Free Energy Pioneer- John Worrell Keely

by Theo Paijmans

  In 1913, a booklet was published holding a large fold-out reproduction of the zodiac at the temple of Denderah, which somehow reminds us of Parson's claim. On its very last page under the heading, "The promise of the zodiac," it is written that, "It may be that a new dispensation is at hand, and that the promise of the zodiac, that has never failed us, yet, will not fail us now. But so long as the old dispensation is with us we may remember that "out of Egypt I have called my son,"91 a cryptic foreshadowing of Gernsback's "one to foresee for one" and the modern interpretation of certain illustrations at the temple of Denderah as being symbolic for that which has been preordained since times immemorial.

  Gernsback also knew Howard Philips Lovecraft, and he would publish several of Lovecraft's stories. Lovecraft (1890-1937) had read Arthur Edward Waite, and refers to him in veiled sense in three of his tales.92 Lovecraft also read the works of Algernon Blackwood, and Arthur Machen, whose writings he admired. Waite, Machen and Blackwood were all members of the Golden Dawn. A review of Astor's A Journey In Other Worlds was published in the occult periodical of which Waite was its editor. Machen had been involved in the compilation of the catalogue of the library of Hockley,93 who at one time worked for Denley, who in turn owned a bookstore that Bulwer-Lytton often visited.

  In the tale, "The Festival," written in 1923, Lovecraft describes a church in which a tomb is found beneath an altar. Lovecraft modeled his church after a real church. It was not until 1976 that during restoration of that church, Lovecraft's seemingly fanciful tale of a crypt just before the pulpit was proven to be accurate. The crypt was not located under the present altar, but under an older, hidden altar.94 Lovecraft's fictional tale, based on fact that was later known, echoes Sauniere's discovery of a crypt in his church at Rennes-le-Chateau.

  Lovecraft lived most of his life in Providence, Rhode Island, the town of Mrs. Staunton, the Paris Golden Dawn member. Lovecraft knew about Keely and his discoveries through the writings of Charles Fort and partly modeled his NYARLATHOTHEP on Keely; the word holding shades of NYZMA, THOTH and SET.

  The last that is known about Keely's inventions is that they were shipped to Boston. Lovecraft is known to have made several trips to Boston. In his 1924 tale, "The Shunned House," he refers to Dr. Chase.95 In his 1937 story, "The Evil Clergyman," Lovecraft describes a person who finds himself in a house in London. Through the use of a strange little device that he finds in his pocket, he summons the forms of a group of clergymen, dressed as Anglicans, but clearly the members of a secret magical cult. It is alleged that this is a parallel with the Men In Black.

  In 1924, Algernon Blackwood wrote a short story, "The Pikestaffe Case," in which he described the non-Euclidian geometry of a dimensional trap lurking within a mirror, reminiscent of Lovecraft's tale, "The Dreams in the Witch House." Lovecraft travelled to Philadelphia once, and Blackwood had long held an interest in the occult. He not only became a member of the Golden Dawn, but also helped to establish the Canadian Theosophical Society. In 1892, Blackwood became a reporter for the New York Evening Sun and later worked for New York Times newspapers, both of which regularly published articles about Keely.

  The year before Lovecraft penned the tale, "The Rats in the Walls," in which he describes a large cavern beneath an old manor house where time is warped into reverse. In connection with Rennes-le-Chateau, it is alleged that hidden in the region a device might be located that can only be described as a "Time Portal."96 In 1923, the same year that Lovecraft trusted to paper the tale of a cave where time is warped into a reverse, Moholy-Nagy began the construction of his "Light-Space Modulator," and forgotten Dutch clairvoyant, Grail-seeker, theosophist and author J.K. Rensburg wrote a remarkable preface in his book Wereldbouw or, The Building of a World.

  In it, Rensburg states that the entire solar system is an organism with a central consciousness, that metals have a consciousness, and that higher, material beings live on the sun and on Mars. Rensburg praises Verne as a forerunner of "the inter-astral direction." Rensburg then writes: "there are material, superhuman people; who, like us and the animals, feed, procreate and die in higher developed worlds than our own... material gods and goddesses who may divulge their decisions and knowledge to clairvoyant persons by means of inter-astral telepathy, meaning, marconigraphy of organical nature, directly from their to our nerve-system,"97 which echoes Parsons' concept of interplanetary communication and Cromie's fictional InterPlanetary Communication Company Limited.

