Andrew Paul Wood. Shadow Worlds: A History of the Occult and Esoteric in New Zealand. ISBN 978-1991016379. Auckland: Massey University Press, 2023. 426 pp. RRP $65.00.
The Blue Room: Being the Absorbing Story of the Development of Voice-to-Voice Communication in BROAD LIGHT with Souls who have Passed into THE GREAT BEYOND, by Clive Chapman (Auckland: Whitcombe and Tombs Ltd., 1927) … I first came across a reference to this curious book in D. Scott Rogo and Raymond Bayless’s almost equally intriguingly titled Phone Calls from the Dead (1979). Shortly afterwards I managed to acquire a copy of it myself, and was privileged to read its long, literally “ghost-written” – by a reporter identified only as G. A. W. – account of “Uncle Clive” and his careful fostering of the clairvoyant abilities of his young niece Pearl.
The story came to an abrupt end in 1927, with the publication of Chapman & G. A. W.’s book, so I was delighted to find some supplementary details about the case in the chapter entitled “Bumps in the Night” in Andrew Paul Wood’s newly published history of the occult and esoteric in New Zealand. He records, for instance, a reference in Harry Price’s Fifty Years of Psychical Research (1939) to an incident “around 1930”, where:
William Henry Gowland (1879-1965), professor of anatomy at the University of Otago’s medical school, witnessed heavy tables levitate and a locked piano play itself.As an Otago Daily Times reporter invited to an earlier séance said of the phenomena he saw: “If it was trickery it was damnable trickery, for there were many in that Blue Room who believed, heart and soul.”
This is perhaps the most useful feature of Wood’s book: its inclusiveness, and the fact that he’s followed up on so many intriguing details of early New Zealand occultism – as far as that’s possible in so tantalisingly ill-defined a field. Nor does he scruple to record the many occasions where the trail has run cold, and the rumours of the continued existence of some exiled order or malign coven cannot be substantiated one way or the other.
It's true that much of this data is not, in itself, particularly interesting or stimulating except to enthusiasts (or other Academic researchers). The list of changing addresses for the Dunedin Theosophical Lodge between 1914 and 2015 – recorded in detail on pp. 61-62 of the chapter devoted to this “Not-so-secret Doctrine” – is fairly typical of this aspect of Shadow Worlds. If in doubt, include it, appears to be the guiding principle – after all, it might be of use to someone – which led me to wonder, at times, if simply compiling an Encyclopaedia of New Zealand Esotericism might not have suited his (and our) purposes better?
Wood’s book is, after all, already grouped in large, roughly chronological grab-bag chapters around his basic themes: Theosophy, The Golden Dawn, Anthroposophy, Spiritualism, Witchcraft, and various others. Would further segmentation into discrete entries really have compromised it much?
Part of the problem is the very large scale – both chronological and conceptual – of the study Wood has undertaken. It’s true that he specifies in his preface:
I do not pretend this to be a comprehensive or exhaustive history of the subject – an undertaking of that sort would take many years of research and extend to multiple volumes. … What I hope this book will do is give a taste of the parallel universe of the unexpected, the strange, and the high weird that exists just beneath the New Zealand story you thought you knew.Exhaustive, no, but certainly at times a little exhausting. It’s awe-inspiring just how much material Wood does manage to cover, especially given the necessity of giving potted histories of at least some of the major luminaries – Madam Blavatsky, Aleister Crowley, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Rudolf Steiner – whose doctrines had such surprising offshoots here on the other side of the world.
The truth of the matter, I suppose, is that this book only really comes to life when it touches on something directly interesting to each individual reader. In my case, this was definitely his chapter on Spiritualism, “Bumps in the Night” – but devotees of Black Magic, Rosicrucianism, or Neopaganism are likely to be similarly engrossed by the sections on their pet topics.
