Aquarian Path, The.
A Quarterly Journal Devoted to the Ancient Mystery Teachings and Occult Sciences, etc. / A Monthly Journal Devoted to the Study of Esoteric Philosophy and the Ancient Mysteries.
1947--1953 Quarterly, monthly, bimonthly
West Feltham, and then London, England.
Editor: Francis Clive-Ross.
Publisher: Aquarian Lodge / The Aquarian Press.
Succeeded by: Light (1955-1959?); Tomorrow (1963-1967); Studies in Comparative Religion (1967-1981)
1/1, October-December (Fall) 1947-6/2, March-April, 1953.
24-34 pp., 9-13 pence an issue, 13 s. a year.

This was begun as the quarterly organ for the unknown Aquarian Lodge in Feltham, then moved to London and became a monthly in 1950 and a bimonthly in 1952. In its monthly format it was a non-partisan and fairly intellectual journal of "Esoteric Philosophy and the Ancient Mysteries," as it proclaimed. In effect, this consisted of long discussions on "Personal Development," "What is Man?," "Eastern Psychology," "Anthropology--the Science of the Spirit," "Where is God? How to Find Out," "Astral Projection," "Astrological Studies," etc. The journal was a gathering place for a variety of minor occult and spiritualist authors who published after the war, together with some notable contributors like Christmas Humphreys, Charles J. Seymour, and Colin M. Turnbull. It published a notable article "The Vampire: Fact or Fiction?" in the February-March 1951 issue by "Francis Fabian" (a pseudonym of the editor) that reviewed the folkloric and psychological roots of vampirism, and in June-July 1952 published a sharply critical review of L. Ron Hubbard's Dianetics, which it dismissed as a clumsy blend of Christian Science and psychoanalysis.

The editor of the journal, Francis Fabian Clive-Ross (1921-1981) was also the proprietor of the Aquarian Press that published the journal and devoted a significant part of its pages to reviews of and advertisements for its own offerings. The journal also carried a variety of the usual advertisements for "Postal Psychometry," "Faculty of Astrological Studies," "The Order of the Sun, a worldwide mystical fraternity," etc., and for miscellaneous clairvoyants. It promoted "The Aquarian Association, An Organisation for the Study & Practice of the Aquarian Way of Life," which held weekly meetings and gave personal instructions – but failed to explain what the Aquarian Way of Life was or what was offered to develop it. The association was probably the same as or an offshoot of The Aquarian Lodge that had been the original sponsor of the journal.

Clive-Ross (who adopted the hyphen for his own purposes) was, as an eminent researcher has said, "a prickly antiquary who was chiefly known to the broad reading public in his lifetime as the chairman of the Hounslow and District Historical Society, in which role he was a vigorous inspector and critic of claims made by various concerns and institutions (like pubs) about their history and origins, and for his protection of historic landmark buildings in the path of the bulldozers of progress." In later life he became a Justice of the Peace. In 1955, after the London Spiritualist Alliance was reorganized as the College of Psychic Science, he became editor of Light (q.v.) and expanded its regular content to include occultism and parapsychology and often dealt with spiritualism in a skeptical manner, complaints about which led to his resignation at some point after 1959. In a newspaper interview in 1966 he said: "I became convinced that there was something in spiritualism many years ago, after wide reading. I subsequently became unconvinced through much practical experience. Whereas there is a great deal of fraud in spiritualism, I was also careful to point out that many adherents are sincere people of somewhat limited outlook who are self-deluded. In addition to this there is a clairvoyant, or extra-sensory faculty, which while it has nothing to do with the dead, does enable some mediums, fortune-tellers, and so on, to state facts that they could not have known normally." In 1963, Clive-Ross became editor of Eileen Garrett's Tomorrow (q.v.), which had since the year before become increasingly devoted to Traditionalism and the perennial philosophy of Rene Guenon and his emulators. In 1967 he transformed this into Studies in Comparative Religion (q.v.) which he edited until his death in 1981. BL.

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