Author: Paul V Young

From New Dawn 157 (Jul-Aug 2016)

Every July, thousands gather in Queensland, Australia, for one of the Southern Hemisphere’s largest medieval festivals. But past the jousting and pageantry lies a far stranger reality: the site was originally built as an esoteric sanctuary. Founded by Cambridge scholar and mystic J.S.M. Ward, the Abbey was created to safeguard sacred relics and ancient stained glass rescued from a collapsing Europe. Decades on, the Abbey stands as a rare, tangible link to preserved ancient wisdom.

On a 135 hectare property 60 km north of the Queensland state capital Brisbane, a religious community maintains a museum, church and college. Many Brisbane residents are familiar with the annual Medieval Tournament and Banquet held on its grounds every winter, and the Abbey Museum is well-known and loved by school students and local history buffs alike. While the small Abbey Church, boasting windows that contain imported historical stained glass panels (including fragments from Winchester Cathedral), is a popular choice for weddings, baptisms and funerals, not all of its admirers are aware of its fascinating heritage.

Known today as the Orthodox Catholic Church of Christ the King, the Confraternity is linked to the Great Schism of the Western and Eastern Orthodox Churches in the 11^th century, thus featuring a blend of Eastern and Western Rites. However, the Abbey represents something more than just an East/West mix, having been established by the followers of J.S.M. Ward, an enigmatic Englishman who drew his inspiration from Christianity, Freemasonry, Spiritualism and a number of other esoteric traditions.

JSM Ward – A Complex Character

The Abbey owes its existence to the vision and dynamism of John Sebastian Marlow Ward. This snippet taken from his autobiographical recollections less than two years before his death, and quoted in the final pages of Geoffrey Ginn’s insightful book on Ward’s life, captures a glimpse into his background:

I was born in Belize, British Honduras in Central America on Dec. 22^nd 1885. What terrible changes have taken place, since I was born, in world affairs. My lifetime has seen the decline and fall of Europe and her leadership in the world, particularly is this true of her loss of control in Asia.¹

He referred, of course, to the two World Wars and he especially lamented the apparent unravelling of the British Empire. He enjoyed a stint as a headmaster in Burma just as World War I broke out, and was saddened at its independence from Britain in 1948, the year before he died.

John’s father, an Anglican minister, had returned to England from Belize with his wife and young son in 1888, just prior to the birth of their second child, Rex. Growing up in the culturally stimulating atmosphere of Victorian times, John developed a love of history and heritage buildings, amassing a large collection of artefacts and natural curiosities during his boyhood. 

His dutiful Christian upbringing gave rise to a sense of enquiry, which would later broaden to encompass Mysticism, Spiritualism, Theosophy and Metaphysics. It was during his time at Cambridge University, at the age of 20, that he was initiated into Freemasonry, which was considered quite a respectable step to take for a modern middle class man, in what was by then the Edwardian Era. This would provide valuable introductions into the social and professional arenas, while also satisfying Ward’s attraction to the intrigue of the esoteric underground of the day. Soon after graduating in 1908, he took up teaching history and literature, and also married his cousin Carrie.

Psychic occurrences, which were to guide John throughout his adult life, first began five years later with the regular visitation of his late uncle (also Carrie’s father), Henry Lanchester (HJL), to him during lucid dreams. The visions would occur at regular times of night on set days of the week and provided personal messages as well as information about the afterlife. Contact with the astral plane expanded to include his brother Rex who died in 1916 (identified in John’s writings as RLW); it later became a dominant feature of his life and work, with his introduction to the angelic ‘Master of the Work’.

Carrie, although a believer in her husband’s visions, did not share his preoccupation with spiritual matters and this led to their separation in 1923. John had already met the woman who would prove to be his soul-mate, the schoolmistress and Theosophist Jessie Page, with whom he had co-founded a publishing imprint to promote his own works a couple of years earlier. The couple married soon after Carrie’s death in 1926, embarking on a lifelong partnership during which they shared their prophetic visions. They actually began to participate in one another’s dreams when, it is claimed, “they both dreamt that they were summoned into the presence of a great Angel, told that Christ was about to begin His Descent through the Celestial Planes to the Earth and asked to help in the Preparation for His Coming. This great Angel, of the order of the Thrones, was to become their constant Guide and helper in the years ahead.”²

John Ward’s beliefs and practices comprised elements that many Christians today would feel uncomfortable with. We should keep in mind that Spiritualism was popular in England a century ago. During the onset of World War I, Ward spent time teaching in Burma where he took a keen interest in Buddhism, Hinduism and Eastern traditions, strengthening his own convictions about reincarnation. It was these esoteric influences, combined with his sometimes turbulent association with Freemasonry, that paved the way for what he came to consider his life’s mission.

Freemasonry Woven into the Rich Tapestry

John Ward was born into a world of blossoming spiritual exploration and experimentation. The esoteric landscape of late Victorian England was dotted with communities devoted to Eastern mysticism, the Kabbalah and Hermetic texts, as well as scores of Rosicrucian and Theosophist groups. Geoffrey Ginn points out: “Although Freemasonry was not generally seen as occult, initiates were able to use its lodge meetings and reading groups to pursue esoteric topics and interests. Consequently, active Freemasons were in the vanguard of the occult revival at the end of the nineteenth century.”³ A number of Masonic researchers argued that the symbols and rituals of the Craft derived their roots from ancient Egyptian mystery cults. With the objective of establishing this claim, John became the founding secretary of the Masonic Study Society (MSS) in 1921. It was a pursuit he relished, continuing to attend the MSS meetings even after he later severed other links to Freemasonry and delivering more than a dozen papers to them over the next fifteen years.⁴

Not only did Ward appear untrue to his Christian origins as he delved deeper into ancient mysticism, he also succeeded in alienating many of his fellow Masons. He saw in Freemasonry the characteristics of, “The ancient Egyptian Mysteries, the Eleusinian Mysteries of Greece, the Mithraic Mysteries of Persia, the Adonaic Mysteries of Syria, the Cabiric Mysteries of the island of Samothrace, the Druidic Mysteries of primordial Britain, and the Gnostics of the early Christian era…”⁵ For him, these mysteries concurred with the knowledge of the afterlife imparted to him by his beloved departed relatives, HJL and RLW.

