PAST LIVES INVESTIGATED BY CHARLES LEADBEATER

(This article was written by researcher Gregory Tillett. )

Although Leadbeater’s research into the past lives of members of the Theosophical Society had begun in the 1890’s, it was with his investigations into the lives of Krishnamurti (Alcyone) that this became a major preoccupation with him, and an obsession with many of his followers.

Leadbeater was the author of numerous articles on the past lives of members of the Theosophical Society, along with some other eminent personalities.

The story of those investigations

In April, 1909, a series began in The Theosophist under the title “Rents in the Veil of Time”, and provided a graphic coverage of the past incarnations of various heroes and heroines, most of whom remained anonymously veiled by “Star Names”. 

The Lives spanned a period from 22,662 BC to 624 AD, and contained the sort of material that makes for gripping reading.

Each instalment was awaited with eager anticipation by Theosophists, most of whom hoped to find themselves in at least some minor role in one of the adventures of the selected few.

For accounts of the strange atmosphere, eager anticipation, and plain snobbery, associated with the being identified (in a positive character, of course) in The Lives see: Arthur Nethercot The Last Four Lives of Annie Besant Rupert Hart-Davis, London, 1963:202-201.

In 1913, many of these articles were compiled into a voluminous 500-page book entitled "Man. Whence, How and Whither. A Record of Clairvoyant Investigations of Prehistory, Anthropology and Cosmology With Predictions for the Future." Theosophical Publishing House, Adyar.

Those who found this book particularly difficult to read could get help from the book "Vade Mecum to Man: Whence, How and Whither with References to The Inner Life" by A. Schwartz, Theosophical Publishing House, Adyar, 1914.

By then, some 280 star names had been used, although not all of them were related to incarnate personalities, and just over forty were publicly identified.

The following investigations resulted in the book "The Lives of Alcyone: A Clairvoyant Investigation of the Lives Throughout the Ages of a Large Band of Servers", two volumes, Theosophical Publishing House, Adyar, 1924.

The process of reincarnation could be viewed by occultists of sufficiently advanced psychic development, looking down upon the sweep of human history recorded in the akashic records.  This was the work which the Lives set before Mrs Besant and Leadbeater, “two observers, two explorers” whose work represented the following of a very ancient path trodden by few feet today “but that will be trodden more and more by thronging students as time shows its stability”.

The finished products of Leadbeater’s research into past live make fascinating reading. "Man. Whence, How and Whither" includes an account of the incarnations of a small group of leading Theosophists on the moon when they inhabited monkey-like bodies, and were servants of those who are now the Masters.

Various complicated, and to the cynics musing, relationships occurred in the course of thousands of years.   In 40,000 BC, for example, Leadbeater was Annie Besant’s wife, and their children included Krishnamurti, Nityananda and more than ten others. Thousands of years later, Mrs Besant married Leadbeater’s daughter by his wife, Nityananda.  And in Peru, some 12,000 BC, Leadbeater married Francesca Arundale, producing Basil Hodgson-Smith, Bertram Keightley and A.P. Sinnett as their sons, and adopting George Arundale.

The complex and exacting detail that went into the material can be seen from the following extract from genealogical data on life in Peru, about 12,000 BC; it is drawn from three pages dealing with this life, and containing nothing but information of this type.

« Uranus married Hesperia, and had three sons – Sirius, Centaurus and Alcyone – and two daughters – Aquarius and Sagittarius.  The wife of Sirius was Slpica, and Pollux, Castor and Vegan were their sons, and Alcestis and Minerva their daughters.  Fides was an adopted son and married Glaucus.  Pollux married Melpomene and had three sons – Cyrene, Apis, Flora – and two daughters – Eroa and Chamaeleon.  Apis married Bootes, Eros Pisces and Chamaeleon Gemini.  Vega married Pomona and they had one son, Ursa, who espoused Lacerta, and two daughters – Circe and Ajax, the latter marrying Rex.  Ursa’s family included Cancer (daughter), Alastor (son), Phocea (daughter) and Thetis (son).  Of these, Alastor married Clio and had one daughter, Trapezium, and a son, Markab. »

Photo

This is one of the original photographs that Russell (“Dick”) Balfour Clarke (1885-1981) generously donated to me in Adyar in 1979.

