Free Energy Pioneer- John Worrell Keely

by Theo Paijmans

  While Keely claimed that an airship "of any number of tons weight" could be suspended if it would be kept "in sympathy with the earth's triune polar stream" and Belinfante wrote that "ether is found in abundance at the poles," Astor hints that the qualities of apergy have something to do with the terrestrial axis. During work on the straightening of the axis, apergy became to be better understood: "I only regret... that when we began this work the most marvelous force yet discovered — apergy — was not sufficiently understood to be utilized, for it would have eased our labors to the point of almost eliminating them. But we have this consolation: it was in connection with our work that its applicability was discovered, so that had we and all others postponed our great undertaking on the pretext of waiting for a new force, apergy might have continued to lay dormant for centuries. ...With this force and everlasting spring before us, what may we not achieve?"128

  In Astor's novel, water is pumped out of the Arctic Ocean and shifted to Antarctica. Thus they overweigh the southern hemisphere and change the Earth's center of gravity. "Blessed are they that shall inherit the earth. ...We are the instruments destined to bring about the accomplishment of that prophecy, for never in the history of the world has man reared so splendid a monument to his own genius as he will in straightening the axis of the planet. No one need henceforth be troubled by sudden change, and every man can have perpetually the climate he desires," Astor writes.129

  And although with apergy it is possible to "someday visit the planets," why do so, "since the axes of most of those (planets) we have considered are more inclined than ours, they would rather stay here."130 Nevertheless, a large cylindrical spaceship called "Callisto" is built. Traveling a million miles an hour, Jupiter and Saturn are visited. Many life-forms, such as the beautiful musical flowers of Jupiter, are encountered. Saturn is the abode of the spirits of the dead. The book is filled with remarkable predictions: solar and wind energy, advanced medicine with inoculations for all sorts of diseases, linear motor trains, wireless transmission of power, super-metals, electric automobiles, battery operated airplanes with screw propellers and weather control. Traffic policemen check automobile speeds with instant cameras and the rabbits of Australia are exterminated by an artificial disease.131

  The novel also clearly showed that its writer had not forgotten his idea of creating artificial rain, although they had been rejected by the U.S. Patent Office. Rejected as they might be, Astor now wrote that, "Rainmaking is another subject removed from the uncertainties, and has become an absolute science."132 Curiously, one finds a similar intellectual occupation in Cromie's novel: By means of a "powerful machine" the Martians are able to "electrically" disturb the atmosphere, thus creating rain conveniently only at night. "I hope, Mr. Bamett, you will bring one of these machines back with you when you are returning," a protagonist of Cromie's novel utters, "It is wanted badly in some places I know."133

  During his college years Astor took courses with astronomy professor Pickering, who mentioned that the seasons were due to the inclination of the earth's axis off of the ecliptic. If the earth was not tilted away from the sun, Pickering suggested, the planet would have a uniform, moderate climate. Thus, a part of Astor's obsession with the axes of the planets is explained in his novel. In the same year that he started to write his novel, Pickering proclaimed to have discovered "lakes in great numbers on Mars. The Canals."134

  Pickering also was a corresponding member of the Society for Psychical Research,135 and perhaps this is why that in a novel of futuristic technological extrapolations, one encounters such an out-of-place concept as Saturn being the place of the spirits of the dead with whom Astor's protagonists communicate. A few months after the publication of his novel, Astor presented a copy to Tesla. Tesla did not seem to care much for Astor's book, although he promised "to keep it, as an interesting and pleasant memento of our acquaintance."136

  Astor may have presented Keely with a copy, although this is not known, nor what Keely thought of Astor's novel, or any of the other tales that so aptly depicted his visionary ideas. Bloomfield-Moore read A Journey In Other Worlds as we have seen, although she made the strange remark that, "At present I do not know of any one who believes that Astor wrote the book, but I have convinced myself that he did write it and wish to do him the justice that he deserves."137