It was in 1929 that John and Jessie Ward began their ‘public work’ as religious leaders, establishing the original ‘Confraternity of the Kingdom of Christ’ and setting up an altar in a spare room in their house. John adopted the title ‘Reverend Father’ and celebrated communion in the traditional Christian manner, at the same time conducting a group of devotees in prayers and hymns that he had written himself. Jessie would come to be known by their followers as ‘Reverend Mother’. Notwithstanding the use of Christian titles, their practices continued to embrace the essence of Hinduism and Buddhism, mingled together with the doctrines of Spiritualism and reincarnation. 

The small band of founding members – some of whom stayed in the Confraternity for the rest of their lives – pooled their assets and, when John resigned his job of twelve years and could add his generous separation bonus of seven hundred and fifty pounds, they purchased Hadley Hall on London’s northern outskirts. This mansion had been designed as two houses under one roof and sat on three acres of gardens. One of these dwellings now became The Abbey of Christ the King.

The Original Abbey in England

Life at London’s Abbey in the 1930s could best be described as monastic, with a strict daily routine of work and prayer. In addition to Father Ward’s study and library, the basement became a gallery for his treasured collectibles: antiquities, rare books and artefacts, tapestries and paintings. A small private school was set up on the estate and named St Michael’s College – a forerunner of today’s school bearing the same name alongside the Abbey in Queensland, Australia. And, like the modern-day Abbey complex, the founding members put their greatest effort into establishing a substantial and well-respected museum. As the Wards continued to add thousands of items to their collection, the exhibition extended out into the gardens in the form of replica historic and prehistoric buildings, eventually christened as the Abbey Folk Park. It proved extremely popular with the public, providing much-needed income for the community. 

Surviving site plans of the Folk Park reveal how far the Confraternity went in not only entertaining but educating students and adults alike. It included a Roman Villa, African Bazaar, Chinese Temple of Initiation, Japanese garden, a conservatory, greenhouse, a forge and smithy shop and even a witch’s cottage. 

John Ward had another motivation for developing the site that was not well known to the general public: he believed the world was in the ‘End Times’ and expected the imminent return of Christ, making The Abbey Folk Park an ‘ark for the ages’, a kind of time-capsule to preserve part of the old civilisation for the coming New Age. He envisaged it as the ‘Kingdom of the Wise’.

The Threads of Christian Traditions & Western Orthodoxy

One challenge to be met was the fact that neither John Ward nor any of his followers were ordained clergy, making their celebration of communion and other sacraments technically invalid. Soon after moving into The Abbey, ‘Father Ward’ managed to secure an endorsement as an affiliate of the Church of England from the Bishop of St Albans, on the recommendation of a mutual friend who was an Anglican Canon and fellow Freemason. However, this was only meant to authorise him as a lay preacher to his own community and the Anglicans made it clear it did not allow him to ‘minister the word of God’. A rift between them was inevitable and, after it occurred at the start of 1935, Ward would go on to have himself ordained in no less than three different religious organisations.

John Ward was what church officials called an episcopi vagantes, meaning ‘wandering bishop’ or ‘bishop at large’. His first affiliation outside the Anglicans was with the Autonomous African Universal Church when he was consecrated as a bishop by its London-based Primate, Mar Kwamin. Soon after that, when doubt was cast over Mar Kwamin’s authority to hold office in England, Father Ward sought advice from the elderly Archbishop John Sibley of the Orthodox Catholic Church. The two men clicked and agreed that the Abbey of Christ the King should be incorporated into the Orthodox Catholic Church, contributing much needed numbers to Sibley’s congregation, while at the same time granting Ward’s Abbey Church the institutional affiliation it craved. His second ordination is recorded by Geoffrey Ginn thus: 

Ward was baptised and re-confirmed, ordained deacon and, finally, solemnly admitted to the Sacred Office of the Priesthood by the authority of Archbishop Sibley’s hand and seal. In further ceremonies the following day, Ward was solemnly consecrated as a Bishop in the Church of God and commissioned as its Chancellor of the Province (England).⁶

During World War II John and Jessie Ward struggled financially and were dragged through a court case brought by the parents of a teenage girl in their community, the charge being enticement of a minor. This resulted in damages of five hundred pounds being awarded against them, taking a toll on their funds as well as their health, reputation and confidence. Wartime saw membership numbers and income of many other itinerant English bishops flounder too, leading to an initiative to unify the various strands of the episcopi vagantes – and to the third ordination of Father Ward.

A group of six autonomous Christian churches merged under the leadership of Hugh George de Willmot Newman, who had recently been disavowed by the Syrian Orthodox (Jacobite) Patriarch on whose authority he depended. Forming a council, they declared the Syrian Church to be in schism and re-constituted themselves as a Western Orthodox Church. This was in contrast to Eastern Orthodoxy, which sprang from the first century Christian missionaries in the Eastern, Greek-speaking part of the Roman Empire. Newman took for himself the title Mar Georgius, Archbishop of Glastonbury, which he called the Occidental Jerusalem. Thus Father Ward received from this new church his third consecration as its ‘Archbishop of Olivet’, thereby bringing his Orthodox Catholic Church into its fold.

