The very borders of conventional science were not only traversed, but also severely questioned. Means that once were considered pure magic were dusted off and transformed; thus bewitching and casting spells were a "form of telepathy," the moving tables of the spiritists surely were the result of as-yet undiscovered energies and forces. The negation of gravity was discussed,17 as were telesthesia, telenergy, mental suggestion and magical thought transfer.18 The magnetic healing of wounds, the fluidal body of man and the doctrine of thought waves, "the understanding of thoughts as psychosphical energy... already formulated by the Russian researcher Dr. Naum Kotik," was explained in yet another brochure.19 Magic was considered to be a form of "nature science" and a doctor, Adam Voll, wrote upon the dowsing equipment and the sidereal pendulum,20 while Robert Blum confided his theories to anybody who would read his book that was published in three tomes suggestively called The Fourth Dimension. In the first part, Blum followed Keely's doctrine in propagating a threefold order to be found in all nature, while the third part was suggestively entitled In the Realm of Vibrations.21 Interestingly enough, a German translation of Shelley's Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus also was reprinted during that period.22 Much of the above was published by theosophical publisher Max Altmann. His Zentralblatt fur den Okkultismus, published in 1908, was to be the first monthly occult periodical in Germany.23 Altmann also published Moderne Rosenkreuzer by occultist and neo-Rosicrucian G.W. Surya in 1907. The book that was in its seventh edition in 1930 treated much of the above and recommended many of these brochures. Meanwhile from the theosophical quarters, authors such as Leadbetter and Besant had already rained down a torrent of books and pamphlets on thoughtforms, the ether, the Akasha, chakras and the human aura.
Two years after the construction of Steiner's first Strader instrum entarium, which was only a tip of the German occult iceberg, in Paris the French alchemical circle around the fabled alchemist Fulcanelli was deeply involved in the construction of a "Turbo Propulseur," or a "curious aerial sled," that was first conceived by Jean-Julien Champagne in 1911. We learn nothing of its appearance, its propulsion or in fact the underlying motivation for an alchemist to conceive of such a device, save a sketchy description. The vehicle was powered by a motor-driven propeller, and was said to be "quite suitable for travel on roads."24 What the actual motor consisted of was not mentioned. Elsewhere it is being described as a "polar vehicle," and its propeller was still in construction in 1914.25 It was eventually presented to Tsar Nicholas II, allegedly through the French occultist Papus, who resided at his court around that time.26
In 1914, while the French alchemical circles were still busy with the construction of the propeller of their strange vehicle and shortly before the outbreak of the First World War, a German named Franz Philipp purportedly succeeded in lifting his "Sonnenkraft-Triebwerk," or solar-powered motor, into the air in Germany.27 Perhaps the experiment was the result of the earlier-mentioned widely held discussions in Germany on the negation of gravity, in matter as well as the human body, but we do not know, for the only thing that Philipp wrote considering the nature of his invention was that he discovered its principles with a device of his making for the study of the solar protuberances during a total solar eclipse. Based on what he then discovered, he would construct several aerial craft and eventually spaceships with "ever better propulsion systems." According to Philipp, all this would lead to space travel well before World War II.
An impenetrable and suspicious curtain of vagueness surrounds his claim. Studying his bizarre book, one is quick to dismiss the writings of Philipp as those of a lunatic, or as a parody on UFOs and ufology in general. To make matters worse, nowhere in his book does he lift the veil on the exact nature of his supposed solar-powered motor, while on the other hand the pages are filled with wild and unproven allegations without a shred of evidence that any of it was true.
