Cheiro bravely climbs on the couch, fastens the helmet on his head, places the curiously shaped magnet on his chest and "the Mystic" plays "a series of chords" on the organ. "The vacuum lamps responded, the lights changed and flooded the room with a pale gray shade like that of a ghostly dawn... The music ceased. I could see in the weird gray light the figure of the Mystic leaning over the keys, waiting and listening (his italics). A slight vibration came down the aerial leads, passed through my body and echoed back through the magnifier at the end of the room",155 and the palmist is transported to the lost kingdom of Atlantis moments before its destruction. The Atlanteans take the destruction of their magnificent empire, the "highest pinnacle, greater intelligence can not be created, more knowledge cannot be attained," stoically, for "Men have become as gods, and being as gods, they bend their heads to Destiny."156
Hartmann's visit did not leave a lasting impression on him or Keely. We can only speculate about the nature of Hinton's aid. There were Colville's account of Keely's visionary ideas and Cheiro's distorted and fictionalized reminiscences. There was another occult contact however, who was relevant to Keely's research. This contact involved Seth Pancoast, one of the founding members of the Theosophical Society. Like Bloomfield-Moore, Pancoast is almost completely forgotten and is sadly absent in most studies of occult history. In contrast to Hartmann his knowledge of the occult was superior, as he was one of the most learned cabalists of his time.
In 1895, a contemporary newspaper remarked that Bloomfield-Moore made a statement that was "of interest as showing one of the sources of Keely's inspiration in the pursuit of his investigation."157 At that time she confided to a reporter that, "To the fruits of the thirty years of research which our late townsman, Dr. Seth Pancoast, devoted to the study of the Hebrew Kabbala and to occult science, Mr. Keely is indebted for the instruction which has enabled him to fasten his machinery to the very wheelworks of nature, drawing from space a current of force and demonstrating by dynamic apparatus that it is the governing or controlling force of the universe. "158 To theosophists this was not exactly new. In 1888 Bloomfield-Moore was already writing about similarities in the lines of thought of Keely and Pancoast.159
Seth Pancoast (1823-1889) spent the first few years of his adult life in business, but when he was twenty-seven years, he began the study of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. The year after his graduation as MD in 1852, he became professor of anatomy in the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania. At the end of the year he resigned to become professor of anatomy in the Pennsylvania Medical College. In 1859, he became professor emeritus. He held a private practice and taught at the college until 1865. At that time he interested himself in cabalistic literature. In this field, he became a noted scholar and built up what allegedly was to become the largest library of books dealing with the occult sciences ever assembled in America.
The ideas gleaned from his cabalistic studies curiously mingled with his medical and scientific knowledge, which led him to write a number of extraordinary books. The first of these was The Kabbala; or the True Science of Light; an Introduction to the Philosophy and Theosophy of the Ancient Sages, published in 1877, two years after his involvement in the foundation of the Theosophical Society. This book is said to be the first book ever written in the English language that tried to explain the Ten Sephiroth and give the mystical interpretation of the Holy Scriptures as contained therein.
