Free Energy Pioneer- John Worrell Keely

by Theo Paijmans

  Engel also wrote a very curious novel titled Mallona, the text of which he obtained through the remote viewing of a medium into the Akashic Records. The novel depicts life on the planet "Mallona," which was destroyed through the evil use of stupendous technology, and its remnants now form our asteroid belt. As a strange echo of Bulwer-Lytton's The Coming Race that Engel undoubtedly read — a German translation was available as early as 1874 — flying devices are described, and also the usage of "ether-power." The concept of Akasha-chron-icles, so widely dispersed through The Secret Doctrine that was published in a German translation in 1903, prompted Engel to write in Mallona: "It is a known fact that all things which have ever occurred, do not disappear without a trace, but instead are being photographed and kept in the universe. From every occurrence emanate light waves, which travel in the universe. Would one succeed to capture these light waves in another place and collect them in a suitable device, or to deliver them to a receiver, one would be able to recreate... the same image."127

  In March 1888, Franz Hartmann had a long conversation with Keely and inspected his devices with great interest during one of his visits.128 Allegedly Hartmann also made a sketch of one of the devices.129

  Hartmann first heard of Keely years before he actually visited him, years before The Secret Doctrine was printed and years before Bloomfield-Moore tried to hire him to cure his daughter of mental illness. This could mean that Hartmann either learned about Keely through a contemporary newspaper or that, perhaps this is a glimpse of other uncharted channels, possibly of an occult nature through which news about Keely traveled. Hartmann in any case gives no clue, and with this it is unfortunately left open to conjecture.

  Hartmann, however, wrote about Keely: "I have taken great interest in him ever since I first heard of him in 1882. I believe that the world is entering into a new era of existence, and will become spiritualized from top to bottom. As gaslight has driven away, in part, the smoky petroleum lamp, and is about to be displaced by electricity, which in the course of time may be supplanted by magnetism, and as the power of steam has caused muscular labor to disappear to a certain extent, and will itself give way before the new vibratory force of Keely, likewise the orthodox medical quackery that now prevails will be dethroned by the employment of the finer forces of nature, such as light, electricity, magnetism, etc. "130

  In the end Hartmann and Keely fell out, the former claiming that Keely would never be able to "utilize the force in mechanics," but that Keely's mission was "to spiritualize the world instead of advancing its material progress,"131 which would help Marques in his arguments in justifying Blavatsky.

  Burgoyne, who coincidentally came through Philadelphia — he had to check past the immigration authorities there while immigrating to America132 — echoed Hartmann's earlier hopes, when he wrote that, "Startling discoveries in chemistry, electricity and all the physical sciences will be brought to light. Steam will be superseded by compressed air (gas), electro-magnetism (atomic power) as a motive power."133

  Not only that, it also demonstrates, since the Theosophical Society and the Brotherhood of Luxor did not get along very well, that a deep-rooted interest in avant-garde technology is to be found across the whole occult spectrum, a topic to which we shall return in the following chapter. Burgoyne's book, which received favorable comments by Hardinge Britten who by now felt a deep hatred for theosophy,134 was distributed in 1897 by a Chicago based esoteric organization, The Progressive Thinker Publishing House. Their advertisement slogan, which was published in the book Ghost Land edited by Hardinge Britten, reads: "Keep your brain vibrating! "135

  Interestingly, there is another minor connection between the theosophists Olcott, Blavatsky and Keely, a minor triviality or a small coincidence so to speak. Olcott wrote that "One day in the month of July 1874, I was sitting in my law office.. .when it occurred to me that for years I paid no attention to the spiritualist movement. .. .I went around the corner to a dealer's and bought a copy of Banner of Light.136 Other persons in the Keely history who submitted their writings to this spiritualist periodical published in Boston were the freemasons and spiritualists John Ballou Newbrough and Keely's friend William Colville.