The case however obtains a sinister and ominous dimension when we read elsewhere that Philipp was found dead in his Berlin apartment in the late 1970s, after having laid there for two weeks. It is also stated that at one time the CIA tried to "assassinate Philipp at least once." Then there is mention of his connections with self-styled counter Pope Clemens XV, who was the head of the Order of Saint Michael and the founder of the "New Church" located in the east of France and in 1970 was said to have numbered some 50,000 members in Germany, France and Italy. This New Church believed in the salvation of mankind with the help of extraterrestrials.28 The fate of his solar-powered motor, if it ever existed outside of his imagination, is now unknown, but perhaps the fact that the memory of Philipp is again cherished in certain contemporary German occultist underground circles where his ideas are currently linked with what has become a whole ideology — or a religion in the making — of vril, speaks for itself.
In this strange history, we again encounter isolated cases. A year after Philipp's discovery and a continent away, an electrical engineer named C.E. Ammann, residing in Denver, started working on something of a more tangible nature and what he eventually called "the atmospheric generator." A Denver newspaper reported seven years later that the device, according to Ammann, could "draw energy out of the air." The atmospheric generator was described as a "compact cylindrical object with two small brass spheres protruding from the top." Inside was to be found "an arrangement of steel wires and minerals so fixed as to draw the energy from the air," somehow echoing Timmins' pneumatic generator a quarter of a century before. The device was demonstrated in 1921; it was attached to an automobile which was then driven around the city. The device was inspected; it was agreed that Ammann, who was then 28 years of age, had "made an invention that will revolutionize power," and that "we have long known that certain minerals exist which, if properly arranged together, would furnish power." Ammann, we learn, was planning to go to Washington for a patent that very same week in 1921, but we hear no more of him or his device.29
The air was filled with energy in those days. In 1916, Harry E. Perrigo invented a converter to extract electricity out of the air. He worked on his device between 1916 and 1927. He discovered that it produced more electricity when a breeze was allowed to circulate through the room or when a warm body stood close to the antenna of the device.30 A great invention, but of which we also hear nothing more.
Perrigo was followed in 1917, just a year later, by an Armenian immigrant named Garabed T.K. Giragossian, who lived in Boston. Giragossian claimed to have discovered an inexhaustible source of free-energy, which he called The Garabed. He stated that his discovery would make the steam engine a thing of the past. His source of free-energy would power ships, airships and locomotives. Although he was vague about the exact nature of his discovery, prominent Bostonians would vouch for his honesty. Giragossian apparently convinced Congress, for in 1918 President Woodrow Wilson signed a resolution to protect him and his discovery. Interestingly, he did not want money, but protection. Four scientists and an engineer saw his device on June 29, 1918, and this commission delivered its report, just one paragraph long, the same day. Its conclusion was that Giragossian's claims were false.
The invention seems to have been a massive flywheel that, once set in motion, would be kept turning by a miniature 1/25 horsepower electric motor. When linked to a brake-type dynamometer, the spinning wheel would briefly produce up to 10 horsepower before it stopped. Giragossian and friends insisted that the commission did not understand his invention, and Congressional supporters held more hearings in 1923 and 1924. Although he maintained that his Garabed would "reshape the destiny of mankind, creating an age of reason, an everlasting happiness," Congress voted no further action. Resolutions on Giragossian's behalf were proposed almost annually until 1930.31
In 1919, two years after Giragossian's first public appearance, 19-year old Alfred Hubbard built and demonstrated his first device. Like Perrigo, Hubbard also claimed that "he was getting energy out of the air." One experiment made with the Hubbard transformer was the propelling of an 18-foot boat around Pot