  In Lovecraft's 1920 tale, "From Beyond," an inventor who blended science with metaphysics builds a device that emanates waves which enable the person to see beyond that what our sense organs usually perceive. "The waves from that thing are waking a thousand sleeping senses in us; senses which we inherit from eons of evolution from the state of detached electrons to the state of organic humanity," the inventor claims. But that is not all, for the inventor states "You have heard of the pineal gland? ...That gland is the great sense organ of organs - I have found out. It is like sight in the end, and transmits visual pictures to the brain."98 Through the rays that this device emits, people are able to see beings that live in another dimension or plane of existence.

  But years before Lovecraft painted his haunting picture, in 1882 a woman said to Keely: "You have opened the door into the spirit-world." He answered, "Do you think so? I have sometimes thought I might be able to discover the origin of life." At this time, Keely gave no attention whatsoever to the occult bearing of his discovery; and it was only after he had pursued his research, under the advantages which his small Liberator afforded him for such experiments, that he realized the truth of this woman's assertion.

  It was then, in 1887, that Keely was enabled to walk into the light, to cross the last barriers and jump the glittering chasm, to attend and have his membership received. There he would learn the great metaphysical truths that underpin his wonderful discoveries. He would learn of the shining, spinning zodiac and of the space-time axis. He would learn of the secrets of Atlantis, thought lost for such a long time, and of the sacred geometry that is so essential. He would come to know the mysteries of the Rosy Cross and the riddle of Rennes-le-Chateau. He would study the principles of the magnificent giant world machine and the living, breathing universe that creation is.

  But we must now part company with John Worrell Keely. It has been such a pleasant company, with many a strange tale. It has been an incredible journey indeed, but we must leave the brilliant inventor and discoverer for now, turn away and silently close the door of his workshop in the Philadelphia of a century ago, and we must not disturb him any longer.

  Notes

  Chapter 1. Discoverer of the Ether: The Early Life of John Keely

  1. William Mill Butler, 'Keely and the Keely Motor,' The Home Magazine, 1898, page 104. Only reference to Chester found in: 'Keely, The Inventor, Dead,' unspecified clipping, November 18, 1898, Sympathetic Vibratory Physics Homepage, Internet.

  2. Various sources give a different birth year and when not specifically mentioning this, give his age at me time of his death in 1898 as 72: Public Ledger Almanac, 1900, or sometimes as 71 years: Public Ledger and Daily Transcript, November 19, 1898, American Machinist, vol.21, no.47, November 24, 1898, and Locomotive Engineering, December 1898. In 1895 it was claimed that Keely was 68 years old. In: 'Two Hours With Keely,' Public Ledger and Daily Transcript, November 11, 1895. It is also claimed that Keely was 63 years at the time of his death! While describing the casket in which Keely's body lay, it was noted that "A silver plate on the lid bore the simple inscription, 'John Worrall Keely, in his sixty-third year.'" (note the different spelling of the middle name). In: 'John W. Keely Laid to Rest,' The Times, November 24, 1898. The Times November 19, 1898 edition, gives as his birth date September 3, 1837, as do later Theosophical sources including H.P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, vol. VIII, 1960, page 267, and H.P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, vol. XIII, 1982, page 384. 1827 is claimed to have been Keely's birth year by The New Encyclopedia Britannica, 'Micropedia Re
ady Reference' 15 th edition and Schribner's 1961 Dictionary of American Biography, Frank Edwards, Strangest of All, Citadel 1956, Carol Paperbacks, 1991, page 160, Gaston Burridge, 'The Baffling Keely 'Free Energy Machines,' Fate, vol.10, no.7, 1957, page 47, Carl Sifakis, Hoaxes and Scams, Michael O'Mara Books,' 1994, page 140.

  3. William Mill Butler, 'Keely and the Keely Motor,' The Home Magazine, 1898, page 114. See also: 'Keely Motor Man Dead,' Public Ledger and Daily Transcript, November 19, 1898.

  4. 'The Keely Motor,' International Cyclopedia, vol. VIII, 1899, page 458.

  5. William Mill Butler, 'Keely and the Keely Motor,' The Home Magazine, 1898, page 104. See also: 'No Other Has Ever Been So Shrouded In The Mist Of Publicity,' New York Herald, November 27, 1898.

  6. 'Public Opinion,' vol. XXV, 1898. See also: 'No Other Has Ever Been So Shrouded in the Mist Of Publicity,' New York Herald, November 27, 1898.

  7. Clara Bloomfield-Moore, Keely and His Discoveries, Aerial Navigation, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1893, page 290. Also in: William Mill Butler, 'Keely and the Keely Motor,' The Home Magazine, 1898, page 104.

  8. 'Keely's Secret Known,' The Times, January 26, 1899, See also: 'Another Theory About The Motor,' The Evening Bulletin, January 26, 1899.