“Orthodox Catholicism offered itself to Ward as a religious vehicle that was necessarily flexible in matters of formal doctrine, but charged with a sense of history and a living heritage of faith,” writes Geoffrey Ginn in his departmental journal, Crossroads, adding, “In the first instance, then, Orthodox Catholicism appealed to his sense of historical drama. Ward took seriously the claims of Orthodox Catholicism to be an historic rapprochement between Christianity’s two great warring factions: ‘the Orthodox Catholic Church in itself’, he wrote, ‘marks the reunion of the Eastern and Western Churches, which mutually excommunicated each other in the 11th century, since when Christendom has been divided into camps’.”⁷

This refers to the mutual excommunication of the Eastern and Western Orthodox Churches in 1054. The identity of today’s Orthodox Catholic Church at the Abbey in Caboolture can be further linked to a later separation in 1870, when a number of Roman Catholics renounced their allegiance to Pope Pius IX following his declaration of infallibility. Having no bishops of their own, the breakaways could not be confirmed or ordained, so they contacted the Old Catholic Church of Holland, which had already become disassociated from the Vatican but retained valid Orders. Another historical figure, the priest Francis Xavier Alvarez and his followers in India, severed ties with the Papacy and obtained consecration by turning to the Syrian Christians, whose bishops on the Malabar Coast were under the jurisdiction of the Patriarch of Antioch, thereby adding to the bewildering melting pot of ‘bishops at large’.

Thus these ‘Old Catholics’ (the breakaways) could claim two possible lines of ordination: the first from St Peter and the Western Church in Rome via St Augustine, the fourth century Bishop of Hippo; the other from the Eastern Church, this lineage tracing itself back directly to the church founded in Antioch in 34 AD by St Peter himself. 

Stations on the Journey

By 1945 the effects of the war and the legal proceedings against them left the Wards disillusioned with Britain, and it occurred to them that their Kingdom of the Wise might be destined to emerge in a foreign land. Fortuitously, John Ward’s old friend Gerald Gardner, who had designed the witch’s cottage for him, expressed an interest in taking over the cottage and its artefacts in exchange for a piece of land with a farmhouse he owned in Cyprus and wanted to offload. Cyprus held great appeal for the Confraternity – it was an English territory in the Eastern Mediterranean with a pleasant climate and, most importantly, it already embraced the tradition of Orthodox Christianity. The following year, after selling off the more valuable of their antiquities and library books, the small community packed up whatever they had left and made the two-week voyage from Southampton to Cyprus.

Disappointingly, Gardner’s farmhouse turned out to be derelict and sat on barren land but, undeterred, they simply walked away from it and immediately purchased a more suitable property on the coast close to Limassol. This land was more than a hectare and boasted an orange orchard with a furnished two-storey house plus gardener’s cottage, outdoor brick oven and a chicken house with poultry. At a cost of two and a half thousand pounds, it was a drain on their funds, so they were relieved a few months later when they received over four thousand pounds from the sale of Hadley Hall back in London. Here they would stay for more than eight years, earning their living from farming and handicrafts they produced.

For the Reverend Father John Ward, Cyprus was to be the last station on his life journey. Before his passing due to a stroke in mid-1949, he fathered a child with one of the ladies among his flock, Ursula Cuffe, and their son John was raised by Jessie Ward as her own. Growing up with Father Ward’s tradition and principles, the mature son would go on to be known as Bishop John Cuffe, presiding over an off-shoot of the present-day Orthodox Catholic Church in Queensland. A number of the older members of the original Confraternity were to pass away soon after Ward and the remaining followers had become restless by the mid-fifties, scouting around for a new home base. After looking first at Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and India, they decided to head for Australia where they settled briefly in Sydney and then in the Blue Mountains. When Jessie suffered a bout of pneumonia, she decided to head to the warmer climate of Queensland to recover, accompanied by a few others, including the nine year-old John Cuffe.

The influence of John Sebastian Marlow Ward lives on and the depth and diversity of his legacy can be gleaned from the titles of some of his books: Gone West: Three Narratives of After-Death Experience; Freemasonry and the Ancient Gods; The Hung Society; The Kingdom of the Wise: Life’s Problems; The Psychic Powers of Christ; and articles: ‘The Hindoo Symbol of the Point Within the Circle’, ‘The Knights Templar’, ‘The Aims and Ideals of Freemasonry’, ‘Chinese Secret Societies’.⁸ Author Geoffrey Ginn neatly sums up his character in the final paragraph of his book: 

In J.S.M. Ward we find, indisputably, a man of many parts. A historian with a strong sense of the romantic, a visionary with heightened spiritual sensibilities, he was a questing soul, curious until his last days about the human past, how we might comprehend its mysteries, and the life beckoning beyond that of everyday sense experience.⁹

The Ongoing Legacy in Queensland

The community began settling at its present site of the Abbey at Caboolture, Queensland, half a century ago, and Jessie Ward survived until three years later, providing a clear link back to the organisation she co-founded with her husband in the late 1920s. What makes today’s Orthodox Catholic Church stand out from other Christian sects are their teachings on the afterlife, their representation of the Holy Spirit as the feminine aspect of the Godhead, and how at the very core is their belief in the imminent return of Christ. Concerning reincarnation they say, “that the journey of each Soul encompasses many lives to complete its journey back to God”; and concerning Catholic traditions, they affirm their church “holds to the tenets of the Christian Faith as enunciated in the Nicene Creed.”¹⁰

Its followers seek spiritual development, both on a personal level and also collectively as a Confraternity. According to their publicity material:

Community members strive to live a balanced life that revolves around attending Church Services, devotion and personal prayer and the practicalities of everyday life. The four main areas of the work of the Confraternity include the Church, the Farm, the College and the Museum. Holding public services, visiting the sick, undertaking works of charity and giving public lectures form part of the ongoing work of the Confraternity members.¹¹

In keeping with the values established at the original Abbey Folk Park in England over eighty-five years ago, the tranquil setting at Caboolture is also home to the Abbey Museum, as well as the independent co-ed school, St Michael’s College. Describing itself as a welcoming community, their church and museum at The Abbey Place are open to the public.

