The Ark

Born in England in 1846, Anna was a mystic, doctor, activist, vegetarian, and writer who promoted esoteric Christianity. She was president of the London Lodge of the British Theosophy Society in 1883 and formed the Hermetic Society in 1884.

Transcript

Rachael Kohn: Strong-willed, high minded, and ambitious, Anna Kingsford was a woman to be reckoned with.

Hello, I'm Rachael Kohn. On Today's Ark, here n ABC Radio National, we're in 19th century England, when women were agitating for change, including in religion. Madame Blavatsky founded Theosophy in 1875, later to be headed by another fiercely independent woman, the orator, Annie Besant.

Less popularly known is Anna Kingsford, born in 1846, who claimed to be a prophet of esoteric Christianity. She also had her own women's magazine, wrote books and became a doctor. Alan Pert has written her biography.

Alan Pert: Well her father was a very wealthy shipowner. He was of Italian descent, though his family had been living in England for many years. Her mother was of Irish-German descent. She had seven brothers, three sisters, so in those days of course, they had very big families. Anna in fact was the youngest of the family.

Rachael Kohn: Well I gather that when her father died, she inherited some money, so she was pretty much set up in life.

Alan Pert: That's right. She was very fortunate in that respect. In our money she received a bit over $2-million, and also a similar amount went to each of her siblings. Now there's a number of women of that time were in a similar position, they had wealthy fathers and they were activists, and they really gave a shove to the women's movement of the day.

Rachael Kohn: Well she certainly became an advocate of a number of causes, and women's rights was probably the most important to her. Who were some of her inspirations?

Alan Pert: One woman is called Mary Walker. She was an American who became a surgeon in the American Civil War, and she was into progressive causes, such as dress reform. She used to wear trousers, or 'bloomers' as they were call in those days, and met with a certain amount of ridicule of course. Another woman was Elizabeth Garrett Anderson. She was the first Englishwoman to qualify in England as a doctor.

Rachael Kohn: And becoming a doctor was very much what Anna Kingsford wanted to do. Didn't she go to Paris as one of the few British women to study medicine there?

Alan Pert: That is correct. After Elizabeth Anderson was qualified in England as a doctor, they shut the loophole so that women were no longer recognised, or allowed to qualify in England. And Paris or Berne in Switzerland were the main centres where women went. Anna was very fluent in French and she enrolled over there in Paris, and she actually was the sixth Englishwoman to qualify in Paris.

Rachael Kohn: But there was a slight problem Alan, and that was that she was against vivisection. Now how could she have gained her medical degree opposed to vivisection, which I would expect would be pretty important to the training of a medical doctor.

Alan Pert: That's correct. Basically is was the force of her will and personality. She was very sure in her beliefs, and she stuck to them, and she was so bright that she just whizzed through her course, and just simply I think, the power of her personality, she could just refuse to do it, and that's it, she pulled through.

Rachael Kohn: She pulled through. Now it's surprising, given that she was such an independent woman, that she married an Anglican vicar, even though she wasn't very interested in becoming a nice parson's wife.

Alan Pert: That's correct. Now her family were forcing suitors on her, elderly suitors and rich suitors, and she was expected to be just a normal mother and wife. But that was not for her. Now Algernon was not related to her, but he was related to one of her brother's wives indirectly. But she gave him the condition of marriage that she would be free to follow her own course, and he agreed. And actually she did not take up the duties of a vicar's wife, she joined the Roman Catholic church.

Rachael Kohn: That's an amazing thing to do for the wife of an Anglican vicar.

Alan Pert: Well it is in a way, but not from her point of view, because some of the teachings she agreed with in the Catholic church, such as Mary, the Virgin. She kept a statue of Mary in her boudoir, and also she wrote some of her husband's sermons for him. She wasn't divorced from her religion at all. She did it her way, basically.

Rachael Kohn: Well it's really the spiritual side of Anna Kingsford that's most interesting. She, as you say, wrote her husband's sermons occasionally, but she also called herself a prophet. When did that happen?

