The Secret of Time Travel

Found - a booklet from 1984 by David Savage The Secret of Time Travel (Finbarr Book, Folkestone.)

The lines near the start of the book:  'If we have lived on the Earth before, the body cells must ALSO be equipped with, or have access to, all the data about our other lives on Earth' may require a couple of largish leaps of faith, but time travel sitting comfortably at home and without the aid of a complicated Wellsian metal time machine is an attractive proposition, so it may be worth persevering.

The book is only 15 pages in length and the author gets down to the real secret at page 8. Other Finbarr books included: Making Money with Magick, How to Contact God, Winning with Witchcraft, Mindflow and The Secret of Immortality. The booklet came from the vast library of Dr. M. H. Coleman, a writer on the occult and psychic matters. He collected over 4000 books on these subjects but was a confirmed sceptic and  set out to prove that there are definitely not more things in heaven and earth than in Horatio's philosophy...

"Your Body Cell"
.
The secret lies within your body cells. These are the structural units of all living organisms. The body is made up of a countless number of these microscopic cells. Scientists now accept that for the body cells to function, every single cell knows everything about you from eye colour to what you like the taste of. It is accepted SCIENTIFIC FACT that every single body cell of yours is equipped with all the data about you. This made me think. If we have lived on the Earth before, the body cells must ALSO be equipped with, or have access to, all the data about our other lives on Earth.

From the 1970s TV series The Time Tunnel

THE SUBCONSCIOUS MIND.
The mental processes outside the personal awareness of an individual are controlled by the subconscious mind - the mind which regulates our heartbeat, bloodflow, and body cells etc., on the subconscious level

The Blind Boy Medium

 The second of a couple of pamphlets from the world of mediums, psychics and seances - part of a large collection bought from a major collector who was trying to disprove it all. He was particularly incensed by the spoon-bending Uri Geller and worked back from there. There were books on the occult, the paranormal, spirit messages from famous dead authors like Doyle and Wilde, the inevitable Madame Blavatsky, afterlife experiences, many books with titles like 'There is no Death' and messages from the ether, heaven and hell. 

This is the well told and touching story of a boy who lost his sight, the operations he went endured, the dismal reactions of his school friends and so called experts and his fortunate awakening to his mediumistic skills and partial regaining of his sight. He appears to have been an accomplished performer and he ends the piece with this caveat 'to all my friends' - 'I wish to state that I do not give private readings or psychometry neither by post or at my home. My work is exclusively confined to the platform.' The work was published in Britain in 1919 but is unknown to the internet and all world libraries - but no longer!

How I Lost my Material Sight

and Gained the Spiritual Sight.

MY LIFE'S STORY.

I.

  My sole object in writing my life's story is to try and give a little encouragement to those who perhaps, like myself, may meet with misfortunes, from which it may appear for the time being there is neither help nor hope for them on this side of life. My advice to such people is that they should never lose hope. If in despair or depression, or if afflicted, continue to live in hope, have faith,

How to run a Psychic Circle

We are publishing a couple of pamphlets from the Spirit World - part of a large collection bought from a major collector who was trying to disprove it all. He was particularly incensed by the spoon-bending Uri Geller and worked back from there. There were books on psychics, seances, the paranormal, spirit messages from famous dead authors like Doyle and Wilde, the inevitable Madame Blavatsky, afterlife experiences, many books with titles like 'There is no Death' and messages from the ether, heaven and hell. This book is a guide to running a psychic event or meeting. There is much practical advice- e.g. ' Do not have a heavy meal immediately prior to a séance.' The author has the same name as the famous post-romantic writer but is known to librarians as Leigh Hunt, 'writer on Spiritualism.' It was published in London in 1937.

THE CONDUCT

OF

PSYCHIC CIRCLES

A Few Hints

by

LEIGH HUNT

PRICE THREEPENCE

L.S.A. PUBLICATIONS LTD.,

16 QUEENSBERRY PLACE.

LONDON, S.W. 7

1937

FOREWORD.

  No attempt is made in this little brochure to cover the whole ground of mediumistic activity, either in connection with development or with the various phases of phenomena. I have merely indicated by the hints given what I consider to be the best methods for investigators to adopt when holding a circle for psychic unfoldment. It cannot be too strongly emphasised that the whole subject calls for careful and serious consideration and investigation, and, therefore, at least a fair acquaintance with the literature of Spiritualism and Psychic Research is necessary if the inquirer is to pursue his quest with the hope of achieving any full measure of success.

