Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Unexplained with me your host, Richard
Speaker 1: McLain Smith. For each week we explore another true tale
Speaker 1: of high strangeness. If you're new here and you're a
Speaker 1: fan of expertly told atmospheric stories about the strange and unexplained,
Speaker 1: then you've come to the right place, and please subscribe
Speaker 1: to the show if you haven't already done so. I'm
Speaker 1: very excited to be taking Unexplained to the Edinburgh Fringe
Speaker 1: Festival this year. I'll be performing at the Space's Surgeons
Speaker 1: Hall venue at ten oh five pm every night from
Speaker 1: August seventh to the twenty ninth, except for the sixteenth
Speaker 1: and twenty third. You can get tickets at THESPACEUK dot com.
Speaker 1: Forward Slash shows Ford Slash twenty twenty six, Ford Slash
Speaker 1: Unexplained hyphen Live. For those watching on YouTube, you can
Speaker 1: find the link below. With all that out of the way,
Speaker 1: this is Unexplained, Season nine, Episode twenty eight Laughter Cracking
Speaker 1: through the Walls. It's late in the evening of November eighth,
Speaker 1: eighteen ninety five, down at the Physics Institute of the
Speaker 1: Julius Maximilians University of Wurtzburg. Fifty year old physicist Wilhelm
Speaker 1: Runtgen is hard at work. For the past few weeks,
Speaker 1: he's been tinkering with a cathode tube. The tube itself
Speaker 1: is simple enough to describe, a sealed glass cylinder with
Speaker 1: almost all the air sucked out of it and a
Speaker 1: metal plate fixed at each end. Rentgun connects one plate
Speaker 1: to the negative element of a rudimentary battery and the
Speaker 1: other to the positive and completes the circuit through an
Speaker 1: induction coil. Then, after turning off the lights, he throws
Speaker 1: the switch inside the tube. With nothing left to get
Speaker 1: in its way. An invisible stream leaps across the near
Speaker 1: vacuum from the negative plate toward the positive one, what
Speaker 1: physicists have taken to calling a cat cathode ray, but
Speaker 1: what it actually consists of is still as yet unknown.
Speaker 1: The glass starts to glow faintly, as if it had
Speaker 1: suddenly decided to come alive. Then something even stranger begins
Speaker 1: to happen. Bntgun catches it out at the corner of
Speaker 1: his eye, some distance away, much further than a cathode
Speaker 1: ray could possibly reach. A small screen coated in barium
Speaker 1: platinum cyanide is glowing a luminescent green. Confused, Rentgun covers
Speaker 1: the cathode tube with sheets of black cardboard, but the
Speaker 1: screen still glows. He wraps another and then another around it,
Speaker 1: but still nothing reduces that strange, eerie glow. He moves
Speaker 1: the screen further away, but nothing changes. He puts a
Speaker 1: thick book between the tube and the screen, a thousand
Speaker 1: pages of paper, more than enough to stop any light
Speaker 1: that he knows of, but still the screen keeps glow.
Speaker 1: Then Brongan holds up his own hand in front of
Speaker 1: the catho tube and stares in utter amazement at what
Speaker 1: has just appeared on the screen, the inner architecture of himself,
Speaker 1: the bones of his fingers moving when he moves them.
Speaker 1: Wilhelm Rogan has just discovered the X ray. For the
Speaker 1: next six weeks, Brogan tells no one about his discovery,
Speaker 1: not his colleagues, not even his wife. When she finally
Speaker 1: presses him to tell her what he's become so preoccupied with,
Speaker 1: he gives her the only honest answer he has that
Speaker 1: if he told people what he'd discovered, they would say
Speaker 1: he'd gone completely mad. So he stays in the dark alone,
Speaker 1: running the same tests again and again, checking and rechecking,
Speaker 1: a result that he can barely bring himself to believe.
Speaker 1: When at lasts he writes the phenomenon up, he doesn't
Speaker 1: even dare give it a proper name, it is so
Speaker 1: strange and incomprehensible. He names it simply X, the mathematic
Speaker 1: symbol for a quantity that is yet to be solved.
