An occult appreciation of a short story by Rudyard Kipling
Guest article by John Temple
Foreword by the author
Once again the Editors of Occult Mysteries have prevailed upon me to contribute a story to — as they put it — "keep the readers out of mischief during the Festive Season." Well, 'prevailed' is not quite the right word. Importune, blandish, cajole, wheedle, soft-soap and butter-up would be nearer the arm-twisting that was employed to persuade Yours Truly to pull another literary rabbit out of his threadbare hat. Furthermore, I am not convinced that my writing is sufficiently riveting to dissuade readers from enjoying the British Christmas tradition of a jolly good punch-up with their relatives after a surfeit of mince pies, turkey and sherry. Do please drop the Editors a line should it be the case that far from keeping you 'out of mischief' my contribution resulted in some pretty serious fisticuffs in your pied-à-terre during Boxing Day. Whilst a blow-by-blow account of your Yuletide mischief is unlikely to prevent the Editors from 'prevailing' upon my good nature next year, it may — just may — give them pause for thought, especially if you casually include such words as 'lawyers', 'writs' and 'compensation' in your email.
What has all this got to do with the story you are about to read? Well, quite a lot actually. The tale I have chosen to analyse is about a story that was never written. You may well wish the same applied to this foreword when you reach the end of it. I happen to think that about a good many stories nowadays. We're told that "everyone has a book in them." Mayhap they do, but I wish more of them would keep it there. Quite the opposite is true of The Finest Story in the World by Rudyard Kipling. Firstly, Kipling could write. Secondly, he was a master story-teller, and thirdly, this is among the very few "uncanny" tales he penned. Actually, the story is only 'uncanny' in the sense that it deals with reincarnation — a philosophical concept that was almost wholly unknown to Westerners until Madame Blavatsky introduced it in the last quarter of the 19th century. The Finest Story in the World was published in the Contemporary Review of July 1891 and subsequently found its way into several editions of the author's works. I have always regarded it as a thinly disguised attempt to bring the reality of reincarnation to a wider audience. If that was Kipling's aim — and he was a firm believer in reincarnation as we shall see in my Afterword — it fell flat. The man on the Clapham omnibus was no more ready to accept the idea of reincarnation than his counterpart in a Nissan Qashqai is today. Kipling's tall tale is too long to reproduce in full here. So, as in my appreciation of Dickens' A Christmas Carol, I will confine myself to quoting a few passages from the story as we go along. So, if you are still reading this foreword, I cordially invite you to seat yourself in your favourite armchair, pour yourself a glass of your chosen tipple and accompany me as we unwrap why The Finest Story in the World was never written.
Rudyard Kipling writing in his study at Bateman's
The Finest Story in the World
The Finest Story in the World begins with a chance meeting between the narrator and a young bank-clerk and would-be poet — Charlie Mears — over a game of billiards in a pub. The narrator is never named, but as the story is told in the first person, we may assume he is Kipling himself. As we shall see as the story unfolds, it is not impossible that Kipling didn't entirely invent it. In support of this we have the fact that Charlie's fantasy of becoming a poet may well be based on conversations Kipling had with his cousin Ambrose Poynter. In a letter written in November 1889, Kipling describes the aspiring poetaster as "a queer young chap sprung from deuce knows where. He’s nineteen and in business but anxious to write...he insists on regarding me as his father confessor and thrust into my hand on leaving his M.S. volume of poems and A FIVE ACT TRAGEDY IN BLANK VERSE!" This is exactly what Charlie Mears does, or as Kipling tells us: "It was my fate to sit still while Charlie read me poems of many hundred lines, and bulky fragments of plays that would surely shake the world. My reward was his unreserved confidence, and the self-revelations and troubles of a young man are almost as holy as those of a maiden. Charlie had never fallen in love, but was anxious to do so on the first opportunity; he believed in all things good and all things honourable, but at the same time, was curiously careful to let me see that he knew his way about the world as befitted a bank-clerk on twenty-five shillings a week. He rhymed 'dove' with 'love' and 'moon' with 'June,' and devoutly believed that they had never so been rhymed before. The long lame gaps in his plays he filled up with hasty words of apology and description, and swept on, seeing all that he intended to do so clearly that he esteemed it already done, and turned to me for applause."
Not to put too fine a point upon it, Charlie is revealed as an inept scribbler of utter tripe. Like all scribblers of utter tripe past and present he suffers from an inflated sense of his non-existent literary genius. Now you'll see why I'm not terribly keen on the books (or poems) everyone is popularly supposed to "have in them" getting out. At least in Charlie's day one needed to find a publisher foolish or desperate enough to take a punt on a pile of pretentious piffle. Even then, there was no guarantee it would ever turn in a single penny. The alternative for the truly resolute scribbler was the snake-pit called "self-publishing." But this slippery slope to literary immortality was not open to the impecunious. The average poetaster could barely afford to eat never mind buy paper, pens and ink. Nowadays all you need is a tablet connected to the interwebmagraph and an account with Amazon and — hey presto! — you're a published author.
