Lamy points out a multitude of similarities between Verne's initiatory novel Journey to the Center of the Earth and Sand's Laura or the Journey in the Crystal. Both are full of polar symbology. Verne's protagonist is called "Axel," Sands heroine "Alexis." Professor Hartz in Sand's novel has his Vernean counterpart in Professor Liddenbrock. Both are described as German scholars.9 Curiously the most famous of the Hartz mountains in Germany is the sacred Brocken peak. The Brocken is known for an optical phenomenon known as "the Brocken spectre." In 1938, a strange device called a "transmitter" was erected on the top of the peak, a tower surrounded by an array of posts with pear-shaped knobs on top. At the same time similar constructions were erected in other places in Germany.
When the device on Brocken peak began operating, there were reports of engine failure by cars that traveled in the vicinity of the Brocken transmitter.10
Returning to the Keely history, we also came across the name of Jules Verne in additional instances. In connection with Astor's A Journey In Other Worlds, a slight reference to Verne appeared in the periodical The Unknown World, issued by circles surrounding the Golden Dawn. Later, occult grail seeker Rensburg referred to Verne in his writings and neo-Rosicrucian Surya dropped what might be seen as a slight hint. Verne corresponded with his visionary literary counterpart Louis Senarens, and Bloomfield-Moore writes how a scientist while witnessing Keely's demonstrations, is given to exclaim: "What would Jules Verne say if he were here?"11 In his 1886 tale involving an airship, "Robur le Conquerant," of which Lamy pointed out reference to the Rosicrucians — the initials of the title "R" and "C" again meaning Rosy Cross — Verne casually remarks that the most beautiful Masonic temple is erected in Philadelphia.12 Four years before Verne published his tale involving an airship, Keely had "given no attention whatever the occult bearing of his discovery." But in 1887, a year after Verne's singular novel, and at a time that Keely was working on his airship, "a bridge of mist" formed itself before him, "connecting the laws which govern physical science with the laws which govern spiritual science..."13 This "bridge of mist" is synonymous with the Angelic Society, also known as Mist, that initiated Keely, thus connecting his researches with a spiritual foundation.
There are also circumstances which indicate that the Angelic Society was not an exclusive French affair, but also had its foothold in England and the United States and that a substantial part of its message involved an intricately hidden symbology of the poles and the zodiac. Blavatsky, while investigating spiritists, was living at Girard Street, and Keely's memorial address, written by spiritist and freemason Colville, was delivered at Girard Avenue, both in Philadelphia. In that city, a Stephen Gerard had been the principal financial backer of the new Masonic temple built in 1819 on the premises of a much older Masonic temple that was destroyed by fire,14 where in 1731 Benjamin Franklin was initiated.15
We will leave the application of name-analogy there, and concentrate on the Masonic Temple instead. We find that the temple is the residence of the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania and the same one that Verne referred to. The temple was located at Broad Street,16 the same street where the warehouse was located containing Keely's devices that were not taken away to Boston. Other orders, such as the Knights of the Temple and The Knights of Malta also held their meetings in the Masonic Temple at Broad Street.17
The temples of the Freemasons are often adorned with depictions of the zodiac. In the 18th century a Masonic grade called Knight of the Zodiac was in existence,18 and towards the beginning of the 19th century, the existence of a secret society called Les Illumines Du Zodiaque became known.19 The oldest depiction of the zodiac is found in the ancient Egyptian temple at Denderah that was consecrated to Hathor, the Mother of Light. The temple at Denderah has other, very strange features, including several illustrations on the walls of subterranean chambers. These illustrations are the only ones found in the all of Egypt depicting what modern writers have variously interpreted as being a symbol of "that which is to be expected and is preordained from times immemorial."20 It has also been theorized that the illustrations were of electrical devices or possibly electric light sources, or at least held as a clue that points toward the use or knowledge of an unknown power source known by the ancients.21
In a number of these wall designs, the figure of a snake is depicted inside oblong tubes. Thierens, who pondered on Keely's supposed psychic abilities, departs from theosophical ground while explaining that, "Astral primal atoms appear as snakes. This is the reason that in the occult sciences left behind by Egyptian and Indian symbolism, the astral beings are depicted as snakes and that one calls the Higher Beings, that lead the evolution of the soul, the Masters of Wisdom, Nagas or snakes."22 Thierens' "Astral primal atoms," conceived in 1913, are clearly the next phase in the evolution of Levi's concept of "the astral light," which he also called "the great serpent," an idea which is said to have also influenced Bulwer-Lytton's concept of vril. Bulwer-Lytton in turn influenced Greg, who in 1880 introduced the term apergy for the first time in his book Across the Zodiac. As a zodiacal echo, in his novel, Greg writes how the Martians use a system of the multiplication of twelve.23 But we are also reminded of that highly curious Martian initiatory ritual that the protagonist in Across the Zodiac has to undergo to become a member of the "Children of the Star": "A bright mist of various colors intermixed in inextricable confusion, an image of chaos but for the dim light reflected from all the particles, filled a great part of the space before us. ...Presently, a bright rose-colored point of light, taking gradually the form of an Eye, appeared... beyond the mist; and emanating from it, a ray of similar light entered the motionless vapor. Then a movement... commenced in the mist. Within a few moments the latter had dissolved, leaving in its place the semblance of stars, star-clusters, and golden nebulae, as dim and confused as that in the sword-belt of Orion, or as well defined as any of those called by astronomers planetary.
