured the first critical edition of the poetic treatise Genesis from the Spirit. A Prayer (Lutosławski 1903) and penned several articles (Lutosławski 1909a). Excerpts of the treatise published in 1844 were reproduced in its German translation in Lotusblüten. Ein monatlich erscheinendes Journal enthaltend Originalartikel und ausgewählte Übersetzungen aus der orientalischen Literatur in Bezug auf die Grundlage der Religionen des Ostens und der Theosophie (Lotus Flowers. A Monthly Published Journal Containing Original Articles and Selected Translations from Oriental Literature regarding the Foundation of Eastern Religions and Theosophy), edited by Franz Hartmann, M.D., Member of the Theosophical Society in America (Hahn 1909: 197–201). 45  Lutosławski read aloud Plato’s works to himself “hundreds of times.” He developed memorisation and loud repeated declaiming as a method for coping with the study matter in preparation for his exam, which he took after a single semester instead of four years: “I developed in the core of my soul the memories of a past life as a Roman when I heard Cicero’s speeches” (Lutosławski 1933: 98). In so doing, he was supposedly able to read out a Latin text “in Polish, German, or French,” or “improvise” the works of Polish Romantic poets for foreigners. I am not aware of any study on this method in the context of stylometry. For Lutosławski’s contribution to linguistics, see Pawłowski 2010. 46  Skoczyński 2005 attempts interpretations of this experience in 1885, as well as his conversion to the Catholic Church in 1900.

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remained the central reference point by which he tested all teachings.47 He saw the basis for the tradition of messianism, as well as its universal claim, in his interpretation of Plato’s philosophy.48 In the handbook, not only Vivekananda, but also Lutosławski himself is meant by the “called and chosen individuals” who have realised the power of their “single spirit” and would lead their own nation—as well as ultimately all of humankind—to immortality through their radiating impact. This is suggested by a number of parallels in the two vitas which Lutosławski especially emphasised, such as: their same year of birth (1863); the trip to America for the sake of studying modern progress; the subjugated homeland; and the moral decay of their compatriots.49 Thus, the Indian sage is introduced by Lutosławski as a patriot who wanted to guide his occupied-by-barbarians homeland to its spiritual rebirth and thus—in accordance with the providence—would lead all humankind on the path to its fulfilment (Lutosławski 1910b:132–134). He cites at length from Vivekananda’s Madras lectures, in which he rebukes his “lazy and sluggish” compatriots, who fight amongst each other instead of trusting in their own strength with the awareness that “each one of us is an omniscient, omnipotent spirit.” Thereby, the link is made to the dedication to the physician Tarnawski cited at the very beginning of the handbook.

Summary In the philosophy of jaźń, Lutosławski unified Vivekananda’s ātman with the spirit of Romantic poetry50 and the soul of Plato. The healing process of the individual, as Lutosławski’s handbook documents, constitutes the first step towards the healing of the collective, and thus the salvation of the entire human race. As a result, the psychophysical exercises (i.e. yoga) 47  The chronological order of Plato’s dialogues was regarded by Lutosławski merely as the necessary preparatory work (Lutosławski 1933: 215). 48  “Plato’s spiritualism in the late dialogues, as interpreted by Lutosławski, was an argument for the ancient roots of Polish philosophy and, in particular, nineteenth-century Polish messianism as a spiritual outlook, thus confirming the universal nature of messianism, as well as the historical continuity of philosophical tradition from Plato to Polish philosophy” (Mróz 2016: 56). 49  In letters to William James, which he wrote directly before he started to work on the handbook, Lutosławski presents himself as the messiah (Świerzowska 2015: 149). 50  Cf. n. 39 above. For the diverse aspects of the notion Geist in Towiański’s writings, see Lami 2017: 89–116, and Lami 2019: 101–188.

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would lead to the national rebirth of Poland.51 Hence, the first yoga handbook in the Polish language is also to be interpreted as a crucial stage on the path to the formulation of the philosophy, or worldview, of Polish neo-messianism.

Annex Table of Contents (Lutosławski 1910b) I. The Arian Traditions

1. Brahmanism and Christianity 2. The Tasks of Our People 3. The Significance of Breath 4. The Conjunction of Eastern and Western Methods II. Prerequisites for the Success of the Exercises



1. Right Eating and Drinking 2. Purity and Abstinence 3. Moral Prerequisites III. The Breathing Rhythm IV. Vitalising Exercises



1. Deep Complete Exhalation 2. Purifying Inhalation 3. Vitalising Inhalation 4. The Inhalation of a Singer 5. The Halted Inhalation 6. The Vitalisation of the Lungs 7. The Spreading of the Ribs 8. The Widening of Thorax 9. Morning Exercises 10. Exercises while Bathing

51  This is how Lutosławski formulated it in 1945  in unpublished notes on his journal entries, cf. Archive of Science of Polish Academy of Sciences (PAN) and Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences (PAU) in Kraków, reference number K III-155, 48.

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11. Stimulation of Blood Circulation 12. Exercises before Sleeping V. The Ability to Relax VI. Psychophysical Exercises The Psychophysical Rhythm



1. The Distribution of Prana 2. The Elimination of Pain 3. The Regulation of the Blood Circulation 4. The Healing of the Self 5. The Healing of Others 6. Distant Healing 7. The Protection from Bad Influences 8. The Acquisition of Good Attributes Sexual Purity 9. The Deep Inhalation 10. The Spiritual Development VII. Aesthetic Exercises



1. Exercises of the Limbs 2. Exercises of the Torso 3. Vertical Stretching 4. Lateral Stretching 5. Pendular Movements 6. Spiral-Shaped Movements 7. General Remarks on above Movements 8. The Diametrality of Arms and Head 9. The Diametrality of the Limbs and the Torso 10. Remarks on Gestures VIII. Raja Yoga Indians in America Preparation for the Exercises



1. Asana 2. Pranayama 3. Pratyahara 4. Dharana 5. Dhyana 6. Samadhi and Samyama

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IX. Detailed Applications

1. Children and Adolescents 2. Workers The Type of the Intellectual Worker 3. Women 4. Artists and Scholars 5. Conclusion

References Unpublished Manuscript Lutosławski, Wincenty. Diary. Archive of Science of Polish Academy of Sciences (PAN) and Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences (PAU) in Kraków, reference number K III-155, 48.

Primary Sources Boz˙yca Trentowskiego [Trentowski’s Boz˙yca]. 2017. Kronos.Metafizyka— Kultura—Religia [Kronos. Metaphysics—Culture—Religion] 4 (43) (special issue). Lutosławski, Wincenty. 1888. Erhaltung und Untergang der Staatsverfassungen nach Plato, Aristoteles und Machiavelli. Breslau: Koebner. ———. 1897. The Origin and Growth of Plato’s Logic with an Account of Plato’s Style and of the Chronology of his Writings. London, Bombay, and New York: Longmans, Green, and Co. ———, ed. 1903. Juliusz Słowacki.Genesis z Ducha. Modlitwa [Genesis from the Spirit. A Prayer]. Kraków: Gebethner i sp. ———. 1909a. Darwin i Słowacki [Darwin and Słowacki]. Warszawa: Gebether i Wolff. ———. 1909b. Losy jaźni u Słowackiego [The Fate of Jaźń in the Works of Słowacki]. Pamiętnik Literacki [Literary Diary] 8: 4–21. ———. 1910a. Ludzkość odrodzona.Wizje przyszłości [The Rebirth of Mankind, Visions of the Future]. Kraków: Gebethner i sp. ———. 1910b. Rozwój potęgi woli przez psychofizyczne ćwiczenia w drugiem ulepszonym wydaniu, według dawnych aryjskich tradycji oraz własnych swoich doświadczeń podaje do uz˙ ytku rodaków Wincenty Lutosławski [The Development of Will Power by Means of Psychophysical Exercises—In Accordance with Arian Traditions and Personal Experiences for Use by Fellow Compatriots]. Warszawa: Gebethner i Wolff.

