1. In 1925 H.C. Randall-Stevens published his book The Book of Truth (or Voice of Osiris) with several drawings of Egyptian heads and other items. J. Godwin writes that when Randall-Stevens was 29 he was surprised to hear a Voice telling him to sit down, write and draw, although he had no training in either (ch.7, Atlantis & the Cycles of Time… 2011). But he did and so appeared the book. In 1927 he published a second book The Chronicles of Osiris. Instead of the author’s name, the title page of both books said that each was –
Set down in the House of El Eros El Erua, they being male, female, born according to the Laws governing the Human-Adamic race, this being their fourth incarnation.
In The Book of Truth Osiris narrates a cosmogony and anthropogony produced by the Creative Powers of an initial Triad (God-father, God-mother, God-son). El Daoud, the primary Demiurge, created first an incorporeal race of humans, then a material one. Then complications appeared as a new divine Being generated monsters giving rise to depravity and iniquity, so that El Daoud destroyed this creation. The follow-up, The Chronicles of Osiris, was published like the first one by Rider (London). It continues the story whereby some survivors selected by Ptah [the Egyptian creator-god of Memphis] make a fresh start in Sardegon (= Atlantis) and live in peace and prosperity for thousands of years as vegetarians, ruled by Initiates. Then a wicked priest, Ithelodeth, forms a new secret sect which performs human sacrifices to gain occult powers and when they grow very strong, they destroy Ptah’s culture but they too get destroyed by earthquake and fire. Horus, then, the son of Osiris re-organizes life with the help of El Erosuplu and his wife El Erosuplua resulting in a new long period of prosperity and expansion until the cult of Ithelodeth was revived, there was a mixture of races and a new war. Atlantis was engulfed in flaming lava while Horebatop with an Adamic group managed to escape to Egypt where they set up a new culture over a period of 1500 years and constructed also the Sphinx. But again, new divisions and wars ensued even as two kingdoms were formed, Upper and Lower Egypt. At about 6000 BCE the warring kingdoms were united by Mentos “of the double crown”. A third book came out in 1954, Atlantis to the Latter Days with similar cycles of prosperity, evil fanatics and so on, with a final warning that, if they do not mend their ways, they ’ll suffer the fate of Atlantean destruction.
2. One very interesting point is that Godwin detects in the third book an incident which is identical to one described by Paul Brunton in his A Search in Secret Egypt 1936, NY, Dutton, pp57-78. Both writers describe some secret initiation ceremonies in the temple of the Sphinx (= Great Pyramid). Then, in both narrations the subject lies down in the King’s Chamber and leaves the material body and with his astral body follows a guide. Then passes through a series of initiatic ordeals and finally returns and re-enters the sleeping body. All three books contain material from earlier books on Atlantis, Agartha, Egypt, Lemuria the Hermetical, the Theosophical and other similar literatures.
Godwin gives also the view of one Peter Miles, who “may have been a doctor of repute”, and wrote the introduction to the first book. Miles notes that he did not know Randall-Stevens before and was impressed by the speed he was writing and making the drawings and by his ignorance of Egyptian history and Egyptology generally. He concluded: –
It does not appear to me that the writings as a whole can adequately be accounted for as the product of what is commonly termed the subconscious mind as understood by psychologists. A more tenable hypothesis is that the work is that of a Superior Intelligence coming from beyond and using the writer as a medium.
Godwin continues then to write that he sees a naivety in Randall-Stevens’s revelations [?]… “that inclines me to the same conclusion as Miles, though “superior” is not the word I would use”. It is very curious that despite his close acquaintance with dozens of publications of this nature and the prevalent plagiarism, Godwin at times seems to believe that authors actually visualise real events of mythical places and times.
Surely, they must wonder how can such different effusions by different people about the very same subject, yet so vastly different in details of dates, names and movements of peoples, races, heroes and divine and satanic forces, be described as “revelations” and considered genuine???