'"What seest thou?'" said a voice whose very direction I could not recognize. 'Cosmos evolved out of confusion by Law; Law emanating from Supreme Wisdom and irresistible Will.'
'"And in the triple band?'
'"The continuity of Time and Space preserved by the continuity of Law, and controlled by the Will that gave Law.'
"When I spoke a single nebula grew larger, brighter, and filled the entire space... stars and star-clusters gradually fading away into remote distance. This nebula, of spherical shape — formed of coarser particles than the previous mist, and reflecting or radiating a more brilliant effulgence — was in rapid whirling motion. It flattened into the form of a disc, apparently almost circular, of considerable depth or thickness, visibly denser in the center and thinner towards the rounded edge. Presently it condensed and retracted, leaving at each of the several intervals a severed ring. Most of these rings broke up, their fragments conglomerated and forming a sphere; one in particular separating into a multitude of minute spheres, others assuming a highly elliptical form, condensing here and thinning out there; while the central mass grew brighter and denser as it contracted; till there lay before me a perfect miniature of the solar system, with planets, satellites, asteroids and meteoric rings."
There the vision does not stop, for after answering the ritual questions, Greg's protagonist is given to witness the beginning of life in the solar system itself, all inside a "small transparent sphere within the watery globe, containing itself a spherical nucleus. From this were evolved gradually two distinct forms, one resembling very much some of the simplest of those transparent creatures which the microscope exhibits to us in the water drop... The other was a tiny fragment of tissue, gradually shaping itself into the simplest and smallest specimens of vegetable life. The watery globe disappeared, and these two were left alone. From each gradually emerged, growing in size, complexity, and distinctness, one form after another of higher organism."24
Initiated, Greg's hero is now given to behold the emblem of the "Children of the Star": "Towards the roof, exactly in the center, was a large silver st
ar. ...Around this was a broad golden circle or band; and beneath, the silver image of a serpent — perfectly reproducing a typical terrestrial snake, but coiled, as no snake ever coils itself, in a double circle or figure of eight, with the tail wound around the neck. On the left was a crimson shield or what seemed to be such, small, round, and swelling in the center into a sharp point; on the right three crossed spears of silver with crimson blades pointed upwards."25
We have encountered that suspicious phrasing "mist" several times in Greg's visionary description. His Martian secret society "The Children of the Star" is also called "The Children of the Light." The Angelic Society also called itself mist or "le Brouillard," alluding to its status as a "Church of Light."26
William Delisle Hay described zodiacal force and zodiamotors in his 1881 Three Hundred Years Hence. When the numbers 1881 and 300 are added, the number 2181 and then 12 is obtained. Twelve is of course the number of the houses of the zodiac; when the numbers 1 and 2 are added, the number 3 is obtained. Greg painted a vivid picture of a three-fold symbol, part of it consisting of three crossed spears. While Keely asserted that everything was composed of triune streams, the number 3 also has a special significance in freemasonry. Freemasons often refer to themselves as "brothers of the three points," a custom that was introduced for unknown reasons in the 18th century,27 the period when the Masonic grade Knight of the Zodiac simultaneously sprang into existence. Delisle Hay was not the first author to use the title Three Hundred Years Hence. He was preceded in 1836 by Mary Griffith who published a futuristic Utopian novel with the same title, which involves time travel through suspended animation.28
Interestingly, Griffith's story is based in Philadelphia, in the years 1835 and 2135. Amongst others, Griffith described a new power source "not steam, not muscle," developed by a woman, that is widely used in ships, government-operated trains, aircraft and ground vehicles equivalent to automobiles. The force however is not further explained.29 The fact that the power was developed by a woman may serve us to see a certain influence of ideas on Bulwer-Lytton's The Coming Race, in which he writes that women are superior to men in handling vril. As with Delisle Hay's novel, the year of publication, 1836, and the title, 300, deliver the values 12 and 3.