Whatever his shortcomings as a poet and a writer, there was no doubt that Charlie Mears had a riveting yarn inside him. "I've a notion in my head that would make the most splendid story that was ever written," Kipling tells us, adding: "There was no resisting the appeal. I set him a table; he hardly thanked me, but plunged into his work at once. For half an hour the pen scratched without stopping. Then Charlie sighed and tugged his hair. The scratching grew slower, there were more erasures, and at last ceased. The finest story in the world would not come forth." As these tales unfold, the narrator becomes convinced that — rather than fabricating these colourful stories — Charlie is vividly recalling his past lives. Whether Kipling wholly invented these memories, obtained them from Ambrose Poynter, or from the devout Hindus he met in India, neither he nor his biographers record. I suspect it is a combination of these three sources. Added to which we have Kipling's own belief in reincarnation which may have been reinforced by memories of his own previous lives and his involvement with occultism — factors which I explore in my Afterword.
Later on in the story an Indian friend of the narrator, one Grish Chunder, confirms that Charlie really is remembering his previous incarnations, but warns that when the bank-clerk falls in love the threads from the past will be irretrievably broken. This, as we shall see, is exactly what happens. In my experience it is not only love that first dims and then obliterates past life memories. The simple process of what used to be called 'growing up' does the job just as well. I've used the past tense, as I'm not convinced there are any grown-ups nowadays. Many people I encounter, even those in the twilight of their lives, seem to be overgrown children. They even look like overgrown children, dressed in what I believe are known as 'track-suit bottoms' and 'hoodies' among the Primark generation. They even talk like children. Only the other day, a chap whom I barely know and by his appearance is unlikely to see the right side of 70 ever again regaled me with the salutation "hiya —— y'a right." I haven't the faintest idea whether this was a greeting or a question. Perhaps it was both or neither. Whatever happened to "good day"? My 'switched-on' elder granddaughter informs me there is a special word for such overgrown children — "kidults." So it seems I'm not the only one to have noticed this strange disability, or is it self-indulgent imbecility? Perhaps a kind reader will "put me straight." But I digress, I meander, I positively peregrinate. Where was I? Oh yes — losing past life memories. I've known a number of children who have memories of their previous incarnations. But as they mature into adulthood with all its attendant responsibilities, distractions and challenges, these memories fade away. Not always completely, but what remains is rationalised as childish 'make believe' or 'dreams'. That is usually the end of the matter. Should the person develop an interest in spirituality and/or occultism in later life, such memories may revive. But this was not the case with Charlie Mears as we shall see!
"Now tell me how you came by this idea?" Kipling asks the young man. Charlie tells him that "it came by itself." Kipling is sceptical. "Yes, but you told me a great deal about the hero that you must have read before somewhere." Charlie replies: "I haven't any time for reading, except when you let me sit here, and on Sundays I'm on my bicycle or down the river all day." Kipling doubts that an impecunious bank-clerk suffering from delusions of literary fame and fortune could possibly come up with such a well-conceived tale and asks: "Tell me again and I shall understand clearly. You say that your hero went pirating. How did he live?"
"He was on the lower deck of this ship-thing that I was telling you about."
"What sort of ship?"
"It was the kind rowed with oars, and the sea spurts through the oar-holes, and the men row sitting up to their knees in water. Then there’s a bench running down between the two lines of oars, and an overseer with a whip walks up and down the bench to make the men work." "How do you know that?"
"It's in the tale. There's a rope running overhead, looped to the upper-deck, for the overseer to catch hold of when the ship rolls. When the overseer misses the rope once and falls among the rowers, remember the hero laughs at him and gets licked for it. He's chained to his oar of course — the hero."
"How is he chained?"
"With an iron band round his waist fixed to the bench he sits on, and a sort of handcuff on his left wrist chaining him to the oar. He's on the lower deck where the worst men are sent, and the only light comes from the hatchways and through the oar-holes. Can't you imagine the sunlight just squeezing through between the handle and the hole and wobbling about as the ship moves?"
It is this astonishing degree of detail that convinces the narrator that a nincompoop like Charlie couldn't possibly have invented it all, leading him to remark: "I can, but I can't imagine your imagining it." One can almost hear the derision in his voice!
This raises an interesting point in connection with the modern pseudo-occult phenomenon of so-called "remote viewing." Most of the examples of this re-branded form of clairvoyance I have seen on YouTube are less than convincing precisely because they lack the meticulous detail Charlie Mears saw. The two things that distinguish genuine clairvoyant visions from the 'psychic' impressions allegedly seen by "remote viewers" is the clarity and detail of the former and the opacity and vagueness of many of the latter. While Kipling's story may be fiction, it is nonetheless based upon sound, occult principles, in proof of which Charlie provides yet more compelling detail. "How could it be any other way? Now you listen to me. The long oars on the upper deck are managed by four men to each bench, the lower ones by three, and the lowest of all by two. Remember it's quite dark on the lowest deck and all the men there go mad. When a man dies at his oar on that deck he isn’t thrown overboard, but cut up in his chains and stuffed through the oar-hole in little pieces." "Why?" demands the narrator in astonishment; not, as one might expect because of the gruesome nature of the information imparted but by the commanding tone with which it was delivered.
"To save trouble and to frighten the others," Charlie replies. "It needs two overseers to drag a man's body up to the top deck; and if the men at the lower deck oars were left alone, of course they’d stop rowing and try to pull up the benches by all standing up together in their chains."