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Index1

A Abbé Faria (1756–1819), 62 Abel, Jakob Friedrich von (1751–1829), 17 Abhedi (1878), 285 Abhinavagupta, 296 Adam, 6, 140, 151, 179, 255 Adamski, George (1891–1965), 198 Adhyatmika (1880), 282, 285 Adler, Jankel (1895–1949), 197 Advaita Vedānta, 7, 248, 251, 280n16, 364, 375, 380–381, 392 Aetherius Society, 198 af Klint, Hilma (1862–1944), 6, 160–161, 163n11, 164–172, 166n18, 166n19, 167n20, 167n21, 172n29 Ágai, Adolf (1836–1916), 69 Agastya, 352n11, 353n13, 355 Age of Aquarius, 209–210, 215 Age of Capricorn, 210n15 Age of Pisces, 209

Aglaophemus, 294 Agricultural and Horticultural Society of India, 274 Agrippa von Nettesheim, Heinreich Cornelius (1486–1535), 105n25 Aikidō , 7, 222, 224, 227, 229, 230, 236–239 Ajita, 201, 201n4 ākāśa, 9, 129, 133n33, 373–393 Akbar “the Great” (1542–1605), 252 Alaler Gharer Dulal (1857), 272 al-Bı̄rūnı̄ (973–1048), 253 alchemy, 69n7, 308, 390–391 Alexander, Rolf (1891–?), 197 The Alpha (1875–1888), 178 Ali, Muhammad (1942–2016), 236 al-Shahrastānı̄ (1086–1153), 253 American Methodist Episcopal Church, 127 American Psychological Association, 404n10

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s) 2021 L. Pokorny, F. Winter (eds.), The Occult Nineteenth Century, Palgrave Studies in New Religions and Alternative Spiritualities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55318-0

425

426 

INDEX

Amrita Bazar Patrika, 275, 275n10, 359 anamnesis, 114–116 Anderson, Leafy (1887–1927), 337 animal magnetism, 4, 16–19, 23–24, 31, 37, 41, 41n5, 44, 59–79, 86, 88, 92, 94, 122, 260–261, 272, 274, 321 Anquetil-Duperron, Abraham Hyacinthe (1731–1805), 7, 88–90, 107, 248–249, 256–263, 257n8, 258n11, 258n12, 259n13, 261n15, 262n16 Ansichten von der Nachtseite der Naturwissenschaft (1808), 46 Anthropologie (1772), 16 Anthroposophy, anthroposophical, 150–151, 153–154, 160, 166, 168 Anton Reiser (1785–1790), 19 apocalypse/apocalyptic, 30, 203n7, 206 Ā raṇyaka, 249 Arcana Cœlestia, 117 Arcane School, 207 Archiv für Thierischen Magnetismus (1817–1824), 41 Ariosophy, ariosophic, 148–150 Aristotle, 292, 295 Aryan, 146, 148–150, 203n6, 385n24, 402 Indo-Aryan, 308 Arya Samaj, 355, 358, 419 Asam, Eugène, 62 āsana, āsanas, 98n15, 349 Assisi, Francis of (1181/82–1226), 200 Aṣt ̣ādhyāyı̄, 355 astral, 95, 130, 131, 152–153, 187–188, 233, 233n22, 233n24, 234, 359, 360 astrologist, 97

astrology, astrological, 69n7, 155–156, 185, 186, 236, 261, 351, 351n7 Atatürk, Mustafa Kemal (1881–1938), 143n6 Atkinson, William Walker (1862–1932; Ramachakara), 5, 106–107, 178–179, 410, 411, 411n29, 411n30, 413 Atlantis (1882), 144 Atlantis, Atlantean, 144, 146, 148, 150–155, 207–208 ātman, 129, 135, 247, 251, 258n12, 376, 378, 391, 414, 417 Aurangzeb (1618–1707), 252–253 Ayurveda, Ayurvedic, 355 Az ód és életdelejség közéleti értéke (1858), 67 B Baader, Franz von (1765–1841), 28, 46–47 Bābur (1483–1530), 252 Bahrdt, Carl Friedrich (1740–1792), 120 Baier, Karl (b. 1954), 2, 10, 15–16, 24, 59, 87, 99n16, 100, 108, 249n2, 347, 348, 357–358, 365, 374–375, 390, 415 Bailey, Alice Ann (1880–1949), 6, 94, 198–201, 199n1, 200n2, 206–207, 210, 213n19, 216 Bajkay, Endre, 72 Banner of Light (1857–1907), 281 Bary, Ruttun Chund (ca.1849–1890), 358 Basu, Baman Das (1867–1930), 355, 355n20, 360 Basu, Śrı̄ś Candra (1861–1918), see Vasu, Shrish Chandra (1861–1918)

 INDEX 

Baumgarten, Siegmund Jakob (1706–1757), 259n14 Beaufort, Francis (1774–1857), 126–127 Bene, Ferenc (1775–1858), 64 Bengal Renaissance, 271, 271n5, 283 Bengal Spectator (1842–1843), 271 Bengal Theosophical Society, 274, 277–278, 281, 284, 285, 285n22 Bennett, Allan (1872–1923), 361–362 Béranger, Pierre Jean de (1780–1857), 69 Bergson, Henri (1859–1941), 133, 400 Bérigny, Thiennette de (1823–1868), 276 Berlin, 40, 46, 64 Bernheim, Hyppolite (1840–1919), 62 Bertrand, Alexandre (1795–1831), 62 Besant, Annie (1847–1933), 5, 94, 198, 200, 204, 204n8, 204n9, 205, 391 Bezerra de Menezes Cavalcanti, Adolfo (1831–1900), 328 Bhadralok, 270, 270n3, 275, 284 Bhagavadgı̄tā, 250, 288 Bible, Biblical, 42, 75, 118, 125, 131, 134, 139, 151, 184, 259, 288, 294, 321n6, 332 Binet, Alfred (1857–1911), 62 Binswanger, Otto (1852–1929), 404 Biographical Sketches (1817), 125 Bircher-Benner, Maximilian (1867–1939), 409 Birven, Henri, 190 Blake, William (1757–1827), 350 Blätter aus Prevorst (1841), 28, 47 Blavatsky, Helena Petrovna (1831–1891), 5, 6, 92–94, 103, 105, 106n30, 107, 120n9, 129–132, 130n27, 130n28, 132n30, 135, 146–149, 183, 198, 200, 200n3, 202, 203,

427

203n6, 203n7, 204n9, 207, 210, 232–233, 269, 279–281, 280n17, 283, 295, 306, 335, 358–360, 358n26, 360n28, 362, 374n2, 384n23, 386n26, 387n28, 411n32 Bloch, Ernst (1885–1977), 173 Boas, George (1891–1980), 180 bodhi, 132 Bodhidharma, 223 bodhisattva, 201, 204–205 Böhme, Jakob (1575–1624), 308 Bonn, 40, 40n4, 41, 44 The Book of Secrets (1977), 290, 295, 298n21, 303, 308 brahman, 91, 247, 250–251, 352, 376–377 Brahmo Samaj, 7, 277, 355 Braid, James (1795–1860), 62 Brentano, Clemens (1778–1842), 42 Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad, 89, 103n20 British Library, 405–407, 405n19, 410 British National Association of Spiritualists, 273, 278, 281 Brotherhood of Mutual Prayer, 191 Brown, John (1735–1788), 46 Buchanan, Joseph Rodes (1814–1899), 130n27 Büchner, Ludwig (1824–1899), 374 Budapest, 66, 68–71, 73, 77 Budapest Association of Spiritual Investigators, 75–76 Budde, Johann Franz (1667–1729), 259, 259n14 Buddha, 132, 133, 133n32, 135, 149, 201–206, 202n5, 203n7, 208–210, 209n12, 224, 231, 231n16, 310, 312n36 Buddhism, Buddhist, 1, 6, 92–93, 129, 133n33, 196, 201–203, 223, 229, 235, 295, 322n13, 352, 362, 382

