ANNA KINGSFORD
& EDWARD MAITLAND:
LIVING COURTLY LOVE
PART TWO: AN INSTANCE OF COURTLY LOVE
Having written quite a bit about ‘courtly love' on this website (click here for a sample), I found it intriguing to see that the intertwined lives of Kingsford and Maitland met all my courtly love expectations.
The result? A birthing of a plethora of occult ideas and ideals between the two. They both acknowledged they could not have caused this creative explosion alone! That is what the outcome of a true courtly love arrangement ought to be.
Heretofore my closest example of an ideal courtly love situation was semi-fictional and involved a poet in love with a dead woman! Through that love of Beatrice, Dante was brought into the presence of God. The same was true for Kingsford and Maitland.
RECONSTRUCTING A CASE OF COURTLY LOVE
Selvidge (see Part One) set the stage for this enquiry by suggesting that the relationship between Maitland and Kingsford was celibate and led to occult revelations on the part of Kingsford. My further readings suggested that Maitland was also no stranger to intuitive knowing, though between the two she was the primary revelator.
What I am planning to do is dissect the story of Kingsford’s life as told by Maitland. I am focusing on clues as to how Maitland’s relationship with her influenced and enhanced her occult forays into the unknown. These revelatory forays had begun in her childhood.
The book I was able to read online is located for anyone to use on the excellent website constructed in her (and his) honor at http://www.anna-kingsford.com/index.htm. The book is Anna Kingsford, Her Life, Letters, Diary and Work, By her Collaborator, Edward Maitland, Illustrated with Portraits, Views and Facsimiles, in Two Volumes, Third Edition, Edited by Samuel Hopgood Hart (John M. Watkins, 1913). Another subtitle is: {"Behold, I send unto you prophets" (Matt. 23:34)}.
Maitland himself shortened that title to Life of Anna Kingsford. I use neither the full title nor the shorter version in this Part Two, or in Part Three. All cited excerpts in both Parts are from this same book.
In the very first part of the book her childhood is mentioned as being a relatively happy one with many siblings and much spare time spent in her father’s considerable library, giving her the intellectual wherewithal to write stories and poems from a very early age. We also come to understand that her future husband was a cousin, older, which may explain some of the laxness in their later marriage, but that is just hinted at and then not explored further by Maitland.
She was not a well child, or adult for that matter. It is implied but not stated that given her painful encounters with doctors after physical problems, and also after reporting visions to her family which were then reported to the doctors and seen by them as evidence of illness, I see her being strongly drawn to a cousin who believed in her supernatural gifts. He wanted to rescue her from doctors doing terrible things to her to make those visions stop. She also wanted to get away from them. He believed. Perfect.
This cousin/husband really believed in her episodes as manifestations of spiritual gifts. This makes it more understandable why later, as her husband, he sends her to where and to whom she thought might help her develop her gifts. This husband’s is guilty of an astounding selflessness.
Then there came a religious organization, and not the Anglican one for which her husband was a minister, that validated one of her visionary episodes. This caused her to leave her husband’s church, with no apparent protest from him, and this is where I want to start citing from the book itself:
LIFE OF ANNA KINGSFORD, (Vol. 1), CHAPTER I, EARLY LIFE
(From pages 14-15 –forgive the long paragraph, it is as it is)
. . . the determining cause was of an abnormal kind. It consisted in her receipt of nocturnal visitations, three in number, from an apparition purporting to be that of St. Mary Magdalen, who announced herself as the patron of souls of her order, and bade her join the Roman communion as a step requisite for the work in store for her, the nature of which would in due time be communicated to her. This led to her seeking priestly counsel, when she was told that her experience, though of rare occurrence, was recognised by the Church as being orderly and regular, and as a mark of special grace and favour, and one not to be disregarded without incurring grave responsibility. Her private intimations were to the same purport, and no obstacle being raised, she at length took the step so strangely prompted, and on September 14, 1870, being the "Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross," was formally received under the names Mary Magdalen. Two years later, June 9, 1872, being the "Feast of the Sacred Heart," she was confirmed by Archbishop Manning, receiving the additional names of Maria Johanna. Of these, the former was chosen by the Archbishop, and the latter by herself, her reasons for the choice being her affection for her father and eldest brother, both of whom were named John, and her veneration for Joan of Arc, upon whom she was wont to look almost as a patron saint. . . . She described the apparition of the Magdalen as bearing a close resemblance to herself in feature, form, and colouring, so far as she could discern her through a veil which covered her head and shoulders. She had no theory at the time to account for the experience, but subsequent events pointed to conclusions of a very startling nature.
From this point forward, she was a Catholic. But she was active in more than religion. It is obvious that she was fond of and loved men, from the above, including her male relatives. This is an important prerequisite to having a courtly love relationship with one.
She soon rose to being a leader among the suffragettes of her day, pleading their cause in a London weekly she had purchased, which she edited. (From pages 16-17)
The movement for the political enfranchisement of women – then in its early stage – found in her an ardent advocate, and many were her utterances, written and spoken, on its behalf, her appearances on the platform never failing to excite the utmost enthusiasm – as the journals of the day bear witness – by her charm of look and manner, her eloquence and logic, and, withal, her intense feminineness. Never of her was it said that she “unsexed” herself on these occasions; but, on the contrary, she was recognised as a practical demonstration of a woman’s ability to fulfil such functions without the smallest derogation of her womanhood, and that fact supplied the most potent of all arguments for her cause. Even members of Parliament resorted to her, not only for information and arguments, but for speeches, with which she readily supplied them, taking delight in attending the House to hear them delivered, but always regretting her inability to deliver them herself, she would have done it so much better!
But she became disillusioned at the meanness of the feminist movement toward men, to her they were not an enemy to be vanquished. It was up to women to show themselves their equals or superiors. She kept adamantly teaching the basic feminist principle that women and men are equals, but devoted herself to her own further development. She felt that women ought to be who and what they wanted to be, but they should not be prevented from striving to be all they had the potential for being. No one should stand in their way in terms of education or political office.
