40 PART I: AN ORDER OF PRACTICAL OCCULTISM

9. P a s c h a l B e v e r l y R a n d o l p h
We have now surveyed the H. B. of L.'s origins as a semi-secret
order for teaching practical occultism, and described the roles of
Theon, Davidson, and Burgoyne. For all the vaunted participa
tion of celestial hierarchies, the more immediate source of almost
all the Order's teachings is more plebeian, and demonstrates the
truth of Burgoyne's claim to be merely a compiler. Rene Guenon
suggested th at one should look for the an teced en ts of the
H. B. of L. in a "Brotherhood of Eulis," which he rightly says was
founded about 1870 by Paschal Beverly R andolph/6 Even a
glance at the practical instruction embodied in the Laws of
Magic M irrors" and "Mysteries of Eros" reveals the enormous
extent to which the Order mined the works of this unique and
underrated character.77
Randolph (1825-1875) was an African American man who
had a reputation by the early 1850s as a typical "trance speaker"
who would act as the unconscious medium for various reform-
minded "spirits." This began to change in 1855 when he traveled
to Europe and mixed in the Mesmerist circles in France around
Baron Jules Du Potet de Sennevoy and Louis Alphonse Cahag-
net. Unlike most American spiritualists, the French Mesmerists
were well versed in the Western magical and occult traditions.
Also, and most especially, they used in their spirit evocations
magic mirrors or crystals, and drugs, especially hashish. All this
was a revelation to Randolph.
In 1857, and again in 1861, Randolph was in Europe visiting
the same circles, but also venturing to the Near East (Egypt, Pal
estine, and Turkey as far as the borders of Persia), where he came
to know a different sort of magic among the w andering der
vishes and "fak irs" whom he met on his travels. Returning to
America after his first trip to the East, he publicly denounced
spiritualism, and especially the role he had hitherto accepted:
that of a passive and unconscious medium for the "spirits." In its
place he now taught a complete system of practice and theory, of
which these are the main points: A) Myriads of divine "m onads"

76Guenon 1982,313; Guenon 1952,21.

77This section is condensed from Mr. Deveney's forthcoming study of P. B. Randolph.
 PASCHAL BEVERLY RANDOLPH 41

are continuously being spun out from the vortex of the Divine
Central Sun. The goal of every human monad is to become first
individuated, then a divine individual, and then to progress per
petually as a god through infinite universes. The inhabitants of
these universes are not lim ited (as the spiritualists thought) to
the "spirits" of the human dead, but include vast hierarchies of
"e le m e n ta ls" and of the p rog ressed dead and of the never
embodied, with all of whom m en on earth can be taught to com
municate. B) There is no reincarnation in the sense of rebirth on
this earth, w ith the exception of abortions, m ental defectives,
and those who die before the "sou l" really comes into being. C)
The goal of divinization can be attained by m any people here
and now, through clairvoyance achieved by means of the magic
mirror, drugs, and sexual magic.
W hatever Rene G uenon m ay have urged to the contrary,
both Randolph and the H. B. of L. were firm believers in commu
nication with the dead. But Modern Spiritualism, in Randolph's
mature view, was up a blind alley in trying indiscriminately to
contact what it took to be the spirits of the dead, and in encour
aging passive and unconscious m edium ship. W hat should be
contacted was adepts and beings in the celestial hierarchies, and
wrhat should be cultivated was conscious clairvoyance and the
will.
Originally Randolph characterized his teachings as "Rosi-
crucian," though by that he did not mean exclusively the Rosi-
crucians known to history. These were merely a small part of the
real Order, which Randolph called by various Oriental names
("Gate of Light," etc.). This extended on both sides of the grave,
among men and among the earthly and celestial hierarchies, and
contact with it was on the clairvoyant level. Randolph spoke var
iously of his contact w ith Ram us/Thothm or, a dead Egyptian
pharaoh, and with Pul ali Beg, a Persian who, it seemed, was still
alive. The earthly extensions of the Order were in the Near East,
though there appears to have been a center in Paris.
Randolph places great emphasis, both personally and as an
occultist, on a state he calls variously "Blending" or "A trilism "
a state in which a person, while still conscious, is totally taken
over by another being, hum an or never hum an, and indoctri
nated or used for some purpose. This was the very essence of the
42 PART I: AN ORDER OF PRACTICAL OCCULTISM