428 

INDEX

Budo: Den japanske krigarens väg till zen (1970), 235 Bühler, Georg (1837–1898), 296–297 Burns, James (1835–1894), 275 Bushidō , 228n10, 229–234, 229n11, 236, 239 Bushido: Japanernas system (1910), 231 Bushido: The Soul of Japan (1900), 229 Butler, Hiram Erastus (1841–1916), 182–183, 183n2, 186–187, 191, 410n28, 411n31 C Cabbala denudata seu doctrina Hebraeorum transcendentalis (1677–1684), 259 Cairo, 212 Caitanya (1486–1534), 209 Cakkavattisῑhanādasutta, 201–202 Cakra, cakras, 91n7, 94, 103n20, 103n21, 105n27, 295, 301, 349, 357, 364, 382 Calcutta, 7–8, 97, 141, 271, 274–281, 283–285, 384, 389 Calcutta Public Library, 271–272, 271n7 Calder, Alexander, 278 Campbell, Douglas (1922–2009), 197 Candomblé, 324n24, 325–327, 325n26, 329, 331, 334n60, 335 Carové, Friedrich Wilhelm (1789–1852), 28–29 Cār vāka, 392 Casanova Pérez Eguía de Lutosławski, Sofía (1861–1958), 404 Catholicism, Catholic, 4, 24, 37–51, 181, 197, 205, 256, 324, 327–328, 327n36, 330, 330n46, 332, 332n51, 332n52, 335, 337–339, 402, 404, 405, 416n46 Central Association of Spiritualists of London, 273

Chāndogya Upaniṣad, 88, 91, 103n20, 376 Charcot, Jean-Martin (1825–1893), 62, 409n23 Charlemagne (742–814), 104n22 Chastenet, Amand Marc Jacques de, see Marquis de Puységur (1751–1825) Chatterji, Mohini Mohun (1858–1936), 273n9, 280, 280n16, 284 Choa Kok Sui (1952–2007), 5, 107 Christ, 63, 75, 128n24, 196, 199, 205–207, 209, 213–214, 217, 310, 323, 323n19, 328, 406–407 Christian, 17, 18n5, 25, 28–29, 39, 42–45, 47n13, 63, 75, 76, 97n12, 99, 115, 117–119, 121, 125, 127, 131, 134, 171, 179, 184, 190, 205, 229, 258–260, 259n14, 262n16, 288, 294, 307–308, 323, 323n19, 337n68, 338, 407 Judaeo-Christian, 114, 116n4, 127, 413 Christianity, 26, 92, 181, 184, 204, 258, 294, 323–324, 407, 411, 418 clairvoyant, 45, 123, 144–145, 151–152, 155, 276, 359 Clark, Davis Wasgatt (1812–1871), 127 Clough, Prunella (1919–1999), 197 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor (1772–1834), 125 Collins, Mabel (1851–1927), 191 Colquhoun, Ithell (1906–1988), 162, 162n8 Colquhoun, Robert (1914–1962, 197 Colville, William Juvenal (1862–1917), 191 Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821), 125 Conflict zwischen Himmel und Hölle (1837), 29

 INDEX 

Confucianism, 228 Confucius, 204n9 Corbin, Henry (1903–1978), 365 Corpus Hermeticum, 294, 308 cosmological, 100, 376, 378, 380, 383, 387n28, 388, 390, 393 cosmology, 98, 100, 146, 152, 291, 326, 373–375, 377–381, 383, 387, 388n32, 391–392 Cratylus, 140 Creatio ex nihilo, 259 Creme, Benjamin (1922–2016), 6, 195–217 Creme, Julian, 201 Creme, Phyllis (b. 1942), 201 Creme, Tara (b. 1973), 201 Cronholm, Viking (1874–1961), 230, 234–235 Crowley, Aleister (1875–1947), 104n23, 162, 162n7, 190, 348, 350–351, 361–365, 361n31, 362n32, 362n33, 362n34, 363n36 Csanády, István (1814–1876), 66–67 Curwen, David (1893–1984), 348, 362, 362n33 D Däniken, Erich von (b. 1935), 143 Dàodéjı̄ng, 230 Dārā Shukūh (1615–1659), 7, 248, 252, 254–256, 254n3, 263, 355 Dass, Sain (d. 1890), 358 David-Néel, Alexandra (1868–1969), 197 Davis, Andrew Jackson (1826–1910), 127, 128n23, 320n1, 335n61, 410n28 Day of Declaration (D-Day), 195, 201, 213–217, 213n19 De Cœlo et inferno (1758), 116

429

Décsi, Károly, 73–74 De hominis dignitate (1496), 294 Delhi Sultanate, 252 Delsarte, François (1811–1871), 102, 409–410 Demens idea, 119 De mysteriis, 294 Denton, William (1823–1883), 130n27 Der animalische Magnetismus als Heilkraft (1852), 70 Der Eremit und der Fremdling (1805), 18 Derozio, Henry Louis Vivian (1809–1831), 271 Devi, Swarnakumari (1855–1932), 284 Dewey, John Hamlin (1828–c. 1908), 191, 410n28 Diatriba de Europaeorum linguae (1610), 141 Die Christliche Mystik (1836–1842), 44 Die geistige Führung des Menschen und der Menschheit (1910–1913), 151 Die Philosophie der Mystik (1885), 128 Die Philosophie im Fortgang der Weltgeschichte (1827–1834), 43, 90 Die Philosophie in ihrem Übergang zur Nichtphilosophie (1803), 17 Die Seherin von Prevorst (1829), 27–28, 47 Die Ursprache der Ario-Germanen und ihre Mysteriensprache (1915), 149 Die Zukunft (1879–1896), 95n9 Diop, Cheikh Anta (1923–1986), 143n6 Dissertatio physico-medica de planetarum influxu (1766), 61 divination, 170, 375, 386, 388n32 Dömösy, János, 78

430 

INDEX

Donnelly, Ignatius (1831–1901), 144–145 Draper, John William (1811–1882), 130, 130n28 Dresden, 68 Dumas, Alexandre (1802–1870), 69 Duncan, Isadora (1877–1927), 180, 410 Dutt, Prosonno Coomar, 273 Dynamic Breathing and Harmonic Gymnastics (1892), 102 E Eden, 178, 186–187 Edmonds, John Worth (1799–1874), 275 Égi Világosság, 75 Eglinton, William (1857–1933), 278 Egypt, Egyptian, 85, 92, 143n6, 212, 292–293, 296, 299, 307–308, 322n13 Ehrmann, Johann Franz (1757–1839), 28 Eight Lectures on Yoga (1939), 364 Einleitung in die Seelenlehre (1786), 17 Einstein, Albert (1879–1955), 108 Eleusis (journal), 405, 405n18, 414 Emmerick, Anna Katharina von (1774–1824), 42, 44 Enlightenment, 19, 25n10, 26, 39–40, 88, 97n12, 133n33, 259n14, 271n5, 287, 293n13, 302–303, 309, 322, 402 anti-Enlightenment, 50–51 Buddhist enlightenment, 202, 224 Ennemoser, Joseph (1787–1854), 40n4, 41, 44–45, 45n12, 48, 85, 90, 92 Episcopal Church, Episcopalian, 180–184, 190 See also American Methodist Episcopal Church

Erthal, Friedrich Karl Joseph von (1719–1802), 39 Eschenmayer, Carl August von (1768–1852), 4, 15–31, 41n5, 63–64 Esdaile, James (1808–1859), 274 esoteric, 3, 5–9, 59, 77, 87, 97, 99, 102n19, 103–105, 107, 108, 116, 126–127, 155, 159–173, 181, 197, 200, 225, 232–233, 248, 249, 253–254, 256, 259, 263, 273–275, 295, 299–300, 308, 324, 348, 360n29, 375, 400, 405, 410n28, 416 The Esoteric (magazine), 182–183 Esoteric Buddhism (1883), 133, 202–203 Esoteric Instruction No. 3 (1897), 94, 105 Esotericism, 6–8, 15, 31, 59–60, 92, 96, 113–135, 153, 161, 164, 197, 221n2, 225, 228, 232, 235, 248–249, 257, 262, 270, 273, 283n21, 291, 306–307, 321n5, 335, 347–365, 413 esotericist, 6, 114, 225, 227 Estep, William, 354, 354n18 The Eternal Life Spiritualist Christian Association, 337 Eurythmie als sichtbare Sprache (1924), 153 Eve, 140, 187 Evenings at Home in Spiritual Séance (1881), 172n29 exorcism, 25, 29, 43, 51, 93 F Fabre d’Olivet, Antoine (1767–1825), 8, 306–309, 309n32, 312 Faria, José Custódio de (1756–1819), see Abbé Faria (1756–1819) Federação Espírita Brasileira, 328