age Bay near Seattle. A 35 horsepower electric motor was linked to a Hubbard transformer that measured 11 inches in diameter and 14 inches in length. It furnished enough energy to drive the boat and a pilot at a reasonable speed around the bay. Later Hubbard alleged that his transformer was powered with radioactive substances. Hubbard admitted that he had used the idea of power from the air to protect his real idea for a patent, and that his machine created electrical energy directly from radioactive materials, which he did not name. As far as can be determined, no U.S. patents were ever issued to Hubbard concerning this device, and Hubbard, like Ammann and all those before him, disappeared from the pages of history.32
The same can be said of Lester Jennings Hendershot, who developed a device that he always maintained worked on the force that pulls around the needle of a compass. Hendershot claimed that during his experiments, he learned that by cutting the lines of the magnetic north and south he had an indication of the true north, which in his opinion was not the magnetic north of an ordinary compass. By cutting the magnetic field east and west, he found he could obtain a rotary motion, in which we find an echo of Keely's statements and of the very early designers of magnetic perpetuum mobiles. Hendershot built his first unit in the 1920s, but nothing seems to have come from his invention. There are vague tales that he went to Washington for a patent, but somehow this city does not favor young inventors, for as far as can be determined no U.S. patents were ever issued to him, and his doings in later years are largely unknown.33
The same, or a possible grimmer fate awaited young inventor John Huston of Prineville, Oregon. Around 1920, he claimed to have invented a way to take "heat out of the air" with condensers. According to an eyewitness, the first poorly insulated rig boiled water in 20 minutes. The device was claimed to replace fuels, to be good for household heating or refrigeration and to be able to run railroad engines and steamboats. Huston and his father formed a company of 20 stockholders and he built an up-to-date model of his device. The model apparently worked better than expected, and Huston and his father took it to San Francisco to demonstrate it, since they hoped to interest manufacturers in building the device on a royalty basis. According to the eyewitness who talked to Huston after his return, Huston told him that, "The machine can be made so hot that it will destroy itself. Reverse the machine, and the temperature will go as low as 250 below zero." According to Huston, manufacturers in San Francisco "refused to build the machine because it would throw too many men out of work. It would also kill the sale of fuels, the major cargo of steamships at that time." He also stated that, even though the U.S. refused to patent the device, Canada and England did patent his invention. However, his remarkable invention disappeared, and he died a young man at the age of 22 in 1920 or 1921.34
Although the original Strader instrumentarium also disappeared when Steiner's Goetheaneum burned down on December 31, 1922, that strange blend of technology and occultism did not disappear with it. It was perhaps this current, possibly experienced during his stay in Berlin between 1921 and 1922,35 that prompted Georgi Ivanovitch Gurdjieff to write about fantastic "tri-cerebrial beings," the "all-pervading Okidanokh" and the "tri-centric beings of Saturn," who possessed a bizarre device or installation, called the "khrakhartsakha," that was invented to study hitherto-unknown aspects of this cosmic substance.36
What very much existed outside the borders of such an exercise in the fantastic was the German magical order Fraternitas Saturni, founded in 1928 in Berlin. The order had its roots in an occult society called "the Pansophical Lodge," or "Pansophia," originally founded as a loosely organized study group in Berlin shortly after the First World War. The group became more organized and changed its name "the Grand Pansophical Lodge of Germany, Orient Berlin" in 1923. After a visit by Aleister Crowley, a schism occurred; the Pansophia Lodge ceased to exist in 1926 and the Fraternitas Saturni came into existence.37 The Pansophia lodge, whose founder knew Ordo Templi Orientis cofounder Theodor Reuss quite well, was already bent on the curious fusion of technology and the arcane. Not much is known of the activities of the Berlin Pansophia lodge. However, in one of its publications one finds references to Babitt's Principles of Light and Colour and German occult philosopher Milankowitsch, who so elegantly formulated his theories on creation as a giant "world-machine" at the time that Spear was constructing his New Motor.