Further reading: Archangels & Archaeology: J.S.M. Ward’s Kingdom of the Wise by Geoffrey Ginn

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Footnotes

1. Geoffrey Ginn, Archangels & Archaeology: J.S.M. Ward’s Kingdom of the Wise, Sussex Acad. Press 2012, 261 

2. ‘Orthodox Catholic Church of the New Age, Life of J. S. M. Ward’, http://orthodoxcatholicnew.tripod.com/id7.html

3. Geoffrey Ginn, Op. cit. 29

4. Ibid 106

5. Ibid 109, quoting from Secret Societies by Noel Gist, 1940

6. Ibid 197

7. Crossroads, Special Issue 2006, AEN Conference (page 11) www.uq.edu.au/crossroads/Archives/Vol%205/Issue%201%202010/Vol5Iss110%20-%207.Ginn%20%28p.45-57%29.pdf

8. For full catalogue of publications, see Archangels & Archaeology, Op. cit., 297–310

9. Geoffrey Ginn, Op. cit. 265

10. http://abbeychurch.com.au/history-of-the-church/ 

11. http://abbeychurch.com.au/history-of-the-confraternity/

© New Dawn Magazine and the respective author.
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From New Dawn 161 (Mar-Apr 2017)

Early twentieth century Australia saw a flowering of alternative spirituality when a number of communities, particularly in Sydney and Melbourne, embraced the influx of occult and spiritualistic practices from Victorian England. 

A central figure linking many of the well-known characters and societies of the era was the young Vivian (later Vyvyan) Deacon (1895–1938), a medium, herbalist and respected public speaker. Among his circle of associates were Aleister Crowley, Krishnamurti, Annie Besant and Charles Webster Leadbeater, the author and spiritualist Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and the artist Norman Lindsay. Deacon’s affiliations, that started out with the Order of the Star of the East, would go on to include Theosophy, Gnosticism, the Golden Dawn, Crowley’s OTO, and his own Christian Mystics of the Rosy Cross.

Certain recurring themes in Vyvyan’s life were established during his boyhood in England where he grew up, before setting out for Australia via India at the age of seventeen. From his father Cornelius he took on, probably at a subconscious level, the pattern of an itinerant healer, dispensing unconventional remedies to a needy public. ‘Corrie’, as he was affectionately known, came and went from the family home until, eventually, he just never came back. Although little Vyvyan was led to believe his father had died, Corrie lived on and was briefly reunited with his son before his actual death at Christmas in 1930. His passion for herbalism and alternative therapies passed on to Vyvyan, woven into the rich tapestry of his life and guiding his purpose. His absence was also to impress itself on the psyche of his offspring, resulting in Vyvyan’s own inability to settle down, with frequent separations from his future wife and family.

As a boy Vyvyan was frail and sensitive, given to bouts of ill health and often needing care. In place of formal schooling he received his education largely from Sunday schools, drama lessons and some home tutoring. Like many youngsters deprived of paternal attention, he was drawn to older father figures from an early age. At first these were clergymen and teachers, such as his local vicar Rev. Horsfall and drama teacher Rev. Mills, then on his arrival in Australia in 1912 he was taken under the wing of middle aged actor Roy Redgrave. In Sydney, he made the acquaintance of Theosophist Charles W. Leadbeater who, no doubt, also had appeal as a father figure. 

The predominant driving force pulsing through his veins, however, came from his mother Elizabeth, an intriguing personality who projected her own spiritual aura. Elizabeth Deacon, nee Browning, was the cousin of Robert Browning who, with his family’s claimed Rosicrucian lineage, introduced her to a wealth of colourful characters, including Oscar Wilde, who would become the Deacons’ next-door neighbour. Elizabeth was close to Oscar’s wife Constance, sharing her interest in the occult, with the pair attending séances together. In fact, Vyvyan’s name was a copy of Wilde’s own son’s name and, although the Deacons originally used the spelling ‘Vivian’ to differentiate them, he was to later change the spelling himself, noting a mystical significance in the letter ‘Y’. The Browning’s referrals also included W.B. Yeats who, in turn, opened the doors for Elizabeth to eminent members of the Golden Dawn. It was in 1895, the year of Vyvyan’s birth, that she made the acquaintance of a young James Ingall Wedgwood – a regular correspondent of Robert Browning – who would one day become one of Vyvyan’s teachers.

The trait that was to place Vyvyan in the ranks of Charles W. Leadbeater, Annie Besant and Aleister Crowley was that he, like they, did not simply follow and uphold traditional beliefs and philosophies. They claimed to actually communicate directly with otherworldly beings and, at times, act as vehicles in transmitting their messages to the Earthly realm. 

Vyvyan first realised this ability when he was only eight years old. The occasion was an open-air Sunday school service where the regular preacher failed to show up. As the service was about to be cancelled, Vyvyan arose, walked to the dais and spontaneously began preaching. While this impressed the congregation, he himself was left feeling bewildered, especially in the face of some adults present who accused him of being demonically possessed. One kindly woman, however, comforted him by explaining that he had the rare and special gift of being used by those who dwelt on a higher plane. The event was publicised by the Daily Mirror, which hailed him as the ‘Boy Preacher’.

A Meeting of Minds in Australia

Vyvyan had met Eunice Mary Lew Tong, who was five years his junior, when he first arrived in Melbourne, and was besotted with her right from the start. In early 1916 he decided that a move to Sydney was in order and, not wanting to leave fifteen-year-old Eunice behind, they successfully sought permission from her recently widowed mother to marry and travel interstate together. It was his friend Veni Cooper-Mathieson, herself a Sydney-sider, who persuaded them that her city offered a more appropriate environment in which Vyvyan could establish himself as a healer, psychic medium and speaker. Sister Veni, as she called herself, was the voice of the New Thought movement and knew that their mutual acquaintance Charles W. Leadbeater, a member of the Theosophical Society (TS) and the Liberal Catholic Church (LCC), would open a whole new avenue for Vyvyan.