 INDEX 

Féré, Charles Samson (1852–1907), 131, 131n29 Ferenczi, Sándor (1873–1933), 71 Fergusson, John Duncan (1874–1961), 197 Feuchtersleben, Ernst von (1806–1849), 124, 124n16 A Few Days in Athens (1850), 180 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb (1762–1814), 38 Ficino, Marsilio (1433–1499), 257–258, 258n10, 294–295 Fiore, Joachim of (ca. 1135–1202), 171 Fletcher, Horace (1849–1919), 409, 409n26, 410n28 Fluide universel, 322, 323 fluidum, 2, 5, 85–108, 234, 260, 374, 408 Flying Saucers Have Landed (1953), 198 Forel, August (1848–1931), 404, 404n15 Fournel, Jean-François (1745–1820), 43n10 Fox Sisters, 320n1 Fox household, 275 Freemasonry, Freemason, 95, 104, 233, 273, 277, 332 See also Masonic lodge(s) Freud, Sigmund (1856–1939), 62, 71 Fröbe-Kapteyn, Olga (1881–1962), 161, 161n6, 170, 170n25 G Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand (1869–1948), 400 Gárdos, János (1813–1893), 4, 70–74 Gaßner, Johann Joseph (1727–1779), 24–25, 25n10 The Gateless Gate (1934), 298

431

Genesis (first book of the Ancient Testament), 118, 140 Geschichte der Magie (1844), 41, 92 Geschichte der Religion Jesu Christi (1806–1818), 46 Geschichten Besessener neuerer Zeit (1835), 29 Gheraṇḍa Saṃ hitā, 355 Ghose, Ram Gopal (1815–1868), 271, 275 Ghosh, Moti Lal (1847–1922), 276 Ghosh, Sisir Kumar (1840–1911), 275, 277 Gibran, Khalil (1883–1931), 180 Gillard, Paul (d. 1901), 360, 360n29 Gioni, Massimiliano (b. 1973), 161n6, 170 Gnostische Geheimschule, 190 Goclenius, Rudolph (the Younger; 1572–1621), 89, 260, 261 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang (1749–1832), 43 Gogh, Vincent van (1853–1890), 161 The Golden Verses of Pythagoras (1975), 290, 303–311, 309n32 Gorākhnāth, 354, 354n17 Gorbachev, Mikhail (b. 1931), 212 Gordon, William (1831–1909), 278 Görres, Joseph (1776–1848), 28–29, 44–47, 50, 262 The Gospel according to Spiritism (L’Évangile Selon le Spiritisme) (1864), 332 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (1942), 97n12 Gould, Sylvester Clark (1840–1909), 183n2, 185 Government College Lahore, 354, 354n15, 389 Grands Initiés (1889), 257, 308 Grant, Kenneth (1924–2011), 362, 362n34 The Great Invocation, 213n19

432 

INDEX

Grundriß der Geschichte der Philosophie (1862), 414 Grünhut, Adolf (1826–1906), 71, 74–75 Gupta, Mahendranath (1854–1932), 97n12, 384 Gurre, V., 231–236 guru, 8, 97n12, 248, 287–288, 300–301, 303–304, 312, 351n7, 353, 353n12, 361, 363, 399–418 guru-lineage, 350n6 Guthrie, Kenneth Sylvan Launfal (1871–1940), 6, 177–191, 410n28 Guthrie, William Norman (1868–1944), 180 H Haddock, Joseph W. (1800–1861), 127 Hansen, Carl William (1872–1936), 69, 69n7 Hardinge Britten, Emma (1823–1899), 129, 129n25, 133, 275, 335 Harmonia coelestium corporum et humanorum astronomice et medice (1592), 261 Harris, Thomas Lake (1823–1906), 191, 410n28 Hartmann, Franz (1838–1912), 104n24, 191, 360, 389–391, 416n44 Ḥ asanat al-ʿārifı̄n (1654), 253 The Hasheesh Eater, 128 Haṭhapradı̄pikā, 377, 384n23 Hatha Yoga or the Yogi Philosophy of Physical Well Being (1905), 411n29 Hatsumi, Masaaki (b. 1931), 224 Hauffe, Friederike (1801–1829), 26, 44

Hedman, Märta (1883–1974), 234 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1770–1831), 29, 38 Helmont, Jan Baptist van (1579–1644), 119–120, 124, 128, 134, 260 Heraclitus, 288, 302, 311 Herder, Johann Gottfried (1744–1803), 16 Herman, Josef (1911–2000), 197 Hermes, 308 Hermes Trismegistos, 294 Hermetic Brotherhood of Light, 104, 183n2, 362n32 Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor, 102n19, 104, 183, 183n2, 361, 362n32 Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, 362 Herrigel, Eugen (1884–1955), 227 Hesse-Darmstadt, Christian von (1763–1830), 28 Hierocles of Alexandria, 306 Himalaya(s), Himalayan, 198, 204, 205, 208, 210–211 Hindu College of Calcutta, 271 Hinduism, Hindu, 1, 7, 88, 92, 97, 97n12, 98n14, 103, 129n25, 201n3, 204, 252, 253, 271, 276, 280–281, 295, 296, 322n13, 334, 350–351, 353, 355, 355n20, 358, 373, 385, 392 neo-Hindu[ism], 92, 94, 96–98, 198, 201n3 Hindu Spiritual Magazine (1906–1918), 276 The Hindu Yogi Science of Breath (1903), 106, 411n29 Histoire philosophique du genre humain (1824), 308 Hitchcock, Edward (1793–1864), 130n27

 INDEX 

A hit és a lélek ereje a delej és általában az életműködéseket befolyásoló inmateriális tényezők lényege a természettudomány tükrében (1943), 76 Hochland, 404, 406 Hőgyes, Ender (1847–1906), 74 Hohenlohe-Waldenburg-­ Schillingsfürst, Alexander Leopold Franz Emmerich von (1794–1849), 41 holistic milieu, 87 homeopathy, homeopath, 72, 72n11 Houghton, Georgiana (1814–1884), 6, 160–161, 163n11, 165–166, 168–172, 169n22, 172n29 Howitt, Mary (1799–1888), 41, 92 Hübbe-Schleiden, Wilhelm (1846–1916), 95n8 Hufeland, Christoph Wilhelm Friedrich (1762–1836), 63, 65 Humboldt, Wilhelm von (1767–1835), 146–147 101 Zen Stories (1939), 298 Huxley, Aldous (1894–1963), 133, 298 Hyperborean, 146 hypnotism, 2, 62, 75 I Iamblichus, 293 Ibn Ḥ azm (994–1064), 253 Immermann, Karl (1796–1840), 16 Inazō Nitobe (1862–1933), 229, 231 Inner Traditions, 306 Inside the Space Ships (1955), 198 Introductio ad historiam philosophiae Ebraeorum (1702), 259 Introduction to Mesmerism into the Public Hospitals of India (1856), 274

433

Isis Unveiled (1877), 92, 129, 203n7 ISKCON, 230 Islam, Islamic, 114, 209n14, 249n1, 251–255, 263, 352 J Jahāngı̄r (1569–1627), 252 James, William (1842–1910), 132–133, 400, 404n10, 406, 411n31, 417n49 Janet, Pierre (1859–1947), 62 Janin, Jules Gabriel (1804–1874), 69 Jendrassik, Ernő (1858–1921), 74 Jesus, 25, 145, 152, 180, 203, 204, 209, 214, 308, 327 Jiu-Jitsu (Jūjutsu), 229–232, 234, 239 Jiu-Jitsu: Japansk försvarsmetod (1922), 234 Jiu-Jitsu tricks: Japanskt system för själfförsvar (1908), 234 Jizya, 252 Jnannweshan, 271 Joachimism, 171n28 Jones, William (1746–1794), 141 Jong, Ingo de (b. 1943), 237 Joo, Lakshman (1907–1991), 297, 298n20, 308, 308n31 Judge, William Quan (1851–1896), 200, 358 Jūdō , 222, 229–230 Jung, Carl Gustav (1875–1961), 20, 161n6, 170, 170n27, 414n38 Jung-Stilling, Johann Heinrich (1740–1817), 122–123, 135 Jupiter, 72, 155, 213n18 K kabbalah, kabbalistic, 119, 259–260, 294–295, 308 Kachler, Auguste, 68