We can almost see the sweat of frustration beading the poor narrator's forehead, as once again he airs his disbelief. "You've a most provident imagination. Where have you been reading about galleys and galley-slaves?"
"Nowhere that I remember," Charlie replies, adding by way of mollification "I row a little when I get the chance. But, perhaps, if you say so, I may have read something."
Like Kipling, my readers may well be wondering how a twenty-year-old bank-clerk who is not the sharpest tool in the box could possibly come up with a story of extravagant and bloodthirsty adventure, riot, piracy, and death in unnamed seas — all delivered with self-assured nonchalance. Charlie goes on to relate how his hero led a desperate revolt against the overseers, to command of a ship of his own, and at last to the establishment of a kingdom on an island "somewhere in the sea, you know." The canny narrator, sensing the opportunity to "make something" of the story, offers Charlie five pounds for it — a not inconsiderable sum to a bank-clerk on twenty-five bob a week. That's one pound and five pence in British new money or about one dollar and 40 cents for my American readers. That 'something' is immeasurably increased when Charlie says: "Well, I was thinking over the story, and after awhile I got out of bed and wrote down on a piece of paper the sort of stuff the men might be supposed to scratch on their oars with the edges of their handcuffs. It seemed to make the thing more life-like. It is so real to me, y'know."
"Have you the paper on you?"
"Ye—es, but what's the use of showing it? It's only a lot of scratches. All the same, we might have 'em reproduced in the book on the front page."
"I'll attend to those details. Show me what your men wrote."
Charlie does so. "What is it supposed to mean in English?" the narrator asks.
"Oh, I don't know. I mean it to mean 'I'm beastly tired.' "
The narrator shows the inscription to a scholar of ancient Greek in the British Museum who tells him that it is an attempt to write extremely corrupt Greek by a thoroughly illiterate person. When pressed, the scholar explains the words mean "I have been — many times — overcome with weariness in this particular employment." If ancient Greek galley slaves were anything like the oppressed foreigners who pick our veg for a pittance while up to their armpits in mud and nettles, they would probably have used much fruitier language to express their disillusionment with their uncongenial employment. It is at this point in our story that the narrator finally realizes Charlie is not guilty of either fabrication or plagiarism; he is genuinely recalling incidents in his past life, or as Kipling tells us: "To me of all men had been given the chance to write the most marvellous tale in the world, nothing less than the story of a Greek galley-slave, as told by himself. Small wonder that his dreaming had seemed real to Charlie. The Fates that are so careful to shut the doors of each successive life behind us had, in this case, been neglectful, and Charlie was looking, though that he did not know, where never man had been permitted to look with full knowledge since Time began. Above all, he was absolutely ignorant of the knowledge sold to me for five pounds; and he would retain that ignorance, for bank-clerks do not understand metempsychosis, and a sound commercial education does not include Greek. He would supply me — here I capered among the dumb gods of Egypt and laughed in their battered faces — with material to make my tale sure — so sure that the world would hail it as an impudent and vamped fiction: And I — I alone would know that it was absolutely and literally true. I — I alone held this jewel to my hand for the cutting and polishing!"
Alas, the poor narrator was doomed to disappointment. As Joan Grant discovered in the last century, stories of past lives appeal to very few and have never brought riches to their authors. But Kipling was right when he wrote that the world would hail Charlie's tale as "an impudent and vamped fiction." Even today, when the doctrine of reincarnation has gained, if not widespread acceptance, then at least grudging consideration among some obscure backwaters of the scientific community, The Finest Story in the World would still be dismissed as fantasy by the vast majority of the population. Even the one group of people whom one might reasonably expect to believe in reincarnation, don't! I refer to the smug, opinionated oracles who have the temerity to call themselves 'occultists' and 'magicians' who infest social media with their pretentious piffle.
The sheer amount of detail Charlie relates about his past lives begs the question of whether Kipling himself had memories of his previous incarnations. If, as I suggested earlier, he did, he kept them to himself for I have not been able to find any reference to them in his writings or the biographies of his life. For example, Charlie remembers that his fellow oarsmen ate "rotten figs and black beans and wine in a skin bag, passed from bench to bench." Later on we learn about a sea battle in which he may or may not have been drowned along with his fellow slaves. Kipling writes: "But you were all drowned together, Charlie, weren't you?"
"I can't make that fit quite. The galley must have gone down with all hands, and yet I fancy that the hero went on living afterwards. Perhaps he climbed into the attacking ship. I wouldn't see that, of course. I was dead, you know." Charlie shivers slightly and protests that he can't remember any more.
This reminds me of a little-known TV documentary made by the Australian hypnotherapist Peter Ramster in 1982 called — appropriately enough — Reincarnation. You can read about this in the Afterword to The lost doctrine of Reincarnation by the authors of this website, who also provide a link to the documentary on YouTube. In it, one of the subjects becomes extremely distressed when Ramster, unlike the compassionate Kipling, presses her to recall traumatic events from a horrific past life in Nazi Germany. This alone provides the answer to those who ask why, if reincarnation is a fact, more people don't remember their past lives. It would be an intolerable act of cruelty on the part of what Kipling calls the "Lords of Life and Death" to torture us with memories that are best forgotten, or as he himself puts it later in the story, "now I understood why the Lords of Life and Death shut the doors so carefully behind us."