Alan Pert: That must have been in the late 1870s just before she finished her medical exams, finals. She actually did some study in London too, she wasn't totally in Paris, and she met an expert of the Kabbala called Dr Winsberg. She went round to his place one evening, and he was a bit condescending towards her, and he said, 'Oh, I suppose you're a prophet greater than Daniel, are you?' And she said, 'Yes'. It wasn't pushy or anything, but he was just trying to put her on the spot and make fun of her.

Rachael Kohn: Did she have revelations that she wrote down?

Alan Pert: Yes, that's correct. She called them Illuminations. Largely they came in sleep and then she'd write them down the next day. Now that's, if you look back at ancient writings, it's in Plato for example, that was very common for the sages and initiates to have these Illuminations in their sleep, so really, what she was doing was just carrying on these ancient practices.

Rachael Kohn: And she was pretty educated in the antiquities, wasn't she?

Alan Pert: Yes, she could read Greek, possibly she knew Latin too. So yes, she sort of educated herself really.

Rachael Kohn: Well if her real partner in life wasn't Algernon, her husband who I gather she lived more or less in a sexless relationship with for some time.

Alan Pert: Yes, well she only had one child, called Edith, in the first year of her marriage, and they lived like brother and sister, according to her biographer, Edward Maitland.

Rachael Kohn: Now that's the man I want to talk about. He was really her partner in life, wasn't he?

Alan Pert: Well to a point. He was a partner in her work really. He was older than she was, he was 22 years older than her. He was a graduate from Cambridge, and his father and brothers were clergymen. He was expected to go into the clergy, but he had doubts about it, and he went to California, looking for gold, he came to Australia looking for gold, he was in Australia in the 1850s. And then he went back to England and he met Anna, and they had similar interests: they were both in favour of vegetarianism, and they were both against vivisection, and they developed the same religious outlook, and he used to accompany her some of the time when she went to Paris. Also her husband, Algernon, he went to Paris too at times, to accompany her.

Rachael Kohn: But they also went to the seaside together, they seemed to travel a lot together.

Alan Pert: Yes. That's a very interesting question because not all his information is reliable. This is what I've discovered. He gives the impression that he's with her a lot more than he really is.

Rachael Kohn: This was certainly a time, the 1880s, the 1870s, of great religious ferment, and also the beginnings of Theosophy. Now she was interested in Theosophy, wasn't she?

Alan Pert: That's right. Her views were similar to the Theosophical views.

In 1881 after she'd finished her medical degree, she gave a series of lectures in London called 'The Perfect Way'. These were based on her Illuminations. These were on esoteric subjects, esoteric Christianity, the ancient mysteries, those sorts of subjects, that gained her a lot of attention, especially among Theosophists and Spiritualists, and she was invited to join Theosophy as the President, because they'd been having some trouble, dissention within the ranks, and in 1883 she was President of the British Theosophy Association, and she changed its name to the London Lodge.

Rachael Kohn: Madame Blavatsky of course is one of the two founders of Theosophy, but Anna Kingsford and she crossed swords occasionally. Was it a matter of two strong-willed women, or was it more than that?

Alan Pert: It's more than that really, because Anna Kingsford was appointed to the British Theosophy Society by an Englishman, Charles Massey. He was the first President there, while Blavatsky was over in India. So Blavatsky didn't have any say about it. You know, she liked to control her Society. The biggest bone of contention was the Masters. Blavatsky had these Masters who were supposed to live in the Himalayas, and give them messages through Blavatsky to the Society. But Anna joined on the condition that she didn't have to believe in the Masters. And I think that was the big bone of contention.

Rachael Kohn: Kut Humi, I think was the main Master.

Alan Pert: That's right. He was a sort of an intermediary between Blavatsky's Master, and he's the one who sort of gives most of the messages out, but there were other various Masters, too, yes.

Rachael Kohn: Well Anna Kingsford wouldn't be the only one who had difficulty believing in Kut Humi. But eventually, she and Edward Maitland founded their own version of Theosophy, the Hermetic Lodge. Was that a success?