Pancoast's treatise on the cabbala was republished the same year under the title Blue and Red Light; or, Light and Its Rays as Medicine; Showing that Light is the Original and Sole Source of Life, as it is the Source of All the Physical and Vital Forces of Nature, and that Light is Nature's Own and Only Remedy for Disease, and Explaining How to Apply the Red and Blue Rays in curing the Sick and Feeble. While its title suggests a new therapeutic idea, the book is a cabalistic writing in which mystery, science, religion, and medicine are blended.160
It is asserted that Pancoast was not only learned in the cabala and the theory of magic, but was also alchemically inclined and a practicing color therapist which is clearly demonstrated by the titles of his treatise.161
In 1875, before the founding of the Theosophical Society, Pancoast unsuccessfully tried to cure a leg injury that Blavatsky suffered while falling down the pavement.162
Pancoast's philosophies were in the same vein as those of E. Babbitt, who in 1878 privately published his classic study on the therapeutic value of colors and the etheric forces, titled Principles of Light and Colour; Including the Harmonic Laws of the Universe, the Etheric — Atomic Philosophy of Force, Chromo Therapeutics & the General Philosophy of the Fine Forces, Together with Numer. Discoveries & Practical Applications.163
There is some circumstantial evidence that the learned Pancoast wrote more than was every published. Some years after his death, his son wrote to Bloomfield-Moore. She stated that she received a letter from "the son of Dr. Seth Pancoast, author of the True Science of Light, whose manuscript works I tried to buy from his widow after the death of Dr. Pancoast in 1889. She refused to sell them then; but the son wrote to offer them to me in order to raise money for his collegiate course. I could not have encouraged him to hope from any assistance from me, in anyway, as I am not well enough to undertake the editing of them, but I at once referred him to Dr. Lounders after hearing from the doctor that he would revise and edit the work, if it proved to be what I had reason to think it was."164
It would be another highly influential occultist however, who publicly became involved with the Keely mystery long after those fateful events and long after most of these intriguing people faded from the pages of history. His statements provided alternative answers to the questions that have transformed the Keely history into the Keely mystery; questions such as why Keely's devices are now so strangely missing? What happened to his manuscripts? And why Keely was silenced and his inventions rigorously suppressed?
Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) started his esoteric career in the Theosophical Society but referred to Keely more than once in his writings and lectures. After he joined the Theosophists, he drifted amongst others to the Ordo Templi Orientis for a number of years before he founded his Anthroposophical movement in 1912.
Steiner obviously learned about Keely through Blavatsky's writings, as so many did, or through Hartmann's statements whom he met.
The occultists and those in favor of Steiner considered — and still consider — him as a high initiate who was able to cross the barriers of space and time and could see the past, and even into the future. Steiner was aware of his capabilities early in his childhood. His Anthroposophy was to him the road to knowledge that would lead the spiritual part of mankind to the spiritual realms of the universe. The aim was to acknowledge its spiritual contents in the whole of creation.
Steiner also believed that man consists of four parts: as a physical body, as an ethereal being, as an astral body, and as ego; and that a close cooperation exists between the physical and the spiritual parts of both man and the universe.
Olcott hastily tried to rupture any connections between Keely and Blavatsky after Keely's alleged exposure, a situation that would be corrected several years later. Significantly Steiner instead began to lecture about Keely long after Keely's alleged exposure. The first recorded lecture in which he mentioned Keely was on March 30, 1905. He also referred to him during two lectures held in 1906, during three lectures in 1916 and again during a lecture in 1920.165 It must be taken into account that Steiner held a great number of lectures, more than 6,000, which limits the times that he choose to speak about him to a rather insignificant proportion.