Keep your eyes on this fact: she was visited by an apparition of Mary Magdalene and took her name upon becoming a Catholic. In fact, at some point in his narrative, Edward started to call her Mary instead of Anna. We will do so too. So do not be surprised if all of a sudden I say Mary instead of Anna. Maitland did the same thing.
To get to the next chain in the link that proves their relationship is a significant case of courtly-love, we move to the next chapter: CHAPTER II, OUR FIRST ACQUAINTANCE.
In this chapter Maitland tells how they met, at a reception for contributors to the Examiner, her weekly. They very briefly exchanged ideas followed by letters and samples of each other’s writings. They quickly saw that they were of the same mind regarding religion and the occult. In their exchanges of letters she used yet other names for herself, Maitland felt it was a way for her to express the many women she had been (in previous lives, but neither she nor he yet believed in reincarnation).
She explained her reason for being a vegetarian, killing for food was destructive and there could be no peace on earth until cruelty and violence of every sort was done away. That is not an unusual reading of the state of animals in the Genesis account of the Garden of Eden prior to the Fall. It was her pacifism that led to her objecting to vivisection in medical school, which made her persecuted and unpopular, but she still graduated and practiced medicine. She carries this anti-cruelty to animals ideology a step further on page 29:
“I could bring forward endless proofs of my theory, proofs collected by dint of long and careful observation. And I know that in proportion as man abandons the diet of flesh and blood, and observes that of fruit and grain, his spirit becomes purer, higher, and diviner. So true is it that the Body makes the Soul.
As a vegetarian I find that interesting. If I would stop overeating, I could reduce the size of my soul?
Maitland was also vegetarian. If it had been otherwise they would not have been able to become as close as they did.
She invited Maitland to the parsonage to meet her husband and daughter. She mentions her husband in her letters with respect and admiration. But Maitland (Edward) could not come at that time, his aged mother was ailing.
She was pleased that Maitland’s son was to study medicine and revealed her plans to do the same, but in Paris, since as a woman she could not enter an English university.
Then finally they meet and he describes her! (Selected from pages 31-33):
Tall, slender, and graceful in form, fair and exquisite in complexion, bright and sunny in expression, the hair long and golden, of the “Mary Magdalen” hue, but the brows and lashes dark, and the eyes deep-set and hazel, and by turns dreamy and penetrating; the mouth rich, full, and exquisitely formed; the brow broad, prominent, and sharply cut; the nose delicate, slightly curved, and just sufficiently prominent to give character to the face; and the dress somewhat fantastic, as became her looks, – Anna Kingsford seemed at first more fairy than human, and more child than woman – for though really twenty-seven, she appeared scarcely seventeen – and made expressly to be caressed, petted, and indulged, and by no means to be taken seriously; and the last characters to be assigned her were those of wife and mother, sufferer and student, while the bare idea of her studying medicine, or even taking a journey by herself, as she was then doing, shocked one by its incongruity.
These impressions, however, were considerably modified when she spoke, so musical, rich, sympathetic, and natural were the tones of her voice. And when, as was presently the case – for there was no barrier of strangeness to be overcome, so ready had been the mutual recognition – she warmed to her favourite themes, her whole being radiant with a spiritual light which seemed to flow as from a luminous fountain within, her utterances were in turn those of a savant, a sage, and a child, each part suiting her as well as if it were her one and only character. Never had I seen anyone so completely and intensely alive, or comprising so many diverse and incompatible personalities.
On my remarking on the number of the natures which seemed to belong to her, and to correspond with the number of the names by which already she had called herself, whether in her letters or in her books, and expressing curiosity as to which of all these personalities she really was – we were sitting and conversing in a picture gallery at the time – she frankly admitted that she was as much puzzled to find an answer to the question as anyone else could be, for she seemed to herself to be so many different persons, and to have so many different aptitudes and tendencies, that it was most difficult for her to decide either about her nature or her work; and the result had been the disastrous one of inducing her to do a great many things indifferently instead of some one thing well. She had it in her equally to be artist, poet, orator, musician, singer, scholar, savant, preacher, apostle, reformer, and prophet. “And now,” she went on, “I am completing my education by studying medicine. Not that I believe it will really be complete even when I have my diploma; for the subject is limitless, and really leads to other subjects. For all things are related.” She further told me that, though she had ceased to take an active part in the “Women’s Rights” movement, she was none the less in sympathy with it, as founded in essential justice, and justice was the ruling principle of her nature. Could she only do something to restore the just balance of the sexes, she would not have been born under Libra for nothing. Justice as between men and women, human and animal, – these were her foremost aims. For all injustice was cruelty, and cruelty was, for her, the one unpardonable sin. It was their cruelty that more than anything else made her own kind hateful to her. For she was not a lover of humanity if by that word be meant men and women. Her love was all for principles, not for persons. To my suggestion, in reference to her remark about women’s rights, that one reason for men objecting to change the condition of women might be that they liked them so much as they are, she replied – “I do not admit their preference as entitled to any weight in the matter. They do not consider whether we like them as they are, but follow their own likings and fulfil their own nature as they will. And we claim the right to do the same. Let us fulfil our natures and be our own utmost, and then it will be time to see whether or not they like us. As it is, we are so artificial that they do not know what womanhood really is in its proper development; and not only are we shams, we are dwarfs, cripples, and deformities, compared with what we might and ought to be. Ah! And the men lose too, and in a twofold way. They lose by having inferior women for their mothers, wives, daughters, and sisters, and they lose by being stunted themselves. For one sex cannot be kept back without the other suffering.” . . .
In reviewing the situation I found myself conscious of a feeling that I had, somehow, contracted a responsibility of no ordinary kind towards her. For I foresaw that, while we should become great friends, there was that in her which rendered her peculiarly amenable to personal influences, notwithstanding her claim to independence of character. I felt, too, that thus far it was altogether uncertain how or to what extent her revolt against conventional ideas would find expression. Intensely feminine of aspect, fragile of frame, and delicate of constitution, she was evidently endowed with energy and talents sufficient to ensure conspicuous results. Of her possession of the other qualities essential to high achievement, patience, perseverance, discretion, and judgment, I was less confident. She struck me as one so liable to be possessed and mastered by her ideas, rather than to possess and master them, as to be in danger of losing sight of all collateral considerations.