  9. A. Wilford Hall, 'John Keely - A personal interview,' Scientific Arena, January, 1887.

  10. William Mill Butler, 'Keely and the Keely Motor,' The Home Magazine, 1898, page 104.

  11. 'Keely ofMotor Fame is Dead,' The Times, November 19, 1898.

  12. Clara Bloomfield-Moore, Keely and His Discoveries, Aerial Navigation, Kegan Paul, Trench Trubner & Co., 1893, page 333.

  13. 'Keely's Secret,' The World, May 11, 1890.

  14. Clara Bloomfield-Moore, Keely's Secrets, T.P.S. 1888, page 17. in Keely and His Discoveries, Aerial Navigation, on page 84. Also in: Afra, 'John Worrell Keely,' Theosophia, no. 13, May, 1893.

  15. Charles Morris, 'Apergy: Power without Cost,' no. 10, 1895.

  16. A. Wilford Hall, 'John Keely - A personal interview,' Scientific Arena, January, 1887. Elsewhere it was written that 'Keely's explanation of how he came to make his reputed discovery has a certain interest. Once, when a boy, he saw the windows of a house vibrate long after the wagon that had caused the vibration was out of sight. Also that once some drummers were driven into a hall by a storm. The storm made all the drums beat for an instant into a concerted roll, and the windows were broken by the vibration. Thus he held to have discovered that there was such a thing as sympathetic vibration, by which, under certain conditions, a force could be communicated from one thing to another. Later on he concluded mat this vibratory motion was present in nearly everything, and announced that if a substance be vibrated by a musical note in harmony with it, not only will the distance between the molecules composing it be greatly augmented, but be dissipated into their component atoms, and thus exert a dynamic force double that of steam. So the Keely Motor, or harmonic engine, came into existence... ' In: 'What Is The Force, Hidden and Unseen, of Keely's Motor?,' New York Herald, August 22, 1897.

  17. 'Keely and his Motor,' The Evening Bulletin, August 22, 1887.

  18. Clara Bloomfield-Moore, Keely and His Discoveries, Aerial Navigation, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1893, page 290.

  19. 'Keely of Motor Fame is Dead,' The Times, November 19, 1898.

  20. 'Everybody's Column,' Philadelphia Enquirer, October 16, 1931, H.P. Blavatsky, HP. Blavatsky Collected Writings, Vol. VIII, Theosophical Publishing Society, 1960, page 267.

  21. Megargee, 'Seen and Heard in Many Places,' The Times, March 11, 1898.

  22. Charles Morris, 'Apergy: Power without Cost,' New Scientific Review, no. 10, 1895.

  23. 'Men and Things,' The Evening Bulletin, November 21, 1898. Also in: William Mill Butler, 'Keely and the Keely Motor,' The Home Magazine, 1898, page 104.

  24. 'Hidden Tubes Show How The Keely Motor Worked,' New York Herald, January 20, 1899.

  25. 'Keely, Motor Man, Dead,' Public Ledger and Daily Transcript, November 19, 1898. About Keely's mechanical turn of mind, see also short reference in: William Mill Butler, 'Keely and the Keely Motor,' The Home Magazine, 1898, page 104.

  26. 'What Will become of Keely's Motor,' The Evening Bulletin, November 19, 1898.

  27. William Mill Butler, 'Keely and the Keely Motor,' The Home Magazine, 1898, page 104. See also: 'No Other Has Ever Been So Shrouded in the Mist of Publicity,' New York Herald, November 27, 1898. Also in: Frank Edwards, 'John Keely's Mystery Motor,' Strangest of All, Citadel, 1956, Carol Paperbacks, 1991, page 160.

  28. Letter by H.R. Borle to Megargee, 'Seen and Heard in Many Places,' The Times, November 26, 1898.

  29. Letter in The Evening Bulletin, November 26, 1898. Collier said that Keely was 'a skilled musician on so small an instrument as the flute... ' In: 'There Was No Meeting,' The Times, November 27, 1898.

  30. ibid.

  31. Public Opinion, vol. XXV, 1898.

  32. Megargee, 'Seen and Heard in Many Places,' The Times, March 11, 1898.

  33. Megargee, 'Seen and Heard in Many Places,' The Times, November 26, 1898. The story of Keely being a cannon ball-tosser began to lead a life of its own; a year after Keely died it was written that 'There is a story also that he used to be the 'cannon ball man' in a circus... ' In: 'Keely's Sphere Not His Secret,' The Evening Bulletin, January 25, 1899.