  William Wilberforce Juvenal Colville (1859-1917) was a medium; of how he became aware of his talent, two versions exist. Colville claimed that in his very early childhood, his mediumship "originally declared itself." As a child he had a sensation of "information flowing into me. I can only liken my experience to some memorable statements of Swedenborg concerning influx of knowledge into the interiors of human understanding." Colville treated his mediumship as a talent that consisted of three features; one was clairvoyance, the second as "mental enlightenment" or "intellectual illumination" and the third being "the actual predicting of coming events." On May 24, 1874, Colville "experienced the first thrill of consciousness that it was my principal lifework to travel nearly all over the earth, guided by unseen but not unknown inspirers."137

  History has a more sober opinion on the origins of Colville's mediumship and dryly states that his mediumistic talents were disclosed on May 24, 1874, coincidentally the year that marked Keely's appearance before a general public and just a month before Olcott would go around the corner to buy a copy of Banner of Light. That day, Colville became conscious of a spirit presence during a meeting. Until 1877, he was often found answering questions while unconscious, explaining his unawareness of his physical mediumship. At other times, he asserted that he heard every word he spoke as if it came from strange lips.138

  Whatever the differences, 1877 would start Colville's career as a lecturer and medium. In the intervening years between 1874 and 1877, he had "many opportunities for witnessing extraordinary phenomena, as I became well acquainted with many prominent spiritualists. .. .I had many opportunities for sitting in circles with Williams, Herne, Monck, Eglinton, and other extraordinary mediums, who, at about that time, were either in the inception or at the zenith of their fame." During his investigations, Colville was repeatedly being told that he was "a physical medium." Although he was not aware of this, he did admit that "planchette has worked for me repeatedly and automatic writing has been often with me quite an everyday experience." During the greater part of 1877-1878, Colville was "privileged to investigate the evidences of phenomenal Spiritualism all over England. The most private gatherings were open to me, and I was times without number privileged to sit with the most distinguished mediums."

  His first performance as a medium took place in a Masonic hall on March 4, 1877. Apparently he did well, as the newspapers would herald him as "one of the marvels of the nineteenth century." As a consequence he started to tour as a lecturer for nineteen months between March 1877 and October 1878. He went to the United States towards the end of October 1878 and arrived in Boston. On reaching America he discovered that his arrival had been announced in the Banner of Light, "the oldest spiritualistic newspaper in the world" as Colville wrote.

  After lectures in Boston, Colville would visit New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and other cities. Like Randolph, Newbrough and Leland, he travelled to various places and countries. In 1883, he would once again go to England, to return to the United States a year later. In 1885, he revisited England and a year later visited California for the first time. He joined the Theosophical Society in 1890.

  In 1895 after a 10 year stay, he would once again visit England and Europe. In 1897, he held private midnight seances with a group of "several professionals." This group assembled twice a week at midnight. Their chief focus of attraction was, as that of Bulwer-Lytton and Disraeli once had been, a "huge crystal placed in the center of a large library table. The crystal was as large as an ordinary globe for containing goldfish, and into this brilliant object we all quietly but intently gazed."139

  Colville not only coedited The Gnostic, in which Dowd's "Rosicrucian Temple" was serialized, he also wrote profusely. His writings number over 125 publications, but with his Dashed Against the Rock, he left us his documentation o
f what must have been a series of remarkable conversations with Keely. When Keely died, Colville delivered a speech during the funeral services and gave a lecture titled: "In Memorial, John W. Keely." He also wrote the memorial address that was held on November 27,

  1898, in Casino Hall, Thirteenth Street and Girard Avenue in Philadelphia, where he also gave his lecture on Keely the same month. The memorial address was published in 1899 by the Banner of Light Publishing Co. In it, Colville wrote that "Keely has been well looked upon as the fulfiller of many mysterious predictions. There are those among theosophists and others who have not hesitated to say that he was a soul embodied for a very special purpose; that he came to earth by direction of those mysterious masters who are called Mahatmas in the Sanskrit tongue, that he might give openly to this generation a secret which has been held in the keeping of a few especially illumined ones from times immemorial. It has also been said that, in consequence of the unpreparedness of the populace — in consequence of the lack of spirituality on the part of the great people everywhere, that obstacles have been thrown in Keely's way, even by the very spiritual messengers whose servant and representative he was."140