To me, the first part of Maitland’s description of her shows a man head over heels in love. The long second part gets to the turning of this into a protective feeling. The third part, written after giving it even more thought, hones in on where she is vulnerable, and thus where he can actually serve her and protect her. At this point, at least on his part, I believe that ‘courtly love’ has been entered into. The gallant knight's first duty to his pedestaled 'lady' was to protect her, then love her and obey her, and help her in everything for which she requested or ordered help.
This what Anna/Mary looked like as a young woman in her twenties, perhaps a few years before meeting Maitland, but married with a young child:
In her last decade of good health, her thirties, she was (to me) an even more attractive woman:
In Chapter 3 there is just a hint of a courtly love drama detectable on pages 75-77 where it becomes clear that she is seen by Edward Maitland as the semi-divine “Seeress,” and that he exists to serve her. His duty is to help her develop and augment her message and craft it into coherent forms that can be understood by others. He is also her protector in terms of morals and physical safety and watches over her during her frequent bouts of illness. This resembles the unreachable perfect Lady of the courtly love dramas whom the noble knight pledges to ever protect and honor. She in turn offers her purest love, blesses him, and tasks him with heroic acts that develop and perfect his valor. Most often in courtly love pairings both are married, but never to each other. To me his raising her onto this holy pedestal is consistent with a courtly love relationship.
CHAPTER X, PERSECUTED OF APOLLYON contains some insights into Jesus and Mary Magdalene that I found interesting from a courtly love perspective. This is from a letter from Mary to Edward in which she is in good spirits, and it tells a lot, I think, about their relationship! She mentions Jesus and Mary Magdalen traveling together to perform their mission, and immediately sees that Edward needs to come and join her in Paris to perform their mission (Page 172). This is remarkable because it suggests Jesus and Mary were partners in life and that there were parallels with Edward and Mary:
“I think that they who have the guardianship of you are, above all things, anxious to detach you from your present surroundings. I think they wish to place you in circumstances wholly different from those of your previous life, and to ‘isolate’ you, as they themselves said, from all worldly influences. In order to do this you will have to leave London, and certainly to withdraw yourself from your immediate family. (...)
“A most extraordinary thing has just happened to me! As I wrote that word ‘family,’ I suddenly saw, with all the clearness of actual vision, the figure of Christ, with Mary Magdalen beside Him, going forth together over a plain towards Jerusalem, and in the far distance a group of persons, men and women, standing at the door of a cottage, shading their eyes with their hands, and looking after their departing forms. It must have been a vision of Christ leaving His family to go out and preach the gospel. I must go and rest a little. This sudden appearance has disturbed me. (...)
What comes next in the same letter is her scheming to get him to come and be with her in Paris, after her husband has left, to help her fulfill her mission, presumably as Jesus and Mary did. She will change her daughter's [E for Emily] schooling from using a governess at home to a school away from home to make sure they have some privacy:
“What I propose, then, is that you should join us so soon as you can after A. leaves me. For he is coming first. I am going to send away E.’s governess, and have her taught at a school close by, to which she will go for certain hours in the daytime. We three should constitute a pure household, and our work would be easy and peaceful. I cannot do real, worthy, and valuable work apart from you. I think your magnetism imparts a vigour to my brain which nothing else gives me. And I earnestly believe that this proposition of mine is the actual end towards which we have long been being conducted. You must detach yourself from your present world. You must be one with me. It is not permitted us to serve both God and Mammon. The tongues of the world will die away and be hushed when the world knows our lives and sees our work – work which we cannot produce apart, and which it will be idle to attempt unless we are together. I write with the strong conviction that I speak the truth, and that you must and ought to hear it. I will ask Miss D. to write to you; for I know she will take my view about the governess, and the school, and your being with us.
Maitland agrees to this arrangement, and so does her husband! Mary in the meantime has consulted a Miss. D. (I do not know who either D. or C. are in these letters) and writes again:
“I have spent two hours with Miss D., and she does take my view; so pray look upon the arrangement as a settled one. Ah, what happy communions we shall have, and how great the work we shall accomplish! A. is sure to be pleased, for he himself mentioned it to me as a feasible plan, and said he was certain you and C. would never get on together – he with his student chums, and you with your serious work – in the same rooms.”
On pages 172 and 173, Edward is puzzled about a recent reference to Mary Magdalen by Mary/Anna:
“Why Mary Magdalen and her reappearance on the scene?” I asked myself, as I pondered this strange recital, and recalled the corresponding incident which had led to her joining the Roman communion. And then, as I continued to think, the words came to me: “You will know in time”; and before I could frame further questions, there were projected into my mind these words:
“Meanwhile, what she wrote was inspired, and must be heeded. You are to go to Paris, and live with her as John the Beloved would live with Mary Magdalen were the two to come back to tell the world what they knew about the Christ.”
“And how is that?” I asked; but there was no response. Clearly I was to think it out for myself. And while endeavouring to do this, there recurred to me a passage I had written in the previous winter. It is on p. 428 of England and Islam, and is as follows: –
“Fancy a Paul redeeming a Magdalen by sheer dint of out-loving her! Fancy his exhibiting the divine tenderness and patience which could go on enduring and loving without stint, while the frantic hysterical woman was rent by one devil after another of the seven which possessed her! Tormented and fretful himself, the Alexander Pope of the Apostolate, save for his unfeigned enthusiasm – so far from the feverish hand of Paul soothing the excitement of those inflamed nervous centres – as we may conceive was done by the sympathetic magnetism of the touch of Jesus, it would have but aggravated the symptoms until, in place of peace and salvation, despair and madness had supervened. Paul might boast of being all things to all men. Christ could be all things to all men, and to all women also.”