Speaker 1: In truth, what he's discovered, though he doesn't yet have
Speaker 1: the language for it, constitutes a whole being punched clean
Speaker 1: through the Victorian idea of a solid, visible universe. Within months,
Speaker 1: the rest of the world will be forced through that
Speaker 1: same hole, forced to accept that the air carries invisible waves,
Speaker 1: that matter gives off energy that nobody can see, and
Speaker 1: that even the human body is not quite the solid,
Speaker 1: determinate thing that most might have it be. It would
Speaker 1: be almost two decades before anyone proved what the X
Speaker 1: ray actually was, a radioactive wave of light too short
Speaker 1: for any human eye to see. But Rundgan's discovery had
Speaker 1: set in motion an earth shattering paradigm shift in our
Speaker 1: understanding of the universe, which would ultimately lead to the
Speaker 1: birth of quantum mechanics. Meanwhile, in London, at almost exactly
Speaker 1: this same moment, a rather different set of investigators were
Speaker 1: embarking on a set of experiments of their own, a
Speaker 1: loose brotherhood and sisterhood of poets, actors, doctors and mystics
Speaker 1: who never once doubted that the true architecture of the
Speaker 1: universe lay hidden behind the visible one. Much like Urgan,
Speaker 1: they too believed that all they needed was the right
Speaker 1: instrument or the right ritual to bring it into view.
Speaker 1: They had no catho tube and no barium platinum cyanide
Speaker 1: coated screen. What they had instead was a mysterious magical cipher,
Speaker 1: a stranger's letters, and an unshakable conviction that if he
Speaker 1: could just speak the right words into the dark in
Speaker 1: the right order, something would eventually answer. Of the hermetic
Speaker 1: order of the Golden Dawn. You're listening to Unexplained, and
Speaker 1: I'm Richard McLean Smith. One afternoon in the summer of
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty six, down at the strange and imposing Freemason
Speaker 1: Hall in central London, the British headquarters of the Freemason movement,
Speaker 1: the Reverend Adolphus Woodford was busy collating the papers of
Speaker 1: his close friend and fellow Mason, Kenneth Mackenzie Mackenzie had
Speaker 1: just recently died, and Woodford was keen to get his
Speaker 1: papers in order. Both men were also members of another
Speaker 1: secret society, the Society Rosicruciana in Anglia, or the Rosicrucian
Speaker 1: Society of England, which was founded by a man named
Speaker 1: Robert Little in eighteen sixty seven. For many, despite its
Speaker 1: mystical connotations and promises of divine enlightenment, the Freemason movement
Speaker 1: was really little more than an elaborate old boys club
Speaker 1: for networking and pulling favors. To that end, Little established
Speaker 1: the Society Rosicruciana for Sria in the hope of drawing
Speaker 1: together like minded fellow Masons to work on a genuine
Speaker 1: pursuit for divine knowledge. The Rosicrucian name that Little borrowed
Speaker 1: wasn't his own invention. It reached back over two and
Speaker 1: a half centuries to a set of anonymous German pamphlets
Speaker 1: that appeared in the early sixteen hundreds describing a secret
Speaker 1: brotherhood founded by a mysterious figure called Christian Rosenkrauts. According
Speaker 1: to the legend, Rosenkrauts had traveled through the Middle East
Speaker 1: as a young man, gathering secret wisdom from Arab and
Speaker 1: Sufi scholars, before returning to Europe to fuse it with
Speaker 1: Gabala alchemy and Christian mysticism, and founding a hidden order
Speaker 1: to guard and pass on what he'd learned. When his
Speaker 1: tomb was supposedly des covered a full one hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty years after his death, his body inside was said
Speaker 1: to be perfectly preserved, untouched by decay, surrounded by symbols
Speaker 1: and hidden knowledge meant only for the initiated, Like many
Speaker 1: searches of divine knowledge before him, Robert Little was inspired
Speaker 1: by the legend and hoped that his own Rosicrucian society,
Speaker 1: the SRIA, could serve as a kind of British outpost
Speaker 1: to continue the same search that the original Rose Accrutionans
Speaker 1: had supposedly embarked on to unlock the secrets of the universe.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't long before the SRIA had its critics too.