There you'll see Dick Balfour Clarke, Irving Cooper, Fabrizio Ruspoli and Leadbeater (and his cat) working on "The Lives of Alcyone" in Adyar in 1911.

Irving Steiger Cooper (1882-1935) was Leadbeater's secretary for many years in India and Australia. He was ordained a priest in the Liberal Catholic Church in 1918 and a bishop in 1919.

Don Fabrizio Ruspoli (1878-1935) was an officer in the Italian Navy (some sources indicate lieutenant, others vice admiral), who joined the Theosophical Society in 1902 and became an enthusiastic supporter of the cause.

Ruspoli assisted Leadbeater as a secretary, transcribing his dictations while he conducted his clairvoyant investigations into past lives.

Star names

It is difficult to know whether the “Star Names” chosen for the personalities as they were in incarnation were intended to correspond to some individual traits.

The identities of the Star names, with the exceptions of those who consented to having theirs published, remained a closely guarded secret.  Readers could have recourse to lists included in "Man. Whence, How and Whither", or "The Lives of  Alcyone", but these would reveal only forty or so names, quite a few of them famous figures from history rather than living Theosophists.  Julius Caesar was Corona, for example, and the tenth Earl of Dundonald was Deneb.

Other historical notables honoured by inclusion were Buddha (named Mahaguru), Sir William Crookes (Aries), Laotse (Lyra), Sir Thomas More (Vulcan) and Viscountess Churchill (Roxana).  Of course, private lists were kept, built up, and privately circulated. Some of those included in the Lives would presumably not have wished to be, and would, furthermore, have taken grave exception to the things they were alleged to have done, and the characteristics they were supposed to have manifested, in previous incarnations.

If the Lives gave great scope for the creation of heroes, they also allowed for the clearly define villains.  Great mystery surrounded some of the obvious villains, readily identifiable in every life as evil, and an enemy of the Theosophical heroes.

The principal villains were Ursa, Cancer, Hesperia, Lacerta and, the most evil of them all, Scorpio. This little cluster was found in numerous lives as malcontents, trouble-makers and the tools of the Black Powers.  Whereas others rose and fell with different incarnations – or, as sceptics remarked, as they pleased or displeased Leadbeater – these five remained in the depths of nastiness.

The identity of the first four are relatively clear:  Dr Elizabeth Chidester or Robert Dennis (Ursa), Mr Knothe (Cancer), Mrs Helen Dennis (Hesperia) and Mrs Kate Davis (Lacerta).  These are all the “villains” of Leadbeater’s 1906 “troubles” in the United States, and its aftermath.

Scorpio has been identified with Dr Eleanor Hiestand-Moore, but however much Leadbeater may have hated her for her vitriolic attacks on him in the Theosophic Voice, the journal she established for that sole purpose, she remained an improbably insignificant figure.

It is far more likely that Scorpio was retained as a mysterious, never-specified villain capable of being recognized in anyone who filled the role at any time, a subtle threat to any would-be enemies who might have found it uncomfortable to have been so identified in Theosophical gossip.

The major characters are identified in the following table.  An analysis of the significance of the names attributed to them is an interesting, and not altogether unprofitable exercise.