Seeking for the reason why such a train of thought was suggested to me, I found myself impressed with the conviction that it was for my own guidance, and was on no account to be communicated to her. She was to be frank with me in all things, but much that was given to me was for practice, and not for speech.
This monologue says much about their intent in terms of their relationship. I liked the comparison between the internally tormented Paul and peace-full Jesus.
But did they live up to his vision of her as Mary and he as Jesus together? Perhaps they were not unaware of their inability to withstand temptation forever: In a few more pages we have a very strong hint that there was a sexual component to their relationship, for a limited time anyway.
My next extract concerning courtly love is coming from CHAPTER XVIII, CONVERSATIONS WITH THE GENII [the Genii are spirit beings with their own personalities, like angels, whose function is to informs us].
According to practitioners of courtly love in the fiction of Zoe Oldenbourg, jealousy is an integral art of courtly love (a notion perhaps true, but one I never liked). Mary/Anna has a bout of jealousy, and later so does Edward Maitland.
First Mary/Anna’s bout of jealousy. On pages 389-390, Mary is revealing to Edward that she knows all about his visits to a sensitive called Mrs. B., whom she blasts as an inferior out to steal him away from her. I cite quite a bit of this because she is really dressing him down here, something I had not expected to find in this book since it was written by Maitland who is here being told off:
On going up to the drawing-room I seated myself at the table with pencil and paper, and Mary, after looking a few moments at the moon, which was at the full – it was November 17 – became lucid, and spoke as follows while walking up and down the room; not, however, under “control,” but in her own person: –
“I can see and hear all you have heard and said and done in the past few days. I hardly know whether to tell you or not. Why have you had those long sittings with Mrs. B.? I see a spirit very like myself. She says she is your counterpart. It is a horrible lie. She has told you ever so many times she will never come to me again. I should think not, indeed! How could you go among those people? You named Hermes to them, and gave them a clue to let them in. Why should you go among strange people, and listen to them, instead of letting things come in the right way? She said my own spirit was a serpent and a dragon, and that without you I should be nothing at all; that the man is everything and the woman nothing, and that I got it all through you. Here’s another of her spirits, a dreadfully low creature, which calls itself ‘Ben.’ [This was the name “Franklin” gave himself.] I can take no account of such creatures. Why, don’t you know this woman and her set know nothing of the Gods, but believe everything to be done by a low stratum of existences? It hurts me to see them; they are so low. I can’t breathe among them. So far as I see, they are the spirits ‘Eliphas Levi’ writes about, and are the products of a reflective atmosphere. She, the medium, holds your hand and gets magnetised by you, and reflects you and the feelings in your mind. Better you had stayed away. You must now forget it as speedily as possible. You are like the man who went down to Jericho and fell among thieves. Why not wait for the right time? Their idea was to separate us entirely. Everything was to be given directly to you yourself if you quitted me. The ‘Counterpart,’ as she called herself, said so. They spoke to you about the subordination of the woman; about your being master. I have not been your master, nor you mine. We both are ‘mastered’ by the powers who direct us. Men and women are on an equality. Neither is first. Nor must you be misled by their story of Moses and Aaron. They both were failures, who entered not into the land of Canaan. We must be patient and trust. We have to be cultivated on both planes, the intellectual and the spiritual; and not on the physical, for this draws from and saps the others. This is an instruction to be heeded, and we must not repine against it. The trouble between us has come of too much leaning towards the body. We must be detached yet more from it.
“In one of your remarks to the medium, when speaking of your cultivating a negative disposition, you said that perhaps you were the woman and I the man in our joint spiritual system. To a certain extent you were right. For the woman element is most developed in you, and the man element in me. But you must not regard me as your instrument – as they said you should – any more than I am to regard you as my instrument, which I confess I have been tempted to do. I was told to withhold certain things from you lest you should communicate them to the medium and her controls. For all between us must be kept secret from all others until we have leave to divulge it. You are to go there no more at all. Her spirits are your enemies. They are of the Astrals, an order with which you must have nothing to do. . . .
“Only through me can messages come to you from the Gods, unless they speak to you directly themselves. It is the condition of our work. I see my Genius and my spirit. And it is a question with them whether to withdraw me from you, and carry on the work with me alone. . . . Oh! Shall I have to go away altogether and do it by myself? [Here she began to cry.] Why should you care for these things, and why should they affect you, O my Genius? He says that if he lets me stay with you, you must keep to me and listen to no one else. But he wants me to leave you and do the work alone. These controls told you that the ‘Woman’s Age’ is a long way off. That is because they want to keep it so. It will come by the will of God. It cannot be helped or kept off.
“The spirit that calls herself your counterpart is one of the order that controls the American ‘prophet’ Harris, and that Oliphant told us of. And she has tried to put an end to our work. How like me she is! How like me! Whence can come this likeness? I see it all now. It is copied from me. She is made exactly in my likeness, out of the astral fluid; and to do this she has been for a long time drawing the nervous vitality out of you, and has built herself up with it. As I look at her she changes like a flame, and goes in and out. The group is numerous. The air is thick with them. But they are not ‘devils’; not absolutely evil. They have no positive existence, but make themselves entities out of human beings. There was no need to disturb yourself about the work. It was partly because my vitality was required for my intellectual work, and partly because yours was taken by the Astrals, that there has been delay. You are so expansive in feeling if not in action; you give out so freely of your vitality that you help these spirits to create themselves. In me the self is far larger than in you. It fills me up to the very extremities. And that is why I am of so positive a nature, and have red for my colour. The self in you is not so large as in me; and your colour, which is blue, is paler than it used to be, and we do not make so deep a purple as before.