The publication also promised a training to any initiate of the first grade in which one would learn such matters as "unexplained miracles of nature," dowsing, the art of the pendulum, the od-force and magnetism, hypnosis and telepathy, matters that had set the German occult substrata a decade earlier in such an exalted and expectant state. Moreover, the initiate of the Pansophia lodge was required to experiment with "Od-rays" and the pendulum.38
Beside studies in cabalistic doctrine, sidereal astrology and sympathetic magic, the initiate would learn during alchemical courses the secret of the Aurum Magicum: "This magical gold of fluidal and fiery appearance is also called the ointment of the wise, with which the true magus may establish the greatest miracles: 1. the magical Perpetuum mobile of the sidereal heavens in eternal circulation etc., and 2. With it the eternally burning lamps of the ancients can be lit."39
The mind of the neophyte is carefully prepared for a journey into the spheres of the arcane. In a long and curious digression on alchemy, the initiate is immersed in a vast sea of hermetical and technical metaphors. Thus we read of "the spirit of imagination," of "love that mingled with wisdom," of "light-life" and of the dead, the "old Adamic man" that may rise through "the tincture (cosmic electricity, auric force, electro-)," of "etheric regions" and the "alchemical tincture."40 It is hinted that "alchemy has only one universal, not two and more. Yet this one can manifest itself in seven different rays, forces, energies, vibrations in various spheres or planes of existence."41
But we also read that, "In the new coming times we will refute the hypotheses which were acknowledged until then, about the origin, rotation and evolution of the stars, suns and planetary systems. The human race will be magnificent and will be sensibly organized, will evoke a new meaning of life, with the help of which a totally new knowledge of nature's secrets will blossom. A new science will develop, in the direction of transcendental physiology and psychology.... The world ether, these days once again rejected by science, will no longer be a vague hypothesis, when mankind will unriddle the secret of its existence through a variety of inventions and discoveries, through which those mechanic-material, chemical-technical conjunctions will disappear into nothingness. New problems will be undertaken by the human brain, which then has to torment itself with until now unknown and because of that rejected cosmic forces and energy quantums of unknown dimensions. The astral regions will once again be accessible for everyone, and new elements and ferments, a new biogenesis on sidereal principles, therefore a new heavens with a new astronomy and astrology, and a new earth with a new geosophy and tellurism will expect a new type of man, after the downfall of the old man. ...But the universal brotherhood knows by looking at the giant world clock, the sidereal zodiac, almost precisely the right spiritual moments coming in a few decades... the most favorable projection of a new race of man, a higher developed type of man."42
Unfortunately the exact nature of the "variety of inventions and discoveries" is not further explained or described, although we are left to assume that these were based on other principles than the known mechanical and empirical ones. And leaving that puzzling vista of magico-spiritual eugenics behind, which — as is clear from other passages not cited here — was influenced by Steiner and Blavatsky, but possibly also by Bulwer-Lytton, the writer leaps into cosmic distances. There, we learn, the sun and the planets are parts of the same thing; point and counterpoint; "one and the same ether, one of it has become positive — and is named the sun, the negative one is called the planet. Both are but one etheric globe, of which its center is the sun, its periphery the planet is called. ... The sun cannot exist in the absolute middle of the solar system, be
cause of the opposition of the planets, who likewise want to be in its center. Since the universe can only exist in bicentral form, there is also no universal central body. It is there, but in the form of the sun and the planet. Only God is monocentral — the world is the bicentral god. God is the monocentral world. The behavior of the planets to the sun is one of a polar attraction and repulsion, power of the primal law in the solar system, power of light, of radiation. This attraction and repulsion is only possible, because the planet of its own force when it approaches the sun too close, in itself tilts from the negative to the positive pole — becoming the sun — and when it distances itself from the sun, it once again tilts the positive pole and nourished the negative pole in itself. And that is the cosmic motor!"43 the Pansophia lodge jubilantly declares.
With this occult vision of the solar system as one giant cosmic motor, the Pansophia lodge adhered itself to Keely's views on the earth's poles as being negative and positive, the polar and depolar force, the "interchange of polar and depolar sympathy" and "the sympathetic attractive, the force that draws the planets together," which was "the same that regulates the motion of the planets in their recession from each other." Aside from the uncanny similarity, we are left to muse — by absence of any reference to Keely in the publication of the Pansophia lodge — as to what degree the techno-magicians were aware of Keely's endeavors or in precisely what way they put this knowledge into practice.
Free Energy Pioneer- John Worrell Keely Page 41