  There were also other reactions; a Keely antagonist wrongly suggested that Keely shrewdly drew a connection between Astor's A Journey In Other Worlds and his discovery: Astor wrote "a book of scientific fantasy, in which he does wonders with a newly discovered force operating directly the other way from gravity, and which he calls 'apergy.' Well, shortly after Astors visit to Philadelphia Mr. Keely made public mention — meant to be taken as serious mention, mind you, — of harnessing Mr. Astor's 'force.' Keely didn't call it 'apergy,' but it smelled just as sweet. And its use showed which way the wind blew — Astorway for the time being..."138

  Astor's book also drew the attention of the occult communities, but certain circles surrounding the Golden Dawn were not amused by his novel, a strange thing considering the rich polar tradition in the occult.139 A review of A Journey In Other Worlds was published in The Unknown World, a turn-of-the-century occult magazine that barely lasted two years and was full of articles about the cabbalah, Rosicrucianism, spiritism and other subjects that interested the coterie surrounding Arthur Edward Waite, its editor and Golden Dawn member. In it, the anonymous writer cynically remarked that "Of this story it may be said that le roi s 'amuse (their italics), and when a prince of finance unbends that would be a ponderous criticism which was needlessly serious. All this, notwithstanding, a scientific romance should have at least the complexion of possibility, and here it is distinctly wanting. The straightening of the terrestrial axis is a very large piece of absurdity, and the imaginative element throughout is somewhat forced and stilted. Moreover, it is not written in a readable style. A special faculty is requisite for the scientific romancer; it is possessed by Jules Verne; to a certain extent Mr. Maitland exhibited it once in By and By; there is a gleam of it in the first chapters of The Goddess of Atvatabar; it was plenary in Lord Lytton; it is quite wanting in Mr. Astor."140

  Another who allied his imagination with Keely's concepts was Louis Senarens (1865-1939). Senarens is characterized as "a Brooklynite of Cuban descent and an extremely prolific writer with an enormous amount of wordage." Senarens corresponded irregularly with the great French author Jules Verne, and an exchange of ideas for their stories took place.141 During his lifetime, Senarens was referred to as "the American Jules Verne," and a comparison of the work of both authors indicates the similarity. Senarens wrote stories of airships suspended in the air by helicopter blades, "helices," three years before Verne did so in his Clipper of the Clouds that was published in 1886. Even the illustrations were identical, with three of those in Senarens' story also used in Verne's Master of the World.142 Not only that, one of Senarens' 1897 stories was named Frank Reade Jr. and his Queen Clipper of the Clouds, written by "Noname,"143 a fanciful pseudonym clearly derived from Verne's character Captain Nemo. In 1897, the year that a puzzling airship-wave struck large parts of America, Senarens also wrote his Across the Milky Way; or Frank Reade, Jr. 's Great Astronomical Trip With His Airship "The Shooting Star. " In it, an airtight spaceship is featured which is propelled by a rotascope and an attractomotor, a device that utilizes magnetic affinities among the heavenly bodies and establishes magnetic fixes on selected worlds. The return is possible by reversing the currents. By playing off such forces against the earth's gravity, the attractomotor enables space flight. Interestingly, an occultist is also aboard the spaceship, hoping to reach theosophical heavens. This detail in itself could well mean that the author was inspired by some theosophical writings or pamphlets about Keely. Perhaps he read Bloomfield-Moore's book with its reference to aerial navigation, which must have been most tempting. After all, a writer of such unusual tales would have feverishly sought for everything that would deliver him even mor
e outre plots and ideas.

  An unusual feature of Senarens' tale was that while in space, the explorers sometimes left the ship in diving suits and helmets. In his 1898 The Sinking Star; or Frank Reade, Jr. 's Trip Into Space With His New Airship ' 'Saturn,'' once again the rotascope and the attractomotor are featured.144 According to Moskowitz, Senares was "the first to propose that an air vessel be driven by electric engines powered by storage batteries."145