Speaker 1: Sure they were learning more, but for some members it
Speaker 1: was all too Academic. Members like Reverend Adolphus Woodford, wanted
Speaker 1: to go further, so when he was gathering Kenneth Mackenzie's
Speaker 1: papers from his office, he couldn't help but be intrigued
Speaker 1: by the strange manuscript that he discovered tucked away at
Speaker 1: the back of one of his cupboards. Leather bound and
Speaker 1: written on cloth paper, with its jumble of occult symbols
Speaker 1: and strange combination of letters and diagrams, it was quite
Speaker 1: clearly some kind of magic text. But Woodford couldn't understand
Speaker 1: a word of it, and so, as the story goes,
Speaker 1: he passed it on to his friend and fellow Rosicrucian
Speaker 1: Society member William Wynn Westcott, a forty year old coroner.
Speaker 1: Westcott was also desperate to get his teeth into something
Speaker 1: a little more practical. Westcott had apparently never seen anything
Speaker 1: like it before. The strange ruins on the pages before
Speaker 1: him seemed closer to Egyptian hieroglyphs or some alien language
Speaker 1: than anything he'd encountered in his casual study of ancient
Speaker 1: oem Arabic or Chinese. Even Russian cyrillic and the Greek
Speaker 1: alphabet seemed closer to Latin script than the unusual series
Speaker 1: of circles and arrows, triangles and squares which confronted him now.
Speaker 1: But the more he read, the more he began to
Speaker 1: understand that what the manuscript most closely resembled was a
Speaker 1: form of Hebrew, perhaps rendered with a trithemia cipher, in
Speaker 1: which ordinary numerals were swapped out for letters. The last
Speaker 1: page of the manuscript seemed to have a partial key
Speaker 1: that was written in a mixture of French and Latin,
Speaker 1: and Westcott's mind couldn't help but drift to the burnished
Speaker 1: black granite of the Rosetta Stone in the British Museum.
Speaker 1: William Westcott had stood before the Rosetta Stone on many
Speaker 1: occasions as a young man, and absorbed the almost magical
Speaker 1: quality of its power. It seemed to breathe through the
Speaker 1: glass of its holding display case, and left everyone who
Speaker 1: viewed it feeling as though they had been in the
Speaker 1: presence of a portal to another world. He felt like
Speaker 1: Jean Francois Champollion, the famous French philologist who first deciphered
Speaker 1: the meaning of the ancient Egyptian symbols adorned on the
Speaker 1: rock some sixty five years prior. In eighteen twenty two,
Speaker 1: Westcott is said to have spent long evenings with his
Speaker 1: newly acquired document, pouring into his books and trying to
Speaker 1: uncover their extraordinary secrets. Having hit a dead end is
Speaker 1: said to have turned to his closest confidants from the
Speaker 1: Rosicrucian society, the older William Woodman, who was a doctor
Speaker 1: like Westcott, and the younger, more eccentric Samuel Mathis. Like Westcott,
Speaker 1: Mathers was also multilingual with a deep knowledge of mystical texts.
Speaker 1: By September eighteen eighty seven, Westcott finally had a service
Speaker 1: of translation of the document, which became known as the
Speaker 1: Cipher Manuscripts. What it apparently revealed once decoded was something
Speaker 1: closer to an instruction manual than a text, outlines for
Speaker 1: a set of graded initiatory rituals combining rose Accrucianism, Kabbala,
Speaker 1: and hermetic magic, and instructions for the correct ways to
Speaker 1: engage in a whole host of mystic practices, including astrology,
Speaker 1: tarot alchemy, and even necromancy communicating with the dead. It
Speaker 1: was an entire architecture for a magical order that, as
Speaker 1: far as William Woodman, Samuel Mathers, and William Westcott could establish,
Speaker 1: did not yet exist anywhere in the world. But it
Speaker 1: wasn't necessarily the Cipher that mattered most to what came next.