“My Genius charges us not to go to outside spirits. These Astrals are non-moral rather than evil. They care only to sustain and exalt themselves. They have no souls; they are simply Astrals, being made of the ether, and are like flames. They are playful sometimes. Your pretended counterpart is laughing now, as at a joke. They are not real creatures, and have no idea of right and wrong. They are neither light nor darkness; but they catch any prominent quality in a person’s mind and make the most of it by reflecting and magnifying it. Hence they are not to be trusted. We must heed no one but the God. True, they use the holy name; but when they speak of God they little know of the enormous ladder which reaches from the highest to the lowest, and all of which is within ourselves.
After all this negativity Mary turns slightly positive again on page 391 with some statements reflecting an experience of unity with all that is, very much like those inner experiences and feelings of unity described by other prophets, of other persuasions and other times:
“I behold myself in a field covered with grass and flowers. It is early morning, and everything is bespangled with dew; and in each dewdrop everything is reflected, from the sun itself down to the minutest object. All reflect God. All is in every dewdrop. And God is in each individual according to his capacity for reflecting Him. We, all of us, in our degree, reflect God’s image. How exquisite is the scene!
But the euphoria fades and she quickly returns to her critical mode, but now begins to involve herself in the criticism, it is “us” and “we” now instead of “you”:
“I see your Genius go past. She has a pale blue colour, and looks wasted and unhappy. I suspect mine is much the stronger of the two. He looks so different. He is of a very jealous and proud disposition, as Swedenborg [see my note One] assured us, and he is proud of his jealousy. He keeps telling me things which he will not let me tell you for fear the Astrals [see my note Two] should get them from you.
“What a dreadfully difficult thing it is to steer one’s way amidst such numbers of influences! It was on account of the Astrals chiefly that we were forbidden to use the planchette [see my note Three]. I see a fine, bright-shining thread. It is our own path; and it is a pathway of light. But, oh, so narrow, so narrow! [see my note Four] And all around are spirits trying to lure us from it.
Note One: Swedenborg will be discussed later when they suggest this mystic came to them to have them teach something he failed to get right during his career as a seer while alive.
Note Two: Astrals are not true beings but temporary beings made of borrowed energy, ephemeral, who attempt to influence humans, usually not in a good way.
Note Two: A planchette is a triangular board used like a Ouija board to receive messages from beyond.
Note Two: The imagery here is that of the Zoroastrian chinvat bridge across which the dead soul must pass, following their guide, a beautiful young woman if they have been good (this is written for and imagined by men, get over it). The bridge is very narrow and high, and if they have been good they will not fall off, they will enter paradise with their voluptuous guide. If they have not been good, their guide is not beautiful and they fall off into a deep dark place of torment and agony.
Here comes the more interesting of all that has just been cited, a hint of passion having led them astray:
“Here is Hermes, shining like a silver light. My Genius says that the way to get the utmost vitality on the spiritual plane is to abandon the plane of the body, and keep it quite low, by not indulging it. The time for bodily indulgence is past with us. Abstinence, we have been told, and watchfulness and fasting, are needful. And the time for the first of these has come. Nothing is gained without labour, or won without suffering. Fasting and watching and abstinence, these are beads and rosary. It is a hard way and a long way, and it makes one wishful to turn back.”
In the context of courtly love, the last paragraph could be seen as a call to abstinence of a sexual character, a call to repent after they have both been indulgent. Does this suggest they have been intimate, sexually? Maybe. Perhaps. Probably. It is hard to tell.
I have sometimes been asked what would happen to the creative power unleashed by ideal courtly love if the couple failed to maintain the higher standard and engaged in sexual activity. Here we may have an answer. Something was blocking them at this point. She blasts him for spending a lot of time with another woman, supposedly for spiritual purposes but she blasts that threatening relationship out of the water unmercifully and forbids him to see her again.
Then she finally calls upon both of them to abstain, to not indulge their bodily desires.
And that is the answer. In a courtly love situation a “capacitor” captures the charge of true love that strong desire and strong restraint build up. This love-charge splits the veil between worlds, resulting in creativity aided by the spirits of the world beyond our eyes, or so it seems.
The same love-charge can also be discharged through sexual intercourse. In that case, if sperm meets egg just right, the miracle still happens: the veil between worlds is opened and something new flows into this world that becomes a new person. But regardless of the outcome of the sex act, the capacitor is discharged.
This is not the end of courtly love, however, as Mary is perhaps telling Edward in this instance. Their mutual capacitor needs to be recharged through abstinence! Abstinence is difficult.
The next chapter of interest in terms of courtly love is CHAPTER XI, THE BAFFLED SORCERER, and it involves a medium come to England from America with a familiar named Winona who, among many other items to be discussed in Part Three, tells Maitland that Mary is in great danger in Paris and needs to be rescued.
So this time it is Edward who is jealous. An older professor simply identified as O., one whom she needs, in order to get her M.D. degree, has been pursuing Mary (burning with passion for her, so to speak), and she is not aware of the danger he poses to her spiritual well-being (pages 217-218). The most surprising part of this first discourse is the strong suggestion that Jesus and Mary had been sexually active at the beginning of their relationship, but as the relationship matured they moved their love to a higher plane. I cannot help but think this is a hint that the previously cited call to no longer indulge their bodies but move to a higher plane of being is reflected in this revelation, and the revelation sanctifies their earlier physical relationship because Jesus and Mary’s relationship went through the same cycle (and she is the same Mary, with the same tendencies!!):
I was presently recalled from my ponderings by Winona, who recommenced her discourse, saying –
“I now see her for whom you wished to consult me.” [It must be remembered that not a single word had escaped me on the subject.] “She somewhat resembles the spirit who was here at first, the one who was associated with your past life and has long passed away. She is thinner, taller, and fairer, with a large forehead and more deeply set eyes.” [This description was absolutely correct.] “Oh, she is in a bad position. Her surroundings are terribly against her. She ought to be taken out of them at once, and go where they cannot follow her. She has a good body, but it is ailing in one point. It is the lung. That is very bad. We must do something for it. I will consult my doctor. We have a doctor in my circle who is very skilful in diseases of the flesh. But now the thing is to see what is best to be done about the matter which presses. If she cannot quit her present surroundings, you and she will have to be exceedingly cautious and wise, or you will all come to destruction. The risk is very great. As I see her now, she is a young spirit, who has not been incarnate in the human many times; and though she has an advanced intellectual organism, it is not able to control her spirit, which is still too much that of an animal. If she loses you, she loses herself for – I cannot say how long. He, about whom you are uneasy, will drag her down. He, too, is a young spirit – all will and self, and no love. They are too much like each other in that; only that she is above him in that she does care for something not herself.