  The Library of the London Spiritualist Alliance offers exceptional opportunities in this connection, and I would also strongly recommend a perusal of the L.S.A. Booklets, which are sold at 1/- each, affording, as they do, a comprehensive insight into the subject of Spiritualism and its phenomena
L.H.

  Start a sitting with prayer. I suggest the Lord's Prayer, for then all sitters can participate. Sometimes, however, a mediumistic person will feel an inspirational impulse to offer up a special prayer;

Major-General Fuller on 'The Black Arts'

From The Occult Review in April 1926 this article by J.F.C. Fuller. Major-General John Frederick Charles Fuller, CB, CBE, DSO (1878–1966) was a British Army officer, military historian and strategist, notable as an early theorist of modern armoured warfare. He was also the inventor of "artificial moonlight". He was also something of an occultist and an early fan of Aleister Crowley and author of a book on him The Star in The West: a critical essay upon the works of Aleister Crowley (Walter Scott Publishing Co., London, 1907).This article was also published in Austin Osman Spare's magazine Form. When later Fuller attempted to distant himself from Crowley to advance his military career The Great Beast fired this salvo at him:

I wanted to give you a leg up the literary ladder. I have taken endless pain to teach you the first principles of writing. When I met you, you were not so much as a fifth-rate journalist, and now you can write quite good prose with no more than my blue pencil through two out of every three adjectives, and five out of every six commas. Another three years with me and I will make you a master, but please don't think that either I or the Work depend on you, any more than J.P. Morgan depends on his favourite clerk.

As to Fuller's merits as a writer, it is probable that he wrote better prose as a military tactician than a follower of the occult. Worth noting in this longish piece is Fuller's quotation from Arthur Machen-- an over-the-top rant about the British Museum Reading Room:

O dim, far-lifted, and mighty dome, Mecca of many minds,

mausoleum of many hopes, sad house where all desires fail! For there men enter in with hearts uplifted, and dreaming minds, seeing in those exalted stairs a ladder to fame, in that pompous portico the gate of knowledge, and going in, find but vain vanity, and all but in vain...

THE BLACK ARTS

Major-General J.F.C. Fuller

Man is human and a mystery; herein is to be sought all our sorrows, all our joys, all our desires, all our activities. Man is a troublesome creature, inwardly troubled by his consciousness, outwardly troubled by the unconscious, the things which surround him, the “why” and “wherefore” of which fascinate his mind and perplex his heart. We cannot fathom the origin of life nor can we state its purpose; we can

but judge of it by inference, and inferences, if we probe them deeply,dissolve into an unknowable ether, an all-pervading miracle. Yet, such as these shadows are, we follow them, and as day creeps out of night so does the conscious emanate from out of the vast and formless body of that unconsciousness which softly enfolds us in its gloom.

Some lie still in the coffin of existence; these are the human

sheep who, where the grass of life is green, browse peacefully, and, where it is dust, die or bleat helplessly to others. These others are those who tear their shrouds and hammer at the lid,

Bibliomancy

BIBLIOMANCY
Found in A.E. Waite's Occult Sciences (1891) between Belomancy and Capnomancy (divination by smoke) this method of detecting witches and sorcerers and also using a Bible for prediction etc., Belomancy, by the way, is divination by arrows...

Occasionally the forms of divination exceeded the bounds of superstition, and passed into the region of frantic madness. There was a short way the sorcerers which was probably the most potent discoverer of witchcraft which any ingenuity could devise. A large Bible was deposited on one side of a pair of weighing scales. The person suspected of magical practices was set on the opposite side. If he outweighed the Bible he was innocent; in the other case, he was held guilty. In the days of this mystical weighing and measuring, the scales may be truly said to have fallen from the eyes of a bewizarded generation, and to have revealed " sorcery and enchantment everywhere." 

Bibliomancy, however, included a more harmless practice, and one of an exceedingly simple character. This was the opening of the Bible with a golden pin, and drawing an omen from the first passage which presented itself. Books like the Scriptures, the "Following of Christ," and similar works, abound in suggestive and pertinent passages which all men may apply to temporal affairs, but declares that he had recourse to it in all cases of spiritual difficulty. The appeal to chance is, however, essentially superstitious.

Fairies at Work and Play

From Fairies at Work and Play by Geoffrey Hodson. Published by the Theosophical Society in 1925 (and still in print) the book is a sort of Varieties of Religious Experience anthology of meetings with and sightings of fairies, elves,devas, sylphs, 'mannikins', gnomes and brownies. All the observations are by Geoffrey Hodson (1886-1983) who wrote many other religious and occult works in a long and productive life.