  Unfortunately in both Colville's book and written speech there is a general lack of biographical details concerning their association. When, where and under what circumstances Colville met Keely is thus open to conjecture. Possibly Colville became acquainted with Keely as early as 1878, when he lectured in Boston, or around 1888, when Bloomfield-Moore's Keely's Secrets and Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine were published, or in 1890 when he joined the Theosophical Society. The interest of a spiritualist and a medium in an inventor was possibly fueled by the ambiguous views of Keely that the theosophists shared. On one hand, Keely was considered as someone who rediscovered the fabulous powers and forces of the ancients - on the other hand, he was considered a person with special psychic capabilities.

  Colville wrote profusely on a variety of subjects, such as astrology, spiritualism and reincarnation, fashionable subjects considering the occult milieus that he frequented. But his 1894 Dashed Against the Rock — in which we hear Keely speak — is a quite different book with futuristic ideas such as space travel, a theme to which, like Greg, Delisle Hay and Astor, he never returned to in his later writings. In Colville's case this may be explained by the fact that the book was, in all aspects, an account of Keely's visions. In Colville's autobiography, written in 1906, Keely is strangely absent, and Colville is more concerned with the depiction of his career as a medium and other psychic matters. The only impression that he wrote about his association with the inventor was found in his speech: "Keely was a man you could only know if you had a spiritual discernment; you could not get really acquainted with him simply by talking to him. The only way in which you could become familiar with him at all was by sitting down quietly with him and breathing in some of the mental atmosphere which he breathed, and feeling something of the spirit which animated him, then you might realize that you and he were spiritual neighbors."141

  Undoubtedly, Cheiro felt the same fascination when he visited Keely in 1890. As we have seen, his memoirs are highly inaccurate. He could have conceived to do so either on the instigation of Stead or Blavatsky, whom he met once,142 or indeed after visiting Bloomfield-Moore's London home. Perhaps a hint is to be found in one of his writings: "Is there a connection between music and communion with the dead?" he wonders.143 Cheiro was a fanciful pseudonym appropriately chosen to name his profession; for the name was chosen by Count Louis Hamon (1866-1936), the most famous palmist or chiromancer of his time.144

  Conventional history depicts Cheiro, who asserts that he never was "a member of any Spiritualistic Society, or any sect dealing with Psychic matters" and refused to become a member of the theosophical society when Blavatsky asked him to join,145 more or less as a charlatan, although it is admitted that "it appears from the stories of many of his clients that his predictions were remarkably accurate."146

  What Cheiro read in Keely's handpalm and what he concluded from what he detected is open to speculation. But his visit left a lasting impression on Cheiro, so much that he felt the need to record his experiences twice. His memoirs about his visit are lacking in accuracy. In another book, he wrote about his visit several times, but in heavy fictionalized form. In one of his short stories, Cheiro meets a person only vaguely described as "a London recluse," who explains to him that "he believed the law of vibration was the key to unlock the secrets of 'the beyond,'" but not only that: "In my investigations I have discovered certain chords of music that create the class of vibration necessary for the manifestation of still higher beings who inhabit what is miscalled the 'invisible world.'.. .I have discovered that certain chords create the class of vibration necessary for still more important manifestations." And echoing Blavatsky's statement with which chapter 1 opened: "the faintest chord of harmony produces its counter wave in endless space until like two affinities they blend together and reappear in greater strength (his italics)."147

