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Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Madame Blavatsky, Precipitation Phenomena
Ella Wheeler Wilcox was an "extraordinary ordinary" woman who rose from poverty to international acclaim by writing little poems and moral articles for the newspapers. Later in life, she became fascinated by the possiblity of paranormal experiences.
I followed the generally accepted 'feminist' thesis when writing Ella's biographical sketch (Ella Wheeler Wilcox); to wit, that her work is not very well known today because influential male chauvinists took over poetry and suppressed her work as well as the work of other female poets.
Ella was a wildly successful poetess and role model in her day. Many of her fans were housewives who tried their hands at poetry from time to time. No doubt quite a few husbands believed the ladies were wasting their time with poetry and wanted to keep them otherwise occupied - with their marital or household duties, of course. No doubt certain gentlemen went so far as to tear up any poems they managed to find hidden away around the house and to otherwise discourage the aspiring poetasters.
Professional critics resented Ella's success, I think because they had themselves failed dismally as poets, or had enjoyed some repute and turned to criticism when the muse abandoned them because they lacked the very sentiment they disparaged women for possessing. Women's success at poetry was not the only blow to the male ego; even worse, some women were making good money, and worldly success during the early phase of the scientific-industrial revolution was supposed to be the rightful domain of the stronger sex.
The feminist slant I took for my little essay about Ella angered several male intellectuals. On the other hand, women for the most part responded enthusiastically. As pioneers of the virtual world know, the advent of the Internet and open publishing in the form of writing sites and ezines released a flood of poetry previously dammed up in homes for want of enough media to exhibit it. It seemed as if almost everyone had become a poet overnight. Poetry was by far the favorite category on every writing site, more popular than recipes. The servers were so inundated by poems that information managers attempted to eliminate Poetry from the taxonomic scheme of things. Literally thousands of new poems were being posted on the Internet everyday. It was at that time that I chanced upon a few of Ella's poems at the brick-and-mortar library. I inquired further into the public catalogue and was suitably impressed by Ella and her work, and concluded that Internet poets would be interested in her, especially since the Internet affords talented women with a revolutionary opportunity to express themselves poetically and to lay claim to their literary deserts in the literary world.
I believe that some of the turns we are taking in this Information Age have certain parapsychic implications for those of us who are more comfortable with the Age of Aquarius if not with the American Transcendentalists and Spiritualists. I did not dwell on Ella's occult life and the fact that Ella was under the influence of Madame Blavatsky's Theosophical Society in my little biography, hence I am moved to bring forward some of that information here.
Ella was particularly captivated by Annie Besant, the formerly atheistic sociologist who fell under the spiritual spell of Blavatsky and became her primary protege. Mahatma Gandhi, among many other renowned spiritual leaders, was deeply influenced by Madame Blavatsky, Besant &Co. Madame Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine and Isis Unveiled are her main written texts. Blavatsky the person was denounced as a charlatan, a sort of spiritual nomad who wandered over the face of the earth consulting spiritual masters and smoking a lot of tobacco from the cat's head pouch that she carried on a thong about her neck. She mesmerized many of the scientists who investigated her, although they were not too impressed by her tricks; for instance, the letters from the secret Masters that dropped mysteriously out of the curtains.
Seances to contact the dead were in vogue in the deathly days: millions had died violently in the Great War; the aggrieved wanted to contact their beloved ones. Of course the seances were roundly denounced as fraudulent - Harry Houdini went out of his way to expose the frauds. Yet even today people claim to be in regular contact with the departed. Who knows for certain that contact has not been made? Houdini's obsession with exposing the frauds certainly indicates an unconscious wish that someone, perhaps his own dead mother, would communicate from the other world. I sometimes get an overwhelming feeling when I am intensely studying a particular historical period or person, a feeling that I am personally in touch with the living souls of people long gone from the face of the Earth. So I wonder, Can contact be made with departed souls? Ella Wheeler raised that very Question in her book, The Worlds and I. And, in 'The Search of a Soul in Sorrow, she claimed that her departed husband had never lied to her about the subject. The poem begins thus:
You Promised Me
That was a mighty promise you made me; - not once,
But many a time
Whenever we discussed the topic death -
You promised me that there were such things possible
In God's vast Universe,
You would send back a message to my listening soul,
Now I am listening with bated breath...
Moses, Elias, Matthew, Mark and John -
Paul and Cornelius, Buddha, Swedenborg -
All talked with Angels.
Science, which once denied, now publicly investigates.
I do not seek alone.
The 1916 poem speaks to those of us who are still seekers even though we discount the old seances as outright frauds. We seek sceptically, however. Houdini allegedly made a similar commitment, to give some sign to Bess, his beloved wife, from the other world, if possible. If anyone, besides Sisyphus, the infamous trickster who cheated death, could loosen Death's bonds long enough to speak, surely Houdini could.
Ella Wheeler was certainly not easily discouraged: she gives us a considerable account of her frustrating quest to make contact with her beloved Robert. She was no fool: she was not deceived by charlatans nor was she drawn in by the bigots who tried to hustle her. Nor was she much interested in what she considered to be mundane paranormal phenomena, the sort of thing that many thousands of people are intrigued by to this very day in one peculiar form or another. For example, she wrote about her experience with an occult phenomenon called "precipitation."
"I began to visit reputable psychics. Many interested me, some distracted me, a few comforted me with what seemed real messages from the Great Beyond. Others gave only what might have been read from my mind. Still others gave the babble of elementals. None of them satisfied me. One man gave me my first illustration of that curious phenomenon, 'precipitation.' He sat at one end of a room flooded with southern California sunshine, I at the other. On a table beside me were fifty or more slates. He told me to select two and strap them together (after sponging them well) and to place them under my feet. Then I was instructed to take a sheet of paper from the table, write the names of three people who had gone away from earth, and ask one question; to seal this in an envelope and hold it in my hand. I held this for a half hour, while the man with the occult power sat quietly writing at the opposite end of the room. Suddenly he said: 'Look at your slates.' I looked at the slates and found a forget-me-not flower, in water colors, on one corner, and both slates were filled with a message signed by my husband name. No human hands had touched the slates. They were blank when placed by me under my feet. Yet I was not thrilled or stirred... I knew it was a genuine phenomenon, known to occult students... It is a peculiar mental power which enables the possessor of it to obtain facts from the sitter's mind, and precipitate them upon paper or slates... I did not believe for one instant that my husband had sent the message. It was not the message of a spirit, longing for months to communicate with the dearest soul on earth, would send when first the door was opened. It left me utterly cold, and simply curious."
Thus Ella believes paranormal phenomena may exist, yet she is not about to be hoodwinked. I, for one, share her attitude. I believe it is possible to contact departed souls and spirits in the 'Beyond', but I have seen no convincing evidence to convince me that any such contact has been made.
As for Madame Blavatsky, I believe that she had paranormal powers, and that she was a charlatan as well - I do not believe that 'precipitation' was caused by a magical psychic power. I know that we are the dead alive, for I can literally see the faces of those who lived before us in the living faces around me. I know the spirit of Ella Wheeler communicates with me when I think about her and read her poetry. I enjoy that experience, and that is why have rejoined her with this second little essay, which I hope will pique the psychic reader's interest.