Charlie next recalls "some desperate adventure of the Vikings" — an even more startling plunge into a previous life lived in the 10th century of our era. This prompts the narrator to ask: "Was it possible that he had skipped half a dozen lives, and was then dimly remembering some episode of a thousand years later?" Occult Science answers an emphatic 'yes'. J Michaud in Occult Enigmas mentions that many people can only contact the last two or three incarnations, beyond which there seems to lie an impenetrable mist. Others remember almost nothing of their recent incarnations, but can go far back in time and contact civilisations such as ancient Egypt or even Atlantis. Speaking through his narrator Rudyard Kipling now airs some very perceptive thoughts about reincarnation which are well worth quoting. "If Charlie were permitted full recollection for one hour...of existences that had extended over a thousand years — I would forego all profit and honour...I would take no share in the commotion that would follow [on its publication]. Preachers would found a fresh conduct of life upon it, swearing that it was new and that they had lifted the fear of death from all mankind. Churches and religions would war over it. Between the hailing and restarting of an omnibus I foresaw the scuffles that would arise among half a dozen denominations all professing 'the doctrine of the True Metempsychosis as applied to the world and the New Era'; and saw, too, the respectable English newspapers shying, like frightened kine, over the beautiful simplicity of the tale. I saw with sorrow that men would mutilate and garble the story; that rival screeds would turn it upside down till, at last, the western world which clings to the dread of death more closely than the hope of life, would set it aside as an interesting superstition..."
How true this is of the modern, secular world in which it is hard to find even a devout Christian who is fully convinced there is an afterlife. Most Christians I know merely wish there might be one, while the real sinners among them hope there isn't! It was their firm belief in reincarnation that made the ancient Britons such formidable opponents of the Roman invasion of this island. A conviction they imbibed with their mother's milk from the Druids who once ruled the land with justice and wisdom. Nowadays, almost everyone believes in death while embracing the most desperate and often improbable means to put off the dreaded event for as long as possible. The more mankind clings to death the less it lives life as it should be lived — with joy and magnanimity. The rewards of a life devoted to genuine charity, benevolence and goodness are a richer life to come after so-called 'death'. Hence, it has ever been the fate of every attempt by the wise, not-so-wise and the foolhardy, to promulgate this occult truth be laughed to scorn. Even so-called 'occultists', as I mentioned earlier, cling tenaciously to death, as enshrined in the contemporary acronym 'YOLO' — "you only live once." If only they did live life; most waste it in self indulgence and the pursuit of evanescent trivialities.
The study at Bateman's, Rudyard Kipling's country house in East Sussex
It is at this point in Kipling's tale that we encounter the Grish Chunder mentioned earlier. He is described as "a young Bengali law student whose father had sent him to England to become civilised." One can almost hear the irony in Kipling's prose. He was no apologist for the arrogant attitudes and presumptions of the sons and daughters of the British Raj despite what modern historians say to the contrary. Kipling proceeds to tell Charlie's astonishing story to the Hindu law student who listens attentively without interruption before replying: "I have heard of this remembering of previous existences among my people. It is of course an old tale with us, but, to happen to an Englishman — a cow-fed Mlechh — an outcast. By Jove, that is most peculiar!" Kipling counters with: "Outcast yourself, Grish Chunder! You eat cow-beef every day. Let’s think the thing over. The boy remembers his incarnations."
"Does he know that?" asks the Indian.
"He does not know anything. Would I speak to you if he did? Go on!"
"There is no going on at all. If you tell that to your friends they will say you are mad and put it in the papers."
"Let's leave that out of the question entirely. Is there any chance of his being made to speak?"
"There is a chance. Oah, yess! But if he spoke it would mean that all this world would end now — instanto — fall down on your head. These things are not allowed, you know."
"Not a ghost of a chance?"
"How can there be? You are a Christi–an," the Hindu replies, "and it is forbidden to eat, in your books, of the Tree of Life, or else you would never die. How shall you all fear death if you all know what your friend does not know that he knows? I am afraid to be kicked, but I am not afraid to die, because I know what I know. You are not afraid to be kicked, but you are afraid to die. If you were not, by God! you English would be all over the shop in an hour, upsetting the balances of power, and making commotions. It would not be good. But no fear. He will remember a little and a little less, and he will call it dreams. Then he will forget altogether."
The narrator, loathe to lose the opportunity to make a name for himself and earn a few bob along the way, protests "I wasn’t thinking of him. His name need never appear in the story."
"Ah! I see. That story will never be written. You can try," replies Grish Chunder.
"I am going to."
"For your own credit and for the sake of money, of course?" says the Indian cynically.
"No. For the sake of writing the story. On my honour that will be all."
"Even then there is no chance.You cannot play with the gods. It is a very pretty story now. As they say, Let it go on that — I mean at that. Be quick; he will not last long."
"How do you mean?"
"What I say. He has never, so far, thought about a woman."
"Hasn't he, though!" countered the narrator, referring to Charlie's confidences about the fairer sex which were alluded to at the beginning of the story.
