Free Energy Pioneer- John Worrell Keely

by Theo Paijmans

  Schappeller's device resembled a miniature earth and was built from two precisely calculated half globes with the hulls consisting of magnetic parts with an inner room built of a nonmagnetic diaphragm. Inside this globe were two magnetic poles of a "certain shape." Connected to these poles were thin tubes, filled with an "electrical mass." The tubes, separated from the inner hull of the globe through an isolating substance, were configured in a number of closely wound spirals. The "electrical mass" with which the tubes were filled consisted of a substance that was partly wax. These tubes were then "permanently electrified" and were connected with a pole to the grounding.

  The second pole originated in the middle of the globe, which was filled with an "electrostatical mass" that was Schappeller's secret. When energy was taken from the globe it recharged itself continuously in the same quantities. The globe was fixed to some kind of "magnetic arm" that was called the "rotor," while the globe itself was called the "stator," although this unusual device had no moving parts. When the globe was charged and switched on, a magnetic needle reacted on the north and south pole similar to the actual north and south poles of the earth. Switched off, the globe was magnetically neutral. It is alleged that a globe of only 15 cm diameter delivered an astounding high number of kilowatts. The "luminous ether" regenerated itself and only dissolved when the globe was opened. The filling of the globe was done by a special "filling machine" of which unfortunately no technical drawings or specific descriptions exist.104

  Interestingly, a 1930s German esoteric magazine with ariosophic leanings published an article by Schappeller and referred to Liebenfels in connection with Schappeller, thus giving more substance to the possibility that Schapeller indeed rubbed shoulders with the coterie surrounding this dark initiate while in Vienna, or that both parties were at least aware of each other. Liebenfels studied The Secret Doctrine very well, and perhaps thus a trail leads back through time and geography to John Keely in Philadelphia.

  The article did not mention Keely but lamented that Schappeller and Liebenfels were neglected researchers, as was Frenzolf Schmid, it pointed out. Schmid succeeded, so the article goes, with the help of a device of his making to divide the cosmic rays in its three components. These were the "primal rays" or "death rays," the "pure rays" or "healing rays," and "primal additional rays" or "indifferent rays."105 In 1929, Schmid published two booklets about his invention and claimed that with his device he was able to use any of these rays as he liked, for instance as a healing method, like Keely had claimed almost half a century before him.106

  Liebenfels was quite aware of Schmid's exploits, as he wrote on a number of occasions about Schmid and his curious invention. They also added more weight to his own strange philosophy: "Add to this as another important fact the discovery of Frenzolf Schmid, according to which light is broken down in three rays, primal or death rays, life rays, indifferent rays (or, as I call them, carrier or isolating rays). ... Frenzolf Schmid has, with this discovery, established scientifically my thesis on the trinity. The primal rays correspond with the 'father,' the healing rays with the 'son,' the indifferent rays with the 'holy spirit,' that by means of isolation and direction steer the other rays."107 And elsewhere Liebenfels extols the virtues of a treatment with one of Schmid's devices for the healing of disease, while treating one of Schmid's publications on the subject.108

  Clearly, as so many of the 1920s European occult milieus, Liebenfels was quite taken with inventions and discoveries that involved cosmic rays and stupendous energies. In his writings the terms "Urkraft" or "Primal Force" and ether crop up, again suggesting at least a common origin with Schappellers' inventions and Keely's discoveries.