I think it almost funny that in her revelation she is the older, more experienced soul, and in his revelation it is the opposite! He recognizes this, and writes a very convoluted explanation for how both can be true. I think it is simply funny, and shows they both have good self-images.
“This will save her if it be suffered to grow under your influence. He has been mad, through jealousy of you. And she was too much of a child in spirit to see the necessity and understand the way of managing him. An evil spirit has taken possession of him through this feeling. And when under its influence he is not responsible for his deeds. He is then as one mad; but he is responsible for having produced the conditions which made him accessible to the evil spirit. [In answer to question.] Yes, I know who his demon is, and you know it also.
“Now, I know human nature perfectly, and I am going to tell you how to act. You cannot ignore him, as you have tried to do; he is too strong. And you must not oppose him; he is too wilful. She has tried that, – has tried to argue with him. It does only mischief. You must make friends with him by flattering him. He is vain, and will be won in that way. Make him think he can teach you. Ask his advice, and do not avoid him. Do not, either, refuse to talk with him about her if he mentions her. Only tell him nothing about her, and do not seem to be his superior. That is what he cannot endure; he is so vain. And she, when with him, must not be frank and free as she has been. He will not be as brother and sister with her. And all you would say to him must be said by her as from herself. He must not see your hand in it. So, she may teach him. They must not meet often or be much alone together. She is too weak, too impressible. That is why she is so good a medium. Her spirit has not yet acquired those high and firm principles which would make her safe from assault. She reflects evil as well as good influences. When with you, your influences pervade her and keep off the evil, except at times when she sides with them against you, and you are powerless to help her. She trusts to her own strength, and she has none. All women are so – it is their nature – until the masculine element is developed in them. She has the masculine will, but not the other qualities to control it. These will come with experience, if she does not let her will destroy her first.
“Not only are you necessary to her, but she is necessary to you. If you lose her your work stops, and you will be crucified through her. Ah! ––”
Here an expression of agony came over the medium’s face, making him wince and bite his lips, as one surprised and disappointed. The spirit continued –
“Shall I tell you what is in my mind? I will. No. I am forbidden. It will do harm.” Then the expression changed to a smile, and she said, as if soliloquising, “Jesus loved His Magdalen. It was necessary for Him to love her in her way, before He could teach her to love Him in His way. His life was the richer for it. We cannot save anyone except by going down to them. It is necessary to get below to raise them up. People cannot be raised up only from above. You must stay by her for both your sakes, and for his. So may he too be saved; but for you, I wish you could be rid of him. I will look further and tell you more, but not now.”
Maitland (pages 219-221) says that he:
. . . “ was struck, however, by this fresh reference to the Magdalen; but I refrained from remark, and after making another appointment for the 30th I took my leave.
On the next occasion Winona spoke as follows, no word having been uttered by myself: –
“Wait a little till I get up the hill to you. For most people I have to go down, far down below my own level, but for you I have to climb as far above it. And when I have been down for someone first, I have two hills to climb to get from them up to you. I expected you, and sent out my medium to get refreshed, and would not let him take anyone else. I can’t always make him understand. But someone came to-day whom I would not let him see at any price, – someone who wanted me to find a lost trunk.
“I have been where you wanted me to go, and this ring helps me to remember the name, that is part of it, K. i. n. g., that is like ring. And the other half begins with F., and is the same length. Will that tell you I have found the right person? You did not tell me she is not in London! I came to you and looked round and round, and could not find her. So I watched you, and I saw a letter come which made you very uneasy. It was meant to make you easy, but you saw through it, and it did not, and then you wrote an answer and put it in a letter-box, and I followed it, – followed it all the way to the water, that nasty Channel, which I crossed for your sake, though I did not like it. But it was nice on the other side. And so I went to Paris. And there I saw her write what I knew would make you uneasy, and I wanted so much to give her a good shaking. Like all other young women spirits, she likes to run her fingers over the keys of a man’s heart, to see what sound they make. Their own hearts are not fully come yet, and they play with those of men, not knowing by themselves how deeply they feel.
“Then I looked round to see who was about her, and I followed her when she went out. And she went to such a big building where there was a man who seemed to be watching and studying things, but he was watching her. There were a number of people sick and hurt. It was, I suppose, what is called an hospital. She goes there, not to help the sick, but to learn. She is a student. I heard him talk to her there and in her own house. She was angry with him. He tried to undermine your influence, and to persuade her that he is well-meaning. But his only desire is to conquer, for the sake of the triumph. He has no heart, no principles. The victory is all he wants. You had charity for him, and tried to think the best of him. But he does not deserve such consideration. She has no affection for him, but he completely psy – psychologises her, by his strong – not spiritual, but – animal magnetism. And every time they meet he strengthens his hold, and impresses himself more deeply on her system. And as she does not know how impressible and weak she is, but thinks herself strong because she has will, she is on the high-road to yielding to his control completely. The only safety lies in his being dropped out of your lives altogether, and at once. She will never convert him, and he would min her mediumship the very first sitting. She is so impressible and powerless to resist a strong influence that she would reflect his evil influence and return it. That intense eye of his binds her; and when he leaves her she is so imbued by his magnetism that she longs to call him back. It is hopeless to think of doing any good with him. He must grow for many more lives yet for that. If she would only have the sense to dismiss him now, while you are absent, and to take all upon herself! Not when you return; that would be fatal. She must do it now, or all will fall upon you. She has any amount of tact – of ability; she can do it, by degrees, if she will. The blame is not all on his side. She likes his attentions, and excites him by her womanhood, and puts him in a frenzy. There is no half-way possible. She must act at once, and alone, without you. It must and shall stop! And such a slight acquaintance to risk so much for. If she could but see him as I see him! He has been incarnate in the human only three or four times. He was a tyrant, a petty despot last time. His early stages were carnivorous, and hers herbivorous. When among fishes he was a shark, and he retains all his shark nature. She was a gold-fish, all beautiful colours. No tests such as you or she might like to give him would convince him. He would take the facts in only to cast them out again. He is not sufficiently advanced to – to – assimilate them. I tell you he is no real student, no lover of truth, but only of power; all is for self.