3. In the earlier chapter 4 (“Later theosophists”) of Godwin’s same publication we read about William Scott-Elliot (1849-1919) who produced in 1896 a book, The Story of Atlantis… utilizing “revelations” by Charles Leadbeater and A.P. Simmons (who used the medium “Mary” who later married Scott-Elliot). This showed in 4 maps how (1) the world was up to One million years ago, (2) after the catastrophe of 800.000 y.a., (3) after the catastrophe of 200.000 y.a. and (4) after the catastrophe of 80.000 y.a. until the final submergence of Poseidonis (= Atlantis) in 9564 BCE. It also gives the 7 sub-roots of the primary Root-Race – Rmoahal, Tlavatli, Toltec, First Turanian, Original Semite, Akkadian, Mongolian. Colonists came to Egypt c. 210.000 y.a. and built the two great Pyramids (the 3rd much later) – to provide permanent Initiation Halls and a store and shrine for a great talisman-power! Extraordinary this insistence with Egypt, pyramids and “initiations”!
These details are not in Randall-Stevens’s “revelations” just as these “revelations” by Scott-Elliot do not contain all the wondrous vicissitudes that we encounter in Randall-Stevens!
And, of course, there are many more and different “revelations” by others, too numerous to examine here.
Which version of “revelation” is the true one?
That many people seek entertainment or a kind of escape from the drab and full of anxieties routine of daily life and find their sort of satisfaction in such literature is understandable. But why do they take them so easily at face value and consider them true or genuine???
4. Prior to Randall-Stevens, at the beginning of chapter 5 of his book, Godwin presents another Britton clairvoyant, Dion Fortune (= Violet Mary Firth, 1890-1946), who formed the Society of the Inner Light, combining theosophical notions with the magical current of the Golden Dawn and its rituals and magic (both of which she had joined at some stage). Unlike others, she had qualified as a psychotherapist and had studied and strongly appreciated Jung before turning to occult and magic circles.
In her early book The Esoteric Orders and their Work (1928) she traces in an almost orthodox early theosophical fashion three emigrations from Atlantis by those who foresaw the coming cataclysms. The first contacted and mixed with the remains of the Lemurians in the Pacific resulting in a dangerous, polluted stream. The second reached the Himalayas. The third formed the Egyptian culture which generated the Hebrew, Greek and Gnostic traditions. The first folk were of the Ray of Power: they worked from the material level and were dangerous. The second were of the Ray of Wisdom and, working with higher mind only, were too abstract. Western people should link again with the third emigration which was on the Ray of Love and Devotion, had brotherhood and compassion (!?). But here we should note that “Hebrew, Greek and Gnostic traditions”, were not really formed by Egypt but obviously had been influenced by aspects of the Egyptian culture. Also, her narrative is wildly different from those of Randal-Stevens and Scott-Elliot above.
She was convinced that she had been a priestess in Atlantis. Her “psychic experiences” (first in trance states, later obtaining visions even in waking states) inspired her novel The Sea Princess (1938) which describes the final days of Atlantis with its City of the Golden Gates, the rise of black magic and other elements, common in similar writings. But it also has some original notions like the Sea Temple with its even more ancient cult of the Sea and the Moonlight, and King Arthur, Merlin and the Knights of the Round Table. Again, some quite different traits!
5. Dion was so busy with her visions and images of the past that she could not see that the West was more intellectual while the East was far more devotional and in India the Vedantic tradition combines all her three Rays – or more precisely action (power), devotion-worship (love) and knowledge (wisdom)!
There are increasingly far too many publications of men and women who have visions and fantasies of all kinds and see “true history”, the rise and fall of civilizations and (pseudo-)esoteric and magical movements (alchemy, astrology, necromancy, satanism, witchcraft etc. etc.).