  Liebenfels also uses such metaphors as "the radio broadcast station" for God, evoking the ideas of Dutch grail seeker Rensburg. Rensburg, who like Liebenfels admitted his indebtedness to The Secret Doctrine, wrote on the communication of man with godlike beings as "inter-astral telepathy, that is, marconigraphy of an organical nature, from their nerve system directly to our nerve system...," further explaining that "as long as there existed religion on earth, meaning the connection with the gods, this was never anything else than inter-astral telepathy. "109 But with gods, Rensburg does not mean the same gods as those that feature in Liebenfels' dark blend of Wotanism and Christianity: Rensburg muses on "organical marconigraphy from star to star" and on "material beings on other stars that exert their influence on us through telepathy, soon amplified by means of inter-astral radiography."110

  Enough is said here of Rensburg's highly original but today totally forgotten writings, in which he refers to Golden Dawn initiate Waite, to Edgar Rice Burroughs' Mars Novels and to Jules Verne, and who ponders on the possibility of life on the sun and of metals, of which "it is proven that they have feelings," in turn evoking Keely's ideas on "a crazy piece of metal." As brilliant and unusual a thinker as Rensburg was, he would pursue his ideas further and thereby also quote the writings of the dark Viennese initiates List and Liebenfels. But as a horrible irony of history, Rensburg, who was Jewish, died in 1943 in a Nazi deathcamp, such focal points of unimaginable suffering being partly the result and the culmination of the racist ideas of the ariosophical initiates Liebenfels and List.

  Returning to Liebenfels' writings, we find citations taken from Zanoni, and his thoughts on inventions such as the "Atomedium," "a sort of automatic dowser (or pendulum) that partly corroborates the discoveries of Reichenbach and de Rochas"111 or of the discovery that "the human blood emits rays that is capable to dissolve hydrogensuperoxyd."112 But whereas in these writings of Liebenfels the name Keely is nowhere mentioned, it is safe to assume that me dark initiate from Vienna also had been keenly aware of Keely's discoveries. Liebenfels was heavily influenced by The Secret Doctrine, and he knew Hartmann, who visited Keely on a number of occasions, moreover his particular frame of mind where avant-garde technology and the occult sciences meet makes an interest in Keely's discoveries quite obvious.

  To what extent Liebenfels was involved in the case of Schappeller remains uncertain, as in the case of another contemporary Austrian inventor, Victor Schauberger. Around the time that Schappeller was working on his space-force machines, Schauberger claimed to have developed an astounding device that he named the Implosion Turbine. Water was pumped in a spiral-shaped tube in which it then imploded. This drove the pump and converted it into an electrical motor. Schauberger mentioned the existence of an "all pervading fifth element, Aether." Although much has come to light in recent years concerning Schauberger, as with Keely's and Schapeller's devices the whereabouts of Schauberger's machines — which were shipped to the United States after the Second World War — still remain unknown and he too seems to have been the victim of an interested party with international control aspects.113 In recent years, researchers have noted the similarity between the theories of Keely and Schauberger.114

  We have tasted something of the very troubling and bothersome aspect that plagued those early occult pursuers of unorthodox rays, Keely, Schappeller, Schauberger and other free-energy inventors: that uncertain and dark corner which perhaps was the same that Steiner alluded to in his lecture, and has been named "an interested party with international control aspects" by one author. It is obvious that this unidentified current was much more powerful than any of the occult and esoteric societies that surrounded these free-energy inventors. Its frightening aspects led Jacques Bergier to theorize about a secret organization that he suggestively called "the men in black," that has always accompanied every progress of mankind during the ages and therefore also the endeavors of those free-energy inventors, something that the theosophists and again Steiner already warned about. Bahn speculates on the absence of publications of the mysterious Reichsarbeitsgemeinschaft after 1930 — that perhaps this group in itself was meant as a front organization, as, except from their identity, they never really cared much for secrecy: "clearly the Reichsarbeitsgemeinschaft Das Kommende Deutschland was not a secret society. It published its philosophies with two
relatively known publishing companies and it recruited for members in its pamphlets with an address that anybody could find."115