  Another story that was definitely influenced by Keely's inventions was also fitting for its irony. The story was titled "Edison's Conquest of Mars," written by Garett Putnam Serviss (1851-1929). Serviss was employed as a staff writer at the New York Sun, and as a journalist at the New York Journal, the newspaper that published the devastating Keely expose on January 29. Serviss' story, his first novel, was serialized in the New York Evening Journal where news about Keely was published as well, from January 12 until February 10, 1899, during the height of the Keely exposure. The story concerns the invasion of the earth by Martians, and was a rewrite of H.G. Wells War of the Worlds. In Serviss' version, the scientists team up under the leadership of Edison to build powerful weapons against the Martians. Ironically, Edison and not Keely is credited in the story for producing two remarkable inventions: the vibratory disintegrator and an electric repulsion antigravity device.146

  We can even trace a certain influence of ideas in the writings of Jules Verne (1828-1905); The Hunt for the Golden Meteor, which was published posthumously in 1908, features a scientist who invents a "neutral helicoidal ray" with gravitational powers,147 the use of the term "neutral" in connection to gravitational powers pointing towards Keely who used the same term in connection with the same force. Some years later, in 1914, a Frederick Robinson (?) published The War of the Worlds, A Tale of the Year 2000 A. D. in Chicago at his own expense. In it he describes how science has progressed enormously by the year 2000. Airplanes travel at three hundred miles an hour and moving sidewalks serve pedestrians in New York. The moon has been provided with oxygen and is colonized, and it is possible to travel to Mars using apergy,148 a theme that by now sounds all too familiar.

  Three years later, the same city would deliver another strange novel with the obvious Keelyesque influence. The book was called The Wizard of the Island or the Vindication of Prof. Waldinger, and was written by a Frank Stover Winger (1865-?), a writer of whom absolutely nothing is known. His novel employs huge flying devices, and a vibrometer that enables the operator to control almost everything vibratory, from sound to light and gravity. The vibrometer works not on the concept of atomic energy which its inventor refuses to accept, but instead on regulating the flow of the ether. With this device a small plane called "the electron" is propelled that can fly a thousand miles an hour.149 Obviously Winger hinted that he knew what he was writing about; in a monograph on the physics in Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine published a few years before, it is stated that " Some men of science speak of electrons as 'centers of power' in the substance of the ether."150

  Then there is the bizarre novel written by Everard Jack Appleton, equally unknown because behind this nom-de-plume not one writer, but a syndicate and two writers hid.151

  The first wrote The Sound Machine that was published in 1906, in which a free-floating balloon with a device hooked up to it is described, "some sort of apparatus consisting of little boxes, levers and wires." With this device one is able to turn sound into energy152 - a strange concept that the writer undoubtedly borrowed from Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine, where she treats Keely's vibratory force as something that is similar to the occult power of sound, and the force that in the ancient times was fixed "on a flying vessel, a balloon" and "reduced to ashes 100,000 men and elephants."153 The second wrote a tale of which the title alone already evokes memories of Keely: the tale was named Tom Swift and his Polar Ray Dinasphere, and was published as comparatively recently as 1965.154

  Long after most of these fantastic tales, which were what science fiction consisted of in the early days, Keely would even enter ufology in the famous contactee book Flying Saucers Have Landed by Desmond Leslie and George Adamski155 through the same medium that had informed innumerable others of his existence: Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine. For Leslie was an Irish occultist156 and Adamski too had risen from the occult undercurrents. At one time and well before his career as a contactee, he had been a member of The Brotherhood of Tibet, a quasi-theosophical order. And as we will see, it was in the occult underground that Keely's discoveries became fully appreciated.

  PART II

  SECRETS OF OCCULT TECHNOLOGY

  9

  The Sorcerer's Apprentice The Occult Connection

  "It is the fact that Keely is working with some of the mysterious forces included under the name Akasa that makes his discoveries interesting to theosophists"

  R. Harte (sec. T.P.S.)

  introduction to Clara Bloomfield-Moore's Keely's Secrets, July 1888

  "I had never heard the name NYARLATHOTEP before, but seemed to understand the allusion. Nyarlathotep was a kind of itinerant showman or lecturer who held forth inpublick halls and aroused widespread fear and discussion with his exhibitions. These exhibitions consisted of two parts — first, a horrible — possibly prophetic cinema reel; and later some extraordinary experiments with scientific and electrical apparatus."