Moreover, the interpreters of Steiner's words on an occult level have satisfied themselves with the explanation that Steiner incorporated Keely in his grandiose vision on human evolution and the future of mankind — as Steiner did with Bulwer-Lytton — and that he wanted to say that the time was not right for Keely's inventions to be of benefit to mankind. If that is the case, Steiner merely echoed the
opinions of Colville, Hartmann, Harte and Blavatsky. For Harte wrote in 1888, a short time before The Secret Doctrine was published, "Whether Keely's inventions will be a commercial success at present is another matter. The force, or, rather forces, which Keely handles, are the same as those known under other names in Occultism, and it is the belief of Occultists that these forces cannot be introduced into the practical life of men, or fully understood by the uninitiated, until the world is fit to receive them with benefit to itself — until the balance of the good and the evil they would work is decidedly on the side of the good. .. .The discoveries of Keely have an occult side, which perhaps he himself may not fully perceive."166
Blavatsky would later write that "whenever such individuals as the discoverer of the eteric force — John Worrell Keely — men with peculiar psychic and mental capacities are born, they are generally and more frequently helped than allowed to go unassisted. ...Only they are helped on the condition that they should not become, whether consciously or unconsciously, an additional peril to their age."167
Notwithstanding his opinion of Keely, which is in part based upon the opinions of the theosophists,168 Steiner spread the information about Keely in anthropsophical circles. Thus only recently references to Keely have been unearthed in the notes of Walter Johannes Stein,169 a remarkable anthroposophist, writer of an erudite grail-study,170 and the protagonist of Trevor Ravencroft's Spear of Destiny, written in the same manner as Bulwer-Lytton once wrote his Zanoni and The Coming Race. Stein also learned about the Keely motor from another source: "Mr. Dunlop told me that he saw the Keely motor, but he did not see it function." Interestingly, Stein remarks that this occurred before "the world at first learned more of this case through Madame Blavatsky."171 Guenther Wachsmuth, who translated The Coming Race, was so taken by Steiner's remarks that he promptly wrote his book on the forces of the ether.172
Three of Steiner's accomplishments set himself distinctly apart from the theosophical thoughts on Keely. These accomplishments, most important in the Keely history, are the construction of what has been called "The Strader Instruments," of which a full expose is given in chapter 11; the performance of Steiner's Mystery Plays in Munich in 1912 for which the Strader Instruments were meant; and a series of lectures during which he discussed Keely and his inventions. Steiner also modeled the figure of Dr. Strader partly on Keely in his Four Mystery Plays, published in 1912.173 In the third part, Dr. Strader invented a device that operates on the fusion of vibrations. Through this device, mankind will be freed of toilsome labor and the use of expensive energy. Mankind, Steiner reasons in his Four Mystery Plays, would have all the time for self-tuition and spiritual development. But Strader was not to complete his remarkable device. In the fourth part of the Four Mystery Plays he dies while his device is still in the laboratory phase.
In 1918, Steiner gave six lectures, one of which is most interesting in connection to the Keely mystery. During this particular lecture, held on December 1, and titled "The Mechanical, Eugenic and Hygienic Point of View of the Future," Steiner explained that mankind would develop three new faculties during the next centuries. This would happen in the same natural way as mankind's mental faculties had been developed during the past. These three new faculties would be the new mechanical faculty, the new hygienic faculty and the new eugenic faculty. Steiner believed that especially the English and the Americans would develop the new mechanical faculty. New machines and mechanistic devices would be the result. These would operate through "the laws of the fusion of vibrations."174
He also confided to his audience that indeed there existed secret societies. But he did not mean orders such as the Golden Dawn, the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor, the Freemasons, the Rosicrucians, the Ordo Templi Orientis or the Theosophists. These orders, while being secretive and surrounding themselves with an aura of mystique, were never secret in a strict sense.
Steiner made it quite clear that he did not mean any of these occult orders. He had been initiated in most of these orders and he was honest enough to admit that this secretiveness that was also apparent with his Anthroposophical Society was nothing more than a relic from the early days of theosophy. At that time it merely served to provide the society with a "special distinction."175
We could easily dismiss Steiner's statements as pure allegations typical of an occultist, eager to clothe himself with a supposedly profound occult knowledge. But the fact that Steiner saw most of the 19th century occult orders from the inside gives food for thought. Was he simply trying to impress his audiences? This we will probably never know, because as Disraeli in his novels and speeches and Bulwer-Lytton in his letter to Hargrave Jennings before him, Steiner never really bothered to identify these mysterious secret societies. During his lecture he only confided that these societies existed in the English-speaking countries and were "sources through which, by certain methods of which I perhaps one day will speak... truths may be begotten according to which one may rule things politically."176
He also stated that, "In the denial to others of a certain kind of occult knowledge, that is being cherished in these centers, lies an immense power."177 This knowledge was strictly reserved only for those mysterious secret circles, for according to Steiner this was "the only way by which it is possible to attain world domination."178
These secret societies plotted, according to Steiner, to conquer the entire east "that begins with the river Rhine and continues further east to Asia," and to establish a caste of rulers in the West and a caste of slaves in the East,179 thereby morbidly foreshadowing Hitler's own plans, partially based on occult concepts, that would plunge the world in a black abyss of horror, pain and sorrow.