  But of the Reichsarbeitsgemeinschaft as being a front organization, Bahn states that it is "Not to be excluded, although on the other hand not proven... the Reichsarbeitsgemeinschaft could have been a front organization of an occult circle, whatever it called itself, that really operated in hiding and observed and filtered potentially interested by means of the Reichsarbeitsgemeinschaft, before they were admitted to the inner core. ...The division between the 'secret order' and front organization possibly created a double protection; against unsavory characters... and against repression from the state, that was taken on by the front organization and thus diverted from the inner core."116 That after 1930 no other publications were issued by the Reichsarbeitsgemeinschaft could mean, according to Bahn, that "the group did not attain the resonance that they hoped for."117 Could the Reichsarbeitsgemeinschaft have been the last brilliant ploy to either promote or employ the same principles that Keely discovered more than half a century before? Was Steiner's first Goetheaneum at one time the place where certain initiates conducted strange experiments in the fashion of Keely's discoveries? Unfortunately, such lines of thought and the questions that they yield are until this point quite unverifiable.

  Whatever the causes, the reasons or the motives, nowhere does one come across so many instances of patents, papers, documents, technical drawings, devices and inventions that have gone mysteriously missing after the often sudden, unexplainable and sinister deaths or disappearances of persons than in the history of the search for alternative energy sources. That, too, is a historical fact, even though a sad and frightening one, even if one wants to ignore or downplay this, depending on the point of view taken on history in general.

  Relatively recently a warning as to this frightening aspect was issued,118 and elsewhere two examples of inventors who disappeared under never-resolved circumstances are offered. There is the case of John Andruss, who claimed that he found a method of making petrol from water by adding a special liquid to it. His disappearance has never been solved. Apparently both the British and the U.S. governments were sufficiently impressed by his claims and even set up a joint panel of experts to study his work. "Finally, the stage was reached when a tank of a motor-boat was filled with water, and Andruss poured into it a glass of his secret composition. Selected men were in the boat and it is stated that it roared out over the waters of a lake near New York. A final test was to be made on the speedway at Indianapolis; but on the morning of the (successful) test, Andruss did not turn up. From that day in 1925, until this, not a trace of him has ever been found."119

  The second example is the case of German mechanical genius Rudolf Diesel, who "on the night of 29 December, 1913, eight months before the outbreak of the First World War, sailed with the Harwich steamer from Antwerp." He never reached Harwich, and his nonarrival and what happened to him remains a mystery to this day.120

  Webb states that, if there is any truth in the dictum that occultists have a special relationship with the imagination in their pursuit of other realities, we might find an extraordinary amount of creative work in, for instance, the realms of mechanical invention.121 He includes such people as Hugo Gernsback who coined the word "television" and the term "science fiction" and Austrian Hans Horbiger, the strange prophet of the Welteislehre that became the official cosmogony in Nazi Germany.

  But as we have seen in many instances, this creativity went far beyond common mechanical invention and stretched itself into those planes of existence where they felt that like Keely they could touch and measure the very stars, where wonderful rays, cosmic energies and primal forces were the rule: where man is not simply made out of flesh and blood alone but is also a creature that is, like the surrounding universe, a source of radiant energy, a power plant of unimaginable possibilities who holds the promise of becoming godlike in the end.

  Clara Bloomfield-Moore (1824-1899) An extraordinary person with a deep interest in science and the occult. She supported Keely for 15 years, and remained his friend until his death.

  Helena Blavatsky (1831-1891) Founder of the Theosophical Society and author of Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine, in which she devoted a chapter to Keely and his discoveries.

  Henry Steel Olcott (1832-1907) Cofounder of the Theosophical Society. Lawyer, early spiritualist and editor of The Theosophist.

  Wilhelm Hubbe-Schleiden (1846-1916) Founded the Theosophical Society and the German occult periodical, The Sphinx. Wrote about Korschelt's mysterious solar ether ray devices.

  A rare 1920s photo of the underground temple of Ellora in India, place of initiation by the mysterious Ellora Brotherhood. According to Emma Hardinge Britten, the place was a strange device of gargantuan dimensions.