I turn here to one of them, Rene Guénon and his The King of the World, (2001, Sophia Perennis), from French Le Roi du Monde, (Gallimard 1958) where, in chapter 8, we find references to Anne-Catherine Emmerich and the mysterious “Mountain of the Prophets” which he places in Tibet and Tartary, where also the Swedish occultist Swedenborg declared is hidden the “Lost Word” (!). But before that, it seems worth citing Guénon’s words on Blavatsky at the end of ch.8: “And let us add that the fragmentary information Madame Blavatsky was able to gather on this subject, though without understanding its true significance, gave rise to the idea of the ‘Great White Lodge’ [of the theosophists], which we would call, not an image, but quite simply a caricature or fanciful parody of Agartha.” It is quite remarkable that he criticizes Madame Blavatsky but takes seriously the ‘Mountain of Prophets’ and the utterly imaginary ‘Agartha’!
In note 13 of chapter 8 the Editor explains that Anne Catherine Emmerich (1774-1824) became an Augustinian nun, having had from early childhood visions of scenes from the Old and New Testaments. When the convent was disbanded (in 1811), Anne withdrew in a small room in Dulmen and in 1812 she received the stigmata [scars in the two palms and two feet and the left side under the heart like Christ on the cross]. In 1818 Clement Brentano, a well-known poet of the German Romantic movement, visited her. She recognized him as the “pilgrim” sent to record her visions, which he proceeded to do. So, several volumes were published (The Life of the Blessed Virgin Mary, The Dolorous Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ etc.). Guénon’s reference is to a passage in Reverent Carl E. Schmöger’s The Life of Anne Catherine Emmerich vol.1, ch.41 (Rockford, Il, Tan Books 1976). In this Anne has the vision of “the whole country [being] like a beautiful green island up in the clouds” (Samuel D. Fohr, editor of The King of the World, 2nd Ed. 2004.).
Stigmata appeared in several faithful Christians, mystics and saints. (Including St Francis of Assisi: he is said to have had a vision on 17 September 1224; wherein he saw a seraph, a six-winged angel on a cross who gave him the gift of the five wounds of Christ.). But why would a genuine, devoted mystic obtain stigmata or have such visions as the romantic landscape in the clouds – instead of experiencing in deepest silence union with the immanent presence of the Godhead?…
6. I am sure many will disagree. But I wonder why and how? Is it because there are hefty reasons which reflect the realities of the Cosmos, or because they have lived for many decades with the belief that visions and stigmata are genuine indications of the favour of the Divine Powers, as taught by the Church?
Visions, voices and stigmata belong to the observable world which is a world of change and therefore unreal since it does not remain constant. A table, a house, a painting – they begin to deteriorate from the very moment we consider them finished and perfect. The ravages of time are evident within a few years, if not earlier. In this sense the sensible material or intellectual world, consisting of masses and forms which change, is not real or true. Besides, a very powerful function of the mind can produce visions, voices and stigmata with a forcefully convincing sense that they are real. And people get deluded.
Real or true is only that which does not change, that which has no mass or form and therefore is not object of the senses or of the faculties of the mind such as thinking, planning, feeling, calculating and the like. Visions, voices and stigmata come and can and often do go. They are not signs or proofs of genuine mystical experience, real unity without mass or form which is a union with the Divine having no deterioration or any change. There are naturally other levels of reality, as when, in the world of change and relatives, one distinguishes between day and night or earth and sky.
I repeat here with some slight modifications what I wrote in ES1, §6, end –
I would suggest that academics change their terminology leaving the terms “esoteric, esotericism, esotericist” for the genuine teachings and practices and, instead, adopt the terms “occult, occultism, occultist” for their field of study and research. Otherwise, how would anyone, except genuine esotericists, distinguish between fantasy and/or fraud and the true creativity of esotericism – as with Pythagoras, Parmenides and Plato in ancient times in the West and Lao Tzu (Taoism), Shankara (Advaita Vedānta) and Nagarjuna (Mahāyāna Buddhism) in the East. There have been other traditions or groups or schools since.