“I saw someone else with her, a kindly man, who, though not her father, is parental to her. She is fond of him, but his influence over her is weak. Intellectually she is his superior; for, though young spiritually, organically she is advanced. That is one of Nature’s an–an–omalies–thank you [aside] – to educate spirits and make human existence richer in illustrations. He might take on himself the responsibility of a rupture. For – I see the link now – he is her husband, and that chef knows it. If the separation is not effected now, so that you may not be suspected of causing it, it is impossible to say what his frenzy may incite him to against you. I see your work, your life, tremble in the balance. Your spirits are most anxious that it should be settled at this present time, while you are away. His spirits are powerful and evil. She has angelic influences of her own, but she is not an angel herself, and she renders them powerless. For she insists on going down to a depth of her nature where it is too dark for them to follow and rescue her. Oh that she would let herself see that he is not repentant, but scheming – acting with all his might and talent, which is very great, to entrap her, and triumph over you! He was serpent as well as shark. He is very shrewd and cunning. And he knows his power, for he is well up in psychology. When away from her, he puts forth all his power to influence her by his will. There is only one way to withstand this; it is to meet force by force. She must banish the thought of him with all her might. Her husband, who is so anxious about her and careful of her, might help her by bringing her away. Oh that he would do this! Her great, beautiful spirits are longing to separate her from the bad influence. If only she will come! I do not think you ought to go unless she comes away first. Let her say to him that her husband insists on a complete separation, as it is doing her mischief. It is so. His influence is poisoning her; and when she returns with you to Paris it must not be renewed – only the most distant acquaintance, if any be necessary – and the husband will have the credit of it. I will tell you why I started and winced so on your last visit. I saw, directly I looked close, that you and she were well and rightly placed together for a great work, and were happy in doing it. But then I saw in your Eden the snake, with his forked tongue out of his mouth, and I started in horror, the danger was so imminent. I hope I have not hurt you by my plain speaking. You came to me for help. I have not spared her; but she has a very good and beautiful side, and will do very great and excellent things if she escapes this snare and keeps you by her.
Things get even more complicated, and interesting, on page 221:
“She of whom we have spoken has a spirit called Joan, a name-sake of hers, and linked to her. She was a great world-heroine – yes, thank you [aside] – of Are. Joan of Are has come, and is here now, brought by your and her spirits. She has come to you first, and is going to Paris to put matters right. Her colour is the same as your friend’s, red, and mixed with yours it makes ––? [turning to another spirit to ask for the word] – Yes, purple, thank you.
“She who was your wife is coming to speak to you through me about your boy. (...)”
Next, Maitland shows up without an appointment and has to wait with the medium’s wife, also a sensitive, who then goes into trance and says many of the same things Winona had said through her husband the medium, and other things besides.
On page 223 he is again with Fletcher, with Winona speaking through him about the importance of some of his projects for the whole world. Maitland was inspired and pleased that a spirit of a royal person of renown was present and encouraging him in his work. But more important to our search for evidence of a courtly love relationship are pages 225-226 where Winona reports on progress being made to save Mary in Paris, by Joan of Arc:
“I saw you write a letter. The answer is very near. I see it on its way. Joan of Arc is still there, trying her best to help her. It is difficult, the evil influence is so strong. But Joan is working; she has collected a number of spirits, and they are concentrating their forces to bring them to bear on her. It is not done yet. Here is another spirit. It is Josephine. She says what is unpleasant, but I must tell you. It is that you have to hold your friend, as it were, in your arms all the time; so much does she need protection, so helpless is she of herself. I know her well, for I am much with her; and I say that you must all the time guard her as a mother guards her babe. Sometimes, it is true, you must be apart, or your force would be exhausted; but not for long, and she must never be alone among evil influences, for she is utterly powerless to resist them. In some respects you have not been wise with her. You have let her think that she holds the reins, because you saw that she liked to believe she held them. You are too tender, too considerate; whereas she needs to feel the master-mind exerted over her. You need not be afraid of her feeling that with that other chef. She sees no master-mind in him, and never will. He comes only from the magnetic plane, and she is on her mettle to conquer him because he is strong. Each tries to beat the other – like two racers – but the victory would not be worth the having.
“Guard against two things: Make her feel that it is for her good that you want him dismissed, and that it is for no jealousy of yours. I know it is so, and that jealousy is not in your nature; but she is too young yet to see that. I should like her to come to me, that I might talk to her alone. I want to speak freely to her.
So there is no jealousy on his part? Go Fish!
What happens in the remainder of the chapter is a plot for a movie. Maitland is joined by his female neighbor to go across the Channel to talk Mary out of having anything to do with O. On the way he sees the neighbor woman in vision as he awakens from a slumber, clothed in armor. He tells her what he saw and she immediately states that Joan of Arc is her patron saint and she is often inspired by her and feels her influence on this journey. Just like Mary/Anna!
Mary resents this ‘intervention’ and challenges the basis for Edward’s information about O. She feels herself superior to any medium’s familiar and sets off to challenge Winona. Instead she sees in Winona the genuine article and acknowledges that she has felt pursued, but O. was so gallant and charming it did not occur to her there was serious danger, spiritually. O. had ridiculed her cautious descriptions to him of her visions, suggesting they indicated medical problems that should be treated (just like had been the case with doctors in her youth). She did not think she was falling under his spell. But she was proven wrong when she fell into a trance state saying that she needed to go to O., now! She was gently helped out of it by Maitland.