The Deacons lived rough when they first arrived in Sydney, moving accommodation from one spot to another, and it was only with the assistance of Theosophists Frank Bennett and James Wedgwood that they were able to set up a small herbal dispensary in Junction St, North Sydney. Bennett was said to be Aleister Crowley’s appointed representative in Australia for the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO)¹ and Vyvyan immersed himself in the activities of this group as well as the TS and their Esoteric Section, before going on to found his own society in 1917 called Christian Mystics of the Rosy Cross (CMRC).

Vyvyan had already befriended Krishnamurti, who was the same age, and on Sundays would often attend his meetings of the Order of the Star of the East, after having first participated in the Liberal Catholic Church service and then, later in the evening, going on to deliver his own lectures in public halls.

All these activities naturally kept him away from Eunice, often for days at a time, and she was left feeling lonely and depressed. Like her mother-in-law before her, Eunice had to adjust to the continual comings and goings. Notwithstanding the absences, the couple eventually had two daughters, Sybil, born 1918, then Vivienne in 1922, who would go on in adult life to write an in-depth account of her father’s life. 

Concerning the scandal around Leadbeater’s relationship with Krishnamurti and other young men, she writes: “Vyvyan and Krishnamurti were born within a few months of each other and each received training from Leadbeater. It would be logical to surmise that their treatment by Leadbeater was similar. Vyvyan certainly admitted that Leadbeater had regressed him to previous incarnations. […] We know from his past that Vyvyan was particularly susceptible to the influence of older men, father figures that filled the void left by his own father’s disappearance from his early childhood. My own recollection of Leadbeater is of his being rather creepy, in contrast with the attractive Wedgwood.”²

Along with practicing hypnotism as a means to achieving higher levels of consciousness, Vyvyan, as a herbalist, had access to mind-altering drugs with which he experimented together with Frank Bennett and another friend, Vincent Pantin. He often stayed out overnight with them rather than at home with his wife. There were several occasions when a shortage of funds forced Vyvyan to seek labouring work and one such time was mid-1918, when he and Pantin went off fruit picking for a couple of months in Wyalong, in country New South Wales. Eunice busied herself in his absence, acting as his proxy in filling medicinal scripts for patients back in Sydney.

Vyvyan remained close to Leadbeater during 1919 while they studied the ‘Egyptian Rite of the Ancient Mysteries’ together. This was the year the scandal broke around Leadbeater’s involvement with young men, so the Deacons thought it prudent to distance themselves for a while by moving into a commune that had been founded by the late renowned naturist and sex-reformer William Chidley. 

Early the following year, when ardent Spiritualist Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was preparing to tour Australasia, Vyvyan was approached by a prominent New Zealand Spiritualist group to visit them and pave the way for the events there. Knowing he already had a good reputation in that country, he eagerly set off for Christchurch in May 1920 for what was to become a two year stay. His daughter would later write about the spiritual atmosphere at the time and the flavour of his lecture material which blended Theosophy, Fabianism and New Thought together with Marx, Freud and Darwin, plus more than a hint of the New Testament. From a lecture in January 1921, she quotes a passage that underlines how he viewed the “constitution of man,” in what is now accepted by modern-day psycho-spirituality as the “triune nature” of humankind:

Man’s consciousness can be divided into three. The conscious mind corresponds to the economic world, the object world, and is the mind one always used in the present. Man’s subconscious mind corresponds to the subject world and from the depth of the subconsciousness come the demands for those things that are termed ‘the rights of the people’. […] Man’s super-conscious mind corresponds to the ideal world and holds within it all the desires and possibilities of the future. Intuitions from the super-conscious mind might be said to emanate from the spirit of man – the highest part of him.³

Shortly after moving on to Wellington, Vyvyan was joined by his mother Elizabeth, who had already followed him out from England to Australia, then soon afterwards Eunice also sailed to New Zealand to be with him when he fell ill. All the while he managed to earn sufficient income but when they all returned to Sydney in Easter 1922, to coincide with the arrival of Theosophical Society leader Annie Besant, the only means of earning a living was to conduct séances. He enhanced his reputation through the novelty of using aluminium trumpets as the passive recipients of sounds created on the psychic plane. The number of sitters he allowed to attend his “direct voice séances” was high, frequently twenty-three to twenty-eight people per session, as he needed to make each meeting pay as much as possible. It came as no surprise to Eunice then that, after receiving a letter from the Melbourne Spiritualist Society offering him a contract for steady work as a lecturer and medium, he quickly packed and set off, leaving her behind once again.

Public Lectures and Bad Press

It was 1924 and Vyvyan’s residence in the inner Melbourne suburb of West Richmond became known as ‘The Abbey’. Although Eunice and their two young daughters were soon reunited with him there, the relationship proceeded in an intermittent fashion, with them often living separately and Vyvyan engaging in a number of affairs. During such times Eunice tried to remain philosophical and console herself with prayer. She frowned on his increasing consumption of alcohol and would keep her distance from him when he drank. When they did share residence together, it was often with Eunice and her two daughters sleeping in one room and her husband in another. This was a repetitive pattern that continued right to the end.

The press published articles about Vyvyan from time to time, some of them expressing genuine interest in his work, while others were not so flattering. It was a defamatory piece in the Melbourne Truth in October 1928, under the headline “Vyvyan Deacon is a Fraud,” that set off a chain of life-changing consequences. The story accused him of being a parasitic charlatan who extorted money from his followers, describing him as a “Humbug churchman who is subject to two spiritual influences, ethereal and bottled.”⁴

Vyvyan engaged a solicitor and instigated a case of libel against the paper. In spite of the Truth engaging the legal services of the up-and-coming lawyer Robert Gordon Menzies – later to become Australia’s longest serving prime minister – the following year a jury ruled in Vyvyan’s favour, awarding him a record amount of 3,500 pounds. Naturally the Truth appealed the decision and it would be a year later in mid-1930 before they finally settled out of court. 