434 

INDEX

Kandinsky, Wassily (1866–1944), 159 Kant, Immanuel (1724–1804), 17, 21, 28, 42n6, 129 Karate, 222–224, 229–230, 236–237 Kardec, Allen (Hyppolite Rivail) (1804–1869), 320n1, 321–324, 328, 328n39, 330, 332, 337 Kardecianism, Kardecian, 8, 319–340 Karlsson, Thomas (b. 1972), 237 karma, 98n14, 212, 225, 322 Kashmiri Śivaism, 296–298 Kasyapa, Rama Prasad (ca. 1860–1914), 375 Kellner, Karl (1851–1905), 104, 389, 390n34 Kerner, Justinus (1786–1862), 16, 18n5, 26–30, 31n22, 47 Khandalavala, Navroji Dorabji, 203n7 Kieser, Dietrich Georg von (1779–1862), 23, 41n5, 90 King, George (1919–1997), 198 Kingsford, Anna Bonus (1846–1888), 191, 410n28 Kircher, Athanasius (1602–1680), 260 Klee, Paul (1879–1940), 197 Kluge, Karl Alexander Ferdinand (1782–1844), 38, 44, 70 Knorr von Rosenroth, Christian (1636–1689), 259 Kölcsey, Ferenc (1790–1838), 65 Komáromy, György (1817–1872), 67–68, 67n3 Koot Hoomi, 204n9, 209, 214 Koreff, David Ferdinand (1783–1851), 40, 40n4 Kováts, Mihály (1762–1851), 63–65 Kraft und Stoff: Empirisch-­ Naturphilosophische Studien (1855), 374 Krishna, Kṛsn ̣ ̣a, 204, 209, 308, 310 Krishnamurti (1895–1986), 200n3, 205, 209, 209n11

Krug, Wilhelm Traugott (1770–1842), 28, 229 Kumāratēvar, 350n6, 353n12 kuṇḍalinı̄, 364n39, 408 kuṇḍalinı̄ yoga, 91n7 Kunz, Emma (1892–1963), 6, 160–161, 165–166, 169–172, 169n24, 170n25 Kyūdō , 7, 224, 227 L Lamas and Druses (1881), 206 Landa, Diego de (1524–1579), 145 Lanz von Liebenfels, Jörg (1874–1954), 148 Laozi, Lao-tse, 204n9, 288, 310 Laveau, Marie (ca. 1801–1881), 336, 336n64 Laycock, Thomas (1812–1876), 124, 124n16 Leadbeater, Charles Webster (1854–1934), 94, 106, 198, 200, 204–205, 204n9 Lee, Bruce (1940–1973), 230n14 Léger, Fernand (1881–1955), 197 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm (1646–1716), 16 Le livre des esprits (1857), 321 Lelki gyógymódok (Psychoterapia) (1900), 73 Lemurian, 208 Lenhossék, József (1818–1888), 64 Lenhossék, Mihály (1863–1937), 64 Lenhossék, Mihály Ignác (1773–1840), 64–65, 67–68 Le Plongeon, Augustus (1826–1908), 145 Leslie, Desmond (1921–2001), 198 Le Spiritualiste de la Nouvelle-Orléans (1857–1858), 337 Leucorrhoea, 187

 INDEX 

Les Vers dorés de Pythagore (1813), 306 Liébeault, Ambroise (1823–1901), 62 Life Beyond Death (1934), 276 Life of Jesus (1835–1836), 29 Light (journal), 275 Ling, Pehr Henrik (1776–1839), 102n19 List, Guido von (1848–1919), 149, 150 London, 66, 161n6, 166, 168, 169n24, 197, 199, 201, 209, 211, 273, 277, 280, 281n20, 355, 400, 405, 406, 410, 411n32, 412n33 The Long-Lost Second Book of Acts Setting Forth the Blessed Mary’s Teachings about Reincarnation (1904), 180 Lotusblüten, 390, 416n44 Louis XVI (1754–1793), 86n2 Ludlow, Fitz Hugh (1836–1870), 128, 128n24 Ludwig of Bavaria (1786–1868), 41 Lutosławski, Wincenty (1863–1954), 9, 399–418 M MacBryde, Robert (1913–1966), 197 Mackaye, Steele (1842–1894), 102n19 Macumba, 325, 325n27 Madhva (1238–1317), 251 Madras lectures, 417 Magazin zur Erfahrungsseelenkunde (1783–1793), 19 magic, 18, 19, 29, 41, 44, 92–93, 95, 96n11, 101, 104, 149, 179, 185, 237–238, 274, 294, 325n27, 336 magical, 19, 44–45, 74, 90, 101, 105, 185, 188, 384 Magick: Book Four, 363

435

Magikon (1840–1854), 28 Magnetizmus (1904), 76 Mahachohan, 208 Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (1918–2008), 297, 308n31 Mahatmas, 167 Mahāvastu, 201 Mahavira, 310 Mailáth, János (1786–1855), 69–70 Maitreya, 6, 195–217 Majma῾ al-baḥrain (1654/1655), 253 Majumdār, Baradā Kānta, 358 Malik, Arjan Dass (1938–2006), 348, 364, 364n39 Mallick, Rasik Krishna (1810–1858), 271 manas, 377, 379, 383 Mandela, Nelson (1918–2013), 212 mantra, 213n19, 299 Manu, 204, 204n8, 204n9, 208 Marquis de Lafayette (1757–1834), 179 Marquis de Puységur (1751–1825), 37, 43n10, 61, 86 Marr, Nikolai Yakovlevich (1865–1934), 143 Mars, 155, 213n18 Marxism, Marxian, Marxist, 143, 172–173 Masonic lodge(s), 273 Massey, Charles Carleton (1838–1905), 280 McKenzie, James Hewat (1869–1929), 275 Medicinische Philosophie und Mesmerismus (1860), 66 Memnon, 209 Meno, 115n1 Menzel, Wolfgang (1798–1873), 28 Mercury, 155 Mercury, Francis (1614–1698), 119 Mérimée, Prosper (1803–1870), 69

436 

INDEX

Mesmer, Franz Anton (1734–1815), 2, 19, 24, 37, 60–63, 67–68, 67n3, 72, 75, 86–89, 99–100, 103, 105n25, 108, 260, 274, 321n5 Mesmerism in India and its Practical Application in Surgery and Medicine (1846), 274 messianism, messianic, 6, 9, 171, 195, 199, 201–203, 205–206, 400n2, 403, 412–417 neo-messianism, 400, 402, 418 metaphysics, metaphysical, 29–31, 132, 377–379, 381, 383, 390, 415 Metempsychosis, 115, 120, 120n9, 322n13 Meugens, J. G., 276, 277 Meyer, Johann Friedrich von (1772–1849), 28 Mickiewicz, Adam (1798–1855), 403, 405n16, 415, 416 Milarepa (11/12 c.), 200 millenarianism, millenarian, 6, 171, 195–217 Minton, John (1917–1957), 197 Mirandola, Giovanni Pico della (1463–1494), 294 Miśra, Jvālaprasād (1862–1916), 356, 356n22 Mithra, mithraic, 180, 201, 209 Mitra, Digambar (1817–1879), 275, 277 Mitra, Raj Krishna, 277 Mitra, Vihari Lal, 375, 381n16, 384, 384n23, 385, 385n24 Mittra, Peary Chand (1814–1883), 7, 270–285 Mizauld, Antoine (1510–1578), 261 Mnemosyne, 116n2 modern postural yoga, 228, 349, 355 mokṣa, 247