Speaker 1: It was something that was said to have been scrawled
Speaker 1: almost as an afterthought, on the manuscript's end paper, in
Speaker 1: a hand noticeably different from the rest of the document
Speaker 1: an address. The name attached to it was Fraeulein Anna Sprangle,
Speaker 1: the address Nuremberg, Bavaria. Nobody in Westcott, Woodman's or Mathers's
Speaker 1: circle had ever heard of her, and so, in the
Speaker 1: hope of understanding more about where the manuscript had truly
Speaker 1: come from, it is said that Westcott decided to write
Speaker 1: her a letter. A reply is said to have come
Speaker 1: late on a cold November evening in eighteen eighty seven,
Speaker 1: and it would change the shape of not only his life,
Speaker 1: but many occult luminaries for years to come. Members of
Speaker 1: such organizations often take a new name for themselves, or
Speaker 1: a motto, as it was called. Sprangle's reply to Westcott
Speaker 1: is said to have begun with the words, Hair Westcott,
Speaker 1: you may sign my motto on any paper if the
Speaker 1: need arise, saypians domin arbiter astris, the wise man will
Speaker 1: rule the stars. Fraulein Anna Sprangel, as it supposedly transpired
Speaker 1: over the letters that followed, was no ordinary correspondent. She
Speaker 1: claimed to be the illegitimate daughter of King Ludwig I
Speaker 1: of Bavaria and the Irish dancer and adventurer Lola Montez,
Speaker 1: whose affair had caused a great scandal at the time.
Speaker 1: She claimed also to have broken away from the Rosea
Speaker 1: Crucian Order some decades earlier, once its teaching struck her
Speaker 1: as too closely tethered to Christian orthodoxy for her taste.
Speaker 1: She wanted to venture somewhere other. She didn't just want
Speaker 1: to worship gods, she wanted to meet them. To that end,
Speaker 1: she supposedly claimed to have established an entire magic order
Speaker 1: of her own, Order of the Golden Dawn to help
Speaker 1: make this a reality. But Sprangle, as she apparently said,
Speaker 1: didn't answer to herself alone. Above her stood a higher authority,
Speaker 1: a body of enigmatic individuals called the Secret Chiefs, who
Speaker 1: she was apparently in constant communication with. They were the
Speaker 1: true source of all genuine occult wisdom. According to Westcott,
Speaker 1: Sprangle then revealed to him that the Cipher manuscripts constituted
Speaker 1: the movements founding Charter, and as a reward for their
Speaker 1: brilliance in deciphering them, William Westcott, William Woodman, and Samuel
Speaker 1: Mathers were invited to establish a British branch of the Order,
Speaker 1: since there had apparently already been an aborted effort to
Speaker 1: set up a lodge, as they are called, under the
Speaker 1: tutelage of Kenneth Mackenzie, in whose papers the cipher had
Speaker 1: apparently been found, and with Sprangle's Lodge being numbers one, Westcott,
Speaker 1: Woodford and Maths called their lodge number three, it became
Speaker 1: known as the isis Urania Temple, and so in eighteen
Speaker 1: eighty eight, in a set of rented rooms at Tavy's
Speaker 1: Inn in Hoburn, London, the isis Urania Temple opened its doors.
Speaker 1: Such was the fascination with the occult in London social
Speaker 1: circles at the time, Membership grew quickly. Unlike the Masonic
Speaker 1: lodges which this new Order had sprung from, women were
Speaker 1: admitted here as full equals, with permission to examine candidates.
Speaker 1: One evening in eighteen ninety, during a gathering for potential
Speaker 1: new initiates, Samuel Mathers was introduced to a young William
Speaker 1: Butler Yeates, who was already making a name for himself
Speaker 1: as a poet and playwright. Mathers handed Yates a small
Speaker 1: card with a symbol painted on it, and told him
Speaker 1: simply to close his eyes and try to envision the
Speaker 1: symbol in his mind. Yates, a little amused, took the
Speaker 1: card as asked, and then placed it on his forehead
Speaker 1: and closed his eyes. Just then something in his face darkened,
Speaker 1: and the smile dropped from his lips. With a start.