In the meantime Vyvyan had already decided to do a series of lectures in Tasmania, where Spiritualism and New Thought had gained wide popularity. His initial trip to Launceston was well received and covered favourably in the press. An overall view of his teachings can be gleaned from talks he delivered in early November 1929, as reported by The Examiner.

In the first of these, in the city’s Kings Hall on 1 November titled “Spiritual Science,” he revealed his underlying belief in the priority of spirit over matter, saying:

[T]he spiritual world warned mankind many years ago of the coming world war, and it could be shown that many recent discoveries in the scientific world were foretold from the spirit world years before the verification ultimately transpired. Spiritualism contended that the world had never been without adequate spiritual guidance at any time; that to every age and clime had just so much of the divine been made manifest as was suited to the proper growth of that particular age and clime.⁵

On the following Sunday night in his lecture “What Happens after Death” he decried the fact that Christendom was unable to provide positive knowledge about the afterlife. From The Examiner’s report we read:

As a matter of fact there are, broadly speaking, two ways whereby actual knowledge may be gained as to the fate awaiting our dear ones who have passed through the portal of death into the larger and fuller life of the spiritual world. The first way is accessible to all, without very much trouble being necessary. It is the way whereby knowledge is given to a person through some outside agency or at mediumship. The second way, the more satisfactory way, is that entailing some years of training and hard work, nevertheless truly worth-while, whereby one develops one’s own psychic faculties and observes the facts for oneself. Men like Sir William Crookes, Alfred Russell Wallace, and Sir Oliver Lodge are pioneers of the first way, and Andrew Jackson Davis, Rev. Stanton Moses, M.A. and Dr. Rudolf Steiner are pioneers of the second way.⁶

A week later he gave a talk on “Personal Magnetism” at the Mechanic’s Hall. This theme continues to be topical in its present-day form as ‘The Law of Attraction’. Vyvyan’s angle provided insight and guidance to his attentive audience. 

Once we understood the nature of mental currents, we would learn that we each were a mental storage battery pregnant with potency. […] The saying in the Scriptures: To him that hath, shall be given, and from him that hath not, shall be taken away, even the little that he hath, could only be intelligible to the person who understood magnetic force. […] Desire in all forms is a mental current charged with power, and recognition of this fact and the utilisation of the power contained in desire by refusing to gratify each desire, thus extracting its power for one’s use, is the secret of personal magnetism. A certain restraint in thought, feeling, and word, is the insulation of magnetic power.⁷

It is hard to discern whether his ideas on this subject may have been influenced by contemporary American New Thought exponents like Wallace Wattles and Napoleon Hill. Of course, by this time the fifth Solvay conference had taken place in Brussels where Einstein, Plank, Heisenberg and Bohr had acknowledged the existence of ‘mind over matter’.⁸ The practical element of this work was famously revisited with the release of Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret in 2006, putting personal magnetism and ‘The Law of Attraction’ back in vogue.

The Final Years

Being flush with funds from the defamation settlement, Vyvyan found himself yearning to return to England and, in late 1930, bought tickets for Eunice, Sybil, Vivienne and himself for the voyage from Melbourne to Southampton on the SS Jervis Bay. He would never set foot on Australian soil again.

Although Vyvyan shared mutual acquaintances with Aleister Crowley, the pair did not actually meet until 1931. Crowley particularly admired his new friend’s skill in filing lawsuits against defamation and used the same tactic successfully himself. While their relationship essentially revolved around occult matters, Vyvyan did find himself constantly called upon to help scrape together enough cash to keep Crowley solvent. They remained close over the next seven years as Vyvyan supported himself by conducting séances, demonstrating hypnotism on-stage, performing psychic services and delivering lectures – one of the last ever being a joint presentation with Alice Bailey in late 1937 titled ‘The Cosmic Christ’. 

A few months prior to that he had collapsed in the street, sustaining a skull fracture that was never properly treated and then, following a second fall and hospitalisation shortly afterwards, he passed away peacefully on 19 February 1938. He was 42 years of age.

Thus, the curtain fell on one of our most gifted proponents of psychic mediumship – one who formed a pivotal link in the golden chain of Australia’s esoteric legacy.

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Footnotes

1. For OTO reference on Bennett see: www.collective777.com/#!oto–thelema/c1kx2 

2. The Uncommon Medium by Vivienne Browning, 1993, Skoob Books Publishing Ltd, London, 46

3. Ibid., 77

4. Ibid., 123

5. National Library of Australia, http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/
article/51629162

6. National Library of Australia, http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/
article/51629583

7. National Library of Australia, http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/
article/51630954

8. For more on the mind-over-matter debate see websites such as www.newthoughtwisdom.com/quantum-communication-mind-science-
consciousness.html

© New Dawn Magazine and the respective author.
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This article was published in New Dawn 170 (Sept-Oct 2018)

The masterfully told stories of a magical nanny that held adults and children alike spellbound for decades might incline readers to think that Australian author Pamela (P.L.) Travers merely had an over-active imagination. The truth is that her talent blossomed out of a fertile garden of occult teachings and paranormal experiences, nurtured and inspired by some real-life, exceptionally gifted personalities. 

The movie Saving Mr Banks and the documentary The Real Mary Poppins treated the public to insights into her relationship with her father, the influence of the Auntie she called Sass, and her tumultuous association with Walt Disney. Of equal gravity was her lifelong attraction to mystical pursuits and the guidance of the philosopher and mystic George (G.I.) Gurdjieff.

Travers was born in Maryborough, Queensland, as Helen Lyndon Goff in 1899. Her father, Travers Robert Goff, whom she adored, moved the family to the small community of Allora on the Darling Downs in 1905, where he died of tuberculosis at the age of 43. It was then that Christina Saraset, or Aunt Sass as she liked to be called, came on the scene to help out, and Pamela and her family moved once again, this time to Bowral in New South Wales. 