  Cheiro returned to this theme in another short story titled, "Turning Back the Clock of Time." Where Colville named Keely "Aldebaran," in Cheiro's short story Keely was now called "the Mystic" and the location was again shifted from Philadelphia to London. While certain passages such as those that describe the appliance of neon-lamps suggest that perhaps the Mystic was a fictional composite of both Keely and Tesla, we may deduct from passages in Cheiro's tale that he definitely meant Keely; "I had known from the first that he had mastered the most difficult problems of what may be called 'etheric electric waves,' and long before broadcasting receivers had been thought of, he had fitted up in his house a receptacle that collected both sound and speech from the ether, far beyond anything we have at the present day.148 As a demonstration of the theory that the Law of Vibration was the key by which he could utilize some of the great forces of Nature, he could at any moment, by a chord of music on the organ, piano or harp, call whatever lamp he wished into action, or extinguish any or all of them in a similar manner... .It is only the vibration and speed of the revolving molecules that hold the particles of iron, stone, or any other solid mass in a state of solidity. ...This man in his work had demonstrated that human life itself was only a matter of vibration. Thus, the Mystic was able to let a person leave his or her body 'for a certain time' by slowing down 'life's responsive throb to such an extent that the sub-conscious brain found its freedom.'"149

  We further learn that the Mystic had "by another invention... utilized the electricity in the higher atmosphere, and collected it by storage batteries of enormous dimensions, and these, connected with vacuum glass tubes filled with 'neon' or some other gas, produced a light that appeared to flood every part of a room in which one of these lamps was placed."150

  The Mystic was also able to control "electric forces that he was able not only to dissolve any metal, but he could direct the 'ions' of the dissolving metal into any organ or part of the body that he so desired."151 Through this control the Mystic was able to cause electric currents to carry "ions" of copper, silver, gold or mercury into the body and cure many a disease. More wonders Cheiro encountered during a visit at the abode of the Mystic; a device called "register of Thought," the "delicately poised needle in this wonderfully constructed instrument" would be "affected by the aura or soul radiation of any person standing within a few feet of it and recorded by its movements the effect of thoughts passing through the brain."152

  Cheiro also asserts that such a device was actually satisfactorily tested in England in August 1897. A fascinating prospect unfolds about one of Keely's devices being shipped to England, but we must not forget that Cheiro's memoirs lack in accuracy, and this time by choosing fiction as his form he presents us with an equally suspicious account dating it seven years after his visit with Keely. Very much in the realms of fiction is his description of a device built for the occasion, although one cannot help but think of the unexplained metal rod that was found dangling from the ceiling of Keely's workshop: "Near th
e window (was) a curious-looking couch covered with copper, insulated with glass feet... At the head of it lay a compass showing by the position of the needle that the couch lay north to south in a direct line with the magnetic current. On a table at the side I noticed a helmet of copper with a copper band so constructed to go down the spine, with two arms from it to go round the body and terminate in a twelve-pointed magnet on the solar plexus. Connected to the center of the helmet an insulated covered wire led through the open windows to a series of copper wires hanging from the edge of the high roof to a few feet from the ground. These in their turn were joined to an aerial of immense height over the house... the copper plate on which my feet would rest was connected with a wire which, passing through what he called 'a magnifier' at the other end of the room, terminated in an 'earth' zinc pole at the bottom of a well in the garden." In other words, "it was intended that my brain should be exactly like the receiver in a 'wireless set'" (his italics).153

  Where Hartmann's occult companion Engel in his Mallona proposed the idea of capturing light waves that emanated "from every occurrence" in "a receiver" or "a suitable device" to "recreate the same image" — thus in fact watching into the Akasha chronicles — in Cheiro's tale the Mystic has actually built such a device. The apparatus, helmet, magnet and all is specifically made for that purpose the Mystic explains. "Science has proved that the light of some of our distant stars commenced its journey to the earth when it was 'without form and void.' ... That light reached this world, perhaps yesterday, after traveling thousands and thousands of years from some far-off star. What, then, if its photographic beams could be reversed and the scenes of long past ages could be reconstructed before our eyes. There is nothing lost — there is nothing impossible. Let us make the attempt."154