Dancing Fairies

Lancashire, 1921              

We are surrounded by a dancing group of lovely female fairies. They are laughing and full of joy. 

The leader in this case is a female figure, probably two feet high, surrounded by transparent flowing drapery. There is a star on her forehead, and she has large wings which glisten with pale, delicate shades from pink to lavender; in rapid movement, however, the effect of them is white. 

Her hair is light golden brown, and unlike that of the lesser fairies, streams behind her and merges with the flowing forces of her aura. The form is perfectly modelled and rounded, like that of a young girl; the right hand holds a wand. 

Although her expression is one of purity and ingenuousness, her face is at the same time stamped with a decided impression of power. This is especially noticeable in the clear blue eyes, which glow like flame, and have all the appearance of a living fire. Her brow is broad and noble, her features small and rounded, the tiny ears are a poem of physical perfection. There are no angles in this transcendently beautiful form. The bearing of head, neck and

shoulders is queenly, and the whole pose is a model of grace and beauty. 

A pale blue radiance surrounds this glorious creature, adding to her beauty, while golden flashes of light shoot and play round her head. The lower portion of the aura is shell pink, irradiated with white light. 

She is aware of our presence, and has graciously remained more or less motionless for the purpose of this description. She holds up her wand, which is about the length of her forearm and is white and shining and glows at the end with a yellow light. She bows low and gracefully, much as a great prima donna might bow on taking leave of a highly appreciative audience. 

I hear a very faint, far away music, too fine-drawn to translate, such music as might be given forth by diminutive needles, delicately tuned, hung and struck with tiny hammers. It is more a series of tinkles than a consecutive air, probably because I am unable to contact it fully. 

Now the whole group has risen into the air and vanished...

Shackleton's Phantom Guide

Came across this article in the Winter 1948 Occult Review by the intrepid cinematographer J.C. Bee-Mason, a war photographer in France, Belgium and Russia, and cinematographer to Ernest Shackleton on his last expedition south and other Arctic expeditions. He was obsessed with bee-keeping (hence the hyphenated “Bee” in his name) and filmed documentaries about bees.There is quite a bit about him on the web including his belief that if you ate a hundred pounds of good honey every year you would live to 100. Sadly JCB only made into his early 80s. Part of the interest in the piece is the acknowledged influence of Shackleton's experience on some lines in T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land:

Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
- But who is that on the other side of you?

This phenomenon  has been called by the author John Geiger the 'third man factor' - the experience of people at the very edge of death who feel the presence of an incorporeal being who encourages them and guides them to safety. Geiger tells the stories of 9-11 survivors, mountaineers, astronauts, explorers and prisoners of war who have reported this feeling…

Shackleton's Phantom Guide by J.C. Bee- Mason M.B.E.

About 30 years ago the world was staggered by the story of possibly the most wonderful feat of endurance ever made by man.

Shackleton – who died 26 years ago in January – Worsley, and a seaman named Crean, after enduring a journey of 500 miles in a ship's lifeboat in the Antarctic in midwinter, crossed the glaciers and crevasses of South Georgia to obtain help for their shipmates left stranded on Elephant Island. The men at the whaling station were astonished when they saw three men dragging slates down the mountains which had never before been crossed by man.

Shackleton, in his book South, says : "...when I look back at those days I do not doubt that Providence guided us. I know that during that long march of 36 hours over the unnamed mountains and glaciers of South Georgia it often seemed to me that we were four, not three. Worsley and Crean had the same idea."

Arctic Expedition

I first met Shackleton when I sailed with him on the Quest, and I heard him describe the journey when we were entertained by the members of the English Club at Lisbon. I don't know why, but I had a feeling that he invented the story "we were four not three", knowing it would appeal to the general public.

In 1925, I was a  member of the British Arctic Expedition to Franz Josef Land. Worsley was our leader. We sailed in a little brigantine of about 126 tons register. She had an auxiliary. In pack-ice off  Spitzbergen we broke our propeller and had to carry on under sail. Near Franz Josef Land we got caught in heavy ice and the ship looked like being pinched, so Worsley ordered us to sleep fully dressed in polar kit and be prepared to leave the ship at a moment's notice. He said to me: "if we do, we must walk over the ice to Siberia and God knows how many of us will get there."