  Howard Philips Lovecraft

  in a letter to Reinhardt Kleiner, December 14, 1921

  Philadelphia, the city where Keely lived, experimented, and demonstrated his devices almost all of his life, was a hotbed of esoteric activity, a focal point of secret societies. Philadelphia was an occult vortex where various strange and Fortean events happened before, during and after Keely's lifetime, such as automatic writing, poltergeist activity, spontaneous human combustion, falls of ice, rocks, sulfur and gelatinous substances from the skies, ball lightning, cases of teleportation, out-of-the-body experiences, encounters with the ever-elusive Men In Black, and UFO sightings, some events going back to the 18th century.1

  From its founding, Philadelphia attracted mystics and believers of all kinds: groups of Quietists, Dunkers, Moravians, hermits, astrologers and magicians. An unusual number of ghost stories are to be found in the Philadelphia tradition.2

  In 1693, a selected group of Pietists with their families led by Johannes Kelpius (1673-1708), gathered from all parts of Europe at one port, and set sail for America in their own chartered boat, the Sarah Maria. They arrived in Philadelphia on June 23, 1694, where they established their headquarters farther west on the banks of the Wissahickon River. Staunchly millenialist and communal and in possession of certain manuscripts of purported Rosicrucian origin, the group also practiced occult, healing arts and possibly cabalist studies, since Kelpius had met with Knorr von Rosenroth, the writer of the famous Kabbala Denudata that was translated by Golden Dawn co-founder MacGregor Mathers and published in 1887. After Kelpius' death, the group disbanded, but they are remembered as the originators of the Pennsylvania hex tradition. It is alleged that this group brought Rosicrucianism to America.3

  Philadelphia was also the town where the first American Masonic lodge sprang into existence before 1730 and where Benjamin Franklin was initiated into freemasonry; where in its Masonic temple the Royal-Arch masons, the Knights of the Temple and the Knights of Malta held their regular meetings.4

  In 1795, the first Utopian work of fiction published in America was printed in Philadelphia.5 In the 1840s the millenarian Millerite sect, one of many that flocked the Philadelphia streets, distributed the apocalyptic "Philadelphia Alarm."6 Philadelphia's 19th century esoteric community consisted of a dizzying mixture of spiritists, cabalists, theosophists, and various occult lodges and orders, possibly a temple of the Golden Dawn called Thoth-Hermes,7 a branch of the Societas Rosicruciana in Scotia established since 1879,8 and a temple of the Rosy Cross, re-founded in 1895 by Freeman B. Dowd, a member of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor.9 Before that, in 1882, Dowd issued a booklet called "The Temple of the Rosic
ross," which became serialized between 1885 and 1888 in the occult magazine The Gnostic that was coedited by John Keely's friend Colville.10

  Isaac Meyer, the cabalist of whom it is rumored was once in possession of documents on Keely's devices, privately published his learned treatise on the cabbala in Philadelphia.

  Charles Godfrey Leland (1824-1903), the American folklorist and journalist whose "immersion in gypsy lore and witchcraft influenced the revival of the latter in the 20th century,"11 was born in Philadelphia. Family lore had it that one ancestor was a German sorceress and Leland always believed that he resembled her in an atavistic way.12 Another story he told had it that his baby nurse was reputed to be a Dutch sorceress who had performed rites over him to ensure his development into a scholar and a wizard. It is further alleged that his mother's relatives took pride in one of their forebears, a doctor who had acquired a reputation for sorcery.13

  Leland was attracted to the occult and folklore at an early age. During his youth he was often given to solitary walks through the woods and through the Swedish and Spanish neighborhoods of Philadelphia.14 He studied in Germany and led a life of exotic travel. He penetrated the mysterious worlds of the gypsies, witches and voodoo and spent several summers with the Native Americans to learn their spiritual lore. He also discovered Shelta, the secret language of the tinkers, learned to speak Romany, the language of the gypsies, and was adopted in their society. He made his literary debut in 1856 with a curious book published in Philadelphia, in which he coupled his fascination with dreams and their explanation with poetry by others as examples of interpretation.15