  Emma Hardinge Britten (1823-1899) Medium, spiritualist and founding member of the Theosophical Society. Published the strange account of the underground temple of the Ellora Brotherhood.

  Diagram of the Spheres, as drawn by Jonathan Koons, inventor of the spirit machine, while in a trance state and under the direction of spirits. According to Koons, G represents "the Star of Light and Beauty beneath the throne of God. It signifies me vast celestial realms of unknown and perhaps illimitable extent, filled with the subtler fluid, the impenetrable, the inconceivable, the source, fountain, and centre of all light, heat, life, force, gravitation and attraction... the central sun of being, the profound mystery."

  Drawing showing a comparison of the Aero Goeit, designed by Sonora Aero Club member Adolf Goetz, and the Aero Goosey designed by Peter Mennis. These aircrafts were designed in secret in 1858 and drawn from recollection by Dellschau in 1911.

  A page of Dellschau's manuscript showing a cut-section of an airship, purportedly built in secret by the Sonora Aero Club.

  A page from Dellschau's encoded manuscript, depicting Peter Mennis and his dog next to the airship.

  "I saw the machine... It is made of metal... It is equipped with two canvas wings... and a rudder shaped like a birds tail." Illustration from Jules Verne's Robur le Conquerant, 1886.

  Example of a later design for Dellschau's Airpress Motor (inside view)

  Example of press cuttings which form a part of Dellschau's strange encoded manuscripts.

  William Colville (1859-1917) Freemason, medium, occultist and theosophist. Coeditor of The Gnostic. He published Keely's remarkable ideas on interplanetary travel and anti-gravity in 1894. A long-time friend of Keely, he wrote the memorial speech at his funeral.

  Paschal Beverly Randolph (1825-1875) Founder of the Brotherhood of Eulis and cofounder of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor.

  Karl Kellner (1850-1905) Freemason and cofounder of the Ordo Templi Orientis. He constructed instruments that collected and produced electricity directly from the ether.

  Eliphas Levi (1810-1875) The great French magus and renovator of 19th century continental occultism.

  Franz Hartmann (1838-1912) Occultist, freemason and cofounder of the Ordo Templi Orientis.

  Count Louis Hamon, alias Cheiro (1866-1936) The most famous palmist of his time. He visited Keely in 1890, and trusted his strange memoirs concerning him to paper.

  John Jacob Astor (1864-1912) Eccentric inventor, and one of the wealthiest men on earth. At one time he planned to support Keely with several million dollars. He died on the ill-fated voyage of the Titanic.

  Jules Veme (1828-1905) Author, master of prophecy, alleged psychic and keenly aware of Keely's discoveries.

  "Inside the barn was a strange looking affair, made of aluminum having wings and a rudder." Illustration from Fritz Holten's Das Aeromobil, 1912.

  12

  The Great 19th Century Airship Wave

  "I saw... gliding quickly through the air, what appeared a small boat, impelled by sails shaped like wings."

  Bulwer-Lytton,

  The Coming Race, 1871

  "You can take my word for it, that the airship is no myth."

  Ra
bbi A. Levy,

  New Orleans Picayune, April 24, 1897

  ".. . should we, the aeronauts, forever stay the stepchildren of this Mother Earth?"

  Fritz Holten,

  Das Aeromobil, 1912

  Two years after Colville's remarkable description of what an airship might look like built according to Keely's antigravity ideas, and two years after Astor published his book in which he treated precisely such a space voyage, something inexplicable happened in the skies over large parts of America. From November 1896 until April 1897, thousands of people saw UFOs, described as brilliant lights and vague aeroforms, which were nicknamed "airships" in the press. During what has been termed "the great 19th century airship wave," all the characteristics of later UFO waves were apparent. There were contacts; eyewitnesses would often meet the alleged builders of these airships, terrestrial and extraterrestrial, with some who claimed to represent the inventors. There would even be an occasional abduction, and tales of crashes and hoaxes.