moon, 151, 208, 357 Morihei, Ueshiba (1883–1969), 227 Moritz, Karl-Philipp (1756–1793), 19 Morse, J. J. (1848–1919), 275 Morya, 204n9, 214 Moses, 254, 295, 308, 310, 328n37 Moses, William Stainton (1839–1892), 280 Mughal Empire, Mughal, 251–256, 262–263 Muhammad (570–632), 200, 209n14, 253, 310 Mukherjee, Dakshinaranjan (1814–1878), 271 Mukherjee, Purna Chandra, 277 Müller, Max (1823–1900), 89n4, 354 Münchhausen (1841), 16 Munich, 46, 48, 160 muwaḥḥidūn, 253–255, 263 muwaḥḥidān, 254–255 Myers, Frederic W. H. (1843–1901), 133 Mysterien des innern Lebens (1830), 29 mystic, 7, 40, 44–45, 47, 51, 97n12, 104, 105, 119, 227–228, 230, 255, 293, 390n34 mystical, 4, 42, 44–45, 47, 66, 74, 102, 105, 107, 118–119, 185, 223, 230, 280n17, 365 mysticism, 40, 45, 47, 97, 119–120, 161, 181, 227, 239, 296, 299, 303–304, 307 Mythengeschichte der asiatischen Welt (1810), 262 N nāḍıs̄ , 103, 103n20, 105, 382, 386 Nasse, Christian Friedrich (1778–1851), 23, 40–41, 41n5 Naturphilosophical, 4, 37–39, 42–45, 44n10, 47–50, 100, 108

 INDEX 

Naturphilosophie, 1, 16, 18, 20–21, 23, 25, 27, 31, 37–39, 46, 50, 88, 92, 98, 101, 103 Nees von Esenbeck, Christian Gottfried Daniel (1776–1858), 41 Neogrammarians, 142, 142n5 neoplatonism, neoplatonic, 115, 119, 180, 258–259, 294, 307 Neoplatonist, 179, 191 Neo-Sannyas, 290, 300, 304 Neo-Sannyas International, 288, 302 Neue Metaphysische Rundschau (1897–1917), 190 New Age, 87, 95, 195, 206, 207, 221, 223, 223n4, 237, 308 New Group of World Servers, 207, 210 New Testament, 181, 184 New Thought, 87, 87n3, 93–94, 96–97, 102, 106, 177, 179, 185, 188–189, 191, 233, 354, 411, 411n30, 411n31 New York, 161n6, 180, 183, 189, 191, 199, 211, 275, 306, 358, 379, 384n23, 413n35 Nikhilananda (1895–1973), 97n12 Noland, Cady (b. 1956), 163, 164n14 Numenius, 180 Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika, 378 O Occult Science (1892 [1884]), 375n6, 386–390 Olcott, Henry Steel (1832–1907), 92–94, 132, 200, 204n9, 270, 274, 278–281, 280n14, 280n15, 283, 306, 335, 358–361, 359n27, 360n28, 360n30, 374n2, 384n23 Oman, John Campbell (1841–1911), 354n15

437

Ō moto, 227 ontological, 103, 214n20, 225, 376, 379–380, 383, 388 Order of the Illuminati, 120 Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.), 179, 183n2, 237n37, 361n31 Oriflamme (1902–1915), 104–105 Oroszhegyi, Jósa (1822–1870), 67–68, 67n4 Orpheus, 294–295, 308 Orphicae lamellae, 116n2 Osho (Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh) (1931–1990), 8, 287–313, 287n1 Osho International Meditation Resort, 288 Osiris, 149 O.T.O., see Ordo Templi Orientis Oupnek’hat (1801–1802), 7, 89, 248, 256, 257n8, 258, 263 Owen, Robert (1801–1877), 180 P Palm, Joseph Henry Louis Charles de (Baron de) (1809–1876), 280 palmist, 97 Paracelsus (1493–1541), 105n25 Paramananda (1884–1940), 180 parapsychologist, 62, 275 parapsychology, parapsychological, 48, 60, 62, 76n12, 77, 238, 323 Paris, 61–62, 64, 69, 162n7, 258n10, 308, 360, 400, 401n3, 405n16, 409n23 Passavant, Johann Karl (1790–1857), 28, 47, 90, 123–124 Pātañjalayoga, 349, 377–378, 380–381 Patañjali, 98, 349, 373, 378, 391, 410 Paulus, Gottlob (1761–1851), 28 Peebles, J. M. (1822–1922), 277–278

438 

INDEX

Peithmann, Ernst Christian Heinrich (1868–1943), 190 Percival, Harold Waldwin (1868–1953), 191 Pereire, Isaac (1806–1880), 69 Perennialism, perennialist, perennial, 8, 89, 92, 248, 295 Pericle, Luigi (1916–2001), 162, 164 The Perennial Philosophy (1946), 298 Pessoa, Fernando (1888–1935), 163, 163n11 Pethes, Alfréd, 78 Pfaff, Christoph Matthäus (1686–1760), 259n14 Phaedo, 115 Philolaos, 294 philosophia perennis, 89, 257n9, 288, 290, 295, 303, 308, 310, 312, 335 Philosophia Perennis: Speaking on The Golden Verses of Pythagoras (1981), 8, 290, 295, 303 Philosophie und Religion (1804), 17 Philosophische Untersuchungen über die Verbindung der Menschen mit höhern Geistern (1791), 17 Phiquepal d’Arusmont, Guillaume Sylvan Casimir (1779–1855), 180 Picasso, Pablo (1881–1973), 197 Pietism, Pietist, 26, 28, 46–47 Pigoń, Stanisław (1885–1968), 406n21, 407n21 Pius VII (1742–1823), 42 Platner, Ernst (1744–1818), 16–17, 42n6 Plato, 20, 114–116, 115n2, 134, 140, 204n9, 288, 291–292, 294–295, 308, 399, 400, 400n1, 402, 404, 416–417, 416n45, 417n47, 417n48 Platonica Theologia (1482), 294 Platonism, Platonic, 21, 31n22, 114–116, 121, 152, 294

Plotinus, 6, 129, 179–180, 190, 311 pneuma, 91n6 Politeia, 115, 115n2 Pomponazzi, Pietro (1462–1525), 260 Porphyry, 180, 293 The Power of the Mind (1956), 197 prāṇa, 5, 9, 86–108, 261, 373–393, 408–409 psychic prana, 103, 431 Prāṇāyāma, 98, 99, 101, 376–377, 382, 388n32, 391, 419 Pranic Healing, 5, 103, 106–107 Pranic Healing (1987), 107 Prasad, Rama (c. 1860–1917), 354, 373–393 Praśna Upaniṣad, 89n4 Prel, Carl du (1839–1899), 95–96, 95n9, 128–129 Presbyterianism, Presbyterian, 128 pretos velhos, 326–327 prisca theologia, 257–258, 257n9, 294 The Prophet (1899–1907), 181, 184, 189–190 Protestantism, protestant, 39, 39n1, 47, 50, 72, 259n14, 335, 352n8 Psalms, 254 Psychic Notes, 278 Pythagoras, 8, 180, 204n9, 287–303, 289n4, 307, 309n32, 311–312 Pythagoreanism, pythagoreans, 8, 287–313 Q qì, ki, 223, 223n4 Queen Moo and the Egyptian Sphinx (1900), 145 Quimby, Phineas Parkhurst (1802–1866), 87n3, 191 Quincey, Thomas de (1785–1859), 125–126, 126n18