"I mean no woman has thought about him. When that comes — all up! I know. There are millions of women here. Housemaids, for instance. They kiss you behind doors."
The narrator winces at the thought of his marvellous tale being ruined by a lowly housemaid whilst admitting that nothing was more likely.
"Yes — also pretty girls," adds the budding lawyer gleefully. "One kiss that he gives back again and remembers will cure all this nonsense..."
And that dear reader is how it turned out. When we next encounter Charlie he announces that he's written a new poem — "the best I've ever done. Read it," he raves, as he thrusts it into the narrator's hand. It is, as we might expect from what we've learned about his literary ambitions, dreadful, gushing, sentimental rot. So dreadful that it causes the narrator to groan inwardly. You will probably groan outwardly, or worse, feel a sudden desire to make a precipitate beeline for the nearest bathroom. Well, don't say I didn't warn you. Here are two of the least unctuously saccharine verses.
"She gave me herself, Earth, O Sky;
Gray sea, she is mine alone!
Let the sullen boulders hear my cry,
And rejoice tho' they be but stone!
"Mine! I have won her, O good brown earth,
Make merry!
'Tis hard on Spring;
Make merry; my love is doubly worth
All worship your fields can bring!
Let the hind that tills you feel my mirth
At the early harrowing!"
"Well?" asks Charlie eagerly.
The narrator, like any refined person possessed of what used to be called "good taste" is appalled by the poem, especially when Charlie silently lays a photograph of a girl with "a curly head and a foolish slack mouth" upon it.
"Isn't it — isn't it wonderful?" he gushes. "I didn't know; I didn't think — it came like a thunderclap."
"Yes. It comes like a thunderclap. Are you very happy, Charlie?" asks the narrator.
"My God — she — she loves me!"
The astute reader will not be surprised to learn that Charlie's incomparable inamorata is a tobacconist's assistant with a weakness for pretty dresses who had never been kissed before. Nowadays she would probably be a barista with dyed blonde hair scraped back from her forehead and draped down her neck in a ponytail. She would have been kissed once too often and have a weakness for Primark. As Charlie drones on and on and on about the love of his life, our thoroughly disillusioned narrator muses that "now I understood why the Lords of Life and Death shut the doors so carefully behind us." Still, hope springs eternal as they say; or rather naivety does among those who see fame and fortune slipping from their grasp. "Now, about that galley-story," he asks Charlie hopefully. The lovesick bank-clerk looks like he's been hit by another thunderbolt. "The galley — what galley?" he expostulates in disbelief. "Good heavens, don't joke, man! This is serious! You don't know how serious it is!"
So serious that it obliterated all memory of the story that was to secure our bank-clerk's prominent place in the hall of literary luminaries, not to mention a tidy sum for the narrator who published and promoted it. Rudyard Kipling ends his tall tale with the memorable words: "Grish Chunder was right. Charlie had tasted the love of woman that kills remembrance, and the finest story in the world would never be written." The misogynists among my readers will be delighted to learn that it was Kipling and no other who was responsible for the maxim: "the female of the species is more deadly than the male." The line occurs in a poem of his published in 1911 titled The female of the species. History is diplomatically silent on what his American-born wife Caroline thought of this notion, and I see no reason not to follow this wise precedent!
Conclusion
You can't argue with love. In whatever form it presents itself, it's a winner every time. Omnia vincit amor: et nos cedamus amori as the poet Virgil sang in his Eclogues, meaning "Love conquers all; let us, too, yield to love!" Or, as the Latin expression is vulgarly rendered and truncated, Amor vincit omnia. This is a truth I can personally testify to, as those who have been reckless enough to buy my new book — The Search for Truth — will know! All of which reminds me of the Greek Myth repeated by Plato in his Symposium which relates how humans were originally created with four arms, four legs, and a head with two faces. Fearing that these mighty beings will become strong enough to challenge the dominance of the gods and usurp their power, Zeus splits them into two, condemning them to spend their lives searching fruitlessly for their other half, or in modern parlance, soul-mate. This, as the authors of Occult Mysteries explain in their superb discourse on Love, is a pretty hopeless quest. Even when the search is successful, as it was for the eponymous hero of The Quest of Ruru, it invariably ends in tragedy. Rudyard Kipling does not tell us whether Charlie Mears lived happily ever after with his tobacconist’s assistant, but we may be tolerably sure he would have been thoroughly miserable had The Finest Story in the World not remained unwritten. Or, as the wise Chinese Master Li Wang Ho told his fortunate disciples "...when a fool in his foolishness is happy it is cruel to make him wise before the appointed time. Better a happy Fool than a miserable Sage."
'John' (no relation)
About the author
John Temple is the pen-name of a writer who has studied and practised the occult sciences for more than 60 years. He graduated from Cambridge University with a first in Theology and Religious Studies and was ordained as a Minister in the Anglican Church in 1957. He left the Church in 1972 and has since lectured to students around the world on a wide variety of occult, religious and mystical subjects.
John retired in 2002 and now lives quietly in London with his wife, two Yorkshire terriers and a talkative African Grey Parrot called John, shown in typically meditative mood at left.
The Art of Dying.. Thoughts on the subject of death and dying by Greg Wade.
Consciousness after death. In part four of Astral Conversations, Bombast and Flitterflop discuss the survival of consciousness.