It is now common knowledge that the character of Mr Banks in her novels was based on her father, Travers Goff, while Aunt Sass, who ‘flew in from the east’, would serve as the model for Mary Poppins herself, who famously blew in from the east with her parrot umbrella and magical carpetbag. The real-life Aunt Sass was a strong, no-nonsense presence in her niece’s life, as well as her work. Travers described her as a “bulldog with a ferocious exterior” but with a “heart tender to the point of sentimentality.”

Pamela Travers has been described by some observers as “mysterious and prickly,” and one could form the opinion, based on Emma Thompson’s portrayal of her – as praiseworthy as it was from an artistic point of view – that the writer was full of herself, close-minded and perhaps even emotionally cold. And this notion might be further reinforced by the fact that she never married, bore children of her own or formed a family unit in the conventional sense. Yet such an impression would be completely false.

As a young woman Helen Goff was an actress, dancer and a poet before turning her hand to journalism. She toured Australia and New Zealand as a member of Allan Wilkie’s Shakespearean Company, adopting the stage name Pamela Lyndon Travers. At the age of twenty-four she travelled to Ireland, where the Irish poet and mystic George (A.E.) Russell became her mentor. As editor of the Irish Statesman, Russell, whose kindness towards younger writers was legendary, initially accepted some of her poems for publication. From 1925 onward she was introduced to Theosophical thought and literary figures familiar with the Theosophical Society, including T.S. Eliot, Oliver St. John Gogarty and William Butler Yeats, the latter being one of the leaders of the Golden Dawn.

Gurdjieff, Mysticism & Spirituality

Travers studied the Gurdjieff system under Jane Heap, and in March 1936, with the help of Jessie Orage (widow of The New Age editor Alfred Richard Orage), she met the mystic George Gurdjieff, who in turn introduced her to the paths of Sufism and Zen. He encouraged her to explore Eastern religion and, during her thirties and forties, she delved into Buddhism, later gravitating to Jiddu Krishnamurti.

The successful writer travelled to New York City during World War II while working for the British Ministry of Information. At the invitation of her friend, the US Commissioner of Indian Affairs, John Collier, Travers spent two summers living among the Navajo, Hopi and Pueblo Indians, studying their mythology and folklore.¹ Episodes such as these reveal something of Pamela Travers’ true character and her perpetual thirst for occult knowledge. She had no qualms about lodging at a reservation and formed a close bond with the Navajo people in Arizona who did the honour of bestowing an Indian name on her, although it was one that she always kept secret.² After the war, she remained in the USA and became Writer-in-Residence at Radcliffe College and Smith College, Massachusetts. 

Journalist and critic Jerry Griswold, in an essay tribute to Pamela Travers after her death, asserted that she had “lived for several years” with the Navajos and, during another period, had “studied for several years” in Kyoto under a Zen master,³ although in his recollections he probably exaggerated the time spans somewhat. After her American sojourn, she returned to England, making only one brief visit to Sydney in 1960 while on her way to Japan to study Zen mysticism.

Arcane Influences & Didactic Writings

The question arises as to what degree the writings of Pamela Travers were influenced, guided or even manipulated by her spiritual masters? She met George Gurdjieff some years after the first edition of Mary Poppins had been published (in 1934), followed by the equally well-received Mary Poppins Comes Back (1935). Any direct influence by Gurdjieff is more likely to be found in the later Mary Poppins books, particularly Mary Poppins Opens the Door (1944) and Mary Poppins in the Park (1952).

In 1970 Pamela Travers authored a contribution on Gurdjieff for Richard Cavendish’s encyclopedia Man, Myth & Magic (see page 48), then went on to publish an insightful ten-page booklet George Ivanovich Gurdjieff three years later. In that tract she reflects on the various traditions that were woven into Gurdjieff’s work and, by extension, her own thought and philosophy: 

What was the source of his teaching? True to his role, Gurdjieff never openly disclosed it. By examining his writings and the numerous commentaries upon them it might be possible to discover parallels in various traditions: Tantric Buddhism, Hinduism, Sufism, Greek Orthodoxy – possible, but hardly profitable. For the fundamental features of his method cannot be traced to any one source. Ouspensky quotes him as admitting, I will say that, if you like, this is esoteric Christianity. There seems no reason to reject this when one remembers that Christianity, as Gurdjieff knew it, was the heir of the ages and must have drawn to itself elements from very early pre-Christian traditions, Hittite, Assyrian, Phrygian, Persian; and there is nothing so explosive as old ideas restated in contemporary terms as the Western world was to discover when Gurdjieff burst upon it.⁴

In the same publication she lists several celebrated editors and writers of the day who socialised with Gurdjieff:

Great feasts where, under the influence of good food, vodka and the watchful eye of the Master, opportunities were provided, for those who had the courage, to come face to face with themselves. The hardiest among them, those who could rise to the level of being serious, were allowed to transmit something of the teaching to newer pupils.⁵

This issue of the transmission of the teachings poses the further question as to whether the novels penned by Travers carried veiled arcane messages intended only for the more astute, esoterically inclined among her audience. We should, nevertheless, resist the temptation to read too much of Gurdjieff into the Mary Poppins’ stories. In an interview which appeared in the Paris Review in 1982, the interviewers asked Travers whether “Mary Poppins’ teaching – if one can call it that – resemble that of Christ in his parables.”⁶ Travers replied: “My Zen master, because I’ve studied Zen for a long time, told me that every one (and all the stories weren’t written then) of the Mary Poppins stories is in essence a Zen story. And someone else, who is a bit of a Don Juan, told me that every one of the stories is a moment of tremendous sexual passion, because it begins with such tension and then it is reconciled and resolved in a way that is gloriously sensual.” The answer is clarified by the following question (posed by the interviewer): “So people can read anything and everything into the stories?” Travers’ response: “Indeed.”

