Four Generations

[poliphilo]

Edward Bulwer Lytton was an Victorian politician, occultist and writer, famous for starting a novel with the words "it was a dark and stormy night". His best known book is the Last Days of Pompeii. He also wrote "The Haunted and the Haunters"- one of the best English ghost stories.

His son Robert Bulwer Lytton wrote poetry under the pen-name Owen Meredith. As viceroy of India in the late 1870s he presided over a famine which killed millions. His laissez-faire attitude to the suffering of his "subjects" has been described as "genocidal".

Robert's daughter Emily married Edwin Lutyens, the architect of New Delhi. She was a theosophist and acted as foster-mother to the theosophical "World Teacher" Jiddu Khrishnamurti.

Emily's daughter Mary Lutyens was Khrishnamurti's disciple and biographer. She also wrote The Lyttons in India- a book about her grandfather the viceroy.

Comments

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I hadn't realised that Zanoni had actually influenced anyone- let alone Mathers. How interesting. Now, I really do want to read it.

I adore Dickens, but I find most other Victorians hard going.

[oakmouse]

Mathers went by the nickname Zanoni among his friends --- Zan for short. He really wanted to BE Zanoni. (Poor schmoo.)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Fascinating.

Lytton was the real deal, wasn't he? I've read anecdotes about him practising telekinesis.

[oakmouse]

Lytton was an occultist, although apparently not too deeply into it, and it's a highly debatable subject as to whether he belonged to a magical order or not. Joscelyn Godwin's book The Theosophical Enlightenment has a lot to say about Lytton's activities in esoteric fields.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Were there any magical orders around that he could have belonged to at that early date?

Judging simply by The Haunted and the Haunters I get the impression that Lytton saw magic as a solitary practice.

[oakmouse]

Darned good question. The problem with identifying magical orders is that they can be fairly good at hiding. I've belonged to two that had no public presence whatever, and that's in the modern "information age" where everything seems to be a matter of public record. I shouldn't like to commit either way as to whether there were any then or not; we simply can't be certain, since not knowing of any only means we don't know of any, not that none existed, but of course by the same grounds we can't be certain that any did exist. Myself I give it the Scots verdict of "Not proven" in either case. However I also have to say I've seen enough spurious claims of a hidden order that existed in secret for umph period of time that I'd be slow to believe in the reality of any order from Lytton's era whose existence suddenly came to light this long afterward.

I must blushingly confess I haven't read much Lytton at all, so your knowledge of his opinions is very likely far better than mine. And we do know for a fact that a number of people of his era practiced magic as a solitary discipline, so your guess has a good foundation to stand on.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The Haunted and the Haunters is essentially a story about a magician- a very solitary magician. It may have been the jumping off point for Zanoni.

Having looked a bit into the history of Wicca, I'm as sceptical as you are about hidden orders and secret traditions. Isn't it the thing that makes the Golden Dawn distinctive that it was the first magical order of the modern era?

[oakmouse]

No, the GD wasn't the first to exist, it was the first to be outed in a big way and IIRC the first to have its rituals and inner order documents published to the general public. There were at least two important orders extant prior to the GD. (I checked my facts before posting this to make sure I was right about their dates; didn't want to give sloppy information!) The Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor was active as of 1884, beating the GD by 3 years, and like the GD spawned a number of successor orders and resulted in the publication of a number of influential books. (If you want to read about colorful occult nutballs, try the life of the HB of L's founder, Paschal Beverly Randolph. You won't be bored!)

Prior to the HB of L, the German magical and alchemical order "Orden Des Gold- und Rosenkreutz" was active during a chunk of the 18th century, from the late 1750s to some time during the Napoleonic wars. We don't have a clear record of when it folded but its last recorded activity seems to have been around 1797. I don't know that it had much influence in England or America, unlike either the GD or the HB of L, but it had a lot of impact on the Continent.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the information. I'll have to research Paschal Beverly Randolph. What a name!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

P.S. I've just been reading about Randolph. How extraordinary that I'd never heard of this man before!

[oakmouse]

Well, he was of mixed race and practiced sex magic at a time when the sexuality of black males was a deeply taboo subject in America. A black man who claimed to offer magical initiation through sex, and who believed in the magical power (or indeed the very existence) of the female orgasm would be pretty much barred from the public eye; however muckraking the newspapers of his day might have been, and he lived in the peak era of so-called yellow journalism, he would have been far too hot a subject for them to handle. Had he lived longer and/or been white, he might have become more generally known. He's better known now than he has been since his death, I believe, although I'm positive I'm right.

Also, for some reason, a fair number of American occultists of the 19th century don't seem to be generally very well known, even in America. There are exceptions, of course, as with every rule.

[oakmouse]

"although I'm positive I'm right"

Sorry, that should be I'm NOT positive I'm right. :-p

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

But you'd think the things that made him taboo in his lifetime would have elevated him to cult status in the modern era.

But, it's true, the books and articles on magical history I've read never even glance at the USA. They treat the magical revival of the 19th century as- almost exclusively- an Anglo-French affair.

[oakmouse]

You would think that, yes, but not so. Maybe because good old Aleister Crowley got there first? From his time onward, nobody needed to look any further for an occult Bad Boy to emulate.