 INDEX 

R Raipur Sanskrit College, 288 Râja Yoga (1896), 98–99, 101, 103, 348n2, 373–375, 378, 380, 389, 413 rājayoga, Raja Yoga, 98n14, 101, 349, 349n5, 354n15, 363, 381, 391, 411–415, 419 Rama, 308 Ramacharaka, see Atkinson, William Walker (1862–1932; Ramachakara) Ramakrishna (1836–1886), 97n12, 349n4, 384, 406, 410n28 Ramanathan, Ponnambalam (1851–1930), 362 Rāmānuja (ca. 1050–1137), 251 Randolph, Paschal Beverly (1825–1875), 104, 335, 410n28 Ranschburg, Pál (1870–1945), 73–74, 78 rapport, 43, 43–44n10, 45, 62–63, 65, 72, 75, 123n13, 214 Rask, Rasmus (1787–1832), 141 The Reappearance of the Christ and the Masters of Wisdom (1979/1980), 199 Red Book, 170 Regeneration: Special Methods for Men and Women with Specific Directions How to Calculate the Time Dangerous to Conservators (1905), 186 Regeneration: The Gate of Heaven (1897), 184, 187, 190 Reich, Wilhelm (1897–1957), 197 Reichenbach, Karl Ludwig (1788–1869), 67, 67n2, 75, 95n10 Reil, Johann Christian (1759–1813), 40n2, 48 reincarnation, 120n9, 131, 200n2, 225, 258n12, 293, 320, 321n5, 322, 322n13, 324n20, 400n3, 402, 415

439

Reps, Paul (1895–1990), 296, 298–299, 298n20, 298n21, 308n31 Reuß, Theodor (1855–1923), 95–96, 104–107, 179, 183n2, 389 Richet, Charles (1850–1935), 76n12 Ringbom, Sixten (1935–1992), 159, 160 Ringseis, Johann Nepomuk (1785–1880), 4, 38–39, 45–51, 48n14 Risāla-i ḥaqqnūmā (1646), 253 Roerich, Helena Ivanovna (1879–1955), 6, 198, 200, 206, 210 Roerich, Nicholas (1874–1947), 200 Romantic, Romanticism, 1, 4, 9, 16, 19, 25n10, 26, 28, 30–31, 37–51, 88, 92, 97n12, 104, 107, 120–121, 228n10, 229, 308, 400, 403, 405, 405n16, 406n21, 414, 415, 416n45, 417 Rome, 50, 209n14 Röschlaub, Andreas (1768–1835), 46 Rosicrucian, 102n19, 104, 191 Rosicrucian Brotherhood (1908), 185 Roustaing, Jean Baptiste (1805–1879), 328, 328n37 Rozwój potęgi woli przez psychofizyczne ćwiczenia w drugiem ulepszonym wydaniu, według dawnych aryjskich tradycji oraz własnych swoich doświadczeń podaje do uěytku rodaków Wincenty Lutosławski (1910), 9, 403n7 Rudolph Goclenius, the younger (1572–1621), 89, 260–261 Russell, Bertrand (1872–1970), 400 S Sacred Books of the Hindus (1909–1937), 355, 355n20 Sādhana, 296, 301 Safı̄nat al-awliyāʾ (1639/1640), 253

440 

INDEX

Said, Edward (1935–2003), 350, 365 Sailer, Johann Michael (1751–1832), 46 Saint-Martin, Louis Claude de (1743–1803), 47, 47n13 Sakı̄nat al-awliyāʾ (1642), 253 Śakti, 208, 210, 296 samādhi, 98n13, 98n15, 282, 312n36, 361, 414 Saṃ hitā, 249 Sāṃ khya, 100, 282, 376–381, 387 Sāṃ khyakārikā, 376n8, 377–380 Sanat Kumara, 201n3, 208, 211n16, 216n22 Sandor, Robert von (1929–1997), 235–236 Śaṅkara, 248, 250–251, 262–263, 296, 364, 364n38, 383 Santería, 330n46, 331–334, 331n49, 333n53, 333n55, 333n56, 334n59, 339 Saraswati, Dayananda (1824–1883), 358 Saraswati, Sivananda (1887–1963), 198 Sarvadarśanasaṃ graha, 251 Sathya Sai Baba (1926–2011), 198, 201n3, 209 Saturn, 155 Saussure, Ferdinand de (1857–1913), 142 Scaliger, Joseph Justus (1540–1609), 141 Scelsi, Giacinto (1905–1988), 163 Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph (1775–1854), 17, 19, 21, 25, 38–39, 46, 121n11, 125 Schellingian, 18–20, 30, 40 Schiller, Friedrich (1759–1805), 16 Schlegel, August Wilhelm (1767–1845), 146

Schlegel, Friedrich (1772–1829), 121–122, 121n11 Schleicher, August (1821–1868), 147 Schleiermacher, Friedrich (1768–1834), 28 Schlosser, Johann Georg (1739–1799), 121 Schoepf, August (Merei) (1804–1858), 65 Schubert, Gotthilf Heinrich (1780–1860), 28, 46–47 Schuré, Philippe Frédéric “Édouard” (1841–1929), 257, 308 The Science of Breath and the Philosophy of the Tatwas (1890), 375n6, 386 The Science of Psychic Healing (1906), 106n29 Seals, Catherine (d. 1930), 337 The Secret Doctrine (1888), 94, 146, 203, 232 Sen, Keshab Chandra (1838–1884), 97n12, 275, 277 Sen, Narendra Nath (1843–1911), 277–278, 284 Sennevoy, Jean Dupotet de (1796–1881), 126n20 Senzaki, Nyogen (1876–1958), 298–299 Shāh al-Ḥ amı̄d Nagurı̄ (1490–1579), 352, 352n9 Shāh Jahān (1592–1666), 252–253 Shakespeare, William (1564–1616), 200 Shamballa, 208, 211, 215 Share International, 195, 197–201, 213–214, 216n22 Share International (1982–), 199–201, 212 Shree Rajneesh Ashram, 288, 305 Silburn, Lilian (1908–1993), 297–298, 298n19 Simonyi, Imre (1819–1864), 66

 INDEX 

Sinnett, Alfred Percy (1840–1921), 133, 133n33, 200, 202–203, 205 Sircar, Mahendralal (1833–1904), 276 Sirr-i akbar (1657), 248, 254, 255n6, 258, 263 Siva Samhitā, 296, 299, 310, 349n5, 352–353, 355, 355n20, 386 See also Kashmiri Śivaism Śivasvarodaya, 375–376, 385–387, 393 Six Plain Instructions How to Become Divine Before Physical Death (1898), 184, 190 Słowacki, Juliusz (1809–1849), 403, 414, 416 Socrates, 115, 115n1, 311 Solar Logos, 208 Sömmerring, Samuel Thomas von (1755–1830), 39 somnambulism, 4, 16, 29–30, 37, 44, 44n11, 48–49, 61, 65, 70–71, 74–75, 86, 114, 122 Somnambulist, somnambulic, somnambulistic, 4, 15–31, 37, 38, 44, 45, 62, 68, 70–72, 74, 90–92, 123, 123n13, 126, 131, 134 Somnolism and Psycheism (1851), 127 soteriology, soteriological, 102, 200n2, 206, 215, 217, 293, 377, 380, 382, 393 Soudaminee, Sthira (1842–1925), 276 The Sounding Cosmos (1970), 159 Sperling, Ehud C. (b. 1949), 306–307 Sphinx (1886–1896), 95 spiritism, spiritist, 8, 70, 75–76, 97, 100, 319–340, 332n50, 333n56 spiritualism, spiritualist, 1, 5, 7–8, 59, 60, 64, 69, 71, 74–78, 87, 92, 93, 97, 99, 113–116, 124, 126n20, 127, 129, 129n26, 133n33, 134, 135, 165–166,

441

166n17, 168–169, 171, 177, 180, 270n1, 271–273, 271n4, 275–285, 281n20, 319–340, 335n61, 416, 417n48 The Spiritualist (1869–1882), 278, 281 The Spiritual Stray Leaves (1879), 282, 283 Sri Sabhapati Swami (b. 1840), 8, 347–365 Stalin, Joseph (1878–1953), 143 Stebbins, Geneviève (1857–1934), 102, 106, 410 Steiner, Marie (1867–1948), 153 Steiner, Rudolf (1861–1925), 150–156, 164, 167–168, 411n32 Stenudd, Stefan (b. 1954), 224, 227, 230, 236–238 Stockholm, 166n19, 167, 223–224, 230, 236 Stolberg, Friedrich Leopold zu (1750–1819), 46 Strauss, David Friedrich (1808–1874), 28–29, 29n19 Stray Thoughts on Spiritualism (1880), 282 Stuttgart, 16, 28 Sulḥ-i kull, 252 Śūnyatā, 296 Suspiria de Profundis, 126n18 Suzuki, Daisetsu Teitarō (1870–1966), 226–230, 228n10, 230n13, 235 Swedenborg, Emanuel (1688–1772), 97, 116–118, 123, 131, 134, 227 Swedenborgian, 31n22, 335n61 Sylva, Frances (1832–1903), 180 Symposium, 416 Synesios of Cyrene, 258 System der Medizin (1841), 47, 50 Szapáry, Ferenc (1804–1875), 65, 68–72, 74, 78