Speaker 1: He opened his eyes again, apparently completely stunned. Yates claimed
Speaker 1: to have suddenly found himself in a desert scattered with
Speaker 1: ancient ruins. Then, from out of nowhere, a great black
Speaker 1: shape had appeared, hauling itself upright out of the ruins
Speaker 1: on two enormous hands. Mathers smiled riley. It was a
Speaker 1: being of the Order of the Salamanders, he said, one
Speaker 1: of the elemental spirits. The card was supposed to correspond
Speaker 1: to a detail that Yates had no way of knowing.
Speaker 1: William Butler Yates joined the Golden Dawn in March eighteen ninety,
Speaker 1: taking the name Damon s Deus in versus the Devil
Speaker 1: is God inverted. He quickly became an enthusiastic recruiter for
Speaker 1: the order, bringing in famed actor Florence Farr, among many others.
Speaker 1: But then, in the autumn of eighteen ninety came a problem.
Speaker 1: According to William Westcott, Anna Sprangle had stopped writing to him.
Speaker 1: What came instead, some accounts say, was a strange, anonymously
Speaker 1: written letter stating that she had died. Others say it
Speaker 1: was something stranger still that the letter instead claimed that
Speaker 1: Sprangle had acted against the wishes of the Secret Chiefs
Speaker 1: in telling Westcott and the others that they could open
Speaker 1: a lodge in England. From this point on, according to
Speaker 1: the author of the letter, there would be no further
Speaker 1: contact with Sprangle or anyone above her. Either way, the
Speaker 1: result was the same. If Westcott, Woodman, and Mathers wanted
Speaker 1: to keep going, they would have to somehow plead their
Speaker 1: case directly to the Secret Chiefs, whoever and wherever they were.
Speaker 1: By now, the eccentric Samuel Mathers, a far more charismatic
Speaker 1: and outgoing figure compared to Woodman and Westcott, had become
Speaker 1: the organizations to facto leader. This position was further solidified
Speaker 1: when Woodman died suddenly in December eighteen ninety one. At
Speaker 1: this point, Maths wasn't employed and had been relying on
Speaker 1: the generosity of wealthy benefactor Annie Horneman to keep him
Speaker 1: and his wife, Moyna afloat. Moyner and Horneman had become
Speaker 1: friends while studying together at the prestigious Slade School of
Speaker 1: Art in London. It was Moyner who encouraged Horneman to
Speaker 1: join the Golden Dawn, which she did in eighteen ninety.
Speaker 1: Not long after, Hornaman came into a significant inheritance, and
Speaker 1: thanks to no little encouragement from Maths, she became the
Speaker 1: Order's most important financial backer. But even her wealth had
Speaker 1: its limitations, and so running low on money, Mathers and
Speaker 1: Moyner decided to relocate to Paris, perhaps feeling his grip
Speaker 1: on the Order beginning to weaken. From such a distance,
Speaker 1: it seemed Maths would have to do something drastic to
Speaker 1: reassert his authority. That something came with a startling announcement
Speaker 1: sometime in early eighteen ninety two. According to the man himself,
Speaker 1: Mathers had apparently done what no one had managed since
Speaker 1: Sprangle's silence. He had made contact with the Secret Chiefs
Speaker 1: late one evening in a darkened room of his apartment.
Speaker 1: Mathers had apparently channeled some kind of connection to the
Speaker 1: mysterious group, which it turned out weren't a shadowy group
Speaker 1: of powerful men, as some had assumed, but supernatural beings
Speaker 1: whose knowledge of esotericism stretched back thousands of years, having
Speaker 1: apparently made contact with the so called Secret Chiefs, which
Speaker 1: incidentally sound not too dissimilar to Terence McKenna's clockwork else
Speaker 1: if you're familiar with them, Mathers gave one of them
Speaker 1: a name, lux Tenebris light out of Darkness. He claimed
Speaker 1: to communicate it with this member directly on an astral plane.
Speaker 1: What exactly passed between them he would never fully explain,
Speaker 1: but it was enough it seemed to convince the rest
Speaker 1: of the Order that from now on, he, operating with
Speaker 1: the full support of the Chiefs, was the Order's rightful leader.