In Man, Myth & Magic, Pamela Travers wanted to make it clear that the work of her Master in no way constituted Black Magic. She wrote: 

It is clear from Gurdjieff’s writings that hypnotism, mesmerism and various arcane methods of expanding consciousness must have played a large part in the studies of the Seekers of Truth. None of these processes, however, is to be thought of as having any bearing on what is called Black Magic, which, according to Gurdjieff, “has always one definite characteristic. It is the tendency to use people for some, even the best of aims, without their knowledge and understanding, either by producing in them faith and infatuation or by acting upon them through fear. There is, in fact, neither red, green nor yellow magic. There is ‘doing’. Only ‘doing’ is magic.” Properly to realise the scale of what Gurdjieff meant by magic, one has to remember his continually repeated aphorism, “Only he who can be can do,” and its corollary that, without “being” nothing is “done,” things simply “happen.”⁷

Travers insisted that the Mary Poppins stories had not come from herself but that there are “ideas floating around that pick on certain people.” She believed that her books were gifts of God, “given” to her, and quoted C. S. Lewis saying, “There is only one Creator, we merely mix the ingredients He gives us.”⁸ She declared that she was not a creator, simply a vessel, and never wrote specifically for children but was “grateful that children have included my books in their treasure trove.”

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What the Bee Knows

In addition to her well-known collection of novels, Pamela Travers wrote numerous non-fiction essays and books, especially in her later years. What The Bee Knows is a collection of spiritual essays. The back of the book describes it as “a honeycomb of essays pointing to the truth-of-things handed down in the great popular stories of cultures around the world.” And that is just what it is, a labyrinth of brief dissertations covering a range of esoteric, myth-based and biographical themes. She shares tales of her friendships with literary figures such as W.B. Yeats and A.E. Russell, of her studies among many religions of the world, of her early experience with fairy tale and folklore which shaped her character.

The Sphinx, the Pyramids, the stone temples are, all of them, ultimately, as flimsy as London Bridge; our cities but tents set up in the cosmos. We pass. But What The Bee Knows, the wisdom that sustains our passing life – however much we deny or ignore it – that for ever remains.⁹

Why did Pamela Travers choose the Bee as her metaphor? She wrote: 

I thought of Kerenyi – “Mythology occupies a higher position in the bios, the Existence, of a people in which it is still alive than poetry, storytelling or any other art.” And of Malinowski – “Myth is not merely a story told, but a reality lived.” And, along with those, the word “Pollen,” the most pervasive substance in the world, kept knocking at my ear. Or rather, not knocking, but humming. What hums? What buzzes? What travels the world? Suddenly I found what I sought. “What the bee knows,” I told myself. “That is what I’m after.”

But even as I patted my back, I found myself cursing, and not for the first time, the artful trickiness of words, their capriciousness, their lack of conscience. Betray them and they will betray you. Be true to them and, without compunction, they will also betray you, foxily turning all the tables, thumbing syntactical noses. For – note bene! – if you speak or write about What The Bee Knows, what the listener, or the reader, will get – indeed, cannot help but get – is Myth, Symbol, and Tradition! You see the paradox? The words, by their very perfidy – which is also their honourable intention – have brought us to where we need to be. For, to stand in the presence of paradox, to be spiked on the horns of dilemma, between what is small and what is great, microcosm and macrocosm, or, if you like, the two ends of the stick, is the only posture we can assume in front of this ancient knowledge – one could even say everlasting knowledge.”¹⁰

An Esoteric and Occult Bequest

Toward the end of her life Travers became increasingly interested in Sufism, a form of Islamic mysticism, particularly the Persian branch of it, through meetings with members of the fraternity and their publications in Britain. We can assume that she continued her search for life’s meaning among the world’s mystical and spiritual traditions right until the end. Perhaps she never felt she had reached the ultimate aim of Gurdjieff’s Work or ‘Fourth Way’, which held the goal of shattering one’s pretensions and ego, the stripping away of the personality and awakening to a higher consciousness.

It is no secret that the great success of author J.K. Rowling with that other fictional champion of magic in book and film, Harry Potter, owes something to Pamela Travers. Rowling was an admirer of Travers and adopted both her enigmatic disguise in initialling her first names and also her theme of flight, just as Travers had herself been inspired by J.M. Barrie’s ‘Peter Pan’. Rowling now ranks highly in the tradition of authors of youth fantasy classics, joining C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, J.M. Barrie and, of course, P.L. Travers. She also borrowed the name when she created the character of the Death-Eater wizard called Travers in her novels, portrayed by actor Tav MacDougall in the film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

In 1977 Pamela Travers was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire and in 1978 received an honorary degree from Chatham College, Pittsburgh, USA. She would spend the final years of her life in London’s Chelsea district, dying from the effects of an epileptic seizure, on 23 April 1996 at the age of ninety-six. What she contributed to literature is now legendary. What she bequeathed us in the way of mystical knowledge ought not be underestimated either. Her lifelong pursuit of spiritual wisdom significantly enriched the storehouse of esoteric teachings available to all those she called the ‘Seekers of Truth’.

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Footnotes

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P._L._Travers

2. www.biography.com/people/pl-travers-21358293

3. Revealing Herself to Herself: REMEMBRANCES by Jerry Griswold, Los Angeles Times, 16 June 1996

4. www.gurdjieff.org/travers1.htm

5. Ibid.

6. As quoted by Massimo Introvigne at: www.academia.edu/29792559/Mary_Poppins_goes_to_Hell_Pamela_Travers_Gurdjieff_and_the_Rhetorics_of_Fundamentalism

7. “Gurdjieff” in Man, Myth and Magic: Encyclopedia of the Supernatural (1970)

8. www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-p-l-travers-1306698.html

9. What the Bee Knows: Reflections on Myth, Symbol, and Story by P.L. Travers (1989)

10. “What the Bee Knows” in Parabola: The Magazine of Myth and Tradition, Vol. VI, No. 1 (February 1981); later published in What the Bee Knows: Reflections on Myth, Symbol, and Story (1989)

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