Spirit Guidance

It is when men see death staring them in the face, they are more inclined to confide in one another. Whilst pacing the deck one night with Worsley, listening to the timbers of our poor old ship groaning under the ice pressure, I said to Worsley, "Skipper the something I want to ask you." He said "What is it."  I replied: "In Shackleton's book South, he says that, when you were dragging that sledge over South Georgia, you had a feeling there were four men in the party and not three. Is that really true?" Worsley answered: "Yes, Crean was the first to mention it. Whilst he and I were unloading the sledge at the whaling station he said to me, "All the time I was pulling that sledge I had a feeling there were four of us." I replied, "So did I – I wonder if Shackleton did?" Shackleton was standing a few yards away unpacking his kit. I went up to and said, "Crean tells me he had a feeling there were four of us pulling that sledge and curiously enough I had the same feeling, in fact I kept looking around and to see who the fourth man was," Shackleton stopped what he was  doing and said "Worsley, there were four of us."

[The intrepid Bee-Mason recounts a similar occasion in Bolivia's 'Green Hell' with Julian Duguid in 1928, of being surrounded by Toba savages (who torture their captives to death) and not being afraid because 'Like Shackleton's party on the ice- we were not alone.']

A sighting of Aleister Crowley

I remember seeing Aleister Crowley walking in Hampstead in the mid 1940s. He was pointed out to me by another boy called John Bunting.Crowley was staying with his father the writer and anthologist Daniel George (Bunting) in East Heath Road where it meets Whitestone Lane, an area now infested by oligarchs. As I recall he had a beard and was wearing a kilt and possibly carrying a sword stick with an entwined silver snake. I have heard of him wearing a kilt but seldom a beard and he is not known to have associated with Daniel George but I am certain it was him.

 Later I met the writer and film maker Lance Sieveking who also knew Crowley. He told me that in the 1930s the Great Beast had involved him in marketing a scent he had concocted from musk and various spices and animal products. The idea was that a man wearing this scent could not fail with women. It appeared to have the opposite effect however and was a financial failure. [Contributed by a Jot associate, now in his 80s. Many thanks! ]

An Austin Spare Exhibition

In November 1984 art dealer James Birch put on a show of work by Austin Osman Spare at his gallery in Fulham, London. The introduction to the catalogue went like this:

Some see Spare's paintings as the work of an advanced occultist (reputedly a member of "The Golden Dawn') others see the work of a superb draughtsman, an unashamed Cockney artist who went back to Southwark and painted the ordinary people- whelk-girls, barrow boys, spivs and tramps. Certainly his life divides neatly into two periods. By the age of fourteen, possibly inspired by Beardsley and Ricketts, he was producing work of a high technical order. A fellow student at the Royal College described Spare as 'a fair creature resembling a Greek god, curly-haired, proud, self-willed, practising the black arts and taking drugs.' 

At his first one-man show in 1914 he was showing 'psychic' drawings later developed into his 'automatic' drawings. In the 1920s Spare was at the height of his powers, intensely active,producing books, magazines, objects and becoming briefly the darling of Mayfair. He appears to have reacted against the false values of his patrons and admirers in the Smart Set. His book The Anathema of Zos: A Sermon to the Hypocrites- a work of 'automatic writing' excoriates the self- pity and smugness of the mid-1920s. He was seen as a degenerate and crank; little bothered by this Spare headed back to South London, seldom to be seen again in the purlieus of Bond Street. He found peace and obscurity among the lower classes- the whores and sneak-thieves, many of whom he used as models.

His portraits from this latter period of his life show that he was still primarily a visionary.

Even in straightforward works like his portrait of a Southwark tramp, something shines out beyond the technique. Spare said that 'the portrait of a person should be more like them than they are themselves...seldom complimentary.'

The Aquarian Guide (London 1970)

The Aquarian Guide to Occult, Mystical, Religious, Magical London and Around. Francoise Strachan [Aquarian Press, London 1970]

A guide with names, addresses etc. Amazing collection - rainmakers, clairvoyants, robe makers, temple painters, even the artist who did the cover (Ken Crampton) is in there as a mystical painter, also an occult B & B in Coombe Martin, The Process -'Church of the Final Judgement (Balfour Place, Mayfair), Gandalf's Garden (hippy tea-room) The Ghost Club (founded 1862) Lodges, Priories, Cabalistic & Chivalric Orders, Druids, Avatars, Astrologers, Findhorn, Hypnotists, OAHSPE, Fuller D'Arch Smith (occult books), an Isis Unveiled Class, an exorcist, and a spiritual candle maker. The author, now known as Francesca Rossetti, can now be found on Library Thing.