Speaker 1: Mathers then claimed that the Secret Chiefs had revealed instructions
Speaker 1: for an entirely new tier within the Order, known as
Speaker 1: the Second Order, built around a ceremony called the Deptus
Speaker 1: Minor Ritual. Up to this point, for its first four years,
Speaker 1: the Golden Dawn's teachings, despite its original intentions to be
Speaker 1: a more practical approach to the occult, were almost entirely
Speaker 1: theory based. Nobody had actually been taught to practice magic.
Speaker 1: The Second Order changed all of that entirely. Now members
Speaker 1: were for the first time instructed in the real mechanics
Speaker 1: of the craft, how to scry with mirrors and crystals,
Speaker 1: how to evoke spirits and demons, and how to send
Speaker 1: your own consciousness traveling out of your body into some
Speaker 1: other place entirely. A physical vault was constructed at the
Speaker 1: Order's temple in Hoburn, where initiates could complete their ascension
Speaker 1: into the Second Order, a small windowless chamber built to
Speaker 1: exact specifications. It contained a raised bed known as the pastos,
Speaker 1: an altar, four painted tablets representing fire, water, air, and earth,
Speaker 1: and an oversized crucifix known as the Cross of Obligation.
Speaker 1: Initiates in full ceremonial regalia would lie down on the
Speaker 1: pastos in near total darkness, with the Rosicrucian Cross placed
Speaker 1: over the chest, while others already initiated into the Second
Speaker 1: Order stood around them, chanting in low, overlapping voices. Many,
Speaker 1: including W. B. Yates, claimed to have strange visions while
Speaker 1: participating in the ceremony, but perhaps this was all utter
Speaker 1: buncom Perhaps as many suspect Maths' story about making contact
Speaker 1: with the so called Secret Chiefs was just a cynical
Speaker 1: and egotistical invention to exploit the good faith of the
Speaker 1: Order's members and take charge of the organization. So, how
Speaker 1: we might ask, did so many undeniably intelligent people fail
Speaker 1: to see through this and continue to stay committed to
Speaker 1: the Order? Well, the simple truth is, if the accounts
Speaker 1: are to be believed, all those rituals and magic teachings
Speaker 1: that Mathers had apparently learned over the years and later
Speaker 1: under the guidance of the Secret Chiefs actually worked. It
Speaker 1: has just gone past eight o'clock on the evening of
Speaker 1: May thirteenth, eighteen ninety six, in a hot and stuffy
Speaker 1: rented room in central London. A caudron sits at the
Speaker 1: center of the floor what one witness later simply called
Speaker 1: the hell broth, its contents given over to a low simmer,
Speaker 1: the air above it growing thicker by the minute. Around
Speaker 1: it stands four robed figures deep in concentration. That the
Speaker 1: center of them is a woman dressed in white, a
Speaker 1: yellow sash at her waist, an indigo nemes cloth, the
Speaker 1: striped headdress of a pharaoh covering her hair. Outside these
Speaker 1: four walls Florence far is one of the most celebrated
Speaker 1: actors on the London stage, a woman whose voice, according
Speaker 1: to those fortunate enough to see her perform, could make
Speaker 1: an entire house fall silent in awe. But in here
Speaker 1: she is something else. Around her neck hangs the seal
Speaker 1: of the Spirit. They have come here to raise Tafts
Speaker 1: arthurth Spirit of Mercury, a figure that some might call malevolent.
Speaker 1: Beside her stands the pale and willowy Alan Bennett, Bellow,
Speaker 1: Golden Dawn member and one of the most learned and
Speaker 1: respected occultists in London, Famed for his especially deep knowledge
Speaker 1: of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, Those who knew
Speaker 1: him call him simply the White Knight. Has written the
Speaker 1: ritual himself, a precise sequence of invocations designed to draw
Speaker 1: something up out of whatever plane it inhabits and hold
Speaker 1: it briefly inside the boundary of this room. They are
Speaker 1: joined by Charles Rosser and Frederick Lee Gardner, and together
Speaker 1: the four of them have spent weeks preparing for this moment.
Speaker 1: Bennett begins as the order always began, by making the
Speaker 1: mark of the carbalistic cross, imagining a blinding column of light.