George Arundale – Fides

Francesca Arundale – Spica

Annie Besant – Herakles

Esther Bright – Beatrix

Bhagavan Das – Capricorn

H.P. Blavatsky – Vajra

G.N. Chakravarti – Cetus

Alex Fullerton – Alastor

Basil Hodgson-Smith – Vega

Alfred Hodgson-Smith – Tiphys

Hubert van Hook – Orion

Weller van Hook – Aldebaran

Mrs van Hook – Achilles

Jinarajadasa – Selen

W.Q. Judge – Phocea

Krishnamurti – Alcyone

Fritz Kunz – Rigel

C.W.Leadbeater – Sirius

G.R.S. Mead – Markab

Nityananda – Mizar

Narayianiah – Antares

H.S. Olcott – Ulysses

Mrs Marie Russak – Helios

Johan van Manen – Aletheia

James Wedgwood – Lomia

B.P. Wadia – Polaris

Ernest Wood – Xulon

Various private lists of “Star names” circulated within the Theosophical Society, especially during the hey-day of “the Lives”; some of these were consulted in the Theosophical Society Archives and Library at Adyar.  In addition, handwritten annotations in copies of "The Lives of Alcyone" and "Man. Whence, How and Whither" in the Adyar library provided additional information, as did material on file in the Theosophical Society Archives at Adyar.

Of the three hundred or so “Star names” that were employed, only about forty were ever published with the corresponding names for this incarnation. Arthur Nethercot, in his research for his biography of Mrs Besant discovered the identities of over 90.

Gregory Robertson, who acted as my research assistant for most of the time I was at Adyar, and for a time after my return to Sydney, identified all “Star Names” bar one (“Scorpio) by a laborious, and meticulous, cross-matching of published and unpublished lists. See Gregory Robertson The Identification of Characters in "The Lives of Alcyone" Privately published, Sydney, 1980.

Although several hypotheses were considered regarding the identity of "Scorpio", it is clear that Leadbeater kept him as a threat that could be used against a specific enemy.

I received a copy of a duplicate; the document is undated, but it appears to date from the mid-1920s.

If it seems complicated to the reader, it must have seemed even more complicated to those who were working on the compilation of the Lives.  Ernest Wood recalled:

« When the number of persons in the ‘Lives’ had grown to over three hundred, the list was closed, as the investigation had become unwieldy.  I used to keep a ledger showing each ‘star’ name and where the character was in relation to others in all the lives.

With this ledger I assisted Mr Leadbeater to compile his charts, by informing him of the periods during which a character might so far be missing, so that he might be looked up and accounted for throughout the whole period covered by the investigations.

We regarded the use of such a ledger as quite legitimate for the saving of psychic energy, though it deprived the ‘Lives’ of any evidential value for those of us who knew the process. »

Listings

In addition to the ledger, enormous genealogical charts were compiled showing the inter-relationships between individuals in specific lives.  “Accounts” were also prepared showing an individual’s specific number of relationships to another character through the period of the lives.

Julia Somner compiled 'A Students Chart The Lives of Alcyone' (1910) with the Star names printed, and columns for the student to complete with the names of relations and relationships.

Mary Lutyens showed the author a chart prepared to show her mother (Lady Emily Lutyens) in the scheme of incarnations; it is an enormous and complicated document.

One of the few photographs showing Leadbeater smiling is one where he is also holding one of those family trees.  From left to right: Ernest Wood, Mrs. Gertrude Kerr, Leadbeater, Mrs. Dorothy Jinarajadasa, Dr. Raimond van Marle.

Thus, someone could be reassured that he or she had been Krishnamurti’s brother twice, cousin eight times, and had married him once.  Closeness to Alcyone meant closeness to the Masters, and spiritual development;   it was therefore important.

There were a few Theosophists who could even claim that he had been the offspring or spouses of the Masters themselves.

Detailed charts were prepared for the more significant individuals, providing data on the intricate details of lives from the present back some two hundred thousand years.

The following represents a portion of such a chart prepared for Sirius (Leadbeater himself).