442 

INDEX

Szeemann, Harald (1933–2005), 170n25 Szent-Györgyi, Albert (1893–1986), 64 T Tagore, Dwijendranath (1840–1926), 277 Tagore, Maharaja Sir Jotindra Mohun (1831–1938), 277 Tagore, Rabindranath (1861–1941), 277 tauḥıd̄ , 254–255, 258 Tauler, Johannes (c. 1300–1361), 47 Ten Bulls (1935), 298 Thelema, 348, 350, 361–364, 361n31 Theologian, 28, 50–51, 120, 255, 256, 257n8, 258, 259n14, 393 theology, theological, 3, 29, 39, 46, 47n13, 49, 50, 89, 95, 247, 250, 257–260, 259n14, 262, 280, 294, 321 Theorie der Geisterkunde (1808), 122 The Theosophical Glossary (1892), 203 Theosophical Society, 5, 8, 47n13, 92, 93, 97, 165, 183, 204n9, 205, 225, 228n10, 232, 237, 270, 270n2, 273–275, 277–281, 280n17, 283–285, 283n21, 285n22, 306, 348, 350, 355, 357, 358, 358n26, 360–361, 374n2, 374n3, 389, 416n44 The Theosophist (1879–), 93, 132, 282, 356, 360, 375n6, 386, 386n26 Theosophy, Theosophical, 1, 5–6, 8, 9, 18n5, 41, 47, 47n13, 92, 95–96, 98, 114, 129, 130n27, 132–133, 133n33, 145–146, 148, 149, 151, 153, 160, 166–167, 177, 183, 191, 195–217, 226, 228n10, 231, 237, 239, 257, 270–285, 295,

306, 308, 348, 357–362, 364, 374n2, 375, 376, 384, 386, 387n28, 388–393, 411, 411n32 Theravāda, 362 Tibet, 293, 358–359 Timaeus, 292n7 Tō kyō , 199, 211, 222 Tora, 254 Tordai, Vilmos (1880–?), 76 Tóth, Béla (1857–1907), 68–69, 72 Towiański, Andrzej (1799–1882), 9, 403, 403n9, 405n16, 405n18, 415, 417n50 Tractatus de magnetica curatione vulneris citra ullam et superstitionem et dolorem et remedii applicationem (1609), 260 Transmission Meditation, 199–200, 199n1, 213n19 Träume eines Geistersehers (1766), 17 A Treatise on the Seven Rays (1936), 200n2 Trentowski, Bronisław (1808–1869), 414, 414n39 Triangles, 199n1 Tuchman, Maurice (b. 1936), 160 Tuṣita, 202 U Über die Lebenskraft (1795), 40n2 Ueber Etwas, das der Heilkunst Noth thut (1823), 41, 43n8, 47 Ueberweg, Friedrich (1826–1871), 414, 414n40 Ufological, 200, 207 Ultramontane, 51 Umbanda, 324–327, 324n24, 325n25, 325n27, 326n30, 329–331, 329n40, 329n41, 334–335, 334n60, 339

 INDEX 

Unidentified flying objects (UFOs), 196, 198, 212, 213n18 United Association of Spiritualists, 273, 276–277, 284 Untersuchungen über den Lebensmagnetismus und das Hellsehen (1837 [1821]), 123 Upanishads, 7, 89, 91, 107, 247–263, 288, 376–377 Utpaladeva, 297 V Vasu, Shrish Chandra (1861–1918), 348n3, 351, 354–355, 354n15, 354n16, 384n23, 389 Vatican, 209n14 Vaughan, Keith (1912–1977), 197 Vay, Adelma (1840–1925), 70–71, 74 Veda, Vedic, 249, 251, 255, 352, 355, 376 Vedānta, 249–251, 282, 349, 373, 378, 380–381, 383 Venice, 162, 170, 258n10 Venizelos, Catherine (1927–2016), 302 Venus, 155, 206, 213n18 Venusian, 198, 208 Verne, Jules (1828–1905), 69, 69n8 Versuch, die scheinbare Magie des thierischen Magnetismus aus physiologischen und psychischen Gesezen tu erklären (1816), 18 Versuch einer Darstellung des animalischen Magnetismus, als Heilmittel (1811), 44 Versuch über die Medizin (1797), 40 Vidyāraṇya, 251, 381n15 Vienna, 39, 46, 61, 66–67, 77, 95n9, 297, 355, 401 Views of Society and Manners in America (1821), 179

443

Vigyan Bhairav Tantra (1972/73), 290, 295–303 Vijayanagara Empire, 263 Vijñāna Bhairava (Tantra), 290, 296–306 Vijñānabhikṣu (sixteenth c.), 378 Virchow, Rudolf (1821–1902), 49–50 Vivekananda, Swami (1863–1902), 9, 96–104, 106–107, 198, 348–349, 348n2, 373–393, 411–415, 412n33, 413n34, 413n35, 413n36, 415n41, 417 The Voice in the Silence (1899), 362 völkisch, 149 Voodoo, 335–336, 338 Vyāsa, 349 W Wajditsch, Alajos (1887–?), 76 Weimark, Arthur, 234–235 Weishaupt, Adam (1748–1830), 120 Welti, Jacob Friedrich (1871–1952), 169 Whitman, Walt (1819–1892), 180 Windischmann, Karl Joseph Hieronymus (1775–1839), 4, 38–51, 48n14, 90–92 Winslow, Caroline B. (1822–1896), 178 Wisdomism, 203 With Mystics and Magicians in Tibet (1931), 197 Wolfart, Karl Christian (1778–1832), 64 World Teacher, 195–196, 199, 204–210, 204n9 World War, 210, 216n22 World War I, 177, 405 World War II, 207, 211n16, 229 World War III, 212

444 

INDEX

Wright, Frances (“Fanny”) (1795–1852), 179–180 Wunderlich, Mrs., 77–78 Wǔshù, 222, 223 Y Yìjı̄ng, 170 Yoga Sūtra(s), 98, 349, 378–379, 391 Yoga Upaniṣads, 364, 376, 381 Yogavāsiṣt ̣ha, 373–393 yoga, yogic, yogi, 2–3, 8–9, 87, 90–91, 96–104, 106–108, 129, 206, 221n2, 228, 230, 262, 282, 297, 347–420 See also modern postural yoga; Râja Yoga (1896); rājayoga, Raja Yoga Yorke, Gerald (1901–1983), 190, 362, 362n33 Yorùbá, 322n13, 325n26, 326, 326n31, 327, 329n42, 330n45, 331, 334 Young Bengal Movement, 271 Yukti, 296

Z Zeitschrift für die Anthropologie (1823–1826), 41, 41n5 Zeitschrift für psychische Ärzte (1818–1822), 41n5 Zeitschrift für spekulative Philosophie (1800–1801), 17 Zeller, Ernst Albert (1804–1877), 26n13, 29 Zen, 223, 227, 228n10, 229, 235–236, 239, 298–299 Zen and Japanese Culture (1959), 230, 235 Zen Buddhism and Its Influence on Japanese Culture (1938), 229 Zen Flesh, Zen Bones (1957), 298, 298n20, 298n21 Zen in der Kunst des Bogenschießens (1948), 227 Zillman, Paul (1872–1940), 190 Zodiac, 152, 155 Zorba the Greek (1946), 312n36 Zoroaster, Zoroastrian, 201, 256, 292, 294–295