Speaker 1: He touches the crown of his head, then traces it
Speaker 1: down to his chest, before drawing a second column of
Speaker 1: light from one shoulder to the other. Next come the
Speaker 1: words intoned repeatedly and so deeply that they vibrate in
Speaker 1: a rhythmic hum through each of the participant's chests until
Speaker 1: the air itself seems to hang heavy with them. Then
Speaker 1: Far traces the signal of Taftarthurus into the steam above
Speaker 1: the cauldron, as the four of them repeat the spirit's
Speaker 1: name over and over again into the dark. At sixteen
Speaker 1: minutes past nine. It works, as the participants will all
Speaker 1: later attest. First an arm appeared, then a leg, then
Speaker 1: appearing to gather itself out of nothing into something, a
Speaker 1: gray human shape appears, standing where a moment before there
Speaker 1: had only been steam and candlelight, and with it an
Speaker 1: unmistakable sense of power fills the room, pressing on all
Speaker 1: four of them at once. The participants stare wide eyed
Speaker 1: at it as it holds for a few brief seconds
Speaker 1: and then suddenly disappears. We don't know what any of
Speaker 1: them actually saw that night. What we do know, according
Speaker 1: to Alan Bennett's own way Words, is that within days
Speaker 1: three of them became severely unwell, with grim and horrible diseases.
Speaker 1: As he put it, it was called the taft Arthurrath Evocation.
Speaker 1: Later that year, William Westcott, still a chief adept in
Speaker 1: the organization, ceased all public engagement with the Hermetic Order
Speaker 1: of the Golden Dawn. Some said it was because of
Speaker 1: his role as the Crown Coroner that his association with
Speaker 1: magic was starting to be questioned. As a trusted man
Speaker 1: of science and reason, whatever it was, Samuel Mathers wasted
Speaker 1: no time in replacing him with Florence Farr, though many
Speaker 1: members in time, like benefactor Annie Horneman, came to distrust
Speaker 1: Samuel Mathes's validity. By eighteen ninety eight, the Order that he,
Speaker 1: William Westcott and William Woodman had built out of a
Speaker 1: strange manuscript and an enigmatic woman who many claim might
Speaker 1: never even have existed did in the first place, had
Speaker 1: grown into something with well over one hundred members drawn
Speaker 1: from every level of late Victorian society, including poets, actors, doctors,
Speaker 1: and clergymen. None of the Order's underlying uncertainty seemed to
Speaker 1: slow anyone down. If anything, the not knowing was the
Speaker 1: engine that kept the whole thing Turning. On November eighteenth,
Speaker 1: eighteen ninety eight, at the isis Urania Temple, a twenty
Speaker 1: three year old young initiate knelt before Samuel Mathers to
Speaker 1: be inducted into the Order. He had a hefty private income,
Speaker 1: an appetite for ceremony, and a hunger for exactly the
Speaker 1: kind of secrets that the Golden Dawn professed to have.
Speaker 1: He took the name Freighter Perdurabo, Brother I shall endure,
Speaker 1: and over the next six years his presence inside the
Speaker 1: Golden Dawn would do more to tear the Order apart
Speaker 1: than any secret chief reel or invented had ever managed
Speaker 1: on their own, and perhaps took his teachings further than
Speaker 1: anyone else did too. Its name was Alistair Crowley, but
Speaker 1: that's another story. This episode is written by me, with
Speaker 1: additional material provided by James Connor Patterson. Please remember to
Speaker 1: like and subscribe if you've enjoyed the show Unexplained as
Speaker 1: an AV Club Productions podcast created by me Richard McLain Smith.
Speaker 1: All other elements of the podcast, including the music, are
Speaker 1: also produced by me. Unexplained. The book and audiobook is
Speaker 1: now available to buy worldwide. You can purchase from Amazon,
Speaker 1: Barnes and Noble, Waterstones and other bookstores. Be sure to
Speaker 1: follow us on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook at Unexplained Podcast
Speaker 1: and on X and Blue Sky at Unexplained Pod. Until
Speaker 1: next time, stay strange and dissonant.