  34. The Dictionary of American Biography, Vol. V, Scribner's, 1961, remarks that, 'He had been for a time leader of a small orchestra and in certain more or less apocryphal stories he figured as a circus performer.' The New Encyclopedia Brittanica, Vol. 6, 15th edition of the Micropedia Ready Reference writes that Keely, 'is said to have been an orchestra leader, a circus performer and a carpenter.' Equally unsubstantiated is the following yarn: 'Obviously the ex-carnival man had run fun and mystery house contraptions in his youth... ' In: Carl Sifakis, Hoaxes and Scams, Michael O'Mara Books, 1994, page 141.

  35. This confusion was already noted in 1901 by a certain George Canby who had met Keely one time in his workshop; he collected various contemporary newspaper clippings concerning Keely and arranged these chronologically in three scrapbooks, now preserved in the Franklin Institute. In his 'memorandum' Canby wrote that, 'The various confused newspaper accounts, with their many discrepancies, very fairly demonstrate the manner in which the public mind was puzzled, for over twenty-five years...' In: George Canby, 'Keely Motor Scraps,' no.1, not published. For his recollection of his meeting with Keely, see chapter 2, also chapter 2, note 104.

  36. Frank Edwards, 'John Keely's Mystery Motor,' Strangest of All, Citadel, 1956, Carol Paperbacks, 1991, page 160. Anecdote also found in 'No Other Has Ever Been So Shrouded in the Mist Of Publicity,' New York Herald, November 27, 1898.

  37. 'Keely's Secret,' The World, May 11, 1890. Keely never explained how he exposed the mediums. It is possible that here we have me nucleus of me tales mat Keely was connected to a circus, a sleight-of-hand performer or showed amazing dexterity with card tricks, since mediums often were — and still are — exposed by magicians or stage conjurors. See: Carl Sifakis, Hoaxes and Scams, Michael O'Mara Books, 1994, page 241.

  38. R. Harte, introduction to Keely's Secrets, Clara Bloomfield-Moore, Theosophical Publishing Society, July, 1888.

  39. A. Wilford Hall, 'John Keely - A personal interview,' Scientific Arena, January 1887. See also: William Mill Butler, 'Keely and me Keely Motor,' The Home Magazine, 1898, page 105.

  40. Letter by H.R. Borle to Megargee, 'Seen and Heard in Many Places,' The Times, November 26, 1898.

  41. 'The Motor Gets Into Court,' New York Times, January 3, 1888. 'Keely Motor Suit Ended,' Philadelphia Press, February 26, 1890. A year before Keely had admitted mat he knew Wilson; see note 45.

  42. 'The Keely Motor,' International Cyclopedia, vol.VIII, 1899, page 458.

  43. 'The Keely Motor Criticized, a republication in pamphlet form of a series of editorials which appeared in the Public Record of Philadelphia, August 3rd, 4m, 5 th and 6m, 1875,' no place,
no date, but in all probability published in 1875 by the Public Record, pages 2-5.

  44. 'Says He Knows Keely's Secret,' The Times, January 1, 1899. Also: 'Says he Knows Keely's Secret,' New York Daily Tribune, January 2, 1899, a shorter article me gist of which is mat the motor secret did not die with Keely, and that he (Repetti) is the only living man in possession of it.

  45. Keely himself stated that, 'In 1866, I was residing and in business in this city at No. 817 Market Street, and was associated with Bennett C. Wilson, as me testimony in the suit of Wilson against me will evidence...' In: 'It Was Not Keely,' The Times, January 22, 1889.

  46. A. Wilford Hall, 'John Keely - A personal interview,' Scientific Arena, January 1887.

  47. Clara Bloomfield-Moore, Keely and His Discoveries, Aerial Navigation, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1893, pages 10, 11, 320, 150.

  48. ibid. page 336. According to Bloomfield-Moore, mis happened in 1884: 'It was not until Macvicar's Sketch of a Philosophy fell into Mr. Keely's hands that he realized he had imprisoned the ether. This was in 1884.'

  49. 'The Keely Motor Criticized,' a republication in pamphlet form of a series of editorials which appeared in the Public Record of Philadelphia, August 3rd, 4m, 5th and 6th, 1875, no place, no date, but in all probability published in 1875 by the Public Record, pages 2-5.

  50. A. Wilford Hall, 'John Keely - A personal interview,' Scientific Arena, January 1887.

  51. 'The Keely Motor Criticized,' a republication in pamphlet form of a series of editorials which appeared in the Public Record of Philadelphia, August 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th, 1875, no place, no date, but in all probability published in 1875 by the Public Record, pages 2-5.