Alan Bennett

The members of the order were as vulgar and commonplace as any other set of average people.

Jones and Baker themselves were the only members with any semblance of scientific education until a few months later I met Alan Bennett, a mind pure, piercing and profound beyond any other in my experience.

That's so weird for him to say that because there's like all these really educated people in the order.

He might not have met them.

I thought the ceremonies were run by midwits and mediocre dullards who didn't know how to do anything.

Anyway, maybe it's just him who's aware of this powerful force.

It seemed to me to proceed from a man sitting in the east, a man I had not seen before, but whom I knew must be a very honored frat or yehi or called among men, Alan Bennett.

So this is funny.

The members of the order were as vulgar and commonplace as any other set of average people.

Jones and Baker themselves were the only members with any semblance of scientific education until a few months later I met Alan Bennett, a mind pure, piercing, and profound beyond any other in my experience.

That's so weird for him to say that because there's like all these really educated people in the order.

He might not have met them.

I thought the ceremonies were run by midwits and mediocre dullards who didn't know how to do anything.

Anyway, maybe it's just him who's aware of this powerful force.

It seemed to me to proceed from a man sitting in the east, a man I had not seen before, but whom I knew must be a very honored frater Yehi Or, called among men Alan Bennett.

So this is funny.

But, um, but even Crowley-

Yeah, Alan Bennett, Crowley, and of course theosophy in general brought in Eastern stuff.

Yeah, that's right.

That actually makes sense why we would then s- shift focus culturally from, say, the tradition of Anton Mesmer to-

Actually, Crowley brings up, um, the Greek way of being.

So we've done it two or three shows, at least in the members section, talking about democracy and the tyrannicides, and how the Greek, uh, social structure was set up as, it was called homosocial, and an older Greek man would have a younger Greek boyfriend who he showed the ropes, and that's how...

That was your path to citizenship there in ancient Greece.

And Crowley is making a reference to that in the relationship between him and Jerome.

This is, like, the beginnings of photography, but back then, that was a very important thing.

And you can see his port- uh, Gerald Kelly's portraits in, like, museums today of, like, very famous people, kings and queens and aristocrats.

And what really, what happened in my understanding, and I write about it in the book, is that she was trying to get away from either a first husband or a boyfriend, and so he offered to fill in, and that's how their relationship started.

Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Um, Alan Bennett, William But- Butler Yeats, Maude Gonne.

We have here one of his works, because just a lot of these people, they existed so long ago that, you know, w- we don't really have photos available, at least in, in any noteworthy pixelation or I should say resolution.

So we've got here the cover of one of Percy Bullock's works.

I'm at full mast.

That's what she said.

Alan Bennett.

[laughs]

Now, what happened was actually right around the time, because of Blavatsky, Right around the time of the Golden Dawn, you had all these Western initiates who were involved in things like the Golden Dawn.

Alan Bennett is the perfect example.

He was a Golden Dawn initiate, kind of a normal guy, had some asthma issues, and he decides because of all this literature, this exoticizing literature, of the East and the wisdom of the East that particularly was perpetrated by Blavatsky, constantly trying to source the true locus of true wisdom in this world, specifically only in the East.

That's where it all comes from.

That's where, she says, her masters are from.

So you've got this wave of people going eastward.

And Alan Bennett, Golden Dawn Initiate, he's the first Western person To go over there and get initiated into this thing.

And so then they're bringing it back.

Um, I guess my last question is.

um, you know, you do, you do a great job with all of it, you know, and, and bringing in a wide selection of, of, of figures, even in just the, I believe it's four that you, that you referenced, um, St. Teresa, Thomas Vaughn, uh, Ramakrishna and Alan Bennett, right.

Uh, and the golden dawn Friday, uh, yeah, he, yeah, she, uh, yeah, he, uh, um, but the, the book kind of ends with a statement about nihilism that I couldn't agree with more for people listening to our conversation today.

Um, knowing what you do now and you exercise a tremendous amount of epistemological humility.