Subject A  –  Last 20 Lives

Average life on earth 66-1/3 years

Average period between incarnations 1208-1/2 years

Date of Birth – Place – Race – Sex – Age – Between Lives

BC

23,650 – N. America – IV.1 – M – 56 – 929

22,665 – N. America – IV.2 – M – 64 – 1,135

21,466 – Poseidonis – IV.3 – M – 84 – 1,826

19,556 – Bactria – IV.4 – M – 71 – 1,276

BC

12,095 – Peru – IV.3 – M – 82 – 1,266

10,747 – China – IV.4 – M – 79 – 1,050

9,618 – Poseidonis – IV.5 – F – 54 – 1,262

BC

1,907 – Arabia – V.2 – M – 45 – 1,338

524 – Greece – V.4 – M – 70 – 2,301

AD

1,847 – England – V.5 – M

The main interest in the Lives centred on that group of Theosophists known as “The Band of Servers”.  See C.W. Leadbeater The Band of Servers Theosophical Publishing House, Adyar, 1924. These were the elite of human evolution, now being reborn to prepare for the new Root Race, and they figured most prominently in the Lives; some 250 names were known for them, although this was not regarded as a final figure. 

Those mentioned in "The Lives of Alcyone" included 161 men and 91 women, the major of them being British (86), and Indian (59) or American (43).  Only a few were drawn from Australia (14), although more were found there once Leadbeater had settled in Sydney.

The rest came from Holland and the Dutch East Indies (13), France (13), Italy (8), Russia (5), Germany (4), with a few Spaniards, Burmese, Swiss and Parsis.

The Band of Servers represented the spearhead of future evolution on this planet, drawn together in this life as the result of their close association with and devoted service to the Masters in the past.

The only story told by Besant

Jinarajadasa suggested that Mrs. Besant wrote only one biography, number 28:

" His style differs from that of the lives written by Charles Leadbeater. … The final verses are also of a graphic intensity; those verses could not have been written by the pragmatic and undramatic narrator that Mr. Leadbeater was. "

(Clairvoyant Investigations of Ernest Wood by CW Leadbeater and “The Lives of Alcyone”, p.28)

Publications

A fundamental question about the republication of Leadbeater's most important works arises in relation to the enormous volumes that contain his alleged psychic research on the past lives of some 300 people.

The books "Man: From Where, How, and Where To. A Record of Clairvoyant Investigations", Theosophical Publishing House, Adyar, 1913 (524 pages) and "The Lives of Alcyone. A Clairvoyant Investigation of the Lives Throughout the Age of a Great Group of Servants", 2 volumes, Theosophical Publishing House, Adyar, 1924 (738 pages), both attributed to Annie Besant and CW Leadbeater (although they were actually written by Leadbeater).

And to this can be added the series, attributed exclusively to Leadbeater: " The Soul's Growth through Reincarnation", in four volumes, Theosophical Publishing House, Adyar: Lives of Erato and Spica (1941), Lives of Orion (1946), Lives of Ursa, Vega and Eudox (1948) and Lives of Ulysses, Abel, Arcor and Vale (1950).

"Man: From Where, How, and Towards" was published in 1913 and reprinted four times, with a fifth abridged reprint in 1971. "The Lives of Alcyone" was published only once (1924). And once the copyrights on the works expired, they were published in various paperback editions.

Why has Theosophical Publishing House never reissued these works today?

The answer is probably because they started receiving a lot of criticism.

CRITICS

These past lives were not without criticism, although those who participated in them claimed that the critics were generally those who had been excluded.

William Hare

The most outspoken and enthusiastic critic was William Loftus Hare, a British theosophist. A later publication will analyze the criticisms, which ranged from those suggesting it was all fantasy to those arguing it was a deliberate fraud.

In the February 1923 issue of 'The Occult Review', William Loftus Hare criticized those past lives in particular, and Leadbeater's clairvoyant work in general, stating that the material referred to a period or place impossible to confirm or refute, or, if it referred to a historically accessible period, it dealt with trivialities that proved impossible to verify.

Hare pointed out that there were some notable exceptions when Leadbeater was willing to completely distort history when it suited him, as in the case of Jesus' birth date in 105 BC.

John Prentice

John Prentice, always a staunch critic of Leadbeater, wrote an attack on his clairvoyant investigations of history in support of Hare's accusations (see Dawn, November 1, 1923).

Leadbeater had stated in his book "Man. Whence, How and Whither" (1913, p. 486) that the information he was revealing had not been published in any other books.

