Theos-Talk Archives (February 2002 Message tt00509)

There is indeed a relationship between the "Astral Light" from 
Eliphas Levi (found back repeatedly in The Voice of the Silence) and 
the occult force Keely and the Secret Doctrine are describing.
(See also the previous part)

The cyclical doctrine that would lead to the perpetuum mobile in 
later years, is 19th century Blavatskyan Theosophy that speaks of 
seven globes that form the field of our system of development. Our 
earth is the fourth globe in its chain. Around this chain of worlds 
the life-wave travels seven times and this traverse is 
called "Manvantara".

Around 1780, Franz Anton Mesmer about whom I have posted severral 
times information in regards to the early TS, was to become a source 
of inspiration for Bulwer-Lytton, swept Europe with his mesmerism. 
Mesmerism was a curious fusion of avant-garde science and occult 
preconception, and in the process Mesmer would coin the term "animal 
magnetism," which he saw as the soul of all that breathes, not unlike 
the ideas that Keely gravitated towards while describing the source 
of his discovered force more than a century later. Conven­iently,
at Mesmer's times French High-Grade masonry was at its peak, and it 
is sometimes alleged that it was freemasonry that introduced Mesmer 
in the better-situated Parisian circles."

Mesmer directed fluids by the movement of his hands and directed 
these through tubes and bathtubs or in a glass of water. By means of 
his animal magnetism he obtained strange results. It is said that 
people thus treated were often given to weep or to sleepwalk, and he 
cured many persons afflicted with fits of all kinds. No wonder then, 
that many freemasons were trying to obtain Mesmer's secret. However, 
it was established that only "sensitized" persons could procure the 
same results, and from this sprang the notion that an order was 
needed, to "sensitize" those persons."

Since Mesmer was a French High-Grade mason himself, a grade was 
established to promote and preserve the art and the secrets of animal 
magnetism. This little-known chapter in the complex history of 
freemasonry has become known as "magnetic masonry." The plan led to 
the founding of the Order of Universal Harmony in Paris in 1782. The 
purpose of these magnetic masons was also to create a healing center, 
which might radiate over the vast circle of initiates. For this, the 
initiates had to be ritually purified before they could conduct the 
process of magnetic healing themselves, somehow an occult forerunner 
of the process in which Keely had to teach certain persons to 
sensitize his equipment.

In 1784, lodges of this magnetic masonry were established in several 
French cities, including Versailles, Lyons, Bordeaux, Grenoble, Nancy 
and Marseilles. When the French revolution broke out in 1789, the 
order either dissolved or went underground. When Mesmer died, he died 
almost forgotten .24His influence on freemasonry is to be found in a 
direction that is also called "Mesmerian Masonry," in which this 
spiritual current of the 18th century was connected to freemasonry .
(Information comes from Eugen Lennhof & Oskar 
Posner, "Internationalse Freimaurer Lexikon" Amalthea Verlag, 1980)

Perhaps this Mesmerian current influenced a German group that is
sur­ rounded by mystery; the Free-Masonic Order of the Golden 
Centurion. This order supposedly was founded in Munich in 1840 by a 
number of rich German industrialists and well-to-do citizen and is 
described as "One of the most important, and certainly the most 
diabolically mysterious." Around the 1840s, this order used a strange 
device called the Tepaphone. But contrary to Mesmer's endeavors 
decades before, the Tepaphone was used for an infinitely more 
sinister purpose. Allegedly the Tepaphone was a "machine which, when 
coupled with the will of a magician, could kill anyone no matter were 
they were. 

While various theories abounded upon its exact working, it was 
believed that the device could load or unload a person with the vital 
odic force. The Tepaphone was being described in one instance as made 
out of "multiple optic lenses nd copper spiral consisting of twenty-
four coils in the center of which was a plate. " An image of a person 
could be placed beneath the lenses and in the of electrical current 
that ran through the instrument. In this manner the persca the image 
would be affected positively or negatively. The spirals were tools 
engaging the concentrated mental force of the operator or operators 
of die instrument, in order to guide its effects."

