New Age Fi N De Siècle

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE NEW AGE FIN DE SIÈCLE Gary Lachman n this essay I’d like to address two points. First, that the fi n de siècle had an Ioptimistic, forward-looking, positive character, generally overshadowed by its more well-known “dark side”. And second, that the roots of much, if not all, of contemporary “alternative” thought and, for the sake of a better word, “New Age” philosophy can be found in this less well-known “positive” fi n de siècle. Establishing the second point will, I believe, do much to help establish the fi rst. That the fi n de siècle is generally characterized by “decadence” needs little arguing. Although the seeds of decline were planted earlier, 1884 can be seen as the offi cial starting date of the “decadent movement”. In that year, J.-K. Huysmans’ “breviary of decadence”, À Rebours, was published (Symons p. 76). Translated as “Against Nature” and “Against the Grain”, neither attempt quite captures the essence of the French, for which “up the asshole” would be a fair equivalent. This was the notorious “yellow-backed book” that sent Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray, as well as many others, on their exquisite roads to perdition. If we need more proof that decadence was in the air, eight years later Max Nordau’s bestselling Degeneration (1892) achieved world-fame by arguing that the spirit of the age was rife with exhaustion, hysteria, and enervation, expressed in the work of obvious “degener- ates” like Nietzsche, Ibsen, Wagner, and Baudelaire; that Baudelaire and Nietzsche died of syphilis, and that Ibsen wrote a play, Ghosts, about it, may suggest that Nordau had a point. In “Dregs”, the ennui-ridden poet Ernest Dowson (d. 1900) wrote of “the end of every song man sings”, and Arthur Machen’s hideously enter- taining novella The Great God Pan (1890) depicted the rise of blasphemous atavis- tic forces, dragging modern man down into erotic madness and disintegration. That “decadence” tapped into a deep, ever-present well of Weltschmerz is evidenced by the popularity it maintained well beyond the fi n de siècle. For example, Machen’s grotesque story, as well as his many others, enjoyed a revival in the United States in the 1920s, and at the same time, decadent pastiches like Ben Hecht’s Fantazius Mallare: A Mysterious Oath (1922) were still shocking enough to attract the attention of the authorities. Yet a decade before Huysmans’ dangerous book appeared, not to mention its train of epigones, a different kind of fi n de siècle had started brewing in, of all 611 — Gary Lachman — places, New York’s East Side. In Irving Place on 13 September 1875, three people came together to found an occult movement that would exert a profound infl uence, not only on modern spirituality and esotericism, but on practically the whole of modern culture itself. Two of the three were men: William Quan Judge and Colonel Henry Steel Olcott, both with distinguished careers behind them. But the third, female member of this triumvirate was the real centre of attraction. Before she put her considerable stamp on practically all aspects of modern spirituality, the eccentric Russian Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (born Helena von Hahn, 1831–91) had had an incredible roller-coaster ride of a life. There are varying reports of her activities prior to 1874, when it becomes possible to independently corroborate accounts of her exploits, and much controversy surrounds them, but as far as the story goes, H. P. B., as she was called, must rank as one of the most remarkable women of the nineteenth or practically any other century. She claimed to have travelled widely across Europe, the Near East, North and South America, India, Tibet, North Africa, and other points, at a time when such travel, especially by a solitary woman, was exceptional or, in the case of Tibet, unheard of. She claimed to have met “Red Indians” and journeyed across the Midwest in a covered wagon in the 1850s. In 1867 she fought with Garibaldi on the barricades against the Papal army and the French at the battle of Mentana, and became friends with Mazzini. In 1871 she survived the wreck of the Eumonia, a sea disaster that in its day was as famous as the Titanic. She worked as a medium in Cairo, ran an artifi cial fl ower factory, taught piano, and in her spare time wrote articles, essays, and short stories for several newspapers and magazines. And these are just some of the stories. Again, much controversy surrounds these claims – especially the journeys to Tibet – but even if only half of what Blavatsky claimed was true, she still deserves respectful recognition (Washington pp. 32–33). It was in her capacity as a medium that Blavatsky met Colonel Olcott, at the farm of the Eddy brothers in Chittenden, Vermont in 1874. Olcott, who was interested in spiritualism, was