But Prentice in The Occult Review of September 1923 claimed that the material for the Peruvian lives in the book "Man. Whence, How and Whither" (1913, pp. 482-90) had been taken from Garcilasso de la Vega's "Royal Commentaries on the Yuccas of Peru" (written in 1609 and published in English translation in 1638, 1869, and 1871).

These criticisms were notable because they elicited the only public response Leadbeater ever gave to his own criticisms. The September 1923 issue of The Occult Review published a reply from Leadbeater himself. This represented a significant departure from his usual policy of never responding to criticism or attacks; it was generally his disciples who wrote in his defense.

In his letter, Leadbeater stated that he had simply recorded what he saw in the Akashic Records and considered Hare's suggestion that he had copied material from other sources a "grave impertinence," accusing him of "a great rudeness of unfounded accusations of deception." This, of course, did not answer Hare's criticism.

Ernest Wood

Several critics of Leadbeater (including later Ernest Wood) claimed that these past lives were a fabrication, although they did not seem to use that term in its usual, or even legal, sense, suggesting rather that Leadbeater had drawn at least some of the material, not from clairvoyant investigations, but from more mundane sources.

A Parsi

For example, a Parsi noted that in one of his past Persian lives, Leadbeater had confused male and female names. This was also one of the few reincarnations in which Leadbeater provided such substantial information as proper names.

The same Parsi presented what he considered to be additional evidence of fraud, saying:

« One evening, Mr. Leadbeater, with great hesitation, spoke a few words to me in Sanskrit, indicating that he was listening. According to him, he found it very difficult to pronounce words in foreign languages ​​clearly. He asked me if I recognized the language. I told him that yes, it was Sanskrit, perfectly recognizable.

The next day, this interesting fact came up in a conversation between Wood and Leadbeater, and the Parsi was certain he had heard the phrase in Sanskrit elsewhere.

At that moment, the Parsi's gaze happened upon a book that was out of place on the shelf. He instantly remembered that the passage they were discussing was quoted in that book, and the Parsi exclaimed, "But! Now I remember. It was in this book, 'Ravana's Dream,' which is out of place, where I read that sentence."

Leadbeater seemed confused and remarked that the servant had been dusting the books, then changed the subject. »

(Quoted in "Is This Theosophy?" by Ernest Wood, Rider, London, 1936, pp. 139-141)

This Parsi was almost certainly BP Wadia.

Ferdinand Brooks

While most believed, and some doubted, a minority ridiculed and enjoyed reciting a lengthy poem by FT Brooks that began like this:

« In the Lives, in the Lives,

I’ve had all sorts of husbands and wives,

I’ve been killed and reborn,

Many bodies I’ve worn,

But my higher anatomy thrives.

In the Lives, in the Lives,

We’ve been busy as bees in their hives –

Whether Arab or Turk,

We were pining to work,

In the Lives, in the Lives. »

(The Theosophical Society and its Esoteric Spectrum, p. 283)

Conclusion

Although several defenders of Leadbeater have attempted to use his work "Occult Chemistry," for example, as evidence of the accuracy of his clairvoyance, there do not appear to be equivalent comments on the past-life writings he uncovered, despite their purporting to provide a substantial amount of historical and scientific data, some of which, at least, are susceptible to critical evaluation.

Sources:

https://cwledbeater.wordpress.com/2016/05/16/in-the-lives-in-the-lives/

https://cwledbeater.wordpress.com/2016/06/03/working-on-the-lives/

https://cwledbeater.wordpress.com/2016/06/19/whither-the-lives/

https://cwledbeater.wordpress.com/2017/09/10/identifying-the-characters-in-the-lives-again/

CID OBSERVATION

It is stupid to use the book "Occult Chemistry" to try to legitimize the clairvoyance of Leadbeater and Besant because this book is so full of lies that the Theosophical Society of Adyar has preferred to stop publishing it, as it has also stopped publishing the books that recount those supposed past lives discovered "clairvoyantly" by Leadbeater and his team because they have turned out to be very false.