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| Periodical: | The Metaphysician |
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| Summary: |
From Pat Deveney's database:
MMetaphysician, The This was a rather generic and tentative journal without any apparent purpose beyond self-promotion. It gathered material to publish haphazardly by offering all who contributed material to the journal a discount on advertising their services -- a not uncommon procedure in the business. This practice renders especially piquant the journal's claim that "the Metaphysician will be circulating amongst the elite of those interested in Philosophical and Super-normal subjects: the names of its contributors alone assure advertisers of the quality of the clientèle likely to be reached." The contributors attracted included many of the minor figures of the postwar period in Great Britain: Elliott O'Donnell (haunted houses); Bishop Burt (Regionary Bishop of the Liberal Catholic Church in Australia), who wrote under his own name and as "Gnostic"); the novelist Margery Lawrence; Leslie M. Hanna (on alchemy); Louis Ackerman (graphology, with an illustrated article on the related issue of the deeper psychological meanings of where handwriting is located on the front and rear of envelopes); Mir Bashir (palmistry); Ross Nichols; Ross Nichols; Frederick R. Ward (astrologer); Charles Holderness ("Member of the Eastern Occult Order of the Magi," on Tarot), etc. Gerald Heard (1889-1971), the omnipresent author on things parapsychological and spiritualist, is the only contributor who is commonly known. The journal also carried John Martyn-Baxter's "Cyril Scott, A Biographical Sketch." The advertisements carried by the journal were of like ilk: an early "Operator of Dianetic-therapy and manipulative therapy" in Bristol, Palatine's Nazarene College and other enterprises, and various "Postal Courses leading to degrees," and, of course, AMORC. Richard, Duc de Palatine, the editor, was an exemplar of the labyrinthian occult, Gnostic and fringe-Masonic movements of the post-War period. On him see the notes under Lucis Magazine and Gnostic Forum. He was born in Melbourne, Australia, as Ronald John Powell in 1916 and died in California in 1977 (although he said on emigrating to the United States that he had been born in1891). He formally abandoned that name in 1945 in favor of "Richard John Palatine," which soon morphed into Richard, Duc de Palatine, to which he freely added suffixes over the years: B.A., Dip. Psy. (Aus.), L.M. Sc. (Eng.), D.D., 33°, etc. He started his spiritual career as a Theosophist and priest of the Liberal Catholic Church and member of AMORC, became a Registered Psycho-Therapist (fee starting at one Guinea) in London, where he started an occult social club and acted as president of the Nazarene College; was consecrated (in 1953) a bishop in the Old Catholic Mariavite Church by the Mar Georgius I, Bishop of Glastonbury, and then founded his own Pre-Nicene Gnostic-Catholic Church (now called the "Pre-Nicene Ekklesia") and the associated Brotherhood of the Illuminati. The stated goal was to "restore the Gnosis – Divine Wisdom to the Christian Church, and to teach the Path of Holiness which leads to God and the Inner Illumination and Interior Communion with the Soul through the mortal body of man." In 1959 he came to the United States, lectured widely as the Prince Chief Adept of the Order of the True Rosy Cross, and transformed the Brotherhood of the Illuminati into the Brotherhood and Order of the Pleroma and a Sanctuary of the Gnosis (fee $2.00 a month) -- an organization that placed him directly in the middle of the underworld of the Wandering Bishops around the OTO's Ecclesia Gnostica successions and schisms (he ordained Stephan A. Hoeller in 1960). The Brotherhood provided students with the practical instructions on purification that led to "perfection in the art of the Gnosis," after which the initiate would take his place in the "Empire of Light." Palatine definitely saw himself and his work as a culmination of the Theosophical movement that have failed and been supplanted by a more practical approach to Theosophy: "Whenever a Messenger appears in each century, his work is to prepare the groundwork for the changes which will result from his or her initial labours. The Theosophical Society failed the Princes of Light and its Founder H.P.B., in the eighteen eighties, this meant that the Princes were compelled to withdraw from the T.S. The Princes sought individuals who were willing to be trained for the next stage of the Plan, they chose Annie Besant and C.W. Leadbeater for this purpose." Palatine, went onto publish Lucis Magazine in London and Gnostic Forum in California, in both of which he was aided, as here, by Martyn-Baxter (described online as Palatine's "life partner") who contributed regularly to this journal and became a bishop in the church. NYPL; BL.
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| Issues: | Metaphysician V1 N4 Sep 1951 |
| Metaphysician V1 N5 Oct 1951 |
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