Further articles by John Temple
John Temple has written several further articles for us. These are listed in order of publication below, oldest first.
The Search for Truth. In this series of twelve articles the author explores and investigates the links between Religion and the Occult. A slightly different version of these articles was published by Aula Lucis in November 2024. See our Occult Books page for more information.
In my Afterword I review the close friendship between Rudyard Kipling and Rider Haggard and their involvement in the occult.
The friendship between Rudyard Kipling and Rider Haggard was an enduring and very productive one that lasted for nearly forty years, only ending with Haggard's death on 14 May 1925, eleven years before his friend.
Henry Rider Haggard was born on 22 June 1856. The Ascendant was in Cancer at the time of his birth together with the Sun. This was conjoined to Mercury, Venus and Saturn in the 12th House. I challenge any astrologers among my readers to cite a more fitting combination of influences for a gifted writer (Mercury) with a deep love of the past (Cancer) whose abiding theme was the Power (Sun) of Love (Venus) Eternal (Saturn) working secretly in the lives of men and women.
By one of those strange synchronicities which are often dismissed by the unthinking as mere coincidences, Rudyard Kipling was born with the Sun in Capricorn, in close opposition to his friend's Cancerian Sun. Swift-footed Mercury, the Messenger of the Gods — significator of both writers and writing — was in opposition between the two charts, Kipling's in Sagittarius and Haggard's in Gemini — both mutable Signs. No wonder each profited from the rapid exchange of ideas, plots and characterisation.
The astrological synchronicities don't end there. The Moon was in 18 degrees of Aquarius in Rider's chart in exact trine aspect with Kipling's Moon in Gemini. These are both Air Signs. The Moon strongly influences the emotions (among other things) so this contact would reinforce the powerful intellectual and emotional bond between the two men.
Venus too, was in close opposition between the two nativities; in Sagittarius in the Fourth House in Kipling's chart and in Gemini in the Twelfth House in Haggard's chart. Opposition aspects are considered to be stressful by many astrologers. Such would likely agree with the literary critic who remarked that: "From all outward appearances they [Kipling and Haggard] should have been enemies, not friends." Personally speaking, I haven't found opposition aspects to work this way between the charts of those who share strong, mutual interests and attitudes.
On the contrary, I have found that oppositions can stimulate, inspire and galvanise in ways harmonious aspects don't. Moreover, there is a natural sympathy between the Fourth and Twelfth Houses which I feel softens this contact between the two writers. I could go on, but having no wish to lose the company of those readers who know nothing about astrology and perhaps care less, I will say no more, except to add that there may be 'something' in this despised 'pseudoscience' after all!
Rider Haggard was an established writer of thirty-three when he met the young Rudyard Kipling in the year 1888. Kipling was ten years his junior and had just arrived in England from India. Their friendship was rooted not only in shared political and social attitudes and literary interests, but in their similar experiences. Haggard had lived and worked in South Africa, Kipling in India, and each lost their only sons in tragic and painful circumstances.
Both men were also sceptical and suspicious of Spiritualism, Kipling especially so, having encountered many fraudulent mediums during his time in India. Haggard, while less harsh, nonetheless wrote: "I am by no means satisfied as to the real origin of spiritualistic phenomena. Without expressing any definite opinion, at times I incline to the view that it also is but a device of the Devil, by specious apparitions and the exhibition of an uncanny knowledge which may be one of his attributes, to lead heart-sick mortals into regions they were not meant to travel and there infect them with the microbe of some alien, unknown sin."
Those of you who have read my analysis of Mr Tilly's Séance — a ghostly short story by Fred Benson in which the tricksy turns of a medium are exposed — will recognise the truth of Rider Haggard's criticism. But by far the strongest and most abiding bond between them were their spiritual beliefs and religious sentiments.
The locale that brought them together was the Savile Club. Rider Haggard was elected to membership in 1887 and Rudyard Kipling two years later. It was Andrew Lang (1844-1912), the Scottish novelist, poet and literary critic, who was instrumental in facilitating the meeting. Rider dedicated She to Lang who also collaborated with him in the conception and writing of The World's Desire, a fictional account of Odysseus' search for Helen of Troy — the 'desire' of the title.
This book, published in 1890, was not the first collaboration between them. The Scottish poet helped Haggard plan and revise several of the latter's novels, including, She (1887), Eric Brighteyes (1891) and Nada the Lily (1892). Lang also added poems to Haggard's novel Cleopatra (1889).
The Savile Club which still exists today, was then located at 107 Piccadilly in London. Established in 1868 its members included leading scientists (Ernest Rutherford was a member), artists, musicians and writers. Among the latter were such literary luminaries as Robert Louis Stevenson, Thomas Hardy, Henry James, W. B. Yeats, and H. G. Wells.
By all accounts back-stabbing was a popular 'sport' among the distinguished members who hurled heated accusations of plagiarism at one another. These jolly entertainments must have made no small contribution to the lively atmosphere Rider and Rudyard enjoyed! History records that Oscar Wilde attempted to join this happy throng of litigious literati and ambitious aesthetes but was considered a little too 'colourful' for the company and his application was summarily rejected!