In any case, it’s undoubtedly better to be grateful for what we have here than to carp about the various alternative ways in which it might have been arranged. Take, for example, the following 1870 letter from the northern gold fields, quoted from The Pleasant Creek News:
I saved a claim here at the Thames through a spirit communication. It had been neglected, and was liable to be jumped, when I was told by spirit writing that six men were coming at nine o’clock the next morning on the claim to jump the ground, with other particulars of their programme. It was there with the men that I got, just in the nick of time to save the claim. The jumpers came exactly at the time I was told they would do, and they saw at once that they were completely checkmated, and looked sheepishly disappointed and as white as ghosts when they saw we were too much and too strong to be bounced by them. You can see by this that I am a Spiritist.There’s an individuality and expressiveness in this old news item which seems to open a door on a whole other world of experience – on, in fact, the “parallel universe of the unexpected, the strange, and the high weird that exists just beneath the New Zealand story you thought you knew” promised by Wood in his opening remarks.
Again and again, his book raises new questions about the precise nature of this secret history. What on earth was going on in Hawke’s Bay in the early to mid-twentieth century, for instance?
Wood starts off with an intriguing account of the “Havelock Work,” where, sometime around 1907-8, “a peculiar brew of Quakers, Theosophists, Anglicans and adherents of Radiant Living were developing a sympathetic climate” for esoteric enlightenment, with an organisation whose activities included:
Shakespeare and Dickens readings, carving, Morris dancing lessons and festivals, climaxing in the Old Village Fête of 1911 presided over by a pantomime King Arthur and his court.Around 1912, Golden Dawn alumnus Robert Felkin brought his own peculiar blend of Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism and occultism to Havelock North, where he founded the grandly named Smaragdum Thalasses Temple of the Stella Matutina Order. (“Stella Matutina” is perhaps most famous for its connections with the poet W. B. Yeats, a member for over 20 years).
Some land was provided by local farmers for a temple building, completed in 1915, and known locally as “Whare Rā”. Felkin continued to run it till his death in 1926, when it was taken over by his widow Harriot. It would continue to act as a centre for local occult activities – including, latterly, black magic (or “Goetia”) – until the late 1970s.
Whare Rā was eventually sold to a Roman Catholic family, who thought they were merely getting a Chapman-Taylor-designed heritage house, unsealed the door to find the vault in their basement, and were so plagued by supernatural happenings that they had an exorcism performed.If you find it surprising that such a mélange of magic, esoteric rituals and occultist teaching was permitted to flourish in so conservative an enclave, the explanation is not difficult to find: “most of the town’s leading personages were members of the Temple.”
Membership of Whare Rā is reputed to have included members of Parliament and two governors-general.It’s hardly surprising, then, that “there was a weekend-long bonfire when the Temple was dissolved” in 1978. No doubt it included membership lists as well as the rest of their “documentation and paraphernalia.”
This is just one of the many fascinating stories recounted in Wood’s book. It’s true that I’m left with more questions than answers about Whare Rā’s influence on local culture in the Bay, but I don’t doubt his assiduity in hunting out data and clues from a notoriously cagy group of informants (and survivors).
“Occult” and “Esoteric” are, after all, both rough synonyms for “hidden” – and exposing such knowledge to the bright light of day can be surprisingly difficult at times. Despite the fact that the shelves of libraries and second-hand bookshops are groaning with esoteric literature, its authors have a tendency to content themselves with hints and whispers rather than committing themselves to facts.
To conclude, It’s hard to imagine that anyone interested in this field will be able to get anywhere in future without a well-thumbed copy of Andrew Paul Wood’s Shadow Worlds. For myself, I’d like to end with a quote from The Blue Room, the book that started this particular quest for me:
29/3/2*. – At tea time a message came through, strong but broken, F.R. (? FLOWING ROBES), then COUNCIL OF MARS. Next, in answer to the question as to who was the sender of this strange message, I AM ERIN; THEA. While this message was being spelled out I felt a sensation as of a strong electric current passing over my head at the end of each sentence. I had never felt this before, and it gives rise to the thought that possibly Mars could open up communication with this planet by means of electric or magnetic currents controlled by our spirit friends beyond.Why not, indeed?
Why not?
(13-25/9/23)
Landfall Review Online (2024).
[Available at: https://landfallreview.com/many-in-that-blue-room-believed-heart-and-soul/]
[1570 wds]
Landfall 1 (1947)
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