He also told that the initiates of "English secret societies" very well knew that "through the use of certain abilities, which are until now hidden from mankind, but which develop themselves through the law of resonance, machines and other mechanical contrivances could be set in motion." Then Steiner exposed a bit of the deeper meaning of his Mystery Plays: "You can find a hint in that which I have brought in connection with the person of Strader in my Mystery Plays." With this Steiner of course meant a device that he had developed and that is known as his mysterious "Strader Instruments."
But he also delivered a most puzzling statement: "These things are today in development." What did Steiner mean? Was he just adding a little atmosphere, an aura of mystique to his lecture, was he drawing on the reservoir of occult legend and hearsay, or was he hinting at the fact that somewhere, in total secrecy an unknown group was constructing avant-garde technology along the lines of Keely's discoveries?
Calling the fact that so much of Keely's legacy is now missing, perhaps what Steiner further said to his audience obtains an ominous meaning. Echoing Blavatsky who wrote that, "It is just because Keely's discovery would lead to a knowledge of one of the most occult secrets, a secret which can never be allowed to fall into the hands of the masses,"180 Steiner continued with a grave warning: "These affairs are being guarded as a secret in those circles on the subject of material occultism. There are engines possible, that, because one knows its vibrational curve, can be set in motion through a very small human influence. ...But they will, when that which I call mechanical occultism will be put in practice, which is an ideal of these secret circles, deliver not only an equivalent of five-or six hundred million in human labor, but they will achieve about one thousand million in human labor. Therefore nine tenths of the human labor of the English speaking populace will be superfluous. But mechanical occultism will not only make nine tenths of the labors... superfluous, it will also make it possible to paralyze every rebellion of the unsatisfied masses. The ability to set engines in motion according to the law of resonance with harmonious vibrations, will develop itself with the English speaking populace. Of this, those secret societies are well aware. On this they count when they will attain the dominance over the entire population of the earth."181
Steiner's allegations may have the ringing of some actual, unnerving truth. Per
haps for this he had his reasons to warn, yet to speak in vague allusions and riddles. For only after closer examination some people who were involved in the Keely history reveal their shadowy alliance or association with what might be just another college fraternity, one is obliged to join out of social habit and tradition when undertaking a study at a university, but of which it is asserted to be one of the most powerful, dangerous secret societies of the last century: the chapter of the order Skull & Bones. This society does not seem to have overt occult or esoteric overtones, but instead seems to be a breeding ground for illuminated politics.
The society was founded at Yale University in 1833 by General William Huntington Russell and Alphonso Taft, after Russell obtained a charter to do so from an unnamed German Society. The chapter exists even today and is outwardly modeled on a Masonic institution; thus it uses the number 322 to denote itself. It uses the symbol of the skull and crossbones and its members undergo initiatory rituals.182 Possibly the chapter of the Skull & Bones order was a continuation of the Pi Beta Kappa lodge that is said to have been imported by Benjamin Franklin from France in 1776.183
Dr. Brinton, who at one time witnessed one of Keely's experiments and who translated Keely's terms in a comprehensible list, was a member of the Scroll & Key society, a group that revolved around the chapter of the order Skull & Bones, and was founded at Yale a few years after the Skull & Bones chapter was founded. Wayne MacVeigh, at one time Keely's lawyer, whose "dexterous move" was instrumental in releasing Keely from jail in 1888, studied at Yale. It was he who made "a brilliant speech... for the resuscitation of the Brothers and Linonia."184 The English equivalent of the Skull & Bones is referred to as "The Group," and although John Jacob Astor's name does not crop up, it is asserted that "The Astor name is prominent in "The Group' in England, but not in the Order in the U.S. "185
Free Energy Pioneer- John Worrell Keely Page 35