She had insisted on coming to England to test Winona. It turns out before she left Paris she had left a note in O’s inbox saying she would soon be back and, in essence, she was going to let him have his way with her at that time (it was written with a double meaning, it was supposed to refer to their method of studying, on which he had fixed ideas that she did not like, but now she realized it was likely to be interpreted as offering herself physically to this man who --she now knew-- wanted to bed her really, really bad).
So after Winona convinces her that she is the real thing and tells the truth, Mary/Anna tells Edward of her note and she and Maitland go back to Paris to confront O. and prevent this from happening. To their surprise (think of Joan of Arc’s continuing intervention!) he had never come during the four days they were gone, to fetch this note. It was still in his box, unopened! Of course she removed it and tore it up into little pieces.
She needed O. to graduate, but from now on controlled his access to her and was diligent about protecting her spiritual faculties. All was well and she and Maitland resumed their great work together during her last year in Paris. She did graduate, and practiced medicine in London until her untimely death. Maitland was with her from this point on, helping her complete her spiritual mission. A great story line for a movie!
In Chapter 15 I did not find much to extract for my purposes here except that on pages 337 and 338 there is another reference to Mary Magdalen and how our Mary/Anna took her form in order to communicate with Christ, and how she is to be the forerunner for Christ’s second, spiritual coming and how Edward was her co-testifier of this return of the Christ, making again reference to how they should live together:
She further assured me that the character in which she held this conversation with Jesus was that of Mary Magdalen; and, as may be stated here in advance, it was the character in which the whole of her subsequent recollections of Him were recovered.
I was greatly struck by the fitness of the idea that she whose affection and energy had prompted her to be “last at the cross and first at the sepulchre” of Him who at His first and personal coming to be the fullest and foremost manifestation of the Christ-principle to the world, and she, too, who had doubtless ministered to Him of her substance, should be the one appointed to return and be the principal interpreter and introducer of Him to the world on His second and spiritual coming. And it was not without a sense of awe that I recalled the reply made to me when, on a former like intimation, I had asked for guidance on our proposed association – “Live with her as John the Beloved would live with Mary Magdalen were the two to come back to tell the world what they knew about the Christ”
But, notwithstanding these intimations, I was exceedingly slow to recognise and accept them in their obvious sense. In any case, the revolution involved to my previous habit of mind was too great to be readily made by one who was intensely conservative of temperament. And the theory was inconsistent with the conception I had been led to form respecting Mary herself. For, while regarding her as a soul of extraordinary percipience, especially in respect of things spiritual, there were in her character certain inequalities and contradictions which were intelligible to me only as the result of youthfulness and immaturity, making her system a chaos replete, indeed, with divine potentialities, some of which were in an advanced stage of realisation, but yet wanting much to constitute it a kosmos. There was also between us in a marked degree this difference, which seemed to me to imply a far greater degree of maturity on my part. While for me the evidences of the reality of our work remained fixed in my memory and were cumulative, together building up a body of proof altogether inexpugnable; for her they were evanescent, no recollection of them being retained in such wise as to indicate a permanent and substantial personality as their recipient and depositary. And it was largely to this lack of the organic memory that I ascribed the facility with which she had been persuaded.
On pages 440-442, Maitland plays the final notes of the courtly love sonata, this is the fruition of his numerous claims to have been surprised that the name Mary Magdalen came up again and again in unexpected contexts:
Then there was the intimation so early given me that I was to live with my colleague as John would live with Mary Magdalen, were the two to come back to tell the world what they knew of Jesus – a life which I took to be one of entire devotion to her highest welfare and interests, with the tenderest consideration for the limitations and liabilities surviving from her past, and not yet wholly outgrown, and steadfastly surrounding her with the spiritual atmosphere essential to the perfect fulfillment of her mission. The agreement with each other of our recollections of Jesus, His person and ways; and the strong resemblances in character and faculty which I could not but recognise as subsisting between John and myself. My own frequent vivid dreams in childhood of imprisonment, persecution, and martyrdom, and notably of the siege and destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, at which event, it seemed to me, I must have been present.
. . .
But be these things as they may, the incident now to be recorded actually occurred to myself, in relation to the point involved, during the summer of 1892, the occasion being the preparation of the Second [revised and enlarged] Edition of the “Esoteric Christian Union” statement of our doctrine, under the manifest assistance of my late colleague. I do not, however, ascribe to her any part in it, nor was I at the moment conscious of any presence extraneous to myself. While writing I was suddenly seized with a strong desire to exchange supposition for positive assurance in regard to my identity with John; and looking up from my writing, I mentally put the question as to my own inmost self, being, as was my invariable wont, absolutely calm and collected, and without the smallest expectation of a response: “May I be quite certain of the reality of my seeming recollections of having been John the Evangelist and Seer, and that I am truly a reincarnation of the soul that was in him?” The response to this question came with an instantaneousness and force which seemed to imply that the question had been prompted and expected in order to make answer to it, there being no moment of delay to suggest the need of the arrival of anyone to answer it. It was electric for its swiftness, vividness, and intensity, and seemed to radiate from the very centre of my system to its farthest extremities, and it consisted in a mighty “yes,” which appealed to every sense at once, being alike heard, seen, and felt. And when the sensation had passed away and the tones of the utterance had ceased to vibrate, I found myself perfectly content and satisfied, and undesirous of further assurance. The answer seemed to be intended as a final and conclusive reply, to seek beyond which would be to exhibit a distrust wholly without excuse in view of the history, relations, experiences, and achievements in which it had been given me to bear part.
So, it was all true! She was the reincarnated Mary Magdalene and he the reincarnated John the Beloved apostle! They did live together as saints! They opened the doors to the celestial worlds very wide. They let truth shine into the darkness.
But, the darkness perceived it not!
PAGE THREE: SELECTED KINGSFORD TEACHINGS
AN ADDENDUM ABOUT MARY MAGDALENE and 'MARY' KINGSFORD
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