According to Collins, the airship of the never-identified inventor was guarded by "three men" and Hart stated that the mysterious inventor had "three assistants." Hart also alleged that there were "three airships" in existence. A freemason claimed to have learned the true identity of the inventor in a Masonic lodge. In the second part of the airship wave the inventor identified himself as Hiram Wilson. In freemasonic tradition, Hiram, also known as Hiram Abiff or the widow's son, is an important figure that was the builder of the temple of Salomo. As freemasonic legend relates, Hiram was murdered by "three unworthy men." In Dellschau's manuscripts, the mysterious NYZMA is frequently connected by the symbol of the skull and crossbones. Not only is this symbol used by the Chapter of the Skull and Bones, but it also features prominent in Masonic symbolism. The zodiac was not only depicted on the ceilings of the Masonic temples and the temple at Denderah; it was also neatly engraved on Wronski's globular Prognometer and depicted on d'Alveydre's Archeometer.
In 1912, Count Von Rosen purportedly sent Keely's secrets via Scotland to Stockholm, Sweden. It is said that the original Knights Templar fled to Scotland. It is in Stockholm that the grand lodge of the Swedish Freemasons is settled.30 The Swedish Rite affirms in its traditional history that Jacques de Molay, last Grand Master of the Knights Templar, committed the order into the hands of his nephew, the Comte Beaujeu, who carried it to Sweden, together with the ashes of his uncle. Another branch of Swedish freemasonry was derived from the "system of the strict observance," an 18th century Masonic system also based on the legend of the perpetuation of the Knights Templar.31 The word "Rose" is the Masonic symbol for the search for a higher life. In ancient Greece and Egypt the rose was the symbol for secrecy. Something experienced or learned by an adept adorned with a rose, or Sub Rosa, had to stay secret.32
Freemason and Keely's friend Wiliam J. Colville published a book called Our Places in the Universal Zodiac in 1895.33 His book was followed a year later by a book called Across the Zodiac, written by an Edwin Pallander about whose life nothing is known. In the book a spaceship, the Astrolabe, is made operative by a giant gyroscope that nullifies gravity. Flights to the moon are made, where remnants of a dead civilization are found, and to Saturn, where life is discovered.34 Pallander used not only the same title as Greg's book, but also elements of Greg's plot, which he fused with certain elements from Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.35 Greg's Across the Zodiac was published exactly thirteen years before Bloomfield-Moore's book on Keely was issued by the same publishing house. 1880 plus 13 delivers again the numbers 12 and 3.