Alan Pert: Well the Hermetic Lodge was actually only a short-lived thing. They did have a broad range of interests, but it was more the Western tradition that encompassed esoteric Christianity.

Rachael Kohn: Well Anna had a few critics in her day, and also posthumously. I think G.K. Chesterton, among others, made fun of her pretensions. Why do you think she was such a target of criticism?

Alan Pert: This comes back to Edward Maitland. In the course of my researches, he said some very strange things about her in the biography. After Anna died, he wrote this massive biography of her which was published in 1896. Anna died actually in 1888. Now he made some really outrageous claims such as she killed two French vivisectors by mind control. I went into this, and read widely on occult matters, and there's no case where that can happen. If people could just sit down, will people to death, people would be dropping like flies everywhere.

Rachael Kohn: Why did he write that about someone he was so fond of?

Alan Pert: Exactly. Well that's the point really. Because I think studying his works, now he wrote 3 novels; in each novel he's got his ideal woman, and strangely enough she's just like Anna, young, tall, fair, beautiful, long golden hair, but in his novels his ideal woman is submissive. Anna was not submissive. And also they did have certain arguments.

Now it's a bit frustrating because he says for a period of over a year, they had altercations. But he doesn't give any details. So I had to sort of piece things together from his own writings. Luckily he wrote extensively. I think he turned against her really, because he wanted to be closer to her than she wanted herself.

Rachael Kohn: What has been the legacy of Anna Kingsford? Has she been an important person in the field of esoteric Christianity?

Alan Pert: She has. Not only esoteric Christianity, but esoteric studies generally. The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which is a famous occult organisation, formed actually just a couple of weeks after she died in 1888. She influenced strongly the founder of that, Samuel MacGregor Mathers, and then there was another 20th century occultist called Dionne Fortune. She came out of the Golden Dawn, formed her own society called Servants of the Light. She's one of the leading occultists of the 20th century.

Another big name is Mahatma Gandhi. He was very impressed by Anna and her writings, and in the 1890s he sold her spiritual works in South Africa. And there are countless Theosophists, mystics, who have been influenced by her work.

Rachael Kohn: Well now your biography has kind of resurrected her and cleaned her up a bit from the Maitland allegations, but you call your book The Red Cactus. What's the significance of The Red Cactus?

Alan Pert: That's got a number of implications. The main, was her flower. The reports of her that she used to wear red cactus flower on her dress. Also a cactus symbolises flowering in the desert, the cactus survives in the desert, harsh conditions, then it flowers, brings life to the desert. Also we have the colour red, she was a doctor, blood's red, also red blood stands for divine life. So there's a multiple symbolisms in that title.

Rachael Kohn: And a prickly exterior.

Alan Pert: Well she didn't suffer fools gladly, yes.

Rachael Kohn: Well when did you become interested in Anna Kingsford, enough to write this biography?

Alan Pert: Well it was about ten years ago really. I was reading about the Golden Dawn in a book called Women of the Golden Dawn, by Mary Greer. She's an American expert on esoteric matters. The name just sort of floated around in my mind, and I came across her work in the Fisher Library, at the University of Sydney, where I work, and I was struck by her work. It really struck a chord with me, and so I delved into it, and I put some information on the web about her and people contacted me, saying, Where can I get more information? And eventually I just thought I'd write something about her, and I just went deeper and deeper into her. I was just on that sort of wavelength.

Rachael Kohn: Sydney-based Alan Pert has written Red Cactus: the Life of Anna Kingsford.

The Japanese gentleman who brought Zen to the West - D.T. Suzuki is next week on The Ark, with me, Rachael Kohn.

Guests

Alan Pert
graduated in 1971 from the University of Sydney with an Economics degree and has been studying comparative religion and the Hermetic philosophy for many years.

Further Information

Anna Kingsford Homepage

Publications

Title: Red Cactus: The Life of Anna Kingsford
Author: Alan Pert
Publisher: Books & Writers

Presenter

Rachael Kohn

Producer

Geoff Wood and Rachael Kohn