In March 1923, Rider Haggard spent several days with Rudyard Kipling at Bateman's, the latter's sprawling country house in East Sussex. After Haggard had read out some parts of Wisdom's Daughter to his friend, Kipling remarked that he was convinced "the individual human being is not a flash in the pan, seen for a moment and then lost forever, but an enduring entity that has lived elsewhere and will continue to live, though for a while memory of his past lives is blotted out."
It may well be that it was this firm (but privately held) belief in reincarnation which prompted Kipling to suggest the plot of Allan and the Ice Gods to his friend in January 1922. The book is among my personal favourites of Rider Haggard's tales of the remote past, not least because it confirms with uncanny accuracy what Occult Science knows about the first human races on Earth.
Published five years later in 1927, Allan and the Ice Gods is described by Wikipedia as a story of "past life regression." The word 'reincarnation' is never mentioned, despite the fact that countless millions believe in it throughout the East. This proves that it remains a largely anathematic doctrine for 'civilised' Westerners as I mentioned in my appreciation of Rudyard Kipling's short story.
Unsurprisingly, Wikipedia singles out the one statement in the novel which seems to dismiss reincarnation. This occurs towards to end of the book when Allan Quatermain awakens from a vision of the past and muses that he hasn't really been remembering a previous life, but that the hallucinogenic drug he and his friend Captain Good had taken possessed "the power of awakening the ancestral memory which has come down to us with our spark of life through scores of intervening forefathers."
This is Rider Haggard dissembling at his very best — something he does in many of his books — lest he be accused of personally endorsing overtly 'occult' ideas. His characters might express whatever ideas they wish just so long as it is clearly understood by the reader that the author does not necessarily share them!
We have to remember that when Kipling and Haggard were writing their stories, dogmatic Christianity still held sway in the minds of the public. It was all very well to pursue occult interests in private, as many did. It was even acceptable to believe in and promote fairies as Conan Doyle did without serious censure, though in his case his fame as the creator of the immortal Sherlock Holmes certainly helped to keep Mrs Grundy at bay.
In his diary entry for 30 January 1922 Haggard writes: "As usual Rudyard and I talked till we were tired about everything in heaven above and earth beneath." One can picture them in Kipling's study at Bateman's; Rudyard at his writing table by the mullioned window and Rider in his customary chair by the roaring fire. It was during this conversation that they thrashed out the plot of Allan and the Ice Gods.
Haggard's diary entry continues: "We spent a most amusing two hours over this plot and I have brought home the results in several sheets of manuscript written by him and myself." These sheets survive, revealing the extensive help Kipling gave his friend, including a sketch of the ice-bound landscape in which Allan awakens as the hirsute cave-man 'Wi'. This is the prelude to some extraordinary adventures which I will refrain from describing in deference to those benighted readers who have not read the novel but are sure to do so now I have whetted their appetite!
The early part of the book was worked out in advance by Kipling, not Haggard, as the notes in the MSS show. Anyone who has studied volume II of The Secret Doctrine (Anthropogenesis), wherein the occult origins and history of mankind is revealed, will recognise that in Allan and the Ice Gods, Haggard and Kipling have collaborated in giving us an accurate glimpse into the genesis of man such as we seek in vain in Darwin's On the Origin of Species.
Was this a case of inspiration drawing forth shared memories of the faraway past? Very possibly. Only this can explain the innumerable uncanny parallels in this remarkable book to the revelations we find in The Secret Doctrine and the descriptions of primitive humanity in Kenealy's Book of Fo. Of course, both men may have read one or both of these books, but given the opprobrium and derision with which such subjects were regarded in the 1920's this seems rather unlikely to me.
While Rudyard Kipling's long affiliation with Freemasonry is well documented, this is not true of his involvement with occultism. Among his friends was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (a close neighbour in East Sussex), Arthur Edward Waite and the Theosophist C. W. Leadbeater, as well as a score of other famous (and infamous) intellectuals, artists, mystics, bohemians and eccentrics.
Doyle, an enthusiastic spiritualist, and Waite, an ardent, if erratic occultist and aspiring magician were, together with Kipling, all members of the Quatuor Coronati Masonic lodge in London. This was mainly composed of academics, writers, artists, mystics and members of the aristocracy. Kipling joined in 1918.
This premier lodge of masonic research was founded by General Sir Charles Warren in 1888 and is still in existence today. Warren is generally remembered for resigning as head of Scotland Yard due to protracted political pressure about his less than successful handling of the infamous Jack the Ripper murders!
Kipling was also a member of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia (SRIA). This too, still exists today. But, as I pointed out in my discussion of the involvement of Charles Dickens with occultism in my analysis of A Christmas Carol, it was never a strictly Rosicrucian order but an esoteric branch of mainstream freemasonry.
This is not to say that occult and magical teachings and rituals formed no part of its curriculum, for they clearly did and still do. The grade structure of the SRIA is pre-eminently occult and primarily derived from — some uncharitable souls may say copied directly from — the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.
William Robert Woodman, who was the Supreme Magus of the SRIA for over ten years, was one of the three co-founders of the Golden Dawn, as was William Wynn Westcott. The latter also served as Supreme Magus of the SRIA from 1891 to 1925. Even the third founder of the Golden Dawn, S. L. MacGregor Mathers, was Junior Substitute Magus of the SRIA from 1892 until 1900. From which we may safely deduce that Rudyard Kipling was pretty well saturated with occult influences.