Cheiro visited Keely in 1890. In one of his remembrances of Keely that he hid in an otherwise fictional tale, he writes: "In the inscrutable wisdom of the Thought Force of Purpose, and the Creator of all Design, the Zodiacal system that controls this earth compels it to alter its axis once in every 25,000 years. At the end of each of these periods of Time called by men "the Precession of the equinoxes" the tilt or inclination of the Poles causes oceans to alter, continents to be swept away, civilizations to be destroyed, and new ones to appear."36
Cheiro, strapped in the strange device which we have seen described earlier, travels to a remote time when the temple of Atlantis still proudly stood: "I saw stretching into illimitable distance a wide avenue of giant figures of stone leading to a vast temple, of which every part had an astrological meaning. Formed like a circle, this temple appeared divided into twelve parts symbolizing the Twelve Signs of the Zodiac and their influence on human life. In the middle of this majestic temple appeared a throne on which the Sun as the Giver of Life reigned in the form of a mangod. Rays of light charged with ions of magnetism radiated from this center to each of the twelve signs and from them again flooded the Earth-Planet as it swept through each Sign in its annual pathway through the heavens. Stars sang to stars and suns to suns in one universal vibration of harmony. Designs, with threads of gold, linked planet to planet. Purpose radiated from the Sun-God bearing life and Death within its hands. ...The wide space before the throne was filled with myriads of people...all were drawn by some mysterious magnetic force to the Sign of the Zodiac under which they were born; every man, every woman and every child was robed in the same color as their Sign and on each forehead was their own distinctive jewel."37
When we leave Cheiro's visionary description of Atlantis and its polar and zodiacal symbology, we find that Greg's Across the Zodiac, published long before Cheiro's account, exerted its influence on other writers. It is asserted that Robert Cromie's novel about a trip to Mars, A Plunge into Space, published in 1890, owed an obvious debt to Greg's work, from which Cromie borrowed his antigravity mechanism.38 The novel was endorsed by Jules Verne, who wrote his only foreword to the second edition of the book published a year later.39
Lord E.'s remark in Surya's account of having had as his task to fathom the "double sphinx of force and matter" reminds us of Verne's 1895 tale le Sphinx des Glaces or The Sphinx of the Ice Fields, which Verne not only dedicated to the literary genius Edgar Allan Poe, but also to "his American Friends."40 In the story, Verne's protagonists encounter, behind a curtain of mist, a huge magnetic mountain in the form of a sphinx on the south pole. Verne also wrote a little-known story in 1889 about the tilting of the axis, The Purchase of the North-Pole.41 It is also argued on several occasions that Verne's stories are in fact a huge and elaborate code,42 and that one of Verne's characters in Journey to the Center of the Earth, called Axel, is merely a disguised form for the word AXIS.43 The same may be said for Sand's heroine Alexis.
The depiction of the zodiac at Denderah has a striking feature; it shows a deviation of the axis in relation to its current position, a detail that evokes Cheiro's visions. Greg's term "apergy" was again used by Astor in A Journey
In Other Worlds. In his novel, Astor named his spaceship "Callisto," after the moon that circles Jupiter which is the subject of a visit in his novel. However, he chose Jupiter with a very good reason, since Jupiter and Callisto are both a reference to the axes or the poles, which in his novel are such an important theme. In Greek mythology Callisto was loved by Zeus, by the Romans named Jupiter, and she bore him Areas. For this Callisto was turned into a she-bear; in the end Zeus turned her into the constellation of seven stars known as the Great Bear. But Zeus also placed their son Arkas or Areas in the heavens as Arktouros, the Polestar.
A year before Astor published his striking novel, John O'Neill published the first volume of The Night of the Gods, in which we find the layer that Astor carefully covered in name-analogy, explained: "...the Most High, the deity symbolically worshipped on High Places, was the God of the Polestar, who was seated at the Highest celestial spot of the Cosmos, the North Pole of the Heavens."44
In the year that O'Neill published the first volume of his study on polar lore, Bloomfield-Moore published her book in which Keely stated the polar forces consisting of magnetism, electricity and gravital sympathy, "each stream composed of three currents, or triune streams, which make up the governing conditions of the controlling medium of the universe."45 Magnetism Keely described as "polar attraction," gravity as "polar propulsion."46
Where O'Neill saw the Most High as the God of the Polestar, the son of Callisto and also the name of Astor's spaceship, and Cheiro called this the Sun-God, Keely envisioned the streams of polar force originating from God; "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created He them. ...All sympathetic conditions, or streams of force, are derived (if we dare to make use of such a term in speaking of Deity) from the cerebral convolutions of the Infinite; from the center of the vast realm of the compound luminous. From the celestial intermediate, the brain of Deity, proceed the sympathetic flows that vitalize the polar terrestrial forces,"47 an imagery similar to Hopkins' mystical allusion to "Adam and Eve." Bloomfield-Moore proclaimed that "The great polar stream, with its exhaustless supply of energy, places at our disposal a force. ...We have but to hook our machinery on to the machinery of nature, and we have a... force, the conditions of which when once set up remain for ever, perpetual molecular action the result."48
Free Energy Pioneer- John Worrell Keely Page 48