Paschal Beverly Randolph

 PASCHAL BEVERLY RANDOLPH 43

H. B. of L. A parallel process is to be seen in the relationship of

Blavatsky w ith the "Brothers" who wrote much of Isis Unveiled
through her: Colonel Olcott remarked on how she would some
times assume, while writing, an entirely different and masculine
p e rso n a lity , w h ich did n o t seem even to reco g n ize h im .78
Another case relevant to our topic is that of Em ma Hardinge
Britten (see Section 13, below ), who from 1857 onward found
that she could lecture in full consciousness on virtually any sub
ject without any preparation, thanks to an apparently omniscient
force that used her voice.79
The Philosophie Cosmique explains that entities not living
on earth can materialize in the aura of certain persons, through
"reciprocal affinity." Randolph him self had been aware of the
dangers of "Blending," and Theon's warnings were even stron
ger. He called it "confusion of being" and identified it as one of
the m ost dangerous sources of unbalance, especially w hen it
concerned non-hum an entities. He denounced it vigorously as
one of the dangers of spiritualism. On the contrary, Theon says,
the m agnetizer should respect the medium as he would a rare
Stradivarius violin, and leave her in full liberty, since it is the
m edium 's own sincerity that enables her to reflect the higher
worlds. For this, it is essential for her to be free from any imposi
tion by another. The role of the "pathetizer" in Theon's method is
simply to protect and guide the medium, and to obtain knowl
edge for the good of humanity.
From his earliest days, Randolph w as fascinated with sex,
both personally and as a physician. He claimed to have found in
the Near East the true secret of sex, and began in the early 1870s
to d istribu te a series of m anu scrip t teachings on his sexual
magic. The organization which he formed for this purpose was
the "Brotherhood of Eulis," mentioned by Guenon as the place to
look for the origins or antecedents of the H. B. of L.
After Randolph's death, his wife, Kate Corson Randolph,
and follow ers continued his work. In the early 1880s the Bath
bookseller Robert H. Fryar was the agent in Britain for the sale of

78 ODL, 1,236-254.
79 See Britten, 50-51.
44 PART I: AN ORDER OF PRACTICAL OCCULTISM

his manuscript teachings, of which the most important was the

"M ysteries of Eulis." W hen Fryar had first com e into contact
with Randolph is unknown, but the relationship probably dates
back to Randolph's friendship in the early 1860s with the circle of
"Christian" spiritualists around the London Spiritual M agazine.
Hargrave Jennings, never good at chronology, wrote to Fryar in
1887: "I first knew Randolph the A m erican thirty-five years
ago..." Fryar's edition of The D ivine Pym ander (with Jennings'
Preface), in which the H. B. of L. first announced itself, was the
first edition of the Corpus Hermeticum to appear since Randolph's
own edition of 1871, and typographically almost identical with
it.80 We conclude that the H. B. of L. started to function within a
small Randolphian coterie already existing in England, of which
Fryar was the center.
Nowhere in the surviving H. B. o f L. m aterial is the exact
relationship between the Order and Randolph, or between Ran
dolph and Theon, spelled out. That Randolph w as called "half
in itia te d " im plies a real c o n n e ctio n so m ew h ere w ith th e
H. B. of L/s putative antecedents or siblings, as does the Order's
wholesale appropriation of his practical magic, but the exact con
nection is never made explicit. Perhaps Guenon's theory that the
antecedents of the H. B. of L. w ere to be sought in Randolph's
Brotherhood of Eulis [B.9.e], w ith its supposed N ear Eastern
source in the Isma'ili N usairi, is an echo of the O rd er's own
attempt to explain the relationship. W hat is dem onstrably cer
tain, however, is that the entirety of the H. B. of L. m anuscript
material, with the exception of the purely doctrinal works, "The
Key," "The Hermetic Key," and "Sym bolical N otes," is essen
tially derived from Randolph. The indebtedness, m oreover, is
greater than is apparent from the texts as published here. In th e
early days of the Order, manuscript copies of the "M ysteries of
Eulis" were circulated to the neophytes as such, and the First
Grade of the Order was known as the "Grade of Eulis." But the
H. B. of L., though it valued very highly certain parts of Ran

80 Both editions of The Divine Pymander have been reprinted in facsimile: Randolph's (in
the reissue of 1889} by Health Research, Mokelumne Hill, Ca., 1972; Fryar's by Wizard's
Bookshelf, Minneapolis, 1973. The H. B. of L.'s advertisement [B.3.b] has been eliminated
from the latter.
 PASCHAL BEVERLY RANDOLPH 43

dolph's teachings, did not so adm ire the teacher. By his own
account, Randolph was an extremely unhappy man, frequently
out of control and sometimes on the brink of insanity; he died by
his own hand. The H. B. of L. cautioned its neophytes that he was
only "h alf-in itiated " and that he had fallen into black magic.
Gradually "Eulis," with its strong echoes of Randolph, gave way
to "E ro s" or "E ro sa," as the O rder distanced itself from Ran
dolph while continuing to use his work. This, rather than simple
plagiarism, accounts for the suppression of his name in the doc
uments adapted from his writings.
Randolph's distinction lies primarily in his practical instruc
tions on personal development: mirror practice, drugs, and sex
ual magic. His methods, learned (as he variously claimed) in the
N ear East or from personages of the celestial hierarchies, or
made up from his own creativity, provided the essential element
missing from the occultist koine of the period: the practical key to
an experiential realization by the individual neophyte of the
m ysteries expounded endlessly in the w ordy occult com pila
tions and theories of the age. W ith the exception of the French
and English Mesmerists and the related mirror-magicians of the
mid-centurywhose practical experiences were in any case sec
ondhand at best, mediated through the visions and reports of the
medium or seer Randolph provided practical instruction for a
person seeking to realize directly the truths of occultism. His
works outlined a variety of means of achieving personal experi
ence: m irror m agic to develop clairvoyance in the individual
using the mirror; the three principles of practical magic (Volan-
tia, D ecretism , and Posism ); sexual m agic; "B len d in g" as the
means of communication with the celestial hierarchies; the Sleep
of Sialam, and the use of mind-altering drugs.
These practical m eans w ere taken over w holesale by the
H. B. of L., and it is these that constituted its attraction for the
occultists of the time especially for Theosophists "w ho may
have been disappointed in their expectations of Sublime W is
dom being freely dispensed by Hindoo Mahatmas."