Although there was a great revival of interest in the occult during the Victorian era, this did not lead to the widespread acceptance of occult doctrines or teachings. With the possible exception of Spiritualism, those who interested themselves in the occult, and especially those who practised any of the occult sciences, were extremely careful to conceal their activities from public scrutiny.
The growing strength of his friendship with Kipling was a source of great joy to Rider. The two friends planned plots together and discussed their farms and gardens. Rider's visits to Rudyard at Bateman's were amongst his greatest joys and refreshment. "It is, I think, good for a man of rather solitary habits now and again to have the opportunity of familiar converse with a brilliant and creative mind. Also we do not fidget each other — only last year Kipling told me he could work as well when I was sitting in the room as though he were alone."
Years later in his book Something of Myself, Kipling said much the same of Rider: "Rider Haggard would visit us from time to time and give us of his ample land-wisdom. His comings were always a joy to us and the children, who followed him like hounds in the hope of 'more South African stories'. Never was a better tale-teller, or, to my mind, a man with a more convincing imagination. We found by accident that each could work with ease in the other's company. So he would visit me, and I him, work in hand; and between us we could even hatch out tales together — a most exacting test of sympathy."
In the spring of 1918, Rider Haggard spent a long and productive day with Rudyard Kipling at Bateman's. What did they talk about? Haggard writes: "So many things it is difficult to remember them — chiefly they had to do with the fate of man. Rudyard apparently cannot make up his mind about these things.
"On one point, however, he is perfectly clear. I happened to remark that I thought this world was one of the hells. He replied he did not think — he was certain of it. He went on to show that it had every attribute of hell; doubt, fear, pain, struggle, bereavement, almost irresistible temptations springing from the nature with which we are clothed, physical and mental suffering, etc.
"Like myself he has an active faith in the existence of a personal devil. His humility is very striking. We were talking of our failings, of the sense of utter insufficiency which becomes apparent as one nears the end of one's clays, but I commented on the fact that he at any rate had wide fame and was known as 'the great Mr. Kipling' which would be a consolation to many men. He thrust the idea away with a gesture of disgust. 'What is it worth?—what is it all worth?' he answered. Moreover he went on to show that anything any of us did well was no credit to us; that it came from somewhere else, that we were, in fact, only telephone wires. As for an example he instanced some of our individual successes — 'You did not write She, you know,' he said, 'something wrote it through you...'
"I told him that I did believe that as a result of much spiritual labour there is born in one a knowledge of the nearness and consolation of God. He replied that occasionally this had happened to him also, but the difficulty was to 'hold' the mystic sense of this communion — that it passes. Now this I have found very true. Occasionally one sees the Light...one thinks that the peace which passes all understanding is gained — then all is gone again. Rudyard's explanation is that it is meant to be so; that God does not mean we should get too near lest we should become unfitted for our work in the world. Perhaps..."
Rider Haggard here echoes the eloquent reservations expressed by the editors of Occult Mysteries in their article about reincarnation in which they say: "Consider, too, how memories of a past life can affect our actions in this life, perhaps causing us to repeat old mistakes, or become so overwhelmed by our past achievements, worldly position and fame (assuming we had any!) that we waste the opportunities of this life in dwelling on past glories, thus interfering with the work we have to do NOW."
This reinforces my personal view that both men were more closely acquainted with occultism than is apparent from either their books or their letters. As we learned earlier, although Rudyard Kipling did not conceal his masonic activities, he didn't exactly broadcast them either. He was even more circumspect about his membership of the SRIA.
He, like Rider, was well aware that the occult revival of the Victorian era did not extend to the public acceptance of occultism or those who involved themselves with it. Both men would have known what happened to the unfortunate 'mage' William Wynn Westcott, mentioned earlier, who was forced to choose between his position as the Coroner for North London and his offices in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.
He chose to resign from the Order rather than give up his lucrative government post, or, as he wrote at the time: "Somehow it became known to the State officers that I was a prominent official of a Society in which I had been foolishly posturing as one possessed of magical powers — and that if this became more public it would not do for a Coroner to the Crown to be made shame of in such a mad way."
This was not an entirely new experience for the 'Supreme Magus'. In 1889 he was forced to stop giving lectures to members of the Theosophical Society in support of Madame Blavatsky. His arch rival for control of the Golden Dawn, the infamous black magician Aleister Crowley, put it more indelicately when he later wrote that Westcott "was paid to sit on corpses, not to raise them!"
If genuine friendships endure beyond the grave, of which I have no doubt, then the bond between Rider Haggard and Rudyard Kipling is unquestionably a long and enduring one. On 13 May 1925 Rudyard wrote to Ida Hector, Rider's secretary. "Seeing that the operation was last Saturday morning and he is reported as reading and smoking on Tuesday, there seems to be a chance of the luck turning."
His luck did turn, but not in the way Kipling meant or hoped, for on the following day, Haggard had re-joined the ranks of the Living and this Earth was a darker and sadder place for the light that had left it. Rudyard Kipling outlived his good friend by eleven years.