covering a series of spiritualist phenomena occurring at the Eddys’ farm for the New York Daily Graphic, and H. P. B. went there with the intention of meeting him. Although today it seems, at best, a marginal pursuit on the fringes of the mainstream in the mid-nineteenth century, spiritualism was immensely popular, both in the United States and Europe. Its offi cial starting point was 1848. In March of that year, two girls, Margaretta and Kate Fox, of Hydesville, New York, discovered they could communicate with the spirit of a dead man. Soon others discovered they could do the same, and the age of spiritualism had begun. The belief in and practice of communicating with the dead became so widespread that one writer speaks of an “invasion of the spirit people” (Wilson pp. 73–108). In 1872, two years before Helena met Henry, spiritualism had even got into American politics, when the medium and psychic healer Victoria Woodhull ran for President – the fi rst woman to do so – as a candidate for the Equal Rights Party, on a spiritualist, free love, feminist, and socialist platform. Needless to say she didn’t win. Blavatsky and Olcott’s meeting led to a lasting, if often stormy, friendship and collaboration, the central result of which was the founding, mentioned above, with William Quan Judge, of the Theosophical Society in September 1875. Arising out of the spiritualist movement and responding to the sense of meaninglessness created by the increasing dominance of materialist science – especially in the form of Darwinian 612 — New Age fin de siècle — evolution, and the belief in the inevitable “heat death” of the universe predicted by the second law of thermodynamics – Theosophy (“the wisdom of the gods”) provided a kind of secular religion that in its heyday attracted some of the most infl uential people of the time. It was generally devoted to reviving the “lost” knowledge and wisdom of the ancients that, its members believed, exceeded both contemporary science and religion in insight and profundity, and exploring the hidden, occult character of human life and the cosmos. Some of its early converts included Thomas Edison and Abner Doubleday, the Civil War hero and purported inventor of baseball. Later Theosophists included the painters Wassily Kandinsky and Piet Mondrian; the composer Scriabin; the poet W. B. Yeats; the novelist Jack London; the fi rst Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru; and the Zen Buddhist scholar D. T. Suzuki, to name a few. Although attracting much initial attention, bolstered by the publication in 1877 of Blavatsky’s enormous Isis Unveiled, which we can see as the fi rst major work in the “ancient wisdom” genre still popular today, by 1879, Blavatsky and Olcott had moved their base from New York to India. For its fi rst fi ve years on the sub- continent, Theosophy enjoyed unqualifi ed success, attracting many infl uential recruits and publishing its highly popular magazine, The Theosophist. This success was in no small part due to the founders’ very vocal embrace of Hindu and Buddhist philosophy and culture – in 1880 both Blavatsky and Olcott formally became Buddhists by taking pansil in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) – and their equally vocal criticism of the British Raj and the Christian missionary effort. Then, in 1884 – that year again – a twofold disaster struck. Some disgruntled employees accused Blavatsky of faking the paranormal phenomena she produced in order to secure belief in the hidden adepts or “Mahatmas” whose agent she claimed to be; these phenomena consisted chiefl y of “letters” from the Mahatmas that materialized out of thin air. And on the heels of these revelations, made public through a Christian missionary magazine, a report for the Society of Psychical Research by their investigator Richard Hodgson corroborated the charges of fraud, and concluded that H. P. B. was pos- sibly a Russian spy – but was certainly “one of the most accomplished, ingenious, and interesting impostors of history” (Cranston p. xvii). Although both the initial charges of fraud and Hodgson’s report were highly contested – indeed, in 1986 the SPR itself withdrew Hodgson’s report as unreliable – Blavatsky’s reputation and health suffered as a result of the claims (Cranston p. xvii; Hastings). The Theosophical Society itself, however, minimized its connec- tion with her and was relatively unshaken by the scandal. Leaving India in 1885, Blavatsky wandered in Europe until 1887, when she settled in London. Here she spent her last years completing another enormous work, The Secret Doctrine (1888), purporting to be a vast commentary on seven stanzas from the mysterious and, to most scholarship, unknown Book of Dzyan, a work depicting the hidden history of mankind and the cosmos, written in the forgotten language of Senzar.

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