Of John Murray Spear (1804-1887), the American spiritualist preacher 
md founder of the forgotten "new motive power movement," it too can 
be said d= he had one foot in the territories of the occult, while at 
the same time his restless mind created other wonders. Like Mesmer, 
it was to benefit mankind. In 1854 he constructed a motor at High 
Rock in Lynn in Massachusetts, which he calW the New Motor. He 
intended it to be self-generative. The same year and across the ocean 
a strange book titled Der Organismus des Weltalls, or The Organism of 
the Universe, by German occult philosopher U. Milankowitsch was 
published.

In it he remarked that, "When I want to build a machine ... that 
wants to move and that shall root in the earth, I at first think of 
that machine. ...I design a blueprint. This blueprint, this idea 
originated in my mind, according to which ... this machine should be 
built, and when this machine ... is built, the idea that was located 
in my mind, proceeded in objective reality, is realized in nature, 
and has become one with...the machine. Thus the idea was the primal 
image, its form and law according to its rules ... the machine is 
built. When we go from the workshop of the mechanic into nature, we 
will find an immense, boundless and endless building, the house of 
God, consisting of countless parts, or a moving, living, immense 
World Machine, consisting of a countless number of revolving and 
revolvable wheels. Now, the blueprint of this building of nature, 
this living World Machine, is the idea itself that is objectified and 
melted together with the same. The blueprint of the whole of this 
building of nature is therefore the primal idea, the absolute idea, 
the idea of ideas."(U.Milankowisch,"Die vergoetterte Idee Der 
organische oder positive Idealismus" Lotusblaetter,II Jahrgang, 
Nr.1/2, Jan./Febr. 1923)

It is doubtftul if, with his enigmatic statements, the German 
occultist somehow foresaw what Spear was constructing at the same 
time. It is equally doubtful if Spear read the philosophies of the 
German occultist and his musings on the nature of the World Machine, 
but it provides a partial insight into the motives of a priest and 
spiritualist to construct a curious machine-like device. It also 
reflects the exalted spirit of the times, as experienced by the 
esoterically inclined.

Spear, much like Newbrough-who was also a spiritualist--claimed that 
he did so at the instigation of one of the groups of spirits by whom 
he was controlled. He had been active in the antislavery, peace and 
temperance movements, and became a medium in March, 1852. He claimed 
that his book Messagesftom the Superior State was dictated by the 
spirit of John Murray, the founder of the sect of Universalism. 
Whatever its causes or literary origins, it heralded his first public 
appearance as a medium. Spear was also in the habit of journeying all 
over the country as the spirit moved him, "at the command or 
direction of spirits to whom he professed himself willing a childlike 
and unquestioning obedience. " (This descripton about Spear I have 
fromEmma Hardings, "Modern Spiritualism" 4e Ed. 1870 )

A year later, Spear confided to a Boston newspaper that his spirits 
made -vWrtant declarations" to him as he visited Niagara Falls. Forty 
years later, dm place would see a very different kind of magic, but 
this time in the form of we of Tesla's visionary ideas. Spear's 
spirits declared that they had formed various associations. One of 
these was the "Association of Electricizers."

Before the construction of his New Motor that led to a whole 
movement, --the new motive power movement, " Spear experimented with 
mineral and vital ciectricity as a means of developing the latent 
powers of mediumship. He also souglit to promote the influence and 
control of spirits through the aid of copper and zinc batteries, "so 
arranged about the person as to form an armor, from which he expected 
the most phenomenal results." However, an experiment tried in St. 
Louis "proved, so far as external effects were concerned, a complete 
failure. 

In the fashion of Levi's symbolical explanations and of Albertus 
Magnus' construction of an android, Spear too had other things on his 
mind; he "had long indulged the idea of embodying in some tangible 
form the crude conceptions of certain minds (not limited to the earth 
spheres alone), who have labored to discover and scientifically 
control the mystery of the life principle." Eventually Spear and his 
array of invisible spirit counselors thought that they had made this 
discovery, and a Boston spiritual periodical, the New Era, declared 
that "the association of Electricizers in the spheres were preparing 
to reveal to mankind a ,new motive power,' God's last, best gift to 
man," a work that was "destined to revolutionize the whole world" 
and "infuse new life and vitality into all things, animate and 
inanimate. " From time to time, the Boston periodical would drop 
mysterious hints concerning Spear's discovery, which was "to awaken 
the world to wonder, " but finally it announced in its pages 
that "high spiritual intelligences, through the organism of Mr. John 
M. Spear, had given directions for the construction of a living 
machine," termed "a new motor."

Consequently, strange reports began to circulate in spiritualist 
circles. In one of these, a Boston woman, also a spiritualist, was 
named as "the mother of the new motor," and "absurd and impossible 
stories were bruited about concerning the practices by which 'the 
life principle' had been infused into its organism."

Nevertheless, the New Era soon printed an article headlined, "The New 
Motive Power, or Electrical Motor, otherwise called 'Perpetual 
Motion'-The Great Spiritual Revelation of the Age." In it, its editor 
who was Spear's friend but not a spiritualist himself, proudly 
announced that "after about nine months of almost incessant labor, 
oftentimes under the greatest difficulties, we are prepared to 
announce to the world, first that spirits have revealed a wholly new 
motive power to take the place of all other motive powers. And 
second, that this revelation has been embodied in a model machine by 
human cooperation with the powers above. " The last statement was the 
vague utterance that the results thus far obtained,were "satisfactory 
to its warmest friends. "

Spear's "electric motor" or "The New Motor" was designed 
to "correspond to the human organism, " it had "a brain, heart, lungs 
etc., " and it should 11 perform the functions of a living being, " 
The queer device also had "some little balls, connected with the 
machine, " which "for some months have given evidence of motion." The 
device also was equipped with a large wheel, the "grand revolver," 
upon which "all the executive power is made dependent." Wiring of 
some sort covered the apparatus, "Each wire is precious, sacred, as a 
spiritual verse. Each plate of zinc and copper is clothed with 
symbolized meanings, corresponding throughout with the principles and 
parts involved in the livig human organism. ...The various parts of 
this mechanism, both the wood work and the metallic, are extremely 
accurate, and so mathematically arranged with reference to some 
ulterior result or effect. " Poles and magnets were also arranged in 
a specific way in the device.

The statements of the famous spiritualist Andrew Jackson Davis - who 
went to investigate Spear's remarkable machine, which he described as 
a "peculiar construction" - give some insight in the proposed working 
of Spear's New Motor: "The philosophy given through Mr. Spear, upon 
which the mechanism is predicated, is this: First, that there is a 
universal electricity. Second, that this electricity has never been 
naturally incorporated with mineral and other forms of matter. Third, 
that the human organism is the most superior, natural, efficient type 
of mechanism known on the earth. Fourth, that all merely scientific 
developments of electricity as a motive power are superficial, and 
therefore useless or impracticable. Fifth, that the construction of a 
mechanism on the laws of man's material physiology, and fed by 
atmospheric electricity obtained by absorption and condensation, and 
not by friction or galvanic action, will constitute a new revelation 
of scientific and spiritual truths, because the plan is wholly 
dissimilar to every human use of electricity. 

The New Machine was to derive its motive power from the magnetic 
store of nature, of creation itself that was defined by Milankowitsch 
as an incredible World Machine. Since Spear's New Motor derived its 
power in such a way, it was to be as independent of artificial 
sources of energy as was the human body.

When a woman, obeying a vision that she had, went to the High Rock at 
Lynn where the New Motor was displayed, she suffered "birth-pangs" 
for two hours. From this possibly epileptic seizure, she judged that 
the essence of her spiritual being was imparted to the machine. At 
the end of that time, it was averred that "pulsations" were apparent 
in the motor.

The New Machine failed to work, or at least its actions remained 
inconclusive and unsatisfactory, and even his fellow spiritualists 
didn't think much of the device. Eventually the machine was brought 
to the village of P.B.Randolph in Massachusetts and housed in 
a "temporary building. " There the New Machine, costing Spear nearly 
$2,000 to construct, was destroyed by a mob of superstitious 
villagers.31 Saddened, Spear, who wanted to give mankind "God's last 
and best gift, " disappeared from the pages of history, except for an 
occasional reference."

What it demonstrates, aside from the superficial similarities between 
Spear's New Motor and Keely's disintegrator, is the fact that Spear's 
case was the reason that certain spiritualists were interested in 
Keely's discoveries in the first place. (Those who read the 
references to Keely in the SD